Chapter 20 #2
The manor was dark, but felt lived in. A threadbare carpet ran from the entrance down a narrow hall, past a battered suit of armor upon its armature toward an arch at the back that led to the base of a set of stairs.
All was in shadow. Moonlight splashed across old furniture, sideboards, and the lower half of a grand, gilt-framed portrait on the entrance hall wall.
Nessa had stopped, losing what momentum she’d summoned as she took in her ancestral home. Harald stepped up alongside her and studied the portrait.
It was Nessa, clad in a metallic blue gown, her hair done up in regal style, her expression wise, poised, amused. The artist had been talented. The portrait fair seemed to breathe.
“My mother,” whispered Nessa, then dry swallowed. “Painted the year before my conception.”
Right. She’d died giving birth to Nessa, and from there had stemmed all her problems. Her father had never forgiven her, blamed her for the death.
And until the Judgment Slats in the dungeon had declared her in the Fallen Angel’s eyes innocent of murder, Nessa had believed, deep down, that he was right to do so.
“You ready?” whispered Harald.
Nessa nodded curtly, came to herself again, and strode down the hall. The carpet muffled her steps. “My father was a Level 6 Stormblade. He might be higher now, but I doubt it. Regardless. He was feared in his time. Be ready for anything.”
Harald nodded grimly. An hour ago he’d have entered this house with impunity. Now? Her warning was welcome.
They reached a door limned in yellow scale light. The smell of tobacco and leather came from it. Nessa reached up, retracted her hand, reached up again, took a breath, and then shoved the door open wide.
A study lay beyond. A dying fire guttered in a hearth.
A scale lantern burned copper, set atop a towering perch of some thirty books.
Books were everywhere, some dropped face open on the floor, pages mashed, others forming sloppy piles in the corner, rising on the mantelpiece, crammed haphazardly onto the many shelves, drowning a desk in the back.
A huge armchair, the twin to the one out on the patio, was set before the fire. An old man had been sleeping on it, but he startled as the door crashed open, spilling a glass of amber over his faded nightrobed lap.
At first, Harald thought it Nessa’s grandfather.
The man had to be in his late seventies, his face weathered and carved deep by age and woe.
His hair was a mane of white, tinged yellow here and there like much handled ivory.
A mustache bristled over his mouth, which sagged open in dismay and confusion as he stared at them with sunken, watery eyes in whose depths swam gray irises the exact shade as Nessa’s own.
A large man, broad shouldered, but gaunt and worn and wasted and old.
Nessa glared at him, eyes glittering, chin raised, jaw clenched, a vision of vengeance.
“Verella?” Lord Cranock Ermarine’s voice was a withered rasp. “Is that you? Verella?”
“No, Father.” Nessa’s voice rang out, alien and sharp and so full of edges it made Harald’s Abyssal Imperium feel dull. “I’ve—”
“Verella!” The man tried to rise, his glass and a book tumbling out of his lap to clunk on the thick carpet. He reached for her with a liver-spotted hand, his mouth forming into a tremulous smile. “It’s you! My love, you’ve—you’ve returned to me, at long last—”
Nessa drew back, eyes widening in horror. “I’m Nessa. I’m your daughter—”
“Oh, Verella.” Lord Cranock levered himself upright with great effort. “I’ve missed you so. My darling. You don’t know how I’ve suffered… how I’ve longed for your company, your… your everything.”
He stumbled forward, arms outstretched like a somnambulist.
“I’m not—” Nessa drew back from him. “Stop it, I’m Nessa, I’m not—”
“Oh, Verella,” cried the old man in rapture. He lunged for her, eyes closing.
“No!” Nessa’s scream accompanied an open-handed slap of such force that it spun the old man to the side and down to one knee, his large, wrinkled hand rising to his cheek as he nearly tumbled down onto his side.
Nessa’s hand flew to her mouth as she backed away again, right up against the shelving.
“Verella…” wept the old man. Then his deep chest sobs abated, stilling as quickly as they’d come, and he looked down at the carpet.
“I… I deserve your hate, I’ve been… I’ve been weak, Verella, I let everything go, I let our darling…
I let our beautiful little girl go, and she’s been gone for weeks, darling, I don’t know what to do, I… ”
Nessa just stared at him, hand clamped over her mouth.
Lord Cranock began to weep again, shaking his head slowly from one side to the other in a slow despairing motion.
Heavy tears leaked onto his cheeks. “I… I’ve been so lost without you, I…
oh, Verella, how did our lives turn out…
how did it all come to this? We were so happy, we were… everything was so bright, so golden…”
Tears brimmed in Nessa’s gray eyes as she stared down at her snuffling father where he crouched upon the floor. Harald reached for her, thinking to draw her out of the study, away from this moment, but she shook him off.
“I am your daughter, Cranock.” Her voice was bright as an acid-washed blade. “You made this ruin. You’re the reason it all fell apart.”
The old man blinked away the tears and raised his head to gape at her, uncomprehending.
“You did this! Your—your weakness, your pain, your—you bully.” She spat the last word. “You weak, pathetic bully. You took your pain out on me, when I was too young, when I didn’t know—” She cut herself off, her whole body vibrating.
“Verella?” He shuffled around so that he knelt before her like a little boy praying at the Mother Church.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please. Can you forgive me?
I was once your merry knight. Do you remember?
I don’t know what I’ve become. But I’m still that good man.
Can you remember him, and forgive… forgive this… ”