It was the first officer—a pleasant man by the name of George, a bit past the age when he should have had his own command—who eventually broached the most-discussed question. “Just who is it you’re looking for?”
Jarlyth was only surprised it had taken them so long to ask. “You haven’t heard of me, then? I thought I and my quest were too famous not to have crossed even the Breach.”
The officer smiled, nodding as some of the crew listening nearby looked annoyed and disgusted while others looked triumphant.
Apparently, a bet was in play. It seemed only fair to confirm it absolutely so money could change hands.
“I am Jarlyth Denara, warder to Prince Nylan of Serathon. I have been searching for him for years, now. Ever since he was taken from Tanara and from me.” He had only given his first name before, and then just “Jary.” Only the captain had known his real name.
A low mutter rose up and died away in response to this. The bosun’s mate, an older man, nodded. “I met a warder once before. Long ago. You don’t usually get out so far, though I lived on the other side of the Breach, then.”
“We never get this far,” Jarlyth admitted. For whatever reason—Vail only knew—Sensitives were a gift born only to Serathon. “That’s the problem.”
Some discussion of the stories they’d heard of him ensued, and he answered some of their questions and avoided others. And then, one of the crew shouted out, “What’s ‘e look like?” the question rising anonymously from the group.
Jarlyth’s face twisted into a painful smile, and he shook his head. “Like a SanClare,” he said, and his listeners all laughed, the voice which had asked making a sound closer to annoyance.
He waved his hand for patience. “The deepest, darkest black hair you’ve ever seen; bright golden-hazel eyes—more gold, though, than green or brown. Striking. Very fair skin—like his mother’s—and lovely. He’ll be almost fifteen now.”
The good humor of the listeners had died down quickly as Jarlyth described Nylan, and by the time he’d finished, they were entirely silent. Many of them looked...
Frightened? Horrified? He wasn’t sure and let go of his center to see if he could feel more. The emotions whirled up around him like a squall.
He turned to George, a sharp question on his face before it came out of his mouth. “What’s—”
“Holy Vail Over Us.” The man backed several hurried steps away from Jarlyth before whirling away to throw up over the side of the ship. The captain appeared in that moment, summoned by someone.
“What do you know?” Jarlyth shouted. The blood roared in his head, and he wanted to be sick, too—violently and repeatedly.
Is he dead? Have I gone mad with loss and missed that he’s dead? Have they hurt him? Oh, Dear Vail, please tell me they haven’t hurt him!
“I know more than you’ll ever want to hear, Lord Denara.”
The captain’s voice was oddly soft; incongruously motherly for such a severe-seeming woman. “But you’d best know what I know before we reach Queen’s City.”
#
Michael’s life fell into a nightmarish pattern where he found himself summoned at odd intervals by his new master—there was no other way to look at the power Terac had over him. He returned from each encounter bloodied and exhausted and ever weaker. Though he was never again hurt badly enough to keep him more than a day or two from working, his wounds healed more and more slowly after each time, and he found, too, that his heretical powers no longer flared to life at a mere thought. He tried to pretend nothing had changed, and he wanted to continue helping Daren, though each time he worked a new healing, he felt worse.
Harly and Daren all at once had decided he should become more involved, too, with their grand scheme and took turns trying to tell him more details. Michael, afraid that Terac might somehow find out their secrets from him, refused to listen and threatened to stop helping altogether if they kept at him about it.
It was not that he didn’t want to help, either, but what they really wanted him to do was even more impossible than it was terrifying. Still, he felt sorry for the men. Their goal was nothing short of a revolution, and yet even with all their power and careful plans and strategies, they’d never succeed so long as the Duke of Reyhal lived.
Why do they think I can stop him? They’ve seen what he does to me. It isn’t as if I let him.
As he became steadily weaker, Michael started to make excuses not to help at all, none of which Daren wanted to accept. He put so much pressure on Michael to continue performing healings and to listen to his plans, Michael began to hide whenever he saw the man approaching.
