by Brian Fuller
The fight ended rather sooner than the Dark Guard probably expected, though by their smiles they thought it rousing fun anyway. Kimdan managed to pick himself up to renew his advance only to have Gen smack him down doubly hard. The rest of the apprentices fared the same, though the Chalaine thought Gen laid off Volney and Gerand a bit. No one got a day off.
The Dark Guard availed themselves of the Chalaine’s healing talent to mend their charges’ broken fingers, collarbones, ribs, and many deep bruises. Gen stood on the field at attention, unmarked and unmoving, until Tolbrook gave him leave to go.
Perhaps Gen’s impressive performance in the contest or Kimdan’s ungentlemanly fuming afterward was what turned Fenna’s romantic purposes entirely toward the former. Unfortunately for all, the succeeding months’ brutal schedule provided little opportunity for casual time among friends. The Chalaine even heard her mother mention that she regretted not having an opportunity to sit down at a proper meal with Gen. While the first few weeks of Gen’s appointment saw him the topic of much conversation, his night post and limited appearances in public eventually let him fade into the background.
His name surfaced once, briefly. His clue about the fires had helped the city guard turn up evidence of the “faunurgy” in some woods outside of the city. They started to patrol them regularly, and during the whole summer, no other explosions or fires occurred, though no one was apprehended for the deeds. In place of fires, horrible messages scrawled in some animal’s blood were found on walls within the Damned Quarter. Each threatened the Chalaine’s death in some new way. This curtailed her trips outside the castle walls, and though Chertanne was given warning, he didn’t heed it, continuing his nightly revelries whenever and wherever he pleased.
The betrothal loomed closer with each setting of the sun, and the Chalaine couldn’t decide whether she wanted it to come quickly or not. On the one hand, she wanted it over. On the other, she would be betrothed to the most repugnant man she had ever had the misfortune of knowing. Since betrothed she must be, she settled on wanting it to come quickly. In her mind, she held a secret hope that Chertanne would change, that the eventual weight of his responsibilities would sober him, both in mind and body, and unshackle an imprisoned nobility. She hoped that when he saw her unveiled, he would dismiss the concubines as inadequate and find a real affection for her that transcended his physical desire.
The more she thought and the closer the betrothal, the more her sorrow eroded all handholds of hope. She rarely cared to leave her room or even get dressed, finding every entertainment empty of enjoyment. With two weeks left before the “blessed day,” as everyone else called it, she found it hard to sleep, the frightening double dream plaguing her over and over again as if to compel her to some choice or belief. But still, she couldn’t fathom what it meant, and in those sleepless nights she finally found the time and will to read the book Chertanne had hurled at Gen to wake him in the library so many weeks before, His Master’s Secret Law. And after the first few chapters, she had difficulty setting it aside, though she found the story unsettling in the extreme.
The story, written by one Sarvain Obelanne, told of a servant of an apparently upright and pious Lord. The Lord kept up appearances of goodness to everyone—his wife, his children, his peers, his Pureman—to everyone but his servant. The servant, a wretched, sick man low in the ranks of nobility, oddly commanded his Lord’s trust because he seemed so inconsequential to everyone. But his Lord took him everywhere, on the trips that he told his family were to care for certain merchant dealings of his that were, rather, trips of riotous pleasure in far countries. The servant was present as the Lord lied, cheated, and philandered.
But in his own country and in his own house, all believed the Lord good, none suspecting in the least the man’s secret law, his own way of living different than the life he professed to everyone else. When his Lord went to bed, the servant nearly blinded himself in the dim candlelight to record every name, every drink, every coin, and every word. As time wore on, some close to the family found evidence of his Lord’s other life and questioned the servant threateningly about it, but he would say nothing, ever faithful, ever silent, even in the face of irrefutable evidence.
When the master died, the family asked the servant to perform a eulogy for the master he’d long served. In the last chapter of the book he gave it, long, honest, and damning, naming every bastard that could lay claim on his estate, every man the Lord had cheated and owed, every debt he had run up gambling and drinking. The effect of the servant’s careful record keeping was the ruin of his Lord’s estate, his wife and children impoverished and left beggars. The servant killed himself by poison afterward, joining his master in death.
When the Chalaine finished the book, she felt perplexed. Why had Gen lauded the book so highly? Merely to irritate Chertanne? For herself, she could not recommend it. It left her depressed and upset, though she couldn’t decide which bothered her worse, the Lord’s fraud or the servant’s final act of betrayal, an act which hurt the innocent family rather than the one who deserved the punishment. The Chalaine had hoped the charming wife and children would escape the devastating knowledge of their husband’s and father’s depravity, but unlike most stories she liked to read, the ending to this story set her to serious thinking rather than pleasant dreaming.
She returned the book to the library next morning, but the story so possessed her that she turned it over in her mind all day, trying to guess at what it might mean and why Gen apparently thought so highly of it. She had assumed that Gen read books about fighting and war, but this book hadn’t one sword stroke in it and was certainly meant to discomfit the reader.
