Swordmage (48 page)

She hurried inside in pursuit of the two young Hulmasters. Geran and Mirya climbed up the steps to get out of the rain, and Geran paused on the wide covered porch to shake the raindrops from his cloak. “Did it always rain this much?” he wondered aloud.

“In springtime? Aye,” Mirya answered. She hung her own cloak from a peg by the door, and then tilted her head to undo her long midnight braid, finding it too frayed to rescue. When she absently shook out her hair and began to gather it again, Geran found himself standing still to watch. Mirya’s hair was still as long and dark as he remembered, and the strong lines of her face softened without the stern braid. She’d be thirty this year, but for a moment she looked just like the girl he’d fallen in love with a dozen summers past, with a small spray of freckles across her nose and a strange wistful dreaminess to her gaze when she thought no one was looking at her. Then Mirya glanced up and caught him watching her. She frowned. “What are you looking at, Geran Hulmaster?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I suppose I was wondering why you braid your hair.”

“Because that’s for a married woman?”

“Well… yes. Is it for Selsha’s father?”

Mirya paused and looked away. “No, it’s not. He’s dead, Geran, seven years now. And I’m no widow in mourning. We never married. Once Selsha came along, I didn’t much think I was worth courting any longer. I suppose I began to braid my hair because it was the easiest way for me.”

“I shouldn’t have asked. It isn’t my business.”

“You’ve a better right to expect an answer than you know,”

Mirya said softly. “I did something terrible not long after you left, Geran. I was angry with you, and bitter, and perhaps I thought that if I hurt someone the way I thought you’d hurt me, I’d feel better. I fell in with a sisterhood of sorts, a circle of women who met in secret and never showed their faces. They said they understoodwhat grieved me, and I believed them. After a few months they arranged for me to meet Selsha’s father.” She folded her arms and paced away across the old wooden porch. Water dripped from the eaves. “A nobleman of Melvaunt he was—and a married man. Now I know that they meant for me to have his child so that they could blackmail him, but I didn’t know it at the time.” She flinched from her own words, but made herself to finish. “Later I learned that he took his own life to spare his family the shame.”

Geran did not say anything for a long time. He heard the shouts of the children playing in the store, the small thunder of their feet on the old floorboards as they raced about inside, , but it seemed a thousand miles off. “Who were they, Mirya? Who arranged it all?”

“Better if I didn’t say, Geran. Besides, they didn’t make me do anything. They only asked, and I was willing.” She looked back to him. “I turned my back on the sisterhood after I learned what had happened. I was of no more use to them, anyway. But I’ve spent every day since wondering how I can ever make amends for what I did.” I

He winced, thinking of a cold fall morning in Myth Dran-1 nor’s glens not so long ago. No one had made him maim \ Rhovann; that impulse had been waiting somewhere in j his darkest depths, waiting for its chance to do him harm. ] Strange how the human heart could be moved to injure itself I so deliberately. “No one can change the past, Mirya,” Geran ; said softly. “The gods know there are things I’d take back if I could. All we can do is face each new day and try to do better.” He nodded at the door leading inside; the laughter of children spilled out from somewhere behind the long wooden counter, just out of his sight. “Your daughter’s beautiful. She’s the best part of you, isn’t she? Sometimes good things come to us even

when we don’t believe we’re worthy of them. It’s a reason to treasure them even more.”

“I know it.” Mirya looked down at the floor and brushed her eyes. Then she took a deep breath and lifted her eyes to his. “You’ll be leaving soon, then?” she asked.

“I suppose. But I think you’ll see me again before long. It won’t be ten years, that I promise you.”

“Geran … I’m glad you came back to Hulburg. I know it’s been a hard time for you—for all of us, I guess—but Jarad would be pleased to see what you’ve done in the last few tendays. You’ve honored his memory well.”

“If things turned out better, Mirya, it wasn’t my doing. I led the Verunas to Aesperus’s book. I put you and Selsha in grave danger. I was in a cell when the Spearmeet took a stand against the foreign companies. And I was only one blade at Lendon’s Dike.” Geran laughed softly at himself. “Whatever I managed to do right, I did by accident. I doubt I deserve your gratitude.”

Mirya’s mouth quirked upward in the ghost of a smile. “Nevertheless, you have it.” She leaned close, took his hands in hers, and kissed him softly on the cheek. Then she drew away and turned back to her store. “Selsha, if you made a mess, you’re going to clean it up!” she called.

“Natali, Kirr—come on now!” Geran heard Kara say. “You have your lessons waiting at home.”

The children protested, as expected. Geran smiled and drifted back out into the street, waiting for Kara and Mirya to usher the young Hulmasters out of the store. The rain was diminishing; he stood in the street, uncertain which way to go. High Street ran down toward the waterfront, where several more ships were making ready to sail on the morning tide. In an hour he could be on his way to Thentia, Melvaunt, or Hillsfar … and from those cities he could find passage to any of the ports on the Inner Sea. The world was wide and open. Old Dragon Shield comrades were scattered in half a dozen cities around the Sea of Fallen Stars, and he could find good reason to visit almost any of them. But it was the white

towers of Myth Drannor he longed to see again.

