The Broken Blade (29 page)

How could Alessia have dared to take the life of his child?
His
child! What had given her that right? What cruelty had he ever done her, compared with hers to him, that she would think to do such a thing?

How had Hughan seen fit to forgive her?

“Lord Goodman.” Arlaith's quiet voice drew him from his thought. Eamon looked up at him, feeling the sore red of tears about his eyes. Arlaith watched him with concern. “I must return to the East,” he said. “Will you be well, Lord Goodman?”

“I will be well.” Eamon's tone and voice seemed fell in his ears and on his lips as he spoke.

Arlaith held his gaze a moment more, then bowed deeply. “By your leave, Lord Goodman.”

Eamon did not watch him go. Driving his arms deep into his
cloak, he turned and stared out at the plain. Had one betrayal not been enough for her?

Eamon.

As the gentle voice washed through him, he shook with fear, for it forced him from his vengeful thoughts and showed him how dark they were. He shuddered to see them in its light.

How could he know that Arlaith had told him the truth? Why would Arlaith tell him the truth about such a thing?

Arlaith had said he had not lied… and Hughan had not spoken of a child. No; Hughan had told him that Alessia loved him still! Twice, then, Alessia had lied to the King, and Hughan had been fooled.

How could the King be fooled?

Eamon shook his head and tried to reason with himself. It could be a lie. Alessia might not even have been with child…

But even as he sought that comfort, whether from a vision sent by the King, or another of the Master's premonitions sent to torment him, Eamon knew the truth of Arlaith's words: Alessia Turnholt had been bearing a child in her womb – his child – and it was dead. His hands ached at the thought of the tiny babe that he would never hold – or even see.

He pressed his hands to the walls as his limbs shook. The city was behind him and the battle before him, but as the sun sank into the western sky, Eamon could only grieve for what he had never known, and unknowingly had lost.

 

A heavy darkness fell on the city that night. The lights of the Serpent's camp across the River gave back bright answer to Dunthruik's grim walls.

The throne room was long and empty when Eamon knelt wearily in it. He hid his grief as well as he could, but he wondered whether, as they watched him, the Master's eyes discerned it.

“Rise, son of Eben.”

Eamon rose. “The city is ready, Master. It will deploy at dawn.”

“It is a long-awaited watch that comes this night, Eben's son,” the
throned told him, and then looked at him. He rose and crossed the dais to where Eamon stood before reaching out to touch his face. “You, too, were long-awaited.”

Eamon searched the Master's face in confusion. Smiling softly, Edelred leaned forward and powerfully kissed his brow.

“Rest, Eben's son,” he said. “Much will be accomplished with the dawn.”

So it was that, as the moon rose, Eamon returned to his quarters. Supper had been laid for him but he could not face it. With all that he had lived through that day his heart felt terrible and empty, and all his efforts vain. His very self seemed lost in that vacuum and, as he gazed at the table before him, the weight of his long months in Dunthruik came to rest heavily on his shoulders.

Cartwright came to clear the table and started when he found the food untouched. He looked at Eamon with concern. “My lord?”

“I cannot eat.” Eamon drove his hands over his eyes and then gazed accusingly at his servant. “Did you know it?” he demanded.

Cartwright blinked. “Know what, my lord?”

“Did you know that your lady Alessia was with child?”

Cartwright remained very still for a moment and his face paled.

“I did not know it,” the servant said, “but I would believe it.”

“Would you also believe, Mr Cartwright, that she…” Eamon's tongue stuck in his throat as fresh rage ran through him. “You were right, Mr Cartwright,” he managed at last. “She stayed in this city. She was held by the Right Hand, and she…” He thought of her pale, beautiful flesh, prone before the torments of a Right Hand.

“What happened, my lord?” Cartwright whispered.

Eamon looked at him. The thoughts were too terrible for him to bear. His jaw quivered. Desperately he struggled with his violent tongue but he could not hold it.

“She killed it to injure me!”

