~~~~~~
It was a scene he never expected to see: his son, the greatest joy in his life, walking the path home with his favorite pet. They could almost, but not entirely, muffle the sound of their footsteps across the shell and gravel walk. Orson knew it disturbed them both, but if they stepped into the needles from the pines that lined the path, they would encounter the twigs he’d lain to crack under human weight. Another time they might have tried, but they had come with a guest. Sable’s hand on the back of his neck assured Orson the man was aware of next to nothing.
Orson had come to stand at the base of the porch when he heard the plane come in to land. To protect it from the winds that could tear across the island, the plane sat in a shelter that he and Sable had cleared from the woods when she returned with the knowledge of how to fly.
Of the five tenets he had taught her, the fifth was to know the way of all professions.
The fourth was to have no preferred weapon, to be familiar with them all. Even so, while splitting wood, she had shown her preference for the axe. It had not surprised him. Like the Cloitare, the axe was not subtle. It was not a weapon of warning with which to knock back the foolish. The axe did not tease and was in no way coy. When in motion, it allowed no room for quick change, and when it struck, it was heavy with a single intention. The redheaded scamp coming down his walk was a thin ruse for a dark purpose.
He was curious why she was disguised, but not entirely, as Marlow again. In the bright night, each step she took between the shadows of the trees on the snow confirmed his suspicion that she concealed no deceptive weapons, neither sticks in her hair, nor belt around her waist, and considering the exasperation of his son, he doubted any of the bracelets on her wrists were sharpened.
When they cleared the trees, Orson walked out to embrace his son. He said his name as was given at birth, Theodore, then held him strong with love and pride, and Theo returned it with equal affection. It had been nearly a decade since he had last been home, and the separation was a loss for them both.
Still holding Theo by the arms, Orson looked at Sable. She bowed low, taking the man in her grasp down as well. Tense muscles tightened under his hands making Orson wonder what disturbed his son more: that it was confirmed beyond all doubt now he had trained her, or that she was a queen and showing respect to the worst sort of traitor.
~~~~~~
The discomfort of his son continued. Theo watched as his mother assisted Sable in drugging the young lieutenant under his command completely unconscious, and while Sable whispered for Fallon’s compliance in swallowing the pills, it became clear to Theo that his mother also knew about the Cloitare’s murmuring secret.
His father pulled him away from the distressing scene, taking him back into the original vaulted chamber of the log and stone hunting lodge. Passing the drinks cabinet, Orson grabbed up two tumblers and a new bottle of Sierran voški and kept herding his son forward, farther from the duplicity and into the circle of the sitting room. On the edge of the cracked leather couch, Theo dropped his head into his hands to rub away the tension of his thoughts while his father sat on the carpet with his legs crossed, pulling from his jacket pocket a folding knife. Orson cut the lead seal from the neck of the bottle, then, returning the blade to his pocket, he poured with his braced hand before pushing the drink across the low table to his son.
“You look tired,” he said.
Theo lifted his head to take the tumbler. The smell of the place, the old leather, the chopped wood, the smoke, and then finally the drink, had Theo on the verge of relaxing, but his nerves were shot, his heart was angry, and his mind had been overturned. “Ever since that,” he pointed to where they left Sable, “that …, I don’t know what to call her, but ever since she was returned, there has not been a moment’s peace. And the last two days have destroyed my understanding of what is real.”
“It was not long after I learned about their ways I was called a traitor and had killed my dearest friend.”
After so many years and strong denials, it was clear: “They made you do it.”
“I have always maintained my innocence, because I am. The Cloitare killed him, but they used my hand.”
Theo looked to the sound of Sable speaking with his mother. His face was hard with the memory of every lost opportunity to kill her.
Orson said, “Know your enemy, Theodore. It will always remain the first and most important lesson in strategy.” But his son was tired, his expression for murder did not change. He was not yet the master he could be. Orson asked, “Who is your enemy?”
Theo felt like a child in his father’s eyes, but before he said anything to confirm it, he gave the question long, considerate thought. “My enemy is the enemy of the King.”
His father smiled and waited. It was the way he taught, and it could be infuriating, especially for the son, but Theo knew if he didn’t resist, if he calmly accepted there was more to learn, he would be rewarded with a significant insight. He broke it down silently in his mind: My enemy is the enemy of the King. The King’s enemy is the Cloitare. The Cloitare desire …? Control. My enemy will gain control by removing the King.
Sable’s motives did not fit the description. Theo’s face became resigned, looking more tired than before. He said for his father’s gratification, “Sable is not my enemy.”
Orson lifted his glass, saying before he drank, “You must ensure it remains that way.”
Theo returned his tumbler to the table. “It is time you told me what you know about my enemy, how they became your enemy, and why.”
~~~~~~
“When the Clementyne Dynasty asked the Cloitare for help in winning the War of the Nobles, at the very moment of their agreement, every future king became an enemy of the clergy, an adversary to be subjugated while the mothers concentrated power. The crown is not their only foe. The Cloitare are the enemy of the people, though neither may realize it. But mostly, the Cloitare have been the enemy of the future,” the master strategist wished he had seen it all as clearly when he was his son’s age. “The only concession I will allow them is it is not entirely their fault. They have spent the last four hundred years in a deliberate misunderstanding, the obfuscation of Master Aidan.”
