Pleasure and Purpose

by Megan Hart

  Nothing so bold as a signpost marked her leaving one province and entering another, but nevertheless Honesty drew in a deep, slow breath of the sea-scented air and slowed her horse. Ahead of her she could see the mountains overlooking the Belloran Sea. Her father's house was a hard two hours' ride in that direction, and though they'd been riding for the past two weeks, Honesty didn't at once set her heels to the horse's side. She reined it short and stared down the road, neatly lined though unpaved this far out into the country. At this time of year her parents would be in their country manor, not in the seat of state, in the city. She was glad of that, at least. The chance to meet them once more amongst the orchards rather than buildings and noise. She'd been glad for the excuse to ride instead of taking the train so she might return the way she'd left, bearing nothing but herself and a desire for change.

  "My lady?"

  The Order had given her Gilbert to attend her, for she no longer wore the gown of a Handmaiden and couldn't expect its protection. He'd been the perfect traveling companion, saying little but making the way as easy for her as possible. She might have made her own arrangements, bartered at inns and found her own supplies, but she would be infinitely grateful she'd had Gilbert to do it for her.

  "In a moment or two, Gilbert, please. We're almost there." Gilbert looked past her to the mountains beyond. "The sea is past them, isn't it? I've never seen the sea."

  "Perhaps you should go the long way home," she offered. "It would be a shame to miss it, since you're so close."

  He laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I might, at that." They rode in silence after that, keeping the horses to a steady pace that wouldn't wear them out, and though she'd estimated the journey's final length as two hours, it took them four. They rode into the courtyard in the purple hues of twilight. Gilbert took the horses to the stables.

  Honesty went toward the manor.

  Her hair was longer than it had been when she left, her waist narrower. Her eyes, like Gilbert's, bore the lines of her experience. She was no longer a fresh-faced girl. She wasn't a child.

  Yet her knees quaked like a child's when she pushed at the front door, unguarded though her father's men would be close by him and her mother at all times. The great open entryway was unchanged. She hadn't thought beyond this point, where she'd go and what she'd say. With nobody to greet her, Honesty wasn't sure what to do. So she did what she'd have done in any patron's house had she arrived with no one to welcome—she went to the kitchen.

  "Dina."

  The older woman looked up from the pan of rolls she was buttering for baking. Her brow furrowed. She stepped back, a white-floured hand over her heart, leaving the imprint on her black dress.

  "Holy Mother. Erista?" Its me.

  "Erista. . ." Dina's head went side to side in her amazement. "By the Quiver, child, what are you doing here?"

  Erista. The name felt strange in her mind, the same number of syllables, even sounding somewhat like the name she'd worn for the past many years but strange all the same. She wasn't sure she felt like an Erista any longer, even as she was certain she no longer could answer to the name Honesty.

  "I came home." She gave a simple answer to what had been a simple question, but Dina again shook her head and proved there could be no such thing.

  "Ah, lass." Dina wiped her hands on her apron and came forward to clutch at Erista's shoulders and pull her close. "Ah, lass, you've grown so. And so much has changed since you've been gone."

  A small thread of alarm wove its way through her innards and tangled up into a knot greater than the one that had been there already. "What do you mean? Are my parents well?"

  Surely she'd have heard if they'd taken ill or died. Dina sighed, her shoulders lifting, and went back to the pan of rolls as though Erista had only been there yesterday, despite what the older woman had said. But then conversation could wait, and the rolls could not. Erista wouldn't have known that before leaving, but her time in the Order had taught her how to discover that which needed the most attention at the moment.

  "They're as well as they've been, lass, at least in the times I see them. They don't oft come here any longer. Your lady mother prefers the entertainments in Bellora City and your lord father wishes to please her. This place is more oft used for guests who've come to view the seaside than anything else any longer." Dina looked up, her mouth working on words that wanted to come but would insist on being bitten back.

  "And the boy?"

  "And . . . the boy," Dina said. "He comes here with his father." Erista's heart failed in its rhythm for a moment before starting violently in her chest.