With a cry of vile rage he tore up to his feet. He seized the table, and setting against it every force of muscle and of limb, he hurled it down. With a tremendous crack, all that was on the table was cast
asunder and the stones of the Right Hand's chamber rang with a splintering roar.

Eamon did not hear it. His tongue, stirred past all endurance, fell to curses. To think of her, laid open before the Right Hand…

His curses dwindled to wrathful sobs and his knees lost their strength. Sinking back upon his chair, he laid his head in his hands and wept.

If she had been tortured, she had deserved it. All that she had done, she had done to spite him. It was to spite him that she had slaughtered his child.

“My lord,” Cartwright dared at last.

Eamon scarcely heard him.

“My lord, I cannot imagine how this weighs on you, but I am sorry.”

Cartwright's gentle words fell on him with a chill. Eamon struggled to recover his senses.

“It was not your doing,” he answered at last.

Cartwright stood nearby. He held an elegant black napkin, which he had rescued from the floor. Wordlessly, the servant extended it to Eamon. Eamon used it to wipe his stinging eyes and face.

“Thank you.”

Cartwright nodded.

“I am sorry,” Eamon added, gesturing to the broken table.

“I will clear it.” Cartwright began to gather debris from the floor. As Cartwright worked, Eamon's thought turned to what the morning would bring.

“Mr Cartwright.”

Cartwright paused and looked at him. “My lord?”

“If the Master fails tomorrow –”

“My lord!”

“
If
the Master fails tomorrow, and the Serpent enters the city, I want you to gather my house. You will go to a room somewhere in the palace and shut yourselves inside. And, should the enemy find you, you will tell them that you serve me.” He paused. “Refer to me by name.”

“My lord?”

“Do not question my instruction. Only swear to me that you will do this.”

He did not look convinced, but the servant nodded. “Yes, my lord.” He continued gathering the fallen meal and then looked up to Eamon. “Will the Serpent come, my lord?”

“Yes,” Eamon replied. “He will come.”

“Then you, my lord, must eat,” Cartwright said quietly, “for this city's hopes are pinned on you.”

Caught between growing terror and the embers of his anguished rage, Eamon shuddered.

“Yes,” he whispered.

 

It was long that night before Eamon retired to his bedchambersand lay down to rest. For a while he heard the servants tidying the dining hall. When even that noise stopped, he was left alone with the rustling sound of the drapes moving in the evening air.

He lay through the scant hours of darkness, trying to rest. But he could not sleep; his eyes were haunted and his thought was tainted, and when he tried to distract himself by watching the drapes about him, he saw shadows as terrifying as those that dwelt within.

For a moment, however brief, he had not been the last of his house, but before it had even been born, his child had been cursed by his blood. It was repayment for his broken oaths.

So much had happened to him since the day when he had begun taking and breaking oaths. It had not been even a year, yet it felt as though he had lived a hundred. With the dawn, he would face that for which he had fought and suffered.

All over the city men lay down to sleepless rest, or restless sleep. Dunthruik lay on the land like a hideous beast, ready by labours and groans to birth an army through the Blind Gate. The fighting would begin before most of that army had reached the field, and the field would be covered in blood before the sun had reached the third hour.

And all for what – a book and a crown? Would men die for that? Would
he
die for it?

He searched his heart. First Knight they called him, and Right Hand, and Raven's Bane, and Eben's son. He had so many names that he scarcely knew who he was or what he was to do. When he rode before the divisions and lines of men, before the whole city of Dunthruik, its first son and triumph of its Master, and spoke of his allegiance… would he not betray them all?

His arm ached. Slowly he rubbed his fingers across the place where the fangs of Cathair's hound had gripped him.

Whatever he did in the morning, he was to be a traitor. He had always been one. Was he not blind to think that he could come from the battle and have but one name, and one allegiance? Two oaths he had sworn and two marks he bore. The scion of treachery, the house of Goodman was a stillborn house; it did not deserve to live.

Eamon's mind reached after Eben's dagger. By Right Hands was it wielded – Eben and Cathair were not the least of those whose lives it had claimed.

