The Traitor's Heir (52 page)

Now he spoke of it all. He saw her growing pale as he recounted how a breaching was conducted and what he saw when he did it. He trembled as he told her how it felt to be breached, for he knew that also.

“It burns, Alessia,” he shuddered. “It tears and grips and rends and sunders and punctures and penetrates and
burns
. You can do nothing to stop it: a breacher will see what you know, he will take it from you, and if you resist him he will call down fire upon you until you can only beg him to take all he wants and let you die. Breaching is a rare skill among the Gauntlet. The Master's mark gave it to me. I have used it upon dozens of men – women and children too.” His bleeding palm throbbed. “I have done it, Alessia, and, of late, I did not care that I did. I did it to Giles. I wanted to. He was not protected.”

Alessia pressed his hand tenderly between her fingers. “He was your enemy.”

“That does not justify it,” Eamon whispered. There, kneeling by the fireplace with her hands on his, he understood it clearly at last. “He… he said things about me. Things I didn't want to hear. Because they were true.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that I had…” Eamon fell silent. Did he dare to tell her the rest? Alessia watched him, eyes round with compassion. His desire to be true engulfed him.

“He called me a traitor,” he said at last.

Alessia stared. “A traitor?” She laughed. “Eamon, you are no traitor –”

“He spoke the truth, Alessia.”

“How could he?” she breathed, reaching forward to lay her hand by his face. “I don't believe it.”

Eamon felt his resolve quail. Drawing a deep breath, he took her hand again.

“I was telling you about the holk,” he said. Alessia nodded. “Giles was the man who captured it and killed my crew. He meant to kill me too, and he would have done, except…” It hurt to remember.

“What happened?”

“It… it was Mathaiah.” The name came heavily, painfully from his lips.

“Your ward?” Alessia asked softly. She knew that Eamon was estranged from the young man. He had never told her why.

“We were friends then,” Eamon replied, marvelling at the bitterness in his voice. “He… Mr Grahaven saved my life.”

He looked at her in surprise. How could he have forgotten? Yet he had – just as he had forgotten the thousand gestures of kindness and encouragement the cadet had always freely offered him.

He pressed the handkerchief closer to his slowing wound. “He took a blow that should have killed me. He should have died. He was bleeding in my lap. I have seen blood before, and much of it, but I had never seen such rage. I was terrified, Alessia.” He had never confessed it before. “I was terrified that Mathaiah would die; that I had met death and would be swept up with Spencing and the others – another corpse to silt the River.” He wept with remembered fear. Alessia touched his face, caressing the tears to one side.

“Your fear did not seize you,” she said. “That is courage. It does not make you a traitor.”

Did she not understand? “Mathaiah was dying. Yet he lives. Do you not ask yourself how?”

“Does it matter?” Alessia whispered. “It is a grace that he does so.”

How near the truth she struck! “It was. It was the King's grace.”

She stared. “The… the King's grace?”

“Do you remember I told you that sometimes, when I tried to breach men, there was something that stopped me? A kind of blue light?”

“You told me,” she whispered.

“It is called the King's grace; it aids those who serve him in times of trial. I have seen it hold men safe from breaching, and that night I saw it used to save a man from death. Mathaiah was healed.”

Alessia held his gaze for a moment. “Aeryn healed him?”

Eamon looked up at her. How easy it would be to say yes! But it was not the truth.

Now they had come to the crux of everything, to the fatal contradiction. This was what he had to tell her and what she needed to know to understand him and his grief. It was what he needed to utter to her so as to be free.

But what would she think of him? What could she think? She had heard his tale as that of a Gauntlet officer who had perhaps gone too far, and she had been sympathetic to him… What could she say – and be obliged to do – if he told her the truth?

He shook his head. He had to tell her. He tried. The words cloyed in his throat. He swallowed hard. So much rested on it, so much could be lost…

He had to be true.

Determined, he looked up at last. Alessia watched him with confusion. He straightened a single tress of her dark hair, letting it settle over her shoulder. Then, with his heart hanging upon a precipice, he met her gaze.

