"A little scrawny, isn't he?" said Jade Eyes distastefully.
"We'll feed him up," said Jakoven, leaving his chair.
"Boy," he said in a velvet tone as familiar to Garranon as his own voice. "Give me your name."
"Won't," said the boy, spitting on the floor.
Jakoven smiled and touched the boy's thin cheek. Garranon saw nothing, but Jade Eyes dropped his hands and stepped away.
Magic, thought Garranon.
The boy stood still, held captive by the touch of Jakoven's finger. His face was blank and empty.
Vekke's breath, thought Garranon. He remembered that, remembered the king holding him with nothing more than his touch. He hadn't realized it was magic Jakoven had used. Not until he saw the king use it on another boy.
"Give me your name, boy."
"Tychis." His consonants were thick with the accents of the Estian slums.
"Who was your mother?"
"Illeya of Hurog."
"Do you know your father?"
The boy's body began to vibrate with tension, shaking as he fought not to answer. "Fenwick of Hurog."
"What relation was he to your mother."
Tears spilled down the boy's face. "My mother was his uncle's get."
Jade Eyes' lip curled in contempt. Jakoven saw it and smiled. "It may be incest here, but in Shavig, next cousins often marry if there is no weakness in the family. The old bastard probably saw nothing wrong in sleeping with his cousin—and he left us this boy with the blood of dragons running through his veins from both sides. It wasn't strong enough in the young Hurogmeten—that's why the Bane only turned blue instead of red. I think this boy's blood is the key to loosing Farsonsbane."
The king smiled pleasantly at Jade Eyes and shook his head. "You will not allow your attitude over his parentage to trouble this boy."
Jade Eyes read the king's tone as well as Garranon did and nodded obediently. Jakoven turned his attention back to the boy.
"Tychis, you will be loyal to me above all else and serve me."
"I will be loyal," said the boy dully.
"Some things that are done to you, you will hate. Others may give you pleasure. But you will serve me and do as I command."
"I serve you."
Gods, oh gods. Garranon found the memory of those words in his soul. How long have I followed those commands? Do I still?
The king pulled his hand away. "Take him into the green rooms, Jade Eyes. Go with him, boy, you'll find a bed there. Sleep until I awake you."
Garranon glanced at the passage doors behind him to see that the passageway looked as solid as if the Tamerlain had never dismissed it. He stood to the side as Jade Eyes and the boy walked past him, opened the door, and entered the short passage without seeing Garranon or the Tamerlain, though Garranon could have reached out and touched Jade Eyes's robe.
"I've only been able to get that spell to work on a dog," commented Jade Eyes, returning to the audience chamber without the boy. He closed the door to the passage behind him. "I quit using it because the dog's devotion became so annoying, I had to kill it."
Jakoven smiled. "You'll notice I didn't tell him to love me. Hatred is so much more entertaining."
Garranon stared at Jakoven and knew that the king meant him. And that knowledge took his understanding of the whole of his life and twisted it. He didn't hear what else Jakoven and Jade Eyes said before they entered the king's private chambers, closing the door behind them.
"Garranon," said the Tamerlain impatiently, though softly, so her voice didn't carry into the room beyond.
He turned to her.
She said, "The spell isn't as strong as he thinks it is. It would not hold an adult as it does a child who is weak and frightened—or hurt as you were. But the remnants of the spell might make you sad at leaving his service, even after all this time."
Garranon thought of his most terrible secret and shuddered. "Did I tell him anything—is that why Callis fell?"
"He didn't ask for information from you," she said. "You told him nothing because he asked nothing of you. The concept of using children as messengers never occurred to the Tallvenish. Oranstone simply never had a chance against the armies Jakoven's father brought against it."
Garranon nodded and went through the passageway that led to his former rooms. The boy slept on top of the covers, his face peaceful.
"What will you do?" asked the Tamerlain.
"How long was I in thrall to Jakoven?" Garranon asked.
"Four years," she said. "Almost five."
He deliberately stared at the boy, because the answers to the next questions mattered greatly to him, and he didn't want her to know how much.
"You heard what the king wants him for?" she asked. "Jakoven has found Farsonsbane and, in this child's Hurog blood, he has found the key to using it."
"Farsonsbane?" Garranon stared at her a moment. "I suppose my part in your game is to rescue the boy and take him to his brethren. Tell me, what about this spell of Jakoven's?"
There was a pause before the Tamerlain answered. "I can break it."
"You could have freed me?"
She didn't answer.
He turned on his heels to look at her. "Do you think that I have survived this long in court not to realize when I've been manipulated?" he asked bitterly, her betrayal worse than the knowledge that he'd been the king's puppet everyone had always thought him. For nineteen years she had been his only friend, his only confidant. "How kind of you to show me, after all these years, that the king held me in thrall. I assume you will break the king's spell so I don't have to drag this child kicking and screaming all the way to Hurog?"
The Tamerlain stepped back. "It would be better to wait until you're on the trail. He won't be safe in Estian, and given a chance, he'd try and run. He'll sleep until I break the sleep spell the king laid on him as well." She hesitated. "I would have taken the magic off you, but Jakoven would have noticed. It would not have helped you, and Aethervon is limited in how much he can do that is contrary to the king's wishes."
It might have been the truth. Garranon shrugged. "It doesn't matter now. We have no time for this if I'm to get him out of the castle before everyone is awake."
He wanted to ask her if she understood what this task she'd given him meant to his estate and to his wife and son. The king would know who took the boy away as soon as he noticed that Garranon was gone as well. But it wouldn't matter to her, and his wife would not thank him if he left this child at risk because Garranon was afraid for her and for Buril, his home.
The boy didn't awaken when Garranon picked him up and carried him back through the rooms that had once been his.
Garranon traveled the servant corridors. When he passed a few maids, they curtsied to him and averted their eyes from the boy. Garranon had removed a number of children from the play of the higher nobles, and the servants wouldn't go out of their way to report him until they learned whose bed he'd removed this one from.
A stable boy brought his horse without comment, its saddlebags already filled for the journey to Oranstone he'd planned on making tomorrow. When he asked, they brought a second horse for the boy when he awoke.
The stable master held the sleeping boy until Garranon was mounted, then handed him up.
"Poor little tyke," said the master. "He'll be lucky if they haven't drugged him to his death, as fast as he's sleeping."
Garranon nodded; it wasn't necessary that the stable master know that it was magic, not narcotics, that kept the boy quiet. Although his own mare was well used to the company of the Tamerlain, the second mount snorted and sidled when he was led up for Garranon to take the reins.