The Eunuch's Heir (3 page)

He slipped back the tapestry and entered his mother’s room. Some of the anger had worn away along the walk to get here. A hint of apprehension entered in its stead, but he shook it off. Did he not have a right to visit his mother’s rooms? Well, perhaps not when she had no knowledge of it. His father would never have done it—not his sainted father. Of course, that other one probably did it all the time, sneaking through this very door to pay his nightly visits.

Wolfram’s hands hardened into fists, and he pushed away from the wall, the new anger carrying him to the wardrobe. He popped open the doors and pulled out the first drawer, pawing through the jewels it contained. The search fruitless, he shoved it back again, but it stuck, and he let go, the drawer clattering onto the tile floor. Heedless of the mess, he pulled out another.

When the last drawer had joined its fellows, Wolfram kicked the wreckage out of his way and slumped to the floor. Aimlessly, he kicked another drawer, sending it skittering against the wall. There, it struck, and the bottom cracked and fell away. From beneath the panel, a small ivory box tumbled.

Grinning, Wolfram rose and crossed to the wall in two long strides. He swept up the box and creaked open the lid. His fingers suddenly careful, he lifted out a thin gold chain, letting the pendant twinkle in the light of the lamps his mother always burned. The pendant resembled a shell, two smooth curves of glass bordered in gold sheltering a little curl of hair. Soft baby’s hair, as dark as the night around him.

He stood transfixed, his heart lurching within him, throat dry. It could not be. It could not be. Why would she do this to him?

Voices approached in the hall outside, and Wolfram spun, staring at the mess he’d made of his mother’s things. Even as he took a step to rectify the damage, he stopped himself, the cold demon anger gathering again inside him. Why should he care? Maybe she wasn’t even his mother—maybe everything he knew was a lie.

The door swung open, his mother leaning into it, with her back to the room. “Yes, of course, Grandmother. I’ll have it seen to immediately.” She raised her eyebrows to the man who accompanied her.

Duchess Elyn, tall and gaunt with age, her white hair piled atop her head, retreated from the chamber, disappearing down the hall.

The Lord Protector, Fionvar DuNormand, let a smile spread across his face, gazing into the eyes of his queen. “Do you remember when we were afraid of her?”

Queen Brianna laughed, pressing her hand to Fionvar’s chest. “Terrified,” she agreed, then the smile dropped from her lips, for his mouth had fallen open. “What is it?” She swung around, catching sight first of the ruined wardrobe, all her jewels and baubles spread upon the floor like gleaming garbage. “Thieves,” she whispered, but Fionvar’s chin directed her to look a little farther, and she saw her son.

Their eyes locked, brown on brown, her features pale, lips parted though no sound emerged. Abruptly, the lips pinched shut for a moment, then she demanded, “By the Lady, Wolfram, what have you done?” Her hands balled into fists, and Fionvar clasped his hands lightly over her shoulders, propelling her forward just enough to shut the door behind them. “What are you doing in my room?”

“I thought I’d pay a visit, Mother,” Prince Wolfram replied. “Looking for mementos of my childhood.” He held up the necklace, the pendant trembling with translated anger. The anger that tried to conceal his fear.

“Where did you find that? I cannot believe you’ve been searching my things. Great Lady!” she burst out. Shaking off Fionvar’s restraining hands, she made as if to snatch the necklace away, but he kept it from her, swinging it above his head.

“Not so fast, Mother. I have some questions—like whose hair is this? After all, I’m blond, like my father.”

“You’re nothing like your father! Great Lady, how I wish you were.” She slammed her fists onto her hips, glaring.

Behind her, Fionvar winced, shutting his eyes. “Let the boy talk, Brie, let him explain himself.”

“Oh, no, I want to hear her explanation. Go on, Mother, is it my hair or isn’t it?”

“Who else’s would it be? You’re my only son.” Her closed expression plainly told him what she thought about that.

A twinge of pain shot through the anger, but he pushed it away. He had been evil in her eyes too long to hope for redemption. He held up the dangling glass shell beside his own hair. “Mine? I don’t think so. Anybody can look at it and tell.”

The flush burned away from her features, leaving her pale. She drew closer to Fionvar. “Lots of babies have different-colored hair. Yours grew in blond.”

He shook his head, free hand pressed to his temple. “Why are you always lying? Everything you say to me is a lie.”

“That’s not true! How could you say that to your own mother?”

“And I’m your son, no matter how much you wish it otherwise.” He gathered the chain into his hand.

