Return of the Guardian-King (17 page)

“Alas . . .” She’d smiled at him.

He’d offered to send an escort with her, which she’d declined—Trap had her security on the road well in hand. Thwarted there, Tiris had offered to ride up in a week or so to visit her, but that, too, she had discouraged. Being confined to the convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Graces, she’d not be able to receive him anyway.
“No men allowed.”

He’d liked that no more than Trap had.

She looked down at the card in her hands, fingering the impression his signet had made upon the wax seal. It was the jackal of ul Sadek, one of the oldest of the Sorite noble houses or so he’d said. The image recalled to her the ring itself, and the first time she had seen it that night in the Gilded Ram, when he had seized her arm and put his nose to her wrist, inhaling her scent. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck now as then. He might be the charming luncheon host, but there were deeper things about him she suspected were not so charming. Maybe she wouldn’t use his cloak after all. . . .

She was in her music room working on a revision of her ballad chronicling Abramm’s life, when a voice broke into her concentration.

“My lady? Duke Eltrap requests audience, ma’am.”

She looked up and almost told the man to leave her be. Then the name he’d spoken registered, but even then she was so engaged with her work she thought of putting him off. He probably wanted to go over the books with her one last time, and she’d had more than enough of that lately.

Before she could answer, Trap slipped through the doorway himself, a breach of etiquette she found vaguely annoying. Worse, he’d not even bothered to tidy himself up before making his call—his woolen trousers rumpled and his white blouse badly wrinkled under his vest. She frowned at him. “Why are you here, sir? Didn’t my doorman tell you I’m occupied?”

“Aye, ma’am, he did. But . . . I bring important news.” His lips twitched, as if he fought to keep his expression neutral.

Sudden concern twisted her heart as she set aside the lirret. “Is it news from the front? Is my father all right?”

“Yes, ma’am, so far as I know.” It seemed as if he wanted to smile.

“Leyton?”

“I believe he is well, too, ma’am.” Yes, it was definitely a smile.

“Well, then . . .” She fell silent as a child’s voice drifted in from the anteroom:

“Where is Mama, Auntie Elayne? You said she would be here.”

A woman’s low tones responded, but Maddie barely heard her, for the child’s voice had ignited every nerve in her body. She leaped to her feet and crossed the room to fling wide the door.

A group of people stood in the sitting room surrounded by her servants: three men and a gray-haired woman, the latter holding the hand of a small, blond, shaggy-haired boy, all of them coated in the gray dust of travel. Maddie stared at the boy in disbelief, her mind blank with shock, her body thrumming with recognition and wonder. “Simon?”

The lad’s head whipped around, and a pair of startlingly blue eyes widened.

“Mama!” he shrieked, letting go the woman’s hand and running for Maddie. She bent to catch him, and then the little arms were wrapped tightly about her neck and she was hugging him fiercely. His hair—far too long and shaggy for a crown prince’s—smelled of dust and smoke and too many days gone without washing. She didn’t care. She had him back, whole, solid, and not likely to disappear into any holes in the wall, or be snatched up by wolves. Eidon had made good on his promise. Abramm had been right to believe. . . .

And suddenly, her cheek pressed to the top of her son’s head, tears blurred her eyes. A moment later, the first sob shook her body, and the emotional storm it triggered could not be called back. For a time she held him to her and wept as she had not since this whole nightmare began.

All the while he patted her shoulder and said, “It’s all right now, Mama, we’re back. It’s all right.”

“I know, Simon,” she said finally, wiping away her tears.

“Then, why are you crying?”

She smoothed his hair back from his face and smiled. “Because I am so very, very happy to see you.”

He frowned, plainly doubtful, but after a moment went on to something more understandable. “There really was a bunny hole. Father Eidon showed it to me. And when the bad men went away, Auntie Elayne found me and then we found Ian. He was on a rock crying, and he wasn’t even wet. . . .”

The rest of his words were lost as his brother’s name registered. Her fingers tightened on his little shoulders. “Did you say you found Ian?” And now the memory she could never bear to call up returned in force, Gillard’s man ripping her baby from her arms and hurling him into that cliff, his frantic, terrified screams cutting off at the moment of impact. . . . The bundle drifting downward after, blankets fluttering up around it. . . .

