The Traitor's Heir (37 page)

Waite glanced at his erstwhile first lieutenant. “Alben,” he whispered sadly. He pressed his eyes shut.

Lord Cathair stepped forward. “Mr Alben was an exemplary officer, gentlemen, but was known to suffer from bouts of fierce anger. He was receiving treatment for it.”

Eamon gazed at the Hand, dumbfounded. The explanation for Alben's madness seemed too quickly offered. Alben himself, dying, had seemed a different man…

“With respect,” Mathaiah cried, “the fact that he was receiving treatment would have been of no comfort to this lady had he had his way!”

“Cadet,” Eamon warned sharply.

“No, no.” Waite's face was grey and he moved with the slowness of an old man. “Mr Grahaven is right.” He turned to some of the ensigns who had followed him. “Gentlemen, escort Lady Alessia and her maid back to the house, and entrust them to her household.”

At further commands from Waite the bodies of the nameless assassin and dead first lieutenant were removed. Eamon trembled. He had done it – he had killed a man to defend his broken oaths. What else was he capable of doing?

Waite and Cathair were speaking together in low voices. Mathaiah stepped to Eamon's side.

“Are you all right, sir?”

Eamon nodded dumbly. He turned to speak as privately as he could with the cadet.

“Did they see?” he whispered, dashing at tears with bloody, shaking hands.

Mathaiah shook his head. “I didn't want to kill him.” He felt sick. There was nowhere for him to clean his hands.

“Lieutenant Goodman.”

Eamon spun about. Cathair summoned him with a gesture. Captain Waite had already turned to follow the soldiers who carried Alben's body away.

Quivering, Eamon bowed. “My lord.”

“Captain Waite has magnanimously decided that you will not be required to attend watch duties tonight.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“He has also recommended that you return to the college and get some rest. You will have other duties to attend to in the morning. Be sure to be looking your best at parade.”

“Yes, my lord,” Eamon answered. “But I will escort my ward to the surgeons first: he is wounded.”

“Do so,” Cathair smiled. “I bid you good rest, First Lieutenant.” The Hand disappeared into the night. Eamon stared after him with burning eyes. “
He said that you would make first lieutenant within two days…
”

Eamon drove his hands across his eyes. The moon in the cold sky told him that it was the end of his second day.

C
HAPTER
XV

E
amon slept fitfully that night. No amount of washing seemed to cleanse his hands.

Could he not have healed the first lieutenant and then breached him to change his memory? Surely he could have done. But it was too late.

The predawn light seeped slowly through the window. He shuddered, longing for his chill flesh to be warmed. The first lieutenant's dying pleas harrowed him by name.

“Save me, Eamon!”

He thrust his hands back into his water basin and scoured them again. Was this what service to Hughan meant – murder?

He anxiously shook his hands dry. Desperate to distract himself, he paced back to his bed and took from his jacket the papers he had picked up in Ellenswell.

Most were faded with age – odd words or drawings could be distinguished here and there. They angered him. Had he saved worthless papers over a man that day?

Only one leaf caught his eye. On it was a simple sketch: a watchtower on the crest of a hill, overlooking a wooded valley. There was no name, mark, or indication of any kind. Inked soldiers stood at their posts and a flag was raised above them. Beneath the flag, among distant hills, was a man with a bright face. On his breast were the sword and star.

Eamon stared at it, demanding some providential absolution. There was none to be had.

His thoughts oppressed him as he left his room. Even Mathaiah's face, when it appeared at the other end of the corridor, did little to cheer him.

“Good morning, sir.” One jacket arm was swollen, betraying a bandage underneath, but apart from this the cadet was merry enough. Eamon tried to smile.

“How are you feeling?”

“College surgeon says I'll be right as the River,” Mathaiah answered, patting his injury. “Yourself, sir?”

“Not well,” Eamon confessed. “Not looking forward to this morning. I'm glad you're about.”

Mathaiah smiled encouragingly. “Wouldn't be anywhere else but here, sir.”

