“Why are you still in my eyesight?” he demanded. “Go. Get back to the
kitchen where you belong.”
Pierce, his brain dissolving into a nebulous cloud under the furious, hazelnut
stare, found a salient point. “For one,” he heard his tongue say, “you’re
still holding on to me.”
The knight scowled. Pierce felt his fingers open, the weight finally lift. The
knight jerked his head at the nearest doors.
“For another,” Pierce said without moving, “I’ve been told to stay here.”
The knight’s face flamed. He pushed it so closely into Pierce’s that the
wrong word, Pierce felt, could spark and ignite them both. “If you were
anyone at all in this palace, you would know me. I am Sir Kyle Steward, first
cousin of the king and seneschal of this house. Whoever brought you in here
will answer to me. Go. Now.”
Pierce’s knees gave way; he sank back into his chair. In the gathering their
squabble had begun to attract, someone loosed a faint gasp. Someone else
chuckled.
“Sorry,” Pierce gabbled with genuine regret to the fury looming over him. “
I am so much more willing than you could imagine to get as far away from you
as possible. But if I do that, I will never find my way back to this chair
where I was told to stay so that for the first time in my life I can meet my
father. I have come all the way from Cape Mistbegotten and through all the
years of my life to get to this chair.”
All expression flowed out of Sir Kyle’s face; his eyes emptied even of
contempt. He pulled something out of his jacket, said into it, “House guards
to the Hall of Wyverns. South doors. Now.”
“Wait, Sir Kyle,” an unexpected voice said. A woman, half a head taller than
most of the knights, broad-boned and graceful, eased toward them through the
growing crowd. Her hair, shades of honeycomb and gold, was swirled into a
severe knot; her eyes, a lovely, pale violet, seemed recklessly fearless in
the face of the fuming seneschal. She said simply, “Sir Kyle, we are here for
reasons most of us barely understand yet. As Lord Skelton pointed out, we can
’t make assumptions. Nothing on this path the king has asked us to take may
be as it seems. Not even a kitchen knight.”
The seneschal seemed to struggle between various responses as he looked at
her. “Dame Scotia,” he said lamely, “we haven’t started the quest yet.”
“How do you know? We don’t even know what we’re looking at now. He has a
name. You could ask him.”
With reluctance, the seneschal looked away from her to Pierce. His face
tightened again; he said brusquely, “Who are you?”
Pierce pulled together some tatters of dignity under the young woman’s calm
gaze; he stood up before he answered. “My name is Pierce Oliver.”
He heard the whispering begin, ripple through the crowd, which had grown by
then to fill a quarter of the hall and was still growing. His eyes followed
the whispering and found, with vast relief, the wicked grin on his brother’s
face.
Then he saw the broad-shouldered, black-haired man beside his brother, staring
at Pierce with complete astonishment.
He jostled his way through the crowd, his eyes, a warmer blue than Val’s,
never leaving Pierce’s face. He would have walked through the seneschal if
Sir Kyle had not gotten out of his way. In front of Pierce, he finally
stopped.
“I had no idea,” he said. He put his hands on Pierce’s shoulders. “You
look so much like her.”
Pierce was struck mute again, this time with wonder. He took in the strands of
gray in his father’s hair, his deep voice, the expression in his eyes of
tenderness and rue. His own hands rose, fingers closing on his father’s arms;
he felt the muscle like stone. He dwindled, somehow, knee high to the knight,
staring out of a child’s eyes at someone he should have known but never had,
and wishing for a sixth sense that might have shown him all the missing years.
He took a breath finally, sharply. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t— I’m
sorry to surprise you like this. I didn’t know—any other way.”
“Well,” his father said. “There it is. How many other ways are there to
tell a man you are his son?” He paused, while some sort of chaos disturbed
the back of the crowd, and it began to separate around a single moving figure.
“How is your mother?” Leith asked.
“She’s—she’s fine. She’s—at least she was before I left. She—” His
voice stuck again, as he recognized the force approaching. His father glanced
around, finally remembering their transfixed audience, and saw the magus.
“I suppose,” he said reluctantly, “this must wait.”