Essalieyan Chronicles 04 - The Weapon (2 page)

“Is this hall secure?” he asked as she rose.

“We have not the soldiery you have at your disposal,” she replied quietly. “Nor the wizards. But inasmuch as it can be, Lord Breton, it is.”

His eyes were already roving the vaulted ceilings; torchlight flickered a moment across the dark of his eyes, reflected there.
Caught there
, she thought,
as if he had swallowed it in his youth.
She knew the Mother’s pity then, but was wise enough to hide it; his father, the previous

—and very dead—Lord Breton, had been a famously cruel man.

And Lord Breton had decided, in the end, to abide by the life his father had chosen for him.

He had learned fear first, and when he had passed beyond it, he had never forgotten the price fear exacted. Fear was the tribute he desired; fear gave him a measure of power.

But no peace, no security.

He turned to the guards at his back; they were perfect in every way. Silent, grim, obedient, they responded to this slight gesture, and turned from the hall. He met her gaze, and his own flickered across the exposed backs of the most trusted of her servants.

She understood the command in his glance. “Leave us,” she said quietly.

They rose, not as perfect in their discipline as the soldiers of the Baron. But they offered no argument. When they were gone, he turned to her. “Mother’s Daughter,” he said coldly. “I have granted you willingly what few Barons have chosen to grant even greater temples than yours. I have seen the worship of your goddess spread across my cities and my towns, and I have done little indeed to stop it, although I, as the rest of the Barons, have little use for the gods.”

She said nothing.

His smile was thin. “You are in the prime of your power. I have seen it before. I have also seen the decline of such power. Age, in the end, will leave you bereft; will you pass willingly from the halls that you rule?” Before she could answer, he lifted a hand. “They are words,” he said, “no more.” He stepped toward her, and she saw the mud leave the soles of his boots. “I do not understand you. I believe that you feel you understand me. And perhaps you do. I have let you spend your life upon my people in return for services that the mages cannot render me, and I am satisfied with our bargain. I have given you those who have chosen to break my edict; I have

killed them, in your stead, so that your hands might remain bloodless. I have seen your servants,” he added, “and they do not all bear the blood of your Mother; there are those who would raise hand against killers; those who would rise up to the status of executioner.

“But you keep them contained, and they are protected while they serve in your name.” “In the name of the Mother,” she said at last.

“Oh, indeed.” He paused; his hands slid behind his back and he stood there, staring at her, the harsh lines of his face tightening. “I am not certain that you will be a suitable guardian,” he said a last.

It was not what she expected to hear. It was, in fact, probably the last thing she expected to hear.

* * *

When he had first taken power over the corpse of his father—a phrase that was not exactly literal, as there wasn’t
enough
left of his father to technically be called a corpse—he had come to the temple, bleeding, burned. Twenty years ago, and she remembered it still. She had been a simple novice, albeit golden-eyed.

The Mother’s Daughter of that time had offered him the respect of obeisance in front of the congregation that had gathered—that still gathered, huddling now in their pews—before the Mother’s altar.

Skin dark with ash and sweat that he had not bothered to remove, he had gazed at them all, hawk to their rabbit; she had watched, from the doors that led to the nave, thinking that he might destroy the service to demand the healing that was his by right of power. Thinking, if he were not granted it, that he might destroy more. He certainly looked, to her practiced eye, as if he were in need of healing.

But he had confounded that expectation. Into the spreading, uncertain silence, he had walked as if he owned the temple. “I am the Baron Breton,” he said, and the exultation in his smile did not quite penetrate the quiet dignity of those words.

The Mother’s Daughter bowed. She rose, but not quickly, and moved to stand by the altar, placing her palms against its surface.

“You have not flourished in the reign of my father, but you held your own. I respect that, Mother’s Daughter. I desire your company; I will tour my city before the waning of the day.” He paused for a moment, and then his gaze crested the bowed heads of the men, women, and

children who were wise enough not to meet it. But Emily Dontal, golden-eyed novice, was not so wise, and she met those dark eyes beneath those singed, bleeding brows, and almost forgot to move.

“Who is the novice who attends you, Mother’s Daughter?”

The Mother’s Daughter said nothing; he had expected that, but his lips thinned.

No
, she thought. Seeing him, understanding now that he desired a death to mark the beginning of his reign, to mark his prominence. She had stepped forward, ignoring the gaze of the Mother’s Daughter to who she owed both service and obedience. The latter she forsook for the former.

“I am Novice Emily Dontal,” she said, bowing. Bowing low. She might have knelt, but she

thought if she did she would never rise. “You are golden-eyed,” he replied. “I am the Mother’s.”

“Good. You are the first of your kind—with the exception of the Mother’s Daughter—that I have seen in the temple, and I have had occasion to visit during my youth. You will accompany us as well.”

“Novice.”

“Mother’s Daughter.”

“You will stay by my side, and you
will not
speak.” “Mother’s Daughter.”

* * * She had learned much, in traversing those streets.

