Chapter Sixteen #3
“I think him to be, but only advanced magicks will be able to ascertain any blood claims. He looks a great deal like our king.” Asdren cocked a bushy brow. “The elven king,” I corrected.
“Ah, well, then that’s a start. Good thing that peg leg woman come when she did. I was about to charge the door and let fate take over.”
I leaned over to kiss his cheek, the wiry hair of his beard tickling my lips. “A badger lives inside you.”
“Mmph.” He cleaned one rib of its meat before breaking off another. “All we need at this table is your fucking horse sampling the apples,” Asdren commented as he waved a rib at the bowl of fruit. I made a vow to myself to take several for my friend in the stable.
I felt ill at ease here, unsure of what the striking pirate captain would do upon his return.
My sight touched on the letter. It lay open, a swirl of curls that looked nothing like lettering.
I reached for it, knowing it was a breach of protocol but unable to resist. Pity I could not make heads or tails of the elegant script. I peeked at Asdren.
“You thinking of reading a private message from the elf king to his maybe long-lost brother?” he enquired. I nodded, shamefaced. He chuckled. “An elf after me own heart.”
“I thought I already had it,” I asked with a bit of coyness I never knew I possessed.
“Aye, you do. Let me see it.” He wiped his fingers on his breeks as I reached over to pluck the letter from the table. Guilt washed over me.
“Perhaps we should not,” I whispered as I passed the rich vellum to my love.
“Always best to have all the information one needs when entering an enemy camp,” he said as he held the letter to his wide nose, his blue eyes squinting slightly.
I could not argue that.
He wet his lips and began to read.
“My brother, Coelum,
I pray that this letter, and this noble scout, find you.
Many years have passed since your birth.
Long years, years cloaked in lies. The knowledge of you, of your very existence, is a new thing, revealed on the deathbed of our grandfather, Umeris.
I have learned too late that the truths he carried in silence—and the cost of pride and bigotry—have damaged us all dearly.
For that, I offer you no excuses, only my deepest regret that you were stolen away from what should have been yours by right of birth.
I am aware this letter cannot right the wrongs committed against you.
I hope it can be the first stone laid in a new bridge.
I do not command you to return to Celear, to Avolire, I ask.
Nay, I beg. Come home, Coelum. Not as a subject but as my brother.
Your place at my side, at the royal table, is set yet remains empty.
Should you choose to stay away, I will honor that choice. But know this: the gates of the capital will open at your approach, and no blade will be raised against you by my word.
May Ihdos watch your path and may this letter find you whole.
By my hand and seal,
Your brother,
Aelir Stillcloud
King of Melowynn.”
Asdren let the paper lower from his nose and then turned his sight to me.
“Sounds like the king has bought into this elf being his flesh and blood,” he said, handing the sheaf back to me.
I hurried to place it back where it had been tossed.
“I’d advise against setting his heart on something that might prove to be just the demented musings of an old elf ready to meet his—”
The door opened, and Coelum strode in with the peg leg woman at his back.
I glanced at Asdren, who gaped openly at the pirate captain as he swept into the room like a gale.
Prescott, minus the two nude elves, also entered and shut the door.
Hyla skidded to a halt when her gaze fell on Jaculi, as did Prescott.
Asdren rose to his boots, reaching for his war hammer at his side.
“You have no need for that,” Coelum said with a motion of his hand that pulled wine out of a decanter then dropped it with a splash into a goblet.
“None here seek to harm you or your scout. I am well familiar with the Sable Legion. My father spoke well of you.” He sat with a huff, grabbing the wine and downing it in one long pull.
“Prescott, please do close your mouth before a fly enters it. Yes, it is a wyrmling. Oh, and a crow.”
“Raven,” I corrected and got a smirk from Cadere.
“My mistake. Prescott, you may resume your seat outside.” The big man did as bid, closing the door with a soft snick.
“Hyla, this missive was just delivered into my hand. A fantastical little note from the King of Melowynn claiming that I am his brother. Stolen away in the night from the vills of Renedith, where the Stillcloud family resided before he was crowned. Now, I am confused and greatly so, for I had always been told that my mother was a whore who died of the black pox, and you found me in her cold arms.” The woman, Hyla, closed her eyes as she battled with herself for composure.
