K M Frontain, page 19
“Excuse me,” he muttered thickly. He drank the last of his wine in one quick swallow and fol owed his stepfather out of the room. He would have to take Gamis off his hands. Kehfen would have enough to do calming Canella. As he left the dining area, he noted Vik standing in the middle of the hall and paused in mid-step. Vik regarded him impassively.
“Go back in!” Wilf hissed at him.
“Why?”
“He’s your mark!” the young man whispered. For this, Vik grimaced at him. Wilf couldn’t believe his stupidity. “Cussed shitting devils, Vik!
Someone has to calm him down! Go in before the ghouls go on a rampage!”
“Bend over and do it yourself!”
“Shit!” Wilf said, and stomped up the stairs.
Kehfrey appeared at the door of the dining room. “Do you know where my room is?” he asked. Vik shook his head. “Second on the right, back side of the house. Here.” He said this while coming forward. “You dropped this.” He held the dagger out to him.
“Keep it,” Vik said. He had found it after Marun had parted from him in the bedroom earlier. He remembered thinking he could free his brother from this madness. He knew better now. “It’s not much good for anything,” he added angrily.
“You might need it later!” Kehfrey protested.
“What the hells for?”
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“Stabbing would-be admirers,” Marun said, coming up behind
Kehfrey. “Take it,” he commanded.
Vik glared at him and the shadows thickened once again, but he refused to relent. Ignoring the peril and Kehfrey’s outstretched hand, he stalked up the stairs. Marun watched him until he disappeared from view.
Kehfrey sighed unhappily. “You should have asked him,” he said softly.
“I’m not in the habit,” his master snapped. “Go to bed!” He turned away and went back into the dining room.
“Can I learn some more letters first?” the boy asked.
Almost ready to burst with displeasure, Marun suddenly calmed. He nodded. “Wait in the library.”
Kehfrey smiled and darted down the hall. Marun looked over at Olomo.
“You will start with the boy tomorrow,” he commanded the assassin.
“Do not plan on having him all day. I shall want him when I am available.”
Olomo nodded acquiescence. He could hope for no more. He had lost the boy through his own folly. After Marun stalked from the room, the assassin rose from the table. “Tomorrow,” he whispered.
“Tomorrow, the boy begins the path.”
He left the dining room. A servant waiting surreptitiously in the hall came forward and bowed to him.
“This way, if you please,” the man said. Olomo followed him to his appointed room. He was glad to go. He was tired and must rest. The boy must have all of his attention tomorrow.
***
“Enough,” Marun decreed. “Your head is tipping over the
parchment.”
Kehfrey snapped upright with a start. There was ink on the tip of his nose. The blemish made the man peer more closely at the child’s skin.
Unlike most ginger-haired children, this child had not a freckle on his face. The sorcerer didn’t recall seeing any on his body either. But for the 157
small scars that the quarrel had created, which might fade over time, the boy’s body had seemed flawless.
“Go to bed,” Marun said. “Doubtless you haven’t slept properly since sometime yesterday. I’m surprised you can do anything, what with that and dying, too.”
Kehfrey blinked at him, his eyes owlish wide, and put the quill down.
He slipped off the chair and walked quietly out of the room. He neglected to bow as he left.
Marun ignored the gaffe. He wasn’t displeased with the child. The boy had spent the last hour astounding him, but he had hidden his admiration carefully. He seldom came across anyone worthy of his respect, but this peculiar child managed to pull the emotion from him, along with a bright note of astonishment and pleasure.
Odd how everything seemed darker now that he’d left the library.
Marun couldn’t attribute the obscurity to his shadows, for they’d collapsed within minutes of commencing the boy’s lesson. He remembered the strange attraction to light the child had displayed in the cellar, how he’d become a green imp in the dark, how his very emotions had scattered the witch light from his body. Odd. Very odd.
Novices apt to the earthly magics seldom drew the energy to them in such a fashion, out of the very air, for it was the most sluggish manner in which to accrue power, unless one had sufficient to create a flow to begin with. Rather, they pulled it up from deep within the earth, generally through their feet and normally with the consent of the Goddess. Only a master already filled with the earth’s potency could have done what the boy had done in the cellar, repulse a spell with but a thought.
But Kehfrey wasn’t a master. He couldn’t possibly be. Even so, that the boy had a gift for magnetising and repulsing power suggested he was strong enough to force a massive flow from the Great Mother. But that he suffered pain whenever spells were cast daunted the sorcerer’s enthusiasm. Until he could explain that flaw, Marun dared not begin educating the boy appropriately.
Pensively, Marun looked down at the sheets of parchment the child had abandoned. Kehfrey could write simple sentences already. The letters were perfectly formed. There were a few spelling mistakes, to be sure, but the same error had never occurred twice, except for one particular case.
“The child is brilliant,” he said.
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He heard noise without, the clatter of hooves, wheels on gravel, a horse whinnying. He went to the window and peered out. A coach had stopped before the manor.
The butler’s steps sounded in the hall. Marun heard him halt near the outer door, where he quite properly waited without opening it. The visitor must knock.
