“I’m sure you had your own following,” Selfer said. “With all due respect, you must have been beautiful as a girl; you’re good-looking now.”
“I was a mess,” Dorrin said. “And I was always in trouble. It wasn’t the way my face was made, but how I used it. Growing up here, I learned lessons that made people distrust me, dislike me.”
“Well,” Selfer said, “people don’t distrust or dislike you now.”
“Except my own family, and that’s nothing new,” Dorrin said. “I hope that child lives—”
“Which one?”
“The one who was sickening, being prepared for a transfer. That’s what happened—one of the children I’d identified tried to force a transfer. Now we know it’s possible.”
“Gods! Which one?”
“The girl.” Dorrin felt tears stinging her eyes. The girl she might have been, had things been different. A girl who would never have her chance to escape. “I must make it better for the others,” she said. “Verrakai must not be a name of terror, treachery, evil.”
“You’ll do it,” Selfer said.
“That’s the scariest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Dorrin said. Her heart lifted as they came to the front entrance. The sun seemed brighter; the great doors looked less ominous. “Falk’s grace,” she said. “If Falk and the High Lord want this done, then surely it can be done.”
“And Gird,” Selfer said as they came up the steps.
“And Gird,” Dorrin said.
A kitchen maid waited for her in the reception room. “Cook says the pastry’s still waiting.”
Lunch. She had completely forgotten about lunch. “That’s very kind,” she said. “Where—”
“We’s set a table in the servants’ hall since them soldiers won’t let us in the dining room.”
“Fine,” Dorrin said. “Lead the way. Selfer?”
The pie, mincemeat and vegetables in a pastry crust, was delicious. Dorrin ate it quickly, anxious to get back upstairs and check on the children. She met one of the nurserymaids on the stairs.
“He’s better still, my lord,” the maid said. “The fever’s all gone; we’ve never seen the like.”
“Is he awake?”
“No, but he’s sleeping restful, no twitching. Malin says let him sleep it out.”
“That’s good. I’m sorry the children couldn’t go out this morning, but this afternoon let them play outside.”
“In the orchard? That’s where we usually take them when it’s this cool, out of the wind.”
“No, not in the orchard today. It’s cool, but not windy—they should be fine in the front of the house.”
The children came downstairs quietly, obviously anxious with the house full of strangers and none of the familiar adults about. Dorrin watched them file out the front entrance; none were invaded that she could detect.
Once outside, their reserve gradually leached away and soon they were running around the wide graveled entrance, screeching and playing like normal children. They were normal children, Dorrin reminded herself. The nurserymaids watched, trying to keep the children into rough age groups.
After a few minutes, she went back upstairs to check on Mikeli and find out why the nursery’s protection against aggressive magery had failed. Mikeli slept peacefully, appearing normal to all her senses. The nursery’s protection, a spell controlled at the door, had been turned off; Dorrin turned it back on.
While on that level, she spent the next hour checking room after room for any evil magery and found nothing—the children’s floor seemed clear. Down one flight, where the adults had their chambers, was a different matter. After finding multiple death-dealing traps of various kinds, familiar from her time in Aarenis, and spells set to confuse, injure, or kill, in the first bedchamber she explored, she decided she’d continue to sleep somewhere else.
A soft call from the stairway to the third floor brought her back up. “He’s awake, my lord.”
Dorrin went into the nursery; Mikeli was now propped up on pillows, rubbing his eyes.
“Mikeli—how do you feel?”
“Better. Hungry … Who are you?”
“I’m Dorrin Verrakai,” Dorrin said. “The new Duke.”
“Where’s Mama?”
“She had to go on a trip,” Dorrin said. “But I’m here. If you’re hungry, let’s go see if the cooks can find you something.” She looked at the nurserymaid. “I don’t know what a child who’s been sick should eat—”
“Toast, weak sib, to see how it settles.”
“I’m hungry,” Mikeli said in a stronger voice, pushing away from the pillows. “I feel … different.”
Dorrin extended her magery a little. No hint of someone other than a five-winters child inside, a child thinner and paler than he should be, but with healthy energy surging inside him.
“Come downstairs with me,” she said, standing and holding out a hand. Mikeli got up and took her hand without hesitation.
“Your shoes, Miki,” said the nurserymaid, fetching them and putting them on his feet as he stood on one leg at a time.
20
On the way downstairs, the boy asked question after question: what had happened, where were the others, where were his parents, where had Dorrin come from and why, what had been wrong with him and why was he better … on and on. Dorrin answered as well as she could, with what she thought would be good for him to know. That was always less than the full truth, but she tried not to lie.
In the kitchen, Farin recommended broth and dry bread. Mikeli drank a mug of broth and inhaled the bread so fast Dorrin was afraid he’d choke. A little color had come into his pale cheeks.
“Had the crisis this morning, I heard,” Farin said. “Fever gone so fast—is that real, or will he relapse?” She said that quietly, to Dorrin, across the kitchen from Mikeli.
“I believe it to be real,” Dorrin said. “Falk’s grace, I call it.”
“Falk! I’ve never heard my lords and my ladies talk of Falk’s grace.”
“You will hear me do so,” Dorrin said, touching her ruby. “I’m a Knight of Falk, remember.”
The cook gave her a long look. “Does that mean no more of those … with the …” She made a gesture, circle and horns.
“No more priests of Liart, no more blood magery,” Dorrin said. Everyone in the kitchen but Mikeli stopped short and almost cowered. “No more,” Dorrin said, louder. “I am your Duke, and my word is your law, but my word is founded on Falk and the High Lord, not those scum.”
“But—but I—” That was a kitchen maid by the bread oven, a girl perhaps thirteen or fourteen. Dorrin remembered her as one of those who had carried water for her bath. “I—they made me swear to—”
“Be quiet, Efla!” Farin said.
Dorrin walked over to the girl. “Efla, what did they make you swear?”
Tears ran down the girl’s face. “They—they made me swear to him—to Liart—they hurt me and hurt me and I was so scared—”
Dorrin reached out; the girl flinched but Dorrin pulled her closer, into a hug. “Child, the gods forgive such oaths … you are not bound to Liart. You can renounce that oath and take a better one.” The girl sobbed in Dorrin’s arms; Dorrin patted her back. “Efla, listen … listen to me. I’m your Duke now. I’m your protector.”
Efla pulled back a little, gasping out her story through her sobs. “They—they made me—he—he took me—he put his—and a child—they said it—was really—Liart’s—”
Dorrin hugged the girl close again. “It’s all right, Efla. They lied. The Bloodlord’s servants lie to scare people, and lie to trick them, and lie to harm them. If you have a child inside you, it is the human child of whoever raped you, not a god’s child. The Bloodlord cannot engender life.”
“Are you sure?”