If he had struck her, he could not have gotten a more satisfying response. She shook, and the Lord Protector slid an arm around her shoulders. “How can you be so cruel?” she murmured.

“I must have gotten it from you, Mother, since my father was a saint, who descended from on high to deliver his desperate people.” He waved his arms about, making grand gestures of deliverance. “Oh, and leaving behind a pathetically human son, unworthy to be a prince, unworthy to carry his blessed name—Strel Rhys, wasn’t it?”

Fionvar blinked stupidly over Brianna’s shoulder. The Lord Protector, too, seemed to have been struck dumb by Wolfram’s vehemence. Suddenly, the man laughed inanely, shaking his head, his eyes still wide.

Wolfram clenched the necklace so tightly he felt every link of it jabbing his hand. “Don’t you laugh at me,” he hissed, shaking the fist at Fionvar. “You have no right, you adulterous bastard.”

His words snapped the Lord Protector out of whatever trance he’d sunk into, and he drew himself up to take full advantage of the two inches he still had over Wolfram. His own hair, silvered at the temples, matched the chain of office about his neck.

“Don’t act so surprised,” Wolfram said, “I could see it in your lecherous stare—even if I hadn’t seen it in the garden last spring.” He repeated Dylan’s below-the-belt gesture.

Fionvar’s brows notched upward, and Brianna grew even more pale. “I don’t think now is the time to discuss that,” Fionvar replied, with remarkable control. “We were talking
about why you had broken into your mother’s jewelry. The reasons why you did it do not make it right.”

Wolfram gritted his teeth. The bastard didn’t deny his adultery; then went on to act like he knew exactly what the prince was getting at, why he’d come there—dared to act as if he could possibly understand! “What do you know about right? You’re even lower than I am from what I can tell.”

“Be that as it may”—Fionvar’s voice rose with a satisfying anger at last—“your mother deserves some respect from you; certainly more than you’ve given her lately.”

“Who are you to tell me what to do?” He shook a finger in the older man’s face. “You’re not my father! No matter how much you try to be!” His voice had grown shrill, echoing off the stone walls and ceiling.

For a moment, a change passed over the Lord Protector’s face. If Wolfram’s eyes could be credited, the bastard was going to laugh again. Just as quickly, the expression shifted to one of concern. With a sharp intake of breath, Wolfram realized that his mother had fainted, slumped back against Fionvar’s chest.

The Lord Protector gathered up his queen and carried her gently to her bed, touching her wrists and forehead, her son forgotten.

The cold ache of the anger within him roiled and lurched, leaving a hollow place as he looked upon his mother’s collapsed body. Wolfram shifted his attention to the man who bent over her. How many times had he carried her to that bed, the royal bed? The anger swelled again. He let out a little animal growl. When Fionvar glanced his way, Wolfram spat on the ground. He pivoted on his heel and crossed the room with pounding strides. He ducked beneath the tapestry and slammed the door behind him.

FIONVAR TURNED
back to his queen. “Brie? Are you well?”

Brianna moaned, her eyelids fluttering open so she could behold her lover’s face.

“Don’t you agree that it’s time to tell him at last?”

“Not now, Fionvar. I can’t think about that now.” She pressed a hand to her pale cheek. “Would you bring me some wine, something to steady my heart?”

He shook his head. “When can you think about it? Look at your son—he’s confused, hurt, furious with both of us. He reminds me so much of—” Fionvar broke off, then tried a new tack. “I know it’s making you sick the way he treats you.”

“Wine,” she insisted, pushing on his chest to get him to go.

His features hardened. “We should have told him years ago. He deserves to know the whole story.”

“He deserves the walloping that Elyn is always offering, Fionvar. I can’t control him anymore; the past few months, he’s just gone wild.”

“He was always wild, Brianna; you’ve just been too busy with the kingdom to notice.”

“Well, and isn’t the kingdom my first priority, what with these foreigners flooding the city? He’s had the best nurses and tutors in the world, he’s had you”—this elicited a snort from Fionvar—“and I’ve been here when I could, I haven’t been distant or uncaring. I’ve tried to forget what Prince Alyn said of him. I’ve loved him as best I could, Fionvar.”

“And hated him, too,” he said quietly.

She turned her face away from him.

“I know,” he whispered. “I know you’ve tried.” Fionvar stood up and found the wine she had asked for. He settled beside her again, offering the silver goblet. “I’m sorry. You don’t need me to attack you when he’s already done an excellent job of that.”

She accepted the goblet and sipped delicately.

