“It’s my father, you see.” Corwin swallowed, the cords in his throat flexing. “The rumors about him are true. He’s sick. Something festers inside him that the magists can’t heal. It affects both his body and his mind. They don’t know what it is, but it came on after the attack.”
But that was years ago, Kate thought. A sickness festering this long sounded unnatural, like magic. Her old tutor once told her that during the Sevan Invasion, the green robes had applied their healing arts to create spells that could cause sickness—fever, boils, watery bowels. That was magist magic, though, nothing like what her father could do. Not that she could explain this to Corwin.
“He goes weeks without speaking sometimes,” Corwin continued. “And when he does speak, it makes little sense. We’ve hidden the truth as much as we can, but someone has to make decisions in his stead. Someone has to rule.”
Why not you? Kate wanted to say, but she already knew the answer. There’d been no sign of uror. Surely by now, odds were there never would be.
“You sound uncertain,” she gently pressed.
Corwin sighed. “That was the first time I’d seen the golds arrest a child. What his mother did was horrible, make no mistake, but Signe has a point. The woman was provoked. My mother would’ve reacted much the same if it had been Edwin or me. I probably would too, with my own son.”
His admission surprised Kate. The first few months after his mother’s death, his grief and rage had been so great he couldn’t even hear the term wilder without needing to hit something. His knuckles still bore the scars. But now he seemed sympathetic to one.
“But then again,” Corwin went on, “it really wasn’t Edwin’s decision to support the Inquisition. It was my father’s plan to sanction it before he . . . fell ill.” Corwin paused and looked at Kate, his expression suddenly guarded. “I overheard them fighting about it the night before, my father and yours.”
Kate stared back at him, not daring to speak or react at all. Of course her father would’ve objected to the Inquisition if he’d known about it. But if he’d been worried about it, why didn’t he tell her? Even afterward, when he’d been imprisoned, he’d refused to see her. He could’ve given her warning. Maybe she would’ve gone to Esh instead of Farhold. Then again, maybe he’d tried to tell her, but Corwin never delivered the message.
Go to Fenmore.
“You’re so quiet, Kate,” Corwin said. “Are you all right?”
She slowly nodded. “It’s just I know so little about what happened that night.”
Corwin scratched at the stubble darkening his cheek. He’d started shaving again since they’d left Andreas, but not every day. “You know more than you did before.” At her sharp look, he made an apologetic face. “Yes, I remember you asking me about it. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when I had the chance. You had a right to know sooner.”
“Yes, I did,” Kate said, flustered that he remembered more about that night in the Relay tower than he’d let on. She stood, and in a too-harsh voice she said, “Is there anything else you haven’t told me about that night?”
He leaned away from her, brows drawn over his eyes. “No, you know everything now.”
Not everything. She stared down at him. “How can I believe you when you held back so much?”
Anger flashed in Corwin’s eyes. “How dare you make me feel guilty when it was your father who tried to assassinate mine? Especially when whatever he did left my father a shell of a man.”
“Are you accusing my father of sorcery now?” Glaring, Kate raked a hand across her face to push the hair out of her eyes where the wind had begun whipping it about.
“No, of course not.” Corwin stood, his superior height giving him an unfair advantage in any argument. “But . . . when I confronted Hale after the attack, he told me he was sorry. That if he’d only known what would happen to my father, he never would have done it.”
“Done what? Attack him with a dagger? Like he wouldn’t know what would happen if he did that? It makes no sense, Corwin.”
“I know. I’ve thought the same a hundred times, but it’s what he said, Kate. I was there.”
“And you didn’t ask him for an explanation? For more?” She balled her hands into fists, angrier than ever that she’d been kept from her father.
Corwin rubbed a thumb over his chin. “I did, but he refused to tell me. He refused to tell anyone why he did it. We don’t know if he was an assassin working for some rival to my father, or whether it was a personal grudge, or something else entirely.”
She clenched her teeth. Her father, an assassin? It was absurd. But—“I want to know why he did it,” she said, the words coming out of her in a rush. “That’s the only reason I agreed to come back to Norgard. I need the truth. Can you understand that?”
A strange look passed through Corwin’s eyes, and the anger drained from his face. “Yes. It must’ve been torture not knowing all these years.” He touched her arm and held her gaze, unblinking. “And I promise, Kate, I’ll do whatever I can to help you learn the truth.”
She examined his expression, probing it for any insincerity but finding none. Then she understood, and immediately, her own anger subsided. This was the Corwin she’d known before. This was a peace offering, his way of calling a truce. They hadn’t fought often when they were younger, but when they had, the battles had been epic. Stubbornness was a trait they shared, neither of them willing to admit defeat or wrongdoing, to compromise. For some reason this echo of the past didn’t frighten her like the others. Instead she felt her nerves grow calm for the first time in days. Once upon a time, she had trusted Corwin more than any other person, save her father. She hoped he was someone she could trust again.
With a smile curling one half of her face, she said, “Do you swear with both hands?” This was yet another game they used to play.
With a glint in his eyes, he raised his hands and made a cutting gesture over both palms, following their old ritual with ease. But before offering his palms to her, he stopped and said, “On one condition.”
“What?”
He stooped to pick up the garland. “That you wear this.” He reached toward her and dropped the garland over her brow. His warm fingers brushed the sides of her face, sending a shiver down her neck. He leaned back to examine the effect. “There now. Not foolish at all, but enchanting.”
Finally, he held his palms out to her, waiting for her to complete the ritual.
With her sideways smile, she made the slashing gesture against her own palms, then pressed her hands against his, their fingers entwining automatically. More shivers slid through her, and these had nothing to do with the chill in the wind and the raindrops starting to bead her face.
They lingered that way for a moment, hand to hand, but then a loud crack of lightning echoed around them.
“Time to get back to camp.” Corwin turned and pulled her toward the path. In seconds they were running through the trees while the thunder rolled and the clouds overturned barrels of rain on them. It plastered Kate’s hair to her head, destroying the garland in an instant. Now more than ever she was glad not to be encumbered with a skirt.
Something was wrong at the camp. Kate sensed it even before the sound of the horses’ screams reached her. Drakes? With her hand on the revolver, she burst through the trees into the campsite after Corwin.
The horses were in a panic. Lightning had struck one of the trees nearby, setting it on fire. All the horses were tied to the same picket line, making the situation even more perilous. One horse was already down, thrashing to regain his feet while the ground turned to mud. Two others were tangled in each other’s ropes, legs threatening to break and necks to snap.