Havemercy (14 page)

Hal wasn’t the sort of creature suited to such games. I didn’t think he had any idea I was playing them.

What did I want? I was certain that I wanted something—I knew it because I’d found once more the will to rise and bathe and knock the dust out of my own curtains, to demand some servant’s punctuality to air the choking smell of dust out of the entire room—but it was there that my self-awareness ceased to be useful. I had no doubt I was protecting myself from the nature of my eagerness to please and to be favored above all other members of the household. This last wasn’t very hard, for he was treated quite abominably, despite his tenuous kinship to my brother’s wife. I don’t mean that he was in any way overtly abused. It was simply that most pretended he wasn’t there, and while he seemed not to mind overly much, it was nevertheless true that every time I made overtures or reached out to engage him in conversation his warm eyes, the pale blue color of a dreaming sky, lit up immediately. Now that I was no longer steeped in my own self-pity I could recognize the signs at once. This was an affectionate young man who was being starved for warmth.

He was also clever, and being starved of something to test his cleverness against. This, I supposed, was the reason for all the reading he did—for the way he tore into new books the way desert sands swallowed any and all water for which they were so burningly parched.

It was once again selfish of me, but I loved to watch him read. He had nimble, long fingers and he turned the pages of his romans with a trembling reverence—trembling, I realized quickly enough, because he was keeping a necessary hold on himself, that he wouldn’t become so overeager as to tear a single page. He read as he walked; read in small, snug corners of every room; read outside in the branches of trees and tucked up against tree trunks. When he was at the table he wished he was reading. Only when he was at my feet and listening to my evening stories did that wistful expression fade from his face. Only then was the same hunger he usually reserved for the secrets between the pages fixed on someone alive and breathing in this world.

I admit freely that I lived to be sole proprietor of that expression. I dreamed of it at night and waited all day long to see it again.

Was this so selfish of me? Perhaps it was. Yet, in all honesty, I kept the children entertained and kept William from going mad during his confinement, which also kept the burden from resting solely upon Hal’s shoulders. The Mme even fainted less. In my own way, I was useful in a house that still didn’t entirely forgive my presence; and I was glad, also, to be wanted, by someone. It was a small thing, but it gave me a purpose, even if I’d never fancied myself the country bard before.

One evening, William asked me, “Are those stories all true, Uncle Royston?”

“As true as any story can be,” I replied with a smile.

At that moment Hal caught my eyes, his own bright and wide. I understood, with a sudden and fierce thunderclap of epiphany, what it was I had cobbled together and pinned all my hopes to.

I excused myself from the room at once, worrying Emilie and troubling Hal and sending William into a fit of a tantrum in which he made Etienne’s nose bleed all over the brand-new rug my brother’s wife had just procured for the sitting room.

If we were to go about labeling things, then I will readily admit that was selfish.

Sometime later, I heard a tentative knock on my bedroom door. I knew whose knock it was; I’d memorized it. How I hadn’t realized before the extent and the particular quality of my feelings, I didn’t know. I was an idiot.

“Come in,” I said. Even in the depths of condemning myself, I couldn’t keep Hal out. I simply didn’t want to.

He entered the room and closed the door very quietly behind him, perhaps to keep the light from the hallway from bothering me. There he stood, his back against the door and his hands behind him, still holding the doorknob, I presumed, and worrying his lower lip as he so often did. My heart made a strange revolution in my chest. I was sunk, as surely as I lay there.

“Are you feeling unwell?” Hal asked at last, when the silence was too long and too thick for either of us to bear a second more. “I thought perhaps, since you left so suddenly—”

“Something of a headache,” I replied lightly. I hated myself not simply for worrying him, but for lying to him now—as if it made even an inch of difference.

“Oh,” said Hal. Then he nodded, as though this were a perfectly appropriate reason for leaving as abruptly as I had, rather than merely excusing myself as any gentleman would have done in my place.

He would accept any answer I gave him, I felt certain. Except for the truth.

