The Secret's Keeper and the Heir

by Jackie McCarthy

  “Aye, Captain,” said Rose. Realizing that she had just found her way to the ball, she rushed off the ship and into the little port town.

  * * * * *

  Master Lorey looked out his window upon the quaint port town of Lilly-on-Dunsmere, which he could see quite well from the top of his large house. He watched as the townspeople lit their lamps and candles against the pervading night, and saw that his own four walls clothed themselves in darkness as well.

  He didn’t know what compelled him to speak, but he opened his mouth to do so all the same, a force of habit born from long years of servitude. “Your gold is ready to go. It’s being transferred to your carriage as we speak.”

  “How did you know I was here?” asked the darkness in the doorway. From out the shadows stepped the Master’s master, the man who called himself Fenric.

  “You’re surrounded by a very special kind of silence,” Lorey said, trying to understand the strange sensation that had compelled him to speak and finding himself unable to do so. “And you cast a different kind of shadow.”

  “You make me sound like a monster,” Fenric observed, stepping slowly nearer the supine man.

  “Aren’t we all,” asked the Master, half-turning to his guest, “in our own ways?”

  The Scribe looked at him, his eyes sparkling in obscurity. “You’re in a dark mood tonight,” Fenric observed. “Perhaps I should’ve waited outside.”

  “No, no,” Lorey said, forcing a smile to his face. “Dark moods come with the territory of being on one’s deathbed, I’ll have you know. You’re a particular inspiration for dark moods, if ever I needed one, but you’re also, inevitably, my beloved keeper.

  “You’re your own master, Darien,” said Fenric quietly. “That’s always been important to me.”

  Darien Lorey nodded, breaking into a fit of coughing. “I’m as free as I could hope to be in this body of bones and disease, you’re quite right,” he said, clearing his throat into a cloth at his side. He looked at Fenric for the first time that evening, apology ready upon his brow. “None of that is your fault.”

  “I thank you for you absolution,” said the Scribe.

  “And if ever I felt a servant,” the Master continued, “it wasn’t with a sense of injustice. You may have prodded me to pick up and move to Scadia, but my beautiful wife was mine to choose. And my child, he is mine. Every day of my life has been a wonder of my own making. I feel quite fine about it all.”

  “Then what is it that gives you such unrest?” Fenric inquired.

  “Perhaps it is,” said Lorey thoughtfully, “that such a wonderful life must so soon be at an end. I wonder, now that my time is so limited, if I would be equally as sad to leave a poor life behind me. Just think, if I hadn’t seen so much beauty in my life—or known so much love—would I be so bitter in these, my final days? Has the wonder of it all made me more reluctant to let go?” His coughing fit returned, and they both waited for it to pass. He hadn’t fully recovered when he spoke again, and he wheezed through the last of his observations, “When I think it must be so, I blame you strongly. But take heart, old man, there are worse things to be blamed for, I should think, than giving a person a life so good that he’s upset to leave it.”

  Fenric laughed, sharing the sick man’s toothy grin. “I’ve certainly been blamed for much worse,” he admitted, “and sometimes I’ve even been guilty of it.” With a familiar pat of Lorey’s shoulder, Fenric lowered himself into a seat nearer the sickbed. “I run away again after tonight,” he announced, “my deed will be done.”

  “I’ve sent you away with enough gold that you won’t have to return,” said the Master.

  “Still, I hope we’ll see one another again,” sighed Fenric.

  “In this life or the next, I’m sure of it,” Lorey said in agreement. “And if not here, then maybe as I limp and you hobble along the buried path to the underworld. We’ll greet the blazing Bull together, as was intended.” Fenric shook with involuntary laughter at the image of them, and the Master, short of breath, chided him for the disrespect. “You wouldn’t laugh at a dying man—even if you disagreed with his myths. That’s not gentlemanly.”

