Michael A. Stackpole (8 page)

5

_T

he man bade me dismount, which I did, and he took up the reins of my horse. “I will be putting your horse in the charge of the stableboy. Master Lachlan.” He gave me a wink, and the twinkle in his eye told me that by benefit of my blood, 1 had passed muster with him. Still, the formality in his address of me made me feel uneasy.

“Call me Locke; everyone does.” One of his hounds brought its head up under my right hand, so I scratched it behind the right ear.

The man gave me a half nod of his gray-capped head, but then shook his head in full denial. “Might be the way it is out in the wilds of Garik, Master Lachlan, but not here in the capital of the Empire. We knows the proper ways to talk and all. Your kindness is appreciated, but your grandmother is a grand lady in this city, and I’ll not do her disrespect by calling you familiarlike.”

Thank you,” I hesitated, not knowing the man’s name.

“Nob, sir, just Nob.” He smiled infectiously. “Andrew is the stableboy, and my grandsons help him out. James, he sees to the house—‘cept where me wife, Rose, holds sway. Been with your grandmother for years and years, we all have, save my grandsons.”

I pulled my saddlebags from the bay and looped them over my right shoulder. “Then you would have known my father?”

“Met him on numerous occasions, sir. To these old, tired eyes you look his spitting image, too, Master Lachlan.” Nob looked me up and down, head to toe, and nodded proudly. “Was him what taught me chess. I ne’er did get ranked, and he always beat me, but he said as how I was getting better.”

“If I want a game, I will find you.”

“That would be nice, sir. You’ll whip me good, of that I am certain, but I can show you a few things I’ve learned since your father, well, since the last time I played him.”

1 clapped Nob on the shoulder and gave him a nod. “I will look forward to that.” 1 let him lead Stail off toward the stables in the back and headed directly toward the secondary entrance to the mansion. Part of me realized 1 probably should have gone to the front door and made a proper entrance, but the house felt too familiar for me to go through such formality.

1 kicked the steps twice to knock the dust from my boots, then upped the latch and walked into the kitchen. Immediately the sweet scent of pies and bread baking in the ovens hit me. I shut the door quickly against the cold and luxuriated in the warmth being put out by the ovens.

Without looking up, the older woman kneading dough at the table in the center of the kitchen jerked her head toward the water pump behind her. “Nob, you worthless lout, I told you not to dawdle. I need some water, and I’m not of a mind to pump it meself.”

I let my saddlebags slide to the stone floor. “Nob is taking care of my horse. I will draw your water.”

At the sound of my voice her head came up, and her jaw slackened. An apple-cheeked woman with hair as iron gray as Nob’s, she stared at me with gray eyes as steady as stone. “It’s you! Forgive me, my lord. We were expecting you, but…”

I held up my hands. “Nothing to be forgiven. I am Lachlan.” I crossed the room in three long strides and scooped up the wooden water bucket. I hung it by the rope handle on the little hook beneath the pump’s spout. “Rose, your baking smells wonderful.”

“Oh, Master Lachlan, I didn’t mean for you to get the water. Let me.”

I brushed her suggestion aside with a wave of my right hand. “Nonsense, good woman, I will pump your water. After a month fetching it from cold mountain streams and lugging it back to camp, I had begun to think a pump was but a faery tale.”

She wiped her hands on her apron and reached for the bucket. “I will handle it from here, Master Lachlan.”

I pulled it from the hook and held it out of her reach. “Where do you want it?”

She pointed to the table, and I lifted it to the spot she indicated, even though I knew that would not be its final destination. The way she and Nob deferred to me made me feel uncomfortable, but it also made me feel proud. I did not feel I was better than they were by any stretch of the imagination, but I took their attitude, as Nob had explained, as a reflection of their love for my grandmother. I could also have imagined my father playing such games with them when he lived here.

A gaunt man in quite fine clothing appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. His tunic and breeches were not of homespun, and the latter had been fitted with buttons to draw them tight at the knees. He wore white hose and freshly polished black shoes with a big silver buckle on them. His waistcoat and breeches were the same color as his shoes, the buttons on them being silver as well, while his shirt was white.