For the first time she could remember, she itched for Gen to come on duty, bursting with questions for him. So anxious was she, that when he did emerge from the maze and dismiss Jaron, she didn’t think to greet him properly, instead letting the questions run out all on top of each other.
“Why do you like that book? I could hardly make sense of it! What is Obelanne trying to say with such an awful ending? I suppose it’s supposed to be symbolic of something or teach something, and I’ve had some ideas. What do you think?”
“I suppose you’re talking about His Master’s Secret Law?” Gen asked, calm tone a counterpoint to her own babbling.
“Yes,” she said, settling herself.
“Which question do you want me to answer first?”
“The first.”
“Why do I like it? One reason is that it was one of the first books my master had me read once I learned to read well. He assigned me to read it to teach me an early lesson. The lesson itself is the other reason I cherish it.”
“What is the lesson?” the Chalaine asked, wondering why Shadan Khairn would have his student read such a book.
“I will do what my master did to me and reverse the question. What do you think it means?”
“I admit that I’ve thought a great deal on it today, and I keep thinking back to Chertanne that day in the library. I see him as the Lord of the story and Dason as the servant who follows him around silently everywhere. I suppose I thought you were saying to Chertanne that Dason would reveal his secrets one day to his detriment. But now that I say it, it sounds rather inadequate for an explanation.”
“If that’s what it means to you, then that’s a good enough lesson.”
“But not the right lesson.”
“Obelanne did not leave behind anything explaining what he wanted learned from the story. For all we know, he wasn’t trying to teach anything at all.”
“But there is something to be learned, or it wouldn’t bother me so much,” the Chalaine pressed, feeling exasperated. “What was the lesson your master wanted you to learn from it? Surely he told you something.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Then what!?” The Chalaine would swear he was teasing her.
“I will tell you, Holiness, but I must first explain that I do not see the story as symbolizing Chertanne, at least not
in the way you were thinking. My master taught me that the servant, the Lord, and his family are really parts of one person. The servant is the conscience, sickly and silent from his master’s abuse, though still faithful. He is always there, recording every deed and misdeed. The family is what is good about a person. The servant’s exposition of his Lord’s deeds at the end merely represents the inevitable time when the curtains over our memories and deeds are thrown aside and the dark volume of secrets is opened to the light. . .”
“Destroying whatever was good about ourselves,” the Chalaine said, understanding the tack of Gen’s explanation.
“Or perhaps differently said, degrading what was good to ourselves, or what good we leave behind, by enslaving it to the debt incurred by our dishonorable actions,” Gen added.
“What is the Secret Law, then?”
“Whatever law you invent for yourself, the law you really judge yourself by. The law that makes you feel bad for doing something, not because someone else knows you did it, but because you know it was wrong. Or conversely, the law that lets you feel good about doing things a public law says you shouldn’t.”
“Now you are referring to Chertanne, I think.”
“I assure you I am not. The lesson applies to everyone, though some fit my master’s explanation of the story more snugly than others.”
“One more question,” the Chalaine continued after thinking for several moments. “Why would Shadan Khairn have you read such a book? What does all this talk of conscience and law have to do with training someone to be a killer?”
“I do not consider myself a killer, and I never said the Shadan had me read it.”
“He was your master, wasn’t he?”
“In the slave and master sense, yes.”
“If it wasn’t him that had you read it, who was the other master?” The Chalaine’s curiosity was piqued, and she felt ashamed; she had not thought of the life Gen must have lived before Aughmere invaded his country. But just as Fenna had told her would happen, an immediate wall went up between her and Gen.
“Perhaps we should talk of it some other time, Holiness. I should concentrate on my duty. These are perilous times, and no doubt the Ilch is working against the betrothal. I beg leave to focus on the task at hand. You should probably enter your chambers—for safety.”
The Chalaine had half a mind to force the matter, but Gen still intimidated her, and she backed down.
As the next two weeks limped by, the story remained with her, as did her conversation with Gen, which impelled her to rethink her earlier assessment of his nature. The frequency of public appearances in the Great Hall increased steadily, and she spent more time with Chertanne, taking his arm, talking superficially with him, curtseying to him, laughing at his jokes, at least the ones she could laugh at without offending her conscience. Listening to him and watching him convinced her that he had slit the throat of his conscience-servant and buried the body and the record books in the cellar a long time ago.
The day of the betrothal finally came, and she rose that morning with a knot in her stomach and a headache that started in her shoulders and throbbed up through her neck and skull. Eldwena, Fenna, and her mother told her over and over again that most women felt nervous on their betrothal day, but the Chalaine thought that only some few felt so for the same reasons as she.
She had nothing to do for the entire day until the afternoon when she would be primped and dressed for the evening ceremony. They wouldn’t allow her outside the Great Hall today until the trip to the Chapel, which meant the whole of her entertainments had to be found in either her room, the indoor gardens, or the library. Out of kindness to Fenna, the Chalaine agreed to go with her to the library to see if they could encounter Gen so her handmaiden could work at him a little more. Jaron trailed along behind, face bemused. He was well aware of Fenna’s quest for Gen’s attention and enjoyed their plotting from a distance.
