The Traitor's Heir (7 page)

Shredded linen lay everywhere, pitchers and basins had been cracked on the floor, and the great bed was out of place, wrenched to one side. Eamon was not the first from the Gauntlet to have been there that night. The room had been ransacked.

But he knew something they did not: as a child Aeryn had often boasted that her father's bed could be used to hold secrets. After he had repeatedly refused to believe her angry assertions she had triumphantly shown him the secret compartment that her father had had built into the bed. If Telo really had something to hide, it would be there.

What could Telo have had to hide?

The bedposts were thick and sturdy, the grain majestic in the moonlight. He leaned over to look at the base of the bed and accidentally banged his elbow, hard, against one of the posts. In the split second before he leapt away to nurse a numb bone he heard the reverberation of a hollow.

Shaking his arm to coax it to forget its hurt, he knelt by the post and ran his hands over the smooth wood. In the back of the fourth leg there was a small groove about the size of his thumb. Just as Aeryn had shown him a decade before, Eamon pressed it hard and listened to the answering click. A portion of the bedpost swung open against his hand.

He had to crawl under the frame and peer awkwardly up into the gap to see, but, straining his eyes, he made out the slim shape of a piece of parchment in the hidden hole.

Getting his hands into the compartment was difficult; the bed was only about a foot off the ground, and he had to slide under it on his back before he could take his prize. After several awkward attempts, parchment touched his fingers. He groped at it in the dark before threading it out.

It was as he seized the parchment that he heard a step on the landing.

He stilled his breathing to almost nothing and tuned every sense to the noise. His Gauntlet uniform would protect him from looters and other Gauntlet, but if there were more snakes about…

He held himself still. Another step. His arms were heavy where he held them suspended; he could not risk resting them. A step came closer. He hoped that he might pass unnoticed by the pile of blankets.

The pressure of a bladepoint rested sharply on his unguarded midriff.

“Up,” a voice demanded. It was thickly muffled. He didn't move.

“Up,
now
; keep your eyes closed.”

For a few seconds Eamon stayed very still, trying to think of a way to hide the paper. He realized at once that it would be impossible. He was caught.

He edged out from under the bed, his eyes held firmly and obligingly shut.

“Sit up. Not a word or I will kill you.”

Eamon sat in silence as rope was put about his hands. The skin that brushed past his own surprised him; it seemed too soft for a man's. As the knot was tied he pulled curiously against it. It was by no means tight enough.

“You bind very poorly,” he commented.

The paper was snatched out of his fingers. From the silence that followed, he inferred that his captor was reading it.

“Clearly, I mean you no offence,” he added. The silence continued.

He heard a sigh and a rustle of cloth as his captor knelt next to him.

“I have half a mind to leave you here, Eamon!” Eamon recognized the now undisguised voice with a start.

“Aeryn?” Angry words bubbled up in him – he had had too many surprises for one evening. “River's sake! What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” she replied curtly. “What are
you
doing here?”

“You threatened to kill me!”

“You could have been anyone.”

Eamon opened his eyes and fixed her in a steely glare. He noted uncertainly that his friend still held a small, sharp knife in her hand.

“Someone is going to get hurt if you don't put that down,” he told her, eyeing the blade. He refrained from adding, “Most likely you.”

“I know how to use a knife, thank you,” Aeryn snapped.

“You wouldn't be holding it like that if you did.” He thought he saw a look of embarrassment cross her face but her grip on the knife didn't lessen in the slightest. “You're not going to put it down?”

“Answer my question,” Aeryn rejoined, prodding none-too-gently at him with the blade. “What are you doing in my house?”

Eamon rolled his eyes. “I saw everyone else helping themselves and thought it a fine idea!”

She glared at him. “There's no need to be sarcastic.”

“Who said I was being sarcastic?” Eamon's voice quivered on the verge of violence. “Damn it, Aeryn! What did you think you were doing?”