“You know,” Fionvar put in, smiling a little, “I wanted to faint, too, when he said that. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“Laugh,” she said. “There hasn’t been enough laughter around here.”

Fionvar gazed down on her face. The years of her reign had etched their way into her forehead and cheeks, and the
bloom of her lips had withered with age. Still, beneath the face of the queen, he could make out the features of the girl he’d fallen in love with so long ago. “Heart’s Desire,” he murmured, “I’ll bring you bushels of laughter, if you tell me where it grows.”

“I wish I knew.” She sighed.

The Lord Protector smoothed the silvering hair back from her cheeks and lightly kissed her. She reached the goblet over to her bedside table and set it down to embrace him. “Come on, you adulterous bastard,” she said, her eyes glinting so that the girl inside seemed suddenly released from the shackles of age. “If not laughter, at least we have love.”

Kissing his queen, Fionvar thought briefly of the young man in the dark passages beneath them, fleeing the sin of his mother’s love. He was everything like his father—if he only knew the truth.

TAKING DEEP
breaths, Wolfram huddled atop the altar in the great temple. His arms wrapped around his knees, and he rocked slowly in the gloom, gathering himself. Starlight shone faintly down upon him, gleaming on the dagger he had cast to the floor. He did not yet trust himself to retrieve it, but at least his anger was ebbing away. He thought of the pale figure of his mother collapsed into Fionvar’s arms, and shuddered. She spent hours every day presiding over the court, and stayed late into the night, consulting with her ministers—and too much time between trying to school him in the ways of kingship, for the day his time would come. The day she died. Now, with streams of refugees fleeing war in the East, she looked older every day as she walked a path between charity and chaos. If only his father were still here, still exuding his mystic influence, perhaps creating another miracle every once in a while.

Wolfram bent his head back, looking up through the opening in the distant ceiling to the stars beyond, as if this could draw him closer to his father. He snorted. He would never be close to King Rhys, Strel Rhys—who promised mercy for his enemies, who flew through battle, and raised the dead when it suited him. Turning from the starlight, Wolfram rested his chin on his knees, gazing toward the curtain that enclosed an alcove in the outer wall. Beneath the curtain, a narrow band of light showed that Mistress Lyssa still worked. The steady plinking of her chisels soothed the angry pounding in his ears. He feared she would come out and find him there, but
he did not move, staring now at the curtain that concealed her.

As if by the force of his will, the curtain parted, and a tall figure emerged, carrying a lantern. Backlit by the lights within, her silhouette seemed strange and foreign, the bald arc of her skull gleaming, her muscled shoulders and back rippling as she snuffed the lights.

She crossed quickly, at first on a diagonal toward the main door, then stopped her steady pace, head turned toward him. She raised the lantern, the planes of her face glowing as her lips curved into a rueful smile, and she changed course to approach the altar. As she drew near, he could make out the deep green of her eyes, the red of her brows arching in question. From the right eyebrow, a tattooed vine meandered in a tracery of blue lines back over her ear to dwindle down her neck.

“Hey, Wolfram,” she called. “Didn’t expect to find you here.”

“Didn’t expect so myself.” He let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding.

Then, at the base of the dais where the altar stood, Lyssa froze once more. The red eyebrows climbing, lips parted. “What have you done?”

“Oh, left my lover, given the queen a scare, frustrated the Lord Protector”—he shrugged—“the usual things.”

“I meant your head, silly.” She gestured, then climbed up and bent over him to see for herself.

On the steps and on the altar itself, the false blond locks lay about him, raggedly cut with the dagger to leave his hair spiky, tinged with red where he had nicked his ear. Wolfram looked away from her incredulous gaze. He shrugged again.

She stood over him a moment longer. “Move over.”

He obliged, and she hopped up on the altar beside him, her split working skirt falling away to reveal her powerful legs clad in dark hose. Lyssa gathered a lock of the fallen hair, puzzling over it, waiting.

Breathing carefully, Wolfram felt the heat of her beside him, the brush of her bare arm against his as she reached up to pat his shorn head.

She let out a chuckle, tossing her head as if to cast back her own long-vanished hair. “Well?”

He glanced at her sidelong, eyeing the tight leather bodice she worked in, slowly raising his eyes to her face. “What color is my hair, Mistress?”

The tattooed vine at her brow curled downward as she frowned. “Blond.” She flicked the clump of it between her fingers.

