“Would it be simpler on you if I disappeared?”
“Now you ask that?” Cutter asked from the bench opposite them, not bothering to keep his voice down.
The watchmen glanced at him.
“I invited you to stay on my land for as long as you wish,” Jev said quietly, ignoring their guards, “and that invitation stands. You’ve spent years working with the army. You deserve a peaceful place to rest in our kingdom. Even if the common man doesn’t know that yet.” His father didn’t know it yet either, but he would soon. Jev held back a frown. To think, a few months ago, the only thing he’d dreaded about coming home was having to discuss the details of his brother’s death with the old man.
“He didn’t answer the question,” Cutter observed.
“I noticed that,” Lornysh said dryly.
“It would have been simpler if you’d been wearing a hood when you walked off the ship,” Jev said, “but at this point, I’d appreciate it if you stuck around. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I may need an ally or two.”
Especially if his father denied him access to the only home he’d ever known, which might happen, given his father’s feelings about elves. And if Grandmother Visha was there, she would be even worse. She would offer freshly baked cakes and cookies to Jev while screaming obscenities at Lornysh, seeing nothing odd about doing both at the same time.
“Hm,” Lornysh said.
The steam wagon turned off the main road, and Jev’s stomach flip-flopped in his belly. He watched the cottages, shops, and smithies they rolled past, the buildings leased from the Dharrow family by commoners who traded their labor and a portion of their crops or wares for reduced rent and protection from invaders. Jev thought he recognized a few familiar faces, but he didn’t call out or try to draw attention.
As they left the village, Jev did his best to muster his courage, reminding himself that he’d fought countless times and commanded two different companies during his years in the army. It wasn’t right for his knees to go weak at the idea of standing up to his father. Sometimes, he wished he had a little more of the flippancy and irreverence his brother had been known for. Vastiun had never cared if Father was angry or disappointed with him. It hadn’t bothered him at all, especially as they’d gotten older. Jev wasn’t sure why he’d always cared so much, tried so hard to do what was honorable and expected of him, to be the appropriate eldest son. To please a man who’d never been pleased by anything, or so it seemed. During Father’s tirades, Vastiun had simply rattled his luck charms and run off into town to do as he pleased. He’d—
Jev straightened and gripped the edges of the bench. “By all four dragon founders, could that be it?” he whispered.
Only Lornysh, with his fine elven hearing, looked at him.
Jev didn’t explain. He was already lost in the past, remembering the night his brother had died, the spearhead lodged in his guts, his cries of pain and Jev’s shouts for someone to find a healer. But the healer had come too late. Vastiun had died in his arms, having never fully explained why he’d joined the army so many years into the war and requested to be sent to Taziira. He’d mentioned something about a girl back home, but he’d been oddly elusive when Jev had asked him for details.
“What is it?” Lornysh asked.
“You never knew my brother,” Jev murmured, almost wishing Lornysh or Cutter had been there that night, so he would have someone else with him who could verify the memories of his death. Or rather, his memories of the next morning when they had burned Vastiun’s body in a pyre, refusing to bury it in enemy territory. Before that, Jev had removed his brother’s weapons and also the rings and luck charms he’d always worn on his wrists. Vastiun had started collecting them as a boy, and his wrists had been so loaded with them by the time of his death that he’d rattled when he walked.
Had there been an ivory one? Jev thought he remembered something like that. Not eye-shaped, as he had been imagining from Zenia’s description, but the shape of a tree trunk with an eye looking out from a hole in the side. Could it be what the Water Order was looking for? One of Vastiun's luck charms?
It seemed a stretch, but Jev couldn’t think of anything else he’d come across that might fit the description. But why would Vastiun have stolen some artifact from one of the Orders? It was true that Vastiun had worried less about upholding the Code and obeying their father than Jev, but he had still been a good man. A moral man. Sometimes, he’d mouthed off to Father and anyone else who told him what to do, but he’d never broken the law in any serious way.
“He died the year before I joined your company, as I recall,” Lornysh said, a prompt perhaps.
Jev sat back against the frame of the wagon, the wood hard against his spine. Should he explain here? No, not with the watchmen within earshot.
“Yes. I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about later.” Jev made a point of not looking at the watchmen. They had turned away, but they had also stopped talking. He didn’t need magic to know they were listening. “After I talk to my father.”
A conversation he had been dreading but that might solve this problem. After removing Vastiun’s valuable and precious belongings from his body and his pack, Jev had mailed them home with his latest intelligence reports. He’d addressed the package to his father, certain the army would send it along to Dharrow Castle. Those charms might be hanging from a peg in his brother’s room right now.
The wagon came to a stop, the pond just visible beside the road. The nervous sensation returned to Jev’s stomach. They had arrived.
The watchmen hopped out, not stopping Jev when he followed. He was aware of Cutter and Lornysh climbing down behind him and their escorts fingering their weapons uneasily, but Jev didn’t wait for permission to leave the wagon. He strode toward the massive stone structure that had housed Dharrows for almost a thousand years.
