No, Errigal had business here that he feared Connley discovering. Or that he wanted to keep from Ban himself.
Anger shot through him again, and Ban swung around to the entrance. He grabbed the handle and barged inside. The door was lighter than he remembered, and his enthusiasm slammed it back against the inner wall.
Errigal and the star priest shocked apart, but not before Ban saw the paper pass between them, Errigal to priest.
“Ban!” cried his father. “What is this?”
Filling the door with his presence, Ban replied, “What is this, Father? What need have you, the Earl Errigal, for secret meetings with star priests?”
The priest was a young man, hardly older than Ban himself, with a cloud-pale face and glossy black hair caught in a simple tail at his neck. He stared at Ban, firelight reflecting annoyance in his eyes, and brightening the constellation tattoos on his chin and left cheek. “There is no proscribed time for a casting,” the priest said softly.
Ban snorted.
Errigal did, too, exactly the same. He sent his bastard son a long, weary look. “I have letters from Alsax, from Elia, and there is one for you.”
Eagerness pushed through all else, and Ban reached out for it. The priest handed him a tiny square of folded paper.
Do not keep promises by causing more pain. E.
That was the extent of it.
His ears rang and he stared, not understanding.
“Your brother is there,” Errigal said darkly. “The princess writes to me that he fled to her side. And also that she would have her father with her in Aremoria.”
Ban stopped listening for a moment, realizing Elia guessed exactly why and how Rory had found his way to her. Do not keep promises by causing more pain. She rejected his evidence. She preferred to forgive her father than to see the truth.
Ban said, “But Aremoria cannot have both Elia and Lear.”
“Yet we must do something. We must find a way to help our king.”
Maybe it was bile, maybe it was hatred, maybe it was love; Ban swallowed it. He grasped the plain round pommel of his plain sword in one hand, forced the other loose against his thigh. “Help the king? Connley forbade it.”
Errigal waved the priest away and dragged Ban inside, kicking the door shut again. “That is why, don’t you see? Connley forbids me—me, his most loyal retainer—to tend the king? He and his lady will not do it, Gaela Astore will not either, and so I put the king himself to bed in the mud-brick house of my old mistress? That will not abide.”
“Her bed was good enough for you once,” Ban snapped.
His father clapped him on the shoulders. “Don’t be dull, boy. This is no insult to Brona, but to our island, our king himself.”
“He causes insult, Father. To all of us, to the island.”
Errigal growled wordlessly, brow lowered, mouth pressed tight behind his beard.
Ban needed to rein the situation in, control it, before he lost sight of himself. So the Fox put on a stare of disbelief and said, “Connley has been your patron. A good one, too, who recognizes what must be for the good of Innis Lear. And you—what are you doing? What does this priest have to do with it? Will you tell me and let me help you?”
“Ah, boy, I follow the sun of loyalty to my king, and the moon of careful deceit. It is not in you to aid me in that.”
“Not in my stars, you mean? That I cannot follow your same sun and moon?” His play-acting was nearly consumed by the truth of his bitterness.
Errigal hugged him suddenly, hard and rough, with his large arms a vise pinning Ban against him. “You keep yourself clear of this, for I do not know what they may do if I am caught out. If I go, Ban, if I die, you must find your brother—call him from his cousins—and make him come home to take his title, over my dead body as he had professed to want.”
“What?” Ban shoved at Errigal, honestly surprised.
“I know,” the earl said darkly. “It would not be my preference now, but the line must hold. Rory must keep his place, and rule then as Errigal. It’s in his stars, you know, and meant to be as such. We must end this terrible cycle of child against father! This disaster with Lear and his daughters has shown me, Ban. I should have known, and looked past my rage to find forgiveness. In truth, for what comes, Rory is what I would have.”
“Only he.”
As always had been before, Errigal fondly patted Ban’s head, cupped his face. “You’re strong and good, Ban, but not my true line, not the star-ordained right of Errigal. Would that you were, Ban. My son, firstborn by season, if not bed.”
“But Rory wished to murder you,” Ban managed to say, the words grit and sand in his throat. “At the end of it all, after everything you have said, wishing I was your legitimate … You would still rather a patricide and traitor, a murderer, as your heir. You are so resolved to choose other than me.”
“Ah.” Errigal lifted his eyes as if he could see through the roof to the stars. “We are men, Ban. We kill, we send men to kill and be killed. We are all murderers here.”
Ban put his hands to his eyes.
“Do you cry?” his father said, incredulous.
“I