  "Yes. I imagine he does."

  "You'll not know him," Dina said. "He's near a man, now." He would be ten and four, near a man as Dina had said, but Erista wouldn't have known him had he still been an infant. She'd left him while he was still at suck. "And the Lady Bevins?"

  Dina looked confused. "Oh, Caspar Bevins never married." Erista's heart skipped another beat. "He's never had a mother? But. . . they told me . . . they assured me . . ."

  They'd told her if she left, gave up her place, Bevins would raise the boy as his own son and as her father's heir after her two older brothers. Bevins would marry some hand-picked noblewoman somewhere in the line of succession, so Erista's son would have two parents and be raised a nobleman, regardless of his bastard's birth. They'd told her to leave him if she wanted him to have the best life he could have, and she'd done what they told her to do.

  "They did raise him a nobleman, did they not? They did that, at least?"

  "Oh, aye. Gave him your father's name and everything a boy could wish for."

  "Wait. . . my fathers name?"

  Dina looked sad, though with a grief long put aside. "He's been made your father's heir, lass."

  "What of Eynan and Egart?" Her brothers, both so much older they'd been more like uncles. Erista's heart pounded. "Both . . . goner

  "A fever took Eynan. Egart fell in a hunting accident. Your father had nobody, lass. He gave the boy his name, as I said. And everything a lad could ever need."

  "Except a mother. By the Void." Erista knotted her fingers into the length of her gown, the one Cillian had given her. The finest she'd owned since leaving this place. Dina again looked confused. "He has a mother, of course he does."

  "But you said Bevins never wed . . ." Her mind reeled, focusing more on her brothers'

  deaths than anything else. "Nobody told me. I didn't know." Of course they hadn't. She'd been sent away, dead to her parents, who'd had two sons more important than a daughter they were unable to wed to their advantage. They'd told her she was doing the best thing, and she'd believed them.

  "And here you came back. I can't say as I'm sad to see you, lass, but I'll admit I'm surprised. I thought for sure you'd never come back. I don't know many who would." Erista looked around the kitchen, smaller than she remembered it but as impressive as any she'd seen in her travels. She looked at Dina. "The worst they can do is put me in gaol, yes^ They've not named me a traitor while I was gone? I've not been tried in my absence for treason?"

  "No, I don't think so!" Dina looked shocked and then busied herself with the pan of rolls, putting them into the oven. "By the Arrow, I should think not."

  "I think I'll see my father and mother now. Do you know where they might be?"

  "They might be in the gardens," Dina said reluctantly. "You're just going to jump in on them without warning, the way you did me?"

  "I came home," Erista repeated. "There's no sense in skulking in corners or waiting to be called to an audience. So far as I recall I'm no longer their daughter, so I suppose I'll be considered a guest. It would be rude not to introduce myself to my hosts." Dina had no reply for that, not that Erista thought she would. Dina was a talented cook and ran the manor as strictly as any general, but she was a simple woman for all that. Erista left her there and went to the garden to find her parents.

  They were old.

  They'd been old for a number o
f years, she realized, noting the gray in her father's beard and the silver glinting against the gold of her mother's hair. They sat, clothed in garments playing at being peasant garb though sewn of the finest fabrics. It had ever pleased her mother to play the part of country housewife when they came to stay in the manor. Time hadn't changed that.

  "Mother," Erista said and surprised herself when the word broke on her tongue. Her mother turned, the smile slipping from her lips. She was on her feet at once, lifting her skirts and running toward Erista, who froze, uncertain of her mother's intent. When her mother embraced her, tears flowing, Erista wept, too.

  Her father was more reserved. He walked with a cane now, and slowly, but he nodded at her as though days and not years had passed. "Daughter."

