Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (29 page)

He was muttering again now, and she wondered if she should just leave him to his confusion. Still, now that she had seemed to draw the curtain aside a bit, even for a moment, she retained some hope.

He walks among the ghosts of Heiland he has made.

“We all have ghosts, Father,” she whispered. “But we must walk among the living.”

“Ghosts dance…” And her father laughed — a strange laugh she had never once heard, but then he returned to muttering.

“Ghosts dance?” she repeated, shivering from more than the chill. “What do you mean, Father?”

Finally, she dared to touch his face. He looked up, startled, and recoiled from her hand, as if frightened, and pulled his own hand back into his robes, but then he focused upon her again and smiled. “Such a beauty… why would you leave him for me?”

“Why would I leave who… Preinon?”

“I have not decided,” he said simply, turning a little away, muttering.

“I don’t understand,” Adria shook her head, trying to regain his attention with her eyes, but now afraid to touch him.

“I know what you carry, Adria,” he said. “And now you will have me pretend.”

Adria shook her head. 
Does he mean the bow?

“Father,” she urged. “Please listen to me. I am your daughter, and I need you now. You need me.”

“You are not a maid, picking apples on a whim.” He shook his head and proclaimed, with a sigh, “I accept it, but do not mistake the gratitude of a king for the love of a father.”

Adria blinked, stunned for a moment, but then shook her head. 
He doesn’t fully understand what I’m saying. It’s almost like he’s trying to say something, and it’s just getting lost,
 Adria thought. 
There is something beneath the madness trying to show through. Perhaps he is not altogether lost.

She wondered, then, if Taber had somehow inflicted this upon him. There were plants known to both the Sisterhood and the Aesidhe which might induce such madness, and even prophecy, to those so gifted — indeed, those same substances which might also help to cure madness, and which were often used to produce visions during sacred ceremonies.

Adria herself had once taken part in a healing ceremony for a badly burned child. Adria had watched as Shísha urged the spirit from his body, a blue and white net of stars, so that he could rest. Adria saw, then, just how slender the thread of life could be.

But after the spirit of fire was drawn from his body, the boy’s spirit had returned, and Adria knew of nothing which might make her father’s state permanent. She also knew that wise ones among the Aesidhe sometimes went through a period of illness, of both body and mind, from which they returned able to perform such healing as Shísha herself could. Shísha had spoken of it as a cocoon — a closed off place, from which one emerged changed, healed, and with new understanding of the world around and within.

Perhaps he is becoming new again,
Adria nodded. 
Perhaps he will emerge again, and make the world right somehow. Perhaps he really is the One-Who-Comes.

It was a childish notion, she knew, but Adria allowed herself the weakness and the hope. He had, after all, once been her father, and she had once believed in him absolutely.

“I left you in defiance, in great anger, and now you have become someone I can no longer return to.” She shook her head sadly, and rose, and touched him carefully again on the shoulder.

She grew suddenly very dizzy, and for a moment, it seemed as if they both held their breaths. The sounds of the fire and the wind outside grew mute. The colors dulled, her vision widened, and her eyelids fluttered, half closing.

She was walking down a hallway, a woman leading her, but when she saw her hand, it was not her own, but her father’s.

The woman faded, and her... no, 
his
 hand... reached forward to move a knight upon the board. She saw herself in a too large chair. She saw her uncle. She saw a man with stony features and colorless eyes.

Tabashi?

She lay underwater, in near darkness, but not drowning. She heard muffled voices, and saw light grow beyond the surface above her, and closed her eyes.

She saw a marble hall, beyond the dais upon which she sat, and figures in black approaching. She waved her hand, and there was only smoke, no... there was red silk and pale flesh and a flash of silver and...

Adria’s eyes snapped open, the world returned, and she caught her breath in three quick gasps.

Tain
á
be…
she thought.
But… different… fast and violent.

“Is this how you see, Father?”