Theo gently corrected his father, “Well, Aidan can at least account for the last twenty-odd years.”
“He can account for them all.” Orson was harsh with unspoken accusations.
“The man is how old?”
“The man …” Orson huffed a breath out while thinking. “The man must be nearing his late fifties by now.”
Theo puzzled over what meaning laid behind the inflection, and when he could make no sense of it, he said wearily, “In the best of times, I have no patience for riddles, and you know that. Tell me what you mean plainly.”
“I wish I could. What I know is what Sable will share, that the man, his body and flesh, is younger than me, but Master Aidan is very old. And I do not doubt he is a master.”
“Master of what?” Theo had never been sure.
“Sable, tell my son of what Aidan is a master.”
Sable may not have been his enemy, but the General had studied her as though she were. His father’s request met her as she entered the room and kept her pushed against its edge, walking the outer perimeter in slow avoidance. By her own admission, she would only divulge information when it was a threat to Remy, and the General could see her loyalties were under pressure.
Orson smiled apologetically to his son for the silence at his back. “Is it a secret again? Or are we just not telling Theo?”
As though her palms were dirty, Sable stopped to scrub her bare hands against the sides of her jeans. She gave her answer to the fire at the far end of the room. “Master of the mind. Master of travel. Master of creation. Master Architect of the Cloitare.”
While she deadpanned the achievements, Orson kept an appreciative grin on his son. “Aidan would be the most dangerous of them all if he were not so damned attached to the things he made.�
�� Halting her progression again, Orson asked Sable another question, “But he’s not very good at destroying his creations, is he?”
The long stretch of silence proved she wasn’t going to respond. She began walking again for the hearth when his father answered Theo himself, “He’s not. But no architect can build on land that has not been cleared.” His father was now clearly antagonizing her. “Can they, pet?”
She stopped closer to the fire to cast a defensive glance back. Her posture was full of warning.
Orson laughed at her and said, “We’ll come back to it. While you’re there, cut my lovely wife some kindling.” When he returned his attention to his son, it was clear his entertainment with riling his pet was over. “Sable is not the first rebellious nun I’ve encountered. There was another that came to me while I held much the same position as you with the king. But Callias Clement was no Remius. He was fully grey when he took the throne, and he didn’t have a clue what to do with it. The man had never been taught how to manage the army or the people, and he certainly didn’t know how to control the Cloitare. Decades before being crowned, he had a second youth with me while trying to avoid taking another wife that could give him children. I was a little older than Sable and he was about the same age as you when the Cloitare told him they’d annulled his marriage.”
This was not what history had written, and Theo was surprised. “He hadn’t asked for it?”
“Hell, no. He didn’t know they had done it till they dropped the documents in his lap with his father’s blessing. We spent a year looking for his wife, Carina, or ex-wife, or whatever she was by that point. The mothers had locked her up in a convent in Alena, and I was the fool charged with breaking her out, which is a whole other story. After that, we spent another four years with her dodging both his father and the clergy.” Orson raised his eyes with the memory. “Not only them but the teenaged bride with the wide childbearing hips.” He measured his hands to either side of his crossed knees. “Hell of a good time we were having until they caught up with us.”
“They have a way of quashing all the fun.” Sable was kneeling at the hearth.
“That they do,” Orson agreed.
In sensitivity to Berringer’s fear of her with weapons, Sable used the hatchet with small, controlled strikes, splitting a quartered log into thin fire-ready strips against a large circular stump on the stones.
“Callias was a good man, but a bit of a puss. He had no fight in him. Would do near anything to avoid conflict. All he wanted was to keep Carina and me near. He did the marriage thing and then dutifully hammered away at his new wife until she was pregnant. When she began to show, the King sent Callias off to represent Erentrude in the Continental War. The palace essentially didn’t see him, Carina, or me for another thirteen years, except once a year, Callias and I would go home for his son’s birthday.”
Theo gave the sardonic appearance of appreciating Callias’s virility, “And sired three more children.”
“Wide childbearing king-accommodating hips.” Orson chuckled to himself.
The story was about to take a sad turn and Orson was not eager to continue. He watched Sable place another log on the stump and gently split it, slicing it down until she had a pile of sticks. She originally had a habit of rolling the handle of every weapon over her hand with a flourish. It had been an unnecessary action when the purpose of picking up a blade is to cut. Her vaunting display was best left for entertainers, and he’d had to repeatedly knock the weapons out of her hands to show her the weakness. Lesson learned, she became methodical and precise with a sure flexible hand until the blade was committed to a strike, then she and the edge became fixed. Now she was closed, her movements furtive and suppressed.