I knew he was lames, and I sensed instantly that he knew me better than 1 knew myself. It was an uneasy feeling, but one that drained away almost immediately, “lames, how good to see you ag … 1 mean, to meet you. I have heard of you from the stories my aunt Ethelin told of her visit here.”

The man bowed toward me, and a single strand of his thinning hair drooped down over his forehead. “Master Lachlan, how pleased we are that you have come to visit us.” He glanced over at my saddlebags as he straightened up. “I will see to it that your things are taken up to your room. You will have the suite your father used. Your grandmother is…”

I smiled. “She is in her solar.” Without waiting for his confirmation of my conclusion, I stepped beyond the pump and mounted the servants’ stairs. 1 climbed to the top floor, then exited the stairwell and turned right. I marched down the hallway toward the back of the house.

I can recall my grandfather Audin noting what an extravagant waste of money he thought the solar was. With the house aligned on a north-south axis, my grandmother had hired artisans to build a glass wall and ceiling to enclose a veranda. From there, Aunt Ethelin had said, one could see the palace and the theatre beyond it. Audin thought it just showed how Evadne had grown soft since she moved to the capital.

i paused in the doorway and cleared my throat. “Grandmother, 1 have arrived.”

She looked older than I had ever imagined. Still a tall woman, age had sapped her of her physical vitality. Her legs lay hidden by a blanket, and the chair in which she sat helped make her look small. Her parchment flesh barely covered the fine bones of her hands and face. A book lay open in her lap, and it seemed to me that even turning a page would be an effort for her.

Then her head came up and I saw fire in her blue eyes. That fire touched something deep inside of me. Under its influence, my imagination had no problem peeling back the years and layering her youth back upon her. Gold flooded back through her white hair and her full figure hid her skeleton in a most seductive manner. Her gestures were delicate yet forceful and her laughter like wine for the ears.

Her lower lip quivered. “It is you, isn’t it? Cardew, you have returned to me.”

I choked down the lump that swelled in my throat and crossed the room. Kneeling at her feet, 1 took her chilly hands in mine. “I am Lachlan, Grandmother. I am Cardew’s son.”

She blinked away a single tear, then smiled at me. Slipping one hand from between mine, she patted my hands lightly. “1 know that, child. I am merely an old woman waking from resting her eyes.” She took hold of my hands and tugged me upward. “Don’t kneel here, Lachlan, let me look at you.”

1 stood, and as she bade with a hand motion, 1 turned slowly so she could survey me. When 1 came back around 1 saw her smiling. “I meet with your approval?”

She nodded once. “You are leaner than your father was when he came to Herakopolis—Audin has worked you hard. Poor man always thought your father’s loss in Chaos was because he had not made Cardew more proficient a swordsman.”

I grinned. “He said you would say that. He told me to point out to you that I am only ranked as an Apprentice.”

“So you are, as was your father.” Her bright eyes narrowed. “Likewise you are, with good reason, dusty and dirty, which makes you very much like your father. You can read?”

1 nodded proudly. “I have read every book that Audin had, and those my father owned at least twice. I have also read every book you sent me.” I looked out toward the city. “Things have changed since many of those books were written, but they have still given me a general sense of the Empire.”

“Have you read your father’s journals?”

“No. Audin would not let me see them, but he did put all of us in the habit of keeping one.”

“Good.” She looked beyond me toward the doorway. “Where is James?”

“I believe he is taking my kit to my room.” I smiled. “He told me where you were, and I came up here.”

“Without a guide?” She arched an eyebrow at me.

1 grinned sheepishly. “This is a room meant to catch the sun. It had to be up on the top floor, and it had to be at the north end so it would have sun all day.” My mind raced as I outlined to her the logical manner in which I had managed to locate the room, but 1 knew something was wrong. While the explanation I gave her was perfectly true and valid, I realized I had consciously thought of none of it until questioned. In heading to this room, I had just gone where I knew the solar to be.

