Essalieyan Chronicles 04 - The Weapon (5 page)

When the last of the soldiers had left the healerie, Veralaan turned to Rowan. “Please close the door,” she said quietly.

Rowan rose instantly, and tendered the Lady Veralaan a perfect obeisance. She also obeyed. “Lady Veralaan,” Iain said, offering a perfect, shallow bow.

She looked at him, then, lifting her chin to better meet his gaze. “Did I do it right?” she asked softly.

“You were perfect,” was his grave reply. “But I think that—”

“They are not allowed to enter uninvited into
my
home. They are
never
allowed to enter my home uninvited.” And then she walked over to the unconscious boy who slept on the mat upon the floor. “He’s younger than me,” she added quietly.

At any moment, Emily expected the child to crumple, to show the strain of the confrontation.

“What could he have done to my father, at his age? There must be a misunderstanding.” No one spoke. They should have. And if they did not, the Mother’s Daughter had that

responsibility. But the girl’s desire for her father, her love for his memory, was something that, bright and shining, not even Emily desired to tarnish. It came as a surprise to her. Bitter surprise.

Melanna ran into the room. But even Melanna hesitated awkwardly on the outer periphery of Veralaan’s sheer presence. “Veralaan?”

“Lady Veralaan,” Iain said, his tone as severe as Emily had ever heard it.

Melanna glared at the side of his face, but it was a helpless anger. She had watched her charge from the frame of the door, powerless before her power.

“No, Iain,” Veralaan said quietly. “She is Melanna. She can call me whatever she wants.” And she turned to Melanna, “I’m sorry.”

Melanna looked confused.

But Veralaan, clear and confident as children could sometimes be, had no intention of allowing her the grace of confusion. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t with you when your son died. I could have saved him. You would be happy, then.”

Everyone froze again.

“You loved him,” she continued quietly, ”more than you love me.”

Melanna bit her lower lip. She sank to her knees in the healerie, and she held out her arms— looking, in her roundness and her sudden pain, like one of the few perfect paintings of the Mother. “Not more than you Veralaan,” she whispered.

Veralaan walked slowly into Melanna’s arms, and disappeared as they closed round her back. “Never more than you.”

The Baron did not come.

II.

“LADY VERALAAN.”

The young woman so addressed arched both eyebrows and rolled her eyes in mock frustration. The Priestess who attended her almost snickered. But she didn’t speak, and after a moment, the Lady Veralaan ABreton turned almost regally. “Yes, Iain?”

“We have kept the Courtier waiting for as long as we can safely do so. He is, if I recall—” “Lord Wendham,” she replied curtly.

“Lord Wendham, then, and if you know that much, you know he is seldom given to patience.”

“He has come to visit
me
,” she replied coolly. But she rose, wiping bloodstains from her hands upon the apron that hid her clothing. “And I have duties in the healerie that I consider to be more important.” But for all that, she spoke quietly. “Mother’s Daughter?” she said at last, and Emily Dontal, silent until that moment, nodded. The years had aged her. But not unkindly.

“He will wait, Lady Veralaan. Your reputation precedes you, and if you do not tarry for
much
longer, he will pretend not to be insulted.” She paused and added, “Rowan is capable of watching the healerie.”

“Rowan,” the healer said curtly, “is also capable of speaking for herself, Mother’s Daughter.” She turned to Veralaan, and offered the young woman a brisk nod. “I can watch the healerie. But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tarry.” Her grim eye fell upon the pallets, the floor, the crowded confines of the room that was her life’s work.

Veralaan offered her a perfect bow. An unnecessary one. Rowan accepted it; long years had come and gone in which the arguments about form and necessity had at last been eroded by Veralaan’s tenacity. But as Veralaan left the healerie—by the interior doors—Rowan turned to the Mother’s Daughter, her gaze shadowed.

“Do you know why Lord Wendham has come?” Emily Dontal frowned. “No.”

“I believe I do, Mother’s Daughter. There will be a funeral that Veralaan will be required to attend.”

“Whose?”

“I’m not certain,” she replied quietly. “But there has been death in the streets in the past two

weeks, and if I had to guess, I would say the funeral of one, if not two, of her brothers.” The Mother’s Daughter closed her eyes. But words didn’t require vision.

“She’s learned more here than we could have taught her had we planned it all,” Rowan continued, speaking words that should never have been spoken. “She’s seen, every day, what is done in his name, by his men. Or by those who serve him. She knows. No one speaks a word against her father. None of us speak of the wars—not in the temple. But the injured who come to us speak when they dream. The dying? She tends their injuries; she knows how they were

caused, and even why. She hears.

“I was against her working in the healerie,” Rowan added softly. “From the beginning, even after she saved those three lives, I was against it. I do not know when that changed, Mother’s Daughter. But it has. Her presence here—it does something that my power can’t.”

“What?”

“It gives people hope.” “Rowan—”

“Hope for the nobility. Hope for Breton. It is a bitter hope—to me—but not to all, and it has spilled from the temple into the city streets, traveling—like hope does—by whispers couched in awe. People know that if they can reach her side, they are safe.” She paused, and then added, “if she is taken from us, that will no longer be the case.”