Her father had not seemed to notice any of this, or if he did, he did not seem to care. He was muttering chess moves again, and Adria regathered her thoughts as she wandered to the board to see if she could at least perhaps make sense of the game — the one aspect of the vision that seemed to connect them.

She slowly dragged the table over beside his chair, and leaned in close to his mouth to hear. Still, she could only make out some of the moves, and had to deduce the rest, but he recited the most defining ones with more volume and emphasis, and after a few tries of following him, she was able to reconstruct the game almost to its end.

Beautiful…
 she smiled, as she saw what would happen next. 
Sacrifice the knight to pass the pawn, and finally guarantee a queen and…
 she replaced the pawn with a queen, walked a few more moves 
…checkmate.

Her hand froze just as it played the final move.

“Oh...”

Adria now realized that she recognized the game. It was the last game she had played with her father, just before she left, though he had forfeited before its inevitable end.

“…oh…”

And slowly, despite all reason, the memory cascaded into an even earlier one, for this was also the game he had played with Preinon before he had left Windberth for the last time, to return to the Violet West for a doomed war, and finally exile.

“How is this...?”

She turned and looked upon her father again in wonder, but it was clearly now beyond her reach. He was merely repeating the same game, endlessly, and stopping at the point he had surrendered to her, six moves before a forced checkmate.

“I don’t understand, Father,” she whispered, and shook her head quietly. “But I know that you are speaking to me, in what way you can. You tried to teach me one final lesson, I think… and I failed to learn it. I know. I failed you…”

She looked back to the board, tipping over the losing king. And then the greater implication occurred to her. Her father had played the same game twice, in exactly the same way, and she had witnessed it twice, in moments of similar betrayal. And this was his one remaining lucidity.

And then she realized, after three years of flight, that it was a lesson she had not been meant to learn — not yet.

There is only one way we could possibly have played the same game,
 she realized with awe. 
Only if my father had been in control all along.
Only if he had been prophetic enough to know what would happen to my uncle, and to me… he had to know that…

“It has been decided,” she whispered, taking the few steps and falling to her knees again beside her father’s chair. “It was never simply a game we played, Father. It was never a punishment nor a betrayal. It was a message, a prophecy.”

He only continued his muttering, but softly now, his voice and face relaxed, enfolded in something nearing solace, as Adria took his fragile hand in hers, stroking his parchment skin, and he did not pull away.

“You spoke the truth,” she shuddered. “I would never be a Knight, as you said.”

Tears came to her face, at last welcome, and a gentle smile.

“Zho limiyate, Father. I understand now,” she nodded, resting her chin carefully upon his knee. “My lessons from you were over, and it was time to begin anew, to learn what you could not teach me. I did not run away from you at all, Father... you sent me.”

Adria rested there for some time, but he showed no more signs of recognition. She rose and went to the fire, stirred the remains, then added fresh kindling and firewood. As the embers rose into flame, she warmed her hands, turning her head as she heard the mountain wind rattle the shutters beyond the violet curtains. She heard a faint hawk’s cry somewhere above.

Adria stood and stared at the three covered windows. She envisioned the hawks and their pale prey, the smoke of Aesidhe villages and the ashes of Windberth’s laborers. She saw their ghosts, lifted by crows and fluttering into the sky.

Despite the cold, despite the foolishness of the notion, and with her eyes blurred with tears, Adria ran from one window to the next, tearing away the curtains and loosing the shutters until the solar filled with a fury of wind and light.

Part Four

Blood Bonds

Rejoining and Renaming

F
or a moment, as the last of the curtains tore away from the world, and its shutters loosed, her father’s eyes flickered with the strangeness of the sunlight and the air. Dust devils rose and twirled from among the shelves to linger a moment before falling again.

But this was all. The King of Heiland turned his face a little away from the trespass of wind and light, his lips forming the syllables of an endless game of chess.

