I didn’t need any kind of link with Tam or to be a mind reader to hear the words between the words. Tam had hinted over the years at the damage done to his family when he embraced black magic, and again when he’d been forced to flee Regor after his wife’s murder.
Wordlessly, Tam gave the bottle of port back to Barrett and walked slowly toward his mother, stopping just out of arm’s reach. Wise man.
“I have shamed my family, my family name, and the ancestors who gave it to me,” Tam said. “I do not expect nor deserve forgiveness for my choices and actions. I have come home to offer my service, my devotion, and my life if need be. I only ask that you would do me the honor of accepting it.”
Lady Deidre Nathrach took one step toward her son and, for a few silent moments, did nothing. Then she gently put her hands on either side of Tam’s face, drew his forehead down to her lips, and kissed him softly. With a trembling sigh, she touched her forehead to his.
Tam’s breath shuddered.
I sniffed. A couple of others sniffed from the shadows.
Tam’s arms remained by his side, and he bowed his head farther.
Deidre Nathrach’s hands dropped from Tam’s head to his shoulders, wrapping her arms around her son in a fierce embrace. With a soft cry, Tam returned the embrace, lifting his mother’s feet off of the floor.
“Candle smoke,” Nath said, noticing my sniff. “There’s no accounting for cheap wax.”
I dabbed at my eyes. “So that’s what it is.”
Deidre released Tam, but their heads remained close, whispers between a mother and son that no one else needed to hear.
When they parted, Tam introduced Mychael, Piaras, and me. No doubt, Lady Nathrach knew Imala and Prince Chigaru.
Once again, he stopped when he got to Talon.
Talon was standing in the shadows, as close to the door we’d come in as possible. Tam glanced at him and winked. The kid didn’t move. If he hadn’t still been standing upright with his eyes open, I’d have said he’d quit breathing. Tam seemed confident of his mother’s reaction to a half-breed grandson. Talon was only going to believe it when he heard and saw it.
“Remember when I was eighteen and went to Brenir for the summer?” Tam asked his mother.
“How could I forget?” Deidre said. “A few of your more memorable antics nearly caused an inter-kingdom incident.”
“That’s not all,” Tam said.
Terrified or not, Talon’s sense of drama wouldn’t let him pass up an entrance line like that. “He got an unexpected souvenir.”
Talon’s bravado ended there. Oh, he still stood straight and tall, his trademark devil-may-care expression on his face, but the truth was that Talon did care. Nath had accepted him readily enough, but Lady Deidre Nathrach was a woman whose opinion and regard Tam clearly cherished. Tam had accepted Talon, risking his reputation, high social standing, and even his life to protect him.
Talon was terrified of losing all of it.
Terrified that if Deidre Nathrach rejected him, Tam might be forced to do the same. I knew it was ridiculous, but what was running through Talon’s mind right now had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with keeping his knees from knocking together.
Tam’s mother didn’t move. “Come closer,” she told Talon.
Talon did. Reluctantly. He’d been standing in the shadows. Between him and his new grandmother was light, not a lot of it, but enough. Deidre noted Talon’s light skin and his aquamarine eyes. He inclined his head to her and clearly thought about leaving it there. But he took a breath, raised his head, and unflinchingly met his grandmother’s sharp eyes.
She spoke to Tam, but her eyes stayed on Talon. “Is he impulsive, stubborn, arrogant, and believes himself irresistible to women and impervious to death?”
Whoa, that sounded familiar. I bit my bottom lip to stop a grin.
Tam suddenly looked like a schoolboy who’d been caught doing all of the above. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And how much trouble does he either create for himself or attract on a daily basis?”
“All of it.”
Deidre looked at Talon, her lips curling slowly into a crooked smile. “If that is the case, you are most definitely your father’s son.” She turned to Tam and smiled until her fangs showed. “Payback is indeed hell, isn’t it?” she all but purred.
Tam sighed. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“I’m quite certain that I will be finding out.”
Tam gave his son “the look.” “You won’t find out because there will be nothing to see since Talon will be on uncharacteristically perfect behavior. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” Talon replied without hesitation.
The kid’s eyes had a twinkle that didn’t bode well for any promises, stated or implied. Tam had merely asked Talon if he’d understood him. The kid understood just fine; it didn’t mean he was going to do it.
