K M Frontain, page 29
“It only matters that you get the point in the tree, not how deeply.
Your strength will increase with time.”
“Right.” Kehfrey took the knives, all five, careful not to nick himself on an edge, and set off after Olomo. Back at the line, he set four down at his feet and hefted one experimentally. His family watched in dead 245
silence. Marun shifted slightly, coming forward to where he could observe the child’s intent face.
“It’s not like darts,” the boy said.
“No,” Olomo agreed. “The blade must rotate. It must strike exactly so.”
“Well, here it goes!” Kehfrey said, and tossed the first at the tree. The weapon hit the target flat sided and fell off. Kehfrey groaned and thumped onto his backside, the image of mortification. He had missed!
Kehfen laughed in victory.
“Fuck!” Wilf shouted.
“Wait a moment!” Vik snapped. “He hit the target!”
“Not so!” Kehfen said. “It fell off.”
“But not before it hit the target!” Vik insisted.
“That’s right!” Wilf put in eagerly. “He did hit the target! You didn’t say anything about him getting it stuck inside.”
“Go piss off, you pair of cheaters! The target never got stuck, so the strike doesn’t count!”
“Aww! Leave off!” Kehfrey cried from on the ground. “Pop’s right. I missed.”
“Little rat!” Wilf said. He stomped up to the supine child. “I lost ten silver on you!”
“And I lost fourteen!” Vik shouted.
“I’ll pay it back!”
“How!”
“I’ll make every other shot! I’ll bet the pot for it!”
“You’ve got no money to bet with,” Kehfen said, stomping up to his youngest son. “You lost, boy. And so did the rest of you.”
Wilf and Vik scowled at each other. Their accusing eyes fell on the boy once more, who remained flat on his back while staring up mutinously.
“I’ll back him,” Marun interposed coldly.
Kehfen looked at the man in surprise. “You will?”
“That’s what I said,” he confirmed.
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“I bet twenty silver extra that I can get them formed in a square!” the boy shouted.
Marun’s head snapped down toward him. A smile broke his
immediate scowl, forced out by the child’s impenitent character. Kehfrey grinned at him like a wild fool. “Brat!” the sorcerer named him. “Get up and make your play.” He looked at Kehfen. “Are you taking that bet?”
“Hells, yes!” Kehfen said. “Get up and do it, fool boy! I have just the thing in mind to buy with all my gains.”
Kehfrey sprang up, still grinning. “That’s it, then!” He picked up the knives, one after the other, and shot them into the tree without a pause.
When he was done, he had made a perfect square formed by their points.
His father gaped at the tree. He walked over to it and stared. He turned about. He roared into the silence. “You little trickster! You fouled the first shot on purpose! You’ve practiced before! You conned me!”
“Of course I practiced before! I had Vik’s dagger all last night! These knives are easier to toss!” Gleefully he started his victory dance, bottom waggling an insult.
“Shit!” Vik said. “But you were sleeping! Weren’t you?”
“You sleep like an axed cow!” the child cried. He looked over at Marun suddenly. “Sorry about the dresser. I only ruined the back side.”
Marun laughed. “What were you going to do if I hadn’t backed you, you little thief?”
“I have two gold and five silver in my other pocket. I stole it off Hiswil the other night
“How can you have money?” Nicky said. “I threw out your clothes!
There was nothing in them!”
“I hid my stash before my bath yesterday.”
“Gods bust it!” Kehfen cried in further outrage. “You stole from Hiswil! You don’t steal off your own!”
“I was practicing! I was going to give it back!” The child jumped up and down in protest. “I just died before I got around to it! Doesn’t matter now anyway, does it?”
His father stared at him. Kehfrey stared back, the victory dance forgotten. Kehfrey waited to see if he was in for it. By the way his father’s lips worked to repress a smile, Kehfen was about to decide not, 247
but his father wasn’t going to let him get away with all of his ill-gotten gains. He thrust his palm out.
