lands did the Selken ships trade with? What was beyond the Delfier Forest, beyond the City lands whose farms fed the City?
The Council didn't want anyone to know.
Why not? What was so bad about them? And if the places over the Sea and Beyond the Forest were so bad, why did Armethalieh trade with those places? Yet they did: by ship and trading caravan both.
It didn't make sense.
Nothing made sense.
The house was dark when he eased open the unlocked garden gate, carefully locking it again behind him in case someone should check in the morning. This was no time to rouse the servants. He'd remembered to bring the pick and shovel with him, and groped his way down to the gardener's cottage to put them away. He didn't think they'd been missed in the last sennight, and as long as they were back now, there shouldn't be any trouble about them having been gone in the first place.
Mission accomplished, Kellen headed up to the house. He'd better find some way to get rid of the clothes he'd been wearing all this time as well—even if he washed them, he didn't think they'd pass muster as something suitable for a son of the House of Tavadon.
HE knew something was wrong the moment he came through the servants' quarters into the main part of the house—knew without having any way to forestall whatever disaster was to come. All he could do was just walk right into it, and hope the consequences weren't too terrible.
'Don't you know that people talk?'
His father came out of his first-floor study—just like an adder out of its hole, Kellen thought unkindly—just as Kellen entered the reception chamber. Kellen froze, his hand on the panel of white marble that led to his staircase, then turned back to face his father. Lycaelon was standing in the doorway of the study, backlit by the yellow glow of candles.
'Why is it, do you suppose, that you have plenty of time to spend digging ditches and wallowing in muck but not one moment to attend to your studies?' Lycaelon asked him, in the same voice Kellen's professors used when they asked him a question they didn't really want an answer to.
Kellen stared at his father in dawning horror. He'd been so focused— obsessed, really—with getting the cistern cleared, with paying the price the Wild Magic asked, that it hadn't occurred to him until this moment that he'd simply disappeared for a sennight—cut his regular lessons at the Mage College, missed his private sessions with Undermage Anigrel, everything! What could he possibly say?
'I was busy,' he muttered. 'I'll do better, I promise.' He winced inwardly at the sound of his own words, knowing they were a feeble and inadequate defense.
'You'll forgive me, Kellen, if I don't think your promises are worth very much. Promises, excuses—all they are is evasions—evasions of your duties and responsibilities! All you care about is yourself and your own pleasures,' Lycaelon answered scornfully.
'That's not true! You think cleaning out a clogged cistern is a pleasure?. It wasn't—but at least it helped someone, and it was more constructive than sitting around repeating sigils that I've done a hundred times already and listening to useless lectures! You don't know me—you don't know who I am or what I think about!' Kellen burst out angrily.
'Think?'
He should have known better than to try to justify what he'd done.
Lycaelon obviously wasn't listening. He'd probably been planning his little lecture for bells now, and he was going to deliver it intact no matter what Kellen said to him.
' 'Think'? I don't believe you think at all. You certainly don't act as if you do. Don't you know that people see you—and talk? Don't you know that everything you do reflects on my position? Don't you know that you have a tradition to live up to?'
Every time he tried to talk to his father, it always came back to this: duties, responsibilities, behave like a good little Tavadon-golem to make everything easy for the great and powerful Arch-Mage! It was all about Lycaelon Tavadon, and nothing about Kellen!
'Don't you think,' Kellen shot back, angrily mimicking his father's tone, 'that if you care so much about things like that you'd be better off not having a son at all? Or why don't you just make a son with magick, so you can get one that's exactly what you want?' He turned away, opened the panel, and ran up the stairs, ignoring his father's angry shouts to return.
Kellen slammed the door to his room behind him and leaned against it, half afraid—and half hopeful—that his father would come after him. Why couldn't they ever just talk?. He knew his father only wanted the best for him, just as Lycaelon wanted xhe best for the City, but for the past few years, ever since Kellen had started studying the High Magick when he turned fourteen, it seemed they couldn't even say 'good morning' without arguing about
