Master and Fool (87 page)

The man brought
his arm down to his side. "Kylock wasn't going to stop there, but word
came that he was needed urgently upstairs, so I was led back to my cell. He
never called for me again after that night whether he forgot, or whether he
just wanted to prolong my suffering, I will never know." The man shook his
head slowly, and when he next spoke, his voice had lost all its former power.
He sounded tired and very old. "So, whatever you do today, remember this
one thing: Kylock may have led us to victory, but he would have led us to
damnation as well."

A single tear
streaked down Melli's face. Quickly, she brushed the wetness away. Of all who
were gathered here today, she alone knew just how right the old man was.

The eyes of the
crowd were cast down to the ground. No one spoke.

Melli wanted to go
to the man, to comfort him. She wasn't the only one: a young girl with dark
shiny hair and pink cheeks came forward and took the man's arm. Without looking
up at the dais, he let himself be led away. The crowd was silent as the old man
and the girl made their way through their midst. There was something
immeasurably sad about the sight of them, arms linked, shoulders touching, the
old man leaning against the girl for support.

Watching them,
Melli felt her throat tighten. How many other people in the city had been
touched by Kylock's madness? How many years would need to pass before they were
free of the memories and the pain?

After a few
minutes of silence, Mistress Greal chose to speak. Clearing her throat loudly
to ensure she had everyone's full attention, she began telling the crowd the
story of how Melli had been imprisoned in the castle for five months-pregnant
with the duke's child and victim of Kylock's cruelty. The crowd listened,
subdued. Nanny Greal told of the night Melli gave birth and the orders Baralis
had given her: "As
soon as the baby is born, take it away and smother
it. Destroy the body when you're done. "

A dark murmur
united the crowd.

Melli shuddered.
She heard the words as if they came straight from Baralis' mouth. For the first
time, she realized just how much danger Nanny Greal had placed herself in by
defying Baralis' orders. Later, when all this was over she would thank
her-properly and from the heart.

For now, though,
her first task was to show her son to the city of Bren. Kicking her horse
forward, she joined Tawl and Nanny Greal on the steps. Tawl took her reins and
Melli held up the baby for all the crowd to see.

"Look,"
she cried. "Look at the face of your future duke. Look at the son of the
Hawk."

Many in the crowd
cheered, others hissed, a few cursed. "Foreign whore! That baby could be
anyone's brat." Tawl stiffened. He took a mouthful of air to shout, but
Melli put a hand on his arm. "No," she whispered. "Let me handle
this."

Turning back to
the crowd, she took the left sock from the, baby. When Nanny Greal leant
forward to give her a hand, Melli didn't slap her away.

"Here!"
she said, presenting the barefoot and now very indignant baby to the crowd.
"See the mark of the Hawk for yourself."

Most of the people
cheered now. It wasn't enough for Melli. Looking directly at the man who had
just insulted her, she beckoned him forward. "Come, sir, take a look at
the baby close up. Run your finger over the mark-satisfy yourself that it won't
rub off." Laughter rose from the crowd. "Come on," she said when
the man hesitated. "With a tongue as fast as yours, I would have expected
quicker feet."

The man who came
forward became the most famous man in Bren. Quick-tongued Tarvold, as he was
subsequently known to all and sundry, went down in history as being the man
first to doubt, and then to proclaim, Melliandra's baby as the true heir to
Bren. His words, "Aye, my friends, the lady's right about the mark-it won't
come off," went on record as setting off the longest and loudest cheer in
the city's thousand-year history.

Tradition later
held that the one thing that stopped the cheering was when the Lady Melliandra
turned her open palm toward the crowd and swore she would bring peace. Everyone
was quiet after that. There was nothing more to say.

"Aah, so what
you're saying is that I'm definitely not the chosen one?" Tavalisk held
out his little silver sieve and scooped a fistful of tadpoles from the tank. It
was hatching season at last and the archbishop was looking forward to one of
his favorite delicacies: frogspawn.

"Well, as
Your Eminence can see, there is a great difference between the two
verses." Gamil waved toward the two copies of Marod's prophecy on the
desk. "Me version that fell into your hands was a much later edition than
the first, Your Eminence. Scribes had changed words, sentences, meanings."

