Chapter 17
In the days that followed, Kinlear gave all his time to researching her.
Ezer.
Ezer of Rendegard, in full title, though she was as big a mystery to him as was the answer to training Six. It would be up to her, should the War Table vote yes to allowing her to mind it.
It was his mission...but he still had his limits.
Everything, even the godsblessing that was to come, was always decided upon a vote.
So, he would do everything in his power to get them to vote yes.
Ezer had no written record, no past. Her birth was never recorded, which meant her parents hadn’t attended a kingdom’s census day to receive their rations.
Even the Masters sought answers as to who she was. As Kinlear’s chosen candidate... and because she bled red... they had faith enough that she wasn’t somehow working for the Acolyte.
One thing was certain.
She was Sacred, at least somewhere in her lineage, or else the Citadel wouldn’t have opened its doors to her. He wondered if she even knew who she was.
What was a woman like her, of Sacred blood, doing all the way down in Rendegard, of all places?
She belonged here, every bit as much as he did.
Magic or not.
So, while she lay in runic sleep, Kinlear sent ravens across his kingdom.
From Rendegard in the south, to the Dornans out west, to all the territories in Lordach with a tower, he sought information about Ezer, the woman with shadow wolf scars upon her face. He even inquired of the scholars back in Touvre, where the catalogue of the kingdom’s records was kept.
If only Magus was still there...his old tutor would have been eager to help Kinlear make sense of this. But he’d faded like the wind, never to be seen or heard from again, despite Kinlear’s searching on him, too.
No matter what he tried...Ezer of Rendegard was as good as a ghost.
Not a hint, nor a scribbled name to mark her lineage.
She was a mystery.
The kind he’d love to unravel.
He’d nearly given up, three days into her runic sleep, until one bit of information came from the recruiting nomage officer.
She was a ward of one Stefon Ervos.
A name that made Kinlear’s blood curdle. A name that had him seething with untapped rage...because he knew the bastard.
He was the Ravenminder before her.
The one who’d nearly murdered Six along with the rest of her litter.
Gods, it was cold down here.
Kinlear Laroux paused for breath as he made the harrowing journey down into the darkness beneath the Citadel’s halls. The prison cells stank like sweat and stale piss, and rats scurried beneath his feet, narrowly avoiding a maiming from his cane as he wove his way down to the correct cell.
This was no place for a prince.
But he would have his answers...if only because he longed for them himself.
He wanted to know her. To trust her.
And so far, he was the only one in the Citadel that did, beyond Arawn. But what was he to do? Waltz into his father’s throne room, and say, “I’ve been dreaming of her for years, Father. I’m Veilborne, isn’t that lovely?”
He’d find himself in this very prison, if he ever admitted that.
Kinlear sighed, his breath forming before him in a cloud as he paused before the correct cell and peered inside.
There was a lump of torn blankets on the worn cot. Beneath them, a shell of a man, his red hair shorn, cuts and bruises all over his face, who barely shifted to reveal that he’d heard Kinlear arrive.
“Stefon Ervos,” Kinlear said. “The raphon slayer.”
“Is it time?” Stefon asked, in a voice that was raw from torture, from screams, or perhaps from the illness that was rumored to run through these filthy cells. He’d never survive a day in here, with his condition. “It is time for my death?”
Kinlear shook his head, though he would have relished the man’s life ending.
He himself would have loved to swing the blade for what Stefon Ervos had done to the litter of raphon pups.
Kinlear’s chance at becoming great, at being remembered for slaying the Acolyte someday.
..it had nearly ended before it even began.
And all because of the bastard behind these very bars.
“No,” Kinlear said, curling his gloved hands around them. “You will not die today.” He leaned closer, despite the reek of piss, and said, “I’m here to inquire about your ward. Ezer.”
The man stiffened.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
Kinlear sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that. Which is why...ah, what perfect timing. Our friend has arrived!”
He glanced over his shoulder as Thera, the Ehvermage of his choice, arrived.
The Sacred had long brown hair mixed with strands of grey to reveal her strong connection to Dhysis.
She had soft green eyes, deep frown lines on her face.
..and such a talent at torture and darkness, it was a wonder she didn’t defect.
She was useful, during this war, though she was ageing swiftly.
They’d needed Ehvermages quite often lately, when darksouls were captured for information.
Kinlear smiled and turned back to the shell of a man inside the cell. “Now. We can do this the easy way...or the magic way. Tell me what you know about Ezer of Rendegard. Her past, her present. Her lineage. Tell me everything.”
They learned enough – he was a prince without a crown, standing beside an Ehvermage in the darkness. Thera’s eyes were rolled back into her head as she sent her magic into the prisoner’s mind, digging every part of him up like bones from a shallow grave -- before Stefon Ervos finally broke.
And there was nothing more they could uncover.
They left him mumbling phrases that made no sense, sobbing into his tattered blanket as if he’d seen a ghost.
Kinlear’s stomach twisted, as he and the Ehvermage took the spiraling staircase up. Out of the darkness, back into the light.
Ezer, he thought.
They’d learned of her past.
She was a forbidden baby, born to a Sacred servant. A nobody named Styerra, with no magic to her name.
She was just a servant girl, helpless and scared and alone.
She’d fallen in love with a Sacred Realmist, a fool of a young man who’d died after paying an eternal penance for falling in love with someone who wasn’t his Matched. For placing a forbidden baby inside her womb.
A baby...who had become Ezer.
It explained why there was no sword in the snow for her father.
Because when someone paid that much penance, they weren’t meant to be remembered. They were wiped from the Citadel’s records, removed from the history of the Sacred as if they were a traitor to the gods...almost as bad as a defector.
They were lucky if they were to be allowed into the Ehver at all, after their death, for it was left to the gods to decide their eternal fate.
And Ezer?
She should have been killed for who she was. What she was. The child of an Unmatched pairing, half Sacred Realmist and half servant.
It was possible she did have magic in her blood, unpillared...
As wild as his own, for the gods did not choose to place her in Styerra’s womb.
It was forbidden love that did. And choices that had terrible consequences.
“Shall we report our findings to the War Table, Sir?” the Ehvermage asked, as they reached the door that led out. From black stone to white, darkness to light.
Kinlear’s heart thumped unevenly in his chest.
The Citadel, their laws, their rules...
What if his father decided to make her pay the penance in her mother’s place? The penance that this servant Styerra should have paid...were she not already dead.
“You saw nothing,” he told the Ehvermage. “You saw only that the Ravenminder is the child of two servants who fled, and if you are to say otherwise...”
He’d never given a threat so big.
He wasn’t even certain he had the guts to do it.
But the vision of her, the feeling of flight together...of the shadowstorm opening to let them in...
It made him brave, as he turned to the Ehvermage. And with all the royal flair he could manage, he said, “...the penance her father paid will become yours, too.”
He slept.
He dreamt of her all over again, and on the third day of her runic sleep, Kinlear Laroux went to the War Table and argued for the Ravenminder until he was blue in the face.
She would mind the raphon. She would tame it before Realmbreak, before the Long Day arrived. And when she was ready...she would complete the Descent and be tested for the right to fly it across the Expanse.
He, as the leader of the Black Wing Battalion, as the spare prince with no future to his name, would be the one to ensure it all played out.
They would slay the Acolyte together.
Or they would not return.
The War Table debated heavily, for hours on end. Sometimes shouting, sometimes so painfully silent, the sound of Kinlear’s cough was the only thing to be heard in the room.
And at the final hour, just before his eyes grew too weary from lack of sleep...
The War Table voted on her.
Yes.