CHAPTER 28 #2
The books had tried. There were only so many ways to describe a man and they had hit all of the important points.
Both Everard and Reynald had strong features and square jaws.
Both had light eyes under dark eyebrows.
But they couldn’t have looked more different.
Reynald was solemn and hardened by the years, while Everard in front of me was magnetic and brimming with power.
Also, the books described Reynald as keeping his hair in the style of the men from the Highlands.
I had pictured him with a longish mane, but his hair was cut so short, it was barely a dark trace against his brown skin.
Why was he giving me this? A gesture of good faith?
“I had it made for his son.”
I touched Reynald’s portrait. I never got to meet him.
“I was seventeen years old when the Okula invaded for the third time,” Everard said.
“I’d been a duke for a year at that point, long enough for Sauven to get over his shock and start plotting to kill me.
He issued a royal edict demanding Selva respond to the threat and promised the backing of the royal army.
I followed through. He didn’t. He fucked around, he delayed, he puttered.
He mulled over the rations and the routes.
He used any small excuse to be late to the fight.
He hoped the Okula would gut me, and he would arrive just in time to mop them up. Heroically, of course.”
He smiled. There was no humor in it.
“Midway through the campaign, I found myself pinned down in a mountain pass. It didn’t look good for us.
The Okulan vanguard kept charging our position, wave after wave, endless.
When they came, they looked like a human sea.
I was running out of arrows and soldiers.
When it looked like the next charge would break us, Reynald’s company smashed into them from behind. ”
Oh! “He was the ‘Fuck ‘em’ knight.”
Everard nodded.
“He’d been given written orders to reinforce us and verbal orders to delay.
Instead of meandering as he was instructed, Reynald advanced in the middle of the night and marched his knights through a mountain trail that was passable only for goats.
His charge threw off the Okula’s strategy.
We crushed their vanguard between us. Their main force pulled back to regroup.
When we met on the field, among the corpses, I told Reynald that if he ever needed a favor, he had only to ask. I considered him my friend.”
At seventeen, Everard was probably on his first major campaign as the duke. Reynald would’ve been a seasoned, war-tempered twenty-five, already in command and expert with a sword. Adolescent Ramond must’ve looked up to him.
“How did he die?”
Everard’s face turned grim. “It was exactly as you said. He came home to find his wife murdered and his son stolen. For months he went to the teahouse, watched Derog, and plotted his revenge. Reynald was always a careful man. He calculated his risks. Had Derog left the house, he might have cornered him on the streets, but the slaver never stepped foot outside of it. Reynald didn’t know for certain how many people were inside the estate, if they had children that could’ve been taken hostage, or if Matheo was still in there. ”
That did sound like Reynald.
“He dug around and found that Derog had paid bribes to the right people. He was protected. They wouldn’t stick their necks out for Derog, but they wouldn’t make a move against him either.
An official complaint would be useless, and a direct assault by himself was impossible.
Reynald needed to borrow someone’s power and resources to enter the place. ”
“And he sought to borrow yours?”
Everard nodded. “He could’ve have just written, but it was the kind of favor he wanted to ask for in person. He left the city and was on his way to me when Striver collapsed.”
How could that have happened? “Did someone shoot at them?”
“No.”
“Do horses just die like that?”
“Sometimes.”
I hugged myself.
“There was no sign of foul play,” he said, his voice suffused with sadness.
“The stallion was old, and his heart had simply stopped. Striver was a Jekran warhorse, loyal to a fault. They will run themselves to death for the sake of their riders. Reynald’s mind was on Matheo and what he would say to me.
He hadn’t noticed anything was wrong until Striver went down.
He’d fallen badly, hit his head, and the stallion’s bulk pinned him to the ground. A random, stupid twist of fate.”
So he just lay there, pinned down and hurt? “Did anyone find him?”
“Eventually. He had set out before sunrise, and it wasn’t a well-traveled road.
They brought Reynald to the nearest village, two hours from Kair Toren.
He knew the end was near, so from his deathbed he bundled his possessions into a pack, found a willing courier, and told them he was one of my men and I was expecting the package.
