“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Menders asked. Eiren put her hand on his shoulder but he shook his head, not taking his eyes from Katrin.
Desperately wishing she was several minutes back in time and had the opportunity to keep her mouth shut, she looked at the floor.
“I’ll see what Kaymar has to say,” Menders said angrily, starting to rise.
“He asked me not to!” Katrin blurted. “He knew you wouldn’t let him guard me any longer if you knew – and it isn’t smells like a rubbish heap that make him faint, but truly terrible smells, like that splint, or a felschat! I didn’t want him not to be my guard and I could tell he didn’t want you to take him off duty.”
Menders stood, but Doctor Franz blocked his way.
“Not until I have a look at Kaymar,” Franz said sternly. He turned and left the suite abruptly, taking his bag with him.
Eiren busied herself clearing away the washbasin and soap while Menders looked steadily at Katrin.
“He’s never fainted from that day to this,” Katrin said suddenly. She felt stronger as she heard her own voice, and drew herself fully upright. “Perhaps it was wrong not to tell you, but it simply – I forgot about it almost immediately. Kaymar said the chances were so small that something like that would happen again that it didn’t matter…”
“Katrin, you concealed the truth from me – that you were left unguarded while Kaymar was unconscious, and that you knew about his condition,” Menders sighed. “I understand why you did it and that you likely forgot it in all this time, but things simply cannot be done this way, not in this situation, not ever.”
“Sort it with Kaymar,” Eiren said abruptly. Katrin started. She’d never heard Eiren speak so firmly to Menders. “She was seven. She forgot – children forget at that age. If there’s anyone to have this out with, it’s Kaymar. I have my doubts about the necessity of that.”
Katrin was shocked as Menders bowed coolly and then left the room. She looked tentatively at Eiren, who smiled, though her eyes were angry.
“It’s fine darling – a tempest over nothing. No harm has been done and Kaymar will talk him round. Why don’t you go and do something with Borsen, or see if Cook could use any help. And don’t worry. Once in a great while I give Menders a piece of my mind. Everything will be fine.”
Katrin nodded and was glad to leave.
She looked over the stair railing and saw Menders walk out the front door. She went down to the entryway without a sound and saw that Kaymar was seated on the front steps, smoking a small cigar. Menders went to him and sat beside him. He didn’t say a word.
Katrin leaned on the doorjamb, watching them.
“I imagine Katrin told you about my fits,” Kaymar said gruffly.
“Not meaning to, really. She was excited over the entire affair of the dog running around with the splint and it came out as part of the conversation,” Menders responded, taking the cigar as Kaymar proffered it to him. He took a puff and handed it back before leaning back on one arm, blowing out a slow stream of smoke.
“Cousin – there has been almost no chance that this would happen, and I’ve taken steps to be sure that it wouldn’t happen. I couldn’t predict that felschat years ago,” Kaymar said.
“It’s the unpredictable that concerns me,” Menders replied.
“I had to make the best decision at the time. You know I’m the best guard she’s had and will have. Considering the chances that I would run up against an assassin carrying a bag of rotten bones were practically none – I made the best call I could. You wouldn’t have let me continue, so I decided not to tell you. I’m sorry I had to pull her into it, but there was nothing else to be done.”
Menders said nothing. Katrin knew he was going to wait Kaymar out. Kaymar would talk, since he hated long silences.
“Oh for the gods’ sake, Aylam, you know I’m mad as a pitchfork and you’ve had me guarding her for years!” Kaymar snapped impatiently. Katrin felt a ripple of shock over his use of Menders’ first name. She’d never heard it spoken before.
“She’s seen me talking to myself, she’s seen me cutting myself. It hasn’t happened here, but there have been times in the past where I was so mad that I was not aware of my surroundings. You took that risk to let me guard her – so I took the risk I did. It’s far more likely I’ll go off my head and start jabbering to a tree than that I’ll run into something that stinks like that fucking splint did today!” Kaymar’s voice rose and quavered. Menders reached up and put an arm around his shoulders.