Marun turned away from the window. He didn’t see the visitor alight from the coach, but he already knew who it would be. He returned to Kehfrey’s work and admired it again.
The knock finally came, loud, urgent. He listened to the butler open the door. Once again, the servant yelped as someone shoved him aside impatiently. Marun smiled, but the smile was sinister. His visitor rushed past the library door, but skidded to a halt upon spying the master within.
“Marun!” Lord Rhet gasped. He thrust into the library. “Marun! He died! He died horribly! What have you done?”
Marun looked up at Rhet coldly. The nobleman was a mess. His hair was uncombed. His kohl had bled around his eyes and dripped down his cheeks. His red and orange suit had the stains of bodily fluids on it, perhaps vomit, perhaps other liquids.
“Marun! You promised to save him!”
“Lolte died,” Marun said flatly. “Your uncle’s office is hereditary.
You are now the Minister of Justice.”
Rhet gaped at him. His mouth worked without a noise coming from it. Slowly, he turned and sat in an armchair. “Why?” he whispered. “You promised!”
“Your uncle promised also. Quite obviously, he betrayed me. The stone killed him for it.”
“Betrayed you? But—!”
“Your uncle pointed the finger at the wrong person and you helped him,” Marun said. Rhet started and his eyes widened with fear. Marun’s lips turned down with distaste. “Tonight you will search for all his files concerning Kortin and the Syndicate and send them to me.”
“But—! But I don’t want to be Minister!” Rhet cried abstractedly.
“Sorry to have ruined your days of unending play.” He stalked toward the man. Rhet flinched backward into the cushions. A foul odour became perceptible. Rhet stank abominably. “Did you hold him as he 159
died, Rhet?” Marun said, halting near him. “Did his guts spill onto you?
Did he wretch his lungs out onto your tunic?”
Rhet gaped up at him and shivered. The shadows in the room
lengthened, deepened, threatened to surround them. Several of the glow sticks dimmed and then died, the biotic liquid curdled within their glass tubes. Rhet stared at the sorcerer, blank fear in his eyes.
“Tomorrow, you will be approached by the Syndicate, Rhet. You will agree to do whatever they tell you, only you will be mendacious. Isn’t that right, Rhet?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Do you know why you will be mendacious?” Marun asked him.
“Because I don’t want to die,” he whispered.
“At least not like your uncle,” Marun amended for him. He turned away and walked back to the window. “I killed your uncle because he betrayed me outright. But you? I decided to forgive you this time. Just this once. Don’t expect me to do it again.” He looked at the man from a distance. “If you see the beauty again, be sure to thank him for your life.
He’s the only reason I decided to spare you. You have good taste.”
Rhet nodded silently.
“Leave, Rhet,” Marun commanded. The lord rose obediently and headed for the door. “A moment!” the sorcerer snapped.
Rhet froze. He stared at the doorway like a man waiting for the axe.
“Take that chair with you! You’ve ruined it!” Marun spat.
Quaking now, Rhet returned to the armchair. It was a heavy piece of furniture. He attempted to lift it, but found his unworked muscles useless for the task. He was forced to drag it from the room. He sobbed every time the legs screeched on the wooden floor. Marun watched him go in perfect, fascinated silence. After one particularly loud screech of wood on wood, Rhet added a bodily stain of his own to his suit. A puddle of urine formed between his shaking legs. Mortified, Rhet yanked the chair through the door, sliding it through his urine and out of sight. After that, the butler must have taken pity on the man, because there were no further dragging noises.
Marun turned to the window and watched the two men appear on the stairs outside. The butler held one side of the chair, Rhet the other.
They carried it to the coach together, splashing through puddles and 160
blinking away rain. The footmen came off their steps and gaped at the piece of furniture in amazement. Marun turned away in disinterest. He walked back to the desk and looked down at the child’s handwriting.
Every error corrected but one. He regarded the one mistake, the one mistake repeated tenaciously. He floated his finger across the word and read it softly.
“Kahfrey.”
He smiled. He had clearly shown the boy how to spell it, even acceding to Winfellan custom and adding the unnecessary silent consonant to the appellation; but the child had altered the first vowel every time. Every single time.
Marun’s finger drifted off the name. He left the desk and walked out of the library, careful to step over the urine, and headed for the stairs. On the second floor, he paused just outside the child’s door and stared at it.
His expression betrayed momentary irritation. He averted his face, but remained at the door.
What did they look like sleeping together? One angelic, one—
He remembered the child’s unconscious face earlier that day. Both angelic, he amended to himself, but the younger of them had a will of steel. He would have to be careful. Steel needed to be fired just so. Then it would fold like a blade of grass.
He walked away from the door and on to his room. He knew how to wait.
***
Pressed up against the child’s side, staring at the further wall blindly, Vik shuddered involuntarily. The footsteps in the corridor began again.
The sound receded. Even so, he shivered with apprehension. One of Kehfrey’s skinny arms wrapped around him, and Vik gasped like a captured bird, his breath almost whistling inward.
“It’s all right,” the boy whispered. “He promised to leave you be tonight. Go to sleep.”
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“I was until you turned into a board,” the child said sarcastically. Vik shifted away in embarrassment.
