Chapter Twenty-One #2
Then Fin showed me his rooms. Definitely an improvement on Unkea.
I shouldn’t have been jealous, I suppose, but there you are.
Then came the fateful conversation, the one I could only face in certainty that we were alone.
Fin’s reaction was not entirely expected.
I went from butterflies in my stomach, to lead, to light-headed.
Fin was fine with me having a relationship with Ang. From the sound of it, he’d worked it out before I had. So. That was it. Nothing left to hide behind. Nothing to weigh me down or stop me.
The knock on the door made us both jump.
Fin answered it.
“I was looking for your father, is he with you?” Llwydadain’s voice.
I sniffed away my emotions and went to the door. “I am. Yes, sir.”
Llwydadain looked at me. “Then I apologise for this, but I need to speak with you regarding the message you carried.”
* * *
I stayed two nights in Rhastac. It was good to spend time with Fin, and to get to know his friends.
For all that Fin had taken a lot of weight off my mind, discussions of what the Sky Commander had sent Llwydadain weighed just as heavily, if not as personally. Llwydadain hadn’t changed, and neither had the sharpness of his mind. I mentioned to him the things I read in the newssheets there.
The lies.
His conclusions had implications so vast, I struggled to expand my mind to them. Especially when my mind was on one thing - getting home to Unkea and proposing to Ang.
“You think of it as home now then?” Llwydadain asked as we sat in his study.
“I’ve spent more years there than anywhere else,” I said. “So yes. It feels like another lifetime ago when I chafed at the order and hated the command that sent me there.” Admitting that to the man who had delivered the order sent chills through me.
“There were reasons,” he said.
“Yes, you called it blasphemy,” I agreed. “But all we did was tell the truth.”
Llwydadain raised a hand, almost in surrender.
“I didn’t bring it up to argue the point,” he said.
“It’s just that situations change, and now—” He looked to the file of notes.
“—they have changed more. If my suspicions come true, would you be willing to help? Or would you prefer to stay where you are?”
It wasn’t an easy question to answer in that moment. Yet uncertainty gnawed at me, made me cautious. Could I put Ang at risk? But I gave him an answer, the only one my gut and heart would allow.
“As a boy I was taught to believe that honesty was of the utmost important. That any fact can be accepted if it is known. And I still believe that. My resentment of going to Unkea wasn’t as much about Unkea as the reason I was sent there.
For telling the truth. If there are truths to be revealed now, I will do whatever I can to support that. ”
Doubts and questions dogged my mind the whole way back. They made sleep impossible, and what little I got was racked with bad dreams.
“Thank you,” Sky Commander Zemich said when I returned to Ashland Harbour and handed over Llwydadain’s return. “Do you know what’s in here?”
I wasn’t expecting the question, and my skin tingled at hearing it. “No, sir. That’s between you and Sky Commander Llwydadain. Above my pay grade, and I wouldn’t dare, sir.”
“Good.” The return package was much thinner than the pouch I had originally carried to Rhastac. “You will stay the night,” Zemich declared. I wanted to argue, but I know an order when I hear one. “You will join me for dinner.”
That was unexpected, and unwelcome. I would rather have travelled the last hour to get back to Unkea and an extra night with Ang.
But when a Sky Commander commands, a Flight Sergeant obeys.
My leathers felt like they chafed as I sat down to dinner with Zemich.
He looked at me like I should be in dress uniform.
But there hadn’t been a reason to take that with me, so he had to accept me as I was.
The dinner was clearly designed to impress and belittle.
The after-dinner brandy was unexpected and vaguely unpleasant, which was why I made a show of sipping more than I actually sipped.
“I hear he’s gone soft, being over there dealing with nothing but initiates all day every day,” Zemich sneered.
It was an observation, not a question, and I didn’t need a name to know who he was talking about. His eyes narrowed, and he looked me up and down. “You knew him in Pasaocea, what do you think?”
I considered before I responded. “I haven’t seen Llwydadain in fifteen years,” I said carefully. “He seemed no less sharp than I remember. In fact, I got the impression that many of the Rider initiates were rather in awe of him.”
Zemich didn’t like that. No one was in awe of Zemich. Being afraid of him and his idea of discipline was not the same thing.
“I remember he was promoted beyond his years and his ability.”
Again, an observation, not a question. Then the question.
“Don’t you agree?”
“He and I are of similar ages, but he was always ahead of me in rank.”
“Because Tiernan favoured him,” Zemich sneered. “He always promoted sycophants.”
It was undeniable that Tiernan had favoured Llwydadain, but not because of sycophantic behaviour.
If that was what it took, Zemich would have been right there with Tiernan.
And so the evening went on. The bile that boiled in Zemich’s gut spewed forth.
I realised that he was bitter at not rising farther in the ranks, that he thought Tiernan was an idiot under it all.
I got the impression that if Zemich got the chance, he’d happily slit Tiernan’s throat and take the job himself.
Which was ridiculous; Zemich barely had the skills for his current role. Anything more would be beyond him.
The night went on far too long. I was relieved to get to the barracks and be able to lie down. It was too late and too dark to travel even the one hour south to Unkea.
The sickness started as I lay down. And I knew what it was.
That brandy had tasted bad not because I hadn’t tasted brandy in a long while, but because there had been something in it.
Clearly the sip I had had had had an effect.
I got back up and moved over to the toilet block, feeling rather sorry for the plant I’d tipped the drink into to make it look like I was sipping the brandy.
Not drinking it would have been taken as an insult.
Thankfully, I was able to turn my healing powers inward.
Everything I had eaten or drank that evening poured into the toilet.
I didn’t flush immediately, as I studied what had come up.
I recognised from the bright red of certain parts of the vomit, that the poison was managed by combination.
The brandy hadn’t actually contained a full poison, just something that had combined with the food I had eaten to become poisonous.
Interesting.
Perhaps Llwydadain was right.