“Alastair, you are not your father.”
He bowed his head. “It doesn’t matter. My life has been a waste.”
“No. Look at me. Look at me, dearest.” I touched his cheek, gently but firmly forcing him to face me. “You’ve sweat, you’ve bled, you’ve served, you nearly died to protect this kingdom. Many times. You’ve saved more people than you know. How can you call that a waste?”
“Everything I’ve done I’ve done to uphold our family’s honor, to be the man my father was. What is any of that worth when that honor is a lie?”
“Is what you did for Leyda a lie? Or for Cordelia?” Or for me? I brushed a loose strand of hair from his forehead. “I understand your family’s legacy is important to you, love, as it should be, but you can’t live the rest of your life chained to the expectations of the dead.”
There was a long silence.
“Then what do I do?”
The hungry, almost desperate way he said it left me feeling as if I’d stumbled naked across the threshold of a house on fire with only a thimble and my tears to quench it. What answer could I give, not to the heir of House Daired, but to the man I loved?
“What the son of every failed father must, I suppose,” I said. “He dishonored your family name. You have the chance to redeem it.”
The lantern crackled. Alastair’s shoulders rose and fell. I took his hand.
“Aliza, I once told you that I wish you’d been able to meet my father,” he said at last. “Do you remember?
“Aye, I remember.”
He stood and held out the blade in his hand. It was a plain sword, without pommel stone or scrollwork. Made for killing and nothing else. “I don’t wish that anymore.”
He swung the sword. His father’s tapestry fluttered to the ground, sheared neatly in half. An anguished scream would not have sounded more terrible or more pained than that faint crumple of ruined cloth.
“I wish he had been able to meet you.” He drew me closer and kissed the top of my head. “Wherever this leads, whatever horrors are waiting for us in Edonarle, I’m glad you’re with me.”
It took a second for me to draw back my voice from where it had fled. “Edonarle? Aren’t we going to Edan Rose?”
“No.” He sheathed his sword and collected the lantern without a second glance at his father’s desecrated memorial. “Come. I’ve had a letter from Aunt Catriona. They’re in Edonarle. She, Julienna, Edmund, and the others. They’ve asked for us to join them.”
“All right, but why?”
“Do you remember what Lord Camron warned me about before we left for Lake Meera?”
I cast my mind back to what seemed another life. “The trade agreement?”
“Yes. The guilds have been busy while we were away. They’ve persuaded the king to call a convocation. Aunt Catriona tells me they expect an Elsian delegation in Edonarle by Saint Ellia’s Day. Embassies from the Garhad Islands and the Southern Principalities are already there.”
Els. In honesty, I’d forgotten about the details of the proposed agreement, delivered so hastily by Lord General Camron before we’d left for Lake Meera. Now it came flooding back, and with it, a renewed suspicion. The timing was too perfect. Four nations brought together for the first time in decades, in centuries, haggling over the terms of Garhadi ale and Elsian steel, distracted and vulnerable—and all the Tekari of Arle heading south, toward Edonarle. The puzzle pieces began to fall into place.
“This is it,” I said. “This is where the war begins, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Aunt Catriona says tensions are already high. The king wants every ally he has in the city in case something tips it over the edge.” The line of his lips took on a familiar grimness. “That’s where Tristan will be.”
“Then that’s where we need to be too.” I thought of Gwyn’s letter. “But first, there’s someone we need to see.”
I told him about the letter as we returned to our chambers. His frowned deepened as I described Gwyn’s cryptic warning. “I agree we should go to her, khera, but what do you hope to find out? What more do you think she can tell us?”
“I don’t know, but anything is better than nothing. If we’re going to face this unrest in Edonarle then so be it, but I don’t want to go unarmed.”
That drew out a sliver of a smile. “Now you’re thinking like a Daired.”
We took supper and retired early. Though painfully conscious of the godsforsaken hour Alastair expected us to leave the next morning, I couldn’t resist a little teasing before we went to bed. “Alastair?”
“Hmm?” he grunted, tugging off his boots.
“You promised me something at Castle Selwyn.”
Guildmaster Tornay herself would’ve given all the wealth of the Artists Guild for a glimpse of his expression. Its calculated innocence would have served as a model for her paintings of Saint Marten for years to come. “I did?”
“Aye. I distinctly recall a promise in the Lake Hall to ‘make amends.’” I unlaced my dressing gown and laid it aside. “Do you remember now?”
The boot fell from his hand as a slow grin spread over his face. “Thorough amends, I believe my words were.”
I extended my hand but found suddenly that I could not return his smile. For more than one reason I had tried not to dwell on the events leading up to that night in the Lake Hall, but now I felt again that knotted ache of sorrow, that grasping emptiness inside me where our only child had lived and died. “Tomorrow we head into darkness and danger and gods knows what other madness,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if I want to know. But right now, tonight, I want you. Whatever we face—”
He crossed the room and kissed me before I could finish. “I keep my promises, khera,” he whispered in my ear.
And he did. Oh, he did.
Chapter 8
A Howl in the Dark
The storm arrived during the night. Cold rain lashed the windows as we dressed the next morning, and by the time we set off, the rain had turned to a fine, sheeting sleet. Half a day into our flight and I’d made up my mind. Given rain like this or a blizzard of the Old Wilds, I’d take the blizzard, and gladly. Snow had no pretensions; it forced you to face the cold head on, and its fury played no games. Not so with sleet. This chill was subtler, more insistent, and once it had taken hold, harder to shake. My oilskin cloak stood as my staunch defender for half an hour before it too fell to the persistent drizzle, and by the time we landed for the night at a village on the southeast border of Middlemoor, my teeth were chattering uncontrollably.
“We’re a little out of the way, but this is no weather for sleeping outside,” Akarra said as Alastair undid her tack. “We’ll make up time in the morning.”
The village had no inn, and it took some banging on doors and bleary-eyed residents pointing toward one house or another before we found a farmer willing to lodge us in his barn. It sat at the edge of the village, just outside the wall. The Daired crest made no impression on him, and he held out his hand expectantly at the door to the barn. Alastair counted out ten copper trills into his open palm. The man looked at the coins, looked at our armor, and raised an eyebrow. Alastair added another five trills. The man grunted.