“I, I, I trust that all is well with...our king,” the marquis stammered.
“Oh, the kingdom is in a shambles, as I’m sure you know,” Borenson said. “So, Gaborn sent me to give you an urgent message. As you also know, he is battling reavers south of Carris.”
“Is he?” the marquis affected ignorance.
“He is,” Borenson affirmed, “And he wonders where his old friend, the Marquis de Ferecia is hiding.”
“He does?” the marquis asked.
“You did receive the call to battle?”
“Indeed,” the marquis pleaded, “and I prepared to ride at once, but then Raj Ahten destroyed the Blue Tower and my men were left with less than two dozen endowments between them. Surely, one cannot be expected to fight without endowments!”
“One can,” Borenson said dangerously, “and one must. At Carris men, women, and children charged into the reavers’ ranks without regard for their own lives. They fought with the strength of desperation because they had no choice.”
“A nasty business, that,” the marquis said, appalled.
“And now,” Borenson said, “it’s your turn.” Beads of sweat began to break on the marquis’s brow. He held the perfumed kerchief closer to his face. “You are to equip your soldiers and ride toward Carris at once, giving battle to any foe that presents itself, be it man or reaver.”
“Oh dear,” the marquis moaned.
“Father, may I go?” Bernaud cut in.
“I think no—” the marquis began.
“A fine idea,” Borenson urged. “You’ll want to present your son to the Earth King, both as a show of family solidarity and to receive his blessing. Any other choice would leave you...exposed.” He studied the marquis’s neck as if pondering where the headsman might make a cut.
The marquis was in torment, but his son said, “Father, now is our chance! We can show the world that Ferrece is still one of the great houses. I’ll apprise the guard!”
The lad ran from the room, leaving Borenson to hover above the marquis.
Myrrima found her heart pounding. Borenson and the marquis had no love for one another, but Borenson was playing a dangerous game. Gaborn had not ordered the marquis to battle, had not made any threats veiled or otherwise. Yet Borenson threatened the man with the king’s vengeance.
Borenson smiled dangerously. “A fine lad, your son.” Now he got down to the real business at hand. “Have you a facilitator handy? I’m riding for Inkarra and need three endowments of stamina.”
“I—I’ve a facilitator,” the marquis stammered, “and suitable Dedicates may be found, but I’m afraid that I haven’t any forcibles.”
“I brought my own,” Borenson said. “Indeed, I have a dozen extra which I should like to present to your son.”
Outside the castle, Bernaud shouted to the captain of the guard, warning him to prepare some mounts.
The marquis gave Borenson a calculating look, and suddenly the terror in his eyes seemed to diminish. His face went hard.
“You see it, too, don’t you?” the marquis asked. “My son is more a man now than I could ever hope to be. He looks much as his grandfather did, when he was young. In him the House of Ferrece might hope to return to grandeur.”
Borenson merely nodded. He would not feign any affection for the marquis.
The old man smiled sourly. “So, the king orders us into battle. Let the fire take the old trees, and make way for the new.” He sighed, then peered up at Borenson. “You’re gloating. You’ll be pleased to see me dead.”
“I—” Borenson began to say.
“Don’t deny it, Sir Borenson. I have known you for what, a dozen years? You’ve always been so secure in your own prowess in battle. No matter that I had wealth that you could never match, or a title above your own, every time you’ve entered my presence, you’ve given me those insufferable looks. I know what you think of me. My ancestors were kings of renown. But over the centuries bits of our kingdom have been bartered away by one lord, or frivoled away by the next, or stolen from a third who was too weak to keep what he rightfully owned, until the last of us...is me. When you were but thirteen years old you looked at me with disdain, knowing what I was: a minnow freakishly spawned from a line of leviathan.”
“You beg me to speak freely,” Borenson nearly growled, “and through your own self-deprecation, you almost relieve me of the necessity.” He leaned on the table, so that his face was inches from the marquis’s, and he stared him in the eyes, unblinking. “Yes, I’ll be glad to see you dead. I have no stomach for men who live in luxury and whine about their fates. When I was a lad of thirteen, you looked down your nose at me because I was poor and you were rich, because my father was a murderer and yours was a lord. But I knew even then that I was a better man than you could ever hope to be. The truth is that you, sir, are a milksop, so weak in the legs that you could never father a child of your own. You say that Bernaud favors his grandsire, but I suspect that if we look among your guardsmen, we’ll find one that favors him more. Fie on you! If you were any kind of a man, you’d do your best to kill me right now for speaking thus, whether you had endowments or no.”
The marquis’s jaw hardened, and for a moment Myrrima thought that he would grab the carving knife from the boar’s ham and bury it in her husband’s neck. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and smiled wickedly. “You’ve always felt so constrained to prove yourself. The lowborn always do. Even now, as captain of the King’s Guard, you feel the need to challenge me.” The marquis had obviously not heard that Borenson had abandoned his station, and Myrrima wondered what the marquis would have done had he known. “But,” the marquis added, “there is no need for me to fight you. You and your shabby wife are the ones going to Inkarra, and we both know that the Night Children will send your heads home in a sack by dawn. As for me, I go to battle the reavers—a foe I judge to be far more worthy and implacable than you.”
For a moment, Myrrima thought her husband would kill the man for his insults, but Borenson laughed, a genuine laugh filled with mirth, and the marquis began to laugh in his turn. Borenson slapped him on the back, as if they were old friends, and indeed for a moment the two were united, if only in their hatred for each other, their scorn for each other, and their desire to unleash their anger upon other foes.
Borenson and Myrrima made their way to the Dedicates’ Keep behind the castle. Like everything else in the marquis’s domain, the Dedicates’ Keep was overnice. The walls of the keep, along with its towers, had been limed, so that the building fairly glowed. The courtyard gave rise to stately almond trees. Their leaves had gone brown, and the grass was littered with golden almonds. Squirrels hopped about madly, burying their treasures. A pair of Dedicates played chess in the open courtyard next to a fountain, while a blind Dedicate sat off in the shade with a lute, singing,
“You hate the marquis?” Myrrima asked as they walked.
“No,” Borenson said. “ ‘Hate’ is too strong a word. I merely feel such contempt for him that I would rejoice at his death. That’s not the same as hatred.”
“It’s not?”
“No,” Borenson said. “If I hated him, I’d kill him myself.”
“What did he mean,” Myrrima asked, “when he said that the ‘children’ would send our heads home in a sack?”
“Night Children,” Borenson said. “That is what the word Inkarran means. It comes from Inz, ‘Darkness,’ and karrath, ‘offspring.’” He spoke the words with such an accent that Myrrima imagined that he knew the language well. “The Inkarrans will send our heads home in a sack.”