Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) (7 page)

“Well you should.
We served together in the Border Army many, many summers ago. I wasn’t much
older than you when my father sent me to learn a man’s duty under Tullus’
father, who was then general of the Legion’s Third Arm. Should it please Oman
that you will one day have a friend as great as Tullus was to me.”

“How is the good
Tullus managing these days?” Ersala asked. She was genuinely concerned. She
liked Tullus and had been fond of his wife. Adaila had died with the fever only
a summer ago. Tullus and Adaila had not enjoyed the depth of passion she and
Rowle were blessed with, but then so few were. But the two were
well-matched
and Tullus seemed to dote on the frail pretty
woman who shared his bed, more like a father than a husband.

“He’s getting on
with it,” Rowle said. “His son Scearce is growing into a fine young man, though
Tullus says he’s had his share of woes with the boy.”

Ersala frowned and
Rowle feared his wife was thinking of her own eldest, who would have been about
Scearce’s age. In his preoccupation, he did not see the light that came into
Lillitha’s eyes or how eagerly she hung on his words.

“Nothing serious,”
he explained quickly, “just the usual high-spirited troubles of a boy growing
into a man.”

Nothing like
Jonil,
was what he meant.

***

Jonil had been
their firstborn, blessed with a pleasing face and a smile to light a thousand
candles. But from the very first, the boy had shown a disturbing knack for
getting his own way. Worse, he didn’t seem to care who might be hurt in his
single-minded pursuit.

Like the hapless
stable boy that had been thrashed for not shutting the corral gate securely. It
had been a serious lapse, halting other work on the vidoran as everyone
clambered across the meadows to gather the horses. “He won’t forget again,
Vidor Rowle,” the boy’s father had assured him.

Not a day later,
Rowle saw his own five summers’ son opening the gate and waving a shooma stalk
at the bewildered animals. Rowle’s first thoughts were for the life of his
firstborn and only son. His heart in his throat, he sprinted across the
hard-packed dirt of the stable yard.

Jonil was gurgling
happily as the horses thundered past. Rowle grabbed him and swung him high onto
a
stone wall
.

“You could have
been trampled! What in Oman’s name do you think you’re doing?”

The sweet face had
dimpled as he looked down at his father, who was still breathing heavily.

“I am watching the
horses run.” He spoke in the grown-up manner that usually amused his father. “I
like to see them make clouds on the ground.”

“Did you open the
gate yesterday as well?” Rowle demanded
,
his fear
displaced by growing anger.

“Yes, father. I
did.”

“But you saw poor
Thomas take the punishment in your stead! Why did you not speak up?”

“And be punished
for it? It would not be a sensible thing to do when Thomas was there to take it
for me.”

“Your punishment
would have been a mild thing, as you well know.” The worst Jonil would have
suffered was bed without supper. “Have you no concern for Thomas then? He is
your best friend!”

“Oh, he is but a
peasant. He is used to beatings from his father.”

Speechless, Rowle
watched his son climb down from the wall and skip away.

The Vidor of
Kirrisian went to apologize to his seven summers’ stable boy. Then he had a
word with the father. Like all parents, Rowle believed firm discipline
often-times required a beating or two, but he didn’t like that the stable boy
was beaten so regularly that even Jonil spoke it of as a matter of little
consequence.

It would not be
the last time the Vidor of Kirrisian would apologize for his son.

Jonil kept the
household on pins and needles. He would disappear for hours as Ersala worried
what he could be up to. Was he climbing onto the roofs in the village again,
dropping hard-packed balls of sheep dung onto passers-by? Or was he in the east
pasture tying the sheep’s tails together again? Just as Ersala reached a
fevered pitch of worry, the boy would saunter in and present his mother with an
armful of wildflowers. “I picked them especially for you, muma.”

Ersala would
dissolve in relief.

Moments
later baby Lillitha’s cries brought her to the
nursery, only to find Jonil pinching the poor mite hard enough to bruise.

The boy had a
temper. When crossed, his screams could be heard all through the house. When
screaming did not get his way, he stamped his feet and pounded walls until
sweat broke out on his forehead and his mother feared for his health. Even the
half-hearted beatings of his father could not stop Jonil’s tantrums. Nothing
would stop him until he got what he wanted, namely the freedom to come and go
as he pleased, getting into whatever trouble he could find.

As he grew to
manhood, the trouble grew less frequent but far more serious. At a younger age
than Rowle found decent, Jonil discovered that women would fall over themselves
whenever he looked their way. And he looked their way quite a bit. Bitter
fathers of ruined daughters had confronted Rowle twice. The second time it
happened, Rowle had been angry enough to consider making Jonil wed the
unfortunate girl. Jonil had been a mere fourteen summers old and Ersala’s tears
convinced him to make a sizable contribution to the girl’s dowry instead. It
was gold they could ill afford; even so, Rowle had only to remember the
expression on the man’s face and the terror in the downcast eyes of the
daughter to think he had gotten off too cheaply. His own son had turned him
into a vile panderer, buying a girl’s virtue with a purse full of gold placas.

By sixteen, Jonil
was too strong to be beaten and he gave up any pretense of obedience. Instead of
working on the vidoran, he wandered the village, in and out of the dockside
taverns and bellinta houses. He listened neither to his father’s angry commands
or his mother’s tearful pleading.

Rowle cut off the
boy’s small allowance and no longer entrusted him with trips into the village
for the few supplies they could not manufacture themselves on the vidoran. The
family’s fortune was already a fragile and dwindling thing. The gold that Jonil
threw away so freely on ale, women and wagers was meant to buy boots and plows.

Things of value
disappeared from the house. When confronted the boy only tilted his head
haughtily.