Adria wiped her eyes, then looked out over the western slope and down to the harbor. Somewhere among the cogs, longships, and caravels rested whichever ship would take her brother the Prince across the sea to whatever strange purposes. She breathed in and welcomed the cool thin air, nodded slowly, and resolved her will to a moment’s peace.

Images came. Air filling sails... a feeling of flight... hands or arrows breaking the surface of water. And then smoke, and fire, and a woman in red with bare feet on the grass, almost dancing. Some imaginations, some memories.

Palmill...
Adria thought. 
And...
something more...

And she knew, even as she opened her eyes to the violet curtain whipping like a banner or a loosed sail against her father’s shutters.

“I will join my brother,” she said. “It has been decided.”

A young man in formal dress awaited Adria when she exited her father’s chambers. He was a handsome enough lad, but thin and pale — likely not the product of old noble stock, whose males trained for war from early childhood. Nonetheless, his manner and features seemed an appropriate mixture of pleasantry and sobriety.

My confrontations with the Sisters and the Matriarch seem to have earned me some small semblance of respect.

“Your Highness,” he bowed reasonably low, but still neglected the full formality of ‘Royal’ she had earned by right of birth. “I am Falk, steward of the house, and I am ready to escort you to your chambers, if it pleases you.”

Adria nodded her acknowledgment, matching it with a polite smile. “That would be most welcome, Falk. Thank you.”

He turned smoothly and led her on a path she knew all too well. She decided to try for information, though of course she expected there was little of real value with which he would part. Obviously, he would be beholden to the Sisterhood and its Matriarch regardless of his technical duties or oaths.

“I am afraid I do not know your family, Sir, though doubtless much has changed in my long absence.” She used the generic title, for surely anyone highly placed in the citadel had at least been knighted. “Tell me, is your family newly made?”

The phrase might have implied an insult, had it not come from a member of the royal family, who would have made such a title in the first place.

“We are, somewhat, Ma’am,” he responded without turning back. “We are a merchant family from Highreach, mostly trading in wool and lumber. My father aided His Royal Majesty in bringing the great city under his demesne, when the lords dissented.”

A traitor to the rulers of Highreach
, Adria thought.
One of those who allowed the unconquerable to be conquered.
Aloud she asked, “Then you must have my thanks, as your father has had my father’s. Tell me... with what title did His Majesty reward your house, Sir Falk?”

“A Baronetcy, Ma’am.”

Adria nodded. Baronet Falk would have been helpful in gaining the city, but not critical, likely the reason Adria did not know the name. Her father had made a few peers among his most useful allies in bringing down the greatest city of Heiland — a few barons, even a count.

Still, a baronet was landed, and would have knights as vassals, and likely a significant income. This lad would have some resources, a future within or beyond the capital. His stewardship at Windberth was likely a political rite of passage. A way for the family to stay connected.

Sir Falk was certainly leading her to her old apartments, which did not surprise her, since the citadel itself seemed mostly empty. Apart from guards, they had passed only two servants, obviously low-born, who had stopped and curtsied deeply, out of respect for Falk if not Adria.

“Will you succeed the Baronetcy, Sir Falk?” It was a polite way of asking where he fell in inheritance alongside any brothers, and whether the title itself was hereditary, or had merely been the grant of a single lifetime.

“No, Your Highness,” he returned to higher formality, either because of the direct presumption of the question, or the span of time which had passed since he last spoke. He was well trained. “The One willing, my elder brother will gain my father’s title, and will pass it to his son, both of whom are worthy gentlemen.”

A second son
, Adria nodded. 
Third or more in inheritance. And he perhaps has a religious bent, or pretends one, which would explain his position at court. He will almost certainly be Taber’s pawn.

