The Lion of Senet (13 page)

Chapter 19

At first, Johan spent his days drifting in and out of a drug-induced haze, waiting for Antonov with a degree of fatalistic calm. Slowly, as his bones began to knit together and the pain began to recede, Helgin tapered the dosage of poppy-dust. His rare moments of lucidity became more frequent, and he was able to reflect on his situation. He suffered no illusions about his fate; held no false hopes of rescue from it. He had chosen this path many years ago, fully aware that this was how it was likely to end. He did not try to fool himself into believing anything else.

I’ll walk to my execution—or hobble, to be more accurate,
he amended wryly, glancing down at his still-splinted leg—
with
my head held high. I’ll give no man any reason to question the
courage of the last Thorn king.

The pirate had expected Antonov to order him moved to less comfortable accommodation, even transfer him to the Senetian garrison in town, but apparently, Helgin had declared him too ill to be moved, so he had been spared that, at least.

But the Lion of Senet made no attempt to see him. He took up residence in Elcast Keep and carried on as if Johan did not even exist. Antonov didn’t come to his room to ascertain that his prisoner really was Johan Thorn; he didn’t even come to gloat.

By far the worst side effect of his increasing awareness was that it left Johan with far too much time to think about where he’d gone wrong.
Given a chance to live my life over, there’s not a
thing I’d do differently,
he declared defiantly to himself. That, he knew in his heart, was the biggest lie of all. Given a chance to live his life over, there was any number of things he’d do differently.
Next time I wouldn’t make the mistake of asking the mainland for help when my people began to starve,
he told himself.
Next time the darkness comes, I’ll let them suffer, because the short-term
pain of the Age of Shadows is a minor inconvenience compared to the long-term consequences of allowing Senet a foothold in
Dhevyn.

Once started on that train of thought, Johan found himself cataloguing his past mistakes with brutal disregard for his own feelings. He’d had plenty of time over the years to work out where he’d gone wrong. He understood now why, frightened and uncertain, his own dukes had sided with Antonov. The Lion of Senet had seemed like a tower of strength compared to Johan’s shaky leadership. Antonov’s High Priestess had promised the second sun would return, and it did, right when she said it would. All Johan could offer to counter her visions was the word of a drug-addled madman ...

But it wasn’t all the fault of Belagren and her Shadowdancers. Johan was more than willing to admit that he had contributed to his own downfall. Blinded by youth and inexperience, he had made several fatal errors of judgment and they had ended up costing him his crown.

Next time, I’d make every duke in Dhevyn swear allegiance to
me personally, not my throne, so that I can’t be deposed and my sisterelevated in my stead.

Johan did not despise his sister. Rainan hadn’t wanted the throne. She certainly hadn’t conspired against him to gain it. He’d simply left her no choice. Take the throne when her brother fled or hand over Dhevyn to the Lion of Senet.

But that wasn’t all he would change, given a second chance.
I’d make certain the Landfall Festival was outlawed. And
I’d make it a capital offense to practice human sacrifice.

Executing someone for the crime of executing someone struck Johan as being particularly ironic. It was probably the poppy-dust, he decided. It often left him strangely euphoric.

And next time,
he thought finally with a sense of deep regret,
I won’t let Morna go
...

That was perhaps the most painful mistake of all.

Johan allowed himself to remember Morna only rarely— especially now, when she was here, so close to him yet so distant, separated by so many years and so much heartache that he almost couldn’t bear to think about her. He had promised to let her go, and while he had never agreed with her decision to return to her husband and son, he had resolved to respect it.

If I’d kept her with me, if I’d insisted she stay in the Baenlands
with me, would our child have survived? If I’d kept Morna by my
side, I might have another daughter ... or a son. But I wouldn’t have
Mellie
. It was a futile train of thought. Too much had happened since then and it was unfair to both his wife and his daughter to dwell on what might have been.

Morna had not come to visit him, but that was no doubt Wallin’s doing. A part of Johan desperately wanted to see her. Another part of him was terrified by the prospect. Would she still be the same woman? Had her years as Wallin’s wife worn her down? Was she well? Was she still beautiful?

