“I remember you as a little boy—the man before me I don’t know at all,” she said. Her eyes moved across me, seeking something familiar.
“When I see my reflection I feel the same thing myself, Grandmother.” And the box at my hip, in a velvet pocket now, felt too heavy to carry. I don’t know me at all.
We sat in silence for a long minute.
“I tried to save her.” I would have said more but words wouldn’t come.
“I know, Jorg.”
The distance between us fell away then, and we spoke of years past, of times when we were both happier, and I had my window onto the world that I’d forgotten, and it was good.
And by and by when I sat beside her feet, knees drawn to my chest, hand clasping wrist before them, that old woman sang the songs my mother had played long ago, as she had played them in the music room of the Tall 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
