SanClare Black (The Prince of Sorrows) (9 page)

Hands attacked the booklet, snatching several pictures in quick succession.
Michael watched, wistful but resigned, as one of his earlier attempts—this one of the view from one of his hospital ward’s windows, framed by realistically draping curtains—disappeared. Once the crowd had moved off, trading around the pictures and shouting, half the drawings in Michael’s notebook had vanished and were making their ways around the dining hall to much acclaim.

“
Aren’t you upset?” Pol asked as Michael calmly retied the straps on his now much skinnier booklet. “You’ll probably never see those again.”

Michael
shrugged. “I can always draw more. He smiled across the table at Pol and added in a conspiratorial whisper, “Those are not my favorites. I still have those.”

Pol
seemed almost surprised to find himself grinning back
.
“Come on,” he said as he stood. “I’ll show you our room.”

They were interrupted at the dining hall door by a group of boys and girls, all older than they were, all talking at once.
Michael made out the words, “Draw me!” repeated several times in several voices, all very insistent. He took a step back, retreating from the noise both outside and inside his head but hands reached out and caught him.

He wanted to scream at them all to
stop touching him
, but his throat had gone dry and his head whirled. And then someone’s back blocked his view, and the hands released him.

“
Leave him alone!” Pol shouted, annoyance rolling off of him in oddly-comforting waves. “Can’t you see he isn’t well? He’s just left the hospital.”

A flurry of words, again, but
Michael heard, “Sorry,” among them.

“
Yeah, well,” Pol said as he turned around to check on Michael who saw the group dispersing. “You all right?”

Michael
still couldn’t get any words out, but he managed a nod.

“
Vail Above Us, but you look awful,” the other boy commented, but his smile had returned. “Don’t mind them. They’re nice enough, and they like your pictures. You can trade them for stuff you want!”

Michael
had no idea what that meant, but when Pol said, “Let’s go,” Michael followed along willingly, re-shouldering his pack which contained his sketch book, his saved, special pictures, and some odds and ends of charity clothing. Everything he had, Nanna Tierna had given him, but now he was one of these children. One of JhaPel’s orphans.

Kiska
. They call us kiska.

He caught
Pol’s attention as they climbed a steep staircase. He’d regained his composure but now needed a moment to catch his breath. “Excuse me, but what is a ‘kiska?’”

Pol snorted derisively.
“Nasty word, but it’s what we are, I guess. Well, most of us.”

“
What does it mean?” Michael persisted.

Pol stopped on the step and turned to look down on
Michael. “‘No one’s.’ It means we don’t belong to anyone, but it isn’t a nice word. I mean, the law says that’s what we are, but kids in the street are really kiska. Nasty, useless, bullying, thieving—that’s kiska. They have no one, nowhere to go, and they can’t be trusted.”

“
I do not like this word.” A frown creased his forehead as they proceeded on up the stairs and into another wide corridor.

“
Yeah,” Pol agreed. “So, here’s our room!” He shoved open a large door a few lengths down the corridor from the stairs and waved at the dim interior. Michael stepped through cautiously, squinting. “We just had a guy get apprenticed, so we had a spare bed. That’s probably why Abbess Ethene put you with us.”

The empty bed was at the far end of the room by the window.
There were four other beds. Michael liked that his had a view, though he thought it must not be a preferred choice since none of the other boys had moved to take it.

“
It’s drafty,” Pol explained, apologetic.

“
I like to see outside.” Michael dropped his pack onto the bed.

But I
’m going to be cold.
He’d figure something out for that. Maybe he could wear extra clothes to bed.
Or now.
He hunched his shoulders. The room was already chilly even though the sun was out. It would be freezing at night, he imagined.

Pol tapped on a wooden box standing at the foot of the bed.
“This is yours, too. Put your stuff in here and no one will bother it. Well, mostly. There are a few guys in here you have to watch out for.”

Michael
frowned again. “In our room?”

“
Oh, no! I didn’t mean us,” Pol exclaimed. “I mean in the whole place. The boys’ side. Watch out for Telyr. He’s just mean. He likes to hurt you.”

“
Why would he want to hurt me?” Michael asked, confused. “I don’t know him.”

