Noble Beginnings (20 page)

When he looked finally looked up again,
though, he thought Myriel looked upset. She had moved to the window
and was staring out of it, but the grip of her hand on the
windowsill looked slightly too tight to be entirely natural.

"What are you thinking, Myriel?" He asked
softly.

He had thought he'd seen a glimmer in her
eye, but when she turned to look at him, she wore only a soft, sad
smile.

"I understand, my lord," she said frankly. "I
grew up knowing that if I was not useful, if I was not clever and
quick and kind, no one would want me and I would die on the
streets…. alone."

Dorran thought that he had never understood
another human as thoroughly as he did Myriel in that moment. He
swallowed back the lump that tried to form in his throat and
blinked at the telltale prickle in his eyes as he looked briefly at
the coverlet on his bed. Imagining a little girl, especially one
who grew up to be as wonderful as Myriel, accepting such harsh
thoughts as truth in the dead of night gave him a point of
comparison, and for a fleeting second, he thought of how sad it
was, that at six he had started the process of condemning himself
to death.

He knew better than to waste any time feeling
sorry for himself, though, so after that second he brushed the
feelings away. "Then you understand," he said quietly.

Myriel just nodded.

"I know it may sound strange," Dorran said,
trying for a conversational tone and mostly, he thought,
succeeding, "but actually taking over Farlan was never something I
imagined doing."

"Never?" Myriel asked curiously.

"No," he confirmed. "It wasn't that I didn't
understand how the succession worked, it's just that there would be
no way of knowing how long I would be gone in the war, and after
training for it all my life, there wasn't much of a chance I would
be much, if any good at politics." Dorran made a face. "I just
always preferred to imagine Addie taking over from me. Preferably
before I went anywhere near the title of Duke at all."

Myriel hummed quietly as she considered this.
"That's certainly not what I'd call common knowledge, my lord," she
offered finally.

He frowned. "Apparently not. Well, I'll have
to think about it...but in the meantime, you'll report this to
Mother, won't you? And possibly Addie and Nora as well?"

A strange look passed over Myriel's face.
"Report...?"

"Sure," he said easily. "You do that all the
time, don't you?"

"Not to your family members about each other,
no," Myriel said carefully.

"I'd imagine you've been telling them
everything we've talked about, though," he guessed.

The way Myriel's eyes darted upwards and to
the left made him believe that he had found the truth, even though
she showed no other tells. He noted privately, not for the first
time, that her eyes were very pretty indeed slightly delicately
round, and a muted shade of green that somehow managed to find a
sparkle even in the dimmest of light.

"Nevertheless," he said, smiling at her even
though he was still deep in thought, "do you think you could talk
to them about it for me? I..." He frowned. "I'm sure there's a way
I could explain it, but I haven't come up with it...and the less
time they think I've got aspirations of treason, the better it will
be for everyone, I think."

She caught his joking tone and gave him one
of her rare, natural smiles. "I'll be sure to do that, then."
Picking up her dustpan and rag from where she had left them atop
the mantelpiece, she curtsied casually to him on her way out.

He nodded politely in return purely on
reflex, his mind already turning over the beginnings of a plan.

CHAPTER XVIII

There was exactly a week left before the date
Nora had predicted for the King's arrival when Dorran asked Myriel
to summon two dozen of his best-known fighters to a clandestine
meeting in the middle of the night.

Ever since their conversation about what
Dorran wanted to do with his future, an idea had been slowly
gestating in the back of his mind. It had taken a day of skipping
training to do it, which had earned him some questioning, and even
a few disapproving looks, but he had found the historical
references he was looking for in Thea's private library. Then,
after researching his plan to his satisfaction, it took only a
restless night or two to reach his decision.