The drawbridge was down, as it always was, water from the pond siphoned away to create a moat around the castle. A few trees swayed in the breeze wafting up from the sea a couple of miles below, but as Jev had told Lornysh, the land was mostly cleared around the castle and the pond. Cows munched grass on a slope on the far side.
Not only had little changed since Jev walked away ten years earlier, but he was fairly certain the cows had been in the same spot. He might have found comfort in returning to the home he remembered, if not for the tense relationship he’d always had with his father. He distinctly remembered being relieved when his father had informed him he would be going off to war. Even if Jev had never believed in the war, it had been an excuse—an order—to leave, and he’d been ready for that.
As he crossed the drawbridge, Jev thought of his mother for the first time in ages. He hadn’t seen her since he’d been ten and had no idea if she was still alive or, if she was, where she was. Things had been less tense between him and his father when she’d still been around, but he’d long since stopped feeling nostalgia about those times—or wishing she would return.
“Is that Jev Dharrow?” a voice cried from the courtyard ahead. Laughter rang out over the gurgle of the wyvern fountain in the center. “Dear cousin, your own father won’t recognize you. You look like an ape.”
“Because of the beard or just in general?” Jev paused, turning as Wyleria rushed toward him, holding up her skirts so they didn’t drag on the flagstone walkway.
“Can it be some of both?” She grinned at him, and he experienced a strange moment where she seemed the fifteen-year-old girl she’d been when he left instead of the twenty-five-year-old woman she was now. “You’ve gotten old,” she added. “You were just an apeling before.”
“That’s not a word.”
“Unless they trained you to be a scribe in the army, I don’t believe you’d know.” Her grin widened as she reached him, and she abandoned her skirts to wrap her arms around him.
Though he ached to find and question his father, Jev returned the hug, warmed by her enthusiastic welcome. He hadn’t expected his cousins to be around. Father h
ad feuded with Mother’s sister for years after Mother disappeared, and for a long time, Jev’s cousins hadn’t been welcome anywhere on the land. Only Grandmother Visha had stayed from Mother’s side of the family, either because Father had no qualm with her or because she’d been made guardian of the Dharrow family’s heirloom dragon tears and it had been deemed undesirable to have her living elsewhere.
“Actually, they trained me to be a linguist,” Jev said. “I speak six languages, and apeling isn’t a word in any of them.”
“I suppose I should believe you. Vastiun was the one who always fibbed to me, not you.” She stepped back, her grin fading.
“He did do that,” Jev agreed quietly. “You look good, Wyleria. Are you and your mother living here now?”
“Yes. There were riots in the city earlier in the year. Uncle Heber, in his gruffest and surliest manner, insisted we come stay.”
“Ah. Is he around?” Jev hated to rush his reunion with his cousin, but it was possible Zenia had already been healed and was on her way out here. She had definitely seemed the determined sort.
“He should be here soon. I saw you get out of the wagon and sent one of the servants off on horseback to fetch him. He’s been cutting wood and repairing one of the barns out back.” Wyleria arched her dark eyebrows, a hint of bemusement in her eyes.
Jev merely nodded, not surprised in the least. The castle had a handful of servants, not the dozens that some zyndar families claimed, but Father did most of the work around the place himself. He was happy enough to let someone else cook and clean, but if something needed to be repaired or improved, he sprang to the task, claiming the nobility had gone soft, with so few zyndar doing anything except eating and shitting—he had a number of favorite expressions evoking that sentiment.
“By the way, Jev…” Wyleria poked him in the side. “Care to explain why a city watch wagon brought you home? You didn’t get drunk and start busting up furniture in a pub as soon as you got off that ship, did you?” Her grin returned at this image.
“There hasn’t been time. I had been dreaming of getting drunk and sunburned on a beach, but…” Jev heard hoofbeats and trailed off.
“Most people don’t dream of sunburns.”
“I was a long time in those frigid northern forests.” Jev turned as his father rode in on a great brown stallion, trailed by a servant Jev didn’t know, the man riding a gray mare.
Wiry and lean, Father never looked that intimidating at a distance, but up close, he had a presence that always made him seem tall and powerful, not a man to be angered. His short hair had gone from dark gray to white, but he still appeared hale, his gray eyes keen and bright above his trimmed beard. He dismounted with easy grace and handed the reins to the servant.
Jev snorted when he realized he’d come to a rigid attention stance, his heels together, his back straight, and his chin up, but he didn’t break it. Maybe it was appropriate. He’d always felt like a private reporting to a general when facing his father, and as odd as it seemed after ten years of being an officer himself, his feelings hadn’t changed. Maybe it had to do with the fact that his father had been a general, battling the desert nomads to the south when Chief Sirak had united them, determined to take the kingdom’s sea ports and lush agricultural valleys.
“Good to see you, boy.” Father stepped forward and lifted his hands.
For a startled moment, Jev thought the old man might hug him. But Father gripped his arms briefly, then let his hands fall. Formality was the order of the day, as it always had been.
“And you, Father.” Jev bowed slightly.
“It’s regretful that the campaign was unsuccessful.”
Father shook his head, and Jev braced himself, expecting him to talk about how successful his campaigns had been and how soldiers had been better trained and more disciplined in his day. As if those scruffy desert nomads had been anywhere the equal of the Taziir elves.
