III
JAMIE’S TALE
"Marik. Well, he was a handsome youth, I suppose—when we first ran into him, he was in the center of a bevy of young beauties. Give him credit, the beggar, he saw your mother and the others dissolved like the dew."
"Was she beautiful, then?" I asked in a whisper. I had heard all my life, from Jamie and Hadron both, how much I looked like my mother, but that was always where it stopped. And to be so tall, man-height they called it, and strong with it—"look twice to see you're a woman," indeed! It cost me the world to ask, but I had to know why this handsome young man had been so drawn to the mother I was so like.
Jamie was silent for a moment, considering. "I honestly couldn't tell you, my girl," he said at last. "I don't remember her being a great beauty when first I saw her, but that never seemed to matter. She was—she looked—ah, there's no words for it. She was so alive, that was what you saw, and beside her the others were candles to the sun."
So, I thought. Not beautiful, but attractive. There are worse fates.
"Tall as Marik was, he stood yet taller, though he never stood straight—but he was a scrawny thing, compared to her. Altogether he reminded me of a red hawk, stooped in the shoulder, nose like a hooked beak and green eyes flecked with yellow. To this day I don't know what your mother saw in him. When I asked her she hadn't the words, though she seemed to think his voice the best of him. It just sounded high to me, soft and mannered like a man who never deals with men. But then I wouldn't know." Jamie stared into his tankard. "I never did understand it."
"The long and the short of it is, she left me for him that very day, with barely a word after three years." Jamie's voice grew softer, just for a moment. "I would have laid down my life to keep her from harm, and she ran to it fast as she could go." He looked up at me and a rueful smile touched his lips. "You'd think I'd have been furious, wouldn't you?"
"I would have been," I answered, a little sadly. "And I was just starting to like her."
He snorted. "I’d been at it longer. I had told myself all the while we travelled that there'd come a time when she'd leave, but I never believed it. And even as her name was linked with his by the market place gossips, I waited. I found odd jobs, nothing much, enough to keep me near her, for my heart misgave me, and I would not leave her to him so swiftly."
"It was two months before I saw her again to talk to, and it was the last thing I'd have imagined that made her turn to me again. I began to weary of waiting, and I had gone to the marketplace with some idea of buying provisions and leaving—though in truth I had no thought of doing such a thingwhen someone grabbed me by the arm from behind."
"Well, you don't live long in my profession if you let that kind of thing happen. Without thinking I whirled and braced in a fighter's crouch, my dagger in my hand though I didn't remember drawing it, distance between us that I pulled from thin air."
"She laughed, part from surprise, part from something else, something I had not seen in her before."
" 'I never thought to see you here,' I told her, putting my blade away, the anger of two months washing through me. 'Lover boy leave you, or you him?'
" 'Neither,' she said, her eyes troubled. 'Take me somewhere private. We have to talk.'
"For a bent copper coin I'd have cursed her and left, I was that angry, but even as I turned to go I finally recognised what was new in her. It was fear." Jamie shook his head gently. "I had travelled the breadth of Kolmar with her for three years, Lanen. We'd fought off winter storms and treacherous cliffs and the occasional band of roughs and worse, and in all that time I had never seen fear in her. I swore to myself then that I would banish it if I could, and if that bastard Marik had somehow frightened my fearless Maran, I’d put the cap on my career and kill him. Cheerfully."
He took a drink. "Of course, it didn't work out that way. Usually doesn't."
He fell silent for a moment. The couple in the corner clattered about, having a meal served them. I waited, but Jamie seemed to have lost himself in his memories. "Jamie?"
"Eh? Oh." He picked up my tankard, felt the weight and set it down again. "You're not drinking," he said, looking at me with a slight frown. "Something wrong?"
"No," I said, lying. "Go on. Please."
"It's not pretty, my Lanen," he said sadly. "Make you a deal. You drink, I’ll talk. You stop drinking, I stop talking. Done?"
"Done," I replied. I lifted my tankard and half-drained it, filled it back to the brim and made a point of sipping at regular intervals: The brew was starting to affect me, but I kept my mouthfuls small and listened with all my might.
"We found our privacy in a hidden nook in a crowded pub much as you and I have. Seems she had found a secret passage in Marik's house—and being who she was, instantly went in. She heard voices, Marik and a stranger, a voice she didn't know. 'He was bargaining, Jamie,' she tells me. 'The stranger is a demon master called Berys. He said he was a Magister of the Fifth Circle; whatever that means. He was angry at Marik and said he needed more gold. When Marik asked how he should gain it, Berys told him to send a ship to the Dragon Isle!'" .
Jamie paused: glancing at me. "You've stopped drinking again, lass," he said, a wry smile ghosting past his lips. "And remember to breathe while you're about it." I nodded and took a deep breath. He went on. .
"Maran told me that Marik tried to beg off that particular venture, because of the storms and. because every last one for a century had disappeared without trace. Seems Berys didn't much care. 'He told Marik to call on him again in thirty or forty years,' she said. 'Berys started to go but Marik called him back. He said he needed power now, not in thirty years. So Berys said he would make a Farseer for Marik. Thank the Goddess Marik's gasp was louder than mine. I thought such things were only legend, and so did Marik, but Berys was serious, and the price is to be—oh, Jamie, it turns my stomach!' she said, covering her mouth. When she could speak again, she said, 'The price is his firstborn child. I thought for a second he was jesting, but he meant it.' She caught my eye and shook her head. 'And no, I've not quickened, he doesn't have a child, Not yet,' she said, shuddering.
" 'Then Marik asked if Berys intended next to go to his rivals and make Farseers for them, but Berys said there could only be one of the things in the world at any time, and that if he never had children there would be no price extracted. Marik asked what would happen if it were stolen from him. Berys would only say that if he were unlucky he might live.'
"Well, the long and short of it was that Marik agreed to the bargain and signed away the life of his firstborn child in blood. The ritual was set for that very night at moonrise." Jamie wrapped both his hands around his tankard and stared into its depths, and his voice dropped to a rough murmur. "We talked for a while about what to do. She had the start of a plan, and together we worked out the details. When all was set, I—I offered her my services." He swallowed hard. "As assassin. I asked her if she wanted me to kill them. I had not killed in more than three years, and the very thought made my gorge rise up to choke me, but if she needed me to..."
I sat frozen, my throat thick with dread. For me, no matter what came after, this was the center of all Jamie's telling. I could not breathe. I had to know. And below dread, below thought, deep in the center of my soul, I prayed faster and harder than ever I had before. Blessed Lady, Mother Shia, please, please let it be that my mother did not ask Jamie to kill for her…