But when they arrived, Gen had already fallen asleep on “Gen’s couch,” as Obard called it, embracing his sword in his usual fashion. The lack of books on the floor showed he had gone straight to sleep rather than reading first, and Fenna was a little disappointed. Two scullery maids skulked around the shelves of books, whispering and giggling, minds on anything but reading. Jaron scowled at them, and they scampered off, leaving the library empty save for the four of them and Pureman Obard.
“Perhaps we should read a little,” the Chalaine suggested. “I need something to take my mind off . . . things.”
After getting some recommendations from Obard, they both settled in on the couch opposite Gen, and despite the calm and quiet, the Chalaine had difficulty concentrating. If only Chertanne had some redeeming quality she could hang on to. She fancied herself spoiled by years of association with men of quality, only the best, chosen to guard her. She wondered if regular women leading normal lives had many good choices of men or were forced to accept the hand of men who only sought to please themselves.
A quiet groan from Gen ended any pretense at reading altogether. Everyone turned their attention to him, faces concerned and curious. Gen gripped the hilt of his sword so intensely that his knuckles whitened, and on his face smooth calm was replaced with sadness. A tear ran down a jagged line of scars on his cheek, and he calmed, grip relaxing.
“We should wake him,” the Chalaine suggested, feeling pity. “He’s obviously in some nightmare.”
Fenna put her book down and walked toward him.
“Don’t get too close, Lady Fairedale,” Jaron warned. “He is quick with the blade. Do not startle him from sleep.”
The Chalaine couldn’t be sure her handmaiden even heard the suggestion. Her concentration stayed on Gen. Kneeling by him, she placed her hand gently on his, and at her touch, his eyes snapped open and his face went back to its usual expressionless state. He looked at Fenna, then raised his hand to his face to feel the wetness.
“Are you feeling well, Gen?” Fenna asked softly. “I think you were dreaming.”
Gen pushed himself to a sitting position, concentrating for a moment before standing and buckling his sword belt. “I am well, Lady Fairedale. I thank you for your concern.” The Chalaine couldn’t believe how quickly he could shed emotion. “I should take my rest in my quarters rather than the library. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I will see you both this evening. Chalaine, Miss Fairedale, Jaron.” He bowed and left quickly. Fenna watched him go, and the Chalaine saw frustration dawn on her face.
“He will tell me nothing,” she complained quietly. “How can I love such a mystery?”
The Chalaine came to her handmaiden and lifted her by the hand, hugging her gently. The Chalaine wanted to tell her to forget Gen, to love Kimdan as she always had, and be happy, but she couldn’t. Instead, she shared Fenna’s curiosity. Gen kept a lot of himself locked away, and the Chalaine realized she had judged her quiet protector too harshly and in the wrong light.
“Don’t worry too much, Miss,” Jaron soothed, oddly affectionate. “We all know Gen suffered much pain at Shadan Khairn’s hand in his homeland. The pain is yet too near for him to say much. Time will soften the edge and loosen his tongue. Before you know it, you won’t be able to shut him up.”
Fenna smiled and wiped her eyes, giving Jaron a thankful hug. The Chalaine could see he felt awkward, and she couldn’t help but smile. Jaron, a veteran soldier, would have preferred a room full of Uyumaak than the overt gratitude of a young woman.
The rest of the day, the Chalaine spent walking and conversing with Fenna in the gardens and the hallways. They saw Chertanne once, evading him before he noticed their presence. Just seeing him again put the Chalaine in poor spirits, and after taking lunch on the balcony in the Great Hall with her mother, she retired to her chambers and napped before starting preparations for the betrothal.
Later, after two hours of grooming and dressing, the Chalaine willed the Walls to show her the courtyard. Two thick lines of people gathered from the Great Hall to the Chapel with candles and lant
erns, forming a broad avenue of light down which she and Chertanne would ride on a white horse. It was the first night of autumn, and those gathered bundled themselves in cloaks and hats against the chill. A wind would gust from time to time, blowing leaves from the castle gardens about and extinguishing any flame not protected by some device. In spite of these inconveniences, the people smiled and laughed, festive and anxious.
The Chalaine wished she could feel the same. While not the formal bond of marriage, the betrothal was as binding as the marriage vow, and her bond to Chertanne, her duty, gave her no happiness. Now that the time had come, she barely felt alive, an emotional rigor deadening her spirit. From somewhere, she knew, she would need to call forth the vitality to survive the week of joint feasting and joint appearances that would follow the betrothal, but now, with Chertanne waiting, that source of strength was distant and unseen.
Fenna’s presence comforted her, the young handmaiden humming to herself as she pushed and prodded wayward curls in the Chalaine’s hair, hair that no one would see because of the all-covering shroud she wore. Fortunately, that same veil would hide the unhappy face that stared back at her when she looked in the mirror. The betrothal dress was a formless, loose fitting white gown sown from a silky material that would do her little good against the cold; for that, a heavier cloak, also bleached white, had been provided for her warmth.
“There,” Fenna said, putting the brush on the table, “all done. Let’s get you veiled and wrapped and you’ll be ready.”
