People were murdered because of passion: hatred, jealousy, fear. Lucy had neither physical beauty nor the kind of attractions or influence that could generate such emotions. People were also murdered for business: politics, intrigue, secrets. She had been involved in such things, but what could she know that could provoke murder? And why now? For ten years she had been out of sight; for five of those she had rocked in her chair and puttered about with children’s toys.
Ren Wesley was looking at me intently. Waiting. “What am I to tell the boy?” His words were precise, his voice cold.
“It would be difficult enough to tell him that she did it herself, but this…” The temptation to hide the truth strained my conscience. What if the woman had somehow let Gerick know of her connection with me?
“He has to be told,” I said at last. “However painful it is, hiding the truth will only compound the hurt.” Someday he would know, even if he figured it out for himself. “And when the duchess is well enough, we’ll have to inform her also.”
The physician nodded. I thought I saw a flash of relief cross his face. “I was hoping you would say that.” My reputation was wicked. If even so liberal-minded a soul as Ren Wesley had felt it reason to doubt me, I couldn’t blame him.
By late afternoon, Gerick had not been found. With my permission, James had started inquiries among the other servants, but no one had seen the boy since he had taken his cloak from his room the previous evening. I directed the servants to start at one end of the castle and search every nook and cranny, inside and out, high and low, no matter how improbable.
Meanwhile, the day dragged on, and we had to take care of Lucy. I dispatched a gardener to prepare a resting place in the frozen hillside beyond the family burial ground at Desfiere. As Nellia, Nancy, and I rolled the dead woman in her blankets so the men could carry her out, Nancy picked up something from the corner and laid it on top of the grim bundle. “She must’ve kept it since summer,” whispered the girl. “Nice for her to have a flower, even if it’s old.”
I looked at what the girl had found and touched it, not quite believing the evidence of my senses. It was wrong, jarringly wrong, like so much I had seen and heard in the past two days. But like a catalyst in an alchemist’s glass, the wilted blossom drew the pieces of the puzzle together: Philomena, whose womb could carry no children to full term… a firepit with no trace of ash or soot, yet bearing a lump of molten lead… a child who would allow no one to know him, not a tutor, not a kind physician, not even the father he loved… a child who lived in terror of sorcery… a woman who was living where she had no reason to be… And now, a lily… in the middle of winter, a lily, wilted, but not dead, its soft petals still clinging to the stem… a lily that had been fresh not twelve hours earlier. I knew only one person who loved Maddy enough to give her a flower, as he had given her straw animals and a reed flute and a hundred other childish creations. But where in the middle of winter would any child find a lily to give the woman who had tended him… from the day of his birth…?
“Nellia,” I said in a whisper, scarcely able to bring words to my tongue. “What is Gerick’s birthday?”
The old housekeeper looked at me as if I were afflicted with Mad Lucy’s malady. “Pardon, my lady?”
“The young duke… on what day and in what year was he born?”
I knew what she was going to say as clearly as I knew my own name.
“Why, it’s the twenty-ninth day of the Month of Winds, ten years ago, going on eleven in the coming spring.”
It was as if the world I knew dissolved away, leaving some new creation in its place, a creation of beauty and wonder that crumbled into horror and disaster even as I marveled at its birth. How could I find my place in such a world? What could I call truth any longer, when that which had been the darkest, most bitter truth of my life was now made a lie? To none of those questions could I give an answer, but I did know who had murdered Lucy and why, and it was, indeed, because of me.
Darzid had never expected to find me here, had not believed I could ever find out. When he discovered his miscalculation and my laughable ignorance of the truth sitting in my hand, he took swift action to remedy his mistake. Lucy had never been feebleminded, but brave and clever and devoted, feigning a ruined mind in order to keep the child she loved safe. She had taught him to hide what he could do. When she was told that she was no longer needed in the nursery, she knew better, and she did what was necessary to make sure she was close by to watch him, to be his friend when he dared not let anyone close enough to discover his terrible secret.
Ten years ago on the twenty-ninth day of the Month of Winds… two months to the day after Karon’s burning… the day the silent, gentle Maddy had helped me give birth to my son.
From my breast burst a cry of lamentation that would have unmanned the Guardians of the Keep, making them snap the chains that bound them to their sacred duty. I ran like a madwoman through the corridors of Comigor, knowing as well as I knew the sun would set that Gerick would not be found in any corner of the world I knew.
CHAPTER 9
Karon
The forest was dense, shady, and incredibly green. The bearded mosses hung down and tickled my face as I fought my way through the thick underbrush. No trail lay before me, only a distant speck of light piercing the emerald gloom. My destination… if I could but shove the masses of greenery out of my way, I had no doubt that I could reach the light. Well rested, bursting with strength, I swept aside the verdant obstacles. But as I traversed the forest, the light got no closer and the green faded to gray…
The cool brush of pine boughs hardened into cold, rough stone, the wispy mosses into a white linen sheet and gray wool blankets. Only the light was constant, unwavering. Through the thick glass of my window the sun glared from the eastern sky, demanding that my eyes come open to greet the morning.
Such a strange sensation. How long had it been since my eyes had opened of their own volition, no hand on my shoulder rattling my teeth, no sarcastic taunting? “Must I get my scraping knife? Your limbs have attached themselves to this couch like barnacles to a coastal schooner.” Or, “What dream is this that holds you? You lie here like an empty-headed cat in a sunbeam, dreaming only of your full stomach while two worlds hold their breath, awaiting your pleasure.”
I stretched and sat up. My dream had not lied. I felt rested as I had not in waking memory, and I was ravenously hungry. Had Dassine succumbed to pity at my lamentable state? We had been through five or six sessions in the circle of candles since my collapse in Lady Seriana’s garden on the far side of the Bridge, and from each I had emerged a ragged refugee, taking longer each time to orient myself in the present.
When I was a child in Avonar, the lost Avonar of the mundane world, my brothers and I had a favorite place. A small river tumbled down from the snowfields of Mount Karylis in the summer, clear and icy. At certain places on the forested slopes, the water would be captured by great boulders forming deep clear pools, perfect for swimming. High above one of these pools was a chute of smooth rocks, worn away by a spring that raced down the rocks to join the river. We would slide naked down the chute and fly through the air before plunging into the pool far below. The experience teetered on the glorious edge of terror.