volition onto that slave ship. I was not without guilt. I had dealings with the Gray Traders. I placed myself into position to be that pawn.”
Kathryn heard the pain in his voice, but her heart still echoed with his earlier words: It was not just my life in that balance. What if Tylar had known about the child… or even if Ser Henri had known at that time… would matters have changed? Would decisions have been made differently by all? Tears rose to her eyes. They came so fast, a surprise.
“Kathryn…” Tylar said.
“There is something I must speak to you about,” she finally said, “but not here.” She motioned to the cabin door. She needed to move. Though the others had offered some privacy by surreptitiously glancing elsewhere or murmuring in their own conversation, she still felt exposed.
Standing, she led Tylar out the cabin door. The axis hall of the craft led forward to the captain’s deck and backward to a communal room with a viewing window. Checking to ensure the hallway was free of prying eyes, they headed toward the stern.
Once in the vacant back cabin, Kathryn crossed to the curve of blessed glass that opened onto a vista below. A railing bounded a gallery overlooking the lower window. She grabbed it firmly. Below a small village slid by, lit by a central bonfire.
“What is it?” Tylar asked.
“There is one more thing you must know about those awful days.” She girded herself for what she must say. Tylar must have sensed her distress and placed his hand over hers on the railing. It was too much. She slid her hand away, perhaps jerking it too quickly.
“There was a child,” she said, speaking woodenly, trying to be dispassionate. “Our child.”
“What…?” Tylar stiffened.
“A babe… a son. I was to tell you the night you came drunk-what I thought was drunk-and bloody to our bed.” She shook her head. “Then the guards, pounding on the door in the morning… there was no time to tell.”
“Tell me now,” he said in a low voice, thunderous in its depths.
“The trial… the accusations… my testimony… it was too much.” A sob bubbled out of her. She had been holding it in for half a decade. “I was not strong enough.”
Tears flowed. She felt her knees go weak, her entire form trembling. The night coming back to her in full horror. “I lost the baby… my… our little baby boy.”
She was blind now to the view below. All she could see was so much blood, on her, on the sheets, everywhere. She tried to wash it up, alone in her room, so no one would know. Then more cramping, more blood…
“I was not strong enough,” she sobbed.
Tylar tried to put his arm around her, but she shoved him back.
“Not strong enough… not for you, not for our baby.”
Tylar again pulled her to him, with both arms now, hugging her tight. “No one’s that strong,” he whispered in her ear.
She barely heard. She cried into his chest. Words escaped her like frightened birds. “Would you have… would you have…?” She choked.
He pulled her tighter. “I wouldn’t have left. Not for anything.”
She nodded into his chest, continuing to sob, but it was less an aching, wrenching thing and more a release. He held her like that for a long time. She let him. Though too much time had passed between them, though they were not the same young man and woman from before, in this moment, they mourned as one, for a baby… and a larger part for themselves.
Finally Kathryn found she could breathe. She slowly extracted herself from Tylar’s embrace.
“If I had known…” he offered.
Kathryn turned to the window, still blind to the panorama and too tired but knowing there was much still to do. She wiped the last of her tears. “I think that was why Ser Henri told me about Yaellin,” she said slowly. “I don’t even think he ever told Castellan Mirra. I think he sensed the wrong he did to you, to the baby, to the both of us, and sought some peace, sharing his own pain of family lost, of a son born out of wedlock, born out of passion.”
“And this Yaellin was chosen to be a Hand to Chrism?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Over many cups of mulled spice wine, Ser Henri told me much. More than he perhaps meant to. But who can say?” Kathryn turned from the rail. “He told me of his love for a woman named Melinda mir Mar, then the headmistress of the Conclave of Chrismferry.”
“I remember her,” Tylar said, surprised. “A tall woman of chestnut hair and comely of feature. She had visited a few times to Tashijan when I was squiring.”
Kathryn nodded. “He was vague on how it all started. He was the warden of Tashijan, she the head of one of Myrillia’s finest schools. The Conclave grounds still holds one of the largest libraries and scholariums. Henri’s interest in alchemy had him visiting its stacks. The two had long talks into the night on a thousand matters large and small. To quote Ser Henri, ‘We were like of mind and spirit.’ ”
Tylar nodded. “Is that not the way it always starts…”
Kathryn glanced to him, realizing that once the same words could have described them. But that was long ago. Was it still true? She cleared her throat and continued. “Though Henri didn’t say it aloud, I think what drew them was a shared passion that went beyond lust. Each was burdened by the responsibility to guide and raise the young of Myrillia, both wanting the best for all. And at some point, they crossed that line from close companions to something warmer. They kept their trysts in secret. He visiting her, she him. Then, despite precautions, she grew with child. She bore a son. She never told anyone who the father was. Henri wanted to marry her, but she had refused. It seemed her duty to the Conclave and Myrillia’s future surpassed all else in her heart. But Henri understood. He would not have given up his wardenship either.”
“And the child? Young Yaellin?”
“His mother raised him in the school, even trained him in the ways to serve a god as a Hand. Then when he was old enough, at eleven birth years, she and Henri told him of his parentage. He was angry, lashed out against his mother. Henri ended up taking him back to Tashijan to learn the ways of the Shadowknight.”
“He trained at Tashijan?”
“For three years,” Kathryn answered. “Then something happened. I don’t know what. Even deep in his cups, Ser Henri would not divulge it. Henri and Melinda took a journey together to the hinterlands.”
Tylar glanced sharply at her. “The hinterlands? Why?”
“They had some duty there, something done in utmost secrecy. In the telling, Henri’s face turned dark and shadowed of brow, clearly remembering that journey. A year after returning from their sojourn, Henri returned Yaellin to his mother.”
“Why?”
Kathryn turned to Tylar. “Henri swore me to secrecy on this next matter, but I think it bears telling now. Whatever happened in the hinterlands required Henri and Melinda to commit an act of great heresy.”
“What?”
“Henri took his son, not even marked with his first stripe, and trained him in secret. He then blessed him with alchemies to give him the full Grace of an ordained knight.”
“Yaellin was knighted?”
“In secret. None knew. Henri was skilled enough in alchemies to gift the boy with shadowplay but still keep the gift hidden. After the boy was ready, Henri sent him back to Melinda and the Conclave. He was presented to the next moon ceremony and was chosen by Chrism’s Oracle.”
“Then what did you mean before that he was not exactly chosen?”
Kathryn licked her lips. “They paid to have him chosen.”
Tylar shook his head-not in denial, but in shock that Henri would participate in such deceit. He knew it was not totally uncommon for a rich family to arrange a position for a son or daughter. While an Oracle, blinded by blood alchemies, served as the eyes of his god, such men were not without a will of their own, without their own vices. Including greed. They could sometimes be plied by gold to sway a choosing.
“So Henri bought a position in Chrism’s court for his son,” Tylar said. “A son secretly blessed into knighthood.
