Chapter 15 Stone and Saga #3
Caterina and her husband, Percy Bircham, a man with no titles or money, had built a home on the same land so were there often.
Their son, Wyat, had taken the Edevane name, so Asterin—who had taken up the Oldcastle stewardship when Theocratin had passed without heirs—could name him as his successor.
Tyreste and his wife lived in Greenfen half of the year, along with their three children, but the other half they stayed in a cabin Asterin had built for them behind the main house.
The other two lived with their spouses’ families.
Only once had Jesstin seen the whole family together, and his heart had never been so full, nor so empty.
But that wasn’t his destination this time.
He’d been putting off the visit for several reasons, the most important being he only ever intended to go once.
Once and then be done, forever. He took his time getting there, collecting wildflowers from the side of the road instead of purchasing a proper bouquet because the decision had been impulsive, like so many of his were.
Riverhelm Citadel was as well-guarded as he remembered. He could have just approached the gates, but he hadn’t actually come up with a valid reason to be admitted, so he snuck in the back way. It was closer to where he wanted to be anyway.
The Skylark mausoleum was still one of the most unsettling places Jesstin had ever been.
He hadn’t gone down since he was a little boy, but though decades had passed, nothing had changed.
There was still the steady, disconcerting drip of water down the rock walls as he descended.
Thick webs wove along the passage, across the steps, revealing the infrequency of visits.
The eternal flame at the entrance had died, and the basket of sconces lay on the ground, covered by a dense crop of weeds.
Even without a torch, it wasn’t entirely dark in the crypt. No one had ever been able to explain to him where the light came from, and now older and at least somewhat wiser, he understood some questions were better left unanswered.
Crumbling cherubs gawped at him from the cracks of the dirt walls as he descended farther. The familiar sense of suffocation hit at the halfway mark, and he remembered why he and Gennady had only played in the catacombs once.
His ears rang with the echoes of his boots as he moved from one cavernous room to another, dodging cobwebs and debris.
The dim illumination provided little assistance, but he ran his fingertips along the carved letters of the tombs and recited the names from memory.
Every Skylark had seen the crude map of the final resting place of their ancestors. Every Skylark had memorized it.
Jesstin hesitated at the door to the next room, where his mother and Mathias were entombed.
He glanced down at the flowers bunched in his sweaty hand and wondered what he was even doing.
He’d already said everything that needed to be said with his mother.
She wasn’t there. None of them were. It was all just stone and saga.
He dropped the flowers on the damp ground, shaking his head at himself—at everything he’d done since coming home. If he wasn’t working, he was spying on his family, slipping through hidden entrances to be close to them. He was glad Sesto hadn’t been around to remind him how dysfunctional it was.
Jesstin started back and ran into a tomb with a painful thud, cursing under his breath all the way to the steps. It was halfway up when he heard the footsteps and saw the shadow transit across the fading sunlight.
“Who’s there?” a man called down. “Hello? I know you’re there. I saw you go in.”
Jesstin wasn’t wearing a sword because his was still at the forge. There was a dagger in his boot, but if there was one guard, there were more. There was only one way in or out.
“I watched you go down,” said the man again.
Jesstin’s only reasonable choice was to act like he belonged there. “Coming up!” He jogged the rest of the way and found an elderly man watching him when he emerged.
It appeared he’d come alone, without guards.
“I should have announced myself at the gates. I’m a distant relative of the steward.”
The man continued his inspection, which gave Jesstin the opportunity for his own, and it took no time at all to realize this was no stranger.
Standing before him was his brother, Emrys.
Of all his kin, Emrys seemed to have weathered the worst of whatever had transpired the past three decades.
His hunched posture was supported by a cane, held onto by an arthritic hand with a mild tremor.
The lines around his rheumy eyes were deep, like the tributaries of a river.
But he was still as elegant as ever, his jacket combed and his blouse steamed and smooth.
His coiffed white hair gave off an air of refinement that distracted from his infirmities.
But if Jesstin didn’t stop evaluating these depressing changes in his brother, he’d lose his composure.
“And your name, son?” Emrys asked.
“Gennady Skylark,” Jesstin blurted, because a stupid answer was better than a delayed one. “I was passing through Riverchapel and wanted to pay respects.” He glanced at the ashy kiln.
