I wondered stupidly what she meant for a moment before realising, and feeling a terrible sadness fall slowly on my soul, as though a great shroud had been dropped inside me, settling with a sorrowful, implacable inevitability over all my hopes and dreams, obliterating them for ever.
She put one hand to my cheek, and her fingers were still warm and dry and tender and firm at once, and her skin, I swear, smelled sweet. “You are very precious to me, dear Oelph.”
I heard those words and my heart sank farther, and steeper.
“Am I, mistress?”
“Of course.” She drew away from me and looked down at the smashed goblet. “Of course you are.” She settled back in her seat and took a deep breath, pushing a hand through her hair, smoothing down her gown and attempting to button its yoke. Her fingers would not do as she willed. I longed, from far away, to help her, or rather not to help her with that task, but eventually she gave up anyway, and just pulled the long collar to. She looked up into my face, drying her cheeks with her fingers. “I think I need to sleep, Oelph. Will you excuse me, please?”
I lifted my goblet from the floor and put it on the workbench. “Of course, mistress. Is there anything I can do?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No, there is nothing you can do.” She looked away.
20. THE BODYGUARD
“I told the boy a story of my own.”
“You did?”
“Yes. It was a pack of lies.”
“Well, all stories are lies, in a way.”
“This was worse. This was a true story turned into a lie.”
“You must have felt there was a reason to do that.”
“Yes, I did.”
“What was the reason you felt that way?”
“Because I wanted to tell the story, but I could not tell it truly to a child. It is the only story I know worth telling, the story I think most about, the story that I live again and again in my dreams, the story that feels as if it needs to be told, and yet a child could not understand it, or if they could, it would be an inhuman thing to tell them it.”
“Hmm. It doesn’t sound like a story you have ever told me.”
“Shall I tell it to you now?”
“It sounds like a painful story to tell.”
“It is. Perhaps it is painful to hear, too.”
“Do you want to tell it to me?”
“I don’t know.”
The Protector returned to his palace. His son still lived, though his grip on life seemed tenuous and frail. Doctor BreDelle took over from Doctor AeSimil but he was no more able to determine what was wrong with the boy than he was able to treat him successfully. Lattens drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes unable to recognise his father or his nurse, on other occasions sitting up in bed and pronouncing himself feeling much better and almost recovered. These periods of lucidity and apparent recovery grew further and further apart, however, and the boy spent more and more time curled up in his bed, asleep or in a halfway stage between sleep and wakefulness, eyes closed, limbs twitching, muttering to himself, turning and moving and jerking as though in a fit. He ate almost nothing, and would drink only water or very diluted fruit juice.
DeWar still worried that Lattens might be being poisoned in some subtle way. He arranged with the Protector and the superintendent of an orphans’ home that a set of twins be brought to the palace to act as tasters for the boy. The two identical boys were a year younger than Lattens.
They were slightly built and a poor start in life had left them with delicate constitutions which made them prone to any passing illness. Nevertheless, they thrived while Lattens weakened, happily finishing off each of the meals he barely tasted, so that by the proportion consumed it might have seemed to a casual observer that it was he who tasted the food for them.
For a few days after their even more hurried return to Crough, UrLeyn and those in his immediate party had out-distanced the news from Ladenscion, and there was a frustrating lack of new intelligence from the war. UrLeyn stamped about the palace, unable to settle to anything, and found little solace even in the harem. The younger girls in particular only made him annoyed with their simpering attempts at sympathy, and he spent more time with Perrund than with all of them, just sitting talking on most occasions.
A hunt was arranged, but the Protector called it off just before it started, worried that the chase might take him too far away from the palace and the sick bed of his son. He attempted to apply himself to the many other affairs of state, but could find little patience for courtiers, provincial representatives or foreign dignitaries. He spent longer in the palace library, reading old accounts of history and the lives of ancient heroes.
When news did eventually arrive from Ladenscion it was equivocal. Another city had been taken but yet more men and war machines had been lost. A few of the barons had indicated that they wanted to discuss terms that would let them remain loyal to Tassasen in theory and through token tribute, but retain the independence they had achieved through their rebellion. As generals Ralboute and Simalg understood that this was not a course the Protector wished to pursue, more troops were called for. It was to be hoped that as this news had undoubtedly crossed with the fresh soldiers already on their way to the war, this last request was redundant. This intelligence had been delivered in a coded letter and there seemed little to debate or discuss as a result of it, but UrLeyn convened a full war cabinet in the map-hall nevertheless. DeWar was invited to attend but commanded not to speak.
“Perhaps the best thing would be for you to take yourself away, brother.”
“Take myself away? What? Go on an improving tour? Visit some old aunt in the countryside? What do you think you mean, ‘take myself away’?”
“I mean that perhaps the best thing would be for you to be somewhere else,” RuLeuin said, frowning.
“The best thing, brother,” UrLeyn said, “would be for my son to make a full and swift recovery, the war in Ladenscion to end immediately in total victory, and my advisors and family to stop suggesting idiocies.”
DeWar hoped RuLeuin would hear the annoyance in his brother’s voice and take the hint, but he kept on. “Well then,” he said, “the better thing, I should have said, rather than the best, might be to go to Ladenscion, perhaps. To take on all the responsibilities of the war’s command and so to have less room in your mind for the worry the boy’s illness must be causing you.”
DeWar, sitting just behind UrLeyn at the head of the map table, could see some of the others looking at RuLeuin with expressions of disapproval and even mild scorn.
UrLeyn shook his head angrily. “Great Providence, brother, what do you think I am? Were either of us raised to be so lacking in feeling? Can you simply turn off your emotions? I cannot, and I would treat with the gravest suspicion anybody who claimed they could. They would not be a man, they would be a machine. An animal. Providence, even animals have emotions.” UrLeyn glanced round the others gathered about the table, as though daring any of them to assert such coldness for themselves. “I can’t leave the boy like this. I did try to, as you may recall, and I was called back. Would you have me go and then be worrying about him every day and night? Would you have me there in Ladenscion while my heart was here, taking command but unable to give it my full attention?”
RuLeuin finally seemed to see the wisdom in remaining silent. He pressed his lips together and studied the table top in front of him.
“We are here to discuss what to do about this damned war,” UrLeyn said, gesturing at the map of Tassasen’s borders spread out in the centre of the great table. “The condition of my son keeps me here in Crough but other than that it has no bearing on our meeting. I’ll thank you not to mention it again.” He glared at RuLeuin, who still stared tight-upped at the table. “Now, has anyone anything to say which might actually prove useful?”