“He’s right there.” Simon’s voice shattered the vicious image as he turned to gesture toward one of the men. “Captain Channon’s got him.”

Captain Shale Channon, the man Abramm had assigned to find his sons and bring them to their mother. And looking at the man for the first time since she’d entered, she saw he carried a small cloaked form, her baby’s pale face peeking out from the hood, a pair of round, deep blue eyes staring at her amidst too-long locks of blond hair. Except he wasn’t a baby anymore. . . .
How can he have gotten so big?!

She straightened from where she’d crouched with Simon, both hands lifting to cover her mouth as it twitched and sagged with renewed emotion. But a moment after he had stared impassively into her eyes, the toddler turned his head away and buried it in Channon’s shoulder, squirming in the soldier’s arm and whimpering in protest.

“It’s all right, wee one,” Channon murmured to him. “It’s yer mama. She’s been waitin’ for ye to come to her . . . all these long months.” He squatted to set the boy on his own little feet, but the child refused to let him go.

“Ian,” Maddie said, her heart nearly breaking with the fear that after all this time and trouble he had forgotten her. . . . “Ian, it’s Mama. Don’t you remember me, poppet?”

He gave no sign he’d heard her.

Maddie stepped toward him and squatted just behind him. “Ian?”

The boy’s head twitched, stilled a moment, then turned just enough that he could look at her, his thumb in his mouth. Maddie held out her arms to him.

Ian stared at her, sucking his thumb, his blue eyes round and wide, their color so exactly that of his father’s it twisted her heart with an entirely different sort of anguish.

Just when she thought he was going to turn away from her again, he let go of Channon and, thumb still in his mouth, came hesitantly toward her, suffering her to hold him but not hugging her in return, save for the small hand that plucked erratically at her sleeve.

“Oh, Ian, poppet, I have missed you so much,” she whispered in his ear.

But he gave no sign of hearing, just laid his head on her chest and continued to suck on his thumb.

“He hasn’t said a word since the day we found him,” Elayne said gravely.

Maddie recalled that awful moment when he had collided with the cliff wall. . . . “Is he deaf, do you think?” she ventured, hating even to suggest it.

“Doesn’t seem to be.” Elayne brushed a hand over Ian’s fine, pale hair. “I think he just doesn’t want to talk anymore.”

“He misses Papa,” Simon said gravely.

And that almost set Maddie off all over again. Trap looked little better. Simon seemed unaware, turning now to tug at her skirt. “Mama, is it true that Papa is dead? Auntie Elayne says they burned him up in the Square.”

Maddie glanced at Elayne, who frowned at her. In Maddie’s arms, Ian made tiny sucking noises around his thumb, his fingers still plucking aimlessly at her sleeve.

“That is what everyone says, Simon,” Maddie said. “And I have not heard a word from him in all this time, so it may be they are right.”

“But he might have found a bunny hole, too—mightn’t he, Mama?”

“He might have, Simon. . . .”

They were delivered, thankfully, by Carissa’s arrival, pushing open the sitting room door and stepping among them. “I
thought
I heard a familiar voice,” she said with a grin.

Simon’s little boy voice shrilled across the room. “Auntie Crissa!” He flew into her arms, and she hugged him fiercely. Ian, however, refused even to look at her, clinging to Maddie now as he had earlier clung to Channon.

“He wouldn’t come to me, either,” Trap told his wife gently.

“He almost wouldn’t come to
me,
” Maddie added.

After a moment Carissa gave up, then turned to the gray-haired Elayne and fell into her arms, the two of them mourning their mutual loss in Felmen Cooper, Elayne’s husband and Carissa’s lifelong retainer.

Maddie recalled then the needs of her guests, informing them they would of course be staying at the palace. When she learned they had not eaten since midmorning, she sent Jeyanne out for cakes, milk, and tea.

“Please, sit down,” she told the others, doing so herself, Ian still in her arms. “Jeyanne will get the baths going right away, but while we’re waiting, I must hear of your adventures. I can hardly believe you’re all here!”

And right then, Elayne Cooper stood and handed over the battered valise she had carried. “I found this for you, as well, ma’am,” she said. “I think Felmen threw it into the forest when we were attacked, lest anyone should find it. Leastwise that’s where I found it afterward, lying in the midst of a bracklebush.”