It all ended very abruptly, however, when, at Daren’s strongest urging, Michael agreed to heal some poor, broken person worse off than even he was himself, only to wake up with a headache like a knife between his eyes and a badly bleeding nose which Daren, frantically, had still been trying to staunch. The man never asked him to help again.
Terac was killing him. Slowly, but there was no possible doubt as to the eventual outcome. Michael couldn’t continue down such a spiraling path without, at some point not so very far in the future, reaching its end. And, though it frightened him to admit it, Michael found he once again felt nothing but welcome for the prospect.
#
As he led Jarlyth through the narrow, confusing streets of Fensgate, George kept glancing back at him, wary and still almost green with fear. Considering what the captain had told him, Jarlyth couldn’t bring himself to reassure the man that this was unwarranted.
Jarlyth couldn’t be sure himself that he wouldn’t run the man through as soon as he’d made himself useful by leading Jarlyth to this Red Boar Inn where, by some cruel twist of fate, his long-lost Nylan could now be found.
Jarlyth guessed they might have reached their destination when turning a corner brought them to a street that was almost twice as wide as any of the others they’d traveled. People seemed to be everywhere, too, where all had been desolate and rundown before.
“That’s the One-Eyed Sailor,” George muttered as they passed a tall, gaudy building with light and noise overflowing into the street. Men and young women were paired off here and there, some in groups.
No! Jarlyth corrected himself. Those are boys. Vail!
“It’s all boys there,” the officer finished miserably.
“And the Red Boar?” Jarlyth asked, his voice that of the ruthless warrior he’d originally meant to be.
“Only boy there is Michael, but there’s no point in any other boy competing with him. No one minds waiting, even if it’s only for a chance.”
“Shut up,” Jarlyth growled. “Just shut up.” He knew he would never understand why Vail allowed this to happen.
George knew Michael, this child everyone on the ship believed had to be Nylan. After the captain had explained, Jarlyth had interrogated George without pity, learning enough to believe they were right and enough to make him want to eviscerate the man rather than accept his help.
The Red Boar made the One-Eyed Sailor look even cheaper and more pitiful than it had before. This building was grand and rich and beautiful. The entrance was guarded by two big men who stood on either side of the grand glass entrance and glared at everyone who approached. They apparently recognized George for they only nodded, but a gesture indicated Jarlyth was to stop.
“He’s with me,” George said, pale in the warm light pouring from the enormous room beyond. The guard who’d stopped him looked Jarlyth over carefully, mistrustful, but at last he waved him on.
The central salon was filled with tables which were surrounded by crowds of wealthy-looking men and a number of beautiful, opulently underdressed women. Games of all kinds—card games, dice games, games of chance and skill—were being played at the tables.
A larger group congregated around a big, round table that commanded the center of the room. Several men were seated, playing a card game. Five-card, maybe, or whatever the Camarat equivalent was, Jarlyth guessed.
He didn’t need Ge
orge’s tentative plucking at his arm or the hoarse, “there,” to confirm what his entire being already knew.
Crowded as it was, the heat in the room had led many to remove coats and jackets, and the boy who sat almost with his back to Jarlyth was one of that number. He was perched on the arm of one of the player’s chairs, intent on the game. The man had an arm around the boy as if to keep him from falling off, but his hand rested low on the boy’s hip, fingers drumming idly.
Nylan’s hair had grown incredibly long and hung down his back in a thick, loose braid. A white dress shirt—which clung to his back here and there where the perspiration had trickled down—tucked into his close-fitting black trousers which tucked into provocatively-tall, black leather boots. He was small but long and lean and absolutely beautiful.
I’m going to be sick. I can’t stand to see this. Vail, help me!
He couldn’t move, and Nylan didn’t notice him, so he watched, helpless and miserable and unbearably ill.
He could guess which men had never purchased the boy’s time by the way he reacted when they addressed him—which they all did. Because he’s famous, Jarlyth remembered. George had said that he was as famous as royalty. As famous as anyone in Queen’s City.