Wolfram shook his head, feeling an unaccustomed breeze along his scalp. “No, it’s bleached. Every bath with that special soap. I’ve been using it since I started bathing myself.” He uncrossed his arms and let his legs dangle, revealing a pale patch on his tunic. He rubbed his fingers across it as he spoke. “I washed this, just to see.”

The last traces of mirth drained away from her face. “So, you tell me.”

“That’s just it, I don’t know. I cut it all off, to see, when it grows back. In a few months, I’ll know something I should have known years ago.”

Lyssa nodded, less a confirmation than an encouragement to go on. When he didn’t, but just kept staring down at the dagger among the blond hairs, she prompted. “Tell me everything.”

At last, he did, the words tumbling out for her as they always had since he’d first hidden out in her temple years before. She listened gravely, not judging, not shaking her head at him, but with the sort of concentration she always gave to her work—as if he were blunt stone, and she could tease out the beauty within. As if he contained any beauty. With Lyssa paying such close attention, he wanted to be the hero of his own story, wanted to put himself in the right, but, even as he heard his own words, he saw the ruin he’d made of his mother’s special possessions, and the expression on her face when she called him her only son. The hollow place within him returned. “I came in here,” he finished, “so that I couldn’t ruin anything else.” He flicked a patch of his hair off the altar and watched it fall.

When he finished, they sat still for a long time.

“You know she loves you,” Lyssa said at last.

He let out a half laugh. “Why else would she put up with me for so long?” This question trailed into a sigh. “Except I am the son of the blessed Rhys,” he said bitterly.

Lyssa didn’t answer, absently stroking her thigh with a clump of his hair.

Watching the gesture, he shivered. He dragged his eyes away, forced himself to look at her strong profile, the sleek line of her skull, bald as any priestess’s. His gaze slid back toward the curtain she had emerged from.

Lyssa tilted her head in that direction. “Want to see?”

He nodded quickly.

She sprang down lithely from the altar, and he followed her across to the concealed alcove. Lyssa brought up the flames on the lanterns set about inside, lighting the little chapel. Given free rein for the project, she had imported lapis lazuli and malachite for slender columns and tiles inlaid with gold. The chapel was nearly done, but her workbench still dominated, holding a few chunks of pale pink marble and her well-kept tools. She turned one of the stones up to face them, her muscles flexing easily beneath the weight. A face emerged from the surface, a face that would one day support the entry arch to this family chapel.

Lyssa stroked her fingers along the nose and cheeks she had so carefully revealed, letting them linger at the turn of an ear where unruly tendrils of hair crept onto the face. Though not yet polished, the lips appeared ready to speak, the eyes about to blink against the settling of dust. It was a kind face, well formed, if not handsome in the classic way. “Wolfram,” Lyssa said, and it took him a moment to realize she referred to the stone, not to himself. She glanced back to him. “This is your namesake, Prince Wolfram of Bernholt—as I remember him, anyhow.” She smiled wistfully, tracing again the curve of the stone cheek, and Wolfram’s throat ached a little, watching her.

Laying the carving back into the rubble of its creation, she raised the other stone, and he knew the face immediately, feeling his own features grow hard. It should have been like
looking in a mirror, at least in some small way—the eyes perhaps, or the delicate nose, or the tremulous smile about to spread upon the lips. Instead, Wolfram’s eyes were drawn to the curls upon the brow and tucked behind the roughed-out ears.

“Maybe now’s not the time,” Lyssa said, shifting her grip to lower it to the table.

Wolfram shook his head. “No, now’s the perfect time. I’ve seen the portraits; this just makes it even more obvious that I’m nothing like him.” He ruffled a hand over his remaining hair. “I must be some kind of family freak. I guess bleaching my hair was one way to make it seem as if I could follow in his footsteps, but it’s a lie.” The cold anger began to seep its way up his spine, and he gritted his teeth. He would not let it come, not here, not with Lyssa looking on.

She shook her head. “Rhys was human, too, Wolfram. He made mistakes and drove his grandmother mad when she was trying to teach him to be a king.”

“So when I’m king, I’ll suddenly be wise and kind and miraculous?”

“No, not that.” She frowned at him. “Sometimes we forget the other parts, the human parts, when somebody’s gone. We want them to be remembered as perfect, even if they were just like us.”

“Yeah? I wish I was dead—like him.” He thrust a finger at the stone face of King Rhys. “I wish I were in the stars, and everyone thought the best of me, too, if there is anything worth remembering.” The demon anger sprang into him, full-grown and howling.

“You don’t mean that, Wolfram.”

“How do you know what I mean? Aren’t you my friend? Aren’t you supposed to listen to me?”

