Son of Avonar (7 page)

I crept across the grass and leaned my back against a tree, rubbing my shoulder and neck and brushing the leaves and dirt from my skirt. “Easy, Jaco. I'm fine. Just a second layer of bruises.”

“He's been trained to fight,” said Jacopo, glowering at the young man. “No doubt of that. Quick and smooth. Strong, too, I'll be bound. What's he done to you, little girl?” Jacopo bent over to take a look at my neck.

“Ouch!” The old sailor was a ham-handed nursemaid.

Before Jacopo could apologize, Aeren grabbed his collar and shoved the old man away so forcefully that Jaco crashed into the dead lower branches of a pine tree. When the young man dropped to his knees beside me and reached for my neck, I flinched. To my surprise, his fingers brushed my skin quite gently. His brow was creased, as if he couldn't understand how the marks had come about.

“I'll live,” I said, trying to calm the situation before he got more agitated. “We startled you.”

His frown deepened, and he moved in closer, his bulk pressing me against the tree as he tugged at the tie that would loosen the gathered neck of my shift.

“Get away from me.” With an ungentle hand to his chest, I managed to squirm out from between him and the tree. But he removed my hand and moved closer again, yanking the cloth down to bare my throat. With a stiff forearm I knocked his hand aside, while with the other hand, I reached through my pocket, drew my knife, and pointed it at his belly. I knew where to hurt a man, and I knew how to talk to a brute, whether he spoke the same language or not. “Get. Away. From. Me.”

Face a deep scarlet, he let go of my clothes. Then, baring his teeth, he grabbed my forearm and twisted it until the knife dropped to the ground. For a moment I thought he might break my wrist or snatch up the weapon and turn it on me. But instead, he pushed me to the ground, stood up, and walked away.

Jacopo gave me a hand up, stood close by my shoulder, and raised his stick to Aeren's back. “May the good god Jerrat drown you, you filthy devil—”

“Wait, Jaco.” No point in letting things get out of hand. I retrieved my dagger and sheathed it. “Aeren”—I repeated his name several times and waited until he turned around again to lay my hand on Jacopo's shoulder—“this is my friend Jacopo from Dunfarrie. Jaco, this is . . . Lord Aeren of somewhere.” Jaco was busy mopping his forehead with a kerchief, and his grudging bow was less than gentlemanly.

Aeren ignored both Jacopo and my introduction. With a sour expression, he gestured to his stomach and his mouth and pointed to the cottage.

“I've better things to do, you wretched beast. Time to fend for yourself a bit.” I rummaged amid the eggs and butter in my pack and pulled out a well-bruised wild plum, left from my morning on Poacher's Ridge. I threw the plum at Aeren. Hard.

He caught it in one hand, deftly enough to prevent the soft fruit from splattering on him. As he bit into it, one corner of his mouth twitched.
Smug little bastard.

I tossed the clothes bundle at his feet. Once he had finished the plum and flipped the stem into the trees, he squatted down beside the pile and, one by one, lifted the items by the tip of one finger. He examined each carefully, then gave me such a look of scornful disbelief that, despite all my annoyance, I could do nothing but burst out laughing. It seemed like a century since I had laughed, and finding myself doing so at an unpleasant brute of a man who had come near throttling me twice within a week was strange indeed. Aeren flushed, snatched the bundle of clothes, and disappeared into the trees.

“If ever I've seen a spoiled lordling, it has to be this one,” I said, wiping my eyes with my sleeve. “Did you see his nose turn up? I've nursed him until I'm exhausted and full of splinters from sleeping on the floor, I've fed him half my food stocks, so that I'll be doing well to have a meal next week, and here he sits in Anne's old sheet and disdains something a hundred times better. I just don't think he's some common riverman, wrecked on the Snags.”

“Mmm. No half-wit groom, neither.” Jacopo fingered his own knife and did not laugh with me. “He's a killer, Seri. I've seen no man with such moves who wasn't, whether lowborn or high. I don't like the way he looks at you.”

I clasped my hands about my knees and leaned back against the tree. “On that we are in complete agreement.”

A short time later Aeren emerged from the woods dressed in Jacopo's gifts. He picked at the rough cloth uncomfortably, like a small boy dressed in his first stiff-collared suit.

