Castle on the black keys and the white. Grandmother put words to music I remembered but couldn’t hear, and we sat as the shadows lengthened and the sun fell from the sky.
Later, when comfortable silence had stretched into something that convinced me she had fallen asleep, I stood up to go. I reached the door without creak or scrape, but as my hand touched the handle Grandmother spoke behind me.
“Tell me about William.”
I turned and found her watching me with sharper eyes than before, as if a chance wind had stirred the curtains of age and showed her as she once was, strong and attentive, if only for a moment.
“He died.” It was all I could find to say.
“William was an exceptional child.” She pursed wizened lips and watched me, waiting.
“They killed him.”
“I met you both, you’re probably too young to recall.” She looked away to the hearth as if staring at the memory of flames. “William. There was something fierce in that one. You have a touch of it too, Jorg. Same mix of hard and clever. I held him and I knew that if he let himself love me or anyone else, he wouldn’t ever give it up. And if someone crossed him, that he would be…unforgiving. Maybe you were both bound to be a bit like that. Maybe that’s what happens when two people so strong, and yet so utterly different from each other, make children.”
“When they broke him…” The lightning had shown him to me in three quick flashes as they carried him. One frozen moment had him staring at the thorns, into the heart of the briar. Looking at me. No fear in him. The second and he was scooped up by his legs. The third, dashed against that milestone, scarlet shards of skull among blond curls. “My little emperor” Mother used to call him. The blond of that line in a court filled with Steward-dark Ancraths.
“Broke who, dear?”
“William,” I said, but the years had settled on her again and she saw me through too many days.
“You’re not him,” she said. “I knew a boy like you once, but you’re not him.”
“Yes, Grandmother.” I went and kissed her brow then and walked away. She smelled of Mother, the same perfume, and something in her scent stung my eyes so I could hardly find the door in the gloom.
They gave me a chamber in the east tower, overlooking the sea. The moon described each wave in glimmers and I sat listening to the sigh of the waters long into the night.
I thought again of the music my mother played, and that I remembered in images, and never heard. I saw her hands move across the keys as always, the shadow of her arms, the sway of her shoulders. And for the first time in all the years since we climbed into that carriage, the faintest strain of those silent notes reached me. Fainter and more elusive than the sword-song, but more vital, more important.
Two days passed before the Earl Hansa summoned me to his throne-room, a chamber built against the hind wall of the castle where a great circle of Builder-glass offers the Middle Sea to gaze upon in all its ever-changing shades. I faced the old man, my back to the distant waves, the setting sun edging each with crimson, and with the faint crash of their breaking ready to underwrite any silence.
“We stand in your debt, Jorg,” my grandfather said.
Actually it was my uncle who stood, at the right hand of Grandfather’s throne, whilst the old man sat ensconced in his whalebone seat.
“We’re family,” I said.
“And what is it your family can do for you?” Earl Hansa may have been my mother’s father but he was shrewd enough to know young men don’t cross half a continent just to visit old relatives.
“Perhaps we can do things for each other. In troubled times being able to call on military help can make the difference between life and death. It may be that this Ibn Fayed becomes more of a threat and the day comes when the men of the Highlands stand side to side with the House Morrow to oppose him. It may be that my own position is threatened and my grandfather’s troops or horse could be of aid.”
“Are you threatened now?” Grandfather asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m not here in desperation, begging. I’m looking for a strategic alliance. Something to span years.”
“Our lands are very far apart,” he said.
“That may not always be so.” I allowed myself a smile. I had plans for growth.
“It seems strange that you come so far when your father’s armies stand mere days from your gates.” The Earl ran his tongue over his teeth as if he tasted something rotten.
“My father is an enemy I will face in the field of battle in due course,” I said.
The Earl slapped his thigh. “Now that’s the kind of alliance I could get behind!” He watched me for a moment, the laughter leaving him. “You are your father’s son, Jorg. I won’t lie. It’s hard to trust you. It’s hard for me to speak of sending my people to fight and die on foreign soil for Olidan’s boy.”
“It would pain him to hear you call me that,” I said.
Lord Robert leaned in and whispered in his father’s ear.
“If you would bind your fate with mine, Jorg, then we need stronger bonds. Lady Agath is dear to your grandmother and me. Her son rules in Wennith, and he has two daughters. Small girls now, but they’ll be ready for marrying soon enough. On the day you wed one of them, my soldiers will be ready to fight in your cause.” The Earl settled back in his throne with a grin.
“What say you, Jorg?” Uncle Robert asked, also smiling.
I spread my hands. “I do?”
Robert nodded to a knight at the door who drew it open and spoke to a servant beyond. The jaws of the trap closed around me. Birds had flown in the two days since Qalasadi fled. Replies returned, carriages had set out.
“Kalam Dean, Lord of Wennith, third of the name!” the herald called out, sweating in his silks. “And the Lady Miana.”
A stout man, short with thin grey hair, marched in. Near as old as Grandfather, he wore a plain white robe and might have passed as a simple monk but for the heavy-linked chain of gold looped about his neck and down across his chest. A ruby bigger than a pigeon’s egg hung from the chain. Lady Miana trailed in his wake, a child of eight years, bundled into crinoline and crushed velvet, wide-eyed, red-faced in the heat, a rag doll clutched tight in both hands.
The Lord of Wennith strode right up to me without preamble, craning his neck to look me up and down as if examining a suspect horse. I resisted the urge to show him my teeth. Plump and grey and old he might have been but he had a look about him that said he knew his business, he knew men well enough and the notion of putting his child in my marriage bed pleased him as little as it did me. He leaned in close to share some confidence or threat not meant for any ears but mine. As he moved forward the ruby swung out on its chain, catching the dying rays of the sun. It seemed to hold them, burning at its heart and that light woke something in my blood. Heat rose through me as I fought to keep my hands from reaching for the gem.
“Listen well, Ancrath,” Kalam Dean of Wennith said, and the ruby swung back against his chest ending further conversation. He gave a cry of pain and jerked away, a charred patch smouldering on his robes beneath the stone.
While guards hastened to Wennith’s side and Grandfather called for servants, the child approached me. “King Jorg?” she said.
“Lady Miana?” I went down on one knee to be level with her, turning my face so as not to scare her with my burns. “And how is your dolly called?” I’d little enough experience with children but it seemed a safe enough opening. She looked down in surprise as if she hadn’t known the toy was there.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s not mine. I’m near grown. It’s Lolly’s, my sister’s.” The shape of her mouth told the lie: it tasted sour to her. Her first words to me and already I’d made a liar of her. If we ever wed it would be the least of my crimes. I would be the ruination of her life, this little girl with her rag doll. If she had any sense she would run. If I had any decency I would make her. But instead I would lie to her father, smile, be for the moment whatever man he needed me to be, and all for the promise of heavy horse, of five hundred riders on the Horse Coast’s finest steeds.
A friar from the Morrow chapel helped Lord Wennith from the throne-room with the aid of a guardsman. Miana trailed after them. She paused and turned. “Remember me,” she said.
“Oh, I will.” I nodded, still kneeling. A proud day like this would stay with me forever if I let it. I gave her my smile. “I won’t let your memory go, Miana. I’ve somewhere to keep it in, nice and safe.”
