Magic's Pawn (37 page)

For Savil, at least, it had gotten to that point.

Just beyond the window, bundled in quilts and blankets and half-lying against Yfandes’ side, Vanyel dozed in the sun, still kept in a sleepy half-daze by Andrel’s potions. Jaysen had carried him out there, with his own mind so tightly shielded against leaking his thoughts that Savil fair Saw him quivering under the strain. Jaysen would be back for the boy in another two candlemarks, which was all Andrel would allow in this cold. This was the third day of the routine; there had been no real repetition of the crisis that had precipitated it, but Savil more than half expected one every night.

Vanyel sighed in sleep, and one arm stole out of the blankets to circle around Yfandes’ neck. The Companion nuzzled his ear, and instead of pulling away, he cuddled
closer
to her.

But before Savil had a chance to really take in this first, positive sign that the Herald-Companion bond was taking root in the boy, someone
pounded
on her outer door. She half-turned, and heard Donni pattering across the common room to answer it. There was a murmur too indistinct to make but.

The voice from outside the door strengthened. “Please, I’m Van’s sister - let me at least talk to my aunt - “

Savil started, and strode quickly across Vanyel’s room, pulling open the door. There could only be one of Vanyel’s sisters likely to show up on her doorstep at this point, the one that had fostered out in hopes of a career in the Guard.

“Let her in, Donni,” Savil said - and blinked in surprise. The girl in the doorway could have been herself at seventeen or eighteen.

God help her
-
no wonder she went for the Guard
, Savil thought irrelevantly.
She’s got that damned Ashkevron nose
.

Evidently the same thought was running through the girl’s mind. “You must be my Aunt Savil,” she said forthrightly, standing at what was almost “attention” in the doorway. “You have the nose. I’m Lissa. Can I help?”

Savil decided that she liked this blunt girl. “Perhaps, I don’t know yet,” she replied. “First, Lissa, come in and tell me what you’ve heard.”

Lissa turned away from the garden door with a shudder. “He looks like he’s been dragged through the nine hells facedown,” she said.

“And at that he looks better than he did three days ago,” Savil replied. She would have said more, but there was another pounding on the suite door and a voice she knew only too well rumbled angrily when Donni answered it.

“Like bloody hell she’s too busy,” Lord Withen Ashkevron snarled. “I didn’t bloody ride my best horse to foundering to be put off with a’too damned busy!’ Now where in hell is she?”

Savil, with Lissa at her side, strode across to the door, flung it open, and stood facing Withen with her back poker-straight, feet slightly apart, arms crossed over her chest.

“What do you want, Withen?” she asked flatly, narrowing her eyes in mingled annoyance and apprehension.

“What the hell do you think I want?” he growled, ignoring Lissa and Donni as if they weren’t there, placing his fists on his hips, and taking an aggressive, wide-legged stance. “I want to know what the hell you’ve been doing with the boy I sent you! I sent him down here for you to make a
man
out of him, not turn him into a perverted little catamite!” His face darkened and his voice rose with every word. “I - “

“
I
think that’s more than enough, Withen,” she snapped, cutting him off before he could build up to whatever climax he had in mind. “I, I, I - dammit, you blustering peabrain, is
that
all you ever think of? Yourself? Vanyel almost
died
four days ago, he almost died
again
three days ago, and he could die
or
go mad in the next candlemark, and all
you
can think of is that he did something your back-country prejudices don’t approve of! Gods above and below, you can’i even call him by his bloody name, just ‘the boy’!”

She advanced on him with such anger in her face that he actually fell back a pace, alarm and surprise chasing themselves across his eyes. Lissa moved with her, and stood beside her with every muscle tensed, and her fists clenched into hard knots.

“You come storming in here when we’ve maybe -
maybe
-
got him stable, without so much as a ‘please’ or a ‘may I,’ you don’t even ask if he’s in any shape to put two words together in a sensible fashion! Oh, no, all
you
can do is scream that
I
‘
ve
made him into a catamite when you sent him to be made into a man. A
man!”
She laughed, a harsh cawing sound that clawed its way up out of her throat. “My
gods
-
what the hell did you think he was? Tell me, Withcn, what kind of a
man
would send his son into strange hands just because the poor thing didn’t happen to fit his image of masculinity?”