“What did I just tell Mirya?” he murmured aloud. “Meet each day as it comes, and make the most of it.” Besides, Hulburg wasn’t as small of a town as he remembered. Geran realized that for the first time he was standing in the streets of his home and did not feel that it didn’t have room enough for all his ambitions. He snorted, amused at himself. Either the town had grown in the last two months, or his ambitions had narrowed.

Kara, Natali, and Kirr emerged from Erstenwold’s and clattered down the wooden steps. His cousin caught sight of his face and frowned. “What is it, Geran?” Kara asked.

He looked again to the cold gray waters of the Moonsea beyond the rooftops and masts and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. He scooped up Kirr, who squealed with delight, and set his young cousin on his shoulder. In the other direction the old turrets of Griffonwatch shone in another fleeting sunbreak, worn and familiar above the crowded city streets. “You know, there’s nothing in Tantras that Hamil can’t see to for me,” he decided. “Come on—let’s go home.”

Asteady rain pelted the windows of Sergen’s study. It was a modestly furnished room, but so far it was his favorite in the house; it commanded a fine view of the harbor of Melvaunt. His villa was situated somewhat to the west of the city, so the prevailing winds generally carried the smoke and stench of Melvaunt’s smelters away from the small estate. Watching the flames crackle in the marble fireplace, sipping a fine dwarven brandy, Sergen congratulated himself on his foresight in arranging the purchase of the place years ago in case he ever had need of such a refuge.

Melvaunt wasn’t his first choice for a life in exile. He would have much preferred Mulmaster, but that unfortunately, was where Darsi Veruna and her wealthy family resided. His special friendship with Lady Darsi had suffered a serious blow when it had become clear that House Veruna would have to abandon its extensive investments and properties in Hulburg due in large part to his failure to seize the harmach’s seat. Darsi had allowed him to flee Hulburg with her, but as the extent of the disaster became clear, her attitude toward Sergen had begun to cool … and Sergen knew that it was likely to cool even further once the Verunas realized that the mysterious involvement of their own armsmen in the plot to kill the harmach was actually an attempt to implicate them. In fact, Sergen deemed it likely that Darsi Veruna might regard

that as a mortal offense, and in Mulmaster that was quite likely to lead to a knife in the dark some fine evening. No, all in all, it was better to begin his exile in a more congenial environment.

A knock came at the door of the study, and his valet quietly entered. “Excuse me, my lord,” the man said. “There is a visitor at the front door. An elf, my lord. He told me to tell you that he has an interesting proposition to place before you.”

“An elf?” Sergen said, and frowned. He didn’t know many of the so-called Fair Folk, and he could not imagine what sort of business such a person might have with him. Since the disagreeable turn of events in Hulburg, Sergen had been considering a wide variety of prospects. He might not have any chance of making himself lord of a city, but he was still vastly wealthy, and he saw no reason why he couldn’t establish a merchant company of his own to amass more wealth— and more power—still. In fact, Sergen had already begun to make inquiries in that direction; perhaps the elf’s business pertained to those. “Show him in, then. With the usual precautions, of course.”

The valet bowed and retreated; Sergen stood and walked over to the fine desk by the window. He took a hand crossbow and loaded a poisoned bolt in it, hiding the weapon in a special holster underneath the desk, and then he set another such weapon in a niche behind a painting on the wall. He also had two very useful potions in his pocket and no fewer than three ways to flee the room if such became necessary. Satisfied with the arrangements, he took a seat behind his desk.

His valet knocked again, and Sergen called, “Come in.”

The door opened, and his servant showed in a tall, dark-haired moon elf with striking violet eyes and a subtle, crooked twist to the right side of his mouth. He was dressed in fine gray and lavender, with a gold-embroidered doublet and a heavy hooded cloak. When he stepped into the room, he raised his hands to push back his hood, and Sergen saw that the elf’s right hand was not flesh at all, but instead a perfect

replica made of gleaming silver, scribed with tiny runes. The metal hand flexed and moved just as a living one would have—a most unnerving sort of magic, really.

“Good evening,” the elf with the silver hand said. “Are you Sergen Hulmaster, nephew to the Harmach of Hulburg?”

Sergen frowned, wondering what the elf wizard might possibly want with him, but nodded. “I am,” he said. “Might I ask your name and business with me, sir?”

“I am Rhovann Disarnnyl, of House Disarnnyl,” the elf replied. “And as far as my business with you, well, that is a simple matter. You and I have something in common, Lord Sergen. We have both been grievously wronged by your cousin Geran Hulmaster. I am here to determine how best the insults and injustices we have suffered at his hands might be set aright.”

Sergen raised an eyebrow. He couldn’t say what he might have expected his strange visitor to begin with, but that was certainly not it. With a small gesture, he invited the elf to sit, and said, “You have already piqued my interest, sir. Please—continue.”