Son of Avonar Page 5

  I thought I might understand the boy’s anxiety. The villagers were well aware of my origins. “You needn’t fret, Paulo. I’ve not owned anything so fine for a number of years.” Ten, to be precise. “Here, let me see if I can recognize the markings.”

  The boy allowed me to move in a little closer, but kept his thin hand firmly on the knife. A beautiful weapon. Wickedly sharp. I examined the engraving, and the day lurched off in a new direction. “Where did you find it, Paulo? Where exactly?”

  Jacopo peeked over the boy’s head and waggled his eyebrows at me in question.

  “On the ridge up to the head of Poacher’s Creek.” Paulo glanced suspiciously from Jaco to me. “It’s a fine thing. If you can’t pay, I might try Sheriff. He needs a good one.” The boy was studiously diffident. “Or someone as comes downriver might want it. No hurry.”

  I still had Jacopo’s eye and shook my head ever so slightly.

  Jacopo turned the dagger over in his hands. “Well, I suppose you could take it to Graeme and he might buy it, but then he might well take it without paying, as maybe it was evidence or something lost as someone will want. All I could give for it would be a silver penny.”

  “Three!” Glorious avarice burst through the boy’s hang-dog manner.

  “Two, and not a copper more.”

  Paulo’s eyes gleamed. “Done!” In moments the boy was trotting down the road, carrying more money than he could ever have thought to see in his life.

  “Now what is it you find so almighty fascinating about this little bit of wickedness, young lady? It’s cost me dear.”

  I pointed to the engraved device on its hilt. “This is the mark Aeren was trying to draw in the dirt.” His version had been crude, but it was unmistakable: a rectangular shield with two rampant lions supporting a curved arch. Not arrows or crosses, but two starbursts sat atop the arch and a third underneath it. I didn’t mention the nagging familiarity that still refused to resolve itself. “The knife might help us trace him, or perhaps there’s another clue at the spring.”

  “Hmm. Or it might belong to the other odd fellow what’s been hanging about. . . .”

  “Another one? Tell me!”

  Jacopo rolled the dagger in a cleaner rag. “Found Graeme havin’ a pint at the Heron. He was low about Barti Gesso’s thievin’ Mistress Jennai’s flour. Barti did it no question, but he’s got seven little ones to feed and his hold’s got the blight. Mistress Jennai wants half the flesh off Barti’s back, and Graeme’s got to do it, so—”

  “Spare me the sheriff’s moral dilemmas, Jaco. With two floggings and an eviction within three days, I don’t think I can muster any sympathy for him.”

  Sheriffs were constable, judge, and hangman in most Leiran towns and villages. They were charged to enforce the king’s law, to support the king’s whims, and to prevent interference with the conscript gangs, tax collectors, and quartermasters who ensured the unending supplies of lives, money, food, and horses for the king’s wars. But such duties had been acquired only in the past century. The badge sewn on a sheriff’s coat was scarlet, fashioned in the shape of a flaming sword, for the office had been created to enforce the extermination laws—to root out sorcerers in every corner of the realm and burn them.

  “You’re still hard on Graeme, Seri. He’s a fair man and does his job well. I’ve known him since he was a boy.”

  “I won’t argue it again. So what else did he say?”

  “He talked of the king’s men come riding through yesterday looking for the missing servant. They told him no more’n they told you. But then he said another fellow come through here a few days ago, an odd one, dressed as a nob from Kerotea, but his look was not such as would fit his clothes. Said the man was telling how his groom run off with a prize horse, and he was offering a reward for either the groom or the beast.”

  “Aeren is no—”

  “Now just haul in your jib. Graeme believes the man wasn’t looking for no horse, neither. The fellow couldn’t even describe the horse other than it was big and white. Right odd, Graeme said. For certain, he was no king’s man. This Kerotean is staying down to Grenatte, and he wants Graeme to let him know right off if there’s any word of the horse or the groom, but not tell anyone else that might be asking. Says the groom is tall, light-haired, about twenty and some years, fair in the face, but with a testy temper. The boy’s not quite right in the head, he says. Might be talkin’ wild.”

