by Anna Thayer
During December, Cadet Overbrook was among those to fall ill with the fever and be confined to quarters. The word among the cadets was that the young man, never renowned for stamina, would not last the winter.
Despite being advised not to approach those struck down with the fever, Eamon went to see the cadet. He found the young man in a room with darkened windows that already bore an air of death. Remembering Overbrook’s loves, Eamon later returned there, taking with him a number of books. He set the young man the task of locating some quotes, the majority of which he had dredged out of memories of his own reading.
“I’d be particularly interested if you can find this one,” he added at the last, repeating the roundel that Cathair had first spoken to him in September. Overbrook smiled weakly.
“I’ll try, sir.”
“Good man.”
To this work Overbrook set himself with relish and, when he was not quote-hunting, he drew detailed maps based on some geographical volumes. These he showed to Eamon, and Eamon brought them to the attention of Captain Waite. The cadet’s work was impressive and, as a result, new field maps for several regions were commissioned. As Overbrook began returning to strength, the college cadets, who had seen how Eamon had worked to keep the young man focused on something other than impending death, grew more fond of their first lieutenant. Yet even as the college rang to Eamon’s praise Mathaiah Grahaven kept a cautious distance from him. Eamon found that it was no fatigue to scorn and ignore the cadet. He had long since ceased giving news for Hughan.
Indeed the King very nearly slipped from his mind, except for those few nights when, unable to be in Alessia’s bed, he rested in his own. There the heart of the King, closeted away many weeks before, shimmered, casting an eerie glow over his room and pervading his dreams. On those nights he covered the light with blankets, and huddled alone in the cold.
It was also during this time that Eamon came to know the Hands who held each quarter: Lord Cathair, the West; Lord Ashway, the East; Lord Dehelt, the North; and Lord Tramist, the South. With their characteristic pale faces and piercing eyes, it was a chilling business to see all four discussing city policies. Eamon met on several occasions with the Right Hand, who commended his progress, and continued to promise that the Master would meet him soon.
In the new year Lord Cathair took to showing Eamon about the Hands’ Hall and palace, demonstrating their hidden nooks and crannies. The Hand had ceased chanting oddments of poetry at him. Eamon came to know the city very well, and was able to chart swift and complex routes across it. He was charged with capturing any suspected snakes – a task to which he initially responded with reluctance. Yet Lord Cathair’s praise and the Right Hand’s compliments made it increasingly easy to commit men and women to the care of the Hands. He was present when his prisoners were tortured and soon began setting his hands to the instruments to effect it, putting into practice the theoretical training he had so despised in Edesfield. It was not difficult, and their blood was easily washed from him. But of Lillabeth he did not breathe a word; Alessia was fond of her.
From time to time Lord Cathair entrusted him into the care of Lord Tramist. A powerful breacher, the Lord of the South Quarter was capable of extracting much from those he interviewed. Eamon was coached in how to pressure and bend a mind into revealing what its keeper would rather hide. He began to learn the workings of the far-off plain, and just how much pain to inflict on men so that they would open, but not break. Lord Tramist conservatively lauded his impressive skills.
But sometimes, when he tried to breach a wayfarer, the searing brilliance of the blue light intervened. Against it neither he nor Lord Tramist could press, and those too protected by it were killed or cast into the Pit. Eamon found satisfaction in seeing such men hurled into the choking blackness. It was all they deserved for rejecting the Master. How could he ever have considered doing as they did?
But sometimes the blue light haunted his dreams. On such nights Alessia’s kisses barely served to free him from his thought and, seeing his burden, she would take his face between her hands and hush him. Then he would bury himself in her, forgetting his troubles; yet when at last they would lie still and sleep, the light would return to him, and call on him by a name he was trying to forget.
So the winter went on. As the months passed, the time that he spent at the college decreased substantially. If he wasn’t with Lord Cathair or Alessia, he was often on duty at the palace, aiding in inventories or inspecting the West Quarter Gauntlet on duty there.