If a man had no interest in his body, Nylan’s faint smiles would seem genuine, and he would talk to the person easily—answer a question, smile at a joke. If he was desired, his resentment stiffened his back and deadened his eyes. Jarlyth was shocked no one else seemed to notice the difference.
“Blow ‘em for luck, eh?” a man asked Nylan, holding out his cards. The crowd, predictably, found this proposition amusing and the volume rose as everyone began calling out comments, taunts, or suggestions.
Nylan’s lips twisted into something that might be interpreted as a smile but which Jarlyth saw as quickly-masked irritation. Nevertheless, the boy reached up a hand to hold his hair back as he leaned across the table toward the proffered cards.
George felt the need to narrate. “He doesn’t say yes to very much. He has all these rules. He’s famous and everyone wants him so he can do what he wants.”
Jarlyth flicked a glare at the man. “He doesn’t want to do any of this.”
The boy pursed his lips slowly, deliberately, and blew a near-kiss across the cards. As he drew back again, the forced smile evaporated. A roaring cheer rose from the crowd with laughter and clapping playing counterpoint. The man whose cards he had blessed looked flushed and excited and couldn’t take his eyes off of Nylan.
“What happened to his hand?” Jarlyth swallowed against the sickness rising in his throat. The elegant sleeve had brushed back from Nylan’s wrist when he’d leaned over, exposing ugly marks.
“That’s his heretic’s brand,” George whispered. “And he has a tattoo that means something bad. It was new the last time I was here, but he wouldn’t tell me about it.”
The man who’d needed luck apparently got it, for just then he shot to his feet, nearly knocking the table over, and did a little jig of celebration as the other players threw down their cards or pushed the pile of winnings toward the man’s place. It seemed to take everyone by surprise when he whirled around, caught Nylan’s chin with his fingertips, and kissed him.
Jarlyth, much to his dismay, had a perfect vantage point to witness this kiss. He saw Nylan flinch as the hand touched him and then stiffen as the lips followed, but the boy recovered and reciprocated so quickly, his warder almost wasn’t certain he’d seen any resistance.
This sort of thing must have happened before, for a chant began to clarify itself from the noise of the crowd. Jarlyth could make out the word being chanted: “Clink.”
“What’s that mean?” he demanded.
It was George’s turn to flinch, but he took a step closer in order to be heard without raising his voice. “He has to pay, now. A clink for a kiss. A crown.”
Jarlyth’s eyes widened in shock. He was enough a man of the world to be aware what the services of a prostitute would generally cost—not that, as a Sensitive, he had ever been tempted to make use of one himself—and a crown for a kiss was beyond anything he’d ever heard of.
George nodded as if reading his thoughts. “Aye, he’s very expensive.” The follow-up thought to this was so clear that, with the first officer standing so close to him, Jarlyth heard it as if the man had continued speaking aloud: And he’s worth every bit of it.
Of course. He would be, Jarlyth thought, miserable. He’d proven that himself to many a young woman. There were reasons the salacious stories told about bedding a Sensitive were all but countless. But he’s just a child! Can’t they see that?
And he was so unhappy. Jarlyth could feel the despair radiating from the boy from across the room. The warder could only wonder how Nylan had survived such relentless physical contact. Even with his own poor Sensitivity, he thought he would at least have gone mad.
Jarlyth’s hands gripped themselves into fists as the “for luck” man surveyed the chanting crowd, patting his lips with fingertips as if blowing kisses to everyone, though it was obvious he meant only to remind them all of whom he’d just kissed.
His warder’s instincts became more and more in tune with Nylan the longer he watched, until Jarlyth knew the thought behind every movement, gesture, and expression.
Nylan managed to conceal a glare behind a narrow-eyed, measuring expression, and made a deliberate show of wiping the back of his hand across his mouth.
The crowd’s response to this was approving, and the taunts turned back on the presumptuous man as some still chanted for the clink to be paid. Nylan extricated himself from his companion’s arm gently as he stood up, and now Jarlyth could see just how small the boy was.
