Magic's Promise

he was just too tired. He compromised by perching on a tall stool, and then looked from Jervis to his aunt and back again, at a real loss as to how to broach the whole subject.

'Did you find out who put fear in the boy?' Jervis prompted.

That's about as good a place to start as any. Vanyel took a deep breath. 'Yes,' he said, and began his tale.

Jervis and Savil heard him out in complete silence, hardly even breathing. Savil's face was expressionless; Jervis, though, looked ready to call somebody out. Vanyel, for starters.

'That's it,' Vanyel finished, starting to slump with weariness, his shoulders aching with tension. 'That's what I found out. And you have to admit, the answers I got certainly fit the symptoms.'

'Dammit Van,' Jervis said tightly, plainly holding his temper in check, “I am bloody well tempted to call you a damned liar to your face!”

'Why?' Vanyel asked bluntly, too weary for diplomacy.

Jervis colored, and growled. 'Because that's nothing like the things Tashir's been telling me! The way he tells it -'

'Wait a minute! Do you mean Tashir's been talking about his family to you?”

'He trusts me! Can't the boy trust somebody other than you?'

Vanyel told himself that Jervis was only reacting much the way he would if the boy were in his protection, and managed to cool his rising temper. 'Why don't you begin at the beginning, and tell me what you heard?'

What emerged was nothing less than a fantasy, if what Vanyel had learned was true. In his long talks with Jervis (and it seemed that there had been several), Tashir had painted a perfect, idyllic family for himself, one in which the members were forced by circumstance and enemies to present a very different face to the outside world than the one they showed each other. His mother, for instance; Tashir depicted her as the long-suffering plaything of her Mavelan relatives. According to him, once she discovered Deveran's kindness, she took a stand firmly by the side of her wedded lord, but played the part of the discarded, unwanted spouse so as to give the Mavelans no reason to think she could be used against Lineas and its ruler.

And according to Tashir's tale, Deveran was not the bitter, half-impotent dancer on the line between Baires threat and Lineas politics. He was supposedly a stern but kindly patriarch of the Linean throne. Deveran, so Tashir had told Jervis, had only disinherited him under pressure from his people. No, there was never any question in Deveran's mind as to who Tashir's father was. No, there had never been a fight, never been anything other than a small misunderstanding that they had settled that very night.

Fiction, first to last.

'That doesn't even square with what the boy told me!'

Vanyel retorted, disgusted with the game the youngster seemed to be playing. “He told me that his father hated him - that knocking him to the ground that night was only out of the ordinary because Deveran hadn't knocked him about much in public before!'

'Hell!' Jervis replied, his face flushing. 'The boy was half - crazed an' scared outa his wits.'

'All the more reason that he should have told me the truth - he didn't have time to make up some tale!'

Jervis started to protest, and Vanyel raised his voice to interrupt him. 'And the part about the fight wasn't just from Tashir, it was from Herald Lores!'

'A fathead,' Savil put in reluctantly, 'but an honest fathead.'

Jervis lunged to his feet. 'An' how much of this is 'cause you want that boy's tail?' he snarled, hands knotting into fists at his sides.

Vanyel went hot, then cold. 'If that's what you think, I see no point in any further discussion. Think what you like - do what you like - but obstruct me, and I'll haul you off to Lissa in manacles.'

Jervis froze.

'Before I am anything else, armsmaster, I am Herald Vanyel, and my first priority is to my king and land. If I judge this boy is a danger to either, I will give him into Randale's custody. Not mine, armsmaster. But I must, and will have answers, and I will not permit anyone to even attempt preventing me from finding those answers.'