In those months Ladomer, who had been officially instated in his role as lieutenant to the Right Hand, also came frequently to visit him. They spent much time together in a nearby inn, talking about the Master’s policies and their own hopes for the future. Eamon found that his heart turned more and more towards that accolade which had always been before him: that of the Right Hand.
This was the thought that occupied his mind one grey day when he met Ladomer for their usual drink.
“Are you listening to a word I’m saying?” Ladomer asked, waving a playful hand in front of his face.
“Sorry?” Eamon asked, recalled from his distant dreams of power.
“I suppose I wasn’t talking about Alessia, was I? So there was nothing worth listening to!”
Eamon smiled a little. Apart from Alessia herself, he confided most things to Ladomer or to Waite, depending on their nature.
Ladomer pushed a mug to him over the table. “My point exactly. Drink – it will do you good.”
Eamon took a deep draught.
“There’s something on your mind,” Ladomer told him. “Don’t try to deny it! I can read you like a book.”
“You don’t read books,” Eamon replied idly.
“Neither do you these days,” Ladomer countered.
“No,” Eamon mused, trying to maintain his focus against the obsessive bent of his thought. “I’m a little distracted, Ladomer,” he confessed.
“By Alessia?” Ladomer scoffed. “Come, come, Ratbag! You’ve been bedding her for months. Surely the distraction stage has worn off by now?”
“Not by Alessia,” Eamon answered, offended.
“Oh?” Ladomer eyed him curiously. “I thought she was your whole world! Well, if it isn’t Alessia, then you must tell me what it is!”
Eamon met his gaze and held it for a long time. Ladomer was his closest friend. Surely it wouldn’t hurt…
“Come on, Ratbag!” Ladomer insisted. “It’s no good keeping secrets from me; you know I always find them out, one way or another, in the end.”
“You must promise not to speak of it,” Eamon told him sternly.
“Not to speak of it? My, we are being dramatic this morning.” He solemnly raised one hand. “I give you my word.”
So it was that Eamon at last confessed to Ladomer the way in which the promised power of the Right Hand held him in thrall every moment he lived.
For a long moment, Ladomer stared at him. “Well I never!” He whistled quietly. “I have heard some impressive things about you, especially from Lord Ashway – he loves wandering around the palace corridors playing the prophet – and Lord Tramist speaks highly of your breaching skills. But you, become Right Hand!” He lifted his mug high. “Now that would be worth seeing.”
The words encouraged him and his friend’s confidence spurred him to his duties with renewed vigour. For with every day that he served, with every cadet he trained or snake he breached, he was coming closer to earning his place as a Hand. And the closer he came to becoming a Hand the nearer he came to the greatest prize.
“Just a little more,” Cathair advised him one frosty morning in late January. “The Master is most impressed with you, Mr Goodman!”
One day late in January he went to see Alessia. She was expecting him, and all the servants – by now well accustomed to his presence – greeted him. To those who were kind he gave a few coins, and they praised him for it. He walked proudly, fully expectant that promotion to the Hands would come an
y day. In his pride he demanded Alessia’s touch. Gone was his surprise and delight each time she favoured him with her love; now it was a right, his right. Now he favoured her.
As he kissed her that night she pulled back from him and took his face in her hands. Then she studied him hard, strange care on her beautiful face.
“What is it?” Eamon asked, leaning forward to kiss her bare throat.
“You’ve changed, Eamon,” she said, a touch of sorrow to her voice. “He’s changed you.”
“Who has?”
But she did not answer him.
The following day, Eamon was strolling down the Coll towards the college. He had some papers to see to, and needed to go over the list of suggested lieutenantcies with Draybant Farleigh and Captain Waite. He had plenty to occupy him – yet his mind was filled with Alessia and weighted with her strange sorrow. What had she meant? How had he changed?
