Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [11]
Lael started to protest, then merely threw his hands in the air to reproach the gods and followed the two children as they hurried across the by-then empty plaza. When Jahdo looked back, he saw Demet running after as well. Standing where they’d left them, Verrarc and the Gel da’Thae conferred, heads together, while the rest of the town council hovered anxiously nearby.
The family spent a miserable evening round the central hearth, where two candle-lanterns stood, sending long shadows flickering on the walls. No one wanted a fire on such a muggy night. For a long time Dera and Lael paced back and forth, squabbling and cursing each other and the town council both while the family merely listened. Niffa and Demet sat on a wooden bench; Kiel leaned in the doorway and glowered; Jahdo scrunched into a corner with a ferret cradled in the crook of his arm for comfort. All at once he realized that his father was speaking to him.
“Why? Why did you say you wanted to go?”
Jahdo opened his mouth to answer only to find that he had no words. Although he tried his best to remember what had made him speak, the entire episode by the council fire had blurred in his mind into something much like a half-remembered dream.
“The adventure of the thing, maybe?” Lael said, softening his voice. “Lad, lad, you can tell me.” He crouched down to Jahdo’s level. “What be wrong? Second thoughts?”
Jahdo nodded. Lael let out his breath in a puff.
“Too late now, lad, to get out of it. You should have thought of this then. Ye gods, it’s not like we can spare you here. There be a passel of work, this time of year.”
“Lael?” Demet broke in. “If my sergeant does release me, III come take Jahdo’s place.”
Niffa gave him a brilliant smile that made him blush. Lael pretended not to notice.
“Now that be decent of you, lad,” he said. “Ill speak to him myself. It’s been many a long year since I served my turn in the militia, and I wouldn’t mind having someone good with a sword round the place.”
“Why, Da?” Jahdo found his tongue at last.
“Don’t know.” Lael hesitated, suddenly uneasy. “It’s just that somewhat be wrong. I can feel it, like.”
“Everything be wrong.” Dera began to weep. “Jahdo, Jahdo! Naught will ever be right again.”
Jahdo clutched Ambo so tight that the ferret whipped his head round and nipped his wrist, then slithered free and dashed for the other room. Jahdo stood up.
“Mam, don’t be crying! Please! It’s needful that I do this.” He felt as if he were struggling to open a locked door, shoving and pushing and banging against some huge expanse of solid oak, but he simply could not voice the truth, that he’d never wanted to agree.
“You could at least tell your mother why,” Lael snapped.
The entire family was staring at him, waiting for him to speak.
“I can’t. I don’t know why. I can’t say it.”
Lael sighed and threw his hands into the air.
“To think that a son of mine!” he snapped. “Ye gods!”
“Da!” Niffa came to Jahdo’s rescue. “Leave it be. There’s no help for it now, anyway, no matter what the reason.”
Dera wiped her eyes on a bit of rag and nodded agreement.
“And I’ll say one thing for that Gel da’Thae bard,” she snarled. “He’s got some respect for a mother’s heart, not like our Verro. Here I’ve known him since he was a tiny lad, a pitiful little thing with that rotten father of his, and me the only woman in this town who’d stand up to old Renno, at that, and tell him to keep his belt off his lad’s back. To think he’d treat one of mine this way now that he’s made his way in the world!”
Jahdo tried to speak so hard that he began to tremble, but words would not come. Dimly he remembered that Verrarc had somehow or other spared his life, but he could not tell his mother, could not find one word.
“Now here, the lad be exhausted,” Demet said. “Lael, a dropped plate’s past mending, isn’t it? Might as well let Jahdo get his sleep. He’ll need it.”
Jahdo decided that as prospective brothers-in-law went, Demet had a lot to recommend him. Before his parents could start in on him again, he retreated to