The Imposter’s Tale
The old Rhyllian woman found him in the water, half a mile from her home, caught in the rushes there. Her cottage was downriver, miles from the bridge, miles away from most things. She’d lived alone for a long, long time and she liked it that way.
The war had made life by the water dangerous, as in Rhannon, most Rhyllians had abandoned their riverside homes during the war, fearing foreign marauders, but no one bothered the old woman in her tiny tumbledown cottage. Fat brown chickens safely pecked at worms in her walled garden, offering eggs up in gratitude for their sanctuary. She grew her own leaves and greens, knew where to harvest berries in the small woods a little further inland. She had the river for her water, and for fish, and in her garden she had goats and fowl.
She’d been on her own for so long she was out of the habit of speaking aloud, and she made no sound when she saw the small figure bobbing in a shallow pond branching off the main river. It was a place she often sat, allowing tiny fish to nibble the calluses on her toes as she gathered the algae that liked to grow there for soup. But today there was a boy there.
She could see he was dead; his eyes were closed, his rosebud mouth open, his body still. A Rhannish child, she realized as she saw his bronze skin and rounded ears. He was dressed in white and green, the fabric torn where the water had tried to steal it away. She stepped into the pond and saw the birthmark on his neck, like a moon. She bent, the bones in her back clicking as she did, her knees creaking. There was a moment where she thought about leaving him there for nature to attend to, but then chided herself. If it were her little one in the water, wouldn’t she want someone to fetch him out?
She closed her hands around his pudgy arms and lifted him, grunting at the weight. He was bigger than he’d looked, heavier too. She hauled him up, pressing him to her shoulder, and waded out of the water. On the bank, she lowered herself to the ground and set the boy beside her.
His eyes were open.
For a moment the two stared at each other, the old woman and the boy. Then he began to cry. And so did she.
“She took me to her cottage,” Mael continued. “She said that I was ill for days, that I lapsed into a deep sleep almost as soon as we got there, and for a while she thought I wouldn’t survive. Despite it, she kept feeding me broth, cleaning me, tending me, and finally, after almost a fortnight, I woke up properly. According to her, I ate some toast, and an egg, and began babbling to her. Of course, she couldn’t understand a word I was saying, and I had no idea what she said either. But we muddled along.”
“Why did she tell no one she’d found you?” Charon asked.
Sorrow looked at him gratefully. She had questions, at least a thousand of them, but they crowded her throat and her mouth, leaving her unable to speak, as though she’d been the one half drowned.
“There was no one to tell. We lived in the middle of nowhere. She had no visitors that I ever saw, until Aphora and her brother, Melakis, came. She never left the little world she’d created for herself. She didn’t need to.”
“But surely she must have realized you had a home, and a family. Did you not tell her who you were?”
“I expect I did. But in Rhannish. Which she didn’t speak. And by the time I’d mastered enough Rhyllian I’d mostly forgotten everything that came before. It was only when Lord Vespus questioned me that I found I remembered some Rhannish, and even that was limited, given how young I was when I fell. Before that, I only knew her, and the chickens, and the moon and the trees and the river. I never questioned it. Not until…” He looked to Aphora. “This is where Aphora comes into it.”
The Rhyllian nodded, topping up her water tumbler before she began to speak.
“My brother and I were out riding,” she began, and Sorrow sat up as something occurred to her.
“Wait, when was this? How old were you then?” she asked Mael.
Both he and Aphora looked to Vespus.
“How long ago?” Sorrow repeated to Vespus.
“Two years,” the Rhyllian lord supplied slowly.
Sorrow and Charon reacted at the same time.
“You’ve been keeping this a secret for two years?”
“You found him two years ago and said nothing?”
Even Rasmus had slammed his tumbler down and was staring open-mouthed at his father.
“If you’ll allow him to explain…” Vespus began.
But Sorrow had realized something else and turned her attention to Lincel. “You sat in my home, under my roof, for two years and you said nothing.” Her voice was cold. “You knew everything that was happening and you said nothing. You spied, and lied—”
“I never lied.”
“Don’t you dare defend yourself to me,” Sorrow spat. “Traitor.”
“Miss Ventaxis, I must ask you to calm yourself,” Vespus said softly.
Sorrow’s skin flamed with both anger and embarrassment at being corrected like a child. Rage gathered in her chest, but before she could release it a warning hand squeezed her knee. Rasmus, staring straight ahead, was gently gripping her leg.
It was enough to bring her back to herself, and she took a deep breath.
She folded her arms, turning to Aphora. “Fine. Continue.”
Aphora’s mouth thinned at the command, but she inclined her head and began to speak once more.
“My horse threw a shoe, so we decided to cut across the land, hoping to reach somewhere before nightfall to attend to the horse. And the first cottage we came to was Beliss’s—”
“My … guardian,” Mael interrupted. “Her name is Beliss.”
Aphora nodded. “We approached, knocked on the door and were surprised to find it answered by a Rhannish youth.” She nodded to Mael. “At first we assumed he was there with a Rhyllian lover –” Sorrow kept her expression carefully blank “– hiding from the authorities. But then Beliss herself came in, and it was obvious that they weren’t what I’d believed. We didn’t know what else to do, so we sent for Lord Vespus. We waited three days, asking the boy the same questions, over and over. ‘Who are you? Why are you here?’ But his answers were always the same; he was Beliss’s child, it was his home. The old woman herself refused to be drawn, until Lord Vespus arrived. But he got her to speak, and finally confirmed what we’d begun to hope. That we’d found the lost Ventaxis heir. Alive, and well.”
There was something odd about the way she was talking. It sounded rehearsed. The pauses, the inflections, even the way she raised her brows as though unable to believe it herself, had the air of performance.
Charon’s flat tone when he replied “How incredible” told Sorrow he felt the same.
“It was the first I knew of it.” Mael leant forward earnestly. “I’d never questioned that I was supposed to be there, or that she was my mother.”