* * *

At fifteen years of age, Lady Veralaan ABreton presided at her father’s side over the burial

of two of her brothers. She wore the black and the white, and it was edged in the color and power of gold; she wore gloves, and a dress so fine it would have fed the temple’s beggars for two

years. She was tall and straight, slender with youth, and her eyes remained utterly dry.

The Mother’s Daughter was allowed to attend her, and accepted the insult conveyed with

this permission. No other Priests or Priestesses were likewise allowed to be present. It was just as well. This close to the highest echelons of power, it was almost difficult to breathe. There was no grief offered the dead; their mothers had gone before them to the Halls of Mandaros, and their father? Grim and dispassionate. She offered no blessing; was asked to offer none.

But she saw how the Lords of the Breton court circled Veralaan, and she did not like it. The girl herself, however, seemed above them; if she noticed that they eyed her like jackals, she paid them no heed.

In fact, she paid only one man respect: the Baron Breton. And he was graceful and perfect in his reply. But distant as well.

“It is a pity,” he told her softly, but not so softly that Emily Dontal did not hear the words, “that they attempted to prove their power when they had not yet mastered it.”

“Lanaris is still heir,” Veralaan replied. It was the first time—the only time—that Emily was to hear her speak her brother’s name.

“For a while,” was his bitter answer.

And two weeks later, when healers had come at the Baron’s command, and failed to emerge from the bowels of his dungeons, Lanaris ABreton passed away. Rowan was white with anger, and with a bitter admiration. “I would have healed him,” she told Veralaan, as she cut bandages into the long strips that were most useful in the healerie. “I would have healed him and been damned.”

“They didn’t.”

“No. And they will never heal anyone else as a consequence of their choice.”

“What does it mean?” Veralaan asked, in the pause that was wedged by anger between the gentle healer’s words.

“It means that Baron Halloran Breton is now without heir. He has a wife,” she added, “who has had no issue. This was less of a concern, before.”

Veralaan said, with a shrug, “He will find another wife.”

* * *

He needed one. He had come through war to rule the Baronies to the North, the South and the West; he owned the seas. His armies were like legend and nightmare, and where they traveled, they were not forgotten. While he lived, he held them all.

But not even Halloran Breton would live forever.

As Veralaan had so coldly said, he found another wife. But when she was pregnant, she died of poison. Many, many men perished in her wake.

He came to the temple one evening, with four men. He came on horse; the carriage was slow and noisy, and it afforded lookouts the ability to grant warning. But he did not enter the temple; he waited at the door as if he were simply another supplicant. If he did not wait with grace, he

did not wait with ire, and Lady Veralaan ABreton agreed in due time that she might speak with her father, Lord Breton.

He left his men at the doors, and they fanned out, brightly burnished fence beyond which, for the duration of the interview, no one living would pass. Emily Dontal led him from the door to his daughter. She did not ask him why he afforded Veralaan this courtesy; he did not offer. But he looked aged, in a way that she had never seen him aged. Not with the death of his sons, certainly, nor the death of many wives.

She led him into the small chamber, and when she made to leave, he lifted a hand. It was an imperious gesture, but he did not follow it with words; instead, he met his daughter’s level gaze. She nodded.

“Please,” he said, with just a trace of irony, “stay, Mother’s Daughter. What I say may be of concern to you in the future.” He did not add,
do not interrupt
. Nor had he need. She bowed to him, and moved to stand beside the wall farthest away.

Veralaan did not run to him; she did not smile or lift arms. She regarded him from a distance. If he noticed, he said nothing—and Emily thought it unlikely that he
did
notice. It would pain Veralaan, but she had grown strong enough over the years to hide pain from all but Melanna and Iain.

“I will be brief,” Lord Breton told his only living child, “because your safety is served best by brevity. Your existence here has long been known, but it has never been of grave consequence. I fear that this is about to change, Veralaan. There will be, among the Lords who serve me, men who will offer you much if you will consent to marry them. There are those who would not bother to ask your consent, were you not now in the hands of the Mother. They will not risk her wrath at the moment—if they choose to fight among themselves, they may well need the blessings of the Mother.

“I know them all. I know their weaknesses and their strengths. I have chosen two who I believe are likely to be able to hold what I have built. They could simply take it, but I think they are canny enough not to spend men where it is unnecessary. You are the bloodline,” he added quietly. “And therefore, your presence by the side of the right man will signal legitimacy.”

She looked at him. “I am to marry?”

“Not yet,” he said quietly. “But soon. You will know. Choose wisely.” He hesitated for just a moment, as if he might say something more. But he was Halloran Breton; in the end, he retreated in silence, taking nothing of her with him.

And when the door was closed, Veralaan turned to Emily Dontal. The presence—and the

absence—of her father cast long shadow; some hint of the wild fear she had shown as a young child now darkened and widened her eyes. She raised her hands, and they shook, but she did not bring them to her face; she held them out before her, turning them so that she might inspect their

palms.

* * *

The room was cold and quiet; the thin door was shut. There were chairs around the table, because they had chosen the dining hall for their meeting; it was one of the few rooms that could easily seat them all.