Knowing exactly how far they had to travel, Adria paced herself accordingly, both in step and in words. Her questions served, in part, to determine if he was aware of any plot or danger concerning Adria. She had a good sense for such things, and if there was any betrayal against her, it was unlikely that the Steward would be unaware. But though Steward Falk’s answers and demeanor were by no means completely forthright, he nonetheless betrayed no knowledge of subterfuge.

He seemed, quite reasonably, to distrust her about as much as she did him, and this is exactly what Adria would expect, given their respective histories. This recognition put Adria somewhat more at ease, though it did not diminish her wariness, which was by now virtually omnipresent.

But she heard no unexpected footsteps around corners or from behind doorways. She saw no glint of crossbow bolt from gallery overhangs or disguised arrow-loop. All points of possible ambush, which Adria had learned even as a child, lay empty.

Nonetheless, out of habit, she gave little possibility for any enemy, and managed to keep the steward between herself and the most likely points of attack. The conversation served in this, as well — as distraction for her movements, and her quick glances in assessment of her surroundings.

And still, information is information, and the value of words, both in what they reveal and what they conceal
, Adria understood quite well.
This man, though little more than a boy, could prove a danger under different circumstances.

She did not immediately dislike him, but neither did she take him lightly. 
Steward Falk has been bred for power and weaned on betrayal. The winds that brought him to Windberth were winds of war, of blood, and of poison.

And she smiled at herself then, thinking, 
But then, is my breeding any less dire, truly?

They came to the tower Adria had long occupied, though from this level of the keep it was indistinguishable as such at the lower levels, square in shape until it rose above the roof of the central keep itself — just like its sisters. Adria had always been amused with this and with the stair which changed slowly from perfect angles to a smooth circular spiral.

“Is Sir Puros still Lord Steward, Sir?”

“No, Ma’am,” he hesitated just a little, to show his embarrassment. “Forgive me, but the titles have changed somewhat. I am Lord Steward of the House, but our staff is likely much diminished from what you remember, and the full title is no longer commonly used, except within the occasional formal document, and, if you’ll forgive me... to occasionally woo a young lady.”

Adria smiled a little at the mild jest, half for its humor and half for what the whole statement revealed to her — first, that the Peers were now considered old-fashioned, even outdated, and second, that there would likely be no veteran of any rank within the citadel with whom Adria could take counsel. Taber had most likely dismissed anyone highly placed, if this lad of twenty winters commanded the household staff, no matter how diminished the position may be.

“Well, Lord Steward or no, it is the action which brings nobility and not the title.” She smiled only slightly, betraying only a hint of the irony intended by her words. “If you have served my father well, I would thank you.”

In acknowledgment, he inclined his head in her direction and lowered his eyes. Now out of the central spiral of the stairwell, they stood at the main doors of her apartment. Falk turned the handle and bowed respectfully. “You will have a lady in attendance, of course, who will serve as you will, Your Highness. I am also at your command during your stay.”

During your stay...
 Adria thought. 
They do not expect me to remain.
 She had intended to continue the mention of her father with a question, but nearly any she posed would reveal something of his condition, and Adria realized that Falk may indeed remain in the dark regarding his illness.

“Then tell me, Sir Falk,” she asked, though she already knew it to be true. “Does my brother yet remain within the city?”

“He does, Ma’am.” The boy smiled just a little, as if this had been the question he had been waiting for. “You are most fortunate in your timing, for His Royal Highness’ company sails tomorrow for Kelmantium. He is hunting this afternoon, for it is unlikely he will be given the chance for awhile, and he greatly enjoys the sport.”

He allowed his smile to widen, and Adria matched the gesture herself. “And what young lord does not? When he returns, send word to him that I have arrived, and that I request his presence for supper, if such is possible.”

Falk nodded simply, still smiling. “I shall do so, Ma’am.”

“You may…” Adria hesitated. “…tailor the wording… according to his mood.”

He bowed his head. “I understand, Ma’am. Will that be all?”

