Her damaged hand gripped mine and the strength of that grasp was a testimony to Oreg's healing skills. Together we watched the night and felt a little better for each other's company.
When I slept at last, I dreamt I was small with dirty hands and ragged clothes. Hunger spurred me to dig through the trash that covered the cobbled alleyway, hoping that there was some scrap of dry bread that the rats and wild dogs had left behind. I was so intent on my quest that I didn't hear them until a large hand grasped the back of my neck.
They dragged me kicking and screaming before a harsh-faced man who said, "Purple eyes. This is the one."
I awoke in the early hours of the morning and used the dream to find my brother.
10—GARRANON IN ESTIAN
Only as adults do we understand our childhood.
The sky was yet dark when Garranon arose from his temporary quarters, walked the corridors of the castle, and entered the rooms that had been his since he first came to Estian. His things had been moved out yesterday at the king's orders—Jakoven thought they'd been placed in a different suite, but Garranon had sent them home to Oranstone.
The malachite floors gleamed in the light of the torch he carried from the corridor. The floor was older than the walls, one of the few things Jakoven had left when he rebuilt the castle. Green, thought Garranon, green for the king's favorite, the color of Oranstonian whores plying their trade. Appropriate.
The king had dismissed him from these rooms, the rooms that belonged to the king's whore.
All alone in the suite that had been his, Garranon closed his eyes. He was so tired. For two decades Garranon had been hostage for his brother, for his homeland, and now he'd outlived his usefulness. When the time was right he would retreat to his home like Haverness had, and not return to court. Surely the king would allow him that, after all these years.
He felt hollow and useless. All of the sacrifices he'd made had ended at nothing. He was no longer of importance to the king, and because of it he was no longer of importance to Oranstone.
The suite where he'd lived for the past two decades felt curiously abandoned without his things. Garranon supposed he ought to open drawers and wardrobes to make sure the castle servants had gotten everything, but instead he wandered from one room to the next watching the flickering torchlight reflect in the polished floors.
The king had found a new favorite. Someone more important to him than Jade Eyes—who had been as much a weapon to be used against Garranon as he had been a serious rival for the position of king's favorite. The king had been very angry with Garranon for choosing to fight for Oranstone after Jakoven had determined that Oranstone should fall to the Vorsag before he mounted a defense. That Haverness's Hundred had managed to throw back the invasion had rubbed the king's wounded pride with salt.
Jade Eyes had been a punishment for Garranon and a warning. This new favorite was something else—Jade Eyes had not been triumphant when he'd delivered the message for Garranon to vacate his apartment.
Garranon's reign as the king's favorite was ended, and with it any hope he held to help his people. Not that he'd been able to do much these past few years. It was time to go home and leave Jakoven to his new plaything.
Why did that hurt?
He touched an embroidered couch absently and a memory came to him. He'd been in the garden chatting quietly with the queen, so it must have been before the young Hurog's death a few years ago had driven her to living in solitude on her family estates.
A servant had dropped a tray of food, distracting him from his conversation. When he'd looked up his eye caught the face of one of the lesser nobles, a man he'd seen any number of times over the years, and for an instant Garranon was once again a terrified young boy being raped in the remains of his mother's gardens and the insignificant Avinhellish nobleman was holding his wrists.
Unable to deal with the unexpected memory, Garranon had turned without a word and retreated to this embroidered couch. He hadn't noticed the king in the garden, but Jakoven had followed him only a few moments later.
At the king's insistence, Garranon had, haltingly, told him what happened that long ago day while the king held him until he was finished. Their lovemaking that night had been sweet and gentle.
Garranon jerked his hand away from the couch as if it had burned him.
Garranon hated Jakoven. He knew he did. Had hated Jakoven secretly since he'd been brought to the king's bedroom as a terrified boy. Hated him more every time he went home to Oranstone and then was forced to leave his wife, his child, and his lands again to serve in the king's bedchamber.
Garranon lay on the bed, which was made up with unfamiliar ticks and bedcovers, and stared at the painted ceiling two stories above the floor.
It was only pride, he told himself. Oranstone would survive without him to soften the king's orders, but it was natural to fret that it could not survive without him. He would not miss Jakoven. His hands clenched in fists.
When the bed sank underneath the weight of another occupant, he put out his hand to pet the soft pelt of the Tamerlain without looking away from the star-and-moon-covered ceiling.
"Thank you for helping Ward," he said. "He was magnificent—I thought Jade Eyes would drop dead of flouted spite."
She purred and rubbed her broad face against his shoulder before settling against him. "What troubles you?"
He laughed without humor. "I do." He rubbed his hand over the unfamiliar coverlet. To her he could say what he could not admit to himself. "I hate him, so why does leaving him hurt so much?"
She was quiet for a minute and then said, "You've been Jakoven's lover for twenty years."
"Nineteen."
"More than half your life. It should feel strange to leave it behind."
He smiled at her.
"Perhaps," she said slowly, "you need to find out who he is putting in these rooms. It might help you either way. Yes, I think that might be a good idea."
The Tamerlain rolled off the bed and said, "Come."
She led him through the familiar passage between his rooms and the king's, stopping before the panels of wood that opened into the king's chambers.
"Shh—they won't see us, but noise is harder to mask," she said, and huffed at the panel, which shimmered and then dissolved before her. When she stepped forward, Garranon followed.
The passage opened into the king's receiving room. The only furniture it contained was the king's chair, which sat on a dais so the king, when he was seated, was the same height as a standing man.
Jakoven sat in his chair, while Jade Eyes, wearing only a sea-blue night wrap, leaned against it. On the strip of carpet in front of the dais, a guardsman held a struggling boy. All were apparently unaware that Garranon and the Tamerlain were watching them.
The child was tidy, but there was only so much soap and water could do to the dirt of years. His skin was gray and his hair was so neatly trimmed it had to have just been done. It was cut almost to his scalp—most likely to get rid of the pests that infested the lower population of Estian. Hunger gave him the face of a much older person, though Garranon reckoned his age to be around ten or twelve.
He hadn't felt as young as this boy looked when he was twelve, and one of the king's soldiers had presented him and his younger brother to the king in a scene very similar to this one.
"Hold him still," ordered Jakoven. The excited tremolo in his voice brought Garranon to alert as the guardsman wrapped an arm around the boy and gripped his jaw, forcing the boy to stare at the king.
"Hurog blue," said the king, satisfaction in his tone. "Your lord will be rewarded as I promised. Jade Eyes, take the boy for me."
The king's mage took the boy ungently by the arm and the guardsman left. The boy jerked once, then cried out and went still when Jade Eyes shifted his grip.