Pol let out an exasperated breath.
“Sorry. I need to say stuff better. I know you don’t really understand yet. He doesn’t want to hurt
you
; he wants to hurt kids because he’s mean. He likes to hurt people.”

Michael
nodded but bit his lip, worried. He picked his pack back up and emptied its contents into the chest Pol had indicated was his.

“
You need more stuff.” Pol shook his head at Michael’s belongings in disapproval. “We’ll go see Nanna Mabbina. She takes care of supplies.”

Michael
followed Pol through the maze of JhaPel once more, taking in everything. JhaPel was completely different from the charity hospital. It felt far older and in spite of the stone walls and stained glass windows, it felt shabby and neglected.

They found
Nanna Mabbina sooner than Pol seemed to expect, nearly colliding with her as they rounded a corner.

Pol
straightened his shoulders as if shrugging off embarrassment and muttered, “‘Scuse me, Nanna.”

“
What is the meaning of this, Master Rayvin?” The woman arched a disapproving eyebrow. She looked plump and comfortable, but her mouth pinched downwards, lengthening her pointed chin, and the lines on her face showed she narrowed her eyes a lot.

“
We were looking for you,” Pol shot back. “Michael needs stuff. He hasn’t got anything but what he’s wearing.”

“‘
He doesn’t have,’” Mabbina corrected. She looked Michael over, eyes narrowing. “So this is Tierna’s discovery.”

Pol glanced over at
Michael but said nothing in answer to this, so Michael stayed quiet as well. He made a bow of his own, though, just to be safe.

“
Very pretty,” the woman added. The tone of her voice made this seem like a failing on Michael’s part. “And all that hair.”

“
The healers think he’s Reinra,” Pol offered.

“
Yes,” Mabbina agreed. “I was informed. Come with me.”

By the time she
’d led them the rest of the way through the maze of corridors that made up JhaPel, loaded Michael up with changes of clothing and under-things, soap and towels, a brush, comb, small supply of ties for his hair, and an extra blanket when Pol explained his bed was by the window and the previous boy had taken his extra with him, Michael was glad he didn’t have to find his way back to his new dorm room alone. Pol helped carry his new things and, unburdened by Mabbina’s severe presence, pointed out landmarks to make Michael’s future navigation of the orphanage easier.

After evening meal, all the boys r
eturned to the dorm together. Pol, acting his role as group leader, introduced Michael more formally to everyone. Along with Ned, Jiin and Lee rounded out the group, and they seemed nice enough. While they settled in to various games and conversations, Michael reviewed all of his things and tried to adjust to his new reality.

Maybe it
’s easier that I don’t know what I did before. I can’t compare this to anything but the hospital.
The hospital hadn’t been so different. The rooms, cordoned off by white canvas curtains as they were, each still contained several people.

His head ached from the noise of all the minds around him.
He didn’t hear words unless someone’s thoughts were particularly focused or unless he was focusing his attention on understanding them, but he heard them all, nonetheless.

If you don
’t want to see, you just close your eyes. What do you do if you don’t want to hear?
Sticking his fingers in his ears did nothing to silence the noise in his head.

At the hospital, he remembered, reading had helped.
He went to his chest and dug around until he found the little, leather-bound book Healer Tineson had given him upon learning he could read. It was a book of tales about the Kingdom of Camarat.

When he moved back to sit on his bed, a couple of the other boys looked up.
Ned, seeing what he was doing, blurted, “You can read?”

             
Michael’s eyes widened in surprise at the tone of Ned’s question. “Yes,” he said. “Can’t you?”

             
The question came out almost too sharply, but Michael’s impression that everyone could read came from somewhere—all the healers and nannas had been able to read—and his surprise at Ned’s reaction startled him into bluntness.

             
Ned snorted. “No! No one here can read. That’s for highborns. What do we need with that?”

             
“Maybe he is highborn.” Pol smiled as he looked up from the piece of wood he was whittling. “No one knows, so he could be.”

             
Another snort came from Ned, who said, “Sure. He’s the long-awaited SanClare come to judge us unawares.” They all laughed at this, even Pol.

             
“Is that a tale?” Michael asked. He’d not heard or read that one.

