CHAPTER TWO
The sixth day of January in the 941st year a.g.l.
This will be a long entry, for much has happened since I wrote last – all of it my fault, alas. I suspect, though, that it would have happened sooner or later, no matter how innocent any of us were.
It started in Verne’s study chamber.
“I can’t resist showing you this, though my father will tear us apart if he finds us in here.” Carle tilted his head back to look at the bookcase before us. “He won’t even let anyone except his personal free-servant clean this room, and then only under his watchful eye. I remember it being a great privilege when I was a boy to be able to watch my father take a book off that shelf and read passages aloud to me.”
I scarcely heard what he was saying. My mouth was agape as I stared up at the row upon row of books, all bound in creamy leather, all shining golden under the afternoon light. “I didn’t realize there were so many,” I said in a hushed voice.
“You may find this hard to believe, but my father only owns about half the law books.” Carle smiled serenely with his half-raised lips. “He’d have to possess the income of a council lord to be able to afford the full set. Most of these books my father inherited; a few he was able to buy from the profits of our orchard.”
A smell of aging paper was hovering in the room, as delicious to me as the scent of a fine feast. I reached out and touched the soft hairs of the binding. “May I look at one?” I asked, continuing to speak in a low, reverent tone.
For the first time, Carle’s smile disappeared. He stood silent for a moment, biting the tip of his thumb, then said, “We really shouldn’t, but I can’t resist showing you the passage on the Chara’s burdens. The volume on the Great Three is all the way at the top of the case; he’ll never notice if we’ve touched it.”
“But can we get it down?” I asked, feeling uneasy about this subterfuge, but not enough to resist Carle’s suggestions. Already I could imagine what it would be like standing in front of the open law book, staring down at the curve of the neat scribe’s hand, smelling the ink, hearing the terrible words of sacrifice as Carle spoke them in a soft voice . . .
Carle glanced around the room with the quick movements he used when trying to track one of the hunted, then said, “Young!” A slave-servant was passing the doorway, holding a chamber basin. He stopped and peered nervously into the room at us. “Young, fetch us a ladder, please – and be as quick as you can about it. . . . Now,” he added as the slave dashed away, “this will be tricky. My father usually uses a special stepladder to reach the top shelf, but I have no idea where he hides that; it’s probably locked away in the chest. So we will have to use the regular ladder.”
This turned out to be as difficult a task as Carle had predicted, even with the assistance of the slave; the room was narrow, and raising the ladder required us to guide it past valuable vases on the mantelpiece. Finally, though, we managed to put the ladder in its place, and Carle scrambled up to the top rungs. He had just pulled the volume carefully from the shelf when a cough came from behind us.
Carle nearly tumbled from the ladder, which caused Erlina to grin. “Do fall,” she said sweetly. “Father is only a few chambers away, and I’m sure he’d love to see you topple to the floor with one of his treasured books.”
“‘A spoiled pear scolds a rotten apple.’” Carle’s gaze travelled down toward Erlina. “If you want to give our father something to comment on, try walking like that past his door.”
Erlina blushed and let go of Alaric’s hand. “What’s so important about the book that you’d risk your health?” she asked.
Carle sighed as he reached the bottom of the steps. “If you stay, you might learn. Sometimes, Erlina, I think you have as much law-love as an ignorant barbari— I beg your pardon, sir.”
Alaric bowed, as though he had received a compliment. “I am indeed quite ignorant of your laws but am eager to be schooled. This is the book in which they are scribed?”
“One of the books,” said Carle, controlling his expression. “No, leave the ladder, Adrian; I don’t think—”
It was too late; as he spoke, I swung the ladder down, breaking one of the vases in the process.
The slave, who had been standing silently in the corner next to the chest, turned as pale as new-fallen snow. Alaric looked as though a barbarian warrior fiercer than himself had walked into the room. Carle and Erlina, on the other hand, wasted no time.
“Bucket and brush,” said Carle to his sister, and then turned as she fled from the room. “Put the ladder back, then return,” he told the slave, who departed, ladder in hand, with as much urgency as though he were responding to a danger whistle. Carle was already on his knees, picking up the shattered pieces of vase.
