The voice from outside the door strengthened. “Please, I’m Van’s sister - let me at least talk to my aunt - “
Savil started, and strode quickly across Vanyel’s room, pulling open the door. There could only be one of Vanyel’s sisters likely to show up on her doorstep at this point, the one that had fostered out in hopes of a career in the Guard.
“Let her in, Donni,” Savil said - and blinked in surprise. The girl in the doorway could have been herself at seventeen or eighteen.
God help her- no wonder she went for the Guard, Savil thought irrelevantly. She’s got that damned Ashkevron nose.
Evidently the same thought was running through the girl’s mind. “You must be my Aunt Savil,” she said forthrightly, standing at what was almost “attention” in the doorway. “You have the nose. I’m Lissa. Can I help?”
Savil decided that she liked this blunt girl. “Perhaps, I don’t know yet,” she replied. “First, Lissa, come in and tell me what you’ve heard.”
Lissa turned away from the garden door with a shudder. “He looks like he’s been dragged through the nine hells facedown,” she said.
“And at that he looks better than he did three days ago,” Savil replied. She would have said more, but there was another pounding on the suite door and a voice she knew only too well rumbled angrily when Donni answered it.
“Like bloody hell she’s too busy,” Lord Withen Ashkevron snarled. “I didn’t bloody ride my best horse to foundering to be put off with a’too damned busy!’ Now where in hell is she?”
Savil, with Lissa at her side, strode across to the door, flung it open, and stood facing Withen with her back poker-straight, feet slightly apart, arms crossed over her chest.
“What do you want, Withen?” she asked flatly, narrowing her eyes in mingled annoyance and apprehension.
“What the hell do you think I want?” he growled, ignoring Lissa and Donni as if they weren’t there, placing his fists on his hips, and taking an aggressive, wide-legged stance. “I want to know what the hell you’ve been doing with the boy I sent you! I sent him down here for you to make a manout of him, not turn him into a perverted little catamite!” His face darkened and his voice rose with every word. “I - “
“ Ithink that’s more than enough, Withen,” she snapped, cutting him off before he could build up to whatever climax he had in mind. “I, I, I - dammit, you blustering peabrain, is thatall you ever think of? Yourself? Vanyel almost diedfour days ago, he almost died againthree days ago, and he could die orgo mad in the next candlemark, and all youcan think of is that he did something your back-country prejudices don’t approve of! Gods above and below, you can’i even call him by his bloody name, just ‘the boy’!”
She advanced on him with such anger in her face that he actually fell back a pace, alarm and surprise chasing themselves across his eyes. Lissa moved with her, and stood beside her with every muscle tensed, and her fists clenched into hard knots.
“You come storming in here when we’ve maybe - maybe -got him stable, without so much as a ‘please’ or a ‘may I,’ you don’t even ask if he’s in any shape to put two words together in a sensible fashion! Oh, no, all youcan do is scream that I‘ vemade him into a catamite when you sent him to be made into a man. A man!”She laughed, a harsh cawing sound that clawed its way up out of her throat. “My gods -what the hell did you think he was? Tell me, Withcn, what kind of a manwould send his son into strange hands just because the poor thing didn’t happen to fit his image of masculinity?”
Savil ran out of things to say - but Lissa hadn’t.
“What kind of a manwould let a brutal bully break his son’s arm for no damned reason?”the girl snarled. “What kind of a manwould drive his son into becoming an emotional eunuch because every damned time the boy looked for a little bit of paternal love he got slapped in the face? What kind of a manwould take anyone’sword over his son’s with no causeto everthink the boy was a liar?’’ Lissa faced down her father as if he had become her enemy. “You tell me, Father! What right do you have to demand anythingof him? What did you ever give him but scorn? When did you evergive him a single thing he really needed or wanted? When did you ever tell him he’d done well? When did you eversay you loved him?”
Withen backed up another two paces, his back against the wall beside the door, his expression that of someone who has just been poleaxed.
Savil found her tongue again. “A man- may all the gods give you what you deserve, you fathead! What kind of a man would care more for his own reputation than his son’s life?’’She was backing him into the corner now, unleashing on Withen all the pain and frustration and anger she’d been keeping bottled up inside her over the past week. He had gone pale - and started to try to say something, but she cut him off.
“Let me tell you this, Withen,” she hissed. “Everything that Vanyel’s become, youhad a hand in making - and mostly because youdidn’t want a son, you just wanted a little toy copy of yourself to parade around so that people could congratulate you on your bedroom prowess. You helped make him what he is - gave him a set of values so distorted it’s a wonder he even recognized love when he saw it, and taught him that he had to keep everything he felt secret because adults couldn’t be trusted. And nowI have one boy dead, and one a hair from dying, and all you care about is that somebody mightthink you weren’t manlyenough to father manlysons! Oh, get out of here, get out of my sight - “
She turned away from him before he could see the tears in her eyes. Lissa put a steadying hand on her shoulder and glared at her father as if she would be perfectly happy to take a piece out of him if he said one wrong word.
“S-s-savil - I - I - “ he stammered. “They said - but I didn’t believe - is Vanyel - “
“One wrong word, one wrong move, and he will die, Withen,” she said flatly, her eyes shut tightly as she reestablished control over herself. “One wrong thoughtalmost killed him. He slit his wrists because he discovered that someone he trusted believed that his lovewas the reason Tylendel died. Are you pleased with what you made? It was certainly the honorablething for him to do, wasn’t it?”
“I - I - “
“I am very gratified to be able to tell you that he isn’tyours anymore, Withen, he’s mine. He’s been Chosen - ifhe lives that long, he’ll be a Herald-trainee, and as such, he is mycharge. You’ve forfeited any claim on him. So you can have what you’ve always wanted - little Mekeal can be your heir-designate, and you can wash your hands of Vanyel with a clear conscience.”
Withen flinched at her pitilessly accurate words, and seemed to almost shrink in size.
“Savil - I didn’t mean - I didn’t want - “
“You didn’t?” She raised an ironic eyebrow.
He winced. “Savil, can I - see him? I won’t hurt him, I - dammit, he’s still my son!”
“Lissa, do you think we should?”
Lissa looked at her father as one looks at a not-particularly-trustworthy stranger. “I don’t know that he can behave himself.’’
Withen’s face darkened. “You ungrateful little - “