             
Pol nodded. “Yeah, the highborns love that one, too, because they think the SanClare will come someday and tell them they’re doing a great job and this is the true heart of the One Kingdom, and they’ll get some great reward when it’s restored. My mother always said they had it wrong and that the SanClare would be really angry at what the highborns had done to...” Pol trailed off and didn’t finish his thought, but he and the other boys all exchanged nervous looks.

             
Michael had too many questions he wanted to ask about that, but he could feel the other boys’ nerves and irritation from across the room and instead tried to move the subject away from these SanClares.

             
“The stories in this book are tales,” Michael ventured. “I could read them to you sometime. They are very good.”

             
“We know all the tales.” Jiin flicked one of the dice out across the floor a bit too violently, and his wildly curly hair bounced in apparent irritation. Ned grumbled at the interruption.

             
“Oh. All right.” Michael sensed he’d made a misstep. He pulled his legs up onto his bed and turned more toward the window, trying to maximize the waning light.

             
But Pol spoke, his voice low. “You can read them to me. I’d like to hear them.”

Michael
gave a small nod, acknowledging his new friend’s words, and opened the book. He read quietly so that Pol could hear him but he wouldn’t be interrupting the game. It wasn’t long before the other boys had fallen silent and a short time later, they’d all turned away from the game and were watching and listening, intent on the story.

The misstep was corrected, thanks to Pol.
Michael would try to be more careful. He wanted to belong. After all, this was his home now.

# # #

CHAPTER SIX

Jarlyth knew there were many good reasons why he shouldn’t wake up, but the one reason which kept dragging him toward agonizing consciousness seemed to outweigh all the rest. He just didn’t know what that reason was, and he wasn’t sure it would seem good enough once he did know.

He heard voices, but he couldn
’t make out what they were saying. They came from a great distance—or they seemed to. From a great distance away and from under water.

But why would that be?

“Jarlyth?”

The voice was so familiar.
He knew he should know who it belonged to.

“
Jarlyth? Sweetheart? Please wake up.”

And why was he asleep?
Shouldn’t he be doing something important aside from sleeping? Hadn’t he been sleeping for a long time? Much longer than he could justify, no matter how tired he might be.

“
Lord Denara,” a new voice called to him. A young person’s voice. A girl’s. “You have to wake up,” she insisted. “He needs you.”

He.
The word echoed in Jarlyth’s befuddled brain.
He needs you.
But who was he?

Time was meaningless.
Had it been only moments or days or years since the last time he’d heard a voice?

“
You have to wake up, Lord Denara,” the girl’s voice pleaded.

“
Yes, dear. You must,” the first voice added this, very firmly. He wanted to obey this voice. It felt natural to obey.

Mother
?

“
No one can find him, Jarlyth. Nylan needs you.”

Nylan.
He had to save Nylan.

Jarlyth Denara woke up.

#

Michael
sat high up in the branches of one of the oldest trees in JhaPel’s large, somewhat overgrown West Courtyard, and worked on his latest art assignment while Cyra the cat lay sleeping on a nearby branch. Though it often seemed to rain constantly in Queen’s City, the past two days had been fine, and for once he didn’t have to worry about drops of water falling from leaves onto his sketchpad.

Nanna
Tierna’s efforts had paid off and, after showing a few of Michael’s sketches around to various artistic acquaintances, her family had engaged the interest of Robyn Vaznel, an up-and-coming artist whose own patron was none other than the royal Duke of Reyahl. Magister Vaznel came to JhaPel once every quarter-moon for Michael’s lessons, making him the only child at the orphanage to have a private tutor of any sort.

Since
Michael could also read and write, he’d been assigned to the small group of other orphans with similar skills for his lessons and had the hope of someday being apprenticed as a clerk instead of as some sort of manual laborer. Michael rather hoped he would be apprenticed to an artist, but knowing Abbess Ethene’s mistrust of such a profession as steady, he didn’t let himself hope too much.

He
’d now been at JhaPel for more than two years, and his murky, confusing memories of his life before the orphanage mattered little to him anymore. He fit here in this place better than he could have imagined he would that first day, and he felt safe and happy, and, most importantly, he felt that, in spite of his special privileges and talents, his friends accepted him.