“May I assist?” asked Alaric, for once abandoning his flowery etiquette in favor of quick communication.
“No, I think that you’d best— Thank you, Erlina; where’s the bucket, though?” He reached up to take the brush from her hand.
“Missing,” said Erlina, gulping for breath. “One of the servants must have moved it.”
“My room has a basin; I will fetch that.” Alaric turned on his heel. Barbarians, I learned then, are well trained in speed.
Erlina was already on her knees, locating fragments of vase under the table. I began to stoop but was forestalled by Carle’s hand.
“If my father didn’t hear that crash, it will be the first time in his life he hasn’t heard so much as a leaf fall in his house,” he said. “Adrian, could you—?”
“Yes, of course,” I said, and dashed from the chamber.
I was barely in time; Verne was indeed walking in his silent way down the corridor, toward the study chamber. I had just enough leisure to fix myself in front of the tapestry bearing Carle’s family tree; then I froze, pretending that I did not see the man walking toward me.
It seemed at first that my lure would not work. Finally the steps behind me paused, and I heard Verne say, “My family is of interest to you?”
“Is that what it shows?” I said in as ignorant a manner as possible. “I was wondering about the seal in the middle – the sword and the balance.”
“Ah, yes.” Verne stepped beside me, forcing me to look toward him, in the direction of the study chamber. Just beyond him, I saw a flicker of movement that might have been Alaric. It took all my effort to keep my gaze from jumping away.
“The seal is easy enough to explain,” said Verne, pointing toward the bottom of the tapestry. The sunlight flickered off his seal-ring, whose design matched that of the seal on the tapestry. “There, you see, are my son and daughter at the bottom, and above them, my wife and me. If you will look closely at the name of my father—” He looked over at me to be sure that I was paying attention, and stopped speaking suddenly. His eyes narrowed.
For a heartbeat, his expression stayed that way. Then his smile slowly rose from one side of his lips. “But come,” he said softly, “I can explain it much better from a book I have in my study chamber.” And he gently placed his arm over my shoulders and pulled me toward the study.
I drew breath to speak further, then held back. Already I was feeling guilty about luring Verne; it would be unforgivable to lie to my generous host. Surely the best thing to do would be to explain honestly what I had done, and bear the burden of Verne’s look of disappointment. Yet if Carle wanted me to act otherwise . . .
I was still trying to figure out what to do when the slave ducked out of the doorway, bearing a covered basin. Verne’s lips tightened as he watched the slave depart, and his smile disappeared. Releasing me, he strode through the doorway to the chamber.
The afternoon had turned dark; little light came now through the window, though a fire burned in the hearth. Erlina sat on a cushion in the corner near the chest, her face turned toward the window, as though she were idly watching passing birds. Carle was standing behind the desk; as I watched, he carefully turned a page in the book before him, then raised his head to gaze blandly at V
erne.
Verne said nothing; he simply walked forward. Carle vacated the spot where he had been standing, backing up toward me. Verne took his place and stared down at the volume for a long moment. Then he carefully closed the book and looked at Carle, waiting.
In a voice as level as the flat pasture of Peaktop, Carle said, “Sir, I apologize. I know that I ought not to have consulted your books without your permission.”
Verne said nothing; he simply gazed at Carle. From the corner of the chamber, there was a stirring of bright cloth. Erlina said, “Father, it’s my fault. I asked him to look up for me—”
“Leave.” Verne’s voice was very soft, and he did not turn his gaze from Carle.
“Father, please—!”
“Leave,” said Verne, even more softly. “I will deal with you presently.”
I heard a sob from the corner, and then a bright bundle hurried past me. I did not turn my head to watch Erlina leave; I was frozen in my spot like a breacher not knowing which way to run.
Verne turned away, not suddenly, but in a steady manner, as though he were undertaking a task long familiar. He went to the corner of the room, pulled a key from his belt-purse, and used it to open the chest. When he turned again, he was holding in his hand a long, sleek, Jackal-black whip.
I looked at Carle; his face might have been made of mountain stone. “Sir, I am of age,” he said stiffly.
“I had forgotten.” Verne placed the whip carefully on his desk. “Of course, you are a man, and are no longer under my discipline. Will you call in your sister, please?”