"Hmm."
Tavalisk inspected the sieve full of wriggling tadpoles, looking for the ones
that were already sprouting limbs. "Well, I have no sister, so it surely
can't be me. And even if I did have one, as a man of the Church I could never
condone taking her as a lover."

"Exactly,
Your Eminence." Gamil took the liberty of edging the copies to the side. A
few stray tadpoles had landed on the parchment.

"Well, I
can't say I'm surprised, Gamil. Can't say I'm disappointed, either. After all,
everything has turned out fine: the lovely Lady Melliandra is acting as regent
in Bren, the Four Kingdoms have dragged up an old cousin of the late King
Lesketh to take the throne there, the north is free of Kylock's forces, and the
south is no longer under threat. I couldn't have planned it better myself.
Though I still think I'm due part of the credit."

"How so, Your
Eminence?"

"Well,
according to all the rumors it was that goldenhaired knight's doing, and you
alone know, Gamil, how I encouraged him all the way."

"I pray Your
Eminence never sees fit to encourage me."

"Nonsense,
Gamil. I did my duty by the knight: kept him safe in my dungeons for a year,
monitored his every move, even saved his ladyfriend from a life on the
streets." Tavalisk filled his silver spoon with tadpoles, squeezed fresh
lemon juice, seasoned with salt and pepper, then swallowed them whole. Slimy little
devils. Quite tasteless, really. "In fact, in many ways I was chosen.
Who's to say the newly altered version of a prophecy doesn't have as much
validity as the old one? Words don't change without reasons, Gamil. Fate meant
to draw me in."

"And then
left you off the hook at the last moment?"

"Gamil, you
forget how tirelessly I have worked over the past two years to keep Baralis and
Kylock from taking power." Tavalisk managed an affronted snort.
"Anyway, the Lady Melliandra has been regent for over two months now, and
it's high time I sent her an official greeting. Scribe me an appropriate
missive. Make the usual offerings of friendship and so forth, and then bring it
to me to sign."

"Certainly,
Your Eminence. Though the lady might not be willing to respond to your
overtures."

"Really,
Gamil, like a shortsighted archer your arrows always land wide of the mark.
We're dealing with heads of state now; they know better than to keep up petty
squabbles. Rorn is powerful, Bren is powerful-the two cities need to work together,
not apart. People and politics will always change, but the dance of power goes
on."

"Your
Eminence is undoubtedly the most light-footed on the floor."

"Thank you,
Gamil. Wily movers like me always live to dance another day." Tavalisk
handed the bowl of tadpoles to his aide. "You may go now, Gamil. Take the
tadpoles with you-they're beginning to look far too slippery for comfort."
Just as his aide was about to step from the room, a thought occurred to
Tavalisk. "Oh, by the way, Gamil, did they ever recover Baralis' body from
the palace ruins?"

"I don't
think anyone knows for sure, Your Eminence. After all, one set of blackened
bones looks much like another." Tavalisk shuddered. "Be gone,
Gamil," he said. "You're letting in a draft through the door."

The sun shone
through the open shutter and into the kitchen of the old duke's hunting lodge.
With the light came a soft mountain breeze and with the breeze came the scent
of spring flowers. Jack knew, as only a baker can, that somehow the scent, the
breeze, and the light would find their way into the dough. For the first time
in many months Jack was baking bread. He had awoken with the strong desire to
feel flour between his fingers, to cup yeast in his palms, and knead dough
beneath his knuckles. He worked quickly, his hands remembering moves that his
mind had long forgotten. The bums troubled him little now. There was some
tautness where scars pulled at his skin and some lost sensitivity in his
fingertips, but the blisters had all gone, and new pink skin covered once-raw
flesh. He was lucky in many ways, and the quick healing of his wounds was just
one of them. Setting the dough in a bowl, he covered it with a damp cloth. It
was the second rising, so it would be ready for the oven in less than an hour.