  "You've come back, oh, you've come back. They told us there was no way to get in touch with you, that you'd entered the Order and only you could decide to contact us should you desire it. . . We had no recourse!" her mother babbled, hugging Erista and holding her at arm's length to look her over at intermittent moments. "We had no way of knowing where you were, if you were well or ill. . . or if we'd ever see you again!" Erista hugged her mother hard, but looked her father in the eye. "I was not aware I'd be so welcomed."

  "Would you have returned sooner, had you known?" Her father had always known her better than her mother had.

  "No, Father. I don't think so." She watched him carefully, this man who had taught her how to rule a country though he never intended she should need to do so.

  "Why come back now?"

  "Eslan, hush. She's back now. She's back and we have so much to say and do, it's been too long. Don't start up with all that. . . nonsense. Yes, nonsense," her mother said and linked her arm through Erista's. "She's home now. That's all that matters."

  "I'm sorry, Wife, but it's not, and she knows it. Don't you, girl?" Her father jerked his chin at her.

  "I'm not a girl any longer," Erista said, glad for the years of training the Order had provided in temper-keeping.

  "No. I don't suppose you are." Her father opened his arms and she went into them. Once she'd fit just right beneath his chin and his embrace had meant safety. It was different now.

  He looked down at her when she stepped back. "Welcome home, Erista."

  "That's all? Nothing more?" She smiled at them both, though warily. "You'll welcome me back with open arms and hearts, nothing to be spoken of again?" Her mother frowned and looked at her father. "We've longed for you to come back."

  "You sent me away in anger. I wasn't to assume you'd wish me to return. And . . . there was the matter of the boy." Erista forced her voice to calmness.

  Again her father and mother shared a look.

  "He is well," her father said. "You would be proud of him."

  "I have no right to pride," she said quietly. "I didn't raise him." Her mother blinked. "You might pretend, Erista."

  Erista—the name still felt strange, like clothes a size too small— shrugged. "I've borne the name Honesty since joining the Order. They chose it for me. I've learned to live up to it, I suppose, Mother. I mean no offense, but I can't take credit for anything my son has become."

  It hurt her to say it, for she remembered the softness of his skin and the baby-sweet scent of him. His tiny hands and feet. The feel of him at suck.

  "I didn't come back to take him," she said. "I know I have no right. I just. . ." All at once it was too much. The travel. Cillian. Leaving the Order. Erista crumpled, the grass soft under her. She Waited, finding peace in the position which had been the staple of her existence for so many years. She pressed her face into the grass in Waiting, Remorse.

  "I just wanted to come home," she whispered into the grass. "I needed someplace to come to."

  "Get her up," she heard her father say. "Before someone sees." She hadn't noticed any servants but had forgotten her parents would never have been far from those who waited on them. Hands lifted her gently to her feet and Erista shook her head. "I'm all right."

  "You should go inside and have a warm bath. New clothes. Some sleep," her mother said. Erista didn't argue with any of that. "You told me I had to go. That it was the best choice for him. And for me. You gave me no other choices."

  "Erista," her father said, "we were wrong."

  Chapter 16

  Though the room rustled, anything but silent, Cillian heard nothing. Saw nothing. Felt nothing.

  He made certain of it.

  Chin up, eyes straight ahead, face a blank, bare mask. He wore his finest clothes and carried in one hand a copy of the Sacred Book, leather-bound and tied closed with a ribbon. The other held a single coin, printed with the face of his father. The Book was for show. The coin was for comfort.

  Three Temple priests, heads shaved and skin oiled, their red tunics bright against the room's white walls, sat impassively in one corner. Across the back of the room stretched a single long table, behind which sat the lords who'd signed the petition to see him here. Devain crouched in the center seat, a spider in the center of his web and Cillian the juicy fly he intended for his supper.

  Edward was there, too, along with Persis and several others who would support him. Alaric, unless he'd hidden himself behind the gross-bottomed Lord Beals Defentaine, was missing. As for the others, Cillian could name them all as his father's men, now Devain's. One to one, if put to a vote, they might come out evenly matched. Or he might find himself deposed before he'd even made it to the chair sitting now empty across from him. He lifted his chin. "Devain. The proceedings should start. I've long been kept from my lord father and would see him for myself."

