The Bone Doll's Twin (22 page)

“You made all these?”

“Yes.” Tobin held up his bird and Arkoniel’s. “Yours is better than mine, though. Can you teach me to make them your way?”

Arkoniel picked up a wooden horse and shook his head in wonder. “No. And yours are better, really. Mine are just a trick. These are the products of your hands and imagination. You must be an artist like your father.”

“And my mama,” Tobin said, looking pleased at the praise. “She made carvings, too, before the dolls.”

“I didn’t know that. You must miss her.”

The smile disappeared. Tobin shrugged and began lining the animals and people up in phalanxes across the painted harbor. “How many brothers do you have?”

“Two now. I had five, but two died of plague and the oldest was killed fighting the Plenimarans. The others are both warriors, too.”

“But not you.”

“No, Illior had other plans for me.”

“Have you always been a wizard?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know it until my teacher found me when I was—” Arkoniel paused as if surprised. “Well, since I was just a bit younger than you are now.”

“Were you very sad?”

“Why would I be sad?”

“Not to be a warrior like your brothers. Not to serve Skala with heart and sword.”

“We all serve in our own way. Did you know that wizards fought in the Great War? The king has some in his army now.”

“But you’re not,” Tobin pointed out. This clearly lowered Arkoniel in his eyes.

“As I said, there are many ways to serve. And a country
doesn’t just need warriors. It needs scholars and builders and farmers.” He held up Tobin’s bird. “And artists! You can be an artist and a warrior, too. Now, how would you like to see the great city you’ll be protecting, my young warrior? Are you ready?”

Tobin nodded and held out his hand again. “So I should pretend that I’m a bird, but I’m still me?”

Arkoniel grinned. “You’ll always be you, no matter what. Now relax and breathe like you’re asleep, very gently. Good. What kind of a bird will you be?”

“An eagle.”

“Then I’ll be one, too, or I won’t be able to keep up.”

This time Tobin relaxed easily and Arkoniel silently wove the spell that would project his own memories into Tobin’s mind. Careful to avoid any sudden transitions, he began the vision with them both perched in a tall fir that overlooked the meadow outside. “Can you see the forest and the house?”

“Yes!” Tobin replied in an awed whisper. “It is like dreaming.”

“Good. You know how to fly, so spread your wings and come with me.”

Tobin did with surprising readiness. “I can see the town now.”

“We’re going to fly east now.” Arkoniel summoned an image of trees and fields passing rapidly below them, then conjured Ero and poised them high above the Old Palace, trying to give the boy a recognizable view. Below them, the Palatine Circle looked like a round green eye atop the crowded hill.

“I see it!” Tobin whispered. “It’s just like my city, only lots more houses and streets and colors. May I see the harbor, and ships?”

“We’ll have to fly to it. The vision is limited.” Arkoniel smiled to himself. So there was a child behind that stern face, after all. Together, they swooped down to the harbor
and circled the round-bellied carracks and longboats moored there.

“I want to sail on ships like that!” Tobin exclaimed. “I want to see all the Three Lands, and the ’faie, too.”

“Perhaps you can sing with them.”

“No …”

The vision dimmed as something distracted the boy. “You must concentrate,” Arkoniel reminded him. “Don’t let any worries bother you. I can’t do this for very long. Where else would you like to go?”

“To my mother’s house.”

“Ah, yes. Back up to the Palatine we go.” He guided Tobin to the warren of walled houses that lay between the Old and New Palaces.

“Mama’s is that one,” Tobin said. “I know it by the golden griffins along the roofline.”

“Yes.” Rhius had taught his son well.

As they circled closer, the vision faltered again, but this time the problem did not lie with the boy. Arkoniel felt a growing uneasiness as the shape of the house and its grounds became more distinct. He could pick out the yards and outbuildings, and the courtyard where the tall chestnut tree stood, marking the dead twin’s grave. As they drew closer, however it withered before his eyes. Gnarled bare branches reached up to snare him like clawed fingers, just as the roots had held Tobin in his vision by the sea.

“By the Light—!” he gasped, trying to end the vision before Tobin saw. It was ended for him as a blast of cold buffeted them both. The vision collapsed, leaving him reeling and momentarily blind.

