Daimon felt the burn again in his face and guessed that perhaps his life
was not so comfortably ignored as he had thought. “I don’t know enough,” he
said finally, “even to answer the question.”
His father nodded. “That’s a good place to begin learning. I didn’t realize
how much I didn’t know until I met your mother. And you are right: She was
very independent. She wouldn’t let me give her anything. Morrig helped her
find work; she took an apartment in the hinterlands of the city, which is why
you were born out there.” He broke a piece off a bread roll, crumbled it
absently. “All we had was that one night together, after the party. Not even
a night, just the few early-morning hours. She wouldn’t see me again. I had
no idea where she went after she left Morrig’s house; my aunt wouldn’t tell
me. But they kept in touch with one another. It was Morrig who told me when
and where you were born. And that your mother had died.” He paused; his mouth
tightened, more rueful than bitter. “It was Genevra who taught me a few more
things about love, then. How far it can bend, and in how many ways, without
shattering. I knew your mother so briefly. But to this day, I have never
forgotten her. And I have never understood exactly what had hold of my heart
that night.” He picked up his fork again, missing Daimon’s sudden, wide-eyed
stare as the king’s words echoed in his own heart. “You look like her. That
’s all I can tell you. I’m sorry. I don’t know how much you’ve wondered
about the matter, but if you need more, you might ask your great-aunt Morrig.
These days, she seems to remember the distant past much better than she
remembers last week. Another thing,” his father said, moving on with a touch
of relief, “I might as well bring up while you’re here. There is a matter
that Sylvester Skelton brought to Lord Ruxley’s attention; he brought it to
mine.”
Daimon, struggling with his father’s startling revelations, responded to the
simplest of them. “They can’t stand each other. Why would Sylvester take
anything to Lord Ruxley before he brought it to you?”
“It is a matter for the Mystes Ruxley, not the lord. Some ancient artifact of
the god Severen’s—a cup, a pot—came to light in a manuscript Lord Skelton
has been translating.” The king paused a moment, studying his bread plate as
if the crumbs on it might shift into language and illuminate a mystery. “I
don’t entirely understand the significance. Which isn’t surprising,
considering the maze of Sylvester’s mind. The part I do understand is that he
says the object is ancient, valuable, and powerful beyond belief.”
Daimon pursed his lips to whistle, refrained. “What on earth is it?”
“Sylvester seems to think it important enough to call an assembly of the
knights of Wyvernhold. He and Mystes Ruxley will explain it.” He paused,
chewing over the matter with a bite. Daimon recognized the more familiar
expression in his eyes, now: the gleam of the wyvern, roused. “I have no idea
what this object is, but I think what Sylvester has in mind is along the lines
of an old-fashioned quest. It sounds to me like the perfect diversion.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“You must have heard the rumblings of discontent from knights born in more
isolated parts of Wyvernhold—in the eastern mountains, along the north coast
—about regaining the sovereignty that was lost when the first King Arden
Wyvernbourne’s army pulled all the little, bickering kingdoms together under
his rule and created Wyvernhold.”
“Something of it. Surely nobody’s serious.”
“The notion seems to spread more often in peaceful times, when there’s
little else to complain about. That somehow the romance and glory of those
realms would return along with their reclaimed boundaries and their names. It
’s a foolish, dangerous idea. Something as common as water rights could
tangle the courts for years, not to mention the temptation for each small
kingdom to build up its own standing army, just in case. If the magus and the
mystes can sell this idea of an artifact that powerful and valuable free for
the finding and the taking, it will scatter the knights across Wyvernhold and
give them all something else to think about besides reclaiming long-lost
kingdoms. I have no intention of becoming Arden the Last, who let Wyvernhold
scatter into thousand-year-old fragments.”
Daimon, trying to imagine such a marvel, found a flaw in his father’s
thinking. “What if it’s real?”
He felt the weight of the wyvern’s regard again, golden and unblinking.
“Then one of my children had better find it for me.”