He saw someone climbing the Coll. Recognizing Mathaiah, he stiffened. His ward was dressed smartly and bore his jacket lightly over his shoulders despite the cold. Mathaiah had excelled himself in service over the last few months and was one of those shortlisted to progress directly to lieutenant on his swearing. In this sense, Eamon’s tutelage had served him well. Yet Eamon felt that Mathaiah Grahaven was doing all he could to undo that distinction by letting other cadets outdo and defeat him, or by making easy mistakes in his lessons. It seemed nonsensical to him.
Snow drifted in the air that day. Eamon made to pass by his ward without a word, as had become their custom. But this time Mathaiah called him.
“Sir?”
Part of him wanted to ignore the voice and simply keep walking. But an older part of him, a part that he had thought lost forever in his world of Hands and bedclothes, stopped. He turned.
“Mr Grahaven?” He watched his ward against the grey sky. The cadet seemed somehow older; there was strength and nobility in his bearing that Eamon had not seen before. He noticed that the cadet held a small pouch. The young man fixed his hand more firmly about it.
“What is that, Mr Grahaven?”
Mathaiah smiled. “Something I’ve saved for.” Frozen figures passed them by on either side. “Sir,” he continued quietly, “there is something that I need to tell you.”
“Speak freely, Cadet.”
Mathaiah laughed sadly. “We were friends once. Then I spoke freely. Now I must just speak.”
A cold stab of anger drove through him. “Mind your tone, Grahaven.”
“For months,” Mathaiah told him, his voice a sharp whisper, “you have been steadily driven and drawn away from what you came to Dunthruik to do. Your sword and name are tarnished with blood, but you still have your name. It is not too late to turn, first lieutenant.” Mathaiah paused. “I can see, we all can, that the throned is netting you, baiting you, goading you. And he has a powerful piece, sir. But he does not own you. Not yet.”
How dare the boy judge him! “Do not harp upon this theme, Mr Grahaven,” Eamon hissed, “or you will find yourself in a pit of trouble.”
Undeterred, Mathaiah leaned in closer. “You have not turned me in, sir. I believe that’s because a part of you knows what you should be doing. And part of you knows the truth. She’s his, sir. She always has been, and from the day that you saw her first with Alben, she has been played to capture you.”
The biting wind drove into his eyes. “I love her,” he snarled.
“Maybe you did once. Maybe one day you will again. But now she is simply yours, just as you are becoming his.”
Eamon’s blood raged. How dare Mathaiah say such things! And yet… the rage pointed to something that he had been long fighting to deny. For the first time in many months he reached for the heart of the King and the comfort that it had once offered him. Both were gone.
“I have important matters to attend to, sir. Once, I dreamed of your attending to them with me. Now, I cannot even think to ask it.” Mathaiah clutched the pouch, and steeled his eye. Did he detect a tear? “Good day, sir.”
He turned and disappeared into the snow. Eamon could only watch him go.
It was the seventh of February. Bitter winter winds from the north still blew, but the ice over the plains was thinning, the roads slowly becoming passable again. For nights, Eamon’s dreams had been filled with the Pit, with the memories of breached minds, with Hands and banners and eagles, and with a blue light that had never quite left him. It did not call him first lieutenant.
He stood on Alessia’s balcony watching grey clouds roll over the sea. He knew that she was dressing behind him but he did not watch her as he often did. Instead his eyes turned towards the palace. More than a week had passed since he had spoken with Mathaiah, but his ward’s words still haunted him. He felt a weight at his heart and knew it to be the weight of guilt – guilt so softly spoken that a kind word could yet steer its keen bite away.
Alessia came to him and touched his arm. Instinctively, he took her hand. On some days, he felt as though that hand in his was all he had.
“You’re very thoughtful today,” she said softly, turning him to look at her. She was wearing a dark green dress that he had not seen before.
“You’re very beautiful today.” He gathered her to his side, trying to strengthen himself by her warmth and presence.
What if…? He could not believe it. What if Mathaiah had spoken the truth?
He looked urgently at her. “Alessia, why do you love me?”
“What kind of question is that, Mr Goodman?” she countered playfully.