For a moment more, Carle stood motionless. Then his hand went to his throat, and he removed his honor brooch.
Turning to me, he placed the brooch in my hand and said quietly, “Adrian, will take this to my chamber, please?”
I looked at him with uncertainty for a moment, wondering whether I should tell Verne now that I bore the guilt for this episode. Something in Carle’s expression warned me that I should trust his judgment in this matter. I nodded and turned away; Carle’s hand was already untying his belt before I turned.
At the last moment, something made me turn at the doorway. I looked back in time to see Carle slip off his tunic – the tunic he had removed several times a day as a child, he’d told me – and there, for the first time, I saw his back. And thus I discovered what it was that he had shamefully hidden from his fellow guards.
I felt my throat close in tight. Verne was stepping toward Carle slowly, running the knotted lash of the whip through his palm and smiling at his son a dark smile I had seen several months before, though then it had been on the face of a different man. “Let us see,” Verne said softly, “whether the army has taught you how to be a man. . . .”
I forced myself to turn then and to stumble down the corridor. The last thing I remember, before my eyes darkened with tears, was the sight of Erlina crying in the arms of Alaric, as behind us the first of the lashes cut into Carle’s flesh.
o—o—o
I wrote all of the above while waiting for Carle to return to the bed-chamber where I have been staying. It seemed a more constructive deed to do than to weep with anger at myself. Finally, though, I grew restless, and I stepped into the corridors to search for Carle.
Cowardly-fashion, I avoided the study chamber, instead peering into room after empty room. Finally giving up hope that I would locate Carle by chance, I hailed a passing slave and asked him where I might find his master’s son.
“It is possible that he is in his chamber, sir,” said the slave, stepping out of the shadows where I had met him.
“Where—?” I stopped then, for I had recognized the slave. He was the one whose face I mended two days past. All along his forehead I could see the jagged reminder of the blow he had received.
His gaze, which until now had been respectfully lowered, flicked up toward me, and I saw his expression change as he realized that I now understood. Then his gaze dropped, and in the monotone that all of Verne’s slaves seem to hold as a common language, he told me how to find Carle’s extra chamber.
I have never visited slave-quarters before. I don’t even know how Koretian slaves are kept; perhaps they are housed worse than in the dank, dark, putrid chambers where Verne houses his slaves. The last chamber on the corridor was deepest in the dark, so I had to take a lamp with me to light the way. I was shivering by the time I reached it; the chamber had no hearth, nor any slit of a window to let in fresh air. I felt as though I were breathing cold earth.
Very little lay in the chamber: Carle’s back-sling, his pallet on the floor, a chamber-basin, and a few pieces of clothing. One of these was the tunic Carle had been wearing before. I turned it over, then had to bite my lip to keep from crying out.
Carle had told me the virtues of the tunic he designed, but he had not told me its foremost virtue. Whereas any bodily moisture that touches the patrol uniform immediately soaks through to the surface, Carle’s tunic was sewn in a double layer, with the inner cloth made of the same waterproof material that is used for army tents. From the outside, Carle’s tunic looked fresh and little worn; on the inside, in the portion of cloth that lay against the back, I could see the blackness of many old blood stains.
Some of the blood was fresh. I let the tunic fall and stood up, feeling my stomach churn; then I heard a step behind me and turned.
Carle had changed into his patrol uniform, but for the brooch; otherwise, he was as I had seen him last. His eyes rested on me without surprise. He said, “I was about to come see you.”
I stared at him, speechless. After a moment I stepped forward and handed him his brooch. He looked at it, smiling humorlessly, then gestured toward the pallet. “Seat yourself,” he said. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you better.”
“Carle . . .” My voice shook as I sat down on the pallet next to him. “Did you sleep in this chamber throughout your childhood?”
“Only when guests came.” Carle brushed the bloodstained tunic aside with a casual gesture. “Gervais would have hammered down our door with a summons for neglect of an heir if I had been given this as my main chamber, but having guests visit periodically was sufficient excuse to allow my father to house me with the slaves. . . . I used to wish I was a slave when I was a child,” he added, drawing up his knee between his locked hands. “My father pays less attention to them than to his family.”
I blinked away the hot moisture trickling across my lashes. “Carle, why didn’t you tell me?”
