“The fathead,” Tarma muttered under her breath. Kero winced a little; not because of what Tarma had said, but because she couldn’t bring herself to disagree with it. She’d been here at the Tower for several weeks, now, and with each day her former life seemed a little less real, a little farther distant. She supposed she should be feeling grief for Rathgar, but instead, whenever she tried to summon up the proper emotions, all she could recall were some of the stupid things he’d done, and the unkind words he’d said so often to her.
I’m turning into some kind of inhuman monster, she thought with guilt. I can’t even respect my father’s memory.
“He may have been a fathead, she’enedra, but he was exactly what Lenore needed and wanted. A big, strong man to protect and cosset her.” Kethry looked up at the blindingly blue sky, and followed a new cloud with her eyes for a moment. “I offered to let him stay on for a bit, and the moment Lenore laid eyes on him I knew she was attracted to him. Give her credit for some sense, at least—Reichert terrified her as much or more than you ever did. I was just afraid that he’d notice what he was doing, and manage to convince her he was harmless.”
“Tender little baby chicks know a weasel when they see one,” Tarma retorted, scratching the bridge of her beaklike nose with one finger. “That’s not sense, that’s instinct. Lady Bright, I suppose I should be glad her instincts were working, at least. One year in his custody, and you’d have been out a daughter, and lands, and probably under siege in this Tower.”
“Probably,” Kethry agreed wearily. “Well, to continue the story, that young mage was the last pupil we were going to take; we planned to retire within a few years. So I let Rathgar stick around—and I told Lenore I wanted her to run a little deception on him.”
“That part I know about,” Kero exclaimed. “If you mean that she pretended to be the housekeeper’s daughter instead of yours, so he felt free to court her—” Kethry nodded, and Kero flushed. “When I was little, that seemed so romantic....”
Tarma snorted. “Romantic! Dear Goddess—I supposed she’d think of it that way. We were both afraid that if he knew she was Keth’s daughter, he’d never even think about courting her. We just wanted her under the protection of somebody who’d take care of her without exploiting her.”
“It all would have worked fine, except for Rathgar himself,” Kethry said, shaking her head. “If I’d had any idea how he felt about mages—well, she fell very happily and romantically in love with him, and he was just dazzled by her, and it all looked as if things were going to work out wonderfully. He proposed, she accepted, and I told him who she really was—”
“And the roof fell in.” Kero felt entirely confident in making that statement. She knew her father, and had a shrewd guess as to what his reaction to such a revelation would be. Outrage at the deception, further outrage that this mage was his beloved’s mother. Before long he’d have convinced himself that Kethry had some deep-laid plot against him, and he’d have done his best to pry his poor innocent Lenore out of her mother’s “deadly” influence.
“I didn’t see it coming,” Kethry admitted. “I should have, and I didn’t. And at that point, it was too late. My daughter was deep in the throes of romantic love, and Rathgar was her perfect hero. Anything Lenore heard from me on the subject threw her into hysterics. She was certain that I wanted to part them.”
“She thought he made the sun rise and set,” Tarma said with utter disgust, her hawklike face twisted into an expression of distaste. “It’s a damned good thing he was an honest and unmalicious man, because if he’d beaten her and told her she deserved it, she’d have believed him. How could any woman put herself in that kind of position willingly?”
“I suppose I should have expected it,” Kethry said gloomily. “I set the whole mess up in the first place. You know what your people say—‘Be careful what you ask for, you may get it.’ For the first time she had someone around who thought she was wonderful just as she was, helpless and weak, and wasn’t trying to force her to do something constructive with her life. Of course she thought he hung the moon.”
Tarma threw up her hands. “I still don’t understand it. Keth went ahead with the marriage, because anything was safer than letting Reichert have another chance. Well, that was when Lenore decided Keth and I were old fools and began listening only to Rathgar, and when he saw he had the upper hand, he started making demands. Finally it came down to this: when Lordan was born, he made Keth promise never to set foot on Keep property without an invitation.”
“So that’s why—” Kero’s voice trailed off. A great many things started making sense, now.
“I think he was afraid I’d try and take her away from him,” Kethry said, after a long silence filled only with the sound of the wind in the leaves below them. “I really do think he didn’t care as much about the property as he did about my daughter. On the other hand, I know that he always resented that every bit of his new-won wealth came from me. I think he kept expecting me to try and take over again, to control him through either the wealth, Lenore, or you children.”
Probably. That was the one thing he hated more than anything else, being controlled by someone. Maybe because he got a bellyful of taking orders when he was younger, I don’t know. I do know that he’d never have believed Grandmother didn’t have some kind of complicated plot going.
Tarma got up, stretched, and perched herself on the stone railing of the balcony. “Well, I’m not that generous,” she growled. “The man was a common merc; a little better born than most, but not even close to landed. And that was what he wanted all his life—to win lands, and become gentry. That’s what most mercs want, once they lose their taste for fighting. Whether it’s a farm they dream of, or a place like the Keep, they all want some kind of place they can claim as their own, and that’s the long and the short of it.”
Kero shifted uneasily on her wooden bench, and put down the last of the sausage, uneaten. She had the vague feeling she ought to be defending Rathgar, but she couldn’t. Both of them were right. She knew beyond a shadow of any doubt that Rathgar had adored her mother—but she also knew his possessive obsession about his lands.
And she knew that there would be no way that Kethry could ever have convinced him that she didn’t care about the property so long as her daughter was happy. He simply could not have understood an attitude like that. Kero had heard him holding forth far too many times on the folly of some acquaintance, or some underling, giving up property for the sake of a child. And his reasoning, by his own lights, was sound. After all, if one gave up the property now, how could one provide for that same child, or leave it the proper inheritance?
“Destroy a birthright for the sake of the moment?” she’d heard him say, once, when the Lythands had settled a dispute with a neighbor by deeding the disputed land to a common relation. “Folly and madness! Your children won’t thank you for it, when they’ve grown into sense!”
And she was sure now that this was the source of his deep-seated bitterness—that he owed everything, not only to his wife’s mother, not only to a woman, but to a mage. And one who had earned it all honestly, herself.