It wasn’t like Tam to not cover all contingencies. Seeing his mom again after a couple of years must have rattled his cage. Though anything Talon promised not to do was going to get done anyway if the situation presented itself. Tam should have simply saved his breath.
Besides, Talon keeping his nose clean would signal the end of the world as we knew it.
Unless Sarad Nukpana and the Saghred beat him to it.
Imala and Tam were greeted with smiles and handshakes. Prince Chigaru was welcomed with respectful bows.
I felt about as wanted as something that came in the house on the bottom of someone’s boots.
It wasn’t disgust exactly, more like they saw me as something useful, but something that no one wanted to be anywhere near. Kind of like a having a rat problem and being forced to get a really big snake.
“Ain’t it grand to feel wanted,” I muttered.
“Pay them no mind, Raine,” Imala said. “It’s your power that frightens them. You’ve become quite legendary, you know.”
I snorted. “If only they did know.”
“And they can’t,” Imala whispered back while smiling reassuringly to an older gentleman who looked ill at ease in his armor. He had a single long dagger tucked into his belt. Probably the only weapon they trusted him to have. Others looked much the same: all armed, all scared, but all determined to topple their king.
It was a mass suicide waiting to happen.
They were probably hoping that I’d go first.
Deidre Nathrach ushered us into what she and Tam called the dining room. I would have called it a banquet hall, albeit a banquet hall that’d had a rough time of it recently: shredded wallpaper; most of the gilt trim hacked off; and holes either punched, kicked, cut, or chopped into the walls.
However, the dining room had the benefit of being in the back of the house. The windows were boarded up from the outside and the curtains were drawn on the inside. We could light candles, but couldn’t have a fire in the fireplace and risk smoke from the chimney giving us away. The table was intact. I guess it’d been too big for Sarad Nukpana to get it out the door, and he decided not to have it chopped to bits. The thing was big enough to seat at least two dozen people. The Khrynsani had left enough chairs so that we all could sit down. My feet and back had never been so grateful. Our supply packs were necessary, and they weren’t particularly heavy—for the first couple of miles. After that, I’d started wondering how much I actually needed food and weapons.
“Tell me what happened to Father,” Tam asked his mother.
“He had taken a team to intercept a shipment of weapons going from the harbor to the Gate construction site. Your father knew we needed those weapons.” Force of will kept any emotion from her face. “They were ambushed.”
I remembered the old goblin with the one dagger. Perhaps it was all they’d had to give him.
Imala scowled. “Betrayed.”
Deidre nodded once. “The Khrynsani were waiting for them. Four were killed; the other four captured. Cyran was among those captured.”
“Do you have proof that he’s still alive?” Tam asked.
“One of our lookouts witnessed the attack. They saw Cyran loaded into a prison wagon. He’d been wounded, but not fatally.”
Tam shifted uneasily. “I take it he knows where all the cells are based.”
“Yes,” she said tightly.
That one word said a lot. It implied another word. Torture.
“We’ll be in another location before tomorrow night,” she added.
As the leader of the Resistance, Cyran Nathrach would know where their bases of operation were, their plans, the names and cover identities of their agents. Everything. He would definitely know about this house. Tam’s father would probably be more valuable to Sarad Nukpana alive than dead, but with Nukpana, “alive” covered a lot of ground. It didn’t matter how strong you thought you were; everyone had a breaking point. And if anyone could torture you to that point quickly, it’d be Sarad Nukpana. Deidre was Cyran’s wife, but now she had to be a practical leader.
“When was he taken?” Tam asked.
“Two nights ago.”
Damn.
Tam’s expression darkened. “Nath said he’s in the temple dungeons—and that Sandrina Ghalfari was with those who ambushed him.”
“She was. Word we have received said that it was she who knew where our people were going to be that night. Sandrina was always a bright girl. A narcissistic, conniving, overdressed and underbred murderess, but bright.”
If those weren’t catfighting words, I didn’t know what were.
“Sarad and Sandrina have been locking away anyone capable of opposing him,” Deidre continued, “either directly or by their influence. Our most powerful mages and best military minds are locked in those temple dungeons.” Growing anger made her voice sharper. “We had a team trained and ready to destroy that Gate Sarad’s building outside the city. They were captured the same night as Cyran. Every last one of them are in those dungeons.”