Luap could not answer. He had locked all that away, that privileged childhood, a private hoard to gloat over when alone. Now he realized that no one had ever claimed to know both of his pasts . . . the nobility had left him strictly alone, a pain he had thought he could not bear, and the peasantry, where he’d been sent, had not known him before. He did not even know, with any certainty, just where his childhood had been spent. It had never occurred to him, during the war, that he might come face to face with anyone but his father who had known him . . . that the other adults of his childhood might still exist, and recognize him.
He felt that a locked door had been breached, that he had been invaded by some vast danger he could hardly imagine. His vision blurred. In his mind, he was himself again a child, to whom the whole adult world seemed alternately huge and hostile, or bright and indulgent. He could remember the very clothes, the narrow strip of lace along his cuff, the stamped pattern on the leather of his shoes. And someone else had seen that—someone who knew him now—someone who could estimate the distance between that boy and this man, could judge if the boy had grown as he should, even if the boy had potentials he had never met.
“I—didn’t know—” It came out harsh, almost gasping. He could not look at Arranha, who would be disapproving, he was sure.
“I’m sorry.” Arranha’s voice soothed him, sweet as the peach he’d eaten and which now lay uneasily in his belly. “I was afraid she would tell you and cause you this grief in a worse place . . . here, you are safe, you know.”
He would never be safe again . . . all the old fears rolled over him. He had been safe, secure, in that childhood, and then it was gone, torn away. The farmer to whom he’d been sent had not dared cruelty, but the life itself was cruelty, to one indulged in a king’s hall, a child used to soft clothes and tidbits from a royal kitchen. All around, the walls closed in, prisoning rather than protecting. He could hardly breathe, and then he was crying, shaking with the effort not to cry, and failing, and hating himself. Arranha’s arm came around him, warmer and stronger than he expected. He gave up, then, and let the sobs come out. When he was done, and felt as always ridiculous and grumpy, Arranha left him on the bench and came back in a few minutes with a pitcher of water and a round of bread.
“I daresay you feel cheated,” Arranha said, breaking the bread and handing Luap a chunk. “Those were your memories, to color as you chose, and here I’ve pointed out that others live in them.”
Luap said nothing. He did feel cheated, but it was worse than Arranha said. Someone had invaded his private memories, his personal space, and torn down his defenses. The only thing that had been his, since he had had neither family nor heritance.
“I don’t remember much,” Arranha said, musing. “You were a child; I was a priest, busy with other duties. Not often there, in fact.”
Luap noticed he said there instead of here, which must have meant he had not been brought up in Fin Panir—at least, not in the palace complex. That made sense; he remembered a forecourt opening on fields, not streets. He got a swallow of water past the lump in his throat, and took a bite of bread. If Arranha kept talking, he could regain control, re-wall his privacy.
“Someone pointed you out. I was in one of my rebellious stages, so I remember thinking what a shame it was—”
“What?” That came out calmly enough; Luap swallowed more water, and nearly choked.
Arranha chuckled. “Well—she’s right, Dorhaniya, that I was troublesome. I questioned—as I do to this day—whatever came into my head to question. Her sister threatened more than once to cut the tongue from my head—and might have done it, too, that one. Anyway, I not only thought the lords’ use of peasant women was wrong, I thought it was stupid—and said so. You were an example: a handsome lad, bright enough, eager as a puppy, and by no fault of your own the hinge of great decisions. All the talk was of your potential for magery: not your wit or your courage, not your character or your strength. I thought you had the magery, but that fool of a steward had frightened it out of you; others were hoping you had none.”
“Why? Didn’t the king have legitimate heirs?” He would be reasonable; he forced himself to ask reasonable questions.
“You didn’t know—? No, of course, how could you? Luap, the king’s wife lost four children, either in pregnancy or birthing, and died with her last attempt, who was born alive but died within the year. By then he had taken the fever that left him no hope of children, even if he married again. He did, in fact, but to no purpose. He had sired you just before his wife’s death; his older bastards had shown no sign of power, and most—for three were the children of a favorite mistress—died in the same fever that left him sterile.”
Luap had never thought of his father as a king with problems. Whatever the king’s problems, they could not have been as great as those he gave Luap. It gave him a strange feeling to hear him spoken of, as an archivist might write of a figure of history. In his mind he could see the very phrases that might be used of such a king.
“And his brother and brothers-in-law, and his cousins—all would have been glad to have him die without an heir. As in fact he did, before you were grown.”
“But—but then the king Gird killed was not my father?”
“Oh no. Although when Gird told me you were the king’s bastard, that’s who I thought of, naturally. It was the simple answer, and like so many simple answers, it was wrong.” Arranha shook his head, presumably at his own foolishness. “Seeing Dorhaniya again brought it back to me, and then I realized the child’s face would grow into one very like yours. The king Gird killed was . . . let me think. First there was his brother, but he died in a hunting accident. So-called. Then his eldest sister’s husband, who caught a convenient flux. The king Gird killed was the fourth, or fifth, since your father, a cousin.”
“But she said she knew him—when she was talking about mistakes—”
“Well, she knew all of them. So did I. Her father was a duke, her husband one of the cousins—not one who became king; they killed him, I’ve forgotten how. She did know your father—”
“Does Gird know?”
“Know what?”
“That the king he killed at Greenfields—the king who defiled the Hall—was not my father?”
“I . . . I would have thought so, but . . . perhaps not.” Does it matter? was clear on his face, then his expression changed. “I see. Of course he must be told, in case he doesn’t know. You are not that man’s son; you would have been the heir, but of a different man. A better man than that, though not much wiser. I’m sorry, Luap, but your father was, for all his troubles, a blind fool. I said it then, and spent a year in exile for it, and I’ll say it now, to his son.”
“He . . . didn’t hate me?” It took all his courage to ask that; it was the deepest fear in his heart, that he had somehow earned his father’s hate. Against it he had mounted a fierce defense—it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t fair.
“Esea’s light! No, he didn’t hate you. He put all his hopes on you, but understood only one thing to hope for, and pushed too hard. He was desperate, by then, but that doesn’t excuse him.”
“No.” Luap stared at the pavement under his feet. He had held that grudge too long; he was not ready for a father who had had problems of his own, who had been desperate, who had placed a kingdom’s weight on the hope that his latest bastard would grow to have the tools of magery. He was not ready to consider how a king might be trapped by something more honorable than his own pleasure. “My . . . mother?” For the instant it took Arranha to answer, he held the hope that she had been mageborn too.