“Hand it over!” he snapped. Grumbling, Kehfrey stomped over and passed the stolen coins to him. “Where’s the silver?”
“I get my share of the gains!” the boy objected. Kehfen curled his fingers shut, barely stopping a smile from forming.
“Where’s my winnings?” the child demanded.
The smile escaped his father’s lips after all. He shoved the two gold coins back in his son’s fingers. “Go see Nicky for the purse, brat!” He cuffed him on the head lightly. “You owe me change!”
Grinning, Kehfrey stomped over to Nicky.
“Hi, now!” Kehfen called.
“What now?” his boy answered, stalling halfway.
“When’d you lift the coins off Hiswil exactly?”
“When he helped me off the horse. I pretended I was afraid and grabbed the loose coin in his pocket while I was hanging on.”
“Brat,” Kehfen muttered. He looked at Wilf and Vik. They were both grinning at him. “Were you in on this scam?” he said.
Vik at once stopped gloating. “No! I swear! I had no idea he practiced last night.”
“You really must sleep like an axed cow,” Wilf teased.
“I was exhausted! I don’t sleep like that at all normally!”
“Nicky says she only snores when she’s exhausted,” the child piped up.
“Hsst!” Nicky hissed. “Leave off that, or I’ll toss your winnings in the pond!”
“You can’t run in that dress,” Kehfrey retorted. For answer, Nicky hefted her skirt up and was off, shapely legs flashing beneath the white dress. Kehfrey laughed and chased after her.
“Hi, now!” Wilf cried. “She’s got what you owe me!” He raced off behind her, passing his little brother quickly. Kehfrey stopped running immediately. He stared at the bushes they’d disappeared behind. He could hear Wilf thudding away still.
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Vik stepped up beside him. “What about your winnings? And what you owe me?”
“Wilf will get it,” Kehfrey responded flatly. He was probably going to get something else as well. Kehfrey didn’t want to be around to see that.
He turned about and went back to Marun.
“Here.” He proffered the gold to his master. In response to this, Marun lifted an inquiring brow. “For the broken back of the dresser,” the boy said. “I shouldn’t have done it, but I just couldn’t resist.”
Marun accepted the coins without comment, but his cheek twitched again. He turned his head toward Olomo. The tall man was glowering at Kehfrey, had been since he’d discovered the child had scammed the lot of them. “He seems to be well along with knives,” Marun said pointedly, pricking Olomo’s pride further.
“That he does,” Olomo agreed and then turned on the boy. “I asked you if you knew how to throw anything other than food!”
“I gave you an answer,” Kehfrey said.
“You will not lie to me again!”
“But I didn’t lie! I just didn’t answer completely!”
“I asked you if you could throw more than darts!”
“Well, I kind of avoided that answer, didn’t I?” the child admitted.
“But I didn’t lie.”
Olomo scowled. The child was incurable. He was a rebellious little infidel, through and through, and yet he must teach him. “What am I to do with you? You are disrespectful!”
“Can you show me how to throw those stars, then?” the boy asked.
“You goad me!” Olomo shouted.
“What? No! I really want to know! I’m sorry I misled you! I promise not to do it again! Please!”
Scowling, Olomo considered the begging child. After a moment, he crouched down and unwrapped the packet of weapons. He rose with three throwing stars in his fingers and shot them into the tree all at once without turning his head.
“You will begin with one!” he snapped. Grinning, the boy dashed away to fetch the stars.
“Are they poisoned?” Marun questioned hurriedly.
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“Not these ones,” Olomo informed him gruffly.
The sorcerer nodded and settled into a relaxed stance again, but Olomo was not pleased to have seen the flicker of fear in his eyes. A covert chat with the servants had indicated the master tended toward adults, but the slaves had also admitted he occasionally bedded younger flesh, though never before anyone as immature as Kehfrey. Olomo didn’t want the boy to become a first in that category, and determined to remove him from the master’s path whenever possible.
