The Black Prince: Part II (31 page)

“But a man…does not always know when he has become a father. Particularly under those circumstances where, due to his own poor judgment or even simple negligence, he has lain with a woman other than his wife. He relies, then, on her telling him.”

“And she didn’t.”

“No. But when I saw you,” his father continued, “I knew.”

“Oh.”

“The question, though, becomes one not of my beliefs and preferences but of yours. There is a proverb, among the tribesmen: the blood of the covenant is stronger than the water of the womb. In other words, child, the strongest bonds are those we choose. Which, in converse, means that no amount of blood shared between us can overcome a lack of desire on your part for the relation.

“Ultimately, whether you wish to recognize me as your father, and indeed as a man capable of bearing that title in a manner you wish to recognize, is up to you.”

He sat there, thinking. Next to the man who’d decapitated his—other father—as he knelt in the mud, begging for his life. The man who’d killed hundreds, if not thousands more. The man who’d sired him by a married woman whom he’d then, apparently, abandoned. The man who, Asher knew full well, had killed his last wife. Asher had watched her die.

The man who’d killed his last wife, because she’d threatened Asher.

The man who’d given him clothing, and food, and a warm place to sleep when none else had. Who’d provided for his education. Who’d talked to him, from their first conversation, like a real person. Capable of understanding the particulars of his situation, whatever it might be, and making his own judgments. Who’d bought him his first bow, and showed him how to use it.

Who practiced with him still.

The same man who, in response to his having colluded with a known traitor and then mortally insulted both him and his wife—Asher’s adopted mother—had saved his life.

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe her.”

Maeve had lied to him. From almost the moment of his birth. About everything. He’d thought, earlier…he’d wanted to believe…but it was just more lies. She’d done things like this before, too, was the shameful part. Turned on her charm before. Bedazzling him, right along with everyone else. Her supporters. Her lovers. If there was even any difference between the two groups.

And every time, like the idiot he was, he’d believed. That this time, things would be different. Because he’d wanted, so badly, for the illusion to be true. But they were never different, were they? She’d told him exactly what she needed to, to get him to accept that stone.

And then she’d left.

Just like she’d left, before.

Leaving him to his fate.

He looked over at Isla. Who hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken. But was listening.

She always was. He never had to work to get her attention, never had to wait in silence while she laughed at her own jokes. Most of which were told at someone else’s expense. Never got rebuked, or cuffed, for asking a question. Isla would throw herself in front of an oncoming pack of bears before she’d let harm come to him. Of even the smallest kind.

And she was beautiful.

“I love you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Her lips curved into a small smile. Small, but warm. Her eyes, too, were warm. “I love you, too. More than you know. And you have nothing to apologize for. We’re not to blame, when people lie to us. Or use our own best intentions against us.”

Her words were relieving. Healing. And he knew that she meant them, too. She wouldn’t hold this night over him later, nor trot it out as just one more item on an ever growing list of crimes. Like Maeve had. Maeve never forgot even the smallest slight and in truth, to her, no slight was ever small. Even the merest wrong expression was all but an attack on her life.

And then he remembered something. “I heard a raven.”

“When?” This from his father.

“Just before I took the stone.”

“Ravens have great magical significance.”

“Ravens are messenger birds.”

“Yes. This is true. We use ravens, because they’re highly intelligent. They speak amongst themselves and, in some cases, can even be taught the speech of man. Ravens work together, and form common allies—as well as enemies. If a man is cruel to one raven, it will tell its fellows and that man will find himself attacked by other ravens as he goes about his chores. Even if those other ravens have never seen him before.

“And this we call magic. As we call all many things sharing in the world around us, particularly those the mechanics of which eludes us.”

“But—there is magic.” He’d just been a victim of it.

“A wise man might argue that there is no true line between where reason ends and magic begins. The illusion of such a line, rather, extends further for some than others.”

Asher didn’t understand, but he nodded.

“A raven, according to the teachings of the North, casts light into darkness. It reminds one also, in times of need, that the greatest dangers to us are those things, which reflect back the conflict within ourselves. Heed the raven, for after having heard this I believe that the raven is your totem.”

Asher was so confused, now.

He didn’t think he’d ever been more confused in his life. Ravens and totems and magical rocks and curses, one mother who loved him and one whose intentions he clearly didn’t understand. A life that made him happy, but guilty, and another life that made him miserable but that was what he felt he deserved. What felt right. A father who was a murderer but who was also the best man he knew. A king he’d never met and an aunt who frightened him. An uncle who was missing.

Except the king was also his uncle.

And, according to his mother—Maeve—his enemy.

An impending war.

It was all too much.

“W
hat concerns me,” Tristan said, “is how she came here.”

And where she was now.

They were alone in their room. Asher was near comatose, in his. He’d needed no draught to help him relax, had indeed all but started snoring on the hearth bench. While still sitting upright. His father had scooped him up and carried him like he was a baby. He’d slumped against the older man’s broad chest. Comfortable. Trusting. He’d snored, hiccoughed, and kept snoring. But he didn’t wake.

It had hurt Isla’s heart to see him so.

His words had hurt, too. More than he could ever realize. More than she wanted him to realize. He hadn’t truly meant them; intellectually, she understood that. She understood, too, that he’d been asked to process a series of events far too upsetting for the average adult. And he was still just a child. A child who’d experienced little even understanding, let alone love.

But that look he’d given her at the dinner table…she had to wonder.