“Besides, Aunt Ethelin was much taken with it on her visit, and often said how grand it was.”

“You are quick, Lachlan, and you have a strong memory. That is good.” 1 heard the rustle of cloth behind me and started to turn as my grandmother said, “Yes, Marija, what is it?”

Given that lames, Rose, and Nob had been with my grandmother forever, I fully expected another elderly servant to be waiting in the doorway. For that reason I was surprised to see as young a woman as was Marija standing there. Ringlets of black hair hid the shoulders of the blue dress she wore. Had the framing of the door not showed me she was just slightly shorter than I am myself, 1 would have thought her tall because she had the same sort of statuesque beauty my grandmother had once known.

The impish light in her hazel eyes told me the effect she had had on me pleased her, then she looked beyond me to my grandmother. “Mistress Evadne, it is time for your afternoon tonic.”

My grandmother held up her hands. “Seeing Lachlan has been enough of a tonic for me, my dear. I feel as though I do not need it.”

Marija walked over to the sideboard and pulled a small bottle from behind a built-in door. “That may well be, Mistress, but I am sure Master Lachlan would agree that taking your medicine is the best way to ensure you remain healthy.” She filled a small silver tumbler with a greenish liquid and added some water to it from a pitcher. “You would not want to fall asleep and splash facefirst into your soup tonight, would you?”

“That would be a sight, would it not?” Even though my grandmother clearly did not like taking the draft, she accepted it from Marija and drank it in one long swallow. She winced and shivered. “That may be keeping my heart beating, but there are times I wonder if just slipping away in my sleep would not be easier.”

1 saw Marija covertly glance at the cup to see if it was empty, then she smiled, “perhaps easier, Mistress, but not nearly as exciting, if you were dead, you could not see your grandson.”

“A grandson who should, actually, be cleaning the road grime off himself. Please, excuse me.” I bowed to both women, then headed straight for the door. I turned before I exited the room, however, and grinned at Marija. “I enjoyed meeting you. I am glad someone is seeing to it that Grandmother is around for her grandsons to visit.”

“My pleasure, on both counts, Master Lachlan.”

I left the solar and headed toward the front of the house. I took the wide stairway down to the second floor and, not surprisingly, saw lames heading in my direction. He paused at a doorway halfway down the main hallway, and I assumed it led to the suite I had been given. “I apologize for bolting like that, lames.”

The elderly servant shook his head. “Your father, your uncle, Master Driscoll, and even your cousin, Master Christoforos, have made me accustomed to your family’s penchant for being impulsive. Mistress Evadne claims you all have it directly from her.”

“I cannot dispute her claim, lames.” I entered the suite of rooms and stopped barely a stride and a half inside the anteroom. A chill ran over me, as if I had dug up some ancient tomb and stepped into a treasury. The room felt that long unused and, in many ways, just that sacred.

The walls had been painted a goldenrod color that felt richer and warmer than a plain yellow. Even so, I could barely see the color because of the vast number of things hanging on the walls. Directly across from me, between two windows, a pair of crossed greatswords hung beneath a battered breastplate and helm. Below them stood a small table with two chairs and an oil-wick lamp that James lit with a taper.

On the wall to my left, swords and daggers had been arranged in a spiral pattern that covered the entire expanse of wall. To the right, against the wall that was split by a doorway leading to my bedchamber, two full sets of armor mounted on mannequins flanked the door. Behind them hung two tapestries depicting battle scenes that J had to imagine, from the purple-and-red border, had taken place in Chaos. Turning around, I saw the room’s interior wall had been festooned with axes, bows, quivers full of arrows, and several shields that had clearly seen plenty of action in battle. Several standing racks of swords lined the base of the wall, reminding me of a similar display at home in Stone Rapids.

lames smiled as he saw the surprised look on my face. “Yes, Master Lachlan, this is how your father decorated this room. Each one of these items was his, or was taken as spoils of battles he waged in Chaos. We do not use this room much, which accounts for the musty air.”