“What did
I
think
I
was doing?” Aeryn stared at him. “
You
swore to the Gauntlet;
you
built that pyre;
you
put my father in it; if anyone is doing anything today, it's you!”

The words were keener against Eamon's heart than the knife that she held there. “I didn't kill him, Aeryn,” he tried.

“You're such a Glove,” she told him viciously. “No, Gloves only ever follow orders. Accountability wasn't in your training, I suppose?”

“Do you have any idea what they did to me?” Eamon yelled. Tears stung at his eyes; flames danced before them and fire was in his palm once more.

For a moment the moon became free of cloud; its beams showed two tear-marked faces watching each other wrathfully in the dark.

Aeryn held his gaze for a moment. “I tried to warn you –”

“‘Red isn't your colour'? You call
that
a warning?”

He glared at her. With a deep sigh, Aeryn lowered her blade then unbound his wrists, carefully bringing his hands out where she could see them. Snuffling with tears, she turned his right hand over between her own.

The mark of the eagle was still there; in the dark it seemed to glow embers.

Aeryn traced it with delicate fingers; the gesture caused excruciating pain to run up Eamon's arm. Agonized, he snatched his hand away.

Aeryn looked at him with alarm. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. Her eyes were fixed on his palm. Eamon saw that the glow there filled the whole flesh of his hand.

He looked at her with horror. “What have I done, Aeryn?”

“You have sworn a powerful oath.” Eamon recoiled; the words seemed to spell an inescapable doom over him. “The throned does not give up his sworn,” Aeryn added quietly.

Eamon glanced at her. “You mean the Master,” he whispered uneasily.

Aeryn matched his gaze. “He is no master, Eamon; he took what was not his to take and sits where it was never given to him to sit. I mean the throned.”

Eamon began to shake. “You're a wayfarer… a snake…”

Aeryn sat very still before him. “It is as you say,” she answered. A sad smile crossed over her face. “Will you execute me, too?”

For a long moment, Eamon said nothing. “Why didn't you ever tell me?” he breathed at last.

“Why didn't I ever…?” Her mouth hung open incredulously. “You were set on that uniform!” she cried, gesturing to his jacket in disgust. “The Gauntlet would have found out or you would have had to kill me. Even if you didn't, one of the others might have killed you for fear that you might betray me.”

“Others… other wayfarers?” Eamon's glance flicked to the shadows, as though he expected strange creatures to leap out from them. “How many of you are there?” He shook his head. “No, a better question – and for River's sake, Aeryn, you had better answer me this one – who are these wayfarers? No stories: I want the truth.”

Aeryn watched him closely, carefully assessing every aspect of his face. He wondered whether she might be weighing up every second of the years they had known each other, to judge whether the signs of their friendship pointed to him as meriting her trust. Eamon matched her scrutiny steadily.

She reached her decision. “What is this town called, Eamon?”

Eamon stared. Was she mad? “Edesfield,” he said.

“It should be pronounced Ede's Field, not Ed-es-field,” Aeryn told him.

“Ede's Field?” Eamon repeated the new pronunciation dumbly. “Why should it be pronounced like that?”

“Because Ede was the King who fell in battle here. The battle is remembered, even though he is not. He was of the house of Brenuin, the house of kings.”

Eamon felt a weight in his stomach. His mother had talked of kings; his father had tried to drive such thoughts from him. “There has never been a house of kings over the River, except perhaps in the dreams of small boys.”

Aeryn watched him for a moment. Then she began to recite something. As Eamon listened he felt something old and deep, like distant music, hidden in her words.

Eamon gazed at her. “What is that?” he whispered.

Aeryn smiled at him sadly. “A poem not read by bookbinders' sons. It tells how Ede was betrayed and how the throned unlawfully took the River Realm from him.”

“What happened?” Eamon breathed.

“The throned moved both people and land against their rightful king, Ede, promising power to those who went to war with him. The land had to swallow the swollen corpses of many of its own before the last battle was joined. At Edesfield, King Ede and the throned met for the last time.” She paused. “Ede was killed, and the throned marched down the River to take the city that you call Dunthruik.”

