Blood of the Falcon, Volume 2 (The Falcons Saga)

by Ellyn, Court

Garrs hooted with laughter. “No, the ravens got them, I fear. Or the worms.” As it turned out, he and his detachment were unable to bring down the second bridge. Surrounded by Southyn’s militia, they were forced to take a decrepit fort on the river bank and hole up for a couple of weeks. Then word arrived that the White Falcon was dead. Rather than let their enemy leave peaceably, the Fierans decided to avenge their king, charged the fort and tried to set it alight. Half of Garrs’s men escaped by bailing over the wall and into the Galda River. Only half of those survived the powerful current. Kelyn knew better than to apologize for their loss, nor did Garrs expect it. “I heard you fought the warlord.”

  Garrs listened wide-eyed to Kelyn’s tale. “Goddess’ mercy, he hit hard. If I’d lost my helmet, my skull would be mush. Leshan saved my life, though.”

  Preferring to talk of something other than the dead, Garrs asked, “Speaking of skulls, where’re you headed?”

  “Vonmora,” Kelyn lied. “I have business with Lord Davhin.” While he counted Garrs as a friend, he lacked confidence in the man’s discretion. He was Galt’s son, after all.

  Garrs’s grin was rife with mischief. “Genna’s there.”

  “Genna…. Why?”

  “You tell me. She’s so fierce and he’s so soft-spoken, no one guessed.”

  “You’re mad.”

  Garrs’s grin didn’t relent.

  “Now that you mention it, she and Davhin did come and go at the same time. Or nearly. I was at Lunélion for two weeks and she never mentioned him.”

  “Maybe it’s just an arrangement made by her mother.”

  “Maybe.” Then again, how many had guessed Kelyn’s secret?

  Helwende’s patrol accompanied him over Windgate Pass. Bandits, if they hid in the crags, dared not attack fifty armed men. Davhin welcomed him warmly, and true enough, Genna joined them for supper in a sleek gown of white silk. A broad ermine collar concealed her broad, hard shoulders. “Are … congratulations in order?” Kelyn asked.

  Davhin turned red to the tips of his ears.

  “Well,” said Genna, “there’s not been an official announcement.”

  Kelyn laughed, wondering how he had missed it. “I must’ve had other concerns. I can’t imagine what they might’ve been.” He was able to skirt the obvious question until Davhin ushered him into his parlor for brandy.

  Genna declined the invitation to join them. “I may ride with you into battle, my lords, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy men’s banter. Good night.”

  Filling the bottom of a glass, Davhin asked, “You’ve told us everything but what brings you so far.”

  Kelyn hesitated, doubting a lie would save him twice. People usually journeyed over Windgate for two destinations alone: Vonmora or Windhaven. Little else lay between the two cities, and Kelyn knew no one in the smaller villages to provide him an excuse. So he told the truth.

  Davhin extended the brandy glass as if Kelyn’s destination made no matter, but awareness dawned in his face and he slowly withdrew the glass. “You?” he asked. “You!”

  Kelyn clenched his hands behind his back, wincing at his host’s anger.

  “No wonder your brother behaved as he did. All this while, I gladly followed your orders, boy, shared meat and mead with you. And all this while! I was there when Harac announced his daughter’s birth, I watched her grow, only to have you come along and … have you heard what people have been saying? You did, didn’t you! And you did nothing. You bloody—”

  “I’m here to do something about it now, Davhin.”

  “Better late than never, eh?” He tossed the brandy down his own throat.

  Kelyn had never considered this man capable of such a tantrum, righteous anger though it was. “Shall I take my leave?”

  Davhin exhaled. His arms drooped at his sides, the brandy glass hanging lax in his fingers. “No, lad. We all have our scandals. Don’t we? Yours just happens to be public. Do right by her, sir, or I must have done with you.”

  Do right by her? Kelyn fully expected Rhoslyn to toss him out on his arse. What then? How effective a War Commander could he be if every man under him laughed behind his back?

  Long before dawn, he rode from Vonmora. Rows of purple-leaved blethora bushes hunched along the roadside like ranks of soldiers squatting in the dark. The sun rose at his back, turning the broad band of the Liran into molten gold, then to beaten bronze. Silk barges raced him to the sea; as reluctantly as Kelyn traveled, the fat barges won easily. Late in the afternoon, the yellow palace reared high on her cliff, gleaming bright over the city and the sparkling waters of the cove. Kelyn’s belly flipped, making him queasy. And what for? Likely the duchess’s affairs would keep her too busy for her to see him immediately anyway. She might keep him waiting for days, if she agreed to speak to him at all.