Carle sighed and moved the lamp so that it cast more light upon us. “Family pride, I suppose. I’d hoped that my father would behave properly while you were here – he often does, when we have guests.”
“You’re a man,” I said, my voice trembling once more. “You’re not a child any more; you’re a soldier in the Chara’s armies. How could you let him treat you that way?”
Carle gave another of his humorless smiles and waited. After a moment I said, in a voice of resignation, “Erlina.”
Carle nodded. “It’s a game he played all through my childhood. If I rebelled against his punishments, he’d turn upon Erlina – or upon Fenton when he was my tutor. Not that my father ever needed any extra excuse to beat Fenton. If Erlina rebels against his punishments, my father turns next to my mother.” Carle gave a small sigh and looked down at the dirt floor beneath us. “I wish I could feel more pity for my mother than I do,” he said quietly. “When I was a child, she never spoke a word against what my father was doing. She only tended my wounds afterwards, and then only if my father wasn’t watching.”
He rose suddenly and put out his hand to help me to my feet. “It’s Erlina I’m worried about right now. I just searched the house for her, but I can’t find her anywhere. I saw Alaric talking to my mother; I didn’t want to bother him to ask if he knew where Erlina was. But if my father finds her before I do . . .”
“I’ll help you search,” I said, and we started on our hunt.
We tried the slave-quarters first – the dark rooms
being a handy hiding place – and then the top floor, where Erlina’s bed-chamber is located. Alaric hadn’t yet returned to his guest chamber at the far end of the top floor, though Carle knocked there in passing and checked the door, which proved to be locked.
“One thing I don’t understand,” I said. “Why is Alaric here? I thought that your father was being charitable in hosting a barbarian, but now . . .”
“My father,” murmured Carle, peering into a wardrobe, “would gladly cut the throat of every foreigner in the world if he had the opportunity. No, Alaric’s presence is Gervais’s doing. Our baron can do little, in terms of the law, to prevent my father from mistreating his household, so he takes the only actions he can: he invites Erlina and me to his house as much as possible, and he requires my father to host guests to the village, so that my father will be restrained in his behavior by their presence.” Carle closed the wardrobe door and began to check behind the floor-length curtains. “The fact that such hosting irritates my father may be part of Gervais’s motives. He has hated my father for as long as I can remember.”
We stepped out into the corridor. Reaching the stairway, Carle said, “Let’s split our hunt here. You patrol the middle two floors, and I’ll patrol the ground floor.”
I couldn’t help but smile then, knowing Carle’s motive for saying this. “Sublieutenant,” I said, “I know that you’re eager to practice for the future the lieutenant’s privilege to sacrifice himself for the sake of the unit. Even so—” And without any further words, I slipped ahead of Carle on the stairway, leaving him cursing behind me.
Since there was no longer any way to avoid it, I headed straight for the study chamber. The first person I met was the slave who had assisted us with the ladder; he was leaving the chamber as I arrived. His clothes were rumpled, and he was sobbing into his hands. Feeling the same chill that embraced me whenever I faced a dangerous border-breacher, I peered into the study.
Verne was turned partly away from me; he was contemplating in his hand a piece of broken vase. As I watched, he turned his back and threw open the shutter. At the same moment, perhaps encouraged by this sign of life from the house, a dog barked out eagerly. With no hesitation, Verne hurled the fragment of vase down from the window.
The dog’s bark ended on a yelp, followed by a prolonged whimper, fading gradually into the distance. Verne stood at the window for as long as the dog remained within hearing; then he turned. On his face was a smile.
He sighted me at once, rooted at the entrance like a bird-chick watching an approaching viper. “Ah, there you are,” he said softly, his smile deepening. “I was hoping to talk with you further.”
I came to myself then, and began to slide backwards. “I am sorry, sir. I did not meant to disturb you—”
“Nonsense.” Verne moved surprisingly fast, catching hold of me as I was about to reach safety. His hand clamped into my arm so hard that I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out. “Do come in and sit. I have been a poor host during your stay, spending so little time with you.”
I had no choice but to enter, though I declined the chair he offered me. He went over to stand behind the desk. The law book that Carle had been showing me was now replaced by another, slimmer volume.