  “You’re right, old soul, it’s most unkind,” Fenric said, collecting himself. “Forgive me. Where I’m from, you see, there are supposedly two different places a soul may go when it passes: one for the just and good, one for the wicked and bad. It’s considered the place of the evil to burn in the fires underground and the providence of the righteous to ascend to the clouds. I forget that the Illians have but one underworld to which all people, both good and bad, must surely go. For a moment, my dear friend, I thought you had consigned us both to the land of evil men! So you see, I meant no harm by my laughter. No, I quite like your myth. I think there’s a certain merit to it that’s missing from my own ingrained beliefs, if only in encouraging people to be exactly as they are and doing what they must.”

  Master Lorey stared at him intently. “You’ve never spoken of your homeland before. I suppose it’s another of the places I’ll never see.”

  “It’s a place I’ll never see,” Fenric replied. His silence called for further explanation, so he added simply, “It was destroyed.”

  “Destroyed?” Lorey asked, frightened of what he might have said. “And its people along with it?”

  “Many of them,” Fenric said with a nod, “my mother and sisters included.”

  “But how?” Lorey begged to know.

  Fenric grinned sadly, “I think that’s a story for another day.”

  “It’s a story for tonight, I’m sure,” the Master said, pushed by his own mortality to insist, “as I may not have another day.”

  “Then it’s a story for the long walk to the Bull,” Fenric pushed back. “We’ll be needing something to speak of for all that time, don’t you think?”

  “Master of Changing the Subject—you’re diverting the explanation,” Lorey said with a wheezing laugh. “You win! I wouldn’t want to force you to speak. And you’re right, time is short, there’s a ball for you to attend.”

  Fenric walked to the wide window and looked down upon his carriage, which was riding considerably lower than before.

  “Your men are fast workers,” Fenric commented, seeing only his hired driver tending to the horses.

  “Of course they are. They’re yours,” the Master said with a quick laugh. Then he grew serious. “And what of the girl? Is she to be dealt the blow tonight?”

  “I must be done,” said Fenric in the affirmative. “For the sake of the Kingdom.”

  “And with a pink dress too,” sighed Lorey, “how rude of you.”

  “I told you about that, did I?” Fenric asked, scratching his head.

  “No, no,” replied Master Lorey with a chortle. “My Dunstan found out first hand, as you’ll recall.”

  “Ah, right!” Fenric exclaimed, remembering the handsome boy at the bottom of the foyer. He shrugged. “Well, it’s only the beginning, after all.”

  “I haven’t been there in so many years…to Illiamna,” said Lorey thoughtfully. “I recall so little. And now that I’m straddling the bridge to another world, I almost find myself wondering if that land of unforgiving mountains is worth the trouble.”

  “Some might consider such talk treason,” said the shadow.

  “Some might,” the Master agreed, “Fortunately you know I was only ‘almost’ wondering and are sage enough to know the difference. All of it was meant to say that I’d rather leave the girl and let her be happy as she is.”

  “A girl can’t have the throne,” said Fenric phlegmatically. “We must either change the course of history while we still can or suffer the consequences.”

  * * * * *

  Rose sat across from her Captain as their carriage rattled down the now-familiar dirt road. She tried with difficulty to avoid thinking how the cut of the Captain’s shirt accentuated the breadth of his shoulders or how the clean line of his chin was perfectly emphasized by the shape of his collar. N
evertheless, she found herself staring at him covertly, and looked away hurriedly whenever she was noticed.

  “It’s the rocking,” Kaille said, guessing at her attentions.

  Not seeing how this answered the rapid beating of her heart or the strange fluttering of her stomach, Rose squeaked a panicked, “What?”

  “I just figured out what I hate about carriages,” Kaille explained, his blue eyes now settled upon her. “It’s the rocking.”

  Rose grinned through tight lips, noticing for the first time how her body was bouncing left to right. “I’d think you’d be used to that, what with how ships tend to bob to and fro.”

  “Not like this,” Kaille said, shaking his head and growing somewhat green. “Not with this…bumping.” With a sigh, he peering out the window. “I suppose we’re only going a few miles.”

  “That’s right,” Rose said knowingly, looking away lest he catch her watching him again.

  He, instead, began watching her. “Fenric,” he said suddenly, “do you trust him?”

  Rose examined her thoughts the way she’d been examining the Captain’s visage. “I don’t know,” she decided, feeling the heavy dagger at her side. “Why?”