“We’re going to let it drop,” Menders said quietly. “It’s all gone under the bridge long ago and you’re right – we aren’t exactly surrounded by vile odors here. Eiren put me in my place a few moments ago. I don’t like what was done but here we are.”
“You wouldn’t have listened to reason when Katrin was seven,” Kaymar mumbled.
“No, I wouldn’t have. Come on now, no point in getting yourself into a bad spell,” Menders said soothingly. “I’ll have a word with Katrin – I was rather hard on her when she first let it out. We’ll go on from here. I need some things taken over to Erdahn. Do you want the job? That would give you a week away and some rest. It’s just an errand, nothing more.”
Menders leaned back on his arm again, stretching his legs in front of him. Kaymar maintained his hunched position for a moment and then sat up straight.
“I’d be glad to be away, until the laugh over my fainting fit dies down,” he answered. “I see the humor, but for me it wasn’t funny. I have a crashing headache.” A petulant note had come into his voice and Katrin remembered Menders saying once that Kaymar had been horribly spoiled as a child.
“Go see a show. Go to Malvar’s,” Menders said gently.
Kaymar nodded. He puffed on his cigar and then turned toward Menders.
“You could go yourself, you know,” he said. “You can go back and forth to Erdahn in one day in the boat. Take Eiren for an evening. How long since you had dinner at Malvar’s?”
Menders shook his head. “I can’t even say. I’m well enough here, for now. You go, stay a week, more if you want to. By then some new gossip will have erupted and everyone will forget today.”
“Thank you, Cuz. And not just for letting me get away.”
“I know.” Menders patted Kaymar’s back and rose in one smooth motion. “Let me get upstairs and see if Eiren has stopped looking stern.”
“Send Katrin out to see me, would you?” Kaymar asked, sounding calm again.
Katrin shrank into the shadows beside the big clock as Menders walked through the doors. To her chagrin, he turned right to her.
“You heard him,” he said, shaking his head a little bit. Then he kissed her forehead. “It’s all right, Little Princess. Go show him your arm and talk to him for a while. You’re getting to an age where you can be of great help to your cousin.”
With that he was on his way up the stairs. Katrin went tentatively out onto the steps. Kaymar patted a space beside him and she sat down.
“I’m sorry,” she began, but he shook his head.
“It would have come out today anyway,” he said, looking over at her. “We got a good run without it being an issue. Don’t blame yourself, because I don’t blame you.” He tossed his half-finished cigar out into the stones of the drive, where it emitted a thin stream of fragrant blue smoke. Katrin saw a small, round burn on the inside of his left wrist. Before she thought, she cradled his wrist in her hands.
“Why?” she asked, looking at the burn in dismay. He must have just done it!
“Sweetheart,” Kaymar began, pulling away, starting to roll his sleeve down. Katrin shook her head, got up and went to the kitchen, gathering several towels and wetting them thoroughly. She returned and took Kaymar’s wrist on her knee, holding the wet cloth over the burned spot, cooling it.
“Why?” she asked again, looking into his eyes.
Kaymar’s forehead puckered in frustration. He shook his head abruptly.
“Ho
w can I explain madness to you?” he asked. “I – I hear voices in my head, Katrin. Not all the time, but at times of stress I do. They tell me things. They jabber away until my thoughts are so scattered and broken that there’s no rest for me. I can’t sleep. I start talking back to them. They torment me until I have no peace. I have compulsions to do things that I shouldn’t, to be violent.
“I found long ago that hurting myself stops it all for a while. It’s as if you’re surrounded by noise that you can’t ignore, that’s shattering your eardrums – and it suddenly stops. It’s peaceful. I don’t know why it is, but cutting myself or burning myself actually helps me. Oh child, this is nothing for you to know about!” Kaymar looked away so abruptly that Katrin expected to hear the bones in his neck crackle.
“I’m fifteen, I’m not a child,” Katrin replied, changing the cold compress on Kaymar’s wrist. “I saw you cut yourself years ago – you just told Menders so.”