He heard the guards talking in low voices outside his door, and tried to make out what they were saying. It stopped him from thinking about the past for a time.

Other than Helgin, Johan had seen nobody since his capture. He once heard Master Helgin chatting to his apprentice, and he woke from a poppy-dust-induced doze one afternoon, certain he could hear Morna in the other room.

But nobody came to visit him.

He was healing well, so Master Helgin assured him. He could move his shoulder now, without too much stiffness, and the stitches had come out of his forehead, leaving a neat, slightly ridged scar across it. He smiled, wishing for a moment that Mellie were here to see it.

She’d be proud of me. I’m a real pirate now. I have a scar.

Johan sighed heavily. What was she doing now? Were Mellie and Lexie grieving him, thinking him dead, or had word already reached Mil of his capture?

Would Lexie remember what I told her to do if I was ever
taken alive?

Would Reithan be able to control the hotheads, or would Tia fire them up with her rhetoric about reclaiming what was rightfully theirs?

Thinking of Tia and her gift for causing trouble made Johan frown. Although he loved her like a daughter, she had inherited her mother’s cunning—and a degree of her father’s intelligence. It was a dangerous combination. So dangerous that, for a moment, Johan debated the wisdom of taking Helgin up on his offer to get a message to his people in the Baenlands. He dismissed the idea immediately. Antonov would be watching for something like that, and he would watch Helgin more closely than most. Attempting to get a message out would cost more lives than he was willing to spend.

With that uncomfortable thought foremost in his mind, he drifted off to sleep again, but it wasn’t restful. His dreams were a troubled montage of the past, the future and what might have been.

“Hello? . . .”

A hand on his shoulder shook him awake gently. He opened his eyes and blinked owlishly at the boy standing beside the bed. He was about sixteen and, for a moment, he thought Morna had come to visit him.
Damn this poppy-dust. Now I’m
hallucinating
.

The dark-haired boy smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry I woke you, sir.”

Johan stared at him blankly. “What? Who are you?”

“I didn’t mean to startle you, sir.”

He glanced at the closed door with a frown. “How did you get in here?”

“I told the guards I was here to give you another dose of poppy-dust, sir.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Who are you?”

“I’m Master Helgin’s apprentice.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Dirk Provin, sir.”

He closed his eyes for a moment to compose himself, then opened them and looked at the boy. “Sir, this, sir, that ... If nothing else, your aggravatingly good manners should have warned me you were Wallin’s son. What are you doing here, boy? Did your father send you?”

He shook his head. “I just came to see if you needed anything, sir.”

“No, you didn’t,” Johan accused, shifting on the bed to better look at the young man. “You came to gawk at me. And for pity’s sake, stop calling me ‘sir.’ My name is Johan.”

“As you wish ... Johan.” Dirk smiled at him sheepishly. “You are the most interesting thing that’s happened on Elcast since the war, you know, and I wasn’t born then, so I missed all the excitement.”

Johan stared at the boy for a moment. Was this young man Morna’s way of apologizing to Wallin Provin? Had she given him another son as some sort of recompense for the trouble she had caused?

“I’d use many words to describe the war, Dirk Provin, but I promise you, exciting wouldn’t be one of them.”

“You fought against Senet, didn’t you?”

“Senet and more than half my own dukes,” Johan corrected, not able to hide the bitterness, even after all this time. “Take a lesson from that, young Provin. Never declare war on someone until you’ve taken a look over your shoulder to see who’s standing with you.”

“Why did you go to war against Senet?”

“What does your father tell you?”

“He said that a heretic tried to prevent the return of the Age of Light, and that he and all the dukes loyal to the Goddess sided with Prince Antonov to defeat him. Other than that, he doesn’t say much at all.”

“Wallin always was a man of few words.”

“Is that what happened?”

“Pretty much.”

“Why didn’t you want the Age of Light to come back? I heard it was awful during the Age of Shadows.”

