Return of the Guardian-King (27 page)

“Not reborn. Delivered.”

“I see.”

“You don’t believe me.”

Laud snorted softly and shook his head. “I grant there is the physical resemblance. But too many people saw him die, son. Including his own brother.”

“My brother, they say, was addled by the use of painkillers for his bone condition.” He shook his head, frowning. “Why would I lie about such a thing, professor?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps you see a chance to become something you could never be otherwise. Or perhaps it is vengeance for your own losses. Or even a misguided sense of loyalty. Do you even have a wife and children in Chesedh? Or is it the queen you plan to join?”

Abramm stared at him, shocked by the censure in the man’s voice.

“This is an evil plan, Alaric. And I counsel you to abandon it at once.” He frowned and added worriedly, “You haven’t told the others, have you?”

“No.” Abramm snorted. “I figured you would be most likely to believe me.”

And at that the old man looked almost hurt. “It pierces me to the core that you would seek to use me like this.”

“I am not trying to use you.”

“No? You are on the eve of your departure. Why tell me now what you have hidden for six months, except that you need my help for something? Do you hope I’ll convince the others where you could not? Though I can’t see how it would help you with Trinley.”

“I told you because I believed Eidon wanted me to. Because . . .” He trailed off, realizing again that he’d had no idea why Eidon had pushed him into this, and even less of one now. But that it was Eidon’s doing he did not doubt, for he’d never have said anything otherwise.

They stood eye to eye for a long moment. Then Laud dropped his gaze to the speaking stone. “I need to get back to this before I lose it all.” The kelistar flared to life and the arrested message continued on, Abramm dismissed from the professor’s mind.

Abramm stood unmoving, mind whirling. He’d argued with Eidon that this would be the outcome. But now that it had materialized, he realized that against all he’d argued, deep down he truly had thought Eidon would move the other man to see at last. And he hadn’t.

It made no sense.

He turned and strode quietly to the door.

Perhaps it was not for him, my son, but for you.

For me? I respect the man, and now he thinks I’m a liar and a lunatic, out to
steal a dead king’s throne.

Maybe I just wanted you to know that your secret is not yours to divulge
.

Abramm stopped on the steps outside the study, a chill washing through him as Kesrin’s voice echoed in the narrow hall: “All will betray you . . . prison . . . but you will be delivered, and when the time is full, you will receive back what was taken a hundredfold.”

The words were from the last sermon he’d heard old Kesrin teach. Words he’d forgotten until now.

CHAPTER

15

Filled with the rituals of mourning for the dead king, followed by the preparations for a double coronation, the winter had passed quickly in the Chesedhan lowlands. Trap was kept busy with the financial concerns of a holding triple the size of what he had previously managed—a task complicated by an across-the-board replacement of staff members in not only the palace but also at the Exchequer and other financial institutions. He had kept long hours, and was repeatedly called out of town—down to Peregris or Mareis or up to Deveren Dol. In the six weeks between Hadrich’s entombment and the crowning of the new king and queen, he was home in Fannath Rill maybe a week and a half’s time altogether.

What little free time he did have when home, he spent with the Kiriathan exiles, trying to put out the fires started by their increasing intolerance of Chesedhan condescension, prejudice, and unjust dealings. An intolerance that seemed to have been intensified as much by little Simon’s return as by Maddie’s wild stories that Abramm was on his way.

When she had first told Trap she believed Abramm was alive, he’d feared her difficulties in birthing Abrielle had unhinged her mind, that she had fallen into some grief-inspired delusion and was no longer connected to the real world. When that did not prove to be the case, he ascribed her claim to hallucinations suffered during the birth and her battle with the black spore. He was even prepared to believe she’d actually seen her husband in the eternal realm during her own brush with death, and had tried gently, and then not so gently, to get her to accept those explanations. They had exchanged quite a few angry words on the subject, to the point they no longer discussed it, and she had stuck to her original story unswervingly through it all: Abramm was alive, having come on foot through the Kolki Pass to a place called Caerna’tha, where he had been trapped by the winter but would surely be in Fannath Rill by spring’s end.