And how difficult would this prove, when the man stood there as the boy jogged back and looked upon him with such a cool and possessive gaze? Olomo had seen such regard before, upon the faces of men who had purchased fine horses for their stables, or perhaps a prized piece for a rare collection. The assassin supposed this calculating scrutiny was better than the untoward attention of a man with perverse lusts.
“Can you show me again while standing up and facing the target?”
the child asked, not even glancing at the man who owned him.
There were many shadows of the future and the majority did not always come to pass. There was no point in worrying over the sorcerer’s feelings for this boy, so long as those feelings remained cool and remote.
Wordlessly, Olomo took a star from the child’s hand and demonstrated the casting of it.
Kehfrey ran off to fetch the star and returned a second time. He set himself in the correct throwing position and tried a shot. The star thudded into the tree, but well aside from the circle. The child’s eyes narrowed and he sent another off. This one spun where he’d aimed it, between the daggers he’d cast earlier. Dead centre. Olomo cursed something in his own language. The boy whirled about and scowled at him.
“I am not an elf!” he shouted. He dropped the last star and ran off into the growing dark.
“Kehfrey!” Kehfen called after him, but the child vanished under some bushes. “Blast!” He turned on Olomo. “What the hells did you say to him?”
“He called him a misbegotten elf,” Marun said icily.
Olomo glowered between the two men, no hint of penitence to his stolid features.
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“I find it hard to believe he learned that much Ysepian in this short a time,” the sorcerer said.
“I taught him none of it. The child has the gift of tongues,” Olomo said tightly.
Marun stared at him, his face suddenly a blank mask. His eyes turned toward the boy’s father, but Kehfen was gaping at Olomo in surprise.
“What do you mean gift of tongues?” Kehfen said.
“He hears a language and understands it instantly,” Olomo told him.
“I have been teaching him the Pek fables and holy words in Ysepian all morning. He repeats it all back in a perfect Winfellan translation.”
“What?” Kehfen cried. “I don’t believe you!”
“It matters not to me! The child has the gift! He understood Amek just as easily!” Scowling, Olomo retrieved all the weapons and bundled them away. Ignoring both stunned men, he stalked off toward the manor.
Marun continued to stare at Kehfen. “What?” the thief said
nervously.
“When was the child born?” the sorcerer questioned.
“Seven years ago. I told you yesterday.”
“The date, man!”
“What’s that got to do with it? I know he’s an odd child, but he’s not a monster.”
“I didn’t say he was,” Marun replied, calming himself, “but he is unusually gifted. Can you explain it?”
Kehfen shook his head. “He’s always been peculiar, from the moment he was born. He looked me in the eyes and I almost thought he knew who I was. It was the strangest impression. The first light was shining through the window, right onto his little face. His eyes, they almost seemed to glow. He didn’t cry, not during his birth, not when I held him then. Just looked me dead on like he could really see me. Babies don’t do that.”
“The date of birth, Kehfen!” Marun insisted. “I need it!”
“What will you do with it?”
“Make his star chart.”
“You think you’ll find answers in the stars?”
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“It’s possible. If I have the date! Now give it to me!” the sorcerer commanded, his patience at an end.
“Well, there’s the thing. I don’t actually know it,” Kehfen admitted.
“What?” Marun hissed.
“Well, it was early winter. That’s certain.”
Marun cursed a string of the foulest oaths he’d ever learned, many of them in foreign tongues. He thought he heard a muffled childish chortle somewhere in the gloom and desisted at once. “Does your wife know?”
he asked the thief.
“Why would anyone want to put his fist up a god’s ass?” a small voice whispered across the darkening lawn.
“She might, yes,” Kehfen said, his eyes darting nervously toward the bushes and back to the sorcerer.
“Why would any god let him in the first place?” added the small voice, this time from another location and further off. “But it was a good curse all the same. I suppose I’ll keep it. That one outdid the best of Nicky’s.”
The sorcerer’s eyes narrowed. He’d uttered that imprecation in the Midyin language, yet the child had understood it clearly, and it appeared Kehfrey had also been subjected to Nicky’s considerable array of invectives, many of which were not of Winfellan origin. The irredeemable brat most definitely had the gift of tongues.