Now that he was looking at the confused and
more than a little apprehensive group of men in front of him,
ranging in age from a few years younger to a generation older than
himself, he was glad that his resolve was so steady as it was. But
he was operating, at least in part, on one of the pieces of wisdom
he'd received from training that had stuck, that soldiers fought
their best when under a leader who they trusted implicitly, not
only in terms of their abilities but also their morals and goals.
He wanted to provide the same basis of trust for these men, men
that would likely follow him for the rest of their lives and his
own, the closest he would ever come to brothers, that he himself
would want in a leader. They deserved better than a man they
believed might turn traitor in one, or five, or even twenty
years.

So he was going to prove his dedication to
them, and hopefully, at the same time, to his family and to his
people. Admittedly, this would prove something to himself as well,
but it was something slightly different from what he was trying to
prove to everyone else. They needed to know he was loyal to his
family; and as for Dorran, he needed to know that even if he didn't
reach it, he was at least planning for a future that extended well
past the beginning of adulthood.

For this show of loyalty, he'd picked one of
his mother's smaller private chambers, the main attractions of
which were, in this case, a small brazier in the corner which was
merrily flickering with embers by the time Dorran's guests had
settled themselves in the chairs he had helped Myriel to bring
upstairs, and the small, curtained alcove which it had been
Myriel's idea to include.

"Well," he began, feeling a little awkward,
"I'd like to thank you all for coming."

They murmured their acknowledgment, which
only made the awkward air increase. Growing frustrated, Dorran
shoved his self-consciousness to one side with an effort of will
and began.

"As you all know," he said, "I have freely
given away my rights as Thea's firstborn heir."

Some of the men nodded cautiously. Others
looked suspicious, and some looked downright nervous, but Dorran
tried to ignore the dubious reactions. "I forwent my right to the
crown of Farlan before it even had a Queen," he told them. "My
Mother, then the Duchess, asked me whether I would be willing to
lend my skills to her military instead of ruling. I agreed at
once." He looked from face to face. "But as the sole male heir to a
woman who has just created a Queendom, I have eventually realized
that I appear to the outside eye to be Farlan's weak point. In the
future, some may believe that they can tempt me into attempting to
rejoin the Kingdom by enticing me with the crown of Farlan. Others
may not take our goals seriously, believing that the inheritance of
our newborn will revert to the ownership of a male heir and end in
less than a generation. But that is not the country that Her
Majesty, my mother, is trying to create. It is not what she has
envisioned, and not what I have envisioned as her son.

"So," he concluded, "I would like to make a
show of my intention to follow Her Majesty, my mother, in her goals
to establish a matriarchal line. I consider myself a servant of
this tradition, no more, and I would like to use an old custom of
Farlan to demonstrate as much." From the sleeve of a formal doublet
that Myriel had insisted he wear, he pulled out a small square of
metal with a handle in the back, turning it over and over in his
fingers. "I intend to mark myself in eternal service to the Queen
of Farlan and her line, and I would ask you, my brothers in arms,
to be my witnesses."

He watched as their eyes widened throughout
the course of his speech, glittering in the light from the brazier
behind him. He tried to draw amusement from it, to distract him
from what was about to happen and how much it was probably going to
hurt.

"And," he added, "I have asked some others to
bear witness as well. Myriel, if you will?"

Myriel curtsied and drew aside the curtain in
the alcove to reveal the rest of Dorran's family: Thea, Adhara, and
Nora.

Their faces were impassive, revealing
nothing, but Dorran had not discussed his intentions with them
beforehand, and was not sure whether Myriel had, so he thought that
they might be concealing surprise or confusion. Other than that, he
wondered what they might be thinking. However, he kept his own face
expressionless as well as he gestured to Myriel to close the
curtain again. She did so, and then walked over to Dorran, who
placed the custom-made brand in her hand. "Will you heat it?" he
asked quietly. "It can get a bit warm around the edges, and I'm
worried about heating it unevenly."

She nodded. He suspected she felt almost as
nervous about this as he did, but that he couldn't tell whether or
not he was imagining it. "Of course," she whispered back.

