“You grow hot too quickly, Drusis,” said the duke. As his brother had grown darker, Saluceris had grown paler, so that they seemed opposites rather than the product of a single womb. “Stand back and see our land overrun? I have said nothing of the sort—those words are all yours.” He took a breath, and even Jesa could see the duke was fighting for control. When he lifted a hand up to stroke his beard, his fingers were trembling. “No, we will discuss the problem and deal with it as we always have, in council with our fellow nobles in the Dominiate. Now, you have had a long ride, I doubt not, and little in the way of rest or refreshment—the dust of the road is still on you.” Saluceris clapped his hands and within a moment two servants had stepped through the door. “Take my brother to his accustomed chamber and see that he has everything he needs,” the duke told them. “We will speak again later, Drusis.”
Jesa saw that the earl’s face was still red with anger, but thought she saw something else too, a gleam in Drusis’ eye like a hunter whose prey had finally broken cover. “Very well. But I will not hide my feelings in front of Ingadaris, Albias, Claves and the rest. If you will not help me to stamp out these grassland vermin, brother, I will do it myself!”
With that, he turned and strode out of the chamber, the two male servants scurrying to keep up with him.
Little Serasina was crying again, and this time the duchess came and took her from Jesa, pressing her daughter close against her and giving her a finger to suck until the baby’s hitching sobs had quieted. “Fetch the wet-nurse,” she told Jesa. “Too much shouting. The child will need feeding before she’ll sleep again.”
As Jesa was on her way out, she heard her mistress tell the duke, “I would forgive your brother much if I thought he was truly angry.”
“What?” The duke sounded confused. “What are you saying, Canthia?”
“That I think it is an imposture. That he wears that angry face and those stormy sentiments like a mask.”
“You do not understand Drusis, wife. He has always been strong-headed since he was a child, hot as fire. He has always leaped first and looked afterward.”
“Oh, I think he looks exactly where he is going to leap,” Canthia said, and it was surprising for Jesa to hear the harsh undercurrent in the duchess’ sweet voice. “I think he looks very carefully.”
The door fell closed behind her and Jesa did not hear any more.
29
Brown Bones and Black Statues
“What difference should it make that I didn’t come to the Inner Council meeting?” Morgan demanded. He and his grandfather were alone in the throne room, or as alone as a king and prince could be in chamber where so many Erkynguards stood at silent attention. “You’ve never cared about that before.”
Simon let out a weary sigh and waited to compose himself before replying. “That’s not true, Morgan. We haven’t argued with you every time you have chosen to ignore us about councils or many other things, but that doesn’t mean your grandmother and I don’t care.” He was angry, of course, but as always, he found it hard to look at the prince without seeing his lost son. The same heavy, scowling brows, the same handsome features—at least, when they were not twisted in a childlike pout, as they were now. Morgan was not as tall and thin as his father had grown to be, but he had John Josua’s sharp features; Simon sometimes felt as if he were chastising poor, dead Johnno when he scolded his grandson. “But things are different, now, Morgan. It is time for you to step up, to take some responsibility, not disappear with your friends into the stews of Erchester when all the rest of us are worrying about going to war.”
“Responsibility, oh, of course,” said the prince bitterly. “I’m supposed to act like a man because I am the heir—yes, yes, I know. But you refused to let me fight when we were attacked by the Norns.”
At least this was a complaint Simon could understand. “That was not by my choice. The queen was worried for you. We did not know the strength of the enemy—”
“No one else was kept away from the fighting! Even Grandmother was out among the soldiers. The queen!”
Simon had to fight back another frustrated sigh. He wished Miriamele had been able to talk to him that night before making her decision. It was one thing to protect the prince, another to do it in such a way that the lad felt unmanned and humiliated.
“What’s done is done,” he said at last. “But what will come is still up to you, lad.”