Holding Ian in her left arm, Maddie opened the case with her free hand, pulled out two pair of child’s dungarees and small clothes—and then the Robe of Light, stiff and bulky as it had been when she had wrapped Ian in it that fateful night. The robe had never changed to the suppleness it had when Abramm wore it, but it had saved the life of his son nonetheless. Beneath the robe lay the ring and the orb and, at the bottom, the crown.

Seeing it all made her want to weep again, but she restrained herself, replacing the items and closing the case as she pressed Elayne for the story.

The woman had eluded their attackers that night and slipped into the darkness. She’d seen Simon run away and hurried around to help him, was deep into the forest when she’d heard Maddie’s screams abruptly silenced. Torn between the need to keep after Simon and the desire to help the queen, she’d stayed where she was, and in the end that was best.

“By Eidon’s covering hand, the searchers missed me, and Simon, as well.”

She’d found him hiding in a hollow log and, having heard nothing for a long time, ventured back to the site of the attack. There she found the valise, but no bodies.

“Not even him?” Maddie asked, indicating Ian with a tilt of her chin.

Elayne shook her head. Not knowing what else to do, she’d taken Simon along the path they’d originally been following. It was nearly dawn when they reached the bottom.

“We were crossing that small marshy place there between the rocks, and I heard a noise—like an animal that had been hurt. I don’t know why I started toward it, but I’d not gone two steps before I realized it was a child. We found him just as Simon described it. I figured they threw him into the sea, ma’am.”

“Yes,” Maddie murmured. “Gillard told them to make sure he was dead.”

“But the robe saved him somehow, washed him up onto the shore as neatly as if his mama had placed him there, the blankets beneath him. He was crying in the most desperate heart-tearing wail, all alone and scared. But not a scratch on him.” She paused. “It was a miracle, my lady. The rock and the bottom wrap were wet, but the inner wrap and the babe himself were completely dry.”

Elayne had opened the valise at that point to get some new clothing for him and discovered the ring and crown. It hadn’t taken much for her to figure out why Simon’s horsey was so bulbous of belly, and later she’d removed the orb from the toy and placed it with the other items. From there they’d walked over the ridge to Stillwater Cove, where she had relatives. News of Abramm’s execution had reached her there, and it hit her hard, especially in the wake of Felmen’s death during their escape from the palace. At first she’d lost all motivation to go on, having no idea where she would go, anyway. Then some weeks later Channon and Lieutenant Pipping found them.

Armed with Abramm’s instructions to bring the boys to their mother in Fannath Rill, and fearful that Gillard’s henchmen—also searching for the missing heirs—were right behind them, Channon had insisted they leave immediately. Thus ensued an overland trek that had turned out to be far more dangerous and difficult than any of them anticipated. Not knowing whom they could trust in a land crawling with searchers and informants, they’d had to take the longer, less populated routes, often on foot, and on several occasions had even been forced into hiding for a time. Add to that the weather and the general difficulties of traveling during times of governmental instability and warfare, and it wasn’t hard to understand how it had taken them over six months to get to Fannath Rill.

Familiar voices sounded in the anteroom then, and shortly the doorman announced the arrival of their old friends, Darnley, Callums, and Hamilton, along with Oswain Nott. The four had followed Captain Channon’s trail to the palace, hoping to see Abramm’s sons for themselves. Once they did, they proclaimed little Simon to be Abramm’s heir and rightful king of Kiriath, and they would have sworn fealty to him on the spot had not Trap persuaded them otherwise. Given the rumor they’d all heard that day of Abramm’s possible survival, it wouldn’t hurt to wait and see if the man himself turned up.

This was Maddie’s first hearing of the rumor, and it shocked her so profoundly, at first she could hardly grasp what they were saying. When she did, she interrupted their discussion to demand a full report. Their revelation of Roy Thornycroft’s arrival and his claim that Abramm had been rescued the morning before his execution left her breathless and light-headed—despite Trap’s caution that Thornycroft had gotten the story from a tavern drunk.

She was still struggling to get her mind around it all when her father’s First Minister, Temmand Garival, arrived to meet the boys, forcing her to put it aside for a time to attend to him.