by Glenda Larke
He had no idea what she meant, but he extracted it from the bambu and placed it in her palm. She gazed down at it, touched it with a finger, and then handed it back. “I think I’m right. I touched the feather circlet too. That necklet was designed to stop the development of sorcery. To weaken the power.”
“Yes, that’s what we were told.”
She held up the tiny piece of feather. “This is far more potent and versatile. You weren’t, however, told what it was for?”
“No.”
“But you’ve used one to bring Sorrel back from certain death, and another as part of our successful attack on Valerian, a third gave you the connection to your sea eagle, and a fourth took you to a hidden shrine, is that correct?”
He nodded.
“All powerful and producing very different outcomes, all of which ended well.”
He nodded again. “But we weren’t told how to activate them.”
“Didn’t seem to matter, did it?”
“No.”
“I am going to insist that you use these as soon as possible, one on each of the twins. My power to sense the truth tells me these are of far more use than the pretty gold-feather circlets the twins now wear. Those will weaken sorcery. These have the power to burn the sorcery out of the twins.”
“Can you guarantee they won’t kill them?”
“No one can guarantee that. Their power is nascent because they are so young. Their power is further diminished because they wear the necklets. Now is the time to attack that weak sorcery. I am ordering you to do it.”
“You don’t have the authority.”
“You’re still my witan. I want to make something quite clear: we cannot risk another sorcerer. We especially cannot risk a Lowmian Regal having that evil inside him. I want your word that you will use these tiny feather pieces as soon as possible.”
“Or else?”
“Don’t make me tell you what I would do. Saker, surely you understand what is at stake?”
For a third time, he nodded. He took the feather from her and placed it back in the bambu.
“Do I have your promise?”
“Yes.”
She waited in silence, regarding him.
He raised his eyes to meet her gaze. “I love Piper. There is nothing I have seen in her that tells me she will grow up to be a sorcerer.”
“That doesn’t mean much. What I want to hear from you is that you would prefer to see her dead than to see her grow up to be one.”
He winced. “Yes,” he whispered finally. “I would.”
“Good. Now there’s one more thing. Sir Herelt Deremer has arrived from the battlefield. He wants to meet you, and I would like you to speak to him.”
“I’m not much interested in talking to him.”
“He owes you an apology, if nothing else.”
He waved a hand in a gesture of surrender. “All right. Later. I have something more I want to talk to you about, too—”
“See Herelt first. He’s in the library. Come back here afterwards.”
He blinked, surprised at the abruptness of her tone, but shrugged and left the room to do as she asked.
He found the Lowmian nobleman standing at the window looking out. “Fritillary tells me you have something to say to me?”
Deremer turned, but stayed by the window. “Yes, Thank you for coming.”
“I can’t imagine what you have to say, unless it’s that you’re sorry for the death of the eagle.”
Deremer blinked, taken aback. It had obviously not occurred to the man that the death of a bird could have any meaning. “No. I wanted to apologise for trying to kill you in Dortgren. And give you an explanation.”
“I’m not sure I care enough to hear it. Va-faith believes in redemptive behaviour, and you certainly have done much to bring an end to the Fox family and their sorcery. I’m willing to leave the matter there. After all, I’m alive.” Pity I can’t say the same for all the twin babies and Shanny Ide and Prelate Loach and all those others at the Seminary of Advanced Studies in Ustgrind…
“Spoken like a witan, indeed.”
He sighed inwardly. Actually, he thought he’d sounded more like a pompous rattler. A Prime should be more forgiving. “There is one thing I’m curious about. How did you know who I was that night? I was calling myself by another name, it was dark, and I didn’t even know we’d met before. Yet you called me Rampion.”
“We hadn’t met before, no. But your face was familiar to me from your Grundorp University days, when I took a discreet interest in your career. I knew who you were the moment I clapped eyes on you again in that village. Of course, one of my spies had already told me you were in Lowmeer, working with the Seminary of Advanced Studies, so seeing you there in the midst of a Horned Plague outbreak was hardly a shock.”
