The Traitor's Heir (62 page)

The whole theatre answered him: “To his glory!”

The soldier stepped back; the drama could now begin. One of the other actors hurried over to him. “What news?” he asked. “The Serpent is fallen and his brood is fled, but I fear for our noble captain!”

“Did you not see? Have you not heard? What a captain! He came alone from the press, badged in the blood of the viper's brood, bearing the standard of the Serpent himself. He will carry it to the Master!”

“Do you know this play, Lord Goodman?”

Eamon started: the Right Hand spoke softly in his ear.

“I do not believe I do, my lord,” he answered. He was aware of Alessia watching him.

“Ah! Let me explain it to you!” The Right Hand spoke with relish. “Its historical accuracy is, of course, questionable – as is so often the case with drama – but it is the story of a captain who fought for the Master at the battle of Edesfield. I am reliably informed that it is a town you know well,” he added with a small smile, “so I will not describe it to you.”

Eamon nodded silently.

“The captain,” the Right Hand continued, “a man of lowly birth but promoted for good service, is honoured for capturing the standard of the enemy, and rewarded for his deed by betrothal to the only daughter of a noble family, a woman he has always loved and never dreamed of obtaining. But,” he went on, “another loves her and, to spite him, his aspiring rival lays proofs showing her to be of the Serpent's pay. The captain marries the noblewoman, a moment of utter bliss for him, and then finds the false proofs. Deeply grieved, he goes to his rival – once his closest friend – for counsel, dressed still in his wedding robes. His rival encourages him to take the life of his wife and offer it as a gift to the Master.”

Eamon wondered at the growing delight with which the Master's closest told the story. He could see the actors moving and speaking on the stage but could not take his attention from the Right Hand.

“The captain, taking his friend's counsel deeply to heart, waits until evening. Then, when he should be consummating his marriage, he murders his wife, despite her pleas, to which he turns deaf and sorry ears. He takes her body before the Master as a witness of his loyalty, and at the moment when he presents it, evidence comes of the falsified proofs.

“He is, of course, overcome with grief, and has heart-rending words to speak over his wife's body. Lord Cathair speaks of it as true poetry, pertaining to the fickleness of love, the duties of power, and the awfulness of treachery.” The Right Hand allowed these words to fall heavily on Eamon's ears. “Learning all to be his rival's doing the captain slaughters him, but receives his own death-blow in the fight. He is borne, dying, to the Master, and begs for his estate to be passed to his brother, swearing his family's eternal allegiance. The play ends with the captain's death and the brother's ratification of that oath.”

Eamon glanced at the stage. The three soldiers there were speaking about the noble qualities of the captain. As two of the three left the stage, the third – presumably the rival – delivered a terrifying soliloquy, declaring his fear that the captain would obtain the highest prize of all: the lady.

“It's quite the tragedy,” the Right Hand observed. “Still, I understand that there are those who hold that tragedy is good for us. I quite enjoy a little tragedy myself. Don't you, Lord Goodman?”

Alessia's grip on his hand grew tighter. What was wrong?

“Yes, my lord.”

The drama continued. The play was well written but Eamon was painfully aware of the constant, derogatory claims made against the King, of the brutal language used to describe his death, and the revelatory way in which the Master was set in his place. It churned his stomach. As the play drew to the close of its third act the captain, a man whose voice reached the top-most eaves of the theatre, grimly announced his intention to murder his wife. The curtains fell to applause.

“I wonder that your lady hasn't told you,” the Right Hand said, his voice close by Eamon's ear, “but the captain figured here by the dramatist takes his tale from the history of no less than one Tobias Turnholt. The family received their patrimony for capturing the standard of the Serpent. The captain did indeed kill his wife – they say that she merited death for some other betrayal. Is that not the case, Lady Turnholt?”

“My lord,” Alessia whispered. She trembled. He wished that he could hold her close – but the Right Hand prevented it.

