Locke glanced at her, looked away, didn’t finish. Clearly he didn’t fear me. But could he be afraid of Freda?
She touched my hand softly. “Sit, Oberon. Please.”
It was not a command, but a soft, kind suggestion, and somehow it took the fight out of me. I let out my breath and did as she instructed.
Pointedly, she said, “Bickering is forbidden at dinner, as our brother knows.” And her voice carried the same insulting inflection Locke had used.
In that instant I discovered I liked her even more than I had known.
“Thank you,” Dworkin said to Freda. He cleared his throat. “Now, where was I?”
Dutifully picking up my spoon, I returned to my soup. I wasn’t really hungry anymore, but I couldn’t let Locke know he’d spoiled the meal for me.
“Oberon is my son,” Dworkin said with conviction. “I have known it since the day he was born. And my tests here today proved it. The problem lies with the Logrus… it is a damnable mystery still, even to me. Its pattern is within Oberon—without any doubt, it is there—but some trick of fate, or our family’s poor degenerate blood, has distorted its pattern in him more than in the rest of us. That is the true and only answer.”
Silence stretched again. My siblings stared at the table or the walls or went back to their soups, now and then glancing furtively at each other or Dworkin—anywhere but at me.
“Well done, Locke!” Aber finally said after more than a few awkward minutes had passed. He began clapping. “That’s the way to make a new-found brother feel at home and brighten up the dinner conversation.”
“Shut up!” Locke growled at him.
Then Freda began clapping, then Blaise and Pella, then most of the others. Dworkin threw back his head and howled with laughter.
I stared from one to another, bewildered. This was hardly the reaction I would have expected.
Locke glared around the table, gaze settling first on Aber then me, but he must have remembered Freda’s threat because he said nothing. Instead, rising, he threw down his napkin and stalked from the room.
“Send up my meal,” he called to one of the servants. “I prefer to eat with civilized company—alone!”
If anything, the applause grew louder.
“First time that’s ever happened,” Aber said brightly, the moment Locke was safely out of earshot. “Can’t say it will hurt the dinner conversation.”
He picked up his bowl and spoon and made a big show of moving to Locke’s former place. As he settled in, he gave me a quick wink.
“Hey!” he said to everyone down at the other end of the table. “The food tastes better up here!”
That got a laugh… from everyone except Davin, who sat next to him. He was Locke’s right-hand man, I reminded myself. Clearly he took that position seriously. He frowned, and I half expected him to rise and leave, too, in a show of solidarity… but he didn’t.
Then he glanced at me, and I recognized the look in his eyes.
It wasn’t hate or mistrust.
It was pity.
They now had a cripple in their midst, I realized suddenly. They could all work wonders like Dworkin. All travel through Shadow-worlds, summon weapons from great distances, contact each other with magical Trumps, and only the gods knew what else.
And now they pitied me, like the soldier who had lost his sword-arm in battle and would never fight again, or the scribe who had gone blind from too much reading. They pitied me because I would never share our family’s one great gift… the Logrus.
As I looked across their faces, not one of them met my gaze. They all felt the same way, I saw. Only Freda and Aber seemed willing to accept me as I was.
Freda was patting my arm.
“You do not need the Logrus,” she said. “It almost killed Father and me, you know. I lay unconscious for nearly a month after I completed it.”
“Oh?” That interested me.
“It is supposed to be a family problem.” She lowered her voice so only I could hear. “Locke had the least trouble. Poor breeding, if you ask me. Dad had him by his first wife, a Lady of Chaos—an arranged marriage, you know, well before he inherited his title. The biggest mistake he ever made was falling in love with her; he said it a hundred times if he’s said it once.”
I forced a chuckle.
“Thank you,” I told her softly. “It helps to have a friend.”
“None of us is truly your friend,” she said softly, but in an almost wistful tone. “Trust no one, but love us anyway, even Locke, since we are family. Betrayal is our nature and we cannot change, none of us.”
I regarded her curiously, thinking of Ivinius. Could this be a confession? Or just the bittersweet words of a woman who had been hurt too often by those around her?
“You’re too much of a pessimist,” I finally said. “I prefer to think of everyone as a friend until it’s proved otherwise.”
“You are naive, dear Oberon.”
“I’ve been disappointed in the past… but I have also been pleasantly surprised.”
She smiled. “You do not truly know us. Soon… too soon, I fear, you will.” She patted my arm again. “You do have a good heart. I admire that. Now finish your soup.”
I took a few more spoonfuls to satisfy her, but I didn’t enjoy them. Mostly I wanted to be alone now… to think things through, to reconsider the day’s events. So much had happened, and so quickly, that I could barely take it in.
Locke’s departure had definitely lightened the mood around the table, though. Small conversations resumed around us, and the next course came right on schedule: braised pheasant, or a game bird close enough to pheasant that it didn’t matter, accompanied by spicy roasted potatoes and strange yellow vegetables the size of walnuts that tasted, somehow, like fresh salmon.
I ate slowly, eavesdropping on the chatter around me: Davin telling Titus and Conner about a new horse he had broken to saddle. Blaise telling Pella and Isadora about a kitchen scandal involving the pastry chef and a pair of scullery maids; apparently she’s just heard it from one of the seamstresses, who had gotten it straight from the herb gardener. Aber and Freda talked about new Trumps that Aber planned to paint. And Dworkin… Dad… looked down across us all and smiled like the benevolent ruler he so desperately wanted to be.
Almost pointedly, nobody discussed me… or so much as looked in my direction. Being ignored hurt almost as much as being insulted.
Oberon the weak.
Oberon the cripple.
Oberon the doomed-to-be-powerless.
There must be an answer, I thought. Maybe Dworkin—Dad, I corrected myself—had made a mistake. Maybe a true version of the Logrus did exist somewhere within me, only he hadn’t seen it. Maybe…
No. I couldn’t give in to wishful thinking. I forced all thoughts of the Logrus from my mind. After all, I told myself, I’d spent my whole life with no knowledge of it or the powers it bestowed. For years I’d relied on my wits and the strength of my arm. I didn’t need Dworkin’s tricks, nor magic cards nor spells, just a good sword and a sturdy horse.
As servants cleared our plates in preparation for the next course, Dad leaned back in his seat and focused his gaze on Davin.
“How are the new recruits working out?” he asked.
At last something I knew, I thought, leaning forward and regarding Davin with interest. Hopefully Locke managed troops better than he managed relations within our family.
“As well as can be expected,” Davin said. He gave a short report, mentioning company names like “Eagles” and “Bears” and “Wolves,” none of which meant anything to me. A company could have been anything from a hundred to a thousand men, depending on how it had been set up.