He frowned, puzzled. “From my university days? I know you were one of the university’s benefactors, but why the sweet cankers would you remember my face? Why me?”
“I knew your mother at Oakwood University, back when I was a student there, along with Fritillary Reedling and Valerian Fox.”
He knew what he was going to hear then, with ice-cold clarity. The one thing that had never crossed his mind. He wanted to turn and leave the room and never return. Instead he picked up a plain wooden chair from the corner and sat on it back to front, so that he had something to grip in front of him to stop his hands trembling. “Go on,” he said and marvelled at his calm.
“The Dire Sweepers liked to keep an eye on all members of the Fox family. Valerian’s father, Harrier Fox, was still alive then. At the time, we didn’t know as much as we should have, but the Foxes had always been suspect. So they sent me, a young student from Grundorp, to keep a watch on Valerian when he enrolled at Oakwood. I met Fritillary there, right at the beginning of what was to be a brilliant career, but not yet possessing her witchery. She and Fox loathed each other. I don’t know how or why that started, but I suspect she had the edge on him academically and he didn’t like that. Especially as she was a woman, and someone from an undistinguished farming family. A nobody.”
He hesitated then, as if he didn’t quite know how to proceed with his tale. In spite of his antipathy towards the man, Saker was intrigued.
“I always did like strong women,” Deremer said at last. “Our family is famous for women of stature and accomplishment. My mother was strong-minded, proud of her intelligence and learning, and Fritillary was like that too. And of course she had more than her fair share of ambition. I admired that. We became lovers.”
Saker couldn’t stop the astonishment registering on his face.
Fritillary and Deremer? A Pontifect and the head of the Dire Sweepers. Fobbing damn. When he realised his mouth was hanging open, he quickly shut it.
“You’re surprised?” Deremer pulled up a chair, although he sat on it the right way around. He tapped his long thin fingers on his knees. “We were just young people, living with the intensity of the young. We told each other it meant nothing more than the satisfaction of a need, and a way of saving money. Sharing a room was cheaper, and my father kept me on a short leash financially. He thought it built character.” He snorted. “Character! A Deremer!”
Saker said nothing and maintained a blank expression.
“Iris Sedge worked in the tavern. No, let’s call it what it was. A student alehouse. Not nearly as respectable as a tavern. She was vivacious, pretty, bright, but not at all academic or ambitious like Fritillary.” He paused, as if he was remembering. “Exact opposite, really. I’m not sure why she and Fritillary became so friendly, except that everyone liked Iris. Her Shenat parents – farmers from the hills – had wanted her to marry a clodhopping fellow called Robin Rampion. Instead, she’d run away to Oakwood. She was a free spirit, true Shenat in many ways.”
He paused again, and stilled the drumming of his fingers. “Do you want to hear this? Fritillary asked me to tell you anything you want to know about your parents. But it’s your choice, not mine. All I
can say is this: you’ll get what I think is the truth. I owe you that much.”
“I want to know everything that you know.” He wasn’t sure he would believe it all, but he wanted to hear it.
“Fritillary said you would. Don’t blame me if it’s not palatable.” He waited, but Saker said nothing, so he continued. “Most of the alehouse girls earned extra money by bedding the students. Iris didn’t. She wasn’t like that, not at all. She had a knack of charming everyone, and when she refused them they not only accepted the rejection, they loved her for it, even as they kept trying. So there we were: Fritillary and me, lovers but not in love. And Iris, tantalising Iris, flirting with everyone, and apparently unobtainable. We might have gone on like that until we went our separate ways – except we were all so young and foolish and everything spun out of control. To make the story short: Iris and I fell in love.”
He sighed. “It was clay-brained. I wasn’t free to marry whom I pleased! I was a Deremer, born to be a Dire Sweeper, and we could only marry people who understood what we were doing, and agreed with it. People brought up to do the unthinkable. To kill babies. We married within the Sweeper families. Always. And there I was, completely blind-sided by a deep and abiding love. I knew then that I’d never love anyone else.”