“I have been thinking about the sad story you told me the other evening,” Verne said, “and have been growing more concerned, the more I think about it. It seems to me, young man, that by leaving your family as you did, you have placed yourself in grave danger. Why, only this afternoon, as I was looking around this chamber, I came across a volume written by an early Emorian visitor to Koretia. He describes in it how men who have broken their blood vows are executed.” Picking up the volume so that it hid his face, Verne began to recite: “‘The man they consider to be cursed by their gods is brought to the village square, bound both in body and, as the Koretians consider it, in spirit. Before his coming, wood has been placed in the center of the square. Now the man who is doomed is placed in irons and laid across the wood. The fire is lit—’”
I had been trying since the beginning of the narrative to break in. Now I said rapidly, “Sir, I know what is done to the god-cursed—”
I stopped. Verne had lowered the book so that I could see his smile. He continued to smile at me for a long moment; then he continued: “‘The fire is lit. The wood is wetted beforehand, though, so that the man’s agony may last all the longer . . .’”
And so he went on, recounting all the details of the fire-execution, while I stood there wishing I was wearing Carle’s waterproof tunic, for the sweat was causing my uniform to stick to my body.
When he had finished, Verne lowered the book and said softly, “It occurred to me when reading this that even coming to this land may not have saved you from such a terrible end. Suppose, for example, that someone you had harmed decided to send word to your family that you were a patrol guard. It would be easy, would it not, for one of your blood kin to locate you in the mountains and bring you back to your village for execution? I really do think, young man, that you must be careful not to make any enemies in this land.” And his smile was so dark that it seemed to swallow the light from the hearth.
I stood where I was, barely breathing, feeling moisture trickle down my face. Verne said softly, “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered.
“Good,” he said gently. “I wanted to be sure that you were aware of your danger.”
o—o—o
Carle found me half of an hour later in the stables. I was trying to smother my sobs against the flank of my horse. He had the story out of me within two minutes. Then he sighed and handed me his face-cloth, saying, “My father always turns my own mind into the consistency of Koretian mud, so I don’t blame you for missing the flaws in his tale.”
“What flaws?” I gulped down a hard sob. “Carle, he will tell my family—”
“No, he won’t, and for three excellent reasons. The first is that my father doesn’t have any contacts in Koretia. He hates Koretians with a passion, and he wouldn’t have the slightest notion of how to go about sending a message to your family. The second reason is that if he did such a thing, he knows that I’d be in the village court within the day, requesting his summons on a charge of murder.” Carle guided me away from the horse, which was shifting uneasily, and placed his arm around my shoulders. “The third reason . . . Let me see if I can recite my father’s tale correctly. According to him, a member of your family is supposed to enter the patrol grounds, sneak up behind you and me, render me unconscious – for I suppose my father wouldn’t go so far as to arrange the death of his own heir – and then disarm you, bind you, and gag you, before dragging you back over the border.” Carle raised his eyebrows at me. “How likely do you think it is that this kidnapping will take place without the lieutenant hearing?”
I thought about that for a brief moment before bursting into laughter. Carle grinned and said, “Come, let’s to bed. We’ve had a hard day.”
“But Erlina—”
“Is hiding in Alaric’s chamber. Oh, Alaric claims he hasn’t seen her, but barbarians, I am happy to say, are poor liars.” Carle sighed as we reached the door of the stable; he swept the sweat off his brow. “A fine sort of brother I am, permitting my unmarried sister to spend the night with a man who is courting her. Well, if Erlina loses her maidenhead by morning, it will be a lesser loss than what she would lose if she left that room.” And I saw once more the look of patience that both Carle and Fenton forged out of their years of pain under Verne’s care.
o—o—o
The seventh day of January in the 941st year a.g.l.
I awoke this morning to the sound of shouts.
They came from the study chamber but were so loud that they reverberated throughout the house. As I walked down the corridors, hastily tugging on my uniform, I could see slaves cringing in the corners. I thought I caught a fleeting glimpse of Carle’s mother, cringing with them.
By the time I’d reached the c
orridor outside the study chamber, I had identified the voices. I hesitated before slipping up to the entrance.