“I sympathize,” I said. “I can't say I prefer kersey or russet to silk.”

“Do you think he understands what you say?” said Jacopo, as Aeren snatched my pack and rummaged through it, dropping it with an annoyed grunt when he found nothing of interest. Raking me with a glare, the young man strode across the field toward the cottage.

“Most likely not, but I'm less likely to take an ax to him if I say what I think.” If he had broken my eggs, I was going to kill him.

“He looks older than you said.”

Aeren soon returned, tearing at a hunk of the chewy hearthbread as a hunting dog tears at a doe. He did look more like mid- to late twenties than early. I had always considered myself a keen observer of such things. Perhaps it was his illness had changed him or the afternoon sunlight, revealing what forest shadows, soft mornings, and lamplight had hidden.

“Show him the dagger, Jaco.”

“I'm thinking that might not be clever.”

“As you said, a knife is no more dangerous than his hands. If he's of a mind to make away with us, then he needs no knife to do it. But somehow . . .” Twice in the past hour I'd seen his rage surge. Twice I had seen it quelled. Perhaps I was getting cocky.

Jacopo tossed the bundle on the ground in between us and nudged the coverings open with his stick. Aeren picked up the weapon and ran his fingers slowly over its shining length, examining it curiously, especially the device on the hilt. His expression exhibited no sign of recognition. The knife's heft and balance were pleasing to him, though, and he snatched up the sheath and fastened it to his cloth belt. I didn't particularly like the idea, but wasn't going to argue. I wasn't afraid of him. I hadn't been afraid for ten years. What could anyone do to hurt me?

“Come on,” I said, scrambling to my feet, “let's take a look at where Paulo found the knife. Maybe Aeren got in a fight there . . . got whacked on the head or something. Whatever happened, seeing the place might force him to remember where he came from or where he was going. I want him gone by nightfall.”

The angle of the sun was steep as the three of us set out on the trail to the spring. Through the trees we glimpsed the grassy hillsides brushed with gold. I showed Jaco where I'd first encountered Aeren, and where the hunters had ridden through, and I tried to get Aeren to show us which way he had come down the hill. He was unsure, but as we wandered up higher, beyond the boundary of the trees, his steps slowed. His eyes darted about, the lines of his face drawn tight, his fists clenching and unclenching.

“A little farther,” I said, pointing up the hill.

A cool, rock-lined grotto taller than a man split the side of the hill near the ridgetop. At the base of the smooth boulders was the spring. The clear, blue-green pool spilled over moss-covered stones into the stream that carved its way down the sunny hillside into the dark line of the trees.

Jacopo and I searched the soft ground for tracks or any sign that something unusual had gone on in the place. The only thing I found was a rusty ladle thrown into the pool, probably the offering of some drought-blighted farmer hoping to appease a local water spirit. Despite the priests' best efforts to stamp out all remnants of any gods but Annadis and Jerrat, a few stubborn, desperate people persisted in their desperate superstitions.

After a fruitless half-hour, I flopped down on a rock in the shade, discouraged. “There's nothing here.” Why did I care? Perhaps he was exactly the thief Darzid claimed.

Jacopo sagged onto the rock beside me, mopping his brow. “It would help if I knew what we were looking for.”

“Enough is enough, Jaco. We'll give him some food, point him toward Montevial, and let him take his chances. He's certainly not defenseless, and if he sells the knife, he can keep himself far better than you or me.”

Aeren wandered about the hillside restlessly, frustration shadowing his handsome features. He had drawn the silver dagger, and every few steps he would stop and glare at it, until at last, with an explosive croak that was the only expletive he could manage, he threw it at the boulder that sheltered the pool. His face did not change expression when the dagger embedded itself to the hilt in the smooth and unbroken rock face, heeding its impenetrable solidity no more than if it had been a loaf of bread.

“Demons of the deep!” Jacopo jerked backward as if struck in the head.

I thought my heart had stopped. Every nerve in my body quivered with the charge that lingered in the air. Enchantment . . . It was like the fleeting embrace of lightning, or the kiss of fire's breath on frozen flesh, or a moment's memory of passion that stands every hair on its end, flushing the skin with exotic sensation. Ten years since I'd felt the like—almost fifteen since the first time, the day I discovered that the man I loved was a sorcerer.

