The Heir of Night (31 page)

“Just,” Haimyr said, with a glint behind his gravity. “But you may be right about it being easier to escape on the road, especially if you wait until well clear of the keep. Your escort would then have to return here to fetch the hounds,
giving you a chance to reach the Border Mark. And once there—” He shrugged. “I believe the heralds will be able to deal with any pursuit, even wyr hounds.”

Malian’s frown eased, then deepened again. “What if I am so closely watched, even on the road, that escape is impossible?”

“I think it more likely,” the minstrel replied, “that the escort will see you as the child they have always known, your powers just a rumor. And from their point of view, where would you go? No, all their attention will be focused outward, toward the usual dangers that infest the Wall, providing your best opportunity for flight. As for the boy,” he smiled his lazy smile, “there is already talk that he, too, should be sent away.”

Malian struck one fist against the other. “If only I could be certain they would send him with me! Although,” she added, suddenly thoughtful, “I could ask it of my father as a boon. It’s not unprecedented for the Blood to take retainers into exile, and he knows that Kalan saved my life in the Old Keep.”

“That could work,” agreed Haimyr. “I will have to make sure that I am part of your escort as well, so I can assist in your escape and delay or confuse any pursuit.”

Malian threw him a doubtful look. “It will be dangerous for you to return to the Keep of Winds if you are implicated in my escape.”

The minstrel shrugged. “I will have to take good care, then, not to be implicated, for where else would I be paid such good coin to sing my songs? You should be safe enough with the heralds, my Malian, if I can get you to them.” He turned his head, as though listening to something at a distance—and the tune beneath his fingers became light and merry, filled with a rippling note, like laughter. “But it appears we have been secret too long and now company comes.”

“So I am indeed spied upon as well as confined,” Malian said, with a snap. She returned to the sofa and sat very
straight, her hands folded in her lap. The merry tune jigged on, and Haimyr’s smile deepened as the doors swung open and Lannorth strode in with the two door guards at his heels. The Honor Lieutenant looked around keenly, then flushed as he met Malian’s inquiring gaze and the surprised lift of her brows. “My apologies, Lady Malian,” he said stiffly, and gave her a belated salute. “The guards were concerned for your safety, it had grown so quiet in here.”

Malian’s brows climbed higher. “So they came to you? How zealous, when they only had to knock and open the door to see that all was well. Could they not hear Haimyr’s playing?” She turned back to the minstrel, who had laid the lute aside. “You are right, that is probably enough music for now. But I would be glad if you returned tomorrow and played for me again.”

Haimyr bowed. “It shall be as you wish, my lady,” he murmured. Lannorth shot a quick, frowning glance between them, but Malian returned his gaze blandly. The two guards remained stolidly at attention, their eyes fixed on a point somewhere above Malian’s head. No one tried to stop the minstrel when he strolled to the door, although Lannorth continued to frown.

“Lieutenant?” Malian inquired, and his gaze swung back to her.

“In any case,” he said, as though this was a perfectly reasonable errand for the Second of the Honor Guard, “the Earl, your father, advises that he will dine here with you this evening. If it pleases you,” he added, the last clearly an afterthought.

Malian inclined her head. “I will be here, of course,” she replied, but suspected that he missed the irony. “You may tell him so for me.”

This was plainly a dismissal, but Lannorth hesitated. Malian observed him dispassionately, but said nothing. He opened his mouth as if to say something more, then plainly thought better of it, saluted and withdrew. The guards trailed out in his wake and Haimyr gave her a last smile
before the door closed behind him. Malian allowed herself a small smile in return, but not the luxury of hope, since a half-conceived escape and a secret conversation were a very long way from escaping the Keep of Winds and her father’s plans for her future.

“Also ill conceived,” she murmured, but low enough that no hidden listener would hear. And even a half-conceived plan for escape was a beginning.

18

T
he day wore on, as long and slow as the three that had preceded it, except that the eerie calm of the storm’s eye still prevailed. There had been many times, especially when Malian was very young, when she had wondered whether a storm could last forever, particularly with the full malice of the Darkswarm behind it. Those had always been the worst fears of the Derai vigil: The storm that never passed, the dawn that never came.

But this storm, too, will pass, Malian told herself, as the day darkened and Nhairin’s stewards came in, soft footed, to turn up the lamps and build the fire so that both light and warmth spilled out, banishing gloom. The stewards did not meet her eyes and nor would they speak; they simply completed their tasks and left as quietly as they had come. They, too, it seemed, had their orders—or were afraid to speak with the Heir in case the old powers proved catching. Even lamp and firelight could not dispel such gloomy reflection, and Malian was curled up in the armchair again, brooding, when her father arrived.

He came alone, but although she heard the thump of the guards’ spears as they sprang to attention, and the soft creak of the opening door, she did not look around or stand up
when he walked over to the fire. That was a breach of etiquette from Heir to Earl, but they were alone and he, too, seemed abstracted, gazing down at the fiery coals. The winged horse of Night glittered on the breast of his long, blue-black tunic, and firelight played across the hilt of his sword and the dagger thrust into his belt. His expression was grim, his face a mask of hollows and angles despite the mellow light.

“You are sending me away, are you not?” Malian asked, before he could speak, and was pleased with the steadiness of her voice, despite the ache in her throat.

The Earl sighed and his stern eyes met hers squarely. “Yes,” he replied, “I am.”

He went on, as she had known he would, to lay out all the reasons for his decision. Malian had gone over them so many times in her own mind that she hardly had to listen at all, so she fixed her eyes on the red and white tapestry behind his head and let the words roll over her. When he had finished, she did not protest and was careful to keep her expression neutral. “So where am I to go?” she asked. “And when?”