“Eavesdropper,” Kaymar chided.
“You both knew I was there,” Katrin countered.
“Yes. As you were saying?”
“I’m old enough to understand. I’m old enough to help you if you need help. I go with Doctor Franz to see some of his patients who aren’t well in their minds, but it’s because they’re old. I’ve wondered how you control your madness. I’ve seen the scars all over you – years ago, remember?”
“I remember.”
“Were those to – control it?”
Kaymar sighed. “Yes. And to punish myself for things I felt very guilty about. That I won’t tell you about, my dear. Not only are you too young to know about it, but it’s my business alone and something I don’t wish to relive. It may seem horrible to you, but it’s a comfort to me to know that I have the power to control my madness. It’s better than being lost to it and wandering around with the voices and compulsions clouding my mind. Any pain is better than that, Katrin.”
Katrin nodded, shifting the compress as it warmed from Kaymar’s body heat. Now she could see other old, round burns, scarred badly, over the crosshatched marks that must be from years of him cutting himself.
Suddenly she understood Kaymar’s struggle. She had always simply accepted him as being different, but had never comprehended the toll such a difference took.
“Ah well, we got past Menders, didn’t we?” Kaymar asked, his voice flippant and a lot more familiar than the strained tones he’d been speaking in. Katrin looked at him, startled.
“Oh yes, I get back to myself very quickly,” he said, gently setting aside the wet cloth, blowing on his wrist to dry it and then rolling his sleeve down and buttoning the cuff. “I’ll be good for a while now – and I’m off for a little holiday as well. I’ll be back in a week or so, more than ready to work again. Don’t you fret about any of this, now. Get on with life.”
He rose and extended his hand for her to take. When she was on her feet, he inspected her withered right arm.
“It’ll sort out in no time,” he smiled. “Until then, take a tip from me – long sleeves.”
***
“I have a letter for you,” Kaymar said, peering around the door of Katrin’s soapmaking shed with a particularly wicked expression on his face, obviously just back from Erdahn. He handed her an envelope, then produced a cromar and began to play a plaintive tune.
Katrin remembered her directive to Hemmett demanding that a minstrel play while she read any further letters from him. She laughed, wiped her forehead, and broke the seal on the letter.
Oh Most Fair Offended Princess,
Words cannot describe my agony upon learning that my endeavor to cheer you with the description of my chagrin at being partnered for a watered down holta with Ufronia The Dancing Cow has offended you and caused you to fall into fits of insensibility.
I have been lectured regarding the discomforts of the unconscious state by your noble cousin, Baronet Shvalz, who described to me his extreme discomfiture and subsequent fainting spell, upon being confronted with the odor wafting from an item previously worn upon your person. I am downcast, stricken and woebegone to think that I might have caused you one moment of any sentiment other than the most radiant joy.
Therefore, I debase myself before your delicate feet, a willing sacrifice to be put to whatever use you care to name. Punish me to the utmost of your abilities, my noble Princess, and I shall smile with happiness, knowing that my wretched faults are being expunged.
I grovel before you, a wretch worthy only of being pelted with dung. Have mercy upon me, fair Princess. Mercy!
Your vile worm,
Bumpy
Katrin staggered about, gasping with laughter over some of the choicer phrases and the sly dig at her feet, which were far from delicate. She was suddenly confronted by Hemmett leaning over the edge of the soapmaking shed roof, upside down. He grinned, saying, “oodle, oodle, oodle!” in a squeaky voice.
Kaymar finished his serenade, grinned and walked away, cromar over his shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” Katrin asked in astonishment. Hemmett cackled with satisfaction over the sensation he’d made, and somersaulted off the roof.
“You are observing, Madame, the cadet who had the highest exam score for the end of the year. My reward was release from school a week early, no doubt to avoid my assassination by jealous classmates. How about that, oh offended Princess, for the boy who reads slowly and painfully?”
“It’s wonderful!” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged hard.