He continued watching her for the cause so he could correct it. He was frowning for many reasons when he resumed speaking. “Callias was sixty-five when he was made king and sixty-five when I killed him.” Sable left the blade against the block, waiting for the worst of the story she already knew to be over. “The wayward sister I spoke of earlier had come to the palace convent from Alena and was known to me from the escapade in freeing Carina. The Cloitare had sent Sister Agatha specifically because we had a history. The mothers just couldn’t imagine after reeducation she would dare again to help me.” Orson swirled the voški in the tumbler and looked at no one. “Callias hadn’t been king for more than a month when Agatha brought me parchments from the convent’s library detailing the nature of the prophecy the nuns were awaiting from the Clementyne and Cloitare agreement.”
Turning her face to the fire, Sable left a curtain of braids hiding her features. Theo looked between her and his father, reading subtle signs of guilt and condemnation.
Orson shook his head to dispel his thoughts. “It’s not her fault.” He drank the voški while his expression changed to strong determination to explain to his son another part of the story Sable had long known. “The Cloitare have been waiting these last four hundred years on a great destroyer, the Mawan, Destroyer of Time.” Orson pointed at Sable. “The public knows her by three comparatively fluffy-bunny names, but the nuns don’t use those titles behind the double doors.”
“Catherine’s been swearing for seven years you had another title.”
Both men watched her motionless form and knew from experience she had no intention of responding. Orson spoke to her willful silence, “Sable is quite familiar with what the Cloitare expect from the Mawan, so to her I did not need to explain what Agatha told me, but I am hoping she will clarify it for you.”
When time had stretched to an uncomfortable length, the General opened his mouth to put a question to Sable, but his father signaled for him to wait. In the quiet stillness, Theo could hear water running through pipes under the house, his mother’s brisk movements in the kitchen, utensils clattering together under the faucet. The washing stopped and turned into the whisk of a broom against the floor and then the slosh of a mop against the tiles as his mother nervously cleaned.
Finally, Sable relented, saying, “It is quite self-explanatory.” She stood and put her back to the fire. “The Cloitare believe time refers to an era, and they most obviously do not want me to destroy the age of religion.”
“And Aidan?” Orson asked. “What does he wish destroyed?”
She gave her answer to the General. “His understanding is different. He is a master of time. I do not say this to insult your intelligence, but you cannot begin to conceive of what this means. Your experience is limited, far more limited than mine, and I scarcely comprehend it. I have fleeting glimpses of clarity, seeing time as finite and then again as infinite, as matter and then energy, as both, and even knowing this vacillation should be impossible, I believe between the two there exists something else, a space which Master Aidan is familiar.” Sable’s passionate explanation halted abruptly. She spoke now to both men. “If any could guess the will of Master Aidan, it would be me, and I would not dare, so let that give you pause before either of you try. But the desire of the clergy is base and obvious.” She told the General, “They have interpreted the revelations to mean the destruction of the realm so that the new age will belong exclusively to them. With a mother as queen, they will have consolidated their influence.” Then suddenly angry, she said, “The opportunity should never have been presented,” and in her fierce expression, the General was certain she was denouncing him.
The visual exchange between the two was strained and Orson didn’t want them at odds. He pulled his son’s attention back, telling him, “That is what Agatha showed me in the parchments, the coming of the Mawan and the expectation of absolute power. At the time, I had no idea what the Cloitare could do with their voice. I took the nun and the information to Callias, but that man,” Orson grimaced, holding his mouth tight against speaking his real thoughts. “You would think after thirteen years of being sent to every godforsaken war in the world to represent Erentrude, he wouldn’t fall apart to hear someone might want him dead. But that is exactly what he did. He shushed
us both with wild, terrified eyes, like someone might hear when the rooms were empty except for us. When I tried to show him the parchments, he fled behind the desk, telling me, ‘There’s not a thing we can do about it. Best that we forget it.’ But I rather liked the young heir, Remy’s father, and I saw no reason to pass this legacy onto him. Callias was royal, but I had a bad way of pushing him around, arguing with him to win. I wanted to make the parchments public, go to the media, and confront the Cloitare, but on this he was adamantly opposed. He had us in a whispering quarrel when the damnedest thing happened. We noticed Sister Agatha staggering drunk around the room. She had a hand to her head and was bent at the waist reaching out for something to get her steady. Callias became hysterical, whimpering that she’d been poisoned.” Orson shook his head at the logic and then furrowed his brow to say, “But she was sick. And she was terrified.”
Before she could turn back to the fire, the General saw a pained expression of empathy on Sable’s face.
“Then everything went to hell. Callias was behind the desk fainting to the floor,” Orson threw one hand in the air, “Agatha was hyperventilating,” he threw up the other, “I’m thinking they’re both entirely too delicate when the door opens and into the chaos come two rumbling mothers. God damnedest thing I have ever felt. I was weightless and didn’t know I was falling until I cracked my head on the arm of a chair. Even once I was down, I wasn’t certain which way was up because I couldn’t feel the floor. I was certain I was floating and was trying to get into a stable free fall, but there was no equilibrium to be found. And everything was white. Even when I thought I had closed my eyes, there was this stabbing blindness from too much light. Glaring, snow blind, white.
Sister Sable (The Mad Queen Book 1) Page 26