Morgan stared at him, and for a moment Simon thought he saw a fearful hint of Miri’s mad father in the boy’s bright, furious stare. “Let me do something,” the prince pleaded. “I can wield a sword perfectly well. Astrian taught me—”
“Astrian has taught you tricks,” said Simon. “I have seen it. Yes, the Nabban-man is an able fighter, but he has shown you clever stratagems for knife-fights, for tavern brawls. Fighting in a real battle—in full armor, in hot sun—it is the strongest man who has the best chance to survive. A battle is not a tournament. You will not be able to rest between bouts and measure each opponent.” His voice got louder as he warmed to the subject. “No! Arrows will be flying at you! Enemies will attack you from behind even as you fight with someone else.”
“I am strong,” Morgan said. “How could you know? You don’t care, you don’t ask. The only time you talk to me is to tell me what a fool I am—how I always embarrass the High Throne.”
Simon knew he had lost control of his feelings, but at the moment he could only see his grandson following his son into early death, no matter how different their paths. “God’s Bloody Tree, boy,” he cried, “do you not hear me? A warrior who prepares for battle in a tavern will likely not live long enough to see that tavern again. Is that why you do not pay the folk who sell you and your friends all that ale? Do you plan a martyr’s death to clear your bills? Then you are not just a fool, but a heartless fool, because you will cause grief to all you leave behind. Have your grandmother and I not suffered enough?”
Morgan opened his mouth, and for a moment Simon thought that the prince might say something that neither of them could ignore nor forget, and he knew it would be in large part his own fault. To the relief of the king’s more reasonable self, which was still fighting against his fury for mastery of his feelings, his grandson said nothing, only turned and walked out without asking permission or bowing. Simon watched him go, biting back the angry words he knew would only make things worse.
“Well,” he said to the air, to the chair of bones and the ancient banners hanging from the ceiling, “what other cheerful things will this day bring me?”
“At least one, I am hoping,” said a voice from the doorway.
Simon looked up to see Binabik. These days the troll dressed not for the cold of his homeland, but in soft linens. Simon thought it made him look a little like one of Tiamak’s folk. “Has the noon hour struck already, then?”
“It still lacks a quarter-hour or such, is my thought,” Binabik said. “But I wished to be speaking to you first, just us two, because I know the queen does not like the matter. I was waiting for you to be finishing to speak with your grandson, then I saw him go by with a face like a Mintahoq blizzard, so it seemed the conversation was ending.”
“It never ends. It’s always the same.”
“Ah, the stubbornness of the young. Nearly as difficult it is being as the stubbornness of the old.”
Simon raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by that?”
Binabik might have smiled, but it was hard to know because it was gone in an instant. “It is having no importance, my old friend. An old Qanuc saying, only. No, I came now because of wishing to ask you something. Are you still having no dreams?”
Simon decided he did not mind a change of subject. “None at all, and I cannot tell you how strange that feels. Not even of my poor, dead harper, though I see his face when I am awake all the time. What do you think has happened to me?”
“I have no way of saying, Simon-friend. It could be nothing—since, as Miriamele was suggesting, for many people it is always being that way. But to me it has the feeling of a different thing. Still, I can be offering no wisdom, and neither Tiamak nor his lady wife have any knowing of it either, though we have searched most strenuously in their books when they were not tending the Sitha.”
“Ah, yes.” The king sighed. Another missed opportunity. “Does she show any sign of getting better?”
The troll shook his head. “No—she grows slowly worse, if I am any of a judge. But sometimes she is speaking in her fever. Her name is Tanahaya, it seems. Have you heard such a name before, perhaps during your living in Jao é-Tinukai’i? It might shine some light on why the Sithi were sending her to you.”
“No. But I met so many Sithi there, and very few told me their names. Most of them didn’t think much of mortals.”
Binabik looked up at the Dragonbone Chair on the da?s behind Simon, squatting above the king’s and queen’s more modest thrones like a gargoyle perched on a cathedral wall. “I see King John’s seat of bones is still being here. What of all the times you told me of your wish for hiding it away?”
“Miri won’t let me. But I hate it. Every time I look at it, I think of the lying stories about Prester John all over again. I wish I’d never found out.”
“About who really was killing the dragon? Would you have been preferring to keep your ignorance than to know your ancestor’s great deed and of King John taking the credit?”