“Ede can't have been much of a king if he lost,” Eamon ventured. “Power changes hands, Aeryn; it's natural, and the fact that it is sometimes done in battle isn't ‘unlawful'. Besides which,” he added, “Dunthruik is a great city and the throned is a good master of this land.”

“A good master?” Aeryn shook her head with an angry laugh. “Look at your hand, Eamon. What kind of master gave you that?”

Eamon looked uncomfortably at his palm.

“The throned has done much that is evil, Eamon,” Aeryn continued, “and in more ways than I can explain to you now – probably in more ways than I understand. The mark on your hand is just a reflection of it. Dunthruik is a darkened city, built on suffering and founded in blood.”

“Freedom is bought by blood.”

“I suppose you'll be telling me that that's why your uniform is red, next!”

Eamon fell silent. It was taught in the Gauntlet colleges that red, the Master's colour, was one of sacrifice and glory.

Aeryn reached out and touched his shoulder, drawing his eyes back to her. “Believe me when I tell you that the throned works evil in Dunthruik, as do his Hands and his Gauntlet.”

“So what about Ede?” Eamon was struggling to grasp what she was saying.

“Ede died in battle against the throned but Ede's line was not destroyed. His sister survived the fighting and escaped the siege of her city, carrying an unborn son who was the last child of royal blood…” Aeryn paused, as though wondering what to say next. “The throned, with his Hands and his Gauntlet, had – and have – great power. But after Ede's death some of the King's men began to show new courage of their own.”

“These ‘King's men',” Eamon asked uncertainly, “are they the wayfarers?”

“The King's men – wayfarers or ‘snakes', as the throned and his own call us – believe that your ‘master' has wrongfully taken rule of this land and that we suffer for it.”

Eamon sat silent and pensive. His eyes drifted to his palm and to the eagle etched upon it. Part of him wondered what this, his own mark, would bring him. Part of him did not dare to entertain the thought.

Aeryn seemed to read his troubled mind. “The mark of the throned is not easily cast aside,” she said. “I can't tell you exactly what it does or doesn't do, except that by it you have given yourself to him. Some say that the Gauntlet are his possessions in more ways than one and that his mark grants strange strengths.”

Eamon's flesh crawled. “But… it's just a uniform. I serve the people of the River Realm and –”

“No, Eamon; you are bound to him. You serve
him
.”

Eamon took a deep breath, hoping that his heart might be kind and return to a steady pace. It did not.

Aeryn looked once more at the parchment in her hand and then tucked it into her cloak. Silently, she rose.

“I have to go. My father died for these papers and I cannot let you take them.”

He blinked at her in astonishment. “What are they?”

She hesitated. “I can't tell you, Eamon.” She turned to go.

“Is that it?” Eamon asked angrily. “You're just going to leave me here?”

“Eamon –”

He leapt to his feet, his bonds falling easily from him; Aeryn shied back from him as he grabbed her arm. He was angry with her – for not warning him before he swore and for leaving him now in impossible turmoil. His anger rose in him like a thing alive, tightening his grip on her.

“After everything you've said?” he cried, laughing bitterly. “You're just going to go!” What right had she to tie him up, feed him a wild collection of lies, question his allegiance, doubt his integrity, and, to top it all, take what he had found by his own initiative – with no explanation as to what it was and where it came from! More than any of that, she meant to go… If he let her go he would never see her again.

And he would never learn what she knew.

The answer, then, was simple: he would not let her go. He would take what he wanted from her, by force if he had to. She was making him; it was her own fault.

“
Eamon!
”

Aeryn's words seemed far away but something in him heard them. He blinked hard and a terrible veil was lifted from his sight.

His friend's face was wracked with pain as he gripped her about the neck. His other hand had somehow wrested the knife from her and held it fast, ready to use it.