From Darkness Won - Jill Williamson [146]
Toros jerked his head in a quick nod. “Absolutely, Sir Gavin.”
“That’s all I have, then.” Sir Gavin turned to Achan, eyebrows raised.
“Dismissed,” Achan said, as if he had been leading this meeting.
When only Achan and Sir Gavin remained, the old knight turned his mismatched eyes to Achan and said, “I’m sorry none of us spoke to you about spirits, Your Highness. I assumed a man your age knew better than to indulge, but I don’t suppose you’ve had much drink in your life.”
“I’ve seen enough fuddled men to know better, Sir Gavin. I just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.”
“Well, it’s a poison the king’s personal guard swears to abstain from. I gave it up years ago when I began working for King Paxton. Now, as for the girl—”
Achan thought of his father’s face on the gold coin in his pants pocket. “You needn’t fear. I’ll not make that mistake again.”
“Aye, that’s well and good, but Caleb said you were concerned about what Kurtz said about your father.”
The reality of it threatened to choke Achan all over again, like someone dunking his head underwater. “I was surprised. Angry, even. And then to learn that Lord Nathak had killed him and that…” Achan took a deep breath. “Did you know Lord Nathak was—”
“You father’s son? Your half-brother? Nay. There were rumors of other children. But there are rumors with any king.”
Children, Sir Gavin had said. Achan shook that thought away. “And such rumors are there because all the Hadar kings—my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather, and so on—they all kept mistresses?”
Sir Gavin met Achan’s eyes and nodded. “Aye, though not Paxton, as far as I know, and I knew him well. But Paxton saw firsthand what Macoun went through, living in that castle as a baseborn son of a king. Paxton took care of Macoun for years, not that Macoun ever appreciated it. Paxton was fifteen when Johan was killed. Married a month later. Crowned on his sixteenth year of birth.”
Achan had not known that. “Who did he marry?”
“Fasina Levy, who later became Lord Levy’s aunt when her brother had children.” Sir Gavin chuckled. “Now there was a match. Fasina was but thirteen, a shy little thing. I don’t know that she and Paxton said three words to each other the first year of their marriage. But they worked things out eventually.”
Eventually. Would that be Achan’s lot? Three words said to Lady Gypsum in the course of a year? “Well, I’m glad to know the truth.” To know what he needed to guard against for himself, for he would not betray his wife, whoever she may be.
But Sir Gavin mistook Achan’s meaning. “As am I, lad. After thirteen years, it explains what bothered me most about your father’s death. Not who had killed him so much as why Axel would not tell me who’d done it.”
“He wanted to protect his son.”
“That he did. Even as he and his queen lay dying by his son’s hand.” Sir Gavin gripped Achan’s shoulder. There were tears in his eyes. “That is who I want you to remember, lad. The man so filled with Arman’s love that he could forgive his son for taking his life and the life of his bride. That is the man I knew. The king I served. Just you remember it.”
“But a man with many mistresses. A man who wouldn’t have had that problem if he’d—”
“Aye, he was no porcelain saint. He was mixed, torn, pulled by light and darkness, as is every follower of Arman. That is what it is to love Arman and yet still live in this world. Pity those who do not know Arman, because in them there is nothing at all pulling them toward light.”
Achan felt some of his anger at his father recede. That Sir Gavin could know about King Axel’s failings and yet still admire him as a follower of Arman gave Achan courage as he examined his own mistakes. “I will.”
• • •
After Toros’s brief service for the dead, and after Achan and Sir Gavin had encouraged the soldiers, Achan went to the tent where Sir Caleb had confined Kurtz. It was a narrow brown tent with two cots inside. He found Kurtz