The door closed behind my escorts, leaving the two of us alone, but Tomas did not acknowledge my presence. Well, two could play. I stood unspeaking just where Garlos had left me, my hands folded primly.
But when Tomas turned around at last, the face I saw was not the one I expected. Pride was there, but no hatred.
His eyes were not scornful, but cloudy and troubled. “What are you doing here?” he said.
Perhaps I was mistaken. “None of your business.”
“Don’t start this again, Seri.”
“Pardon me, Your Grace. I am here because the Duke of Comigor, the Champion of Leire, has summoned me. I was given no choice in the matter.”
He clenched his fists. “Hand of Annadis, why can we not hold a reasonable conversation? You pride yourself so on rational behavior.”
“Tell me, Your Grace, how does one hold a rational conversation with a murderer? It’s a behavior I was never taught. Must I curtsy or is complete obeisance proper?”
Tomas reddened. “I saved your life—” Before the words left his tongue, he tried to recall them. “Oh, confound it all. We can’t get bogged down in the past. Let’s start again and try to be civil.” He took a breath. “Will you sit down? Can I send for wine? Something to eat?”
“I’ll stand, if you please. And I’ll take nothing from you.”
“Fine.” He fingered a pen that had been carelessly dropped onto the desk, disturbing its sterile order. “When I heard you were on the grounds, I decided it was time I spoke with you about this. It’s been on my mind for a long time, but there’s been no opportunity.”
“You know where I live, Tomas, and you well know where I can be found on the first day of autumn in each and every year.”
My brother clenched his jaw and snapped the pen, throwing it on the floor. I told myself to resist further goading for I was, indeed, immensely curious, and the J’Ettanni journal weighed heavy in my pocket. My brother stepped close, so stiff I wondered he could walk. I folded my arms. Feeble enough protection. But nothing would have prepared me for his words.
“Seri, I want you to come home.” He rushed ahead, giving me no time to recover from my astonishment. “I’ve gotten you a full pardon from Evard. Your parole will be satisfied. You’ll never have to do that… thing… again, if you’ll come back to Comigor.”
“You’re mad.” It was the only explanation.
“It’s not right, your living the way you do.”
“How dare you pass judgment on me! You know nothing of my life. You’ve never understood the least thing about me. Do you see my circumstances as yet another untidy blot upon your honor?”
“No! It’s not that. Look at yourself, Seri. How long has it been since last you looked?” Before I could protest, he grabbed my shoulders and propelled me to an ornately framed glass that hung among his displays.
It had been a very long time. I had to blink and sort out the image at first, for I had never realized how much Tomas and I resembled each other. But there was a world of difference, too. I could still see traces of the girl I had been, but my red-brown hair was dull, my complexion roughened by years in sun and wind, and my eyes had lines at the corners and knowledge in their depths that had never been reflected in my mirror at Comigor. And I was very shabby. My white shift was frayed at the neck and wrists, my tunic threadbare, my brown skirt faded, wrinkled, and not terribly clean. I looked altogether straggly and tired, like a garden gone wild.
“Does it offend you more that I’m poor, Tomas, or that I’m thirty-five?”
He didn’t answer, and I looked again at my brother’s reflection, seeing in his brown eyes something I’d not seen in them for years. Sarcasm and anger lost their purpose, leaving only the dregs of years and bitterness and too much sorrow. “Why ever would you believe that I would care what you think of me, or how I live, or what I do? Is it shameful that I eat only what I can grow or barter for or that I wear the same skirt every day of the year? And do you think those things should bother me enough that I would share a roof with my son’s murderer?”
He turned and walked away from me, rubbing the back of his neck with his long, powerful hand. “No. Those things have nothing to do with anything. So stupid to think I could do this without going back…” In a voice so soft I had to work to hear it, he said, “I dream, Seri. Bloody nightmares that have not left me since that day. Desolation and ruin. Fire. And sorcery. I see you with that knife in your back… and the child… oh, holy Annadis, the child… The dreams eat away at me until I feel I’m living in that horror, and my waking life is the dream.” He spun about and held up his hand, his eyes closed. “Don’t say anything yet.”
He took a breath and continued. “You may never believe me, Seri, but I was convinced—absolutely—that what I did was right. That all of it was for the best… for the family… for you. I’ve thought that the dreams haunted me because I was weak, not because I did anything wrong. But in the last few days, my dreams have gone away, vanished as if they’d never been. A mercy it seemed. But instead… It’s as if I’ve had no clear thought in fifteen years, and only now can I even begin to see what happened to us. To you. And now, if the dreams should return, I don’t know what I’ll do, for only the conviction that I was right kept them at bay. Then, on top of it all, I hear you’re at the gates today, and it’s like a madness in me that I can’t let you leave.”
I started to speak, but he interrupted again. “No. Not yet. Hear me out, for I don’t know what’s opened my eyes or loosened my tongue. I leave the city in three days. There’s been a challenge, a serious one, from some rebel chieftain in the west. I’m to take care of it, of course. It’s a strange and nasty situation, but I thought nothing of it until this other business came up. But now…”
His tongue would not form the words, but he was my brother… as close as a twin. I could read in him the thing he could not say. “You’re afraid, Tomas. Why?”
“I have a son, ten years old. I’m often away from Comigor for months at a time, and I’ve never thought twice about it. It is my duty. But this time…” He paced the length of the room before he could go on. “Maybe this is what happens when a soldier’s luck runs out—some say they know beforetime. The only thing that comes into my mind is to get you to Comigor to be with him, and then I could be easy.” He ended his pacing by the balcony doors and slammed his fist into the lintel so hard that it rattled the glass. “Damnation! I’m a lunatic.”
Magpies screeched in the invisible garden. A fountain splattered and gurgled. Fingering the telltale bulge in my pocket, I considered my brother’s incredible confession. I did not believe that he was mad.
“Tomas, where is Darzid?”
My brother turned, gaping at me as if I had asked him the price of fish in the market. “Why?”
“Just answer me.”
“He’s gone off to Valleor on urgent business—family business—with some old friend, or cousin, or something.”
“And did the change in your dreams happen before he left?”
“No. What are you getting at?”
“After he left, then.”
“No—well, not exactly. It was only when I came back here from Comigor. Darzid had been down near Fensbridge shopping for a new horse when he got called away. He has nothing to do with any of this. He’d tell me I was a fool to speak with you.”
Shopping for a new horse. Not hunting a missing groom. One by one I placed Tomas’s words into the puzzle written in my head, but I could not yet read the answer. “Did he know you were coming to Montevial?”
“No. My business here came up suddenly. Seri—”
“Don’t interrupt. Has he ever left you for so long before?”