  As he neared the ferry, a great bear of a man barged from the ferry house, exclaiming, “Me lord Kieryn?”

  Kelyn didn’t recall seeing this man at the ferry before. “Er, he’s my brother,” he said, dismounting. “I’m Lord Ilswythe, King Rhorek’s War Commander.”

  “Aye, so you are! Bless me, what a joy. I will take your horse, sir, and help you right along here. Watch your step. Buggers wrecked my ferry twice while I was away, and she’s a bit shaky yet.” The ferrymaster tethered Kelyn’s horse to the rail and barked orders for his oarsmen to look sharp. “I’m Rygg, by the way. I served aboard Captain Rehaan’s brig. Her Grace’s cousin, the old pirate. Aye, we helped transport the dwarves. Grand night that was. Grand and terrible.”

  The oarsmen rowed all too quickly to suit Kelyn, but Rygg’s chatter helped eased his nerves until they were across the Liran. Before he knew it, he was riding up to the gatehouse. Garrison Captain Drael escorted him personally across the courtyard and into the palace. Perhaps Kelyn imagined it, but Drael’s reception seemed cooler than professionalism demanded. Giving him into the housekeeper’s care, Drael unmistakably glared. He shouldn’t have come, Kelyn thought, being shown into a receiving parlor. He should’ve written instead. How he hated ‘should haves.’ They only served to point out his mistakes.

  He eased down into a plush armchair, his bones sore from the journey, but he realized he was shedding dust as a dog sheds hair and stood again. He wasn’t kept waiting long. “Well, well,” said Lady Halayn. She stood on the threshold, arms crossed, wild faded hair swept back from her scowling face. “You’re not who I expected. Not that either of you are welcome.” She seemed more shrunken in the cheeks and bent in the shoulders than Kelyn remembered, but her hazel eyes remained as dagger sharp as ever.

  Bowing his head, Kelyn said, “I’ve come to speak to Her Grace.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt about that. But you’ve wasted your time. She won’t see you. You’ve shamed her enough.”

  Kelyn felt relieved in a way, yet at the same time, desperately disappointed. “I will not leave until I have spoken with her. Announce me or make an appointment.”

  “Court is closed for the day. Her Grace has retired.”

  “Then she is unoccupied, and I will see her now.”

  Halayn reared back for another refusal, but Kelyn lowered his head and glared like a ram challenging a rival. “Move,” he ordered, with an unspoken promise to move her himself if she didn’t step aside.

  This weary old woman was no Ulmarr. With jaw askew and eyes downcast, she relented. “Her Grace is in the garden. I will deliver you.”

  Kelyn raised a hand, bidding her stay put. “I know the way.” Halayn conceded, but no doubt she’d be watching from a window with half the household.

  The late sun fell ripe upon rows of budding roses and vines of lady’s lips. Bees drifted through the shrubs, raising a lazy drone. The petal-scented air carried a tinge of salt from the sea. A child’s high-pitched laughter came from deeper in the garden, and Kelyn froze amid the gravel path, listening. He hadn’t expected him to be here. Kelyn’s courage shriveled like a leaf plucked from the vine. Only the thought of Halayn’s narrowed eyes glaring at his
back, daring him to flee, spurred him on again.

  Rounding a curve in the path, he came to a low wall dividing the carefully trimmed roses from the wildflowers. There, under a swaying, silver thellnyth tree, a boy still unsteady on his legs tried to keep up with a yellow butterfly. His hair shown like white gold, and his round cheeks were flushed pink with exertion. Stumbling on his fat little feet, he brushed against the swaying stems and sent up a cloud of sun-bright insects. The butterfly landed on an orange cluster of honeyflower, just out of reach.

  Rhoslyn stooped to help him. She still wore a richly beaded gown of pink silk; she must’ve escaped to the garden fast once she dismissed her court. Expecting no more visitors, she had removed the pins from her hair. The heavy golden waves fell over one shoulder. Her finger poked at the butterfly and it took flight again. Her son squealed and reached for it as it fluttered past.

