Thyran. At eight, Zelen had dressed up as the man—well, in principle, though it had mostly been a matter of black cloth and injudiciously applied raspberry jam—to try to frighten his sisters. He’d gotten a slap from Alize that had made his ears ring, and another from his nurse. After his father had heard the news, Zelen had slept on his stomach for a week.
A son of Verengir did not use that name lightly.
“I can understand why,” Branwyn said into the silence, bringing Zelen back to the present. “Not only does it sound unlikely, but nobody would want to believe it. I didn’t.”
“You mentioned other signs.”
“Ah. Yes. It gets a bit complicated,” she said. “Too much so, I thought, to explain at the end of the council session, with all of you eager to go about your business. It seems that Amris var Faina didn’t precisely die either.”
“GeneralFaina?” Military history had never been one of Zelen’s strong points, but he’d read enough. The man had stopped Thyran at the end and supposedly died in the process.
“I can swear to that too.”
She spoke with a patience that embarrassed Zelen. “I trust your account,” he said hastily, though he hadn’t been sure he did before. “But you have to allow a man a bit of shock. Has Letar gotten tired of visitors?”
Branwyn laughed. It was a quiet, smooth sound and incongruous with the sharp, dark humor in her face. “I wouldn’t blame Her for it, but no. Faina’s lover became a soulsword after he died. The soulsword and his Sentinel found Faina and broughthimback to the present day. Faina was the one to recognize Thyran.”
“And the, er, soulsword recognized Faina?”
“Just so. It’s a strange story, I’ll grant.”
“Certainly not what I was expecting to hear today.”
“Nor any of your fellows, I noticed.” She gazed ahead of them, to where green-painted roofs sprouted over another set of gardens: the first signs of the high lord’s mansion. “I don’t blame them for not believing, or not wanting to. Nobody did at Oakford either.”
“You may find it worse here,” said Zelen gently. “This is where Thyran came from, after all, and where he learned to dedicate himself, and we’ve never been able to find out how. Bit of an old wound, you understand.”
“And nobody did? Find anything out?” Branwyn kept surveying the landscape.
“I’m sure the priests tried to learn more when it happened, but the city’s largely spent the last hundred years trying to forget he ever existed. Particularly the nobility.”
“You seem to be one of the exceptions,” she said, directing that sharp scrutiny at him once more.
They’d come to the gates to Rognozi’s gardens, and a pair of footmen stood there, giving Zelen no excuse to provide an escort further. “Well,” said Zelen, “I’m not precisely a paragon of my house and position. Ask the rest of my family.”
The evaluation she was giving him took on a hint of curiosity, maybe even confusion. “But you’re their representative on the council?”
“Ah, well, they don’t think highly of that either.” He bowed with the skill he’d learned along with walking, but more attention than he usually bothered putting in. “Welcome to Heliodar, Branwyn. I hope we meet again soon, and outside the court.”
Chapter 4
“Well,” said Branwyn under her breath, and then caught herself. She’d waited until she was on the path between the footman-guarded gate and the mansion ahead of her, and she’d declined the aid of Rognozi’s servants to walk all of five minutes, but still there was no point maintaining telling habits, particularly when they served no purpose: she didn’t yet have a soulsword to hear her.
Well, she thought silently instead,he seems fascinating.
The intrigue was tactical as well, not just the allure of Zelen’s lithe physique and big brown eyes, though as she’d stood facing him by the gate, she’d been keenly alive to his proximity. His expression when he’d spoken of his family, one of pain that long custom had polished into amusement, had made Branwyn wince for him.
She wondered at his motives for providing information: a bored lordling’s excuse to spend more time with a comely woman? Tweaking the noses of a family he clearly wasn’t fond of? A genuine desire to be helpful? Gods knew, Thyran was threat enough to scare any who believed, but assuming good intentions too easily was precisely the sort of amateur mistake Branwyn wanted to avoid, even if she was, in truth, an amateur at court politics.
Her thoughts took her through a hedge-crowded garden and up a set of broad stairs to the entrance of a wide three-story house, painted a silvery gray and sprouting peaked green roofs at every possible angle. All of it was wood, suggesting that it had been destroyed, or partly so, in the great storms after Thyran’s first defeat, then rebuilt to be warmer than stone. That spoke of some practicality, roofs aside.
A short man in elaborate pale-green livery answered Branwyn’s knock and inclined his head respectfully. “Madam Alanive?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Welcome to Rognozi. Please follow me to your rooms.” He glanced past her, then added, “We have quarters for any attendants, if…” His voice trailed off, both polite and expectant.
“That’s very thoughtful, but I have none.”