Marun turned away and stalked toward the manor, intending to see the boy’s noble mother about his date of birth, but the thief father, guessing what the master was about, didn’t like that at all.
“Hi! Wait up! You’ll scare the wits out of her! Let me ask!” He darted after the ominous man.
Marun stopped walking. “Go, then. And get the hour of birth as well.”
Kehfen nodded and jogged away.
Behind him and standing together, Vik and Gamis stared nervously at Marun’s turned back, and they watched the shadow of his body grow darker than all the other shadows in the garden. Gamis whimpered softly.
Vik took him by the shoulder and led him toward the manor. Gamis broke free of him once he reached the limestone gravel of the driveway and raced toward the house as fast as his legs could carry him. Vik halted 252
and let him go. He sighed softly. Gamis was not the bravest of them, but he was conceivably the wisest. They should perhaps all think of running.
He heard footsteps behind and turned. Marun approached
purposefully.
“Fetch your little brother,” he commanded. “He’s hidden himself somewhere in this murk.”
“Hi, Kehfrey!” Vik shouted instantly. “I found another toad!”
“Liar!” the little voice hailed from somewhere in the shrubbery, and not too far away either.
Vik looked at Marun pointedly. The man’s scowl altered into an unwilling smile. “Now to get him out of the bushes,” Vik said. “That’s another matter altogether.”
Marun’s smile actually deepened. “Kehfrey! Come here!” he snapped.
He watched Vik’s face as the child appeared at his side a few seconds later. The youth’s eyes narrowed. Was it jealousy? He was extremely attached to his younger brother. Could he resent his lover’s control over the boy?
Vik looked away from Marun and down at Kehfrey. Something
wriggled in the child’s hand. “What have you got now?”
“Don’t know,” the boy said. “Found it under a bush. Looks like a worm, but it has a head and tiny legs.”
Marun peered down. “It’s a salamander,” he said softly. Suddenly, the gamin was no more than a simple child. Marun was mildly astonished by the transformation.
“What does it eat?” Kehfrey begged to know, just a little boy with a potential pet.
“Very small bugs,” the sorcerer informed him. He crouched down.
“You must put it back, Kehfrey. Then you must go upstairs and rest. We leave at midnight, and you have just admitted that you spent part of last night breaking the back of a dresser. Go rest some more.”
Kehfrey scowled, but jogged away to deposit the salamander. Marun lifted up and waited for him to finish. Presently the child returned. He looked at his master once to see if he might be able to change his mind.
Seeing the implacable expression on the man’s face, the boy sighed and made off to the manor without a word. Marun started after him. Vik arrested his retreat with a question.
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“Did you love him?”
“Love who?” the sorcerer said, a note of irritation in his tone.
“Prince Cehtre?” Vik said, regarding the man fixedly.
Marun did not turn to face him. “No,” he said after a moment. He began walking again.
“Then he jumped out of the tower for nothing!”
The sorcerer whipped about. He approached Vik, his face grim and his eyes blazing. “He jumped out of the tower because his father ripped every last ounce of self-respect from him!”
“You did love him,” Vik mocked.
Marun struck him across the face. Vik’s head snapped back, but he righted it immediately, neither remorse nor fear in him, only a deep and burning anger. He tasted blood and realized his lip bled. He didn’t feel the cut. He laughed softly and lifted his eyes to the sorcerer. He knew exactly what he felt then.
Marun’s heated expression altered. Vik stepped into the arms that opened to grasp him, but the kiss he gave his lover was as defiant as the resentment in his heart.
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Chapter Eight
Kehfen waited on the steps, stood there a long time, searching the dark for a hint of human shape, uncertain and wondering where the sorcerer had gone. Eventually, the man turned up, strolling across the darkened lawn, one arm over the shoulder of Kehfen’s firstborn son. Vik had his arm around Marun’s waist.