  “He doesn’t seem to ask for trust,” Kaille said with a shake of his head. “It’s easy enough to tell that he’s lying.”

  “He’s not lying,” Rose corrected. “He’s just…not telling the truth.”

  The Captain laughed, speaking to her like a child, “Some people would consider that the same thing.”

  “Some people would be too simple to see the difference,” Rose retorted. She was pleased to see the wry arch of the Captain’s brow as she put him in his place. “When most people lie, it’s to change our perception about something. They do it to re-write events. Fenric…he tells you only what you need to know, but what he tells you is true.”

  Kaille smiled, looking at her with great interest. Rose turned, the fluttering in her chest growing exponentially at his attention until she could hardly stand it. She thought he might talk further about the Scribe, but when he spoke again, it was on a new subject entirely. “Who did you lose?”

  Rose’s eyes shot to his. Their bright blue shone in the moonlight, and the rest of his eager face echoed the earnest question. 

  “I…” she stammered, her heart beating heavily, “I thought you didn’t want to know.”

  “I’m not like Fenric,” the Captain said teasingly, “sometimes I do lie. Or, wait, is it considered lying if I thought it was true at the time I said it?” Grinning broadly, he leaned in and repeated his query, “So who was it?”

  Rose was taken aback by his flippant manner and momentarily forgot her invented story. “My, ah…my twin,” she answered, searching for what information she could safely give without betraying her disguise. “My soul.”

  Kaille blinked heavily several times and sat back, a pained sigh escaping him. “A twin,” he echoed, gazing out the window at the distant sea. “Gods almighty. I thought for sure you’d say your pet rabbit or…your racist grandmother or something. I…I can’t even…” Kaille stammered, unable to sit comfortably upon this information. “You were close? Gods! Of course you were close, that’s a stupid question.”

  Rose shook her head, seeing the mistiness in his eyes and finding comfort in it. “Nay it’s not. And aye, we were,” she answered. “We were…the same person. Even now, I’m not sure where I end and she began.”

  Kaille’s haunted look lifted in the short length of a moment. “Sorry, she?”

  “Yes, my sister…” Rose said, willing herself to become Benson and speak of herself from a distance. “My twin.”

  Kaille let out a relieved chuckle. “Oh, a sister,” he said, seeming mollified. “I assumed you meant, you know, someone important.”

  It felt as though Rose had offered herself up to the Captain’s judgment only to be torn to pieces by his hand. In her efforts to create the character of Benson Rose, she’d fallen deeply in love with her invented twin sister, not because the girl represented Rose’s love for her brother, which she knew well, but because the girl represented all she could ever know of her brother’s love for her.

  “Important?” Rose snapped. “You cursed the gods for me moments ago, but now she’s not important?”

  Kaille recoiled from Rose’s searing gaze, her livid fury, but he fought his case. “Come now, everyone knows you can’t mourn for a sister the way you do for a brother. It’s just not the way men function.”

  Rose blanched. It frightened her that she would never know what Benson felt about her, not really. He’d seemed distant when they met these past months. A sliver of doubt shot through her. What if the Captain was right? What if the connection between them meant less to him than it did to her?

  “I’m not saying she wasn’t dear to you,” Kaille added, seeing that his shipboy was upset. “But she would’ve been off at lessons, learning to sew and tend a garden. You couldn’t have grown so close to her as you would a brother. It’s just not the same.”

  Lessons? Tending a garden? Unable to stop herself, Rose recalled the character of a crazed gardener as he dazzled the simple servants with a passionate speech. Joy rushed into her mind. 

  In that moment of delight, she felt her sense of Benson return. 

  The speculation was pointless. The worry was pointless as well. She didn’t need to hear her brother say he loved and missed her. Words wouldn’t have expressed the bond between them anyhow. Rose knew how she felt both with and without him, and that was enough.

  “I know this,” she said honestly, “my sister loved me like the second half of her heart—”

  “And so she would,” Kaille said consolingly, “for she was a female, and that’s what they do. But real loss, you see, is the loss of an equal.”