“But it’s good that you’ve returned alive,” Father said.
Jev let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. It wasn’t exactly an effusive display of warmth and affection, but it was better than he had expected.
“Thank you, Father. It’s good to be back.” Jev was tempted to ask about Naysha and whether she and her husband were doing well, but his father wouldn’t be the best source of information.
Besides, Jev would have preferred gossip to straightforward information, a sullen part of him wanting to hear about how they argued and fought often and were on the verge of breaking up. But that was too petty to put into words. He should want her to be happy. He just couldn’t help but feel… He wasn’t even sure. Bitter, yes. But if she had left her husband, would he want her back? Ten years after they’d parted?
Jev shook his head. This wasn’t what he had come home to discuss with his father.
“You’ll stay?” Father asked. “Come to dinner? Your grandmother heard your ship would land today, and she’s been driving the cook crazy by taking over the ovens for all manner of baked goods. Some of the villagers and I are working on fixing a fence in the south thousand, and I could use some help in the morning. Big storm this past winter, and there are still repairs to be done.”
“I would be happy to help,” Jev said, though cutting wood and fixing a fence sounded tediously mundane after serving as an intelligence officer on the front, “but I do have a matter I need to resolve with the Water Order before I’m entirely free to do as I wish.” Even though he was innocent, he hated bringing this up, hated the idea that his father might believe he had done something dishonorable. “You saw the watchmen out front, sir?”
“Yes.” Father’s tone chilled.
Was he annoyed that they had presumed to come onto Dharrow land? Or that Jev was in trouble? Or had Father perhaps seen Lornysh?
“I’m being accused of stealing an artifact. I never did, of course.” Jev spoke quickly, the words almost tumbling over each other as he sought to explain before his father made any assumptions. “I thought it was all some error, that I’d been mistaken for someone else, but then I remembered the charms Vastiun wore and wondered if it was possible he’d somehow acquired something magical, perhaps by accident.” The last thing Jev wanted to do was malign his dead brother or insinuate anything, especially to their father. “The Water Order, or at least an inquisitor from within the temple’s ranks, seems to believe I have it or know something about it. Her name is Zenia Cham, and she, ah, may be up to the castle later.”
“An inquisitor?” Father spat onto the flagstones. “If she dares come up here, I’ll show her the moat.”
“She’s already irked with me, so that might not be a good idea.”
“In my father’s day, no watchman, inquisitor, or other servant of the Orders would dare question a zyndar. Zyndar honor was considered above reproach. It should still be considered above reproach.” Father spat again.
Jev, knowing his father had been questioned after Mother’s disappearance, suspected that anger was directed toward his own memories rather than indicative of any affront on Jev’s behalf.
“Yes, sir,” Jev said neutrally. “But the world is what it is now, right? I want to clear my name, and I would be happy to return this artifact to the Order if I can find it.”
He wondered if that was the only way to clear his name. If he had allowed Zenia to question him while using her magic, might that have absolved him of any taint of guilt? Maybe, maybe not. She hadn’t shown any respect for his rank in society and had even seemed irked by it—or by him—so she may have chosen not to see the truth so she could take pleasure in arresting a zyndar for punishment. He also didn’t know if she truly would have used mere magic to augment her interrogation or if physical means of persuasion would have been employed.
“Describe it,” Father said.
Jev did so, making sure only to use Zenia’s description, not one based on the charm—the artifact—he remembered shipping back along with Vastiun's other belongings. It was unfortunate that he c
ouldn’t detect magical items himself. If he could, he would have known back then if any of those charms had been extraordinary. But he couldn’t tell the difference between a true dragon tear and a knockoff being sold by an unscrupulous vendor.
“You don’t know how large it is?” Father asked. “Is it the size of one of Vastiun’s charms or the size of a house? Why didn’t you ask for more details?”
“If the Water Order thinks I can smuggle a house off the continent in my pocket, then they’re attributing me with a lot of skills.” Jev smiled.
Father frowned. He still had less appreciation for humor than one of those fences he liked to mend.
“As for the rest, the inquisitor wasn’t forthcoming. She seemed to be under the impression that she should be questioning me and not the other way around.”
“She.” Father’s lip curled.
Jev thought he might spit again, but he only ranted.
“When I was a boy, women weren’t allowed to do anything except scrub the halls in the temples. To have some bitter vindictive bitch as an inquisitor is deplorable.” Father shook his head.
Jev thought he was generalizing until he continued on.
“I’ve heard of that Cham woman. She’s taken down a lot of heinous criminals but also a lot of men and women from the nobility. She’s known to take special pleasure in that. You better watch out.”
“I’m hoping if I can find the artifact and hand it to her, I won’t have to.”
Assuming she didn’t hold a grudge. Jev hoped that she would forgive him—or, more importantly, forgive Lornysh—for that attack.
“Do you know what made Vastiun decide to join the army years into the war?” Jev added. “He was vague about it when he showed up, but I got the impression it was about a woman or some conflict at home.”
Father’s eyes narrowed. “He was fooling around, doing nothing with his life. I told him to grow up and be a man.”