Parade was called at the usual time. Eamon took his accustomed place in line. The Third Ravens kept scouring the courtyard for their first lieutenant – everyone seemed to notice the absence. The college's lieutenants spoke together in curiously hushed tones. Eamon could read their conversations from their faces: they all wanted to know where Alben was.

His gut twisted as his double oath consumed him.

Waite came at last. He seemed intolerably tired. The ranks fell silent.

“At ease, gentlemen,” the captain called. He did not need to draw their attention: the college was rapt by his gravity. “I'm afraid that I have some unpleasant tidings. We have lost First Lieutenant Alben to wayfaring intrigues.”

Stunned outrage rippled through the college. Perhaps he hadn't heard clearly over the beating of his throbbing heart. Was he not to be named? No; his murder was to be covered with the tale of insurgents.

“Snakes are at large, gentlemen,” Waite continued, “and this is proof that they have penetrated our city.”

Eamon shuddered. Waite could not guess how near to the truth he was.

“Honour Alben's memory with your vigilance, West Quarter. His death will not then have been in vain.” Waite paused, taking the whole college in his gaze. “Lord Cathair and I have consulted on the matter. We appoint a new first lieutenant this morning.”

There was another murmur; several of the lieutenants looked secretly pleased, expecting the honour to alight on them. But Eamon already knew the outcome of Waite's consultation. He met Waite's gaze. There was an uneasy formality in it.

“Lieutenant Goodman.”

Stunned silence. It was only his third day in Dunthruik, and some lieutenants had reached that rank before Eamon had even joined the Gauntlet. How they would loathe him – and they did not know who he was, and what he had done.

Eamon presented himself before his captain with a salute. Waite's face was expressionless. He held another flame in his hand, a mark ready to join the two already pinned at Eamon's neck.

“Lieutenant Eamon Goodman,” he said. “Your blood, blade, and body speak of the Master's glory; will you command men for that glory?”

Eamon could not look the captain in the eye. “For his glory.”

“Then for his glory it is given to you to command men, First Lieutenant Goodman. Lift your head, Mr Goodman,” he added quietly.

“Sir.” Eamon trembled as the captain pinned on the flame – a bitter, undeserved, usurped honour. Waite knew what had happened – how could he make this appointment?

Waite surveyed the ranks. “I present to you First Lieutenant Goodman,” he called. “This promotion is ratified by the Master himself, and performed by my own hand.” The mark of the throned flared along the contours of his raised palm. “Let any who has bane bring it to me.”

Waite lowered his hand. He proceeded to dismiss the ranks. Then he turned to Eamon.

“Congratulations, Mr Goodman.” The captain held out his hand. There was little warmth in it.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Eamon hesitated. He owed nothing to Waite. But part of him loved the captain – had loved the captain since that first day when he had heard him laughing in the hall. Their oaths conflicted wildly but still Eamon felt bound to him, and bound to please him. At that moment, he felt the captain's grief and was burdened that he was the cause of it.

Waite considered him piercingly. “Why are you still here, Mr Goodman?”

“Sir, may I speak frankly?”

Waite nodded.

“This appointment, sir… it is against your wishes.” Eamon discerned it from the captain's whole bearing.

Waite smiled a sad smile. “Not on professional grounds, Mr Goodman. You are a fine officer and a young man destined for great things. You take responsibility well and defend those who cannot defend themselves. How many of us can say as much? Defending the defenceless is what you were doing last night; I laud your courage.”

Waite looked once about the emptying parade ground and then back to Eamon. When he spoke again his voice was quiet. “Of all the officers that I have trained, Mr Goodman, you are probably the one who has been most deserving of this appointment. Alben was a good man, in his own way, and a man of my age dislikes watching young men being buried before him. Writing a letter of condolence to Mrs Alben is made infinitely more difficult when she is of my kin. My sister will forgive me, in time,” he added stoically. “She is a good-natured woman.”

Eamon's heart ruptured. He had bereaved a mother of her son and the captain of his nephew. What could he say to Waite? That he had killed to defend a wayfarer – the same snake who now bore the murdered Alben's office?

“I'm sorry, sir,” he whispered.

