The day Quinn had left on his crusade seeking life's adventures, he'd not spoken of mortality. Quinn had been too full of hope, of possibilities to think dark thoughts. But a last, long solemn glance between the brothers had reaffirmed the unspoken vow.
Guerrand had not been able to defend his brother against death, but he would stay by him until Habbakuk came, as much for his own sake as for Quinn's. The young lad of sixteen had grown into a deeply tanned, thickly muscled man of eighteen. His raven-black hair, longer than Guerrand remembered it, in death curled below the neckline of his surcoat. Beneath the tunic, he'd been dressed in royal blue leggings and a warm silk shirt. Across his breast was laid his gleaming sword, polished, no doubt, by some faceless servant for the young cavalier's final appearance.
Guerrand forced shallow breaths. The scents of bergamot and balsam, used to wash and perfume the decaying body, smelled overpoweringly of death. After the viewing, Quinn's body would be sewn inside deerskin, along with the cloying scent. There was no death chamber to drape with black serge, so the drab woolen cloth was hung about the vast great hall, which now held the body for viewing.
The last three days had been the worst Guerrand could remember. The entire village of Thonvil had gone into mourning for the immensely popular Quinn DiThon. Guerrand knew why. Quinn had been the kindest and most noble of the family. A steady stream of mourners had traveled between town and castle from the moment the public crier announced Quinn's death in the square. The village bell tolled endlessly, plaintively, until the distant sound felt like a dull, ever-present thudding at the back of the skull.
Wearily rubbing the knotted muscles there, Guerrand looked among the throng of mourners for the wan face of his sister, not really expecting to spot her. No one had seen hide or hair of Kirah since Cormac had called her into his study to deliver the news. Guerrand would never forget his young sister's reaction. She'd given one great, slow blink of her blue eyes. Then, in a remote voice that sounded far older than her twelve years, she'd said, "Death follows this family like some hungry hound." She'd turned on her tiny heels and walked from Cormac's study, leaving the adults in an awkward silence of agreement.
Guerrand thought it somehow fitting, given their opposing natures, that as committed to staying by Quinn as he was, Kirah had not shown up once. He knew from the servants' gossip that Cormac and Rietta were furious at her days-long disappearance and absence from the viewing. Not for Quinn's sake, but because people would think Cormac couldn't control his wayward half sister. Which he couldn't. Guerrand was certain that, wherever she was, Kirah knew of their humiliation and received some small measure of comfort from the couple's anger. When all this ceremony was done, he would find her and help her cope.
Looking about the dark mourning chamber, Guerrand could see Rietta and her daughter Honora weeping appropriately while accepting the condolences of some neighboring nobles. Among them were the wife of the merchant Berwick and her daughter Ingrid, the betrothed of the dead young cavalier. Guerrand knew who she was only because he had been told-he'd never before seen young Ingrid Berwick himself.
Squinting now in the dim light of the oil lamps, he had to agree with Kirah's assessment of the young woman's appearance. Ingrid's looks hadn't been aided by the weeping she must have done since the news of her betrothed's death. Still, he could scarcely summon a twinge of pity for her. She could only be crying for the lost opportunity, not Quinn. To Guerrand's knowledge, she and Quinn had not met in recent years, if ever. Ingrid looked up just then, across the vast hall, as if she felt his assessing eyes on her. Guerrand nodded briefly, a grim, stiff gesture, and looked away.
Despite the milling crowd, Cormac and Anton Berwick were conspicuously absent. No doubt they had retired to Cormac's study to smoke cigars or sip port, or whatever noblemen did when they felt "uncomfortable." That was the most passionate word Guerrand could come up with to describe Cormac's emotion regarding their brother's death. "Inconvenienced" also came to mind, but nothing approaching grief.
That's not quite true, Guerrand had to correct himself. Several times in the past few days, he had caught Cormac's eyes on him, vaguely angry, yet not focused on the present, as if his thoughts were far away in time and space. Guerrand recalled the look his brother had not even known he witnessed: it said clearly, "Why the useful one, and not you?"
Guerrand winced, but not because of Cormac's incredible cruelty. That did not surprise him. He flinched because he could see how the thought might occur to persons far more charitable than Cormac. He was, in his own estimation and in all senses of the phrase, less useful than his noble younger brother had been. His worst crime, if a malaise of the spirit could be called that, was that he had no idea what he could do to rectify that situation.
At that moment, Cormac DiThon was trying to find, in the haze provided by good port wine, a solution to a situation of his own. He'd been suffering from a burning ache, low in the belly, since the news of Quinn's death. The gentle sloshing of the port soothed his stomach in a way brandy could not, and its ability to narrow the senses dimmed the edges of the pain. Drink could not, however, make his problems disappear, no matter how many opportunities he gave it.
Damned inconvenient, Quinn dying before the wedding. It was a minor annoyance that his half brother had met an ignominious death at the hands of bandits, rather than in the blazing glory of battle more suited to a cavalier. That mattered little to Cormac, because it seemed to matter not at all to the copious mourners who had been trooping through his castle for days. Quinn had been well liked, that was obvious. It was the reason he'd been an easy sell when Berwick had come looking for a titled son-in-law.
Stonecliff had been within Cormac's grasp. The conversation he had just concluded with Anton Berwick had done nothing to bring it near again. Yet Cormac refused to let its return slip away so easily. He could not afford to buy the land back-if anything, his finances were worse than when he'd sold it to Berwick.
"Damn those bandits!" Cormac cursed aloud. No matter what he did, or how hard he worked, the fates seemed to conspire against him. How many times had the answer to his problems been within arm's reach, only to be pulled away at the last instant? When his father had arranged his marriage to Rietta, Cormac had believed he was getting a handsome woman of high blood whose name and demeanor would raise his own standing. Instead, he got a supercilious, stiff-necked shrew who was raising their daughter Honora in her own disdainful image and assailing their son Bram with stories of pompous Knights of Solamnia, but who seemed at the same time too much like Cormac's own wastrel of a brother, Guerrand.
Then again, when Rejik died and Cormac had at last become lord of Castle DiThon, he'd believed he actually had a chance to get ahead. He had hoped to pay off the gambling debts he'd run up in expectation of his inheritance. But he discovered soon enough that there was barely enough money to keep the castle running, and little more. Cormac's own creditors had forced him to sell off lands, among them Stonecliff.
Once again, the fates prevented him from getting what he wanted. Cormac slammed the port glass to the desk a little harder than he'd intended. The stem snapped from the pear-shaped bottom, splashing the dark red liquid onto his hand. Growling in irritation, he wiped his hand on the thigh of his breeches.