“Drusl.”
“I’m sorry, Girton.” My master’s first words as she entered the room that evening. She had shed her Death’s Jester make-up and motley. Instead she wore a plain leather jerkin and skirts as she strode across our room and opened the box at the end of the bed to remove our packs and drop them on the floor. She sat on the bed. I moved my legs so I was not touching her and she looked like I had driven a blade into her side, but I could not take the action back. “I am sorry,” she said. “I had no other option. We had no option. And …” Her voice tailed away.
“I understand,” I said quietly. Her hand inched across the sweaty blanket towards my own, as if she unconsciously desired my touch. I moved my hand away. “Understanding is not forgiveness, Master.” I looked away from her with tears in my eyes. I could feel what I was doing, feel how I was thrusting my own pain into my master’s heart. It showed as new grey in her hair and new lines etched onto her face—silvered lines in her eyes.
“I understand too,” she said.
“We are leaving?” I nodded at our bags.
“Yes. You do not have to stay with me, but …”
“But?”
“What you were about to do in the stable …”
“You mean destroy the castle?” I said dully. “Bring it all down around their blessed ears?”
“The power within you,” she said, “it was like nothing I have felt before.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“But you would have, Girton. You would have hurt everyone.” Her voice dropped so low I could barely hear her. “And that is not who you are, so I have cut you,” she said, staring at the floor.
“Cut me?”
She nodded, and without looking at me her hand came up, moving aside my jerkin so I could see a shape incised into the flesh above my heart, a knotted tangle of lines and whorls that would not stay still in my mind. As soon as I knew it was there it started to hurt as if it was eating into my flesh.
“It is like the symbols I found in Heamus’s rooms.”
“I am sorry. It was the only way to hold the power at bay.”
I think she expected me to explode with anger. Instead I pulled my shirt across to hide the cuts. “Good,” I said.
She smiled sadly, shaking her head.
“It won’t last, Girton. The magic wants to be used.”
“I know.”
“It will find a way around.”
“I know,” I said. My voice sounded as dead as Drusl. “That’s what she meant when she said there was no escape, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. But it is different for you, Girton. You have learned control, and together we can make sure that you don’t …” Her voice faded again.
“Destroy the land?”
She wouldn’t look at me.
“You would never—”
“I nearly did,” I snapped. “It wants to be used, that’s what you just said. You should kill me. If you don’t then I will. You’ve seen the sourlands, the people starving. We cannot afford another sorcerer. I cannot bear to be responsible for more—”
“No!” She grabbed my shoulders, shaking me. “Never say that! Never think it!”
“I see no other way, Master!” It seemed such an obvious way out. A way to safeguard the land and to end the terrible pain within me. She stared at me and her mouth moved, but no words came out. She bit on her lip as she held my gaze.
“You were right about Neander,” dry words. “He escaped the castle along with a number of young girls, the ‘others’ Drusl spoke of. In his quarters was found a letter from Rufra requesting the death of Aydor.”
Suddenly I felt something apart from my own pain.
“That cannot be,” I said.
“It was.”
“But Rufra would not—”
“It seems he did, and tomorrow they will burn him alive as a traitor. But I must leave, and you intend to die so …” She shrugged and stood.
“Rufra is a good man, far better than any blessed or king we have come across.”
“Good men do not become kings.”
“Then what does become of them?”
“They die, Girton.” She would not meet my eye. “They die, and usually they die so that bad men may remain kings.”
“Rufra should not die just because …” There were no words. I closed my eyes to try and banish the room and the castle and my master but only succeeded in conjuring up images of Rufra on the pyre—my friend screaming in agony on a fool’s throne, the wood seasoned and dried so it burned cleanly and the smoke did not suffocate him, his clothes daubed with oil so they caught the flame. He would die hard, and I could feel the currents of magic roiling and turning far below me, distant but full of possibility. I felt like a thirsty man on a mountain, reaching for the line of the sea on the horizon in an effort to wet his hand.
A letter.
I opened my eyes.
“Master, did you see the letter?”
“Only for a moment.”
“‘I, Rufra ap Vthyr, request the heir, Aydor ap Mennix, be removed,’” I said. My master stared hard at me.
“You knew about this, Girton?”
“No.”
“But that is what the letter said.”
“Daana ap Dhyrrin,” I said. “Dark Ungar curse him, he saw an opportunity and he took it.” I tried to rise from the bed but my master stopped me by placing her hand on my chest.
“Explain yourself. What does Daana ap Dhyrrin have to do with this? What have you been hiding from me?”
“Nothing,” I said. Rage started to build within me. Rage at the people in the castle and the way they twisted the lives of others to suit themselves, rage with my master for getting us mixed up in this and rage with myself for not seeing the danger sooner. “When I broke into his room there was a pile of vellum on his desk. I thought it was nothing, only requests from the squires to have Aydor removed from the squireyard. Rufra’s was on top. Daana had been scraping it—I thought to clean the vellum for reuse—but it wasn’t. It was to make it look like he wanted the heir dead.”
“Why would he want to make it look like Rufra was responsible?”
“Because Rufra is next in line to the throne.”
“Rufra?” She looked surprised, and I realised I had not had the opportunity to tell her of Rufra’s lineage.
“Rufra and Tomas share a father in Dolan ap Dhyrrin, Daana’s grandson. When Tomas was born, Dolan ap Dhyrrin was already married to Rufra’s mother, Acearis Vthyr.”
My master stared at me as if I had torn back a curtain mid-act to reveal how a trick was done.
“So Tomas is a bastard who cannot inherit? Well, now we know what Adran holds over Daana,” said my master to herself, “but what does he hold over her?”
“Rufra must be innocent, Master, he must be.”
She stood, paced. “You may be right. There is something far darker than simple murder and politics here, Girton. This business with Heamus, Neander and Drusl? Magic? It feels like the tip of a blade pointed at the heart of the Tired Lands. We have missed something. How did Neander know to leave? How did Daana ap Dhyrrin know when to place the letter in his room? It must have been done between Neander leaving and his quarters being searched. Hardly any time.”