The one thing
JhaPel held in short supply, however, was solitude, and Michael stole any he could find whenever an opportunity arose. As bad weather ruled Queen’s City much of the time, any day he was able to sit up in the tree enjoying a bit of this solitude was very precious indeed.

So it did not please him at all when
the sounds of his fellow orphans playing far below in the courtyard swelled and resolved into something less pleasant. He’d only checked on things a short time before and all had been well, so he tried to ignore the noise. Cyra’s curiosity was roused, however, and she climbed down a branch or two to peer through the leaves at whatever was going on below.

She
began making chit-chit sounds as if she were after a bird, her tail lashing. Her excitement spiked, sending a quick flash of what she saw into Michael’s mind, and he gave a small, irritated snort. Closing his sketchbook, he put it and his pencils safely into his pack, which hung beside him from yet another branch, leaving it behind to fetch later. He didn’t want to have it torn or stepped on if there was some sort of fight.

Climbing down a couple of lengths brought
Michael to a place where he could see through the leaves and tell what was going on. Telyr, true to form, stood over the smallest and weakest of the younger boys who’d been using the tree as point base in one of their less rule-bound games of trimble. Michael had bowed out of his friends’ more cut-throat match on the excuse that he’d keep an eye on the little kids. The others stood around looking angry and scared as Telyr’s latest sidekick glared them all into helplessness. He was a big boy, too, and Michael could understand why they all were too frightened to try to help the victim.

“
Why doesn’t he stay in his own courtyard?” Michael muttered to Cyra who’d followed him. JhaPel had five large, separate courtyards—two for the girls and three for the boys, all divided up amongst the different ages. The older boys below shouldn’t have been in this courtyard at all just as the boys and girls weren’t supposed to visit each other’s courtyards. These rules weren’t always followed, however, and Michael grinned at the memory of the last time he, Pol, and Jiin had broken the rule themselves.

Visiting the girls
’ courtyard, however, was much more fun than picking on little kids, and Michael could only despise Telyr and his companion for choosing cruelty over flirtation...which made one more good reason to loathe Telyr.

Michael
climbed down another length, gauging his position above Telyr who had his back to the tree. No one else had seen Michael yet, though he hadn’t expected them to. He’d noticed that no one ever seemed to look up and had perfected climbing to take advantage of this.

Taking a breath,
Michael jumped. At the same time, he whistled the signal he and his friends had concocted. His hands smacked against the branch he’d been aiming for, and he grabbed it, scraping a bit of skin but swinging his legs forward full-force. He grinned at the perfection of his aim as both feet struck Telyr’s back, solid and hard enough to knock him forward and over. As the older boy toppled, Michael used the momentum of his swing to flip himself back up onto the branch.

Telyr
’s sidekick looked startled and then angry in quick succession. He reached down to help Telyr stand while turning his murderous glare up into the tree at Michael.

Staring back with a cool hauteur,
Michael flicked a glance at the little group of younger boys and ordered, “Go get a nanna,” before returning his attention to the bullies.

“
Wait!” Telyr’s sidekick yelled, but the little boys had scattered.

“
Nik you!” Telyr stepped forward, closer to the tree. A gap from a permanently-missing front tooth made his breath whistle a little. “We were just messing around! Why did you—?”

“
Oh, come on Telyr,” Michael said, still cool. Michael had read Telyr’s own, pre-JhaPel history from the bully’s mind on his very first night at the orphanage—a night they both remembered with vivid, almost stinging clarity—and he did feel sorry for Telyr. No one should have to endure beatings and misery, especially when there was no way to fight back.

Thank Vail I have better control now.
Though not perfect. Accidentally learning about everyone else’s hard times had helped him feel less alone with his mysterious, painful past, but it had been rough going while he’d struggled to figure out how
not
to overhear and feel with every touch.

He narrowed his eyes
at Telyr in a very Mabbina-like expression of disapproval. “Making everyone else in the world feel terrible isn’t going to make you any happier.”

“
It’s our turn for clean-up,” the other boy said, a sneer etched across his face as if drawn there. Michael’s fingers twitched, and he wanted to climb back up the tree and get his sketchbook.