“Yours was an unenviable position,” the captain answered. “I don't doubt that Alben genuinely sought your life. You could not have done other than you did.”

“I wish I could, sir,” Eamon managed.

Waite laughed. “I appreciate your sentiment, Mr Goodman. Rest assured that it is not your appointment that displeases me, merely its circumstance. But, as you will no doubt learn yourself, it is often the lot of captains – and draybants, and first lieutenants, and any other man in authority – to see the young gone before their time. Sometimes we have to sacrifice them in war, sometimes for politics (which is far worse), and sometimes for no reason at all.” Waite sighed. “Mr Alben was not the first, and he shall not be the last. My personal stake in the matter shall not jade my opinion of you.” He drew a deep breath. “I had dismissed you too soon, Mr Goodman,” he added, “for I had not yet finished the business side of matters. Will you take the Third Ravens?”

Alben's group? He could not. “If I may, sir,” Eamon answered, “I would rather keep the Third Banners. I know it is unconventional,” he added, “but the Ravens are already brilliant cadets. I began with the Banners, and I would like to stay with them, sir.”

Waite nodded. “Very well. Giving the Ravens to one of the other lieutenants may mollify those over whom you were promoted. You shall keep the Third Banners. To your duties, first lieutenant.” He spoke with the gentleness of a father.

Like a son, Eamon obeyed him.

Mathaiah joined the Third Banner cadets that day. Both first lieutenant and cadet found relief in doing what was second nature to both of them – training to serve. But the new pin at his throat was a constant weight on Eamon's mind. How could he train those beneath him to serve the Gauntlet when he himself did not? This led to a darker thought – did his grief at Alben's death mean he did not truly serve Hughan?

As the cadets were piling off to the mess Mathaiah drew him aside.

“I forgot to say, sir – I was able to speak to Lillabeth last night before… well, before what happened. She said she would pass everything on.”

Eamon nodded. He hoped that what they had seen would be of interest to Hughan. No, he believed it. He had to believe it.

“What exactly did happen last night?”

“She showed me the paintings, and we talked,” Mathaiah explained. “Then she heard noises down by the gates, and said she ought to go down. I offered to go with her but she said that it was probably only one of the stable hands trying to get in. She asked me to wait where I was. A few minutes after she left I heard her scream and went after her. When I got there I found Alben…” the cadet faltered and flushed. “I stopped him, sir. Then you came. The rest you know.”

“I'm glad that Lillabeth is safe.” The thought of losing their contact was not a pleasant one to him. She and Mathaiah were the only things in the city that reminded him of why he was truly there.

“So am I,” Mathaiah added, with feeling. He went on after a pause to ask about Eamon's evening with Alessia. Eamon's reluctance to answer amused Mathaiah greatly.

As a lieutenant in the West Quarter College, Eamon's duties had been straightforward. He had had charge of a group of cadets and been responsible for overseeing their practices and patrols. The West Quarter had eighteen lieutenants and nine first lieutenants, who commanded duties and patrols in the port, the palace, along the River, and through the streets of the quarter itself. Of those first lieutenants, three worked closely with the quarter's three draybants, assigned to the overseeing of the college and quarter logistics, to the upkeep of the quarter's law, and to administrative duties in the college.

First Lieutenant Alben had been the first lieutenant with overall charge of the trainee cadets at the college. As his replacement, Eamon found that his duties grew a little more varied. The signs of respect that he received from others increased and he was called to meetings with Waite and Draybant Farleigh more frequently. It was from the latter that he began to learn the administrative arts behind the running of a Gauntlet college.

Eamon was saluted and congratulated everywhere. Although he was uncomfortable with it at first, he found himself warming to it. He did not descend from a family noted as noble in any way and wondered if first-born sons felt the rush that he did upon being acclaimed. It was a completely new feeling to him. Some watched him with awe, some with scorn, but they all watched. It was the watching that counted.

At the end of the day he went to the officers' mess to sup and found the lieutenants, so silent and cool towards him before, falling over themselves to lavish him with compliments. Even Alben's lackeys had changed their tune; in celebration of his appointment they now brought him a fine bottle of wine and a broad plate.