“Finally, you were seen, chased. But the people who chased you home couldn’t believe that Myklan of Thrace, esteemed member of the nobility, could have done such things. No, it must have been Myklan’s addled boy, Pietrus.”
Pietrus was sitting across from Aric. His hands were over his ears, and he made a low-pitched, keening sound. Tears dribbled down his cheeks. Sheridia knelt by him, stroking his shoulders, but he didn’t seem to know she was there. He was the one Aric felt worst about in all this, and he was sorry he had started it while Pietrus was present. There had been no choice, though. Having come to the realization, Aric had to say something.
“You were happy to let them think it. Happy to let your own family believe you had to flee Nibenay because Pietrus was accused. Perhaps you even let them think that maybe the mob was right, that Pietrus was guilty of those murders. Getting away from the city was the only solution, the only way to protect your son. But it wasn’t Pietrus you were worried about, was it? You were worried that someone would realize it was you all along.”
“You were out that night,” Solyara remembered. “I didn’t see you come home, and you told me you’d been there for more than an hour when the mob started screaming outside. But you were winded, your cheeks flushed with effort. You had just come home, hadn’t you?”
Myklan didn’t answer. He shook, and stared into the fire, and chewed his lip.
“If our guard Bryldun were here, instead of killed in the desert by those awful raiders, we could ask him,” Solyara went on. “But he’s not. Another death on your conscience, Myklan? How many is that?”
“All right!” Myklan sank to his knees, folded over, pounded the earth with his fists. “Yes, yes, yes!” He loosed a great, anguished wail. “Yes, all of it, it’s true!”
“Father!” Rieve cried through her own sobs. “No, Father! I won’t believe it!”
“I’ve known for a long time that there was something wrong,” Solyara said. “That he hated elves, but couldn’t stop looking at them. That there was a fire burning somewhere deep inside him that I could never see, never extinguish. I didn’t know the extent of it, but I should have found out, I suppose. I was afraid to push too much, afraid of what I might find.”
Myklan drew himself back to a seated position. His eyes were rimmed with red, and sand coated his face where tears had dampened it. “Yes,” he said, more composed now. “I’m sorry, Solyara. My Rieve, my Pietrus, I am so sorry. But it’s all true.”
He pointed a quivering finger at Aric. “You … yes, I am your father. But it is not true that I abandoned you, although I admit, to my shame, that I did your mother.”
“How can that be?” Aric asked.
“You must have known, all these years, that you’ve had a secret benefactor. Someone looking out for your interests, interceding from time to time. Gifts, financial assistance. Your smithy …”
“That was you all along?”
“None other.”
“I thought … never mind. I never dreamed it was my own father, doing those things.”
“It’s true, boy,” Tunsall said, “that Myklan’s the one who recommended I commission Rieve’s sword from you. He spoke highly of your work.”
“I had means,” Myklan added. “I knew you were there, knew your mother was gone. You needed help, and I was able to help. I never hated you, Aric. Keyasune, yes, by the end, but mostly myself.”
The rest of it, Aric had figured out on his own, just from seeing the mark on Myklan’s face and knowing his history through the knife.
But this … this came as a shock.
More than that. He felt sick. He felt like he had been stabbed in the gut.
He had told himself it was the Shadow King. If not him, then some wealthy stranger, who had taken an interest in him for reasons he could not fathom. There had never been any clue, any hint that it had been his own father doing those things.
He wondered, if he had known that, if he would have found a way to refuse those gifts. Without someone’s interference—Myklan’s, as it happened—he might be a blacksmith’s apprentice. Instead, the shop’s owner had handed it over to him, without hesitation. Paid off, Aric had learned. Now he knew who had paid him. Myklan wasn’t particularly frightening—or wasn’t, unless to human men in the company of elf women—but he had plenty of wealth to spread around.
He owed Myklan, it was that simple.
He hated the man. The idea that Myklan was his father, and had left his mother in her time of need, and had murdered people through some bizarre compulsion, made him want to pluck his own eyes out so he wouldn’t have to see his closest friends staring at him. He didn’t want to look at his father. Hot tears stung his own cheeks, and he turned away from the others and swiped a hand roughly over his eyes.
Myklan was a liar and a killer. Aric had killed, too—these last few days he had killed many, had lost himself in killing, come to think it was something he was good at. Was that inherited from his father?
But Myklan was a liar and killer who had taken an interest in his son, albeit from a distance. Who had gone out of his way to help Aric. Could he be entirely hateful? He told himself it was necessary.
That was a question Aric could not answer. Someday, perhaps. Not tonight. Not while he burned with rage.
“It’s true, and Pietrus, I am sorry that you were blamed for my crimes. I never meant for that to happen. I tried to control myself—as Aric said, I tried to resist, but I just couldn’t. There’s something inside me, and it drives me to do these things, and if I could cut it out with a knife I would happily do so.”
“You need to make amends,” Solyara said. “You can’t let them blame Pietrus for this. Or ruin everyone’s life because of what you’ve done. Bad enough you’ve ruined your own.”
“I … I know,” Myklan said. “I will. When we get back to the city. While Sheridia is helping them battle … whatever it is. I’ll go to Djena, I’ll tell her … I’ll tell her everything. I swear it.”
Aric took some comfort in that. Rieve and her family would be allowed to return to their home, their lives. There would be a scandal, of course. But if Myklan was willing to take the blame, then the others might get past it.
The conversation tapered off. No one, Aric included, wanted to press it anymore. People settled down under blankets, between the twin blazes that held off the night but could do nothing against the darkness in men’s hearts. No one spoke to Aric, not even Ruhm. He was alone again, here in the company of those he’d considered friends. He had seen the truth and spoken it, that was his crime—that, perhaps, combined with being half-elf. Being the event that had, after all, driven Myklan to murder.
He wasn’t surprised that no one came near him, no one accidentally brushed him as they settled under their furs. Before they reached Nibenay, if they did, the others would probably find some reason to leave the group, not to help him battle Kadya and Tallik, after all.
It would be Aric’s fight in the end. One individual, trying to make a difference, despite the odds.
Quiet sobs erupted here and there during the night, and Aric doubted anyone would get much sleep. But, to his own surprise, he drifted off quickly, while Corlan stood guard.
Corlan’s head drooped toward his chest. He was in danger of falling asleep before his turn on guard was over. The breakneck trip from Nibenay to catch Rieve, then captivity in the raiders’ fort and the wild escape—these things had sapped the strength from him. Activating his psionocus had taken more energy than he had expected, as well. But someone had to stay awake.