That done, Jack
moved around the table, rubbing the flour from his fingers. The far comer of
the working surface was set out for writing, not for baking, and Jack sat down
on the bench before the square of parchment, the linen blotter, the ink, and
the quill. The quill felt strange in his hand, small and awkward; it had been a
long time since he'd last handled a pen. Turning it in his fingers, Jack
couldn't help recalling the very first time he picked up a pen to write with:
all those years ago in Baralis' study, the day King Lesketh was shot.

Jack surprised
himself by smiling at the memory. He hadn't known it then, but that bright and
icy afternoon had marked the beginning of everything. All the fear, madness,
and triumph could be traced back to that day.

And all the
heartache, too.

Jack dipped the
quill into the ink and tested the edge in the side margin of the parchment.
Tarissa.
The nib was fine and sharp. Jack blanked out the jotted-down name, and then
rewrote it in finehand at the top.

Dear Tarissa,

Pausing to brush
the hair from his face, Jack took a long, deep breath. This was going to be
harder than he thought. At some point in the middle of the night, he had
managed to convince himself that if he woke up early enough, and tired himself
out by working hard enough, that somehow when the time came to write the
letter, the words would flow quickly from his pen.

He'd been wrong,
of course. He was wrong about so many things that sometimes he wondered how
he'd managed to muddle through. Mistakes, misconceptions, and misjudgments had
hounded him all the way.

For the past seven
weeks, Jack had stayed in the old duke's hunting lodge. Alone except for an
elderly caretaker who aired the rooms and lit the fires, Jack had found plenty
of time to think. Marod's prophecy, his mother's letter, and Tarissa's
reluctance to disclose her origins all needed making sense of. He didn't want
to make any more mistakes.

Now, as the time
came for him to leave this place, Jack thought he had an answer to the puzzle
that had occupied his mind for so long: he and Tarissa shared the same father.

But sister as
lover.
The line had stayed with him since that long night in the palace.
Disregarded at first, it had needled away at his thoughts until it could no
longer be ignored.

Tarissa was his
half-sister; an illegitimate child of the kingjust like himself. It explained
so much: Magra's noble birth, her bitterness, their exile from the kingdoms.
Even his mother's letter had hinted at the truth:
"Like everyone else,
I heard rumors that the king had affairs with other women . . . "

Suddenly tired,
Jack closed his eyes. Straightaway a vision came, unbidden, into the blackness.
It was the glade where Tarissa had said she loved him. Jack could see the
willow branches trailing in the pool, smell the daffodils casting their scent
to the breeze. He saw himself looking down into the spring clear water and
mistaking Tarissa's reflection for his own.

Jack blinked the
image away. A soft pain, mostly sadness, pulled at the muscles of his chest.
They had looked so alike, yet neither of them had known it.

Jack took up the
quill once more, wondering what to write first. How could he possibly say what
he had to? Was there any way he could word the letter without causing Tarissa
more pain? In his head Jack tried out several beginnings, but none of them
seemed right. After not hearing from him for so long, after his self-righteous
exit from her life, when she pleaded with him to stay, what would she want him
to say?

Jack stretched
back in his chair, thinking. Specks of dust and flour floated in the strip of
morning sunlight that split the kitchen in two. After watching them rise and
fall for a short while, each mote entirely separate yet following the same path
as the rest, Jack leant forward and began to write.

I'm writing
this letter for many reasons, but most of all to say I am sorry. I should never
have walked away from you that day I fought with Rovas. I know now that you
spoke the truth when you said you loved me....

The words flowed
out of Jack. The ink was a shiny black ribbon unraveling from his pen. He knew
what to say and how to say it. There was no need for fancy words or high-blown
sentiment, he just needed to tell the truth. It was what he would want if he
were in Tarissa's shoes. It was what he had searched for all along.

Jack sat and wrote
for an hour, speaking of forgiveness and love and friendship. He told Tarissa
all he had guessed about her parentage and disclosed all he knew about his own.

No matter how
conclusive the proof sounded, a small part of Jack couldn't help but wish he
was wrong, so right at the end of the letter he added an extra sentence,
stating that Tarissa could always contact him through Stillfox in Annis if he
had made a terrible mistake. He signed his name quickly, determined not to
dwell upon that one single hope. They had to move on with their lives now. Both
of them.