Johan took a deep breath. Keeping up with the quick-fire questions from this boy was exhausting. “It
was
awful, Dirk, but not so awful that I would condone cold-blooded murder performed as part of a religious rite of extremely dubious value to make it go away.”

“You mean sacrificing a child of royal blood to make the sun come back?”

“You’ve been to the Landfall Festival then?”

The boy shook his head with a frown. “We don’t have human sacrifices here on Elcast. At least we didn’t until Prince Antonov arrived.”

“Ah, my old friend Antonov. The Shadow Slayer, himself.”

“I’ve never heard him called that before.”

“It’s a title he earned during the war—performing religious rites of extremely dubious value,” he added with a wan smile.

“But it worked,” Dirk argued. “The second sun returned. How can you say it was of dubious value?”

Johan gave Dirk a long look, marveling at the boy’s ignorance. How did they do it? How did they hide such a blatant truth from everyone? But it was time to steer the conversation away from where it was heading. Johan knew he was going to die. He would not hurt Morna further by condemning her son to die alongside him.

“Did you say you were Helgin’s apprentice?”

“For the past year,” Dirk confirmed. “But what—”

“And Wallin agreed to it?” he asked, cutting off the stream of questions Dirk was obviously dying to ask. “I’d have thought he’d want his sons raised in his own image.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you’re Wallin Provin’s son, shouldn’t you be out there learning the finer points of military tactics? The Lion of Senet might have need of your sword one day, boy.” Johan closed his eyes for a moment. “Of course, there’s nobody left to conquer anymore. He has Damita by the balls. Your Uncle Baston would probably roll over and die like a well-trained dog if Antonov asked him to. And Dhevyn ... well, he’ll own that soon enough, once Alenor comes of age.”

“You really hate him, don’t you?”

“Probably not as much as he hates me. Besides, I’m too tired to hate him anymore. Now I just despair of what he’s done to my people.”

“Is that why you gave up on Dhevyn?”

Johan stared balefully at the lad. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Dirk Provin.”

“But if you were our king, why did you desert us? How can you let Antonov occupy Dhevyn while you hide out in the Baenlands?”

“Is that what you think happened? That I just decided I’d had enough and walked away?”

“I don’t know what happened, sir. Nobody will tell me.”

“I should think that as Wallin Provin’s son, you’d find the truth a little hard to stomach.”

“Then maybe I should ask my mother about it?” he suggested. The boy was watching him closely, looking for his reaction. “Perhaps she’ll tell me the truth.”

Does he know anything, or is this a fishing expedition?
“If Morna was planning to tell you anything, Dirk, you’d know about it by now.”

“Was she really one of your followers? Is that why Alenor says the High Priestess wants her put to death?”

“Dirk, can I give you some advice?”

“Sir?”

“Stop asking questions. Stop poking around in things that don’t concern you. I’d bet my right eye your father specifically forbade you to come here. So leave. And don’t come back. And don’t delve into the past, either. You’ll find more than you bargained for and I promise you, it won’t give you the answers you seek, just leave you with even more questions.”

“But—”

“No. I’ll answer no more of your questions, Dirk. You’ve exhausted me and this poppy-dust has made me drowsy. Leave me alone. I need to rest.”

Johan closed his eyes, feigning sleep. The boy waited silently for a time, and then, when Johan showed no sign of taking any further part in the conversation, he left, shutting the door softly behind him.

Maybe I should have told him what he wanted to know,
Johan mused once he was alone. He was alarmed to realize that Dirk Provin had no idea what happened during the Age of Shadows. With each year that went by the truth had slipped farther and farther away. Soon it would be nothing more than a legend, left to simmer in the hearts of emotional zealots like Tia, who believed that the cause was always worth the price; that the principle was the only thing worth defending.

Johan opened his eyes with a heavy sigh.

Belagren has won,
he realized.
She has achieved what she set
out to do. The next generation is growing up hearing only her versionof events.

How long before the truth is lost forever?

He turned to stare at the closed door.
Have I been wrong all
these years? Should I have fought on, no matter how many lives it
cost?