“Please sit, have some wine, and read it.” He waved at the letter from Aelir.
The older woman’s pale skin turned whiter.
“Wine, yes, wine would be good,” Hyla whispered, taking a seat as Cadere magicked wine into a glass for her, soft azure glyphs appearing then fizzing out when she reached a trembling hand to her goblet. Her eyes closed as she emptied the glass.
“Perhaps we should return to our—” I began to say.
“No, no, this concerns you in a roundabout way. Let all hear the truth! Hyla, tell me that this king has had a brain fissure of some sort and has dreamed all of this up. Father told me of how I arrived here in your arms, the son he had not known of, and raised me to follow in his wake. How can that be if I am reportedly related to the noble class? I need the truth. And since my sire is now dead, it falls to you to bear witness.”
She sat up straighter now she had some wine in her. Asdren and I shared a look.
“Your father never wished for you to know about this,” Hyla said, her voice strong, her pointed chin coming up.
“I pleaded with him to tell you the truth, but he forbade it. He said he had no wish for you to know you were of the elite class, for it would turn your head. You’d be a pirate like him.
Blood bound to the sea.” Coelum fell back into his chair, slack jawed, as the story flowed from her like a dam weakening and then breaking after years of stress.
“He was your father, Coelum, that is true.
Your mother, I know not, for I was just the shamed daughter of a cooper, who had taken up with a cowardly shit who ran out on me when I found myself increasing.
I have many suspicions about your mother. “
“Oh? And what would those be?” Coelum asked, his words icy cold.
“An elegant elven female, no doubt taken up with a blackguard, finds herself expecting a dirty child, a child carrying half-human blood. It is a tale as old as the sea itself. That would bring scandal untold on a noble house. But such worries were beyond me. I struggled with the birth of my child. It was born dead, cord around its neck, and I turned to the church for solace. The grand cloisterer…he came to me in the night with a babe in arms not one moon later. It was you, blue eyes bright as a summer day and a head of black hair. Knowing my plight, he—the cloisterer—offered me a large sum of gold to take you to the pirates of the Stormhold with no questions. I was living on the streets, sleeping with rats in alleys, a sun away from having to sell myself to survive.”
Cadere pushed his goblet aside to sweep the wine bottle from the table. He drank long and deep from it, lowering it to stare through the wall as if he could blow a hole through it with mere thought. Anger and shock played out on his face.
“You needed me as dearly as I needed you,” she continued.
“And so I left Renedith and my family to find a new one here. Among the seafarers. I sailed with you and still do, looking out for you as if you were the son that I lost all those years ago. Many times I stared at you and saw the noble blood in you but was forbidden to speak of it. Your father knew all, but he would not refer to her, the woman who he had bedded, and so the lie slowly became a truth.”
“No,” Coelum growled, the bottle in his hand shaking.
“It was still a lie. No matter how much you and my father wished for it to be the truth, it was a lie. My lineage is not what I was told it was. I am not the son of a poxy whore but the son of a noble woman, the half-brother of a fucking king. Even when news of the Stillcloud heir taking the throne reached us, neither you nor my father said a word to me! We sat around this very table talking about the new king and all Father did, all you did, was run down the aristocracy with drunken barbs at the monarch who all the while was my brother. My brother!”
The wine bottle in his hand was brought down on the edge of the table.
Glass shattered, wine flew into the air, and we all went rigid.
If he went to hurt the woman with the busted bottle out of a blind rage, I would step in front of her.
She was a pawn. A rook on a chessboard moved about by powerful hands trying to keep a secret that would impact not just lives but an entire vills. Not only a vills. An entire kingdom.
“We should go,” Asdren stated, rising from his seat. “This is family business.”
“You shall stay here in the Violin. I will need to decide what my reply to the king will be. Take a room here. I wish to have you close at hand. Hyla, you should go as well. My apologies for my temper.” Coelum dropped the neck of the bottle to the floor as we stood.
Jaculi leapt to my shoulder, Click to my forearm, and we left with Hyla following us out, wearing a mask of cool indifference. A stalwart female, in truth.
“Prescott,” she said as the door closed behind us. “Find them a room. Clean, fit for a guest of the captain.”