  Kelyn had never considered her beautiful before. She was just Rhoslyn, the haughty little girl he saw several times a year at court, the one he enjoyed playing pranks on because she became so indignant. He tried to see her with his brother’s eyes.

  A young nurse in a linen wimple rose from a bench, tapped Rhoslyn on the shoulder, and pointed in Kelyn’s direction. Rhoslyn stood abruptly. Even across the length of the flowerbeds, the astonishment was plain on her face, in the taut line of her limbs. She whispered to the nurse, ordering her, no doubt, to keep the child well away, for she picked him up and distracted him with a toy while Rhoslyn approached.

  The charge of a hundred heavily armed Fierans hadn’t frightened him so badly. Rhoslyn seemed as uneasy, however, fidgeting with her hair, forcing her chin up.

  “Your Grace,” he said, bowing his head and taking relief in the momentary escape from eye contact.

  “Congratulations, Commander, on your victory.”

  “Hardly mine alone.”

  “No. We lost many good men and women so I could speak those words.” She glanced out over the garden wall, toward the gulfs of sky above the sea, then she dispensed with the niceties. “What do you want, Kelyn?”

  He jumped as if he were a new recruit snapping a salute at his sergeant. Digging inside his cloak, he pulled out the stuffed puppy dog. “I thought I better return this.”

  “Wh—how did you—?” She snatched it from his hand. “He stole it! A child’s favorite toy. Why? Did he send you?”

  “Send me? I’m not at his beck and call, Your Grace. He convinced me that I ought to come. I confess, every mile of the journey was harder than the last. You have no idea.”

  “Don’t I?” She cast him a glare perfected first by her Aunt Halayn. “Every day, every day, there’s another rumor, another lie I have to tell. I heard one involving my tailor, imagine that. Another about a pirate ship and the entire crew. Captain Drael was furious when he heard a rumor involving him. I thought he’d challenge every citizen of Windhaven to a duel before I could convince him to let it go. And Kieryn, of course. The rumors always return to Kieryn. You’re lucky few knew you visited.”

  Kelyn feared she saw him squirming. Indeed, he didn’t think there was much those hazel eyes missed.

  “I thought the humiliation would kill me,” she added more softly. “Imagine holding court, hearing one plaintiff after another, and all the while their eyes judging, curious about who had won their way into the duchess’s bed, their mouths holding back sniggers of laughter. And I, having to ignore it all, conducting business as usual.”

  “I can imagine more than you may think.”

  “Can you? Perhaps. All the while, I hated him for it.” She glanced back at the nurse and the child who had continued their game of catching butterflies. “He’ll be a year old in a couple of weeks. Too young to carry the spite of the wretch who bore him. Monstrous and unjust, that’s the kind of mother I was. I pretended he didn’t exist. Do you know he went nearly seven months without a name?” Embarrassed, perhaps, she absently rubbed the scar under her chin. “He didn’t know who I was when I started spending time with him.”

  “What did you name him?”

  Rhoslyn’s fingers fidgeted with a section of peeling paint on the picket gate between them. “Well, I thought of naming him after my father, until he looked up at me one day. It wasn’t my father’s face I saw. It was yours. I named him Kethlyn.”

  Kelyn felt himself rocked on his feet, as if a great wind tried to blow him over. He clutched at the stones atop the wall.

  “Is that all right?” she asked.

  His voice seemed to have abandoned him. “The honor is undeserved.”

  “Is it?” There was nothing hard or forbidding left in her face. “Kelyn, this was all my doing. You have no reason to feel ashamed. In my anger, my grief, I lashed out and, well, I never expected …” She gestured in an offhand way over her shoulder. “You don’t have to share this burden. You might be relieved to learn that I’ve accepted a suitor.”

  Kelyn’s heart sank. “Who?”

  “Rorin of Westport.”

  “Rorin?” he shouted. Jabbing a finger toward the boy laughing among the swaying flowers, he declared, “I’ll be dead before I see that boy raised to be like Rorin.”

  Rhoslyn’s eyebrows leapt high. She crossed her arms and countered, “Would you rather him be like you?”

  That stole the wind from his sail. “No. I wouldn’t want that either.”

  Whatever Rhoslyn was expecting from him, humility was not on the list. Her retort died unspoken.

  “Have you set a date?”

  She shrugged. “We’ve tossed several around. He insists we wed soon. I keep putting him off.”