  “He’s lying. If I’d not seen Aeren’s hands or feet, perhaps, or noted his manner. Or if I’d not learned how intelligent he is, I might have believed it. But he’s no groom, and he’s not incompetent.” No groom practiced the kind of martial exercises Aeren had been doing that morning. The more I thought of the whole matter, the odder it was.

  “It’s a mystery, for sure. Graeme says he plans to look into it. And after hearing all this and knowing this little trinket is involved”—Jaco tapped the bundle on his hand—“I don’t know but what we’d best get you out of it as quick as we may.”

  “I’m not getting involved in anyone’s problems. I’m going to give Aeren the clothes and send him off to Montevial. Could I take the dagger back with me?” Seeing Aeren’s reaction to it might be interesting.

  “Surely. But I think I’ll come along with it and get a look at your new friend myself.”

  I hefted the bundle of clothes, Tim Fetterling’s gray cloak, and my bag of eggs and butter, while Jacopo found an unused knife sheath, bundled it with the knife, and grabbed his walking stick. We strolled in quiet companionship past the clay statues of the Twins, glaring from their unkempt shrine, across the fields, and up the trail into the woods. The shadows were already lengthening.

  My breath stopped when I glimpsed the still form sprawled on the grass under the eaves of the forest. Stars of night, was he dead? I sped across the meadow and dropped to my knees beside the body, but I had scarcely noted that Aeren was only sleeping when I found myself face down with my arms pinned painfully behind my back, my nose in the dirt, and not a breath left in my lungs.

  “A blight on your thick head,” I said, gasping. “It’s only me and a friend.”

  At my first word, Aeren released me. By the time I had dragged myself to my knees and reassured myself that neither arms nor neck were broken, he stood ten paces away from me, taut, wary, and watching Jacopo limp across the meadow.

  “Demons! The rascal didn’t hurt you?” said Jacopo, no longer leaning on the sturdy length of hickory, but gripping one end of it fiercely.

  I crept across the grass and leaned my back against a tree, rubbing my shoulder and neck and brushing the leaves and dirt from my skirt. “Easy, Jaco. I’m fine. Just a second layer of bruises.”

  “He’s been trained to fight,” said Jacopo, glowering at the young man. “No doubt of that. Quick and smooth. Strong, too, I’ll be bound. What’s he done to you, little girl?” Jacopo bent over to take a look at my neck.

  “Ouch!” The old sailor was a ham-handed nursemaid.

  Before Jacopo could apologize, Aeren grabbed his collar and shoved the old man away so forcefully that Jaco crashed into the dead lower branches of a pine tree. When the young man dropped to his knees beside me and reached for my neck, I flinched. To my surprise, his fingers brushed my skin quite gently. His brow was creased, as if he couldn’t understand how the marks had come about.

  “I’ll live,” I said, trying to calm the situation before he got more agitated. “We startled you.”

  His frown deepened, and he moved in closer, his bulk pressing me against the tree as he tugged at the tie that would loosen the gathered neck of my shift.

  “Get away from me.” With an ungentle hand to his chest, I managed to squirm out from between him and the tree. But he removed my hand and moved closer again, yanking the cloth down to bare my throat. With a stiff forearm I knocked his hand aside, while with the other hand, I reached through my pocket, drew my knife, and pointed it at his belly. I knew where to hurt a man, and I knew how to talk to a brute
, whether he spoke the same language or not. “Get. Away. From. Me.”

  Face a deep scarlet, he let go of my clothes. Then, baring his teeth, he grabbed my forearm and twisted it until the knife dropped to the ground. For a moment I thought he might break my wrist or snatch up the weapon and turn it on me. But instead, he pushed me to the ground, stood up, and walked away.

  Jacopo gave me a hand up, stood close by my shoulder, and raised his stick to Aeren’s back. “May the good god Jerrat drown you, you filthy devil—”

  “Wait, Jaco.” No point in letting things get out of hand. I retrieved my dagger and sheathed it. “Aeren”—I repeated his name several times and waited until he turned around again to lay my hand on Jacopo’s shoulder—“this is my friend Jacopo from Dunfarrie. Jaco, this is . . . Lord Aeren of somewhere.” Jaco was busy mopping his forehead with a kerchief, and his grudging bow was less than gentlemanly.

  Aeren ignored both Jacopo and my introduction. With a sour expression, he gestured to his stomach and his mouth and pointed to the cottage.