  “I’m a fisherman’s son, Captain,” she said coldly. “If you’re talking about equality, then you must place me at the bottom of the ladder. They don’t spirit away the daughters of fishermen for sewing instruction. There were never any lessons. There weren’t even chores.” Rose fought the tears that stung her eyes, but continued with intensity, “There was just a boy and a girl left to wander over the countryside, their minds entwined and their two hearts beating as one.”

  Kaille, hand to his mouth, sat back again. He wore a look of abject horror at his words.

  Rose didn’t care. Speaking her heart aloud felt too good to stop just because her audience had become uncomfortable. “I…I feel like part of me was ripped away. And they didn’t rip away a thing I could live without, like an arm or a leg—but a part of my being—a part of my soul. I live now, every day, feeling as though I’m walking around with a massive, bloody wound instead of a body. Despite how much I want it to heal, it never will, because…because if it healed it would mean I’d forgotten her. I’ll never forget her!”

  Rose broke down into tears. She curled her legs around her, shielding her body from sight or contact. With only a few words she’d traveled from feeling the pure love of her twin to the purest misery of his absence.

  Feeling a gentle hand touch her head, Rose heard the soft words, “I didn’t mean…I didn’t know—”

  Rose’s head shot up at the touch, as though on fire. “If you’re trying to suggest that she’s lesser than your friend because she’s female,” she snapped, “then you have to say that I’m lesser too, because we’re exactly the same, regardless of whatever lies you may choose to tell yourself about people and equality.”

  The Captain shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his face showing every ounce of regret he felt over belittling the grieving boy’s sister. “You…you don’t seem lesser,” he said carefully. “You seem a bit more, in fact…I’m sorry Benson, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant,” Rose replied scornfully, wiping angrily at her tears.

  “Please, I take back every word,” said the Captain genuinely. 

  He rose from the carriage bench and squeezed in alongside the sobbing girl, awkwardly op
ening his arms in an embrace. Rose fell into his body, her face contorted by the effort to hold back her sorrow. She didn’t know how men were supposed to comfort one another, but she found herself clinging to the Captain as a child might, forehead buried in his broad shoulder.

  It was the first time she’d cried about Benson—not that she would admit to crying about him if he asked. She’d cut herself off from thinking too much about her twin’s disappearance, and though denial of his absence was the only thing allowing her to function day-to-day, her pent-up emotions poured free once given an outlet. Embarrassed as she was to be so vulnerable in front of a man who made her pulse race, however, there was also something about opening her heart to him that felt impossibly right.

  Before long, Rose’s sobbing faded. 

  “You were so kind as to leave me alone in my grief,” spoke the Captain as he patted Rose’s head gently, “and here I probed too harshly into yours. You’re right if you’re thinking I’m a bad person. I can be thoughtless sometimes. Though you deserve better than anything I have to offer, please allow me grieve for you and your twin sister. And let me thank you for setting me straight. She must have been…remarkable.”

  Rose heard more than an apology in his words. She heard her beloved Captain’s praise for her own self. He’d been made to believe in a woman of equal value to himself, though moments ago the thought had seemed unimaginable.

  The embrace lingered. The heat of the Captain’s body had became unbearably hot where it contacted Rose’s by the time she noticed herself reacting to it. She realized for the first time exactly how close he was, and took in a delicious breath of his intoxicating scent. He smelled of sea air and sailing ships and the warm, life-giving sun.

  Breath shallow, Rose pulled back slightly, looking up to meet the Captain’s brilliant blue eyes.  They reflected the depths of the sea, but as entrancing as they were, her gaze couldn’t help but seek his soft lips, which were slightly parted. Unable to stop herself, Rose felt herself sway gently towards him, imagining with a heady warmth the feel of his mouth upon hers. 

  Rose woke from her fevered fantasy with a start. She saw with relief that, despite her desire, she hadn’t actually closed the distance between them. She sniffled loudly, play-acting at feeling more drunken with grief than she truly was as a way of explaining her strangely feminine behavior.  She gave him a quick nod to show her forgiveness, and then looked out the window, breathing deeply in the hopes of regaining her calm.