I was not yet twenty myself, but of course barbarians grow up faster than civilized folk. I said nothing.
“My father had died in the interim,” he continued. “My mother—” He shrugged. “Disappeared some night. That sort of thing happens here. It was just as well. I was granted fullblood status when I returned, and she was a lowblood. If she were still alive, I would no longer be her son.” He glanced at me, after a pause. “That will sound heartless to you.”
I shook my head, slowly. “I’ve been in Sky long enough.”
He made a soft sound, somewhere between amusement and cynicism. “I had a harder time getting used to this place than you,” he said. “Your mother helped me. She was… like you in some ways. Gentle on the surface, something entirely different underneath.”
I glanced at him, surprised by this description.
“I was smitten, of course. Her beauty, her wit, all that power…” He shrugged. “But I would have been content to admire her from afar. I wasn’t that young. No one was more surprised than I when she offered me more.”
“My mother wouldn’t do that.”
Viraine just looked at me for a moment, during which I glared back at him.
“It was a brief affair,” he said. “Just a few weeks. Then she met your father and lost interest in me.” He smiled thinly. “I can’t say I was happy about that.”
“I told you—” I began with some heat.
“You didn’t know her,” he said softly. It was that softness that silenced me. “No child knows her parents, not truly.”
“You didn’t know her, either.” I refused to think about how childish that sounded.
For a moment there was such sorrow in Viraine’s face, such lingering pain, that I knew he was telling the truth. He had loved her. He had been her lover. She had gone off to marry my father, leaving Viraine with only memories and longing. And now fresh grief burned in my soul, because he was right—I hadn’t known her. Not if she could do something like this.
Viraine looked away. “Well. You wanted to know my reason for offering to escort you. You aren’t the only one who mourns Kinneth.” He took a deep breath. “If you change your mind, let me know.” He inclined his head, then headed for the door.
“Wait,” I said, and he stopped. “I told you before: my mother did nothing without reason. So why did she take up with you?”
“How should I know?”
“What do you think?”
He considered a moment, then shook his head. He was smiling again, hopelessly. “I think I don’t want to know. And neither do you.”
He left. I stared at the closed door for a long time.
Then I went looking for answers.
I went first to my mother’s room, where I took the chest of letters from behind the bed’s headboard. When I turned with it in my hands, I found my unknown maternal grandmother gazing directly at me from within her portrait. “Sorry,” I muttered, and left again.
It was not difficult to find an appropriate corridor. I simply wandered until a sense of nearby, familiar power tickled my awareness. I followed that sense until, before an otherwise nondescript wall, I knew I had found a good spot.
The gods’ langauge was not meant to be spoken by mortals, but I had a goddess’s soul. That had to be good for something.
“Atadie,” I whispered, and the wall opened up.
I went through two dead spaces before finding Sieh’s orrery. As the wall closed behind me, I looked around and noticed that the place looked starkly bare compared to the last time I’d seen it. Several dozen or so of the colored spheres lay scattered on the floor, unmoving, a few showing cracks or missing chunks. Only a handful floated in their usual places. The yellow ball was nowhere to be seen.
Beyond the spheres, Sieh lay on a gently curved hump of palace-stuff, with Zhakkarn crouched beside him. Sieh was younger than I had seen him in the arena, but still too old: long-legged and lanky, he must have been somewhere in late adolescence. Zhakkarn, to my surprise, had removed her headkerchief; her hair lay in close-curled, flattened ringlets about her head. Rather like mine, except that it was blue-white in color.
They were both staring at me. I crouched beside them, setting down the chest. “Are you all right?” I asked Sieh.
Sieh struggled to sit up, but I could see in his movements how weak he was. I moved to help, but Zhakkarn had him, bracing his back with one big hand. “Amazing, Yeine,” Sieh said. “You opened the walls by yourself? I’m impressed.”
“Can I help you?” I asked. “Somehow?”
“Play with me.”
“Play—” But I trailed off as Zhakkarn caught my eye with a stern look. I thought a moment, then stretched out my hands, palms up. “Put your hands over mine.”
He did so. His hands were larger than mine, and they shook like an old man’s. So much wrongness. But he grinned. “Think you’re fast enough?”
I slapped at his hands, and scored. He moved so slowly that I could’ve recited a poem in the process. “Apparently I am.”
“Beginner’s luck. Let’s see you do it again.” I slapped at his hands again. He moved faster this time; I almost missed. “Ha! All right, third time’s the charm.” I slapped again, and this time did miss.
Surprised, I looked up at him. He grinned, visibly younger, though not by much. A year, perhaps. “See? I told you. You’re slow.”
I could not help smiling as I understood. “Do you think you might be up for tag?”
It was midnight. My body wanted sleep, not games, which made me sluggish. That worked in Sieh’s favor, especially once he recovered enough to actually run. Then he chased me all over the chamber, amusing himself since I presented very little real challenge. It was doing him such noticeable good that I kept at it until he finally called a halt and we both flopped on the floor, panting. He looked, at last, normal—a spindly boy of nine or ten, beautiful and carefree. I no longer questioned why I loved him.
“Well, that was fun,” Sieh said at last. He sat up, stretched, and began beckoning the dead spheres to himself. They rolled across the floor to him, where he picked them up, petted them fondly, then lifted them into the air, giving each a practiced twist before releasing it to float away. “So what’s in the chest?”
I glanced at Zhakkarn, who had not joined in our play. I suspected children’s games did not mesh well with the essence of battle. She nodded to me once, and this time it was approving. I flushed and looked away.
“Letters,” I said, putting my hand on my mother’s chest. “They are…” I hesitated, inexplicably reticent. “My father’s letters to my mother, and some unsent drafts from her to him. I think…” I swallowed. My throat was suddenly tight, and my eyes stung. There is no logic to grief.
Sieh ignored me, brushing my hand out of the way before opening the chest. I regained my composure while he took out each letter, skimmed it, and laid it on the ground, eventually standing up to enlarge the pattern. I had no idea what he was doing as he finally set the last letter into the corner of a great square some five paces by five, with a smaller square off to the side for my mother’s letters. Then he stood and folded his arms to stare down at the whole mess.
“There are some missing,” said Zhakkarn. I started to find her looming behind me, gazing down at the pattern as well.
Puzzled, I went to look myself, but could not read either my mother’s fine script or my father’s more sprawling hand from this distance. “How can you tell?”
“They both refer to prior letters,” Zhakkarn said, pointing here and there at certain pages.