The “for luck” man towered over him, nearly three handspans taller, and he was big and muscular, besides. Nylan’s apparent fragility broke Jarlyth’s heart. He’s nearly fifteen! He should be taller...like his father.
Fragile he might have been, but at the Red Boar, Nylan held all the power. He looked up at the big man from beneath lowered brows and held out his right hand, palm up, wordlessly demanding payment. Jarlyth saw more scars marring pale skin. Shize! What have they done to him?
“Don’t be that way, sweetling.” The man reached for Nylan’s hand, but the boy snatched it back, fingers curling into a fist as his body fell into a defensive stance, stunningly familiar to Jarlyth from their training sessions years ago.
The man took a step back, surprise blossoming on his face. The crowd jeered, now that it was obvious how inaccurately the man had read the situation. He’d thought his next move would be to the bed of the most desired streeter in Camarat.
“I could have you thrown out for theft, you know?” Nylan said. These were the first words Jarlyth heard him say, and far more than a trace of the boy’s Serathonian accent remained even after all these years—though the rasp was new. “It’s against the rules here to steal a kiss.”
Chagrined, the man reached into his pile of winnings and fished out a large, gold coin which he tossed at Nylan, forcefully. Angrily.
Nylan, without even looking, snatched the coin out of the air with a snap of his wrist, pocketed it, and turned away from the man and the table. If he’d told the man to go to the Fires, he could not have dismissed him more thoroughly. Whoops of laughter and more jeers at his suitor followed, but they all died away to Jarlyth’s ears as Nylan finally noticed him.
He’d braced himself for this reunion for over six years. He’d braced himself for what Nylan would feel at being discovered in this place for days.
But he’d braced himself for nothing. The boy’s eyes skimmed over him without doing more than taking note of his existence, and Jarlyth felt his jaw slacken as Nylan’s face shifted from leftover annoyance to delight at the sight not of him but of his companion.
“George!” He walked over to greet the man. Jarlyth detected a slight limp which attested to more injuries he’d failed to prevent.
“All my favorite people are here tonight—
did you see Jack? He’s here for the festival, too.” Nylan didn’t pause for any answers. “When did your ship get in?”
George’s eyes flicked to Jarlyth’s face before returning inexorably to Nylan’s. “Just now.”
“And you ran right over to see me?” A coy smile curved Nylan’s lips as he looked up at the man through his long, black lashes. “How flattering.”
“Well—” George gulped, a blush reddening his face.
The dissonance between how Nylan was behaving and how he truly felt was so jarring, it made Jarlyth want to vomit. He wanted to draw his sword and start separating heads from bodies, beginning with George’s.
Nylan managed to look both youthfully innocent and shockingly wanton at the same time. “I’m not busy right now.” He reached out to run a teasing finger over the buttons on the man’s uniform jacket.
George stammered out, “I—I can’t—”
Nylan’s eyes widened slightly. Jarlyth sensed the boy’s surprise at being put off. It was something that likely never happened to him.
“Oh...” he began, as his body language altered completely, any trace of flirtation vanishing as he took a step away from George and clasped his hands behind his back. He looked almost hurt though what Jarlyth sensed was panic. “Did you get married? Or...” he glanced at Jarlyth and came to a new conclusion. “Do you want to introduce me to your friend?”
“Don’t you know him already?” George asked, confused.
Nylan looked at Jarlyth, a faint, equally confused smile playing around his lips. “Should I know you?” he asked finally. “I’m sorry. I seem to have forgotten.”
“You...forgot...” Jarlyth choked out. This shock was the last one he could bear. His vision went black, and, the next thing he knew, he was staring up into Nylan’s worried face as the boy knelt beside him. He hadn’t noticed before how intricate the room’s ceiling was, painted with fanciful, provocative scenes which wreathed Nylan’s head, making the moment surreal to the point of ridiculousness.
“Are you all right?” Nylan reached out a hand toward Jarlyth’s forehead to check for fever.
SanClare Black (The Prince of Sorrows) Page 30