  “I’ve better things to do, you wretched beast. Time to fend for yourself a bit.” I rummaged amid the eggs and butter in my pack and pulled out a well-bruised wild plum, left from my morning on Poacher’s Ridge. I threw the plum at Aeren. Hard.

  He caught it in one hand, deftly enough to prevent the soft fruit from splattering on him. As he bit into it, one corner of his mouth twitched. Smug little bastard.

  I tossed the clothes bundle at his feet. Once he had finished the plum and flipped the stem into the trees, he squatted down beside the pile and, one by one, lifted the items by the tip of one finger. He examined each carefully, then gave me such a look of scornful disbelief that, despite all my annoyance, I could do nothing but burst out laughing. It seemed like a century since I had laughed, and finding myself doing so at an unpleasant brute of a man who had come near throttling me twice within a week was strange indeed. Aeren flushed, snatched the bundle of clothes, and disappeared into the trees.

  “If ever I’ve seen a spoiled lordling, it has to be this one,” I said, wiping my eyes with my sleeve. “Did you see his nose turn up? I’ve nursed him until I’m exhausted and full of splinters from sleeping on the floor, I’ve fed him half my food stocks, so that I’ll be doing well to have a meal next week, and here he sits in Anne’s old sheet and disdains something a hundred times better. I just don’t think he’s some common riverman, wrecked on the Snags.”

  “Mmm. No half-wit groom, neither.” Jacopo fingered his own knife and did not laugh with me. “He’s a killer, Seri. I’ve seen no man with such moves who wasn’t, whether lowborn or high. I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

  I clasped my hands about my knees and leaned back against the tree. “On that we are in complete agreement.”

  A short time later Aeren emerged from the woods dressed in Jacopo’s gifts. He picked at the rough cloth uncomfortably, like a small boy dressed in his first stiff-collared suit.

  “I sympathize,” I said. “I can’t say I prefer kersey or russet to silk.”

  “Do you think he understands what you say?” said Jacopo, as Aeren snatched my pack and rummaged through it, dropping it with an annoyed grunt when he found nothing of interest. Raking me with a glare, the young man strode across the field toward the cottage.

  “Most likely not, but I’m less likely to take an ax to him if I say what I think.” If he had broken my eggs, I was going to kill him.

  “He looks older than you said.”

  Aeren soon returned, tearing at a hunk of the chewy hearthbread as a hunting dog tears at a doe. He did look more like mid- to late twenties than early. I had always considered myself a keen observer of such things. Perhaps it was his illness had changed him or the afternoon sunlight, revealing what forest shadows, soft mornings, and lamplight had hidden.

  “Show him the dagger, Jaco.”

  “I’m thinking that might not be clever.”

  “As you said, a knife is no more dangerous than his hands. If he’s of a mind to make away with us, then he needs no knife to do it. But somehow . . .” Twice in the past hour I’d seen his rage surge. Twice I had seen it quelled. Perhaps I was getting cocky.

  Jacopo tossed the bundle on the ground in between us and nudged the coverings open with his stick. Aeren picked up the weapon and ran his fingers slowly over its shining length, examining it curiously, especially the device on the hilt. His expression exhibited no sign of recognition. The knife’s heft and balance were pleasing to him, though, and he snatched up the sheath and fastened it to his cloth belt. I didn’t particularly like the idea, but wasn’t going to argue. I wasn’t afraid of him. I hadn’t been afraid for ten years. What could anyone do to hurt me?

  “Come on,” I said, scrambling to my feet, “let’s take a look at where Paulo found the knife. Maybe Aeren got in a fight there . . . got whacked on the head or something. Whatever happened, seeing the place might force him to remember where he came from or where he was going. I want him gone by nightfall.”

  The angle of the sun was steep as the three of us set out on the trail to the spring. Through the trees we glimpsed the grassy hillsides brushed with gold. I showed Jaco where I’d first encountered Aeren, and where the hunters had ridden through, and I tried to get Aeren to show us which way he had come down the hill. He was unsure, but as we wandered up higher, beyond the boundary of the trees, his steps slowed. His eyes darted about, the lines of his face drawn tight, his fists clenching and unclenching.