“Whatever its guise, Lord Goodman,” the Right Hand told him, “and whatever excuses are given for it, treachery is a terrible thing. It cannot be forgiven or undone.” He looked long at Eamon. Eamon was grateful for the dark in the box, which hid him. What did the Right Hand mean by saying all this?

“And those who betray those they claim to love?” The Right Hand shook his head. “That, Lord Goodman, is most treacherous of all. Death is all that can answer such a betrayal.”

Suddenly Alessia snatched her hand from Eamon's and rose, quaking.

“Lady Turnholt, what ails you?” the Right Hand asked pleasantly.

“I humbly crave your indulgence and your pardon, my lord,” she answered, “but I am not well.”

“I can understand how you might find this play troubling,” the Right Hand soothed.

Eamon leapt at the chance to escape. “My lord, may I have your permission to escort Lady Turnholt home?”

“Of course, Lord Goodman, of course,” the Right Hand replied. “How uncouth of us it would be to let her go alone! I am only sorry that you will miss the rest of the play.”

“As am I, my lord.” Alessia shook visibly. Eamon set her cloak over her shoulders. “By your leave, my lord.”

The Right Hand nodded as Eamon bowed.

“Do take care, Lady Turnholt!”

Eamon escorted her from the box. Alessia said nothing to him as they left the theatre. She tried to walk swiftly, but her whole body shook, slowing her. The streets were cold and quiet, lit occasionally by lightning far away. No thunder reached their ears.

They walked the Coll in silence. At last, they passed her gates.

It was on the darkest part of the path that Alessia stumbled. Eamon caught her and raised her to her feet with soothing words.

“We are almost home,” he told her. “Come, Lillabeth will help you.”

She shook her head, resisting his touch. He stopped. Tears streaked her cheeks. He reached out to touch her face. She gave a startled cry, shying back from him with harrowed eyes.

“No!”

Alarmed, Eamon took her hand. “Alessia?”

Suddenly she pressed herself close to him and buried her face against his breast. She began to cry and held him tightly, as though she feared that he might disappear.

Whispering encouragement, Eamon wrapped his arms about her. As she sobbed he held her, resting his head upon hers. He kissed her brow.

“I'm sorry,” he said quietly. “If I had known that the play would affect you like this I would never have agreed to go with you.”

“Eamon, I wanted to tell you before,” she whispered, raising her trembling face towards his. “I should have told you before, but I couldn't…”

Was this all her fear? “Alessia,” he whispered, and kissed her. “It's only a play.”

Suddenly she pulled away, shaking her head. “You don't understand.” She looked at him, haunted. “I love you.” Her voice quivered. “I have always loved you and I will always love you.”

Eamon looked at her, confused. “And I love you –” What did she mean by such words? “Alessia,” he began, reaching out to touch her face again. She pulled away with a shrill gasp. It shook him and angered him. “Why are you so afraid?”

She was ashen. “Eamon, I couldn't… you were at Pinewood… I…” She seemed to be steeling herself against something terrible. Her face was riven with grief. “I can't tell you,” she whispered at last.

What could be so terrible? “Do you trust me?”

Alessia nodded silently. “Yes,” she said, “but I am afraid.”

He stared. “Of me?”

“Yes. Of what you'll do.”

“What I'll do? Alessia, I don't understand.” Suspicion yawned open inside him. He gripped her hand. “You must tell me.”

“My family has always served the throned,” she began, “the women no less than the men. The men swore their swords, their lands, and their sons to the banner. The women swore to him what, as women, was allotted to them…”

Jealousy snarled in him. “Alessia, while I was gone did you –?”

“No,” Alessia shook her head. “No. They haven't made me give myself…” She swallowed. “Not for a long time.”

Relief.

“I am so sorry.” He shook as he kissed her brow again. “I'm sorry that they have ever asked you to. Is that what you were afraid of telling me?” He touched his brow against hers. “Alessia! I will not judge you for that.” She was his.

For a long moment Alessia stood still in his arms. He pressed her close.

Suddenly she spoke again. “Eamon,” she whispered, “on the same day that you arrived in Dunthruik, I was summoned to the palace.”