“
They’re going to make me do their chores, Michael!” their little victim exclaimed, outraged and dismayed at the same time.

“
You should be embarrassed, Telyr.” Michael shook his head pityingly. “Isn’t it more trouble this way than if you just got along?” He leaned forward with reckless grace and perfect balance to drive home his point more inescapably. “You must be so tired.”

“
Shut up!” Telyr growled. His tongue darted involuntarily to the place where the missing tooth should be, and Michael smiled nastily.

The other bully
caught Telyr’s arm. “Come on, Tel. A nanna’ll be here any tic.”

“
I’ll make you be quiet!” Telyr shrugged free of his friend’s grip and started up the tree trunk.

Pol ran up
, followed immediately by Jiin, Ned, and Toma, who played on their trimble team, and grabbed with both hands onto the back of Telyr’s shirt. He yanked the older—but not much bigger—boy away from the tree, sending him stumbling back and into his companion.

“
Get out of here, kiska trash!” Pol shouted.

The little boys returned at th
at moment, too, leading a very annoyed-looking Nanna Mabbina.

She stopped below the tree and glared around at all the boys collected there, he
r glare at last settling on Michael, still standing on a branch about three lengths above the ground.

Without a word, she caught Telyr by the ear, pinching hard enough to make him yell, and marched off.
His sidekick scrambled along after, needing no orders to know he was meant to do so.

Pol sighed and gave the tree trunk a perfunctory kick.
He peered up at Michael. “Are you going to come down, now?”

Ned herded the little boys back toward the safer, open area of the courtyard where the other older boys
could help keep an eye on them. Michael sighed. “Let me get my stuff first.” He climbed nimbly up to grab his pack from its branch before returning to the lower branches. He leapt for the ground from a height that made the other boys gasp, but he landed without a stumble.

“
Idiot,” Pol said and gave the back of Michael’s head a light slap, but there was no heat behind the word.

“
Do you want him to go after you or something?” Jiin shook his head.

“
He’s twice your size, Michael,” Toma agreed. “You wouldn’t win.”

Michael
shrugged. “I might. After all, he’s just big. He isn’t a good fighter.”

“
How do you know that?” Toma demanded.

Pol actually laughed, though usually, any thought of Telyr just made him rage.
“Michael’s the one who knocked his tooth out.”

None of them expanded on this revelation.
It was a part of their dorm’s secret history that Michael, on his very first night at JhaPel while he’d still been weak from his long illness, had beaten back Telyr’s first, and so far only, attempt at bullying him.

Only Pol knew a deeper part of the secret history which was that Telyr hadn
’t been bullying Michael at all. He’d been hassling another, even younger boy. That boy’s fear had reached out and grabbed Michael, compelling him to throw himself into the middle of things just as Pol walked in to see why Michael hadn’t come back yet.

Telyr had landed a punch
, but it had been a pallid thing, just enough to make Michael realize he was in a real fight. He still didn’t know where his body had learned what it did next, but he’d spun, his palm jutting out hard, catching Telyr’s chin and snapping his jaw shut so hard the sound echoed against the bathing-room’s walls. Without a pause, Michael had pivoted, throwing a fist into Telyr’s gut which dropped him to the floor, groaning and crying, blood pouring from his mouth.

Pol had grabbed
Michael by the arm then and tried to yank him from the room, but Michael had pulled away and hurried to free the younger boy from his flusher-stall prison.

“
Do not go alone next time,” Michael had told the younger boy once they were safe in the corridor, and that boy had nodded and fled and only Pol knew why he then tried to give Michael his dessert for the next several days.

Pol
had dragged Michael back to their dorm room, growling, “Take your own nikking advice.”

Jiin, Ned, and Lee
had taken one look at Michael and Pol’s expressions and had flown to the bathing-room to see what had happened, arriving in time to see Telyr, bloodied and still dazed, rinsing his mouth out in the basin.

Michael
hadn’t wanted to make a fuss on his very first night at JhaPel, so they’d all agreed to let the matter drop. Pol had followed-up with the bully, however, letting him know their silence would last only as long as Telyr left them alone.