He nodded and stood, then bowed toward the young woman at the door. She returned a stiff curtsy.
"I'm delighted," he said, and behind the formal tone he might even have meant it, "to meet you both." He extended a hand to Lilander, and his lips even twitched in a brief smile at the boy's deeply sincere expression as he took it.
"It's nice to meet you, Uncle Jassion," his niece told him, though her attention was fixed mostly on her mother. Her voice carried a surprising weight, given her slight frame. "Even if it should have happened much sooner."
"Mellorin!" Tyannon snapped at her.
"It's all right," Jassion said. "Perhaps I should have looked for you before-"
"It's not you, Jass," his sister told him. "Don't worry about it. Just an-old family squabble."
Mellorin rolled her eyes, and Kaleb coughed into a fist-probably to keep from snickering at the lot of them.
But Jassion's stare had gone flinty as he began to understand Mellorin's meaning. "She may have a point there, too, Tyannon."
"Jass-"
"You never came back."
"Jass, please-"
"You never came back!" Mead sloshed over the edge of the mug. Jassion glanced down, as though it had moved on its own, then once more at Tyannon. "Twenty-three years! How could you? How could you stay with that creature? How-"
Tyannon shot to her feet, chair toppling out from beneath her. "You didn't know him, Jassion. There was so much more to him, I really believed…" She sighed, brushing her hair from her face. "I loved him, Jassion."
"No!" He, too, was standing now, leaning over the table as though preparing to scramble over it.
"Mom?" Lilander whispered. His eyes were wide, but he stepped forward, putting his spindly, twelve-year-old frame between Tyannon and his uncle.
And in those eyes, Jassion saw reflected a figure in black armor snatching his sister away. He swallowed once, hard, and sat down, intertwining his fingers to keep his hands from shaking.
"Don't say that to me," he demanded, though far more softly. "Not ever. Not about-"
"Cerris," Tyannon interrupted, with perhaps the slightest emphasis on the name, "was not the man you think he was."
Jassion frowned, puzzled, failing for a moment to understand the fear, the pleading, in his sister's voice.
But only for a moment.
The children didn't know.
And Jassion would not be the one to tear their innocence from them. "Perhaps," he conceded, "we ought to speak alone."
"Lilander, go play outside." Her tone hadn't changed, but her shoulders slumped in obvious relief.
"I don't-"
"Please don't argue with me, Lilander. Not now. Mellorin, go keep an eye on him."
"Mother, come on! I'm not stupid, I-"
"Mom, I don't need-"
"I said don't argue with me! Please," she added softly, putting a hand on Lilander's face, turning her own face toward her daughter. "Please."
With that sigh of aggravation known to teens all over creation, Mellorin stomped from the room. Lilander trailed after, watching over his shoulder until the door shut behind them.
"Well," Kaleb said brightly, "that ought to keep the neighbors in gossip for a few more days."
The glares cast his way pretty well cemented the family resemblance.
"Thank you," Tyannon said, sitting across from her brother once more.
"I wasn't about to do that to them. Everyone deserves a childhood." The accusation was unmistakable.
"I did it to save you!"
"I know why you went with him, Tyannon. But you stayed with him. You weren't a prisoner, not after a while, anyway. He told me. You could have left anytime you wanted."
"Oh, he told you, did he? Would that have been when you had him chained up and beaten like a dog? Is that who I saved, Jassion? A monster who tortures helpless victims?"
"He was a dog, and I did what I had to do." The baron's face was flushed, his teeth grinding. "I should have killed him!"
"He saved us, Jass. He beat Audriss, and he saved us all."
"It doesn't excuse what else he did. And you, you…" He literally sputtered, unable to put words to her betrayal.
"I loved him," she said simply. And again, even as he flinched away, "I loved him. I saw more in him than you ever did. I saw the man he could be, and I helped him get there."
"You left me alone to do it," Jassion whispered. "And for what? Where's your 'new Corvis' now, Tyannon?"
This time, it was she who looked away.
"He's not here," Jassion said. "From the looks of things, he hasn't been for a while."
"He's never been in this house," she admitted, voice catching. "We left him a long time ago."
"Because you knew he hadn't changed after all, didn't you? You saw it when he came back from the Serpent's War."
"Oh, Jassion, I thought… I really thought he…"
He sat, staring at his hands while his sister cried, and wished he dared comfort her.
"I hate to interrupt this little family moment," Kaleb said in a tone that fooled nobody at all, "but the reason we're here…?"
Jassion nodded, took a deep breath. "Tyannon, it's not over."
She nodded, dashing away her tears with the back of her hand. "I've heard rumors. I think everyone has. Duke Halmon?"
"Among many others. He has to be stopped. For good."
"I don't understand." She was mumbling, face turned toward the table. "Even at his worst… He always believed he was doing what was best for Imphallion. Why would he do this?"
Jassion's body tensed at her words, but he only shook his head. "I don't know. And it doesn't really matter, does it? If we don't deal with him-and fast, before Cephira advances any farther-there may not be much of an Imphallion left."
"I think…" Tyannon shuddered as the implications of her words overcame her, but she forged ahead. "I think I'd help you, if I could."
The air vanished from Jassion's lungs. "If you…?"
"We used to live in Chelenshire, but I don't think he's there anymore." She sighed, reached out a hand to take his. "I'm sorry, Jassion. I know you've come all this way, and finding us couldn't have been easy. But I can't help you. I truly don't know where he is."
Kaleb muttered an ugly curse while Jassion stared down at the fingers that overlay his own, saying nothing at all. THEY REMAINED FOR SOME HOURS, Jassion and Tyannon telling each other-haltingly, and without much detail-of the years they'd spent apart, while Kaleb sat across the room and fidgeted. But all too soon, or perhaps not soon enough, neither had anything left to say.
"We have to go," Jassion told her finally, rising from his chair. "Even if you can't help, we have to find him."
"I understand. Jass?"
"Hmm?"
"I know how you feel about him, and maybe you're right. But… Take him alive, if you can? For me?"
The baron's lips pressed tight, but he nodded. "If I can, Tyannon." Then, haltingly, "And perhaps, when this is over… Maybe you and the children might come to Braetlyn? I know you've no interest in being baroness, and I wouldn't foist it on you, but… It'd be nice not to be alone."
"I don't know, Jass. I'll think on it."
And that-along with a timid, tentative hug and the soft thud of a closing door-was that. Jassion stood on the walkway outside, staring out over the vegetable garden, and for once Kaleb was wise enough to hold his comments.
It was Jassion himself who finally broke the silence. "What now? We didn't really have a backup plan."
"Now? We wait. It'll be dark in a few hours. They'll all be asleep by then."
Jassion stiffened. "So?"
"So Lilander's too young to put up a fight. We can take him without much of a fuss, and with his blood-"
"Have you lost your godsdamn mind?"
"No, but if you keep shouting like that, I may lose my godsdamn hearing." He actually stuck a finger in his ear, wiggled it about a bit. "What's your problem?"