Despite Tennice’s humorous monologues and Radele’s witty ripostes, Karon stayed apart as well. He sat in a chair close to the door, resting his chin on a closed fist. My attempts to involve him in the conversation were met with a monosyllable at most. Yet his attention never wavered in the slightest from the company. Every time the talk slowed, the air felt oppressive.
All too quickly Karon rose. “I need to get back.”
His movement drew all of us into activity. While Tennice advised Radele about breakfast and washing water and the other facilities of the house, the two boys crammed the last of Teriza’s pie into their mouths, piled up the dishes, and carried them off to the kitchen. I went straight to Karon.
“What’s happening here?”
Karon took my arm and drew me farther from the others into a window alcove. “I’m sorry, I can’t explain. I’ve got to go” - he spoke so quietly that no one else could possibly have heard - “and I must speak with the boy for a moment.”
“But - ”
“Seri, be very careful. Please. Listen well and observe.”
I wouldn’t let him leave it at that. “Listen to what? Karon, why ever did you bring Men’Thor’s son here?”
“Because I need someone honorable, someone capable, and someone whose heart is not engaged with me or my family.” I started to protest again, but he pressed one finger to my lips. Then he kissed my hand, pressed it fiercely to his brow, and spoke out over my head. “Gerick, could you walk out with me?” His hand brushed my shoulder as he walked toward the door, giving Radele a stiff, wordless nod at the same time.
“Of course,” said Gerick. He set the last cups and plates back onto the table from which he’d just taken them and followed Karon into the front courtyard.
I peered through the window as they stood talking for a few moments. A serious conversation. Brief. Gerick folded his arms across his chest and watched thoughtfully as Karon strode into the distance and vanished.
I wouldn’t have been half so worried save that, throughout the entire evening, Karon had never once looked me in the eye. Something terrible had happened. I just didn’t know what.
Gerick had nightmares again that night. When I hurried to his bedchamber, I found Radele, sword drawn, examining the windows and doors and flicking the draperies aside as if expecting to find a cowering intruder. But only the moonlight had passed through the diamond-paned windows that overlooked the sleeping orchard… only the moonlight and whatever it was that violated a young man’s dreaming.
“All seems secure,” Radele said, when Gerick’s cries were aborted by his waking. “Is there anything I can do for you, young sir?”
“You can remove yourself from my bedchamber.” Gerick did not even look at Radele. He grabbed his breeches from the foot of his bed and drew them up over his leggings, tucking in the rumpled shirt he had worn to bed.
Radele didn’t move. I smiled halfheartedly at the Dar’Nethi and nodded toward the door. Expressionless, he bowed and left the room.
“Gerick - ”
“I’m sorry to have waked everyone,” he said, pulling on his boots as if he couldn’t accomplish the task fast enough. “But I don’t need anything. Certainly not from him.” He planted a cold kiss on my cheek and hurried out, taking the stairs two at a time, leaving me alone in the moonlit bedchamber.
I sighed and smoothed his blankets, then followed him into the passage. Before returning to my own bed, I stopped at the stair landing where Radele slouched in a shadowed nook. He had one knee bent, the foot planted on the wall behind him, and was peering out of a small, round window that looked down on the stableyard. “Radele, I must apologize for my son’s rudeness. As my husband likely told you - ”
“Don’t trouble yourself, my lady,” he said, straightening his posture at my approach. “It is not my purpose to ingratiate myself with your son or to judge my success by his attentions, only to guard those who live in this house as my prince has commanded me. Watching and listening are my truest talents.”
“Your sword was most efficiently drawn,” I said.
The young man grinned, his white teeth gleaming in the darkness. “My sword knows no place to be save in my hand. I’ve lived the sum of four and twenty years, ten of them on the walls of Avonar, watching and listening to prevent the cursed Zhid from slithering over. I’m not one to sit at leisure while others take action.”
“Watch well, then. Good night, Radele. And thank you.”
“Good night, my lady. Sleep well. You’ve nothing to fear.”
CHAPTER 4
I did not sleep well. Not that night or for many nights after. The weather turned beastly, with hot, heavy air in the mornings that boiled into violent thunderstorms in the afternoons. Neither Gerick nor Radele volunteered to enlighten me as to the concerns that had brought Karon back to us so soon. I was so angry at being left out of the mystery that for days I refused to speak to either of them about Karon or his visit. Then I was furious with myself for being so rock-headed.
After a week I swallowed my pride and mentioned to Gerick that his father had not told me what was bothering him so sorely. Perhaps he had indicated something in those few moments before he left?
Gerick colored a little. “He made me swear not to repeat anything he said… even to you. I’m sorry. He said it was for your safety.”
I spent that afternoon beating the sitting room rugs that Teriza had hung outdoors to air. Teriza swore the things were only half their original thickness when I was finished with them.
Everyone in the house suffered from ill humor as well. I berated Gerick for his continuing rudeness to Radele and snapped at Teriza over nothing until she threatened to leave us. Gerick threw down his books and stormed out of the library in disgust at a burdensome assignment, and swore that he would start sleeping in the stable if Radele entered his bedchamber one more time. Tennice argued with a sullen Paulo over his late rides with Gerick. And Gerick had nightmares three more times that week, each episode more severe than the last. Soon every voice made me start, every closing of a door demanded investigation. If something didn’t change soon, we were going to kill each other.
Only Radele seemed unflappable… when one could find him. He kept out of sight in the corners or the shadows. I had thought he would bring new perspectives to our conversations and lend his good humor to our company, but he never joined us at table or lessons or our evening gatherings. Though Teriza swore he came to her table for meals and even lent a hand around the kitchen while there, I could not have vouched for it.
One morning after I stumbled over him lurking in the garden, startling myself out of a year’s life, I asked him in exasperation if he wouldn’t come out from the shadows a bit. “You’re welcome to use the library, eat with us in the dining room, sit with us in the evenings. Tennice is a masterful chess player. Paulo keeps finding broken-down horses that turn out to be race-worthy, and Gerick thinks a day worth getting up for if only someone will race with him whether on horseback or on foot. The two boys know the countryside like their own hands and would enjoy showing you. You’ve no need to stay apart.”
“Though your company is a pleasure, of course, my lady,” he answered, “I’ve no interest in games. And I doubt I would find anything of interest in your library, just as you’d find nothing suitable for you in the libraries of Avonar.”
Perhaps it was the course of the week that made his answer so annoying. “I believe I’ll find many things of interest in your libraries.”