The new Baron Breton had come to the temple with a small army. He led the men, the Mother’s Daughter by his side, through the streets, proclaiming his rule. He led them to the heart of the high city, and there, he set them free, for in the high city were the men who had gained great fortune in the service of his father.

There, she knew, his sole living brother resided. And he, too, was not without his men. She had read of war. It was something that was fought over distant plains, and distant patches of land. This sudden terrible knowledge: this was the Baron’s gift. To her.

It was a scar she bore still. The soldiers clashed, and this, at least, she could bear in silence. When the first volley of quarrels flew from the distance of buildings, when they pierced armor and men fell with grunts or screams, she flinched, and the Mother’s Daughter gripped her shoulder like a vise. But she could witness this, mute and still.

It was after. It was after the one army had been defeated, and the Baron’s brother beheaded,

that the slaughter had started in earnest.

* * *

“Emily Dontal,” the Baron said quietly, calling her attention back from the bitter recess of memory although her eyes had not left his face. He was older, and he did not come injured and in triumph to these halls.

“Yes,” she replied, “that is what I was called.”

“But it is not, now, what you are. Mother’s Daughter, do you understand the gift I gave you

when first we met?”

She did not, could not, answer. She could still hear the screaming. “I have spoken with the Witherall Seer.”

She kept her face schooled. It was difficult.

“And she has told me that my blood-line will rule these lands; they will fashion not a Kingdom, but an Empire, and it will stretch farther than even the lands the Barons now hold.” His smile was slight.

“Why have you come?” she asked, weary now.

“Ah, that. I am not the man I was when I took the Baronial throne. I have buried three wives,” he added quietly.

As it was widely rumored that his first wife had attempted to assassinate him, she expected no open show of sorrow.

“I am in negotiations with Baron Ederett, to the far South. If these are concluded successfully, you may receive an invitation to a wedding.”

Again, silence was the only response. It seemed, however, to be the incorrect response. “My oldest son is much like my brother in his youth. My younger sons are canny.” He

shrugged. “It is…surprisingly bitter, to see them arrayed against each other in such a fashion. They are attempting to become adult in the Baronial Court, and if they survive it—they have sacrificed pawns and slaves in their games—they will emerge stronger for their testing.

“But the Court at this time is no place for a child.” And he gestured.

The cloak that he wore fell away, its weave a weave invisible to the eye. When it was gone, a small child stood at his side. She was, to Emily’s eye, perhaps three years of age, pale and slender, her hair still blonde, eyes still blue, in the way of children. She did not speak. She did not touch her father.

“This—this is—”

“This,” he said turning to look down upon the child’s head “is Veralaan. She is, as your spies may have told you—”

“I play no games in your Court—”

“Not all spies are paid, Mother’s Daughter. Some come to you because they
feel
they are

She smiled anyway, and the smile was genuine. It annoyed the Baron.

“She is,” he continued, “my only daughter. The child of Alanna, my third wife.” The child said nothing at all.

“Your wife—it is rumored that she died in childbirth.”

“Ah—that is the word I was looking for. Rumor. Yes, that was rumored.” A shadow crossed his face. It was a terrible thing, that shadow; it spoke of death, in every possible way. And had it been on another man’s face, she might have been moved to pity. As it was she struggled with

self-loathing, because there was a part of her that enjoyed his pain.

“It was not, as rumors are often not, entirely true. But it is true now.” He put a hand on the top of the child’s head. His fist was mailed.

But gentle, she thought, and again she was surprised. “Go,” he told the girl. “This woman, she is your new mother. Her name is Emily, but everyone here will call her ‘Mother’s Daughter.’ You must learn to call her that as well.”

The child did not speak. But she was, as were any of his subjects, obedient. She crossed the marble floor, her stride small enough that the hall seemed truly grand. Truly empty.

“You are weak,” the Baron said to the Mother’s Daughter. “It is because of your weakness that I am uncertain of my choice. But it is also entirely because of your weakness that I feel that my child will be safe here. You do not understand politics, Mother’s Daughter, and you have been wise enough not to play.

“Therefore no one will tempt you, and I believe that even were the child my only heir, were the child a son and of use, you would still protect him with your life and the resources that I have chosen to leave at your disposal.

“Do not fail,” he added softly. He turned from the hall. The child started forward. “Daddy!”

He hesitated. She thought he might turn back, but the hesitation was his only show of weakness—and at the risk of exposing even that, he had sent all of his men away.

She caught the child in her arms, and the child kicked and screamed, as children will who

understand that they are being abandoned.

* * *

frenzy had, at last, given way to an unshakable sleep.

Melanna, wide, round, her cheek scarred from a different life, looked at the child’s sleeping back. Her face was entirely composed; no hint of humor, of desire, of hatred, marred her expression. It made her, of the Priests, the most dangerous. Hard to deal well with things that one could not see.

“His men killed my son,” she said at last. “When he was but two years older than this girl.” What did not adorn her face informed her words.