She wanted to be his mother. Was that selfish of her? Had their dream of a family been a foolish one, with no more substance than an image seen in a cloud? As much as she might want to erase Asher’s past, for his sake as well as for her own, she couldn’t. Tristan couldn’t.

She’d thought…she’d thought things were changing. Getting better. Not allowing herself to recognize that issues like these didn’t simply vanish.

Her own hadn’t.

Tristan turned from the window. “They haven’t prevented you from loving.”

She couldn’t bring herself to smile more than a little.

Maeve. Maeve was in Barghast. A terrified part of her worried that the woman was even closer: within the walls of Caer Addanc itself. And for the first time since rejoining Tristan in the North, Isla felt unsafe. Even within her own bedchamber. Maeve’s reach truly knew no bounds; she was like a revenant, sliding its shadow fingers underneath the door.

Nothing could keep her out.

She shivered.

Maeve could be in the barrows, camping out. Or being cared for by some sympathetic family in Barghast. Or, indeed, somewhere within the hundred rooms of this castle. Or none of those places. She might have left. Or she might, this night or some other, stab them in their beds. Stab
Asher
. Or place some other, even worse enchantment on him. One they wouldn’t catch in time.

Most people hadn’t even the most general idea of what Maeve looked like. Nor had they ever seen the king, except perhaps on the newest coins. If they’d ever held a true coin, instead of bartering for goods or using a wooden plug. When they pictured the rogue queen, they pictured awe and finery. Not a middle-aged woman with her hair in a kerchief. Dressed as someone come looking for work, she might easily be hired and none the wiser.

And from there…Caer Addanc was, in and of itself, a small town. Not every servant could be scrutinized, nor indeed the hundreds if not thousands of people who came through the gates each moon. For any one of any number of perfectly legitimate reasons. If Maeve was mixing the dough for tomorrow morning’s bread right now?

Her footsteps silent in the now deserted hall?

Tristan held out his hand, without turning. After a minute she joined him. Leaned against his shoulder and stared out, with him, into the void.

“I think,” Isla said, after some time had elapsed, “that she came by boat.”

“How was the boat not seen?”

Isla shook her head. That, she didn’t now. Although a thought had occurred to her. “The guards might not necessarily pay attention to a children’s skiff.” Large boats, adult-sized boats, yes. But Barghast spent its youth on the lake, some learning to sail and others simply laughing and pushing each other into the water. A merchant vessel appearing over the horizon would surely attract notice. And a great deal of it. But one of those two person boats, creeping its way carefully along the shoreline?

“Or she might have come inside, stowed in the bed of a merchant’s wagon.”

He turned from the window.

Isla watched as he strode to the sideboard and, standing there, poured himself a drink and tossed it back. He poured her one, although she hadn’t asked for one and didn’t in truth particularly feel like drinking, and himself another. And then, without addressing her again, crossed the room to the fireplace and threw himself down on his favored couch. His face was thunderclouds.

“Sit,” he said.

She sat.

She accepted her drink.

“What concerns me is that Maeve has no magic.”

Isla started. “What?”

“Oh, she dabbled. Or tried to. But nothing ever came of her efforts.” He made a small, dismissive gesture. His other hand held the cup. He could drain the cellars and feel no effect, so it struck Isla as odd that he still drank. Although, as he’d pointed out before, old habits died hard. Like love, he remembered being a man with a savage loyalty.

“Some have, what some practitioners call a wild spark. What my old master referred to as true magic. Their powers will manifest, eventually, whether they will it or no. All they can hope to do is, not deny it but learn to control it. Before they hurt themselves, or others.”

He studied the fire. “Callas was one such. Things about the house began displaying an alarming tendency to catch fire whenever he was upset. And he quite a small child. And just as terrified as his mother and father and siblings at this new turn of events, if not more so.”

“So he was—”

“Sent here.”

Isla nodded to herself. That made sense. And explained, too, the deep and abiding nature of the wizard’s loyalty.

What a terrible thing, to be an object of terror within one’s own family. Isla couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain. She, at least, had been mostly ignored. Although she suspected that, where Callas was concerned, Hart might be able to understand better. Hart, the brother and lifelong best friend who had become a stranger to her.

“Others,” Tristan continued, “might grow to be equally—or in some cases far more—powerful practitioners, but have a different kind of magic. One that will not awake on its own, but that must be cultivated. Some practitioners, again like my old master, place a premium on the first kind. Seeing it as more pure, its wielders somehow more entitled to the craft. In truth, however, many of the second kind grow to be far more powerful.”

“Oh.” Isla knew almost nothing about magic. Despite its significance to her husband, he was tight-lipped. She sensed only that there were things he didn’t want her to know. Which she supposed she understood. As left out as she sometimes felt, she knew that he wanted her to see him as a man rather than a monster. Which she did, and would.

Even if he couldn’t quite believe that.

“Your friend Cariad is one such one.”

Isla’s pulse quickened at the mention of the witch’s name—it had been so long and she was nostalgic, fare more than she’d realized—but Tristan had once again lapsed into silence. She thought about pressing him, but didn’t. She didn’t need the bond to sense the cold fire raging within him.

“But Maeve has no magic. Never has had. Which means….” He tapped his claws on the edge of the couch in a slow, deliberate rhythm. “That she must have had help.”

“But—who?”

Who would do such a thing?

She drained her wine in a gulp. He was right. She had needed it. In fact, she still needed a good deal more. She thought she might need the rest of the carafe, if she was to sleep tonight. Or ever again. And then, she supposed because she’d been on the verge of tears now for an hour, she was rambling.