Saker sat motionless, his certainty of what was coming like a stone in his gut, weighing him down. He wanted to leave the room, to say, No! I don’t want to hear this! Not now, not ever! Instead he remained unmoving, his hands gripping the back of the chair.
“She was a remarkable woman, your mother. She made everyone around her happy. I’ve never met anyone else with that capacity. Of course, our feelings for one another had a bitter side. It hurt Fritillary deeply. She and Iris were close. It was a betrayal of her by both of us. There were huge arguments, bitter recriminations. Fritillary did forgive Iris in the end, but not me. Never me.”
Saker still said nothing, and after a long silence Deremer took up the tale again. “Va knows how it would have ended if Iris hadn’t suspected she might be pregnant. She didn’t tell me, but she did tell Fritillary. It was almost the end of the university semester and we were all supposed to be heading off in different directions.
“Fox was transferring to another university. My cousin was going to take over the spying on him there. I was recalled home, unaware of Iris’s condition. I looked for her to tell her I had to go, but she’d already left for her farm. I returned to my family and told my father I wanted to marry Iris. Va knows what I thought I was doing. Any wife of mine would find out about the Dire Sweepers, and that would have devastated Iris. She could never have lived with that knowledge. I never let her see that side of me.”
There was another long silence before he continued.
“Iris had a pragmatic nature. She knew I came from a rich family, titled. She wanted me to be free to choose our future and she wanted me to know that it was my choice. Before I left Oakwood, she’d given a letter to Fritillary for me, telling me she was pregnant. She returned to her parents without saying goodbye and waited to hear from me. When she didn’t, she married Robin Rampion. Gave birth to a boy.”
“Me.”
“Yes. You are my son.”
“Forgive me if I don’t regard that news with unalloyed joy. I can’t think of anyone I would less rather call my sire.”
“Can’t say I blame you. Do you want the rest of the story?”
“There’s more?”
“A lot.”
“Go on.”
“I was hurt. I never did get the letter. I didn’t know about the pregnancy. I thought she’d tired of me. I told my family the affair was over and I’d do what they wanted. Life went on. I tried to get over Iris.
“Three years later, I returned to Oakwood with my father and one of my brothers on Dire Sweeper business. There had been rumours of an outbreak of the Horned Death in the Shenat Hills. After we’d dealt with that, I couldn’t resist searching for Iris. I still ached for her. After finding out she’d married Robin Rampion, I sent a messenger to her with a note, asking her to meet me in Oakwood on a certain day, at the alehouse. Va knows what I hoped for: I don’t. She never turned up. I waited three days and then went home. Tried again to forget her.”
Saker frowned, puzzled, unable to imagine where all this was going.
“Years later,” Deremer continued, “my brother was badly injured. On his deathbed and feeling guilty – which is odd, as acknowledging guilt was something that was deliberately omitted from our upbringing – he told me how he and Father had intercepted my message to Iris, read it, and sent it on its way. Afraid of what she knew, they killed her on the way to meet me.”
Saker closed his eyes. He wanted to lash out, hurt someone, something. No, not anyone, just this man. His father.
His mother, murdered.
He damped down the rage. Her death was hardly Herelt Deremer’s fault.
He took a deep breath, unclenched his hands from around the rungs of the chair back. “You still didn’t know I was your son? When did you find out?”
“Fritillary told me recently.”
“So, if you didn’t know I was your son when I was at Grundorp University, why did you take an interest in me?”
“Your name, of course. Rampion. I realised you were Iris’s son.”
Rage bubbled. “Yet in Dortgren you were quite prepared to kill Iris’s only child?”
Deremer looked away, unable to meet his gaze. “Yes, I was, for what I imagined to be the greater good. As I say, regret, guilt, compassion – Deremers aren’t supposed to possess any of that. Would I have done it differently if I’d known you were also my son? Possibly. I don’t have any others…”
He’d rarely felt so repulsed. “Va help you, Deremer, for I cannot.”