Savil ran out of things to say - but Lissa hadn’t.

“What kind of a
man
would let a brutal bully break his son’s arm for
no damned reason?”
the girl snarled. “What kind of a
man
would drive his son into becoming an emotional eunuch because every damned time the boy looked for a little bit of paternal love he got slapped in the face? What kind of a
man
would take
anyone’s
word over his son’s with
no cause
to
ever
think the boy was a liar?’’ Lissa faced down her father as if he had become her enemy. “You tell
me
, Father! What right do you have to demand
anything
of him? What did you ever give him but scorn? When did you
ever
give him a single thing he really needed or wanted? When did you ever tell him he’d done well? When did you
ever
say you loved him?”

Withen backed up another two paces, his back against the wall beside the door, his expression that of someone who has just been poleaxed.

Savil found her tongue again. “A
man
- may all the gods give you what you deserve, you fathead!
What kind of a man would care more for his own reputation than his son’s life?’’
She was backing him into the corner now, unleashing on Withen all the pain and frustration and anger she’d been keeping bottled up inside her over the past week. He had gone pale - and started to try to say something, but she cut him off.

“Let me tell you this, Withen,” she hissed. “Everything that Vanyel’s become,
you
had a hand in making - and mostly because
you
didn’t want a son, you just wanted a little toy copy of yourself to parade around so that people could congratulate you on your bedroom prowess. You helped make him what he is - gave him a set of values so distorted it’s a wonder he even recognized love when he saw it, and taught him that he had to keep everything he felt secret because adults couldn’t be trusted. And
now
I have one boy dead, and one a hair from dying, and all you care about is that somebody
might
think you weren’t
manly
enough to father
manly
sons! Oh, get out of here, get out of my sight - “

She turned away from him before he could see the tears in her eyes. Lissa put a steadying hand on her shoulder and glared at her father as if she would be perfectly happy to take a piece out of him if he said one wrong word.

“S-s-savil - I - I - “ he stammered. “They said - but I didn’t believe - is Vanyel - “

“One wrong word, one wrong move, and he will die, Withen,” she said flatly, her eyes shut tightly as she reestablished control over herself. “One wrong
thought
almost killed him. He slit his wrists because he discovered that someone he trusted believed that his
love
was the reason Tylendel died. Are you pleased with what you made? It was certainly the
honorable
thing for him to do, wasn’t it?”

“I - I - “

“I am very gratified to be able to tell you that he
isn’t
yours anymore, Withen, he’s mine. He’s been Chosen -
if
he lives that long, he’ll be a Herald-trainee, and as such, he is
my
charge. You’ve forfeited any claim on him. So you can have what you’ve always wanted - little Mekeal can be your heir-designate, and you can wash your hands of Vanyel with a clear conscience.”

Withen flinched at her pitilessly accurate words, and seemed to almost shrink in size.

“Savil - I didn’t mean - I didn’t want - “

“You didn’t?” She raised an ironic eyebrow.

He winced. “Savil, can I - see him? I won’t hurt him, I - dammit, he’s still my son!”

“Lissa, do you think we should?”

Lissa looked at her father as one looks at a not-particularly-trustworthy stranger. “I don’t know that he can behave himself.’’

Withen’s face darkened. “You ungrateful little - “

Lissa shrugged, and said to Savil, “See what I mean?”

Savil nodded. “I see - but he has a point. Maybe he ought to see his handiwork.” She nodded toward the door to Vanyel’s room. “Follow me, Withen. And keep a rein on that mouth of yours, or I’ll have you thrown out.”

He stopped dead at the garden door, and pressed his hands and face against the glass in stunned disbelief. “My
gods
- “ he gasped. “They said - but I didn’t believe them. Savil, I’ve seen men dead a week that looked better than that!”

