“But you don’t look Rhyllian,” Sorrow said. “Not at all.”
“I didn’t know what Rhyllian or Rhannish was.” His eyes lifted to hers. “I knew me, and I knew Beliss. That the only two people in my world didn’t look alike meant nothing to me. I looked nothing like the goats or the chickens either. For all I knew, everyone in the world was a different colour, and a different shape.”
“You must have been surprised,” Charon said. “When they told you.”
He shrugged. “Of course. Of course I was. You see, I liked my life. I liked – loved – Beliss. She’d been everything to me, taught me everything I knew. It was my home. I didn’t want to be someone else and I didn’t want to leave.”
“So you were taken to the capital?” Sorrow didn’t care what Mael had or hadn’t wanted; all she wanted was to hear the rest of the story. She let her impatience seep into her voice. “And then?”
He sat back, slumping in the chair. “Yes. And I could still remember nothing, none of my past, nothing of Rhannon at all. They…” He looked at Vespus, who nodded. “Her Majesty, Queen Melisia, and her council weren’t as convinced as Lord Vespus.”
“My sister suspected he was an imposter,” Vespus added. “She worried he was plotting to make trouble between our countries. She had him arrested and imprisoned. They brought Beliss to the castle too and accused her of the same.”
“So what changed my aunt’s mind?” Rasmus asked. Vespus’s expression darkened briefly, but he said nothing.
It was Mael who answered. “Besides the birthmark, Beliss had kept the outfit she’d found me in. After all those years, she still had it, tattered as it was. It was brought to the castle and examined and the tailor’s label was found. Queen Melisia remembered what I’d been wearing. The embroidery on the collar, specifically. It was Rhyllian made, you see. By her own tailor, as a gift. Completely unique.”
Silence fell over the table. Vespus gestured for the server to return, murmuring to him to replace the coffee.
“Where is it?” Charon asked. “The outfit? I don’t suppose you still have it.”
It was obvious he expected them to say it was lost, or destroyed during some kind of examination, and Sorrow privately agreed, so she was surprised when Aphora reached into a concealed pocket in her flowing gown and pulled out a small parcel wrapped in gossamer-thin paper. She lay the package reverently on the table and delicately peeled the paper away, revealing a set of shorts, and matching tunic, in green and white, fit for a child. There was embroidery on the collar of the tunic, as Mael had said. Moonflowers.
Sorrow reached for the garments and Vespus moved, snatching them away.
“They’re fragile,” Vespus said coolly when Sorrow glared at him. “As you can imagine, the fall and the water took their toll. We’ve been protecting them carefully until we could hand them to the chancellor.” From inside his robe Vespus drew a long glass stick, and used it to push a scrap of the white cloth back, revealing a label. “But you see here, the royal tailor Corius’s label. You were there, Lord Day, were you not? You remember it.”
Sorrow looked at Charon, whose face was stony as he gave a curt nod.
“Did the Rhannish ambassador know that you believed you’d found the lost child?” Sorrow asked.
“No,” Vespus said firmly. “Ambassador Mira knew nothing. There was a very small inner circle who were aware of it until this morning, on Melisia’s orders. She did not want Mira to be compromised. Mira was notified this morning, along with those who accompanied us to the bridge shortly before we began the journey.”
“Why wasn’t she there?” Sorrow asked. Mira had always attended the ceremony before, remaining on the Rhyllian side.
“She was asked not to attend.”
Charon’s tone was icy as he said, “You detained the Rhannish ambassador so she could not attend the memorial?”
“Let’s not get into that now.” Sorrow’s eyes pleaded with Charon’s and he grudgingly nodded. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell us as soon as you were sure,” she said to Vespus.
“Many reasons,” Vespus said. “In the first, the practicality of it. What were we to say – we’ve found a boy who barely understands a word of Rhannish, who’s never had a haircut or worn a pair of shoes in his life, but we believe he’s the chancellor’s lost son, can you prepare a suite of rooms? He couldn’t read, had had no formal education, no experience of people; simply being in a room with Beliss, Aphora and I was enough to make him shake when we first found him. Then there was the situation with your father… Was it wise to expose Mael to your father, given his … ah, difficulties?”
Sorrow didn’t like the pause he’d left there. Didn’t like the way it was exactly the right size to imply he knew precisely what those difficulties were.
“You didn’t have to contact my father. You could have contacted my grandmother, while she lived. Or Lord Day. Or even me.”
“I didn’t want it.” Mael spoke up suddenly, drawing their attention back to him. “When they told me who I was, I decided I didn’t want to be Mael of Rhannon.”
Sorrow took a breath. “Then who did you want to be? What was your name? To the woman, Beliss. She must have called you something.”
“Ir bishi. She called me Ir bishi.”
“It means ‘he who was discovered’. Basically, ‘foundling boy’,” Rasmus said, his voice icy. “It’s not a name.”
“I didn’t know that,” Mael snapped, his eyes clouding. “It was a name to me, until they told me otherwise.”
Rasmus made no reply.
“I know how you feel –” Mael focused on Sorrow once more “– because it’s how I felt two years ago. My whole world turned upside down; everything I believed I knew to be real was gone. I was angry and I didn’t want it to be true either.”
She stared back at him. “What’s different now?” she asked softly. For a moment it felt as though the others in the room had vanished, not a breath or a murmur from any of them. Sorrow waited, her heart pounding fiercely without her knowing why, for his answer.
“I want to know where I come from. Who I am.” Mael laid his hands on the table, palms up, the universal gesture of openness, and leant towards her. “I want to know my history and my family, if they’ll allow it. If you’ll allow it. I want to know the truth of who I am.”
Without meaning to, Sorrow found herself leaning towards him too, nodding. With a start she realized she recognized him. Though she’d been born after her brother died, Sorrow was consumed by an unmistakable sense of knowing as Mael’s eyes locked on to hers. He was familiar. She forgot where she was, forgot everyone else there, save for Mael.
“I want to come home,” he said.
The Chessboard
Rasmus coughed loudly, and at the same time Charon rolled his chair away from the table and said, “I think we’ve heard enough for now.”
It was enough to shake Sorrow from the reverie she’d fallen into at Mael’s words. She blinked and sat back in her chair, her thoughts thick and syrupy.