“No, no!” Tobin cried,

Arkoniel felt the boy’s hand yanked from his. Something struck him a stinging blow on the cheek and the pain broke the last of the magic, clearing his mind and his eyes.

The entire room was shaking. The wardrobe doors
banged open, then slammed again with a crash. Chests jittered against the walls, and objects flew through the air in all directions.

Tobin knelt by the city, holding down the roof of the Palace with both hands. “Stop it!” he cried. “Go away, Wizard.
Please!
Get out!”

Arkoniel stayed where he was. “Tobin, I can’t—”

Nari rushed in and ran to the boy. Tobin clung to her, pressing his face to her shoulder.

“What are you doing?” she cried, giving Arkoniel an accusing glare.

“I was just—” The roof of the Palace spun up into the air and he caught it with his good hand. “We were looking at the city. Your demon didn’t care for that.”

He could see enough of Tobin’s face to know that the boy’s lips were moving, forming quick, silent words against the dark fabric of Nari’s loose gown.

The room went still, but an ominous heaviness remained, like a lull in a thunderstorm. Tobin struggled free of his nurse and fled the room.

Nari looked around at the mess and sighed. “You see what it’s like for us? No telling what it will do, or why. Illior and Bilairy shield us from angry spirits!”

Arkoniel nodded, but he knew exactly why the thing had chosen the moment it did this time. He thought again of bending over a small, still body beneath that chestnut tree, weeping as it sank out of sight, his tears sinking into the hard earth. Yes, it knew the taste of his tears.

T
obin wanted nothing to do with him after that, so Arkoniel spent the rest of the day quietly exploring the keep. The pain in his arm required several draughts of Cook’s infusion, and its dulling effects left him feeling like he was walking about in a dream.

His original impression of the keep was borne out in daylight; it was only partially inhabitable. The upper floor was in total disrepair. Once-handsome chambers lay in
ruin, overrun by rats and rot. Leakage from the roof or attics above had destroyed the fine murals and furnishings.

Strangely enough, there was evidence that someone had continued to frequent these gloomy rooms. Several sets of footprints were visible in the dust that covered the bare floors. One room in particular had had a frequent, small-footed visitor, though the footprints had a new layer of fine grit in them now. This room lay halfway along the corridor and was sounder than its neighbors, and better lit thanks to the loss of a shutter on one of the tall, narrow windows.

Tobin had come here on numerous occasions, and always went to the back corner of the room. A cedarwood chest of Mycenian design stood here, and the dust on its ornate painted lid continued the tale. Arkoniel summoned a small orb of light and bent to examine the smudges and finger marks there. Tobin had come here to open this chest. Inside Arkoniel found nothing but a few tabards of ancient cut.

Perhaps it had been a game of some sort? Yet what game would a child play alone, a child who did not know how to pretend? Arkoniel looked around the dirty, shadowed room, imagining Tobin here all by himself. His small footprints crossed and recrossed each other for however many days the game had lasted. Another pang of compassion pierced the young wizard’s heart, this time for the living twin.

Equally intriguing were the sets of tracks that led to the far end of the corridor. The door here was new, and the only one that was locked.

Placing his hand over the bronze key plate, he examined the intricacies of its mechanism. It would have been a relatively easy matter to trick it open, but the unwritten laws of guesting forbade such a coarse trespass. He already suspected where it led.

Threw herself from the tower window—

Arkoniel rested his forehead against the door’s cool surface. Ariani had fled here, fled to her death taking her child with her. Or had Tobin followed? It had been too long and too many others had come and gone here since for him to read the tale of their tracks.

Nari’s vague suspicions still nagged at him. Possession was rare, and he did not believe Tobin would have hurt Ariani himself. But Arkoniel had felt the demon’s rage three times now; it possessed both the strength and will to kill. But why kill his mother, who’d been as much a victim of circumstance as he and his twin?

Downstairs, he crossed the gloomy hall and went outside. The duke was nowhere to be seen, but his men were busy packing horses and stacking arms for the journey back to Ero.

“How’s the arm today?” asked Tharin, coming over to him.

“I think it will mend very well. Thank you.”

“Captain Tharin keeps us all mended,” a young sandy-haired man remarked, swaggering by with a handful of tools. “So you’re the young wizard who can’t manage a gelded two-year-old?”

