“No,” he said, when Toby, dressed in his best, presented himself as an escort. He motioned instead to Ser Christos’s son, Giorgos, a tall Thrakian with a beak of a nose and no Alban whatsoever. “Please come with me,” he said in High Archaic. He smiled at Toby to indicate that there was no slight intended, but he didn’t need to have his mother’s words repeated.
And then he went out into the hall. Giorgos knew the way-it was his duty-and led him to the south tower. They climbed two dozen steps in a tight stairway and emerged onto a platform with two doors. Giorgos knocked and they waited.
A demure young woman with red hair and bronze eyes opened the door and curtsied. She led them into the outer solar, almost identical to the same chambers that Ser Gabriel had in the north tower.
“Is that my prodigal son?” Ghause called. “I have a present for you, my darling. Come in.”
The bronze-eyed young vixen opened the door to the inner solar, and Gabriel, after a deep breath, and ignoring the trembling of his hands, walked in.
Amicia sat in the sunlight, doing embroidery. The winter had sufficed for her to learn some of the tricks of it, and she’d learned to make letters with a prick stitch and to cut them out and overcast stitch them to an altar cloth before couching them in silk thread. She was slowly working the paschal cloth of her chapel at Southford, the linen and silk going everywhere with her, packed in oiled silk and canvas. Helewise had taught her-a lady’s pastime, and not usually one for nuns. Her I H S was crisp, the gothic letters elegant and almost even.
She was working on the last I in domini when Ghause joined her in the inner solar and began to fuss with the great bird on the perch.
Amicia realized she was casting.
Ghause finished with some tuneless, throaty sounds that made Amicia blush.
Ghause laughed. “Ah, my pretty, I usually work alone. And naked.”
Amicia laughed. “As did I, once.”
“We are not so different,” Ghause said.
Amicia put her head down and went back to her stitches. “What is it?” she asked.
“A gift for Gabriel. No, don’t get up. That will be him now.” She put one hand on the inner solar door and called, “Is that my prodigal son? I have a present for you, my darling. Come in.”
Then she flung the door wide. As she did, with her right hand, she removed the cover on the great bird.
It was bigger than Amicia had imagined, but her shock was completely overwhelmed by the reality of Gabriel Muriens.
It was not that he had changed.
It was merely that he was.
Gabriel lost control of his face and his heart, like an untried army in an ambush. He was blind with the sight of Amicia, and unwarned, unprepared-a grin covered his face, and he stepped forward and took her hand and kissed it.
And she flushed.
And his mother laughed.
And the young griffon on the perch, a true monster of the Wild, was subsumed in a wave of love. It gazed on Gabriel, raised its great wings, and poured its own love back. It gave a great cry as if its heart had been pierced.
Ghause’s laughter rose. “Oh! Brilliant!” she said. She stepped forward like a victor delivering the coup de grâce, and kissed her son on the cheek. “Two presents, then.”
Amicia, moved beyond endurance, rose too quickly and stepped on her altar cloth. But she set her face, and pushed past him, and walked, head high, out of the room.
“She’ll come back,” Ghause said. “She wants you more than she wants her anaemic vows.”
Gabriel was trembling.
“I have brought you a mighty gift,” Ghause said. “And where are my thanks? Hello, my son.”
“You used her to bait the impressment of a griffon?” Gabriel asked.
“Of course! What better love bait than your leman? As good as anything in a romance. And look, it’s done! Your own griffon, which cost me a lot of effort, too.” Ghause was not a woman given to prattle, but the rage on her son’s face scared her. “Oh, my dear. Griffons need to be greeted with love. That’s all that holds them. You cannot turn a griffon. They’re too stupid. And too smart. Now he’s all yours.” She smiled. “All’s well that ends well.”
“You have not changed much,” Gabriel said. He did smile at the griffon. He walked to the perch and cooed at it. Him.
“How old?” he asked.
Ghause smiled inwardly, knowing she had indeed impressed him. “He’s about two months old and he eats like ten wolves. He’ll be four times that size in six months. His mother was big enough for a grown man to ride.”
“You killed her,” Gabriel said.
Ghause sputtered with indignation. “She was wild! And dangerous!”
“The same might be said of you, Mater.” Gabriel was gazing into the eyes of the monster. It looked back at him like a great daft cat.
“You have changed, my son,” Ghause said. “Look at you. A Power.”
“This is the wrong day for you to say that, Mother.” Gabriel stumbled to the window and looked out. Then he turned, unable to stop himself, and went back to the bird.
“But you are a Power, now,” she purred. “I made you to be one, and look at you. They worship you. They all worship you.”
“Stop it!” he said.
“When you take the kingdom, they will-”
He met the griffon’s wide, mad, delighted eyes.
“He’ll need constant attention, of course,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe how much effort I put into this, child. I-”
“Mother,” Gabriel said. “Please stop.”
He turned and they were eye to eye.
“You always were a stiff-necked boy,” she said with a sniff.
“You killed my tutor and my master-at-arms,” he said.
She frowned. “I most certainly did not. Henri killed your so-called master-at-arms, and Prudentia-” She shrugged. “I don’t honestly know what happened.”
“You ordered them killed,” he insisted.
“How tiresome. Stop changing your ground. Killed, ordered killed? What boots it, my child? They were nothing. They were leading you astray and, let us admit it, you needed to be a little tougher. Didn’t you?” She put a hand on his chest, fingers splayed.
He left it there.
Ghause looked up into his face. When last she’d seen him, he’d been a little taller than she, and now he towered over her. Suddenly her pupils widened.
“Where is Ser Henri?” she asked.
Gabriel laughed. “I am not you, Mother. I did not kill him. Only his amour propre took any injury.”
Ghause stamped her foot. “Let us not waste our time together, love. I have many things to share with you-workings to share, plans to make.” She smiled. “You are Duke of Thrake now!”
He responded to her smile and her tone of pleasure. She was his mother. “I am, indeed,” he said.
She laughed, a throaty, rich laugh. “Oh, my dear heart! Every inch of ground along the wall is ours. The earl and I-and you-what a kingdom we will make!”
Gabriel ran his fingers gently through the great griffon’s feathers. “No,” he said.
She frowned. “What do you mean ‘no’?”
Gabriel shrugged. “I mean, I have no intention of taking any lessons from you in diplomacy. Whatever you intend, I am not party to it. While we are on this uncomfortable ground, you may add the hermetical arts. I suspect you have nothing to teach me, and anyway, I wouldn’t trust you in my head.”
“Nothing to teach you!” Ghause replied, now stung to her core. “You are my child. I made you.”
Gabriel gave her a little bow with an ease that made him proud of himself. His mother terrified him, but by God, he was keeping it in. He clasped his hands together to hide their trembling.
“I had Harmodius in my head for a year,” he said, every syllable like the blow of a trebuchet.
“You work the gold?” she asked.