'Irrial, please. I'm not the same man I-'
'Not the same man? Not the man who conquered Rahariem? Not the same man who slaughtered more people in one day than the Cephirans have killed in the last month? Not that man, Cerris?'
'Not anymore,' he insisted, propping himself up on his elbows. 'You've known me for three years! Do you really think those were all a lie? How about the past weeks? Were those?'
She glared, mouth twitching around two or three possible answers.
'Irrial, I don't even think of myself as 'Corvis' anymore. It was so long ago…'
'Long? Not so long that I don't still have nightmares. Not long enough to un-kill all the people-some of them my friends, my family!-that you butchered. No, Cerris, it hasn't been that long at all.'
'Irrial, I'm sorry. I truly am. I lo-'
'If you say it,' she hissed, 'I swear to every god that I'll slit your damn throat!'
'Fine!' He surged to his feet, shoving her aside, anger rising to reflect her own. 'Then how about the fact that I saved your damn life? How about the fact that you need me to save your precious city?' He stopped, breathing heavily, struggling to rein himself in. 'Irrial, whatever happened in the past, whoever I am and whatever you think of me, Rahariem needs us both. Imphallion needs us both. And we need each other.'
She glared up at him, he down at her. 'You're right,' she said, shoulders slumping and head bowing, a marionette with its strings gone slack. 'We do… for now.
'But make absolutely no mistake,' she added, stiffening once more. 'We're allied in this because I want what's best for my city and my people. But that's all we are: temporary allies. Nothing more, not now, not ever.'
'Irrial…'
'That's Lady Irrial,' she corrected, turning away with her head held high.
And Corvis Rebaine, the Terror of the East, could only stand and watch as she stalked from the room, leaving him to make his own preparations for the long journey ahead.
Chapter Nine
'It's… just an ordinary house.'
Kaleb looked askance at the fellow beside him. 'You were expecting a palace? A mansion? Maybe a warren of some sort?'
'I'm not sure,' Jassion admitted, fingers fiddling with the links of his mail sleeve. 'I guess I just expected… I don't know. More.'
The sorcerer's spell had guided them across dozens of leagues, from the terrible forest at Imphallion's outskirts to the city of Abtheum, crouching like a hunting cat beside a major highway. They'd had little difficulty entering, for this far from the borders (and lacking the paranoia of certain other rulers), the Earl of Abtheum hadn't done much in the way of increasing security. Jassion had packed away his tabard, since the last thing they needed was the attention of an official welcome and state visit, and they'd instead passed themselves off as traveling tradesmen. The guards at the gate gave them a glance that would have had to linger even to qualify as cursory, and permitted them passage.
A somewhat more modern city than Mecepheum or Denathere, Abtheum was built as much of wood as stone. Its streets-some cobbled, others hard-packed dirt-were mostly aligned to a prearranged plan, rather than twisting every which way in a more natural growth. Roofs sloped sharply to high peaks, their overhanging eaves casting narrower streets in perpetual dusk, and the air was surprisingly pleasant. Abtheum, apparently, had benefited from the relatively new innovation of underground sewers.
Through sundry neighborhoods they'd walked, Jassion growing ever more pensive, following a trail only Kaleb could sense. And finally that trail had led them here, to a neighborhood of vendors and artisans, neither affluent nor impoverished. Just… comfortable.
Ordinary.
The house, clearly of recent construction, wouldn't have looked out of place in a village a fraction of Abtheum's size. Its walls and surrounding fence were whitewashed, and most of the grounds were occupied by vegetable gardens, each plant clearly marked and arranged in orderly rows.
Jassion stood immobile in the street, gawping as though it were the maw of hell.
'If you don't move eventually,' Kaleb finally said, 'you're going to get run over by a cart. Either that or they'll put a plaque at your feet and dedicate you to somebody.'
'I can't, Kaleb.' The sorcerer actually had to lean in, so quiet was that voice. 'I can't go in there.'
'All right, then,' he said with a shrug. 'I'll talk to them by myself.'
It was, as he'd obviously intended, precisely the right thing to say to spur Jassion into motion.
Dirt and pebbles crunched underfoot, Jassion starting with each sound until they'd finally reached the door. The hand he raised to knock was visibly shaking.
The door drifted open, accompanied by a slightly nasal 'Yes?' Staring up at them was a sandy-haired boy with startling green eyes and a poor complexion, probably just entering his teens.
'I…' Jassion's tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, smothering whatever words might have emerged.
'We need to speak with your mother,' Kaleb interjected, though not before perceptibly rolling his eyes at Jassion's unease. 'Is she here?'
'Mom!' Even Kaleb started back a step as the boy turned and unleashed a shout that implied his father might, in fact, have been some sort of trumpet. 'Someone's here to see you!' Then, far more softly and with a careless shrug, 'She'll be here in a minute, I'm sure.'
Indeed it was rather less than a minute before they heard an inner door-or perhaps the back door into the garden-slamming shut, the pitter-pat of soft footsteps approaching. 'Lilander,' a feminine voice admonished from an unseen hall, 'what have I told you about shouting…'
Jassion couldn't hear the rest of it. The blood pounding in his ears was as the hammering of Verelian, or the charge of Kassek War-Bringer. Had the street behind him been consumed in a volcano, he'd probably never have noticed.
She appeared before him, clad in a sea-green tunic, wiping the garden dirt from her hands. Her chestnut hair-darker than he remembered, and shorter-was tied in a haphazard tail, and her face showed the lines and cares of decades. But hovering about her like a haunting ghost, Jassion saw the teenage girl he'd known, the sister who'd given herself to evil's own avatar to keep her baby brother safe.
'I'm so sorry,' she said with a gentle smile. 'I've asked him to mind his manners around guests, but-'
'Tyannon?'
She blinked once. 'I'm sorry, have we-'
And then she looked, really looked, at this stranger on her porch. 'Oh, my gods…' It was her hand, now, that shook as she slowly reached for him, the other held tight to her lips. 'Jass?'
The Baron of Braetlyn crumpled to his knees, arms wrapping of their own volition about his sister's waist, and wept. THE KITCHEN WAS JUST AS PLAIN as the rest of the house, and smelled faintly of wood smoke. A hearth with a cauldron, and a relatively new wood-burning stove, occupied one wall, leaving the bulk of the room for an oak table and thinly upholstered chairs.
Jassion sat hunched over the table, as small as he could make himself, his hands wrapped tight around his second flagon of mead. Tyannon, across from him, kept reaching out and pulling back. Lilander hovered beside her, puzzled, worried gaze flitting between his mother and this strange, frightening man who, so he'd just been told, was an uncle he'd never met. Clearly, he was trying to decide whether he believed a word of it, and wondering what the hell to do about it once he'd made up his mind either way.
But Kaleb, who'd pulled two chairs back from the table before slouching into one and propping his feet on the other, paid them little mind. No, his attention appeared fixed on the most recent member of the gathering who stood, arms sullenly crossed, beside the kitchen door.
Hair darker than either her mother's or brother's was cut just below her chin in a 'just be done with it' sort of style. Her eyes, too, were dark, the green of the deep seas off Braetlyn's shore. Her features were sharp and