“A serious one. Please,” he insisted, laying a finger to her lips to still them. “Please. I need to know.”
“Isn’t it enough that I love you?”
Though he longed to answer yes, all he tasted was doubt as she quickly pressed her soft lips to his.
That afternoon he met some of his cadets in the West Quarter College hall. He saw Manners and Mathaiah speaking quietly together in one corner. As the two spoke Manners’ eyes widened, as if he had heard something amazing. Eamon suddenly yearned to join them. What friendship he had been without these past few months! Surely Mathaiah would speak to him?
“Mr Goodman, sir!” Cadet Overbrook hurried over, papers in his hand and a wild, exhilarated look on his face. “Sir!”
Eamon smiled. He was fond of Overbrook, despite his being neither strong nor athletic. The young man would probably be far happier in a schoolhouse in some quiet town far away from Dunthruik than he would ever be as a Gauntlet ensign; he had the patience and wit to be an excellent teacher. Since his bout of fever, Overbrook had been industriously engaged in redrawing many of the maps that the Gauntlet used, a duty that had mostly liberated him from the aspects of Gauntlet life that he hated. Unfortunately, the cadet was down to his last maps; full duty beckoned him again in a couple of weeks.
“Mr Overbrook.”
The cadet came to a halt, dropped some papers, stooped to pick them up, saluted, dropped some more, picked them up, and beamed. “I’ve found it, sir!”
“Found what?” Eamon asked, wondering how the young man ever found anything.
“The last of those references that you asked me for,” the cadet beamed.
Eamon stared blankly before understanding: Cathair’s poetry.
“I’m sorry that it took me so long, sir,” Overbrook continued. “It was so difficult to find that I was starting to think that you might have invented it, but I found it. I had no idea you were so well read, sir!” He pulled a ream of notes from his mapping papers. “It was a poem quoted in The Edelred Cycle.”
Eamon frowned. Although he had heard of it he had never read it. He did not think that his father had owned a copy. “What’s that about?” he asked, genuinely intrigued.
“It’s a poem, written after the Master liberated the River from the Serpent,” Overbrook answered. For the first time in many months, the terminology crept into Eamon’s spine to make him shudder. “It tells how the Master came from the east and infiltrated the court to find a way in
which the Serpent might be deposed. While there he becomes involved with a noblewoman who is close to the Serpent, and a large part of the work deals with their hidden love and his hidden task.” Overbrook was grinning with excitement as he told the story. “Edelred eventually turns one of the King’s closest advisors and friends – who also happens to be the brother of the noblewoman. The roundel is about her, sir,” he added, “and some attribute its roots directly to the Master. In some versions of the text, though, the ‘flower’ spoken of in the short verse isn’t an ‘eagle’s’ flower, but a ‘traitor’s’.”
Eamon stared at him. “A traitor’s flower?”
“There’s some discussion as to whether the flower was given to her by her lover, or her brother,” Overbrook explained. “It all matches with a growing tragic subtext, because when the noblewoman discovers Edelred’s purposes she tries to change her brother’s mind and dissuade him from following the Master. Finding that he cannot be moved, she tries to warn the Serpent, but the Master catches her first and, whilst assuring her that he loves her, kills her. It is a pity, for she is a fine character,” Overbrook pronounced sadly, “but she was going to betray him.”
Eamon listened with growing alarm. How much of the tale was true? “What happened?”
Overbrook grinned. “The Serpent was killed, his house vanquished, and the Master took the River Realm,” he said. “There’s a phenomenal description of a battle at some watchtower somewhere,” he added, flicking through his notes. “Sometimes there are problems with the narrator’s stance there – he seems to be more on the Serpent’s side than on the Master’s – but some manuscripts gloss the most suspect passages…”
Overbrook went on but Eamon didn’t hear him. Suddenly he was on a cold floor in an inn far away, listening to Aeryn speak the words of a long forgotten song: “Dark, dark the foes of the throne, sly in the mere.”