“Aeryn didn't heal Mathaiah,” he said quietly. “I did.”

The truth was spoken.

Alessia's eyes widened in disbelief.

Would she say nothing? “I healed Mathaiah,” he said again. He wrung his hands.

“But that would make you…” She stopped short and met his gaze. He tried to hold hers. “That would make you a wayfarer.”

He looked back at her. He wanted to answer yes, but he did not deserve the name that she gave to him. Not after what he had done; not given who he had become.

“I don't understand.” Alessia was frowning at him and her eyes passed over his injured hand. “You were already sworn to the throned. It's…” She shook her head. “It's impossible. Surely you cannot bear his mark and be one of them?”

“But I do, and I am. I am not the first who has done so.”

“What do you mean?”

“After I was captured I was taken back to one of the wayfarers' Hidden Halls,” he told her. “I learned that swearing one thing and doing another is a common curse of the Goodmans. The throned only sits where he does because a Goodman put him there. It… it was my ancestor who betrayed King Ede.” The fierceness and fear in his voice startled him. Who could betray such a man as Ede or Hughan?

Why had he done it?

“They cannot hold you responsible for that,” Alessia told him firmly.

“The wonder is that they don't!” Eamon told her. “Or at least,” he added quietly, “Hughan doesn't.”

Alessia blinked hard. “Hughan?”

Eamon nodded silently. “He is Ede's heir.”

“You've met him?” Alessia's voice was filled with awe. As Eamon nodded again her expression became that of a child watching a fairy tale come alive: the throned gave out that the wayfarers had no true heir among them. “Is he really Ede's descendant?”

“He is the true King,” Eamon answered. The simplicity of the truth stunned him. Even Lord Cathair had acknowledged it: Hughan Brenuin was Ede's heir. Eamon remembered every detail of Hughan's face, the justice and kindness with which the man commanded the wayfarers. How just and gentle Hughan had been with him, swift to encourage him and to call him by his true name. Hughan was kingly indeed.

“Why did you come to Dunthruik, Eamon?” Alessia asked suddenly.

“To serve him.”

Had he ever known whom he served? It was Hughan who had called him First Knight; under that name and with Hughan's blessing, Eamon had come to Dunthruik to aid the King. Or had he come to rise to Right Hand, to be vested in black and serve the glory of the flame-faced Master?

He had done neither.

“Eamon.” Her grip tightened on his hand. “You cannot serve them both.”

“I know.”

“You have to choose.”

It was the truth he had long sought to evade. Now he faced it. “I thought I had chosen,” he whispered. “But I never did. I suppose I thought that I could pick and choose my fealty. But I can't. It has to be all, or nothing.

“The throned wants to begin culling wayfarers. He knows where the King's camp is. It's probably under attack now – Lord Cathair said that men had already been dispatched to see to it. The throned knows where the supply convoys are and where they're going, because I broke Giles's mind and uttered his secrets aloud as I breached him. He's going to try to destroy them, and kill the King.” Eamon trembled as the enormity of the situation struck him. “The throned has only one way to quell the wayfarers and secure his dominion: he has to kill Hughan, for he is the very last of the house of Brenuin.” It was a task in which the throned wanted him to play a critical role: “
you will complete his work…
”

Urgency drove him to his feet. “This is my fault. I have to warn Hughan.”

Alessia rose with him. “There will be others who can go –”

“You don't understand,” Eamon answered. “The throned has a book – something called the Nightholt –”

“A book?” Alessia sounded incredulous.

“Mathaiah and I brought it back from Ellenswell. I don't know why it's so important, only that it is. If only I knew what it said…” He laughed bitterly. “Mathaiah said that he could read it. It was written in that writing that's on the doors to the throne room, and plastered all over the Hands' Hall. I didn't want to believe him; I chose not to. Can you believe that, Alessia? He never failed me,
never
lied to me once. And I
chose
not to believe him!” He did not add why; the wound was still fresh. “I don't suppose I can ask him now. But I have to speak to him. I must get word to Hughan.”