Sir Herelt gave a twisted smile. “I wish Va would. But there’s no help for me, except to spend the rest of my life trying to be a decent human being. I’m not sure I know how. Sometimes I even wonder – what we did: were we really always wrong? A lot of people would have died if we hadn’t killed all those twins. The premise we acted on was incorrect, but the result was often beneficial. Many of them were already infected by the Foxes’ ‘Horned Plague’.”
“Except you also killed innocent twins who’d never had contact with a Fox. Or you persuaded others to do it for you.”
Deremer inclined his head, acknowledging that truth.
Saker stood up and replaced the chair where it belonged. “The one question I’d like answered is this: why did Fritillary not give you my mother’s letter at the time?”
“Ask her.”
“Oh, I will.” She fobbing lied to me, the harridan! He hid the bitter intensity of his rage beneath what he hoped was a calm exterior. “I don’t know what to say. All my life, I dreamed of finding a parent who wasn’t Robin Rampion. Someone who was going to swoop down and take me away from that wretched farm and care for me and about me. The nearest I ever got to that was Fritillary. I need to think about this.”
“I’m sorry – sorry for everything.”
Saker left the room without replying. Once out in the passage, he leaned against the wall. Thoughts hurtled through his head, colliding and coalescing. Gradually his pounding heart slowed.
His mother hadn’t abandoned him. She’d been murdered. His father was a man who’d made a career out of slaughtering newborn babies, a man from a family who’d propped up the foul line of the Vollendorn Regals for generations. And Fritillary had known.
What did that make him? Beggar him speechless, if the Deremers had known of his existence, he might have been removed from Robin Rampion’s care and brought up as a Dire Sweeper. He might have ended up with all the same murderous history and all the guilt of Sir Herelt.
He peeled himself away from the wall and returned to the room.
Herelt looked up in surprise.
“I’m glad I was never brought up a Deremer,” Saker said. “I’m glad I never had the choices that you had to make, again and again. I f
eel sorry for you, and sorrier still for my mother. You apologised just then – but there was no need. You shouldn’t waste any sympathy on me for the life I was left by circumstance. I had the easier road to travel, by far. Be glad of that, for I am.”
Soberly, they regarded each other across the expanse of the room. Sir Herelt nodded. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Go with Va, Saker.”
“Va be with you.” He hesitated slightly before adding, “Father.”
When Saker returned to Fritillary, he thought her unnaturally still and pale.
“So,” he said without preamble, “my real father is a monster from a family that has probably killed as many innocent people over generations as all the Foxes put together. And my mother was murdered by my grandfather and my uncle. That’s quite a family history.”
“I didn’t know that last. Not until recently.”
“Even so, the woman I have looked up to all my life kept the secret of my birth from me and was also at one time my father’s lover.”
He was used to the way she paced when agitated, so the stillness now imposed on her by her injury appeared unnatural. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair until her knuckles were white as if she strained to rise.
“What do you want me to tell you?” she asked.
“The truth. All of it. Then maybe I can just throw it away, forget it, move on.” After all, I’ve already sold the rest of my life to a king and agreed to do possibly dangerous magic upon a child I adore more than my own life…
“What can I say? Herelt was a very charming man, once. Rich, polished, handsome – someone I would not have expected to look at me once, let alone twice. I was a novice Shenat cleric from a farming village, overly tall, with no polish, no money, no witchery, no connections, no sponsor – nothing but my intellect and my ambition. I wasn’t even a cleric at heart. I took on a noviciate because the Pontificate paid my way through university. I always fully intended to refuse final ordination.”
Oak and acorn, is there any end to the surprises?
“Sorry, I’m wandering off the point. Herelt did look at me – and he desired. That was intoxicating. I’d never had a man attracted to me, let alone one like him. There was an aura about him. He was dangerous. He was also generous, thoughtful, totally fearless. It’s easy now to wonder how I couldn’t see through the veneer to the darkness beneath.”