In the darkness of his thought, Eamon rose from his bed and crossed the room to where the dagger lay. Slowly, he knelt down by it and drew it from its sheath, holding the curved blade before him in the pale moonlight.

The letters were there; they glared grimly back at him. He reached forward and quietly touched his fingers to them, feeling their cutting shape beneath his skin.

Surely his task was done? Battle would be joined, and there was nothing now that lay in his power to halt it, or to bring victory or defeat to either side. And what awaited him in victory or in defeat? There was no hope of peace, or rest, or life for him. His life was spent, worn out in deception and in tears, and his blood spent also in the child that had never lived to bear it. What hope had he for goodness or for clemency? What desire had he for life?

As Eamon gazed down at the blade an answer shivered down his spine:
none
. To live was to plunge himself ever more deeply in
sorrow and in blood. To reach the dawn was to declare his treachery and incur the wrath and hatred of those who admired him.

You need not reach the dawn, Eben's son.

Stunned, Eamon looked at the blade in his hands. It glinted back at him and, as he held it, its weight and shape and form seemed good to him. That dagger seemed the only good thing to him in all the world. He had borne much: who could ask him to carry more? How could he carry more?

And why should he? It was not despair in his heart, but rebellion. Why should he suffer and bleed and die for any man, or beneath any hand but his own? Why should he live and risk the breeding and bleeding of his house?

He gazed at the dagger's guileful blade and saw his own eyes caged between the letters, as though he saw them in a dark and bitter glass. His last service to the city, the Eagle, and the Star could, should, and would be his death.

Eamon.

The blade was in his hands and turned towards him, leaning against his very heart as he prepared to cast himself upon it – but the voice, and a memory of Hughan, halted him. “
Your blood is not cursed…”

With trembling hands he cast the blade from him; it clashed into the wall and fell with an angry clatter to the ground. Light flickered on the letters.

Shaking, Eamon crawled to the post of his bed. He pressed his hands and shuddering body against it and drove his face into his arms.

Coward!
The voice seethed so loudly that it seemed to shake the room.
Miserable wretch!

Eamon
.

Tearfully Eamon looked up to see a weeping man. The vision seemed astonishingly clear, and the depth of the man's grief was so forceful that Eamon knew it in his own heart. It was in the closeness of their hearts that he knew the man he saw as Eben.

Suddenly a lady was there. She was fair, her shining eyes were
blue, and as Eamon watched she knelt down at Eben's side. He recoiled from her with woe.

“
Come not near me!”
Eben cried, his voice raised in anguish. “
I am nothing but a curse!”

With gentle, fearless hands, the woman reached forward and touched his face.

“
These ills will be undone,”
she breathed, “
and blessings will be wrought through you.”
The lady leaned forward to kiss his grieved and wearied brow, driving back his care and leaving awe upon him. “
Peace, Eben,”
she whispered.
“Peace.”

It was then that Eamon knew her: Ede's sister, the root of Hughan's line, Elaina.

As the vision faded away he gazed again at his room. The queen's word of peace filled it, and the shadows shrank.

 

“My lord?”

The quiet voice stirred through his silent dreams. Eamon drew open his eyes. “Yes?”

“It is time.”

“Thank you, Mr Cartwright.”

He rose slowly from his bed. The sky hung dark outside without even the faintest trace of dawn. By lamplight Eamon went, shivering, to his hall and ate what Cartwright brought him. As he finished, Fletcher appeared.

“Lord Goodman,” he said, his voice dry with the early hour. “We wait to arm you.”

“Very well, Fletcher,” Eamon answered. “Come.”

Fletcher bowed and left the room. Moments later he returned with a group of servants. They carried with them the various parts of the armour that the throned had had made for him. As each splendid piece was brought and laid down on a long table before him, Eamon's stomach turned with dread.

At Fletcher's command all the servants left the room. Eamon was alone with his lieutenant and servant. The armour watched him
in the darkness – armour fit for a Right Hand and for one beloved of the Master. It had been made to hold him, and him alone.