“I am sending you to the Sea Keep,” the Earl replied, “for the Blood of that House are your mother’s kin, as well as our allies; they will receive you kindly there. As for when, as soon as possible now that you have recovered from your experience in the Old Keep. Prolonging your departure will only make the situation unnecessarily hard for both of us.” He paused, searching her face; and however unlikely it might seem, she thought he was ill at ease. “Is there nothing that you wish to say?”

Malian allowed herself a slight lift of one shoulder. “What is there to say? I have been expecting this since my return from the Old Keep.” She thrust her hands into the folds of her skirt to still them and kept her manner calm. “But there is one boon I would ask of you, both as my father and my Earl. All my household were slain in the attack, but I am still of the Blood of Night. I should have someone to
accompany me on this journey and into my …” she paused on the word
exile
and said instead, “new life. The novice, Kalan, saved my life in the Old Keep. Given the attack and everything else that happened, I would feel safer if he went with me to the Sea Keep Temple.”

The Earl frowned, clearly turning the matter over in his mind, and Malian tried to appear unconcerned. She studied the detail in the red and white tapestry behind him and thought of Ornorith, that deviser of ways and means, and wondered which of the goddess’s two faces would turn her way.

“Nhairin has already asked that I let her make the journey with you,” the Earl said at last, “but she cannot remain with you in the Sea Keep Temple.” His eyes searched her face again and she met his gaze with an assumption of ease. “It will be the Temple’s decision whether or not they let the boy go,” he said finally. “I will not command them in a matter that does not affect the well-being of either House or keep. But I will ask on your behalf and I think it likely they’ll agree.” He shrugged. “I understand there is talk of sending him to another Temple anyway, since he may be a disturbing influence if he remains here.”

Like me, Malian thought. She wondered, briefly, how the Sea Keep would react to being sent two “disturbing influences”—but perhaps the matter would not be put to them in that way. She blinked and realized that her father was studying her closely, as though sensing he had missed some nuance. “Will it please you,” he asked, “if Nhairin and this boy go with you?”

Would it make any difference, Malian wondered, not without bitterness, if I were not pleased?

But she only said, “It will please me if I do not have to go alone.” Which was true enough, although she would have greatly preferred
not
to have Nhairin as part of the escort. The High Steward knew her too well and was hard to fool; her presence would make it harder to escape.

“Such journeys are never easy,” the Earl agreed. “And
more difficult still if one must make them alone.” His expression grew brooding, dark. Malian watched the play of firelight over his face and wondered if anyone truly knew his mind or heart; certainly she did not, even if she was his daughter. It seemed unlikely now that she ever would.

Her father met her eyes again. “There is something more that you should know,” he said and Malian straightened, caught by the gravity of his tone. “It concerns your mother. Up until now you have always been told that she died when you were young. But although that is true, or we believed it to be so, it is only part of the truth.”

Malian’s heart began to pound and she realized that she was waiting for some blow, long suspected but never acknowledged, to fall. “It began when you were less than a year old,” the Earl said. “Your mother had not been well and it was discovered that the cause of her illness was the abrupt manifestation of the old powers, which had only emerged following your birth. Apparently it can happen that way: The power lies dormant until shaken into life by some major physical or emotional event.”

He paused, as though ordering his thoughts. “I was Heir at the time and your grandfather, my father, was Earl. As long as I can remember, he was consumed by a great hatred for those with priestly powers. It was intolerable to him that Nerion should have brought the taint into our line and he insisted that she be exiled from this House, even though she was not herself of the Blood of Night. The exile he named was to the stronghold of the House of Adamant, which is perhaps the oldest and certainly the most implacable opponent of Night.”

The Earl paused again, a deep line between his brows as his right hand clenched into a fist. When he resumed speaking, his voice was harsh. “Your mother was sent to the Keep of Stone and no word came back to tell us how she fared until two years later. Even then, we simply received a bald message telling us that she had died. There was no detail, no explanation. I was Earl by that time, but it still took considerable
effort to find out that she had, in fact, committed suicide. Apparently she just walked out into the heart of a Wall storm, the kind that shreds flesh from bone. We found out later still that she had been very badly treated in the Keep of Stone, to the extent that death was preferable to continuing to live and breathe within its walls.”

Malian stared at him, her mind reeling. She remembered all the stories that Nesta and Doria had told her, of her mother’s kindness and laughter, her wit and spirit—and of how much she and her father had loved each other. Doria had always said that was why there were no portraits of her mother in the keep: “Because your poor father could never bear to look at her dear face, not after she was gone, my poppet.”
Truth
, Malian thought now, Doria’s voice resonating in her memory: Every word true—but not as she had understood them.

Sick and dizzy, she shook her head. “And you let her go,” she said, “alone amongst enemies.” The tapestry behind his head swam and glittered through the tears standing in her eyes; momentarily, it appeared to move, coming alive. Malian blinked the tears away as her father made a sharp gesture, as though warding off a blow.

“I live with the regret and the pain of that every day,” he replied, his voice hard. “But be sure of this, I will not let the same thing happen to you.”

“Won’t you?” Malian asked. She sat even straighter, challenging him. “Yet you are still sending me away, just as you let my mother, your wife, be sent away. And what can you do to help me, any more than you helped her, once I am in the Sea Keep Temple, far beyond your reach and that of Night?”

The Earl’s face darkened. “I do what I must, Malian,” he said harshly, “for the Alliance and for our Derai vigil. You are of the Blood of the Sea House, through Nerion, and unlike the House of Adamant they are our friends, not our enemies. It is also said that they hold the Oath more lightly than we do, perhaps because Sea is not a warrior House.” His face and voice softened. “I am doing the best that I can
for you. And you know as well as I what it means to be Earl and leader of this House, the first and oldest of the Derai Alliance. You know the Oath that binds us.”