“I’ll say. I worked like fury, but I did it. Even the Commandant was amazed. And I say it’s a great thing, because I get another week of summer up here in the cool while the rest of the fellows are slaving away in the heat. What soap are you making?”
“Something new, mint and lemon.”
“Smells good enough to eat. So how are things? Let me see your poor arm.”
Katrin held out the offending limb. It was still a pale shadow of itself, though it looked much better than the wizened mess of two weeks before.
“Poor thing,” Hemmett said quietly.
“Oh, it’s over. It’s a half inch shorter than my other arm now and my elbow stays slightly bent but at least everything works,” Katrin said staunchly. In reality, she was still shaken about the arm. The idea that some part of her wasn’t what it used to be had a permanence that left her rattled and uneasy.
“Rotten when you bust something and it’ll never be the same, isn’t it?” Hemmett said. Katrin started. It was as if he’d read her mind.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“I never told anyone because I didn’t want to worry Mama and Papa, but the very first month I was at military school, I busted a toe. Not just a little bit either, really busted it, the bone sticking out, blood all over the place. It was so bad they thought I wasn’t ever going to be able to march and that would be the end of military school. It didn’t heal worth a damn, so I had them take it off altogether.”
Katrin muffled a scream of horror with her hands, staring at him. “No!”
“Sure did. It hurt less than having the damn thing there, all black and horrible and aching at night until I thought I would go mad. The doctor said it was a matter of time before it started to die and I said ‘why wait?’ Get it all over with, clean and done. So they gave me so much ramplane I would have cut my own leg off with a spoon on a dare and they nipped the thing right off. That toe was so bad it hardly bled, and it didn’t hurt a whole lot after. Healed right up, and now it’s like it never happened, except I can’t count to twenty anymore.”
Katrin laughed, though shivers of horror were running down her spine.
“Hells, Willow, it’s better to have it all over with than go limping along with something gone bad and rotting,” Hemmett grinned. “One short sharp pain, a good yell, and it’s finished.”
“Didn’t Menders know?”
“I’m pretty sure that Sir told him,” Hemmett said. “I asked him not to, but then I’m not of age. He has to tel
l Menders some things, doesn’t have a choice. But he’d have let Menders know that I didn’t want it getting back to Papa and Mama. They’re getting old, they don’t need extra worry, and it would have upset them even though it really wasn’t that important.”
“Having a toe cut off sounds important to me!”
“No, slowly dying from infection from not having the guts to have a rotten toe cut off is important,” Hemmett answered. “And besides, it leaves a perfect gap that I can use to grip the end of a Hetzophian tangmare, which I sometimes play at night to annoy the lads.”
Katrin had once heard someone play the very long, thin reed flute from the far away desert lands of Hetzophia. It had sounded like someone trying to strangle a goose. How typical of Hemmett to turn something like an amputated toe into a joke.
“You seem to have adjusted to it,” Katrin smiled.
“The only thing that bothered me was that I wasn’t perfect any more. Not that I’m saying I’m perfect, but my body wasn’t ever going to be the same. Like your little arm here.” He lifted it again and looked at it, shaking his head.
“Little it’s not,” Katrin laughed.
“To me, everyone is little, except for Tharak Karak,” Hemmett said, releasing her arm and offering her his own to take. “Speaking of little, where’s Borsen? I’ve missed him.”
“He’s grown a lot, but he’s still small,” Katrin laughed. “He’s up in the workroom, toiling over a jacket for Menders. It’s his own design and he’s made the pattern for it himself.”
“He’s a smart fellow. Come on, let’s get inside, you’re the first person I came to see. I don’t want Mama and Papa hurt and thinking I don’t love them.” Hemmett squired her away to the house, eager to begin his summer break.
***
Katrin had never been alone. Of course she’d been alone in rooms in the house, where it was safe, but even outside there was always someone within calling distance. The further she went from the house, the closer that person stayed to her. This summer, which had been warmer than usual, she had taken to waking up during the very short night and had gone into the garden alone several times – or so she had thought.
Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series Page 58