Lissa snorted. Savil pushed him away from the door impatiently, and opened it, flinching a bit as the cold air hit her. She looked back at him; he’d made no move to follow. “Are you coming, or not?” she asked, keeping her voice low so as not to startle Vanyel.

He swallowed, his own face set and very white, and followed her with slow, hesitant steps. She walked quickly to the patch of sheltered, sun-gilded brown grass where the boy was lying with Yfandes; he hadn’t moved since she’d left. He didn’t seem to notice she was there as she knelt in the harsh, dry grass that prickled her knees through the cloth of her breeches and hose.

“Van - Van, wake up a little, can you?” she said softly, not touching him at all, either with hand or mind. “Van?”

He moved his head a little, and blinked in a kind of half-dazed parody of sleepiness. “A-aunt?” he murmured.

“Your father’s here - Withen - he wants to see you. Vanyel, he can’t take you home, he has no power over you now that you’re Chosen. You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”

Vanyel blinked again, showing a little more alertness. “N-no. S’all right. ‘Fandes says s’all right; says I should.”

Savil rose quickly and returned to where Withen waited uncertainly on the worn path, halfway between the door and where the boy lay. “Go ahead,” she said roughly. “Don’t raise your voice, and speak slowly. We’ve got him pretty heavily drugged, so keep that in mind. You might trigger more than you want to hear if you aren’t careful.”

She followed a few steps behind him, with Lissa behind her, and remained within earshot as he knelt heavily in the dry grass and started to reach out to touch Vanyel’s shoulder. She very nearly snapped at him, but Vanyel roused a bit more, and waved the blunt fingers away.

“Vanyel - “ the man said, seeming at a complete loss for words. “Vanyel, I - I heard you were sick - “

Vanyel gave a pitiful little croak of a laugh. “You h-heard I was playin’ ewe t’ ‘Lenden’s ram, y’mean. Don’ lie t’ me, Father. You lied t’ me all m’life an’ I couldn’ prove it, but I
know
when people lie t’me now.”

Withen flushed, but Vanyel wasn’t through yet.

“Y’re thinkin’ now that - I - I’m perv’rt’d, unclean or somethin’, an’ that I - I’m just bad an’ ungrateful an’ I n-never p-p-pleased you
an’
-
dammit
, all I ev’ wanted was f’r you t’ tell me I did
somethin’
right! Just
once
, Father, j-j-just one time! An’ all
you
ever d-d-did was let J-J-Jervis knock me flat, an’ then kick me y’rself! ‘Lendel
loved
me, an’ I loved
him
an’ you can
stop
thinkin’ those - god - damned -
rotten
-
things
- ‘‘

Withen pulled back and started to his feet - opened his mouth like he was about to roar at his son -

But that was as far as he got. Vanyel’s eyes blazed; his face went masklike with rage. And before Withen could utter a single syllable, Vanyel surged up out of his cocoon of blankets and knocked Withen head over heels into the bushes with the untrained, half-drugged power of his mind alone.

Withen struggled up. Vanyel knocked him flat. Lissa made as if to go to one or the other of them, but Savil caught her arm.

“Look at Yfandes,” she said. “She’s calm, she hasn’t even moved. Let them have this out. Between us I think Yfandes and I could keep the lad from killing his father, but that isn’t what he wants to do.”

Twice more Withen tried to get his feet, and twice more Vanyel flung him back. He was crying now, silent, unnoticed tears streaking his white cheeks. “How’s
it feel
, Father? Am I
strong
enough now? How’s it
feel
t’ get knocked down an’ stepped on by somethin’ you can’t reason with an’ can’t fight? You
happy
? I’m as big a bully as J-J-Jervis now -
does that make you bloody happy?”

Withen’s mouth worked, but no sound came out of it.

Vanyel stared at him, then the angry light faded from his eyes and was replaced by a disgusted bitterness. “It doesn’t make
me
happy, Father,” he said, quietly, and clearly; the last of the drug-haze gone from his speech. “Knowing I can do this to you just makes me sick.
Nothing
makes me happy anymore. Nothing ever will again.”