Both voices were quiet now, one so soft that my hair stood sentrywise against my skin. The other voice belonged to Carle. As I pressed myself against the wall, he said in a cold voice, “Sir, the decision is yours. I have given you the conditions under which I will conduct the hunt. It is for you to say whether those conditions are acceptable.”
I did not hear the reply, but I heard the smile in the voice that replied; sweat began to trickle down my back. There was a long pause, and then Carle said, so softly that I had to strain to hear him, “Very well, sir, we will settle this matter through the court. And when you provide your witness for the charge, I will provide my own about a certain lengthy trip our baron took to the Central Provinces twenty years ago, and about how you occupied your time while he was on that trip.”
There was a silence at the other end of the room. Carle did not wait long, but said in the same soft voice, “Do not hurry yourself, sir. I can find my own way to Gervais’s house.” And in the next moment, he walked out the door.
He saw me at once. For a moment, the dark, sickening smile on his face lingered; then it dropped away, like a weapon hastily discarded. For a moment I saw Carle as he must have looked as a child – naked and vulnerable – and then he nodded at me as though I had spoken and re-entered the room.
In a voice that was quiet but was no longer silky, Carle said, “Sir, I ask that you forgive me. I should not have spoken as I did before.”
The soft voice spoke. I peered round the doorway in time to see Carle stiffen in his place. His face, always pale, was drained of the last remnants of color. “Sir,” he said in a level voice, “I would ask that you reconsider. I will apologize again—”
“Out!” the voice at the other end of the chamber suddenly roared. “Get out! And take your brown-skinned friend with you!”
I found myself cringing against the doorpost as the slaves had done. For a moment, Carle said nothing. Then he whispered, “Yes, sir,” and left the chamber swiftly.
He took hold of my arm lightly and steered me toward the entrance of the slave-quarters. “Carle, what has happened?” I asked in a low voice.
Carle waited until we were beyond the knot of slaves clogging the slave-quarters entrance before he said, “Erlina has run away with Alaric.”
I looked over at Carle, but I could not see his expression in the dark corridor we were traversing. “Are you sure?”
Carle nodded. “Alaric left a note for me – for me, not my father, which made my father furious. My father found the note first, but I made him all the more furious by refusing to translate the note, and by burning it after I’d read it.”
“Translate it?” I said. “You mean that it was written in a mainland language?”
“No, it was written in Emorian – you taught Alaric his letters, remember? His spelling is so dreadful, though, that my father assumed that the note was in a foreign tongue.”
“What did Alaric say?” I asked as Carle picked up a lamp in the corridor and led the way to his extra chamber.
“He said that he had asked my mother for permission to marry Erlina, and that she had voiced no objection; from my mother, that’s the closest one can get to a blessing. He said that it grieved him greatly that he could not likewise ask my father for his permission, but that he had dreamt during the night that a snow leopard had mauled Erlina while he stood by watching. He took this as a sign that his gods wanted him to protect Erlina against her father. He swore to me that his intentions toward Erlina were entirely honorable. And he ended the letter with a one-sentence apology to me that covered three pages. Among other things, he apologized to my future wives.” As we ducked through the doorway to the chamber, Carle handed me the lamp, then went over to the other end of the room and pulled open his back-sling.
Watching as he tossed his clothing in it, I said, “It might be true. Perhaps he really does want to marry her.”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt he intends to grant Erlina honor – whatever honor may mean on the mainland. But the idea of Erlina living the life of a barbarian . . . The only fate worse would be living with a man my father had chosen.” Carle knotted the tie of the back-sling, saying, “I told my father that I would find Erlina and fetch her back only if he permitted her final say over which man she married. —No, leave that,” he added as I tried to hand him the bloodstained tunic. “I won’t be needing that again.”
“What was his reply?” I asked as we moved back into the corridor, squeezing past curious slaves. “You said something about the court . . .”
Carle nodded as he laid his hand briefly on the arm of a slave he was passing. “Helping a woman to elope is a crime in Emor. My father threatened to request a charge against me that I’d assisted Alaric. —No, I am sorry,” he said in response to a whispered question by one of the slaves. He gave her hand a squeeze before passing on.