He went cold, stepped back. Her face was pale and her lips trembled.

“You are a lady of Dunthruik,” Eamon answered, trying to assuage his troubled thoughts, “and heir of the Turnholts. Why should you not be?”

“They took me before the Right Hand.” Her eyes were wide and frightened. Eamon imagined her kneeling on the cold stones of the Hands' Hall. “He gave his orders. I had no choice.”

Eamon watched the shadows on her face as she struggled to speak. His heart was seized with fear.

Son of Eben…

“Alessia –”

“He told me about you,” she continued. “He told me that you were arriving in the West Quarter College. He told me that you were important to the Master but suspected of being under wayfarer influence. He told me to shun Alben, and pursue you.”

He staggered. The words fell like blows on a dying heart.

Nothing but a whore, son of Eben; she defiled you! Defiled you with a whore's designs.

“No,” he choked. Hot tears bit. He tried to drive them away. She had been sent to trap him. Mathaiah had been…

Desperately, wrathfully, he wrung her hands in his. “No!”

“Eamon, let me finish –”

“Finish?” he cried brokenly. “Finish? And what will you say? That all the love I received from you has been under the auspices of the Right Hand?”

“No, Eamon!” She wept freely and grasped his arm. “They wanted me to lure you, capture you, hold you, and learn from you the truth.”

He remembered how she had smiled at him and invited him to follow her back to her home, to her chambers, to her very bed. All the long nights that they had spent together, and the laughter and kisses that he had shared with her, passed before his eyes in a moment. The memories cut him like a jagged knife.

“
And those who betray those they claim to love?
” The Right Hand's knowing, mocking words ran through his head, poisoning his thought. “
That, Lord Goodman, is most treacherous of all…
”

A treacherous whore; defiler of your flesh. You will answer her betrayal, son of Eben. You will revile her.

He staggered. The words, the lies, permeated his wounded thought.

“Then this is all we are?” he hissed, glaring at her. “You the seductress, and I your prey!”

“No, Eamon!” she cried. “I never wanted to take you – you frightened me, and the rumours about you frightened me. But when I saw you, dressed in the uniform of a King's man… when we danced at the masque, and I felt something in you far beyond what I could see…” She closed her eyes with the force of the memory. “I saw why they feared you – and I saw that I loved you.”

Lies! Nothing but lies!

“Loved me?” Eamon cried. He tried to tear away but her hold on his arm was true. She reached to turn his face towards hers but he wrenched back from her touch: she was venom on his skin.

“Don't touch me!”

“If you ever loved me you will hear me now! Week after week they demanded to know what I knew, and I told them nothing. They scorned me, and called me whore and threatened me. But I knew nothing.”

Eamon shook. He had told her everything. Fool –
fool!

“Even after I learnt the truth, I told them nothing!” Alessia trembled furiously. “I spoke not a word, and I lied to them for you because I loved you, and the man that I loved wasn't a Hand or a lieutenant or even a Gauntlet officer: he was a King's man.”

Lies! You are mine!

Eamon cried out as though struck; she held him firmly.

“The night you left for Pinewood, Eamon, they came for me. The Right Hand often came unannounced to my house, demanding information. He came that night.”

Eamon remembered the way she had started the first time she had seen him in black. Could she have mistaken him for the Right Hand?

It could be true. Everything that she was telling him could be true…

She deludes you, son of Eben!

“They could have tortured me, Eamon, or violated me in any way they chose, and I would have said no word to betray you. But they did not need to. They took me to the Hands' Hall and breached me.” Her voice broke at last, and she collapsed to her knees, clinging to his arm and sobbing at the memory of an ordeal she could not have shared with any other.

“They breached me, Eamon! They tore out everything that I had refused to give them! They had made me a whore, a painted doll to be dressed and undressed at their leisure, but I had borne that, because that was the nature of my service, and who could stop them? The throned demanded it of me. Then they laid me out for you and I glimpsed something in you that they never meant me to see. I followed after it – how could I not? – and betrayed them by loving you. They repaid me for it.”