"Can you hear as well?"
"Yes."
I rubbed my pant legs. I could work with Pansy's fears because I understood him. I won over Penrod by the same means. I needed to understand Oreg as well as I understood the mistreated horse. "Does it hurt you when the keep is damaged?"
"No," he said, then continued almost reluctantly, "I can feel it, but it doesn't hurt."
"Do you occupy the whole of the keep, or just the older parts?"
"The whole keep, and that which belongs to it. The curtain walls, the stables, the smithy—the sewers, even."
"If you are the keep, how is it that you still have a body?" I asked, tipping my head at his human body.
"It amused my father."
I thought about what he'd said for a while. "If the keep is damaged, it does not hurt you. Does it hurt you when your body is hurt?"
"Yes," he whispered, tensing.
Well, if I'd spent the last fifteen years as my father's slave, I'd have whispered an answer, too. From all accounts, my grandfather had been worse. Deliberately, I yawned. It was late, I needed to sleep.
"My father never mentioned you at all."
"Strategically speaking, it is better if I am secret from your enemies—a harmless ghost that wanders the halls." He hesitated, then ventured, "I prefer to keep my presence quiet. I don't like people very much."
Nor would I, I thought, after so many years of serving Hurogs.
"Right." I said. "Here are my orders for now. Continue your protection of my sister. I'd like to meet you here each night when I am alone. Other than that, do as you will."
"Do you want me to protect you, too?"
I grinned. Powerful he might be, I was willing to accept his word on that, but he was half my weight. "I've had years to learn to do that. If I can't, well, then I'm not fit to be Hurogmeten, am I?"
"There are those who say you aren't fit anyway," he said, a challenge in his voice.
I couldn't decide if he was testing my temper or if he still half believed my act. Maybe he knew the truth better than I did. Abruptly, I felt tired.
"Yes. Well, now. I'd be sad if they thought me competent after all the effort I put into shoving my stupidity down my father's throat. I can hardly hold that against them, can I?"
He laughed, though I thought it was because he believed it necessary rather than because my words actually amused him. He was silent for a while then asked, "Why are you pretending to be stupid?" He hesitated and said tentatively, "I always wondered about that. It seemed so odd that you would spend all those hours in the library. But then you would read and read but never seemed to understand what it was you were reading." As he spoke, he bounced off the bed and strode oh so casually out of my reach.
"Thought I might be looking at the pictures or the pretty inks?" I asked, amused.
"What happened when your father hit you that time? If it wasn't brain damage? And even an idiot listening to you now could see that your brain is fine." He grinned shyly, a boy venturing an opinion or a slave flattering the master, but he'd put furniture between his body and me.
Like Pansy, I thought, he'd learn that I wouldn't harm him. Besides, I'd pried into his private pain; it was only fair to give him the same opportunity. "It damaged something," I said. "I couldn't speak at all." I remembered how terrifying it had been to have thoughts that wouldn't turn into words.
"You weren't just frightened?" asked Oreg.
Looking at him, I could see he knew what it was to be so frightened he couldn't speak. Pity choked my reply. "No."
"You couldn't walk, either," he said speculatively.
I nodded. "Or stand or anything else." It had taken Stala and me years to strengthen my left side until I was as fast with my left hand as I was with my right. Sometimes I dreamt that the strange, overpowering numbness had overtaken my left arm again.
"You used to do magic—make flowers bloom for your mother." Oreg was relaxing a bit. He'd settled on the bench near the door.
"I can still find things. Ciarra nearly scared me out of a winter's growth today when I discovered she was suddenly so far below me. I take it she didn't fall out of the tunnel like I did? You led her by another path?" He nodded. "But otherwise, I can't work magic anymore. I can feel it but not work it."
"But you aren't stupid. Why did you pretend?"
"So my father wouldn't kill me." I tried to put instinctive knowledge into terms someone else might understand. "My father is—was the Hurogmeten. Perhaps you know what that means better than anyone else. To him it was the most important thing a human could be, better than high king, but the title was only temporary, to be given away like this ring when he died."
"But all men must do that," commented Oreg reasonably. "His father entrusted Hurog to Fenwick. He would live on through his children."
"He killed my grandfather," I said. It was the first time I'd ever said it out loud.
Everything about Oreg went still. Then he whispered, "Your grandfather was killed by bandits. Your father brought him here to die."
"My grandfather was struck from behind by my father's arrow. My father admitted it once when he was drunk."
We'd been hunting, just the two of us, when I was nine or ten. We'd camped up in the mountains, and my father began drinking as soon as we'd set up the tent. I don't remember what led him to confess, but I still remembered the look he'd turned on me afterward. He hadn't meant to let that slip, and even then I'd known it was dangerous knowledge. I'd pretended I hadn't heard him, that his words had been too slurred. It might have been that slip that sent him over the edge, but I'd come to believe his antagonism went deeper than that.
"He saw me as a rival for Hurog. Time was his enemy, and I its standard bearer." That sounded like something my hero Seleg might have written in his journals. It also would have sounded better on paper than it did out loud, so I tried for a less dramatic tone. "My father didn't like to lose battles."
I left the bed and went to the polished square of metal hanging on the wall. I looked like my father, not so startling without the Hurog blue eyes, but a younger version of my father all the same. The size came from his mother's family, but the features were Hurog. "I was his successor, a constant reminder that he would someday lose Hurog. I'm not certain even he realized it, but from the day I first held a sword, he thought of me as a threat. You might recall, if you were paying attention, that the beating responsible for my «change» was not the first time he beat me unconscious. If it had continued, he would have killed me before I was old enough to defend myself. And I had the example of my mother to follow."
"When she lost herself in dreams, he didn't beat her as much. Or visit her bed," agreed the boy solemnly.
"My speaking problem made my father think I'd become an idiot, and I decided to take advantage of it."
"Why continue it now, after he is dead?"
I felt my way to an answer. "My uncle rules here for the next two years. Like my father, he was raised to believe that becoming Hurogmeten is the summit of what a man can accomplish. I'm not sure he'll want to give it back."
"You're so certain he's a villain? He was a nice boy…"
Oreg's voice dropped to a whisper. "At least I think it was Duraugh, but sometimes I don't remember so well."
I closed my eyes. "I don't know him, only that he has little patience with idiots. The gods know I wouldn't want an idiot in charge of Hurog, either. We live too close to the edge of survival." I shrugged and looked at Oreg, who'd somehow come to be crouched at my feet. "I don't trust him."
I'd talked more to Oreg than I ever remember talking to anyone except Ciarra. Speech was still something of an effort, and it tired me. Ironic how honesty felt much more awkward than lying.