“I feel as though I’m leaving them to their doom,” he said as we raced our way up the stairs. “There’s nothing I can do for them, though, or for my mother. My presence wouldn’t help them in any way.”
“Carle, you said something in reply to your father’s threat, something about a trip Gervais took—”
“My father’s had better slaves than he deserves,” said Carle as though I hadn’t spoken. “Not just Fenton, who never spoke an unkind word against my father in all the time he lived here. Most of the slaves we’ve owned have tried to serve my father well. I remember an older slave who was my father’s body-servant when I was quite young. He would take pains to provide my father with comfort only minutes after my father had smashed him to the ground.” Carle swung open the door to his main bed-chamber, waited until I was inside, and barred the door.
I was already on the other side of the chamber, packing my back-sling, but I looked up as Carle, with a voice suddenly low, said, “So loyal was this slave that when my father decided, twenty years ago, to seduce the Baron of Peaktop’s wife, the slave assisted in the arrangements for the seduction.”
My hands stilled on the sling; I was calculating ages in my mind. Breathlessly I said, “Do you mean Myles . . . ?”
Carle nodded as he reached my side and began handing me clothing. “Gervais knows, I believe; there’s no other way to account for the depth of his hatred for my father. His honor is shown by the fact that he has never spoken publicly on this matter. Nor has he taken his anger out on his wife and her son.”
“Your threat was just a feint, wasn’t it?” I asked anxiously.
“Naturally.” Carle took from my hand the flask that I was about to pack and sipped from it briefly. “I’d cut my throat before saying anything that might reveal to Myles who his true father is. I must confess, though, that as a child I found comfort in knowing that I had a half-brother, and that he was safe from my father.”
“Carle, how do you know all this? You weren’t even born yet—”
“I know because my father promised to reward his body-servant’s loyalty by freeing him. Several years after the affair, the slave was foolish enough to remind my father, in a tentative manner, of this promise. My father responded by selling him to the mines.”
I felt my heart beat at my throat. “The mines . . .”
Carle nodded and handed me the flask. “That’s where Fenton would have died if I hadn’t been able to persuade him to flee Emor. In some households, loyal slave-servants are rewarded with money or freedom; my father has his own custom. The body-servant was to be taken swiftly from our house before he could talk, but he managed to slip away for a few minutes. He came to me and told me the story. He said that I might need it some day as a defense against my father.” Carle watched as I drank from the flask; then he said, “I was six at the time, too young to understand fully what the slave was telling me. Only later did I realize that the body-servant could have used those few minutes to go to Gervais with his story. As I said, my father has owned servants more loyal than he
deserves.” He turned away and unbarred the door as I rushed to catch up with him.
“Carle,” I said, “what did your father say at the end? Before he shouted?”
For a minute, I thought that Carle would not reply. Finally, he turned his gaze toward me and said, “We are bonded by more than wine now.”
It took me a moment to determine what he meant. Then my breath drew swiftly in, like a spear meeting its mark.
Carle nodded. “He has disowned me,” he said quietly. “Come, let’s fetch our horses. We can do nothing more here.”
o—o—o
The eighth day of January in the 941st year a.g.l.
We stopped at the inn on the way home, and once again Carle arranged for us to have separate sleeping chambers. This time, when I awoke to hear Carle crying out in pain, I did not even have to listen to know the name of his torturer.
He had locked the door again. I thought for a while, and then, returning to my own chamber, I checked the window. Its sill jutted out perhaps a finger’s length, as did Carle’s sill, which was half a spear-length from mine. His shutters, I was grateful to see, were open, and so mild was the weather so far this winter that the landlord had not yet tacked on any waxed paper, so the windows proved no barrier.
Our chambers were on the second storey, and going from his sill to mine was tricky, because the only hand-holds were the frames of the window. I expect that any border mountain patrol guard could have done it in his sleep. After half a minute, I dropped down into Carle’s chamber. I had been as silent as I could, but of course he was now awake, his thigh-dagger glinting in the moonlight.
He slipped his dagger back into his thigh-pocket when he saw who his intruder was, but said nothing as I came forward. He turned his back as I reached the broad bed he slept in. I slipped under the covers, laying my hands lightly upon his scarred back. Within minutes, I had fallen asleep.
He did not cry out again during the night.