Evard. To consider how infatuated I had been with him still revolted me. Oh, he was handsome enough: tall, with shoulders as sturdy as a fortress tower, fair hair that drooped over one of his gray eyes as if in invitation to share a wicked jest, graceful hands that were always warm and never unsure. What Leiran girl of sixteen would not have been swept off her feet by such a dashing young duke, conqueror of an enemy's city at twenty?

My brother Tomas was already a swordsman of wide reputation, and he had attracted Evard's notice while serving in his regiment during the subjugation of Valleor. It was on the brilliant summer day of Evard's triumphant return to Montevial, as I stood with my father on our townhouse balcony watching the victorious legions ride by, that I first fell under Evard's shadow. Life shifted when he looked at me. The first change in a year of changes . . .

“Look, Papa, there's Tomas, at the front of the troop! Next to the dark-haired adjutant just behind Duke Evard. Doesn't he look fine?”

My father squinted into the noonday, holding up one hand against the glare from the whitewashed houses and their new glass windows across the wide street. He rarely came out of his library anymore. He'd not been the same man since my mother had died of fever when I was nine. I hoped that seeing the proud legions, hearing the drums of their marching, and feeling the glory of Tomas so favored would inspire him to his horse and arms again. He was not too old to ride in service to Leire, not yet forty, and his forearms still bulged with muscle. But only my firm hold on his arm kept him from retreating into the dim room behind the balcony door. “Quite fine. Now let me loose, girl. Both flask and cup are empty.” Even at noonday, he reeked of his wine.

Still holding my father's arm, I tossed the yellow and purple garlands the servants had brought from the market that morning. I came near letting loose a most unmaidenly yell at Tomas, afraid his manly bearing might prevent his looking up at us as the Third Legion of Leire rode through the cheering crowds of servants, boys, and shopkeepers, and the maidens of marriageable age being thrust into the warriors' path. But just as the purple-robed priests carried the guide-staffs topped with the Swordsman's rising sun and the Navigator's crescent moon past the stoop before our own, Tomas leaned forward, laid his hand on his commander's sleeve, and pointed up at our balcony.

Duke Evard tossed back his fair hair and fixed his attention on my face, and I felt my color rise as if I'd actually yelled out a soldier's lewd blessing or dropped straw on Tomas's head as I might have done in teasing one short year ago. I dropped my father's arm and gripped the rail of the balcony. To my breathless astonishment, the duke pulled out of the ranks and waved his troops on forward while he positioned his mount just beneath me, stood on his saddle, and reached for our iron trellis that was thick with the dark green leaves and orange blossoms of trumpet vines. As agile as an Isker acrobat, Duke Evard shinnied up the trellis and over the rail until he stood on the balcony beside me. Bowing gallantly from the waist, he presented me with a bouquet of white lilies some admirer had thrust into his hands.

Cheeks burning, I accepted the flowers and was scarcely halfway through my curtsy when he scrambled over the rail again. To a laughing roar from the crowd and his troops, he leaped into the saddle and spurred his charger forward, retaking his position at the front. Neither he nor Tomas looked back.

 

Evard claimed he was my slave from that moment. It did not occur to me at the time that the daughter of the oldest house in the kingdom would make an excellent match for one with royal ambition. And neither Evard nor Tomas nor any Leiran ever mentioned that his bloody victory had exterminated the entire population of the lovely, refined Vallorean city he had conquered. Years went by before I learned that part of the story.

My father died when I was eighteen. His passing was a mercy in so many ways, both for him—a great man before his grieving decline—and for me. Though Papa was only forty-one, the tally of noble deeds we had the priests engrave upon his memorial stele in Annadis's temple comforted us that the Holy Twins would not forget him or our family when telling stories of earthly heroes. And I could not be betrothed in the year of mourning.

During that year I learned a great deal about Evard. He spent much of his time with Tomas at Comigor Keep, our musty holding on the northern downs, sparring in the fencing yard and making himself at home in our grand old library, drinking my father's brandy and talking of those who would stand between him and the throne when King Gevron died. I had listened to men's politics since nursery days, more than ever since my mother's death. And so there came a time when my curiosity prodded me to question Evard's certainties.