  He refused to allow any one of them, friend or enemy, to see how he knew he'd been prevented from sitting at his father's side not because of his arrest but because his father hadn't seen fit to send for him. Edward, who'd also been kept from the king's side, said the word from the medicus attending him was that Cillian's father couldn't speak, though he was awake and could write simple instructions. They'd bled and steamed him, and forced him full of potions and powders, but nothing seemed to help. The word was he was fading fast, and Cillian meant to see him before the old man passed, if it meant breaking down the door to do it.

  The Temple priests muttered and shifted, but Devain didn't spare them a glance. Whatever he'd paid them or whatever he anticipated, it was nothing compared to his apparent glee at being able to lead this trial. Cillian kept his gaze steady, fixed on Devain and not daring even to flicker toward Edward. He wouldn't give Devain the satisfaction. Fear had sat in his gut like a stone for the entire imprisonment, but had gone the moment he entered this room. There was nothing Devain could do to him that could be worse than what had already been done. Cillian could survive losing his place. His wealth. He could even survive the death of his father, when it came, so long as he had his freedom. If Devain managed in some twist of circumstance to wrest that away from him, Cillian would take his own life before he ever went back to the asylum or any place like it. Devain stood and read the list of charges, one after another, the list so long it took him more than a full breath to finish. There was no point in Cillian pleading his innocence though Devain paused to give him time. With every eye on him and every tongue held in anticipation of how he'd respond, Cillian clutched the coin in his palm until the metal was as warm as his own skin.

  "I have done all these things, yes. But I deny that any one of them makes me incapable of becoming King of Firth."

  Thus it began.

  The commentary was exhaustive. Every lord who'd signed the petition had the right to speak against Cillian or in his defense, and each had the right to call up to three witnesses to prove his stance. Devain watched every one of them with avid, greedy eyes, even while the rest of the room drooped as hour after interminable hour passed and the stories unspooled and unraveled.

  Cillian could not speak for himself but had to listen to men who'd nearly crawled up his ass to eat his breakfast for him a few weeks ago now denounce him as a lecher, a cretin. A madman. He w
anted to be insulted but found he could only be amused. The more he smiled, the harder Devain frowned.

  The charges of debauchery and lechery soon held no weight. Too many men had themselves found pleasure in wielding or submitting to a flogger to comfortably chastise Cillian, especially when none of the girls they brought forth from his hareem said anything but that they'd had only pleasure from his touch.

  One of them, a petite brunette with tawny skin who'd come to Firth from far away and had never spoken more than a few words to him threw herself at Cillian's feet and begged him to allow her to return to his service.

  "No, beauty," he told her, lifting her to her feet with a tug on her hand. "I'm sorry, my pretty one. But I can't."

  And no matter how Devain would seek to twist Cillian's reasons for it, he was unable. Fists flexing, he addressed the room. "A man doesn't give up his penchant for cruelty as though it were a hobby he tired of."

  "No," Cillian replied, thinking of Honesty. "But sometimes he might no longer find it necessary."

  The vote came as night fell. They did it the modern way, pulling the lever of a counting box that kept track of each vote, one side apiece for yea and nay. Cillian watched them, one by one, and at last let his head drop and his eyes close. In the end, he didn't want to see who stood against him.

  "My lord prince." Devain's voice, strangled with fury, raised Gillian's head. "It would seem you have managed to garner the support of enough men to keep you in your place a while longer."

  Cillian had no room for relief; to give in to that or joy would open the way to every other emotion he'd stamped so deep down. He was bone-weary from sitting so stiffly and now he stood, his jaw unlocking after being clenched for so long. At first he had no voice and had to clear it, but when he spoke it rang throughout the room. More than one man flinched.

  "I will see my father now."

  Devain's lip curled and he took his hand from the counting box. "Let us not forget what is perhaps the most important accusation. You have no wife and no prospect for one."