you.'
'Wait. I'm going to find you some clothes. I've had plenty of time to prepare them while you were asleep. Then we'll talk. You aren't going to like some of what you hear, so you might as well be patient—and dressed.' She got up, then looked back over her shoulder and added, 'You'll feel less vulnerable when you're dressed, too, and that will make it easier for you to hear some of it.'
Idalia went into the other room and came back with an armful of leather of the same sort and color that she was wearing. She shook it out, revealing it to be a pair of pants—leggings, really—and a long voluminous shirt.
'I wanted to salvage your clothes, but all that was left by the time you got here was a pile of bloody rags, barely enough to make smallclothes with. This should be a good fit, though.' She held out her hand to him. 'Come on, now, I'll help you stand up.'
'But—' Kellen felt himself blushing. He hadn't been dressed by a woman since he was… well, a whole lot younger than this, anyway.
Idalia dropped the tunic and leggings on the bed and regarded him, hands on hips, an amused smile on her lips. 'Oh, come now, brother mine, who do you think cleaned you up, treated your wounds, and put you to bed when you got here? And I bathed you and put you to bed every night until you were six; that ought to count for something.'
'But—' Kellen swung his legs over the edge of the bed—still clutching the blanket to him—and stared up at her. 'Idalia, I don't remember you,' he blurted, feeling the fear begin to well up within him once more.
Idalia sighed, and tugged on one of her braids. 'I know, Kellen,' she said gently. 'Father told me he'd do that, just before the Constables came. Look, just think of me as—as a servant, and we'll get this over with.'
Kellen flushed. 'I still don't remember you. And you don't seem old enough to—to have gone away when you said.' Everyone who had cared for him in his childhood had been very, very old; he remembered that much. And his last 'Nursie' had departed when he'd been five, not six.
She shook her head. 'But I'm not; I'm only ten years older than you are. I left the City when I was sixteen, a year younger than you are. Banished, just as you were. You were born when I was ten. You were six when I left, old enough to remember me and ask embarrassing questions, since I was almost your sole caretaker until then. So after I was gone, Father tampered with your memories, erasing me from them.'
Wildly, Kellen cast his mind back over his childhood. He remembered growing up—alone—in the vast gloom of House Tavadon under the indifferent care of a succession of nursemaids and nannies—none of whom had been Idalia. He remembered falling off his first pony when he was four, and the grand celebration—with fireworks in the garden—when Lycaelon had become Arch-Mage.
He did not remember Idalia. Somehow, Idalia had been taken out of all those memories, and a series of strangers put in her place.
'He couldn't do that!' Kellen gasped in shock as he realized just how extensive the changes must have been. He WOULDN'T do that, his mind cried inwardly, clinging to that last hope.
'Well, of course he could; it's a simple enough Working,' Idalia said with calm reproof. 'The Mages use it all the time to take traumatic—or inconvenient—memories away from people. It's all for their own good, of course— and the good of the City.' Idalia smiled again, her violet eyes suddenly hard and dark, and once more Kellen could see their father in her. 'And if you'd been a good little boy, and agreed to do what they told you, they'd have taken away all the memories that made a rebel out of you and replaced them with memories of conforming. They would have told themselves that it would make you infinitely happier and better off.'
'They would?' he asked numbly. 'They do?'
The revelation rattled Kellen to his core—but after all he had been through, it didn't really surprise him. Only now was he beginning to understand how utterly ruthless the Mages were. If they could kill a man, surely killing his memories would be a minor issue for them.
Idalia toyed with the end of her braid as she watched him closely. 'That was one of my problems, you see, all the things that the Mages do to the people for their own good. The other was that we mere females are not allowed to become Mages. We're too emotional, you see.' Her lips twisted in an ironic half smile. 'As if the Mage Council isn't ruled by every petty emotion there is. Hatred, fear, jealousy…'
Kellen barely heard her. He was feeling more than a little sick at the thought of Lycaelon—his own father— using magick on him without his knowledge. That was worse than spying on him, lying to him, searching his room to find his Books. He'd been invaded, manipulated, changed. And why? Just to eliminate a child's inconvenient questions?
Or to help cover up the fact that Idalia had ever existed at all, to make sure that her influence over him was gone?
Kellen swallowed hard. He'd thought there'd never been an Outlaw Hunt in his lifetime, before his. He'd obviously been wrong. And the question now was, how many Hunts had there been? How many of Armethalieh's citizens had been torn to pieces by enchanted stone Hounds— for the good of the City? How many memories had been erased so that no one would even remember the folk who'd been Banished had ever existed?