  Horrified, Kelyn glowered at the raked gravel between their feet. Rhoslyn’s toes were bare. She’d dyed the nails the color of blackberry juice. When did anyone see a duchess’s toes? Did Rorin know that she cared to dye them? She caught him smiling and pressed her skirt down.

  “If I made you an offer,” he asked, “what would your terms be?”

  “Terms? Terms! Look, mate, I don’t have to marry anyone at all. My son and I get along just fine without all these heroes trying to rescue us. You came here to propose marriage—don’t think I didn’t know what your real motive was—but you don’t even call me by name. A real business deal this proposal is to you and everyone else.” She flapped her hand in brusque dismissal, then hurried away along the path.

  “Rhoslyn!” Kelyn tugged at the gate, found the latch stuck and avenging its duchess, so he kicked the damn thing down and marched over it. He found Rhoslyn staring openmouthed at the quick ruin he made of the obstruction. Her hand darted up to hide a grin. “Don’t run from me,” he said, then remembered he’d once spoken similar words to another.

  After watching him squirm, abashed, she said, “I suppose it’s too much to expect us to love one another.”

  “Maybe.”

  She nodded, thoughtful. “For duty’s sake, then. I can’t condemn you for that.”

  “Rhoslyn, we grew up together. It’s not like we’re complete strangers. We might even get along.”

  Glancing at the flattened gate, she asked, “Like that?”

  “That was the gate’s fault.”

  She bit off a snicker and put on her business mask. “You’ll never be duke. Windhaven is mine and mine alone.”

  “I don’t want your damned Windhaven. Or your title. I have plenty of my own, thanks.”

  “Good. We can work out the rest later.” She started along the path between the firegrass and the lavender, abandoning Kelyn to a cloud of confusion. He had merely a moment to sort out what had just happened before Rhoslyn whirled and asked, “Do you want to meet your son or not?”

  He hurried to catch up with her.

  “Be prepared. He’s still teething,” she added. “That pretty uniform will get snot all over it.”

  Ah, the romantic days were gone then, eh? He shrugged. “Snot, men’s blood and bowels, I think I can handle it.”

  ~~~~

  Rhoslyn chose to be married far from the center
of the scandal, in Ilswythe’s quiet garden, under Alovi’s grand andyr tree. Preparations were made in a rush, and couriers were hired to dispatch invitations to every corner of the northwest. Halayn refused to attend; her excuse was that somebody had to remain at Windhaven and see that Evaronna didn’t fall apart in the duchess’s absence. “I’m not entirely sorry she didn’t come,” Rhoslyn confessed during their first night on the road. “I might actually have a moment’s peace.”

  The evening they arrived at Ilswythe, Alovi tried in vain not to cry when she learned her grandson’s name. After that, the two of them were nigh inseparable. Alovi shared her grandson reluctantly, but when she did, Rhoslyn toured the grounds with Kethlyn, bold and unashamed. The household knew well which Son of Ilswythe the duchess first intended to marry, and talk of the scandal had wormed its way into the walls. Maids whispering behind their hands and stares of the under-butlers enraged Kelyn, but Rhoslyn displayed vast grace by ignoring it all. She would not hide her son, not now that his father’s family had received him.

  After a couple of weeks, the entertainment that the household found in the scandal grew commonplace and hollow. The whispers diminished to a passing of harmless wind.

  Kelyn’s uncertainties were of another kind. They plagued him during quiet moments, day and night. Had Rhoslyn agreed to marry him because he was the image of Kieryn? Did she choose to be married in the garden because she had kissed Kieryn under the andyr tree? Was Etivva to perform the rites because Kieryn would have preferred it? In the night, would Rhoslyn whisper the wrong name? Kelyn had a dozen reasons to doubt her, and he feared he might regret his decision for the rest of his life.

  On the other hand, it wasn’t long before Kethlyn lost his fear of the towering knight with the war-scarred face. Halfway back to Ilswythe, the child let Kelyn hoist him into the saddle, where they rode contentedly for miles, till the boy fell asleep. Then, shortly after arriving home, Kethlyn saw him approaching down a long corridor, broke into a run, squawked, “Da!” and Kelyn knew it was all over. He could put up with anything, all his doubts about Rhoslyn’s secret motives and his own inability to love her. None of it mattered compared to his son’s happiness, his safety, his regard.