“Mind yourself, Sefus, or he’ll turn you into something useful,” an older man snapped from a lean-to workshop built against the courtyard wall. “Get over here and help with the harness, you lazy pup!”

“Don’t mind Sefus,” another young soldier told him, grinning. “He gets irritable when he’s away from the brothels too long.”

“I don’t imagine any of you enjoy being so far from the city. This doesn’t seem a very cheerful place.”

“Took you all morning to figure that one out, did it?” Tharin replied with a chuckle.

“Are the men good to the boy?”

“Do you think Rhius would tolerate anyone who wasn’t? The sun rises and sets on that child, as far as he’s concerned.
Far as any of us are concerned, for that matter. It’s not Tobin’s fault.” He gestured at the house. “Not any of it.”

The defensiveness with which he declared this was not lost on Arkoniel. “Of course not,” he agreed. “Does anyone say it is?”

“Tongues always wag. You get something like a demon haunting the king’s own sister and you can imagine what the gossips do with that. Why else do you think Rhius stuck his poor wife and son out here, so far from proper society? A princess, living here? And a prince? No wonder … Well, that’s enough said about that. There’s enough ignorant gossip in the town. Back in Ero, even.”

“Perhaps Rhius is right. Tobin might not be happy in the city with all those wagging tongues. He’s old enough to understand now.”

“Yes. And it would break his father’s heart. Mine too, for that matter. He’s a good boy, our Tobin. One of these days he’ll come into his own.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

Leaving Tharin to his preparations, Arkoniel made a circuit of the outer walls.

Here, too, he saw sad evidence of neglect and decline. There had been gardens here once. A few bush roses ran wild against the remains of crumbling stone enclosures, and he could see the brown dry seed heads of rare peonies here and there, fighting to hold their ground amidst the wild native blooms of willow bay, daisy, milkweed, and broom. Ariani had had banks of peonies in her garden at Ero, he recalled. In the early months of summer, huge vases of them had scented the entire house.

Only a kitchen garden between a back gate and the river’s edge was still tended here now. Arkoniel plucked a sprig of fennel and chewed it as he let himself in the back gate.

This let onto a rear court. Entering by an open door, he found himself back in the kitchen. Cook, who seemed
to have no other name, was busy preparing the evening meal with the help of Tobin, Nari, and Sefus.

“I don’t know, pet,” Nari was saying, sounding annoyed. “Why do you ask such things?”

“Ask what things?” Arkoniel joined them at the table. As he sat down, he saw what Tobin had been doing and grinned. Five white turnip sheep were being stalked by a pair of beet root bears and a carroty something that looked vaguely like the dragon Arkoniel had shown him that morning.

“Cook used to be an archer and fight the Plenimarans with Father like Tharin does,” Tobin said. “But she says the king doesn’t like women to be in his army anymore. Why is that?”

“You were a soldier?” asked Arkoniel.

Cook straightened from stirring a kettle and wiped her hands on her apron front. Arkoniel hadn’t paid much attention to her before, but now he saw a flash of pride as she nodded. “I was. I served the last queen with Duke Rhius’ father, and the king after her for a time. I’d be serving still—my eye and arm are still true—but the king don’t like seeing women in the ranks.” She gave a shrug. “So, here you find me.”

“But
why
?” Tobin insisted, starting work on another turnip.

“Maybe girls can’t fight proper,” Sefus said with a smirk.

“I was worth three of you, and I wasn’t even the best!” Cook snapped. Snatching up a cleaver, she set to work on a joint of mutton as if it were a Plenimaran foot soldier.

Arkoniel recognized Sefus’ smug attitude. He’d seen plenty of it in recent years. “Women can be fine warriors, and wizards, too, if they have the heart and the training,” Arkoniel told Tobin. “Heart and training; that’s what it takes to be good at anything. Remember how I told you this morning that I don’t shoot anymore? Well, I wasn’t very
good to begin with, or at swordplay, either. I wouldn’t have been much use to anyone as a warrior. Why, if Iya hadn’t made a wizard of me, I’d probably be a scullion instead of a scholar!” He cast a sidelong glance at Sefus. “Not too long ago, I met an old woman who’d been both warrior and wizard in the wars. She fought with Queen Ghërilain, who won the war because she was such a good warrior herself. You do know about the warrior queens of Skala, don’t you?”