I had a fleeting, foreign wish for my old fog of indifference. Then I might have something at least to shield me from this awareness, new and raw. It was rather akin to having a headache, in that every movement seemed magnified, but my affliction was—for mercy or tragedy—centered only and irrevocably around Hal.

The doorknob clicked as he let go of it and came forward, hands clasped still behind his back.

“Would you like me to read to you?” His brow creased in a rare frown. “No, I suppose that wouldn’t help, would it?”

It would help neither my fictional headache nor what truly ailed me. And, as selfish as I was, I could not stomach the idea of lying in bed while Hal read to me as though nothing had changed.

“No,” I agreed, too quickly for manners, too quickly to stop the hurt from flashing across Hal’s face, visible as print on the page. I felt like a brute, protecting myself at the expense of his ego, but trapped here as I was in the house, the country, I could think of no other way. I would not indulge in the same mistake twice.

“Would you like the drapes shut, then?” Hal’s face had a curious look to it, wary and uncertain.

I realized then what it looked like, and that his concern revolved around the idea that I might have given up once more on life in the country at large and decided to shutter myself away. How could I explain that it was quite the opposite? The idea itself was laughable. Only I wasn’t laughing.

“That’s all right,” I said at length, then sat up straighter so as to reassure him. “It’s only a headache.”

“Of course,” he said, relief passing smooth as glass over his face. Hal, I understood, had quite simply never been given cause to hide his emotions from anyone. It was rather a dangerous skill to be without. “Well, you’ll call if you need anything? There are always servants about—or me.”

“I’m sure it will be gone come morning,” I said, no longer in control of my own lie nor even clear on the good it could possibly be doing. After all, I would doubtless wake up in the morning exactly as I was now, lest I took as desperate measures as the men in the historically inaccurate books Hal had been reading in earlier months: which was to say, cut my own heart from my chest and seal it away for safekeeping.

“I hope so,” he confided. “Otherwise, William will be inconsolable. And, well, you’ve seen him when he’s inconsolable. It tends to lead to bloodshed.”

I nodded and felt that this would be an appropriate place for an apology about the rug. “You may give him my deepest regrets,” I told Hal instead. “And inform him that no one was eaten by ravenous sea creatures.”

“That will disappoint him,” said Hal.

“He’ll get used to it,” I said, too coldly again. It wasn’t right or fair of me; I knew that Hal was made for no such pretenses, and that a good man, a better man, would have been perfectly clear with him.

There was a short silence, wherein I could see Hal struggle for a clear direction to take the conversation from there. I should have warned him that it was impossible. In the country, as I might well have known, there were many trees to become tangled in.

“Are you quite sure that there’s nothing I can get for you, Margrave Royston?”

The mere fact that I’d grown less self-indulgent, dragged myself from a mire of self-pity, did not mean that my brother’s request had changed, or that Hal came to see me out of anything resembling his own volition. Remembering this fact made things a little easier, like digging one’s nails into the palm of one’s hand to ward off distraction, or the advances of those with mind-reading Talents. A bit perverse, perhaps, but it was a small and necessary pain, there for me to call out of the ether whenever I so happened to need the reminder.

“Yes, Hal,” I assured him. And then, buoyed by some fool capricious impulse, I looked at him directly. “You needn’t address me that way, in case you haven’t noticed. The rest of the family certainly doesn’t bother.”

“Oh,” he said. The tips of his ears went a helpless, bright pink so that I had to look away. “I only thought—I’m not true family, see.”

“Be that as it may,” I said patiently.

I was not normally a patient man; it was the reason I’d turned down a position at the ’Versity Stretch when they’d offered it. Professors had to enjoy the gift of teaching and I was no teacher. I was too impatient, too scattered and self-interested. I wanted nothing to do with someone else’s ideas and wanted to share none of my own. This curious new generosity was a change and—despite the contempt I held for the country and its own fear of progress—it affected me.

“All right,” he replied after a spell, and I thought he sounded pleased, though I couldn’t bring myself to look and see.