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“Not that! All of you. You’re tense as a primed crossbow.”
“I’m sorry,” Vik whispered, and began to weep.
Kehfrey put an arm around him again. Time for a distraction, he thought; but this day of peril and radical change had rather fixed his brother’s predicament in the boy’s mind. Sensuality. Coupling. Adult mysteries. Adult miseries.
“What’s it like?” he said abruptly.
“What’s what like?” Vik managed to utter.
“Fornication?”
Vik laughed in surprise and lost a little more of the tension that had arisen while waiting on the master’s decision outside the door. “You’re too young, Kehfrey!” He wiped his tears away and sniffed.
“I still want to know.”
“How can I explain it? It’s different for everyone.”
“Really? Why?”
“It’s like food. Some people like the taste of some things more than others.”
“Sex is like pie,” Kehfrey uttered then.
Vik laughed again, unable to help himself. “You’re a wonder, Kehfrey.”
“I was just beginning to notice,” the boy retorted. He yawned mightily. “If you quit reminding me, I’ll be able to forget again.”
“Do you want to?”
“Would you go back to yesterday if you could?”
“Yes,” Vik whispered.
“Me too,” Kehfrey whispered back. “We were safer.”
“No one’s safe now. Not with him here.”
Kehfrey was silent, but he agreed. Marun wanted this city. From there, he would probably just keep on with it, over the years collecting more cities until a hero rose up to stop him. That’s what the evil enchanters did in all the stories. It’s what they did. Pity the poor heroes.
Most of them got banged up but good.
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***
The following day, Olomo awakened Kehfrey before the sun rose.
Kehfrey’s first perception of him came as a cool breeze over his face. He opened his eyes to find the man looking at him from the open door.
Kehfrey blinked. Olomo turned about and left the room without a word.
Kehfrey sighed in resignation, edged out from beneath Vik’s arm and slid off the bed. He snatched his clothes from off a chair and retreated into the hall with them. He shut the door softly and dressed on the polished wood of the corridor floor while Olomo stood on the steps and watched him. When the child had finished, the tall man proceeded down the stairs without a sound. Kehfrey matched his silence and followed.
From the entrance hall, they turned toward the kitchen. Kehfrey hoped they were going to have breakfast, but Olomo altered course before they reached the kitchen corridor and led him toward double doors. Kehfrey shortly found himself standing in a very large bare room.
“What’s it for?” he said, thinking such an expansive chamber a waste of space.
“Parties,” Olomo answered him. “Dancing. Frivolities.”
Kehfrey looked about in wonder. Parties. Frivolities. Dancing.
Despite Olomo’s deprecating tone, he liked the sound of those words.
“This is where we will begin training,” Olomo continued. “And your first task will be to stand and not move.” He glowered at Kehfrey pointedly. The child had been whirling slowly, as if listening to music in his mind. Kehfrey let his arms drop and faced his trainer.
“For how long?” he said.
“You will not question!” Olomo snapped.
Kehfrey sighed once again and then settled into a comfortable stance.
Olomo walked around him and out of sight, where he scrutinized the child meticulously. The boy was balanced, with no signs of disproportion to his shoulders or his limbs. A rarity. His undersized stature was unfortunate, but there were also advantages to this. For an assassin, size wasn’t all that necessary and sometimes a detriment.
Olomo stepped to the side of his student. “We begin,” he said. “You will do as I do.”
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He commenced the First Manoeuvre. Kehfrey rounded to the front for a better view, watched Olomo, and then attempted to mimic his stylistic motions.
“No!” said the assassin. “You are not a mirror! Use the same arm as I do! The same leg! The same hand!”
“Can I stand behind you, then?” the child said.
“I cannot see you behind me!” Olomo barked. “I do not have a second teacher to watch your efforts. For this first lesson, you will stand to the side.”
The child was difficult. Did he not know the honour he was
receiving, learning the ways of Pek when he was no longer of an age to begin? And a complete stranger to the faith! To any faith! Little infidel!
“You will not question my instructions again. What I teach has been passed down in like fashion for centuries.”
The child’s expression tightened into a mulish glower. “Hi, now! I don’t see you looking in that box yet? Who’s to say it was done right to begin with?”
Olomo’s eyes widened in outrage. He stepped forward to punish the brat, but a lilting feminine laugh echoed through the ballroom and forestalled the motion. He whirled toward the small stage built for musicians. Nicky stood upon it, dressed in boy’s clothing. She hadn’t been there seconds earlier.
“From the mouths of the innocent, assassin! ‘ From the mouths of the innocent, the truth can be heard. Listen!’ ”
“You! Filth! You will not speak the holy words of Amut!”
“Why not? He taught them to me.”
Olomo straightened. His expression betrayed disbelief.
“You think I lie? Ask the boy.” She looked toward Kehfrey. “Did I lie?”
“No,” he said firmly. Olomo turned away from both of them, but Kehfrey caught a look of confusion cross his face before he stalked away.
Nicky jumped down from the stage and walked toward the child. “How’d you get in here?” Kehfrey asked. “I didn’t see the doors open. There’s nowhere to hide.”
“Maybe I was invisible,” she tested him.