“Bury it, Wolfram, I am your friend. You’re angry at your parents, and you’re not thinking straight! You don’t want to die.”

He flung up his hands. “Maybe I do, if it’s the only way to be like him, to finally make my mother happy.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! The Lady would give you pity, not
glory for that. Besides, nobody would be happy if you died, Wolfram, least of all Brianna.”

“Maybe I would be! Maybe I’d find my saintly father and tell him what I really think of him.”

“Tell it to the stars, Wolfram.”

He laughed. “You can’t yell at a star. You can’t beat it, and you can’t make it hurt. If he had a grave someplace, at least I could spit on that.”

“You dare speak heresy in the Lady’s temple?” Her eyes were dangerously dark.

“Oh, of course, we bury criminals, not saints. Chances are, they’ll bury me some day—even in death, I won’t stand by my father.”

“But he’s not even dead,” she howled into his face.

Wolfram stumbled back a step, fetching up against the table. “He’s what?”

“Great Lady,” Lyssa mumbled, “now I’ve put my foot in it.”

“He’s what?” Wolfram repeated, voice shaking.

“Rhys”—she sighed—“he’s not dead.”

“What are you talking about?” he breathed. “He was taken into the stars, directly, to the Lady.” The anger that had sustained him threatened to let him collapse now, into some weak and crawling thing.

Lyssa shook her head sadly, frowning at herself. “It was magic,” she said, “a trick; I don’t know all the details.”

Knees trembling, Wolfram grasped at that. “But you knew he was alive.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, me and a few other people. Your mother, Fionvar, Elyn—a few others, I guess.” She spread her hands.

“I knew they lied to me—they have to—but you?” His tongue wet his suddenly dry lips, retreated into his parched mouth.

“I’m sorry, Wolfram, truly I am. It wasn’t my choice.”

“It wasn’t? Every day I swept up your studio, every day you told me the story of the war—you didn’t make a choice every single day, not to tell me my father lives?” He wanted
to crush his pounding head between his hands, but he dared not move.

“It’s complicated,” she replied awkwardly.

“Oh!” he cried. “Oh, I bet it is, keeping the truth from me. Wait a minute!” he said theatrically, thrusting up one finger. “No, it’s not hard, not if the one you’re lying to is a trusting fool!”

“What can I say, Wolfram?” She took a step toward him, hands out, pleading. “I’m sorry, I really am. I know there’s no way to make it up to you.”

“Why would you want to?” he shot back. “Why make it up to me, why not just go up and laugh with your brother and the queen? Tell them how well you fooled me.” He turned away, arms braced against the table. His chest ached so that he could hardly breathe, and his cherished dream, his star of love plunged into darkness with her every word. His father’s stone face smirked up at him, compassion exchanged in an instant for cruelty. Alive!

“Listen to me, Wolfram.” Lyssa’s voice came low, still pleading.

“No! You listen.” A terrible inspiration leapt to his pounding head. The sense of triumph ringing in his ears in a thousand goading voices. He could hurt her as deeply as she hurt him. “Listen to this.” With both hands, and a strength almost beyond him, he pulled the stone head toward him, clutched it a moment to his breast and let it fall.

The finely worked stone crashed into tiles of malachite, shattering the swirling green, gold wire springing from the inlay like sharp spiderwebs. The sound echoed its earthquake in the tiny space.

The nose cracked and fell aside on impact, skittering across the floor to tap against the toe of Lyssa’s boot.

Echoes reverberated in the temple and died away.

Stone dust disturbed from the table eddied about them, settling again in the quiet.

Wolfram’s heart quaked. His hands dangled useless and treacherous at the ends of his wrists. He stared down at the back of his father’s ruined head. She had betrayed his secret
love; but what he had broken lay at the very center of her being, her own skill used in the dedication of the Lady.

Lyssa did not even tremble. Her powerful hands curled and uncurled at her sides. Her lips pressed together, breathing slow and normal. Over and over, her green eyes traced the shattered tiles, shying away from the instrument of their destruction.

“Lyssa,” he whispered, when he regained his voice. “Great Lady, Lyssa, I—”

A hollow, heavy voice answered. “Go.” Her lips formed the word with the precision of one of her chisels.

The sound shot through the last of his anger, sending the ragged shreds of it fleeing from him. “Lyssa.” His voice close to cracking.

“Go,” the dreadful voice repeated. “Now.”

He sucked in a deep breath of the dusty air, and, coughing and sputtering, ran as far from her dead voice as he could.