“Disquieting, isn’t it? The way light somehow finds a way into the bowels of the earth?” Emrys chuckled. “How are you related to the family? You look familiar, but I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“I’m a grandson of Finneus,” Jesstin said, hoping it was vague and distant enough. Finneus had been Mathias’s father’s brother who had died before Jesstin was born. They’d never mingled with that side of the family, at least not back then.
“I regret we know little about Finneus and his descendants,” Emrys said. “You might be the first I’ve met.” He held out a hand. “Emrys Skylark. I’m the steward, and therefore your cousin.”
Sorrow hit Jesstin hard when their hands connected.
Emrys had nearly been a man himself when Jesstin was born, so they’d never been close, but he’d always been there when Jesstin had needed him.
Rhiain might have been louder in her love, but Emrys had never let him down when it mattered.
“I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Steward. ”
“Likewise. And steward, not for much longer.” Emrys hobbled to a bench and motioned for Jesstin to do the same. “How old are you, son?”
“Nineteen.” Jesstin remembered his nameday had passed while he had been away. “No, twenty.”
“Ah, to be twenty again.” Emrys’s head fell back as he closed his eyes and breathed in the chill air. “I’d just met my wife. Finola. She was such a striking beauty. I was never worthy of her, but that was no secret.”
“Was?”
“Spent her promise two midwinters past.” Emrys’s mouth formed a tight line. “Lived long enough to get to know her only grandchild, thank the Guardians.” He kissed his hand and waved it at the sky. “Have you a wife and children, Gennady?”
Jesstin shook his head. He had always liked Finola.
She’d been kind and with enough patience to fill a lake.
She’d put up with Emrys’s indiscretions early in their marriage and helped him deal with the mental anguish he’d shouldered after learning about Mathias’s erasure of their memories.
Jesstin hoped Emrys had been a better husband after that, but he’d never know.
“Not yet?”
Not ever, Jesstin thought, but he’d managed to go almost an hour without thinking of Elloven, and now she was right back to the front of his thoughts. “Time will tell.”
“A man needs a son to carry his name,” Emrys said. “Mine will need to soon enough. Three decades was plenty for me. Have you met him? Anduin?”
“No, sir,” Jesstin replied. Anduin had been young, perhaps five, when Jesstin had left for Rivenholde, and he probably wouldn’t have remembered Jesstin even without the Conductor’s interference.
“He’s a good lad. Takes after his mother. His older sister, Nara, she’s chosen a monastic life as a magus at the Sepulchre. She’s more like me.”
“In what way?”
“Immovable.” Emrys frowned at him. “You do look so familiar. It’s not just the hereditary resemblance. Are you certain we’ve never met?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“It’s only... There’s something about you that feels very, very...” Emrys wagged his head at his lap with a wince. “Anduin tells me my mind is going. Maybe so. Maybe so.”
Jesstin’s throat felt thick. To be sitting in the garden he’d played in as a boy, next to a brother he no longer knew, and pretending to be someone who didn’t exist was needless masochism, even for him.
He shot to his feet. “I should go, Steward. I have plans in the village.”
Emrys’s head was cocked, his eyes glossy. “You’ll tell Rhiain to come for supper soon, won’t you?”
“I... What?” He was so startled, his words emerged as a sharp whisper. “What did you say?”
“We started wrong, you and I, but you’re a good man, Asterin, and you’ve been good for my sister. Can’t ask for more than that, can you?” Emrys nodded to himself. “Perhaps I’ll come to you for supper. She shouldn’t be traveling with the baby coming along any day now.”
Jesstin’s eyes stung. “Um, I’ll tell her. Of course I will.”
“Good man.” Emrys leaned back and spread his arms along the back of the bench. “I think I’ll stay here a bit. It’s such a pleasant evening.”
Emrys was lost to the past, just as Jesstin was barred from it.
Both states were a prison, but Jesstin had the key to his, if he were brave enough to finally turn it.
He whispered his good-bye to his brother.
To all of them.
To everything he was and could have been.
Survive in the now or die in the then, those were his only choices, and neither was much of one.
Today is what you have. Today is all you have. The past doesn’t belong to you anymore. Tomorrow isn’t real, not yet. He couldn’t remember whose wisdom that had been.
Jesstin had spent so much of his life just trying to get by that he’d never given much thought to his future. Not until Elloven.