At her insistence Trap had done some asking around and learned there was indeed such a place as Caerna’tha, an ancient monastery that served as a waystation for Terstan refugees coming in from Kiriath through the Kolki. Since it lined up with Maddie’s story, Trap had spoken further with Roy Thornycroft, then put out the word that he was interested in any further reports of Abramm’s having survived his execution. That so far no others had surfaced didn’t surprise him.

All of which had left him little time for bridging the gap that was daily widening between him and Carissa. Maddie had spoken to him shortly after Hadrich’s entombment, asking him bluntly if he loved his wife or not, and insisting that, if he did, he ought to be setting himself to the task of letting her know it. “You can’t be a pigeon about this, Trap. You have to be aggressive, or she’ll think you don’t mean it.”

“What makes you so sure she’ll be receptive to such attentions?” Trap had protested. “She’s never given me any indication—”

“I’m not talking about serving her cocoa and making polite conversation!”

“What, then? Shall I grab her and kiss her right out of the blue?”

Maddie had grinned at him. “If you’re moved to do so, that might not be a bad start.”

He’d been aghast. “You don’t understand how it is with us.”

“Perhaps not, but I don’t think you do, either. And I’m certain she has no idea.”

When still he resisted her advice, she’d made a sour face. “What’s the worst that could happen? She might reject you? At least you won’t have to wonder for the rest of your life if it might have been something else. It’s not like you’re going to die.”

He’d looked at her skeptically, thinking she was hardly one to talk about not dying in matters of lost loves. He had to admit she was right, though. And how could things get any worse than they were?

But if her words had given him new hope and revived purpose, over time his workload and social obligations—and his own cowardice—defeated both. Not living with his wife anymore, he had to go out of his way to even encounter her, making it far too easy to let another day go by without having acted, promising himself that
tomorrow
he would go to her. Finally the hope and intent had dwindled away into a thickening cloud of doubt and second thoughts.

It was the coronation that brought them together—beginning with a series of pre-coronation socials they attended as husband and wife. At these affairs Carissa was unfailingly polite, serene, and so beautiful he realized one reason he’d made no attempt to spend more time with her was because it hurt too much. He could no longer be with her and not want all of her. Their encounters were cordial, even relaxed and chatty on occasion, and several times he brought himself to the verge of telling her how he felt. But something always intervened.

Then, the day before the coronation itself, he turned from playing with Conal down in the nursery and caught her standing in the nursery doorway looking at him with an expression of such tenderness and longing, it shocked him. For it reminded him of nothing so much as the way Maddie used to moon after Abramm. The expression was swiftly veiled, and she turned away without a word to disappear up the hallway outside. When the shock wore off, he went after her, but as always he was too slow.

He determined then and there that he
would
tell her how he felt the next day, the day of the coronation. They’d be together all day, so he’d have no excuse for lack of opportunity—even if the prospect did scare the breath out of him.

The day dawned clear and mild, and the coronation went off without a hitch. Chesedh’s newest royal couple was crowned in the Great Kirikhal at Fannath Rill before a standing-room-only crowd. Afterward Chesedhan custom dictated a grand feast for the invited nobles in the Grand Hall at Fannath Rill, while a reception and buffet were set up in the South Pavilion for those of lesser rank. Queen Ronesca had made up the guest list, and the former Duke of Northille and his wife were most definitely among the lesser category. Trap had no illusions of his own status, but Carissa was true royalty, with a long and noble heritage, and she deserved to be in the Grand Hall with the other nobles. It had angered him when the invitation had first come—late, not surprisingly—and it angered him now as they had to serve themselves finger foods from one of the many tables arranged around the perimeter of the spacious octagonal pavilion.

It also irked him how the courtiers, standing no farther than arm’s reach of his position, would lean together and talk about him—nothing he’d not heard before, but at least they could have the decency to do it where his wife didn’t have to hear.

“. . . only married her a week before their child was born.”