“You would deny me
what is mine as your firstborn son? Even Danaus’ scab of an heir walks around
clothed in the finest silks and leathers while you would have me looking like a
tinker.”

And still
creditors appeared in the audience hall to collect Jonil’s debts.

Ersala pleaded.
Rowle roared, demanded and raged, all to no avail. Jonil was driven by some
inner demon that would not be tamed.

Until
he picked the wrong dock man to cheat at talimockra.

Jonil had been at
the Blue Darma for two nights straight. He’d been rough with one of her girls
and Tanra Jille had asked him to leave. He only laughed at her, swatting her
ample backside and demanding more ale. She’d seen the dangerous look in his
eyes and the edge in his laugher. She allowed him to stay on the condition that
he confined himself to the gaming tables and left the girls alone.

Jonil had been
playing talimockra with a trio of sailors. He was losing terribly until his
luck suddenly changed. It wasn’t the first time the son of the Vidor was
accused of cheating.

Tanra Jille said
at the inquest that Jonil had obviously misjudged the man. The sailor had been
small, lean and sinewy, without the usual thick arms that came from a lifetime
on the docks. Had Jonil been any judge of character, he should have known a
dock man of such slight build would rely not on his fists but his dagger.

The firstborn of
Kirrisian died with a knife in his throat.
He
was
two keels shy of his eighteenth birthday
.

Rowle looked at
his wife’s bowed head as she knelt before the candles. This was the only time
in her frantic day that she allowed herself to grieve for her lost son, so he
kept quiet until she finally rose to her feet and extinguished the flames.

“Come to bed,
wife. I’ve missed you sorely.”

“And I you, my
husband.” She crawled under the coverlet and buried her face against his chest.

“Ay! You’ve missed
warming your icy feet against me, that’s what you missed!” he laughed.
“Confess, woman! You females only marry to keep your feet warm.”

In the darkness,
he could not see her smile but he heard it in her voice. “It is one of the few
things men are good for. Though I suppose a large hound might work as well.”

His laughter shook
the bed. “Tis lucky I am you didn’t think of that before you agreed to wed me.”

“Ah, but think of
all I would have missed.” She sighed and snuggled closer, her fingers playing
with the thick mat of hair on his chest. She sensed something weighing on him.
“Did your journey go well, truly?”

It was his turn to
sigh. “As well as could be expected. I convicted two thoroughly disreputable
naves of violating a young village wench. Staking was too good for them.”

Ersala shuddered
to think of the poor girl’s shame. She offered a quick silent prayer to Leah,
Mother of Belah, that her own daughters would be safe from such violence. Such
things were rare in Kirrisian and, indeed, in all of the Omani lands—but
from time to time they happened. When they did, honorable men like her husband
were swift to administer justice. Among the Omani, rape was equal to murder for
it was murder of woman’s innocence. The violation of the most sacred rite of
life was blasphemy.

She knew her
husband had found little pleasure in his duty. He needed her to voice his own
guilt and pity; as man, father and vidor, he could not say such things himself.
Not even here, in the privacy of their bedchamber.

“Too good for
them, certainly,” she said softly. “But such a death is always a pitiable thing
to watch. No matter how richly deserved.”

She had seen a
staking once—completely by accident, for women (other than the victims)
were not encouraged to witness such executions. Staking was reserved for the
most offensive of crimes. A mere thief would be flogged or pilloried in the
village common. An adulterer would be shunned, possibly forever. Only murderers
and violators were staked.

In her twelfth
summer, Ersala had been out gathering herbs when she heard them coming. Her
mother would be furious if she found out that Ersala had disregarded her
instructions to stay clear of the western hills, so she crouched in the brush
waiting for them to pass.

The violator was
an old man, convicted of an abomination that no one ever explained to young
Ersala; she’d only heard vague whispers that she did not understand. But she
recognized him from the town market where he sold vegetables and cheap wooden
trinkets. He stumbled past her, hardly able to keep his balance. She was close
enough to see the blood left by his footprints. She hardly noticed his
nakedness, dressed as he was in his own blood flowing freely from the whips of
the men who drove him onward.

Revolted yet
fascinated, she crept after them, taking care to remain hidden in the bushes.

The old man was
crying as the men forced him down onto a mound of dirt in a clearing. His sobs
were unintelligible even before he started screaming.

Ersala’s
stomach loosened as the first of the wooden stakes was driven though his body.
First in the stomach, then his
left shoulder, and finally a third in the groin until he was no longer
recognizable as a man at all.
He was only a screaming mass of bloody
flesh pinned to the mound like a bug.

The faces of the
men—including her father and brothers—were untouched by pity.
Ersala vomited in the grass, then rose to her feet running.

“Did they die
quickly, my husband?” She hoped they had,
then
wondered if she would feel differently if Lillitha or Marta had been their
victim. The memory of the old man’s screams echoed in her heart.

“No.” His voice
was hoarse. “The scavengers were creeping upon them even as we turned to
leave.”

They used blunt
stakes in soft places not likely to bring immediate death. Criminals were
whipped brutally so that the scent of fresh blood would bring the eraat cranes
that were fond of picking the eyes from still twitching skulls and the tongues
from screaming mouths. Then the slinky black foxes would come to take their
feast, slowly, a piece at a time.

“Are you still
cold?” he asked, drawing her closer. “Another blanket, perhaps—”

“No, don’t you
dare get out of this bed. I’ll be fine in a bit,” she lied. Imagine a husband
who would rouse himself from a warm bed to get his wife another blanket! Her
mother, were she alive, would have laughed scornfully at the very idea. But her
mother had known nothing of love.