‘Just a childish illness, there's nothing to fear. He's a strong boy, he'll be well again in a day or two. Don't worry.'
The memory and its attendant emotions caught her unawares and she raised her hand to her throat as had been her way in those days when she was anxious. Then, catching sight of herself in the mirror she straightened up and, slightly embarrassed, called to her maid.
'Have the Lord Menedrion come to me straight away,’ she said imperiously as the woman entered. Maara's mouth opened as if to question the order, but seeing her mistress's demeanour she remained silent. ‘I must see him now, no matter what he's doing, do you understand? Make sure that the message is clear.'
Maara bowed and left rapidly.
Since Ibris had confined Nefron to her old family palace, the Erin-Mal, he had allowed no one to visit her without his express permission except their sons, Menedrion and Goran. It had been a risk, but he had had little alternative. The effective imprisonment of his wife, the daughter of one of the city's most powerful Senedwr, some thirteen years previously had caused a great deal of political unrest, which assurances that ‘The Lady Nefron has been advised by her physicians to retire from public life’ did little to allay. To have denied her ‘the comfort and solace of her children', as her supporters pleaded on her behalf, would have been to court disaster.
Ibris conceded all such matters at that time with a splendid public grace and a very ill private one.
'The bitch is lucky I haven't had her hanged,’ he declaimed to his immediate advisers on more than one occasion. ‘She can thank her father for that. I need him too much.'
On their last meeting, however, he had been unequivocal. ‘Father or no, Nefron. If I catch one whisper of you or your followers plotting against Arwain again, you can look to a pillow over your face one night.'
Nefron had blanched at the sight of her husband's rage, as many a fighting man would have done, but she had held his gaze and her demeanour. ‘I don't deny that I'd have rejoiced if those assassins had been successful,’ she replied viciously. ‘But if you think it was I who hired them to kill my sister's precious bastard, then you're wrong, and you know it. If you'd an ounce of proof you'd drag me through the courts regardless of my father and family just to have done with me, wouldn't you, great Duke?’ Then she looked at him enigmatically. ‘What a pity all the assassins were killed,’ she added.
Ibris's eyes blazed. ‘Cling to your solitary thread of good fortune, Nefron,’ he said. ‘One day … One day…’ The sentence faded impotently.
Nefron picked it up. ‘One day, our son will be the Duke of Serenstad. Duke Menedrion will rule in your wake. You'll have no choice but to decree it sooner or later. And should anything befall him before then, whatever the cause, I'll see the spawn of your adultery in hell, though you throw me from the Aphron Dennai for it.'
'Don't tempt me, woman,’ Ibris retorted furiously.
Nefron laughed. The cruel taunting laughter that only a lover can inflict.
'
Ibris strode forward, his hand raised. Nefron's face twitched involuntarily in anticipation of the blow, but apart from that she did not flinch.
For a long moment, they had looked into one another's eyes, then Ibris had lowered his hand and, without speaking again, turned and left.
The quiet closing of the door behind him had unexpectedly struck Nefron to her heart and, despite herself, she had sent a silent oath after him as she wiped tears from her eyes.
Now she had few tears left.
Menedrion was in a foul mood when he eventually arrived, bursting into his mother's room virtually unannounced.
'Mother! What the devil…'
Nefron casually raised a hand to still his thunderous approach and, looking past him, she smiled at the indignant and flustered Maara who had attempted to escort him into the room with due decorum and who had been swept aside for her pains.
'You may leave us, Maara,’ she said. ‘I apologize for my son's hastiness. He's unused to the company of ladies of refinement. Oh, and please thank whoever carried my message for their speed.'
Mollified, Maara bowed and left, and Nefron turned her attention to her son.
'I'll thank you to have a little more regard for my servants, Irfan,’ she said in mild reproach as she offered her cheek for a kiss. ‘Heaven knows, I've few enough that I can trust these days.'
Menedrion bent forward and, unclenching his teeth, just managed to kiss his mother without growling.
'Mother…’ he began again, purposefully.
Nefron waved a silencing finger in front of him. ‘Let me look at you,’ she said, reaching up and brushing a maternal hand over his tunic. ‘I haven't seen you for weeks and weeks.'
'You said, “Don't come so often,” the last time we met,’ Menedrion protested immediately in irritable mitigation.
'There, there,’ Nefron said, irrelevantly, at the same time taking his arm. ‘Sit down, you're too big for my little room.'
Menedrion cast a brief, ironic glance at the large, ornate receiving room, then followed the prompting of his mother's hand like a convalescing invalid.
Nefron sat down in front of him and looked at him earnestly.
'Tell me exactly what happened last night,’ she said briskly, just as he opened his mouth to speak again.
The question left him gaping as he looked into his mother's wide, inquiring eyes.
There was a flicker of something in his face that startled Nefron, but she showed no outward sign other than intensifying her penetrating gaze.
Menedrion seemed to chew around the possibility of a denial for a moment, then bluntly said, ‘Why?'
'Because I need to know,’ Nefron said in a tone that would brook no debate. ‘I know that you nearly killed one of your women. What I want to know is, why?'
Again Menedrion seemed briefly to consider denying the charge, but suddenly his face distorted with anger and, pushing his chair back, he stood up. ‘Who told you this?’ he shouted. ‘If it was that…'
'Sit down,’ Nefron said, before Menedrion could outline his vengeance. He hesitated.
'Sit down!’ she repeated forcefully, looking up at him but speaking directly to the knees of the child she had reared. They bent in compliance.
Seated again, and momentarily quelled, Menedrion leaned forward and affected to be examining his boots.
'Never mind who told me,’ Nefron continued, addressing the top of his head. ‘Suffice it that I know. And if I know, then others will. And if others know then it might well come to the ears of the Gythrin-Dy…'
Menedrion echoed the name with a dismissive snarl.
A brief look of angry frustration passed over Nefron's face. ‘I despair of you sometimes, Irfan. The Gythrin-Dy is not the Sened. They're jumped-up traders and Guildsmen full of their own importance. Always anxious to chip away at the authority of the great merchant houses and the lords. Even your father has difficulties getting things quietly set aside there. If they catch wind of this there are those who'll gladly call for your father to punish you in some way, and some who'd speak to have you prosecuted.'
Menedrion looked up, his face a mixture of alarm and disbelief. ‘They don't have the authority,’ he said uncertainly.
'No,’ Nefron confirmed. ‘They don't. But they're free to speak and they have money and the public ear. And if this blows into a scandal then you'll soon find the mob who acclaimed your battle successes will be howling for your head, and there's precious little anyone can do if that happens.'
She paused. Even Menedrion knew the power of the mob, but he did not seem to be listening.
'Don't you understand?’ Nefron ploughed on, her eyes narrowing and her tone sharpening. ‘You could end up being banished to one of the islands for a year or more and the succession denied you forever. Arwain would rule in your stead.’ She could see that no response would be forthcoming so she drove her final words in like a lance. ‘Now
Physically, Menedrion was his father's son. Slightly shorter but equally powerfully built, he was a brave man
