"I won't stay a minute longer than I need to."
"Bragi will keep you... " She ground her teeth on words too harsh for the situation, "why did you come?" She heard the whine in her voice and was disgusted with herself.
He accepted the question at face value. "I don't know. We'll find out in a few minutes. But Bragi wouldn't have called me if it wasn't important."
That wing of fear stroked her face again. "Important to whom? Varth, don't let him get you involved. He's accursed too." She had begged and begged her first husband, just like this, and he hadn't listened. And so he had died, and left her alone...
Varthlokkur smiled. "I wouldn't call him accursed. Things just happen around him."
"I would. They're bad things. Killing things. Varth... I don't want the baby born here. I lost two brothers, a husband, and my son here. I couldn't stand it if... "
His thin fingers teased through her hair. She stared at the floor. His arms slid around her and he held her a moment. "There'll be no more of that. No more pain. I promise." And, "We won't stay long. Come on. Buck up. You'll get to see a lot of old friends."
"All right." She tried to smile. It felt like a death grimace tearing at her face. "I'll be brave." I'm good at being brave, she thought. I've spent my whole life bravely bearing up. Then she snorted. I'm also a little long on self-pity.
Varthlokkur drew ahead again. She watched him walk. His tall, lean frame was more rigidly erect than usual. His shoulders did not dip or bob but glided in a constant, unyielding relationship to the floor. He was all tensed up. Something was gnawing him too. King Bragi's summons worried him more than he would admit.
Gods! Don't let this be the start of another of those horrible things that devour everything I love. He's all I have left.
What could it be? Shinsan again? The peace had lasted three years now. The Great Eastern Wars seemed to be over. The Dread Empire appeared to be appeased. The memories began yammering in the shadowed reaches of her mind, besieging her in earnest. She battled them till tears came. The recollections would not be driven back into their tombs. Too many dear ones had gone into the darkness before her. Too many memorial ghosts haunted her. She had nothing left. Nothing but this man, whom she could not wholly love or trust. This man and the life developing within her.
Her own life she held of little consequence. A wasteland lay behind her. The future looked as barren. She would live for the child, as she had lived for her son before.
Varthlokkur paused a few steps short of a smartly uniformed Palace Guard. Impatience peeped through his customarily neutral expression. He sensed the past rising inside her. He always knew, and always belittled her preoccupation.
She screwed up her courage and asked the question that irritated him most. "Varth, are you sure that Ethrian is gone? Isn't there any chance at all? I just don't feel like he's dead." Someday his answer might satisfy her.
His jaw tightened. He glanced at the Guard, controlled himself. "No, dear, I don't think so. I would've found him by now." He whirled, stamped to the door the Guard protected. The soldier snapped it open, clicked his heels as the wizard passed. He nodded amiably to Nepanthe.
She responded with a distracted nod. Was he someone she should remember? But she had known so many soldiers. How could she recall just one?
And then she was inside, bumping against the faces of her past like a swimmer bumping about in cold water crowded with chunks of ice. She did not know which way to dodge, which memory she most wanted to evade.
Two men in their late twenties were nearest her, their heads together as if their conversation portended conspiracy. Michael Trebilcock and Aral Dantice were their names. Once they had trailed her across half a continent in a noble, vain attempt to free her from the minions of the Dread Empire. Such quixotic youths they had been. "Aral. Michael. How lovely to see you again." The romance had fled the two, she saw. They were starry-eyed boys no longer. They had the hard eyes of men who had seen too much. The war changed us all, Nepanthe thought.
Dantice was short, wide, dark of hair. He looked as though he belonged behind a pitchfork in a stable. He responded with a delighted smile and effusive greeting.
His companion was taller, slimmer, bone-pale, and more reserved. His eyes were cold and remote. Rumor said he had become Kavelin's chief spy. Nepanthe's brother Valther had held that post till his death at the battle of Palmisano. She searched Michael's face.
She saw not one spark of humor there. The man was all business these days, all self-confidence, competence, and lack of acquaintance with fear. Exactly the kind of man Bragi would choose...
"Darling, you look marvelous!" A woman surrounded her in a swarm of arms. "A little peaked, maybe, but pregnancy becomes you."
Nepanthe returned the hug absently. "You're looking well yourself, Mist." Mist, who had been her brother's wife, a sorceress he had lured forth from the east and converted to the western cause.
"Pooh! I'm an old hag."
Aral Dantice chuckled. "The ladies I know should be so ugly."
And Varthlokkur, with an arm around Trebilcock's shoulder, snorted. "You've added false modesty to your sins, Princess?"
Mist stepped back. "Plain Chatelaine now, I'm afraid. The King sent me to fortress Maisak. You see what I'm worth when there's no fighting?"
"It is the most important castle in the kingdom."
Nepanthe stared at this woman whom her brother had worshipped, who had borne his children, who had been ruler of the Dread Empire before Valther entered her life. She never seemed quite real. More a fairy tale princess than one of the age's most savage and powerful wielders of magic.
Aral put Nepanthe's thoughts into words by observing, "She hasn't changed a bit. Still the most beautiful and dangerous woman alive."
Mist blushed.
How did she manage that? Nepanthe wondered. Aral had said nothing but the truth. Mist knew that. And she was no simpering little courtesan. She was centuries old, honed sharp and tempered hard by the intrigue and struggle for survival round the pinnacles of Dread Empire power. Her blush had to be contrived.
"How are your children?" Nepanthe asked.
"Growing up too fast. Every time I see them they're two inches taller. I'll tell them you're here. They'll be excited. You were always their favorite."
A gloomy, quiet man chewing the stem of an empty pipe shook Varthlokkur's hand. He greeted Nepanthe with a nod and a mumbled, "Nice to see you again."
"Hello, Cham. Business any better?"
Cham Mundwiller, commercial magnate, was a longtime supporter of the King. "Not really. There's only so much I can do while the Gap is closed." He wandered away, became engrossed in the coats of arms gracing the far wall.
Nepanthe turned to a younger man in military dress. "Gjerdrum. How are you? You look glum."
Aral said, "He's sore as a hornet's sting. His knighthood and appointment as commander of the army have gone to his head."
Sir Gjerdrum scowled. "That's not true. It's just that I've got other things to do. Colonel Abaca or General Liakopulos could have sat in on this for me."
Nepanthe noted the Colonel and General among the two dozen or so people she knew only by sight.
Sir Gjerdrum kissed her hand while clicking his heels. They had developed an innocent flirtation when he was younger and less world-wise. He played their old game half-hearted court with a weak suggestion. "Let me treat you to dinner after the little one comes."
Nepanthe raised an eyebrow. What had become of the indefatigably cheerful Gjerdrum of years gone by? Had he been crushed between the millstones of duty? Or was this just a mood?