She nearly dismissed him with a wave, then realized one last immediate concern — and chance of estimating the young man’s place. “The fire in my father’s solar could use some attending. And the air was stale, so I took it upon myself to allow some fresh in.”

“I will send…” and he seemed to catch himself. “…someone to see to His Royal Majesty’s comfort.”

...word to the Matriarch, you mean...
she thought, but only nodded a final time as she passed into her room. “I thank you, Sir. I shall send for you if I have further need.”

Falk bowed a final time as he shut the door, and Adria could just make out the sound of his footsteps retreating the way they had come as she turned from the heavy oaken door to survey her old quarters.

At a glance, her apartments seemed to be nearly as she had left them. A maid had already made a fire in the hearth and was now warming water in a cauldron. Adria was at first inclined to dismiss her out of hand, but the girl immediately curtsied so low and so eagerly that Adria changed her mind and left her to her task as she examined her three rooms in their particulars.

It was half a task of re-acquaintance, half one of detecting any possible threat.

There is no real reason to expect such a thing now,
Adria thought.
And regardless, given Taber’s apparent resources and state of control, it is unlikely I could hope to defend myself from any determined attempt at outright murder.

The servant girl was the only source of motion in the antechamber, and the only scents and sounds Adria could detect were expected — the fire with its crackle and smoke in the inner wall, the perfumes and bath salts in the water the maid was heating, the wind on the heavy parchment of the windows.

Nothing drew her attention as a possible danger, so Adria crossed the threshold into the second room, her fingers reflexively cradling the grip of her blade.

Adria’s solar was dominated by a great canopied bed which had always seemed far too large for her, and remained so even now. Sunlight filtered through a small windowed oriel, where she had often read or watched the goings-on in the yard below.

To one side of this lay a wardrobe and chests for her clothing and personal belongings, as well as a screen for dressing — a gift from a count of the Northlands, Adria remembered, decorated in a strange Somanan design of horses on desert dunes.

Opposite this, behind a similar screen, lay a wooden tub for bathing, which was already half-filled with water.

This room did not have a separate hearth, but her bedding had always been lush, and coals warmed in the fire of the antechamber were usually sufficient for a warm night’s sleep — especially after a hot bath. On the coldest days of winter, Adria had dressed within the curtains of the bed, whose gold-embroidered violet walls kept her sleeping area warm even after the coals’ warmth died down.

She smiled now, to realize that she had never once been truly cold in her apartments. She could never have imagined walking barefoot through the snow hunting elk or Aeman soldiers.

The bed curtains lay open, and the wool and silk blankets were turned down for her already, perhaps in the correct presumption that she had not properly rested in some time. The wardrobe also lay open and contained no obvious dangers — though it was not so large as to hold a significant source of snarling enemies brandishing cruel instruments of war. Adria smiled again to herself at the thought.

Behind a third screen, a short hallway in the inner wall turned aside into a garderobe which, like the antechamber, held a source of running water fed from the reservoir on the roof of the tower. Of all the luxuries of her royalty, this was perhaps the one Adria had missed most in the past three years, though she had grown reasonably accustomed to relieving herself out-of doors, even in inhospitable weather.

For the sake of completion, Adria peeked around the screens and into the garderobe, finding nothing more imposing than the very faint smell of human waste and the omnipresent spiders who climbed up from the refuse drains and even down from the reservoir. These, as well, would bother her rather less than they had years before. After the sting of an arrow, that of a webmaker seemed rather less cruel.

Confident, Adria returned to the bedchamber and removed her pack, slowly emptying its contents onto a small table. She carried a few mementos beyond the purely pragmatic. A single arrow, carefully wrapped to separate it from the others in her quiver. A long thread of silver unwound from a wreath of vines she had once worn in ceremony.

Adria did not wait for the maid to attend her. She removed her clothing herself, even as the girl entered and carefully tipped the contents of the cauldron into the tub. Steam arose and filled the room with the scent of roses, salt, and Ieruscan oil.