She gripped his hand. “Eamon, don't just go and –”

“I have to.”

“Why must you do it?” Alessia's voice caught in a sob. Eamon suddenly saw the fear in her reddened eyes. “Why must you do it?” she whispered.

“I must because I am not simply a King's man.” The logic of it was painfully obvious at last. “That's why I was sent. Even though I had the throned's mark, even though it was likely that I would be discovered, even though it was more than likely that everything would fall if I were taken, the King sent me.” It astounded him. “I'm his First Knight, Alessia.”

She stared at him, seemingly struck dumb. “First Knight?”

“Yes. It is why, even though I have done wrong, I must choose rightly now.” He looked at her again and saw that she had grown pale. “What is it?” he asked, setting his hands upon hers.

“N-nothing.”

Suddenly he felt ashamed. Her hand trembled beneath his and there were tears in her eyes. What had he put her through? “Alessia,” he breathed, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt –”

“You're an informant, aren't you?” she interjected.

“I was meant to be one. It didn't really turn out that way. I only marvel that I haven't been caught yet.” Sometimes he had felt certain that Lord Cathair knew the truth – sometimes he felt that the whole world could see through him. But nobody had ever tried to stop him. Why, he did not know. Perhaps they had seen how he could not choose. Perhaps he had never been worrying enough to warrant stopping.

He drew himself out of his thoughts and looked at her again. There seemed to be a growing weight across her shoulders, but she held his hand tightly.

“Have you… have you ever done things against people that you love?” she asked.

It cut him terribly. He had. Everything he had done for Cathair had been against Hughan. He could not even begin to think of what he had done to Mathaiah.

“Yes,” he answered weakly. “It is nearly unbearable. But perhaps I can still redeem some of what I have done, even if I cannot undo it.” It seemed a forlorn hope.

The dwindling fire crackled quietly in the grate, its flames lighting the eagle over the mantelpiece.

Suddenly he stared at her, remembering that she was Lady Alessia Turnholt, ally to the throned.

He started back.

He was a fool! If she did not reject him for what he was she would now be caught in the same net as he – and perhaps she would take every word he had said back to the throned. He panicked. “Alessia, I shouldn't have… I have to go… I…”

“Is that why you loved me?” Her voice was quiet. It caught and stilled him completely. “Was I a stepping stone to him?” Her hands shook in his.

With all the force with which he had been ready to flee he reached out to take hold of her face.

“That was never why I loved you,” he told her. “It isn't why I love you now. I love you because… because you chose to love me.” He searched her deep, dark eyes with his own. “The only thing that I have clung to in these days is you, Alessia. Neither king nor throne has been in my heart as you have been. Despite all of my falsehood you have been true, and now you have helped me to see my duty clearly again. I love you. I have doubted much the last few months – but I have never doubted that.”

He had expected to calm her with his words but her voice came back to him with sudden, unbearable passion.

“You have to leave Dunthruik!” she told him, seizing both his hands until it hurt. She startled him.

“Why?”

“You cannot stay!” She was nearly sobbing in her urgency. “They will hurt you. Don't stay!”

Eamon forgot his own troubles. He gathered her into his arms and held her tightly, running his hands across her beautiful hair.

“Please don't stay,” she whispered. Her heart beat fearfully against his.

“Alessia,” he answered. “Dear Alessia. By what grace I do not know, but I have been kept safe so far. If I can still do what I was sent to do, then I must.”

“He will find out!”

“We don't know that.”

“And if he does? What will he do to you?” She clung to him. “Please, Eamon –”

“Alessia, don't you see?” he laughed, and suddenly his fears were far away. “I can't leave Dunthruik now, any more than I could if the throned had already bound me and cast me to torment in the Pit. I have my duty to the King.”

She held him silently for a long time. “You won't go?”

“How could I? Even had I no oath, no promise, to keep me here, I would not.”