  “A little farther,” I said, pointing up the hill.

  A cool, rock-lined grotto taller than a man split the side of the hill near the ridgetop. At the base of the smooth boulders was the spring. The clear, blue-green pool spilled over moss-covered stones into the stream that carved its way down the sunny hillside into the dark line of the trees.

  Jacopo and I searched the soft ground for tracks or any sign that something unusual had gone on in the place. The only thing I found was a rusty ladle thrown into the pool, probably the offering of some drought-blighted farmer hoping to appease a local water spirit. Despite the priests’ best efforts to stamp out all remnants of any gods but Annadis and Jerrat, a few stubborn, desperate people persisted in their desperate superstitions.

  After a fruitless half-hour, I flopped down on a rock in the shade, discouraged. “There’s nothing here.” Why did I care? Perhaps he was exactly the thief Darzid claimed.

  Jacopo sagged onto the rock beside me, mopping his brow. “It would help if I knew what we were looking for.”

  “Enough is enough, Jaco. We’ll give him some food, point him toward Montevial, and let him take his chances. He’s certainly not defenseless, and if he sells the knife, he can keep himself far better than you or me.”

  Aeren wandered about the hillside restlessly, frustration shadowing his handsome features. He had drawn the silver dagger, and every few steps he would stop and glare at it, until at last, with an explosive croak that was the only expletive he could manage, he threw it at the boulder that sheltered the pool. His face did not change expression when the dagger embedded itself to the hilt in the smooth and unbroken rock face, heeding its impenetrable solidity no more than if it had been a loaf of bread.

  “Demons of the deep!” Jacopo jerked backward as if struck in the head.

  I thought my heart had stopped. Every nerve in my body quivered with the charge that lingered in the air. Enchantment . . . It was like the fleeting embrace of lightning, or the kiss of fire’s breath on frozen flesh, or a moment’s memory of passion that stands every hair on its end, flushing the skin with exotic sensation. Ten years since I’d felt the like—almost fifteen since the first time, the day I discovered that the man I loved was a sorcerer.

  CHAPTER 5

  Evard. To consider how infatuated I had been with him still revolted me. Oh, he was handsome enough: tall, with shoulders as sturdy as a fortress tower, fair hair that drooped over one of his gray eyes as if in invitation to share a wicked jest, graceful
hands that were always warm and never unsure. What Leiran girl of sixteen would not have been swept off her feet by such a dashing young duke, conqueror of an enemy’s city at twenty?

  My brother Tomas was already a swordsman of wide reputation, and he had attracted Evard’s notice while serving in his regiment during the subjugation of Valleor. It was on the brilliant summer day of Evard’s triumphant return to Montevial, as I stood with my father on our townhouse balcony watching the victorious legions ride by, that I first fell under Evard’s shadow. Life shifted when he looked at me. The first change in a year of changes . . .

  Year 26 in the reign of King Gevron

  “Look, Papa, there’s Tomas, at the front of the troop! Next to the dark-haired adjutant just behind Duke Evard. Doesn’t he look fine?”

  My father squinted into the noonday, holding up one hand against the glare from the whitewashed houses and their new glass windows across the wide street. He rarely came out of his library anymore. He’d not been the same man since my mother had died of fever when I was nine. I hoped that seeing the proud legions, hearing the drums of their marching, and feeling the glory of Tomas so favored would inspire him to his horse and arms again. He was not too old to ride in service to Leire, not yet forty, and his forearms still bulged with muscle. But only my firm hold on his arm kept him from retreating into the dim room behind the balcony door. “Quite fine. Now let me loose, girl. Both flask and cup are empty.” Even at noonday, he reeked of his wine.

  Still holding my father’s arm, I tossed the yellow and purple garlands the servants had brought from the market that morning. I came near letting loose a most unmaidenly yell at Tomas, afraid his manly bearing might prevent his looking up at us as the Third Legion of Leire rode through the cheering crowds of servants, boys, and shopkeepers, and the maidens of marriageable age being thrust into the warriors’ path. But just as the purple-robed priests carried the guide-staffs topped with the Swordsman’s rising sun and the Navigator’s crescent moon past the stoop before our own, Tomas leaned forward, laid his hand on his commander’s sleeve, and pointed up at our balcony.