His sword would be the proof I needed. The courier happened to work for the Shears, and he took it straight to Solentine. ”
“How long did Reynald linger?”
“Three days.”
Why did it happen? Reynald wasn’t supposed to die for another nine months.
He hadn’t suffered the way he had in the books, but still, it wasn’t a good death.
He had survived every battle, fought in every war, made it through the plagues, the sieges, and the storming seas, and that’s how it had ended.
Alone among strangers, not knowing if his final request would ever make it to Everard.
Not sure if his son was suffering or even if he was still alive.
How could life be so monstrously unfair?
My eyes were watering. I swiped the tears away.
“I made it in time to watch him pass,” Everard said.
What? How? Selva was a ten-day hard ride from Kair Toren. Even if Solentine had sent a message by bird or some magical means, Everard would have still had to physically get there. Was there some long-range version of morr beads I didn’t know about?
“I sat by his side as he faded, and I swore to him that I would find his son and when I did, Matheo would become my ward. He died in peace, Maggie. Or at least as much peace as was humanly possible to find considering what I had to work with.”
Everard leaned back in his chair, his expression mournful and tired.
When he said he’d sworn to rescue Matheo, he’d actually meant it. He’d made a vow to a man he considered a friend so Reynald could let go knowing his son would be looked after.
“Before I got Reynald’s message, I’d been considering coming down to Kair Toren. The rebellion was flaring up, and Solentine’s messages betrayed a growing frustration with the state of things. Once Reynald passed, I took his body into the city so he could be buried next to his wife.”
The cart. Oh my god. When I saw him in the city that night, there were three riders and a cart.
Reynald’s body must’ve been in that cart.
It had rolled by me, and I’d had no idea.
When Everard had given me those coins, he wasn’t just feeling charitable.
It wasn’t mere money; it was funeral alms offered to me in memory of a man who once saved him.
He gave it to me because that’s what Reynald would’ve done.
I tried to keep my voice casual. “When did Striver fall? What day?”
“The third of Planter. Early in the morning, sometime shortly after sunrise. The rain was heavy that day.”
Goosebumps crawled up my arms.
On the third of Planter, I woke up naked in a muddy ditch, choking on rainwater. I had been pulled into Kair Toren on the morning Striver collapsed. Probably at that exact instant. There was no limit to coincidences in the world, but that one was a stretch.
What did that mean? Did the timeline go wrong at that moment, and was I supposed to put it back on its rightful course?
But how? I couldn’t resurrect Reynald. I didn’t have the power to bring the dead to life.
I knew that for a fact because I had tried it when I was looking at the thief.
I had stood there and wished with everything I had to undo Hreban’s grisly handiwork, and nothing had happened.
If that wasn’t it, then that meant the real events had diverged from the books before I had a chance to do anything. This answered absolutely nothing. It just raised more questions.
“I buried him next to his wife and placed his gravestone, as is the custom in the highlands. The next day I went to Taryz Teahouse. I wanted to sit in the spot where he sat and see what he saw. Then a strange woman sat at my table, called me by my dead friend’s name, told me his secrets, and offered me a chance at vengeance. ”
“Why did you trust me? You knew Reynald was dead. That meant everything I said about his death was wrong.”
“You were right about enough. Reynald left me his sword and his papers. He’d kept a journal of people and creatures he’d encountered.
He’d meant for it to be a military manual, I think.
The story of the bronze god was in there.
You knew too much. I wanted to know how you had found out so many secret things, so I went along to see where it would lead. ”
“And then you spent weeks lying to me.”
“I did.”
“You should’ve told me who you were.”
“You liked Reynald. You admired him. I just watched you cry for him. Would you have traded him for a man who would kill you, your family, and your neighbors? The Sleepless Duke is a monster who solves every problem with violence. He will murder your pets, burn your house, and salt your fields . . .”
I held out my hands, trying to stop the flood of things I’d said about Everard coming back to drown me.
“Being Reynald allowed me to live a different life for a few days. He’s who I might have been if I hadn’t been born an Everard. But I am the Sleepless Duke.”
His face was calm, but his eyes had grown distant. He looked past me, across the river, to the city on the other bank.