“Heard he’d been living with her all the time her brother was away.”

“And they have the gall to blame it on the ex-husband! At least he finally married her.”

As he finished serving his plate he glanced back at them, then at his wife. The hurt in her face made him even angrier. But as he was determined not to let the foolish words of a few petty people destroy his plans for this evening, he refused to let himself dwell on it any further. Instead he concentrated on eating and chatting with his wife and was pleased when after a time she seemed to relax, laughing and teasing with him as she had not done in months. She even acquiesced to his first invitation to dance, and it was wonderful to hold her in his arms and swirl her around the dance floor. He thought she enjoyed it, as well, so when he asked her a second time, he was surprised when she declined. More so when she declined on a third occasion. He asked twice more, and each time her answer came more quickly, as the warm camaraderie they’d shared cooled into increasing awkwardness.

Finally she commented on her weariness and asked if he might escort her to her apartments. Thus, though the party would continue for hours into the night, he walked her through the orb-lit waterpark, then up the palm-lined promenade, feeling bitterly frustrated as defeat overtook him. He saw no way to evade it, unless he just blurted out his feelings, without any of the romantic preliminaries he had hoped for.

They said not a word all up the long walk. Entering the deserted foyer of the palace’s west entrance they approached the stair leading up to her second-floor apartments, where she turned to face him though her gaze was directed toward the floor.

“Thank you, sir. It’s been a wonderful day.”

He frowned at her, wondering uneasily why she had stopped here when they still had some ways to go before reaching her apartments. “It has been my pleasure, Your Highness. More than you know.”

She grimaced, as if he’d said something displeasing. Or maybe it was what she meant to say to him that displeased her. A vague sense of alarm stirred in him.

“I . . .” She swallowed, her gaze still fixed upon the gleaming floor between them. Finally she went on very quietly. “If you would like a divorce . . . I wouldn’t refuse you.”

He felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut, shocked beyond the ability even to breathe.

“I know I haven’t . . . been a proper wife to you,” she said to the floor.

“You’ve been an exemplary wife.”

“No . . . I mean . . . there are things . . .” Finally she glanced up at him, her eyes so very blue. “Tendernesses and expressions a husband has a right to expect from his wife.”

“I’ve never expected those things from you.”

She blanched, pain flickering across her aristocratic features as he berated himself for his clumsy wording.

“I mean, not that I wouldn’t enjoy them—just that I know why you entered into this relationship, and I would never . . .” None of this was turning out right. Why couldn’t he just say it? “You needn’t feel this way, Carissa,” he said desperately. “I took this marriage up of my own choice.”

“And all I’ve brought you is grief. I hate it when I hear the courtiers talk of you as they do. It’s so unfair and so false. You’ve been nothing but honorable, yet they call you an adulterer.”

He snorted. “You think I care about them? They’re a flock of fools. If they didn’t call me an adulterer, they’d call me a vicious Kiriathan heretic. Come to think of it, they do.”

She didn’t laugh as he had hoped.

“I know you have only done this out of your love for Abramm,” she said. “Your sense of duty.”

“That is not true, my lady.”

And again she looked up at him, smiling bitterly. “You are an honorable man, my lord duke. But you are a very poor liar.”

He met her gaze directly and firmly. “I am not lying, Carissa. I married you because I wanted to. Abramm never would have asked me to do it if he hadn’t known how I felt. I love you. I have for a very long time.”

Her eyes were wide, the expression of skepticism giving way to a blankness he could not read. Startlement? Hope? Alarm at learning that the swordmaster’s son was not nearly so selfless as she thought? He wasn’t sure. At least she wasn’t running away.
“Courage,”
Maddie had counseled.
“Be aggressive.
Make sure she knows exactly what you feel.”

So, his heart hammering wildly against his breastbone, he took hold of her shoulders and bent to kiss her, not on the cheek, as he’d done for so long, but on the lips, as a husband who loved his wife would do. Softly. Gently. Half fearing she would jerk away in revulsion at his touch.