“That sounds wonderful.” It was very likely that she was being kind, but she was also kind enough to give every evidence of sincerity. Had Zelen been a better man, he never would have seized the opportunity.
Had he been less exhausted, or Branwyn less kind, he might not have felt any guilt about it.
“You’re well set up here,” she said when she followed him indoors. Her eye traveled over cushions, bookshelves, and chairs. “Nicely insulated for winter, I’d imagine, with the curtains, and plenty of reading material.”
“None of it exactly sensational, I’m afraid,” he said, struck by her assessment so soon after Gedomir’s. “Give one of the chairs a try. I can almost promise they won’t collapse.”
“That does set my heart at ease.” She sat carefully.
Under the yellowish magical light of the office, Zelen saw that her tunic and breeches were a dark charcoal gray, not quite black, and her shirt was nearly the same deep red as the wine he poured. The sword at her belt, gilded and gemmed, was the most ornate thing about her that day.
“It takes courage,” he said, “to wander about carrying a weapon like that—not to mention making the trip from Criwath.”
Branwyn glanced down at her waist. “For a soldier,” she said, “obvious wealth is as much a defense as it is a lure. Some figure that I have to be good to carry it so openly.”
“And others?”
“They learn.”
Zelen didn’t doubt it. He drank, settling into his accustomed chair, letting the walls of the office close in around him, familiar reassurance with one new element. Courtly manners suggested he ask how she was liking the city, or the Rognozis. Gedomir would’ve wanted him to pursue the subject of the trip.
“How old were you,” he asked instead, “when you left home?”
Immediately, he feared it was a misstep. Branwyn’s lids dropped, half veiling her eyes—home might not have been a place she’d wanted to think of—but then she spoke without pain or anger. “Thirteen, more or less. Why do you ask?”
“I was on my way back from searching for a boy. I’m”—he drank more wine to get the words out—“fairly sure he’s not trapped or injured in the city. As sure as I can be. We could always have missed a place, couldn’t we? But the locals looked, my people and I looked, and we went as far as he was likely to go, playing. Nothing.”
“How old is he?”
“Eleven. Not large for his age,” he added, remembering what Tanya had said.
Branwyn considered the facts. “His age doesn’t rule out running away to take up the sword,” she said eventually, “but you don’t, no offense intended, have much of an army here. He wouldn’t have had to run away to join the city guards, would he?”
“No, and they’re not bloody likely to take him either,” said Zelen. Despite the situation, the image made him smile, but it was brief. “There are estates in the country where he could’ve hoped to be taken on, though, or ships.”
“You’d know more about that,” she said. “This is the closest I’ve ever been to sea.”
“Really?”
“There isn’t much coast in Criwath,” she said, which Zelen knew. He simply couldn’t imagine life without the sound of the waves at night, or when he had to go out to the country, the chance of a salt breeze when the wind was in the right direction. “I was never sent to places where there was.”
She traveled a fair bit then, and not—or not always—of her own choosing. Olwin might have sent her as an envoy elsewhere, even before Thyran’s return. Zelen noted that as he watched her drink the last of her wine. There, he could tell Gedomir at least one thing his brother probably hadn’t known. “The ocean’s treacherous, even here,” he said, his thoughts circling, sharklike, back to where they’d started. “Most children here know well not to play on the docks, but…children know many things. There comes an age when you start wondering if they’re all true, maybe testing that.”
“And such exploration doesn’t always end well,” said Branwyn, picking up the thread.
“No.” Zelen’s family would likely have said it had ended poorly for him. He disagreed—but he’d survived. “So there’s one more possibility. Nothing to be done about it if it’s true, of course. I’ll have a word or two at court—perhaps he did go to one of their houses.”
“If he’s on a ship, it’ll come back.”
“Poram willing,” Zelen said. It was more hope than conclusion, but still the day sat less like a stone in his chest. He remembered when he’d first seen the ocean, the ever-shifting nature of it, the sun on the water like a golden road or one of Sitha’s spiderwebs, and considered telling her about it. Then the hourglass on the desk caught his eye, and Zelen sighed. “I don’t mean to rush you off, but duty will call very shortly.”
“Mine as well,” Branwyn said. She set her glass aside and stood up. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“Whatever help there could be,” Zelen told her, “I think you were.”
Chapter 8
Rognozi’s parlor had become intimidating in the course of two days.
Ever since Zelen had joined the council, he’d waited there for dinner every few weeks, or taken sherry on more casual occasions. The house as a whole had put him more at ease than the one where he’d grown up, though that wasn’t a very high bar to jump.
Now he had a curiously dry feeling in the back of his throat. He couldn’t sit still, but kept crossing one leg over the other, then reversing them.
Having a purpose was not good for his state of mind, even when that purpose was pleasant, and only one of
