“Is she torturing him?” Reva asked.
“Nothing so vulgar,” he replied. “At least not until it becomes necessary. Lady Veliss is skilled in the concoction of certain herbal mixtures that can have a loosening effect on the tongue, and also the mind, which makes the questioning fairly tricky. My counsellor’s manner can be somewhat . . . unsubtle, at times. But she is loyal to this fief, and to me. Have no doubt.”
“I don’t like the way she looks at me.”
Lord Mustor laughed as he poured the remaining wine into his glass. “Take it as a compliment. She’s very choosy.”
Reva found this was a topic she didn’t wish to explore further and reached out to touch her fingers to the sword’s hilt. “You saved it,” she said. “Kept it. I should thank you for that.”
He frowned in puzzlement. “Your great-grandfather’s sword has been hanging on the practice-room wall for as long as I can remember. I was curious as to why you should go to such lengths to steal it.”
“Great-grandfather?” She groaned, withdrawing her hand. “I thought . . .” I have come so far, for nothing.
“You thought this belonged to Hentes?” His eyebrows rose in understanding. “The sword of the Trueblade. A great and holy relic indeed. I wish I had it.”
“You do not?”
“Lost in the High Keep when he died. Vanished by the time it occurred to me to retrieve it. I would have asked Al Sorna to force those dungeon rats in his regiment to give it up, but my stock wasn’t particularly high at the time.”
“All a waste then,” she said, voice soft. “I have travelled so many miles, lying, hurting and killing along the way. All in search of something that can’t be found.”
“The priest. He set you on this path?”
“He sent me to die. I see it now. Al Sorna was right. I was to be the new martyr, the rallying cry for the reborn Sons of the Trueblade. That’s what the priest made me, ever since I was old enough to walk, he raised me to be a corpse.”
“Do you remember nothing before, nothing of your grandparents?”
“There are . . . images of other people, faces I knew before his. I think they were kind. But they always seemed a dream. And he was so very real, his every word the Father’s truth. Except he was a liar. What does that mean, Uncle? What of the Father’s love now?” Tears were coming again and she was obliged to use the lace cuffs of her ridiculous dress to wipe them away.
Her uncle drained his glass and waved it at a servant who trotted off to fetch another bottle. “Allow me to impart a secret, my wonderful niece.” He leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper. “I may cultivate the image of a godless sinner, but I have never doubted that the Father’s gaze rests upon me. I feel it, every day, a great and terrible weight . . . of disappointment.”
She found she couldn’t contain the laugh, mirth and tears mixing on her face.
“But there’s more,” he went on. “Who but the Father could bring me such a great gift? A saviour and a niece on the very night assassins come to kill me. Tell me you do not see His hand in this, and I’ll not believe you.”
He turned at the sound of the main gate opening. “Ah, it seems my counsellor’s gift has arrived.”
Reva rose in alarm at the sight of the approaching group, four guards, pushing a broad-shouldered youth ahead of them. She ran forward as they came to a halt, Arken sporting a blue-black bruise under his eye. “What have you done to him?”
“Apologies, my lord,” the guard sergeant said as Mustor sauntered over. “The boy saw us coming and jumped from the inn window. Wouldn’t listen to reason.”
Reva touched a hand to Arken’s bruise, wincing. “I told you not to wait.”
He gave a sheepish grimace. “Didn’t want to go to the Reaches on my own.”
The Fief Lord coughed in expectation. “It seems,” Reva said, “we’ll be staying with my uncle after all.”
They gave her a maid, a quiet woman with mercifully few questions, but a keenness to her gaze making Reva suspect her principal duty consisted of providing reports to Lady Veliss. She was given more dresses and a suite of rooms on the floor below those her uncle shared with his counsellor. She wondered if there was any significance to the fact that Arken was housed in a separate wing.
“He’s just my friend,” she had insisted in answer to the Fief Lord’s query over breakfast the next day.
“An Asraelin friend,” he pointed out.
“Just like Lady Veliss,” she returned.
“Which gives me a wealth of experience in fending off the jibes of those in this fief who still hunger for independence. If you are to be my acknowledged niece, a certain . . . discretion will be required.”
She chose to ignore the obvious irony of being lectured on discretion by so famous a whore chaser. “Acknowledged niece?”
“Yes. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“I . . . don’t know.” In fact she had little notion of what course to follow next. The priest was a lie, the sword a myth, and the Father’s love . . . “I thought I might journey to the Northern Reaches. I have friends there.”
“Al Sorna, you mean.” There was a sourness to his voice that told her she had finally found someone not in awe of her former tutor. “I don’t think I like the notion of my niece in proximity to that man. Trouble finds him with far too much regularity.”
“So I am your prisoner, now? Kept here to do your bidding.”
“You are free to go where you wish. But don’t you want to stay a while with your lonely old uncle?”
Reva was puzzling over an answer when the Lady Veliss arrived to join them. Breakfast was usually eaten in the large dining hall with the portraits on the walls. Veliss and the Fief Lord had a curious habit of sitting at opposite ends of the long table, obliging them to converse in shouts.
“Any more intelligence to impart, counsellor?” Mustor called to her as she sat down to a plate of bacon, eggs and mushrooms.
“Sadly our prisoner contrived to expire under questioning,” she shouted back, shaking out her napkin. “Too much drum-weed in the mix. All I managed to extract were a few ramblings about some great and powerful ally, able to match the Darkness that perpetuates the Heretic Dominion.” She shook her head. “These fanatics grow ever more deluded.” She cast a critical gaze over Reva. “You’ll need to change, love. Something more formal, and pleasing. It’s the Father’s Day, and we have a service to attend.”
“Service?”
“The date of Alltor’s first prophecy approaches,” her uncle said. “Three weeks hence. The Reader himself will conduct a service in the cathedral on each Father’s Day until then.”
“Services are a perversion of the Ten Books,” Reva said, in remembrance rather than conviction. “No rituals are stipulated in the books. The truly loved need no empty ceremony from the venal church.”
“Did the priest teach you that?” he asked.
She nodded. “And much more.”
“Then perhaps there may be some wisdom to the Sons’ delusions. In any case, perversion or not, I would greatly appreciate your attendance. I think the Reader will find you most interesting.”
She tried on four dresses before finding one Veliss approved of, a black tight-bodiced contrivance with lace sleeves and a high collar. “It itches,” Reva grumbled as they formed a procession before the main gate. A squad of guards lined up on either side and they started forward at a sedate walk, making their way through the gate and into the square beyond.
“Power comes at a price, love,” Veliss replied through bared teeth, maintaining the smile she offered to the townsfolk lining the square.
“What power?”
“All power. The power to rule, to kill or, in your case this fine morning, the power to incite the lust of the old goat you’re about to meet.”