She turned and began to heat the brand over
the fire.

"I'm planning to place the brand on my
forehead," Dorran said as he waited, "so that it will never be
something I can hide. My father and grandfather both taught me, in
life and in the manner of their death, that to be a man of Farlan
is to serve it as best one can. I intend to hold to that fully,
until my dying breath."

There was a long silence. Then a voice in the
back of the small room spoke up. "My lord...think you might let
that fine brand do its job more than once?"

Dorran met Tam's eyes in confusion for a
moment, not realizing what he meant; then he understood. "Oh," he
said, taken aback. "I...I didn't invite any of you because I was
expecting you to volunteer for this. I just wanted…"

"Yes, I know, boy." Tam's eyes sparkled in
the low light. "I just thought…perhaps our lovely new Queen might
benefit from a queen's guard. The king has a guard of his own,
doesn't he? And I should think our queen deserves yet better than
everything he has."

"I..." Dorran's mind raced as he considered
the proposal. "Well..." Abruptly he stopped talking, turned to the
curtain, and twitched it aside, falling into a kneeling position.
"Well, Mother?" he asked, his voice slightly pleading. "What do you
think?"

Thea was silent for only a moment while she
considered the request. "I would find it quite pleasing," she said
finally. "I would demand it of no one…but if a man would be willing
to pledge his life, loyalty, and blade to protecting me and mine
and helping me to do the same for the country of Farlan, I would
count it an honor to have them in my guard, and to bear in
brotherhood the mark chosen by my son."

Tam nodded, his gray beard bobbing slightly
with the movement. "In that case, Your Majesty...please allow me to
be the second member added to your guard, after your son."

Thea nodded her head in acquiescence, and
there was series of frantic mutterings in the ceremony's audience.
Dorran had not intended for this to be more than a short ceremony
marking him as a servant instead of a usurper, and now felt a
twinge of guilt for the pressure he had inadvertently placed on the
closest of his peers and friends.

There wasn't much time to regret it at the
moment, however. In the time that it had taken for Tam to make his
request and for the Queen to grant it, Myriel had brought the metal
in her hands to an appropriately skin-searing temperature. She held
it up, and as the whispers around the room began to fade, she
caught Dorran's eye and gave him a meaningful look.

He nodded at her, then twitched the curtain
back over the alcove, again shielding his family from view, and
stood before his companions. He kept his hands fastened tightly
around each other behind his back and knelt. Myriel moved so that
she was standing and looking down at him, the brand held carefully
in her right hand.

"Are you ready?" she asked quietly.

Dorran took a deep breath and shut his eyes.
"I am. Go ahead."

For a moment, there was nothing but the
sensation of a cool, smooth hand on his face, and he savored that
for a long moment. Then came the faintest impression of heat on his
forehead, for just a split second, and then.

Every one of Dorran's muscles tightened at
once as blinding pain ripped across the sensitive skin of his
forehead. He had wondered whether he would feel the mark itself,
but all he felt was a general sensation of searing torment. It was
a struggle to remain still, and even harder to keep his forehead
from creasing as Myriel carefully tilted the metal plate back and
forth over it to ensure that the whole mark was left on her first
attempt.

The entire process took less than a minute,
but it took Dorran a moment to realize that Myriel had finished.
The plate had been removed from his face, but if anything, the
brand began to hurt more than it had when it was being applied, as
the skin left undamaged enough to do so swiftly began to swell and
throb in protest. Dorran allowed himself one hiss of pain and then
gingerly opened his eyes, taking extra care not to move his
eyebrows.

The same small sea of faces was still staring
at him, but he thought he saw a certain awe in them that had not
been there before. He slowly brought a hand upward, wanting to
explore the patch of fire above his eyes, but Myriel's hand beat
him to it. She gently smeared something cool and soothing over his
head, then applied a wad of bandage and finally wrapped a strip of
cloth around his head. He looked up at her, but her face was as
expressionless as a statue's.