HAL

The night I learned for certain of Margrave Royston’s reason for coming to stay with us started just the same as any other night, with no warning signs nor any indication that it was to be something out of the ordinary.

I’d prepared the children for dinner as best I could. Earlier that day, William celebrated his release from captivity by immediately finding the largest and squishiest mud puddle left by the rains; he’d used it to spark a war between himself and any of the others who came near, myself included. By the time we’d all got clean again, we’d run short on hot water, and that put Mme in a foul temper.

Mme was in a foul temper often enough these days, though she was fainting less. I came upon her arguing with the chatelain in the study about influences—specifically, the sort of influence the Margrave was having on the children and William in particular, who now proclaimed to anyone who asked that he was going to move to the city just as soon as he was able. He’d also picked up one or two words that had slipped into the stories in the heat of the moment, words that caused our cook to chase him about the house with a wooden spoon.

In general, though, I felt that things had been running more smoothly since Margrave Royston had taken it upon himself to occupy the children’s fancy. I myself enjoyed the help as much as I did the stories, and would have been very sorry if anyone had convinced him to spend his time otherwise.

The children marched downstairs in a queue to the dining room, which I privately thought of as the finest room in the house. It was certainly one of the largest, paneled all in fine, dark wood with high-backed chairs and a long, rectangular table of exactly the same shade. The servants polished the table daily, whether we were using it or not, so that the wood always had an exacting gleam to it, as though it was not wood at all but marble or glass. I knew it couldn’t compare to the likes of what they had in the city, but I thought it very fine, all the same.

“Any news from Thremedon?” The chatelain seemed relieved to have found that the city was no longer a subject taboo with his brother, and he asked after it often now; though whether he was truly curious or if it was only a peace offering, I couldn’t tell.

“Well,” said Royston, and his eyes crinkled at the corners the way they did whenever he was about to relay something particularly amusing. I leaned forward on my elbows—too eager as always, but then no one was looking at me. “It seems the Esar has come up with a particularly unique way of dealing with our airmen and the diplomat from Arlemagne all in one.”

Mme took a very long drink from her wineglass. She didn’t seem to like talking about the city very much.

“Out with it then,” said the chatelain, who had no patience for the way his brother paused in order to build suspense.

Margrave Royston put down his fork and smiled so widely that it still looked rather foreign on his face. “They’re calling it ‘sensitivity training.’”

“What?” The chatelain’s broad face went slack with shock.

The children broke out in a smattering of laughter, though whether they truly understood or whether they were laughing at their father’s expression, I didn’t know.

“It’s a stroke of genius really,” said the Margrave, fingers toying idly with the stem of his wineglass. “It humiliates the Dragon Corps without any blood drawn, which I think the diplomat was quite keen on initially; and perhaps they might even learn something from the whole ordeal though I sincerely doubt it.”

“Oh, Arlemagne,” Mme said, in a tone I thought rather strange. “They never do know what they want over there, do they?”

There was a short pause before the Margrave answered. “Well, I don’t know about that.”

“They’ve certainly had some problems in the past,” said the chatelain, in support of Mme. He smiled jovially, and refilled his glass with wine. “Especially after their king took ill.”

“This new one is completely useless,” agreed Mme. She dabbed at her mouth neatly with a napkin and gestured for a servant to take her bowl of soup. “The prince, or whatever they insist on calling him.”

“Now,” said the Margrave—and he’d told me not to address him as such but remembering was hard, especially in my own head. His voice came out a little colder than it had a second ago, and I had the unexpected sensation of a sudden frost. “Now, that’s not entirely fair. The heir apparent has many fine leadership qualities.”

“Oh I’m sure he does,” said Mme, her expression as sharp and brittle as glass. “But that wasn’t exactly what we were talking about, now was it?”

“Marjorie.” The chatelain said his wife’s given name, quick and quiet like a rebuke. It was obvious that she’d said something rude, though for the life of me I didn’t understand what.

“Yes, Royston,” she went on. “Perhaps you should tell us of the enormous . . . talents the Arlemagnes possess.”