From Darkness Won - Jill Williamson [58]
No wonder Sir Caleb obsessed over safety. “Do you miss your wife?” Achan asked.
“Very much. When Sir Gavin called me to Mahanaim to free you from the dungeon, I did not know I would be gone so long. May Esper forgive me. I do send letters, but it is not the same as my return.”
“May you forgive me as well,” Achan said. “It never occurred to me you might rather go home than be one of my advisors.”
“I am called to serve my king. Esper knows that. Besides, none of us have any sort of life to return to until your rule is settled.”
Achan sat in awe of the men around him. Each one had shared so freely, encouraged him in ways he had never expected. It made him wonder what bits of wisdom King Axel might have shared had he been present. Achan took the coin in his hand and studied it. These men, as honorable and good as Achan knew them to be, had all struggled in some way. Surely his father had, as well.
Achan only wished he knew if the mysterious Hadad had killed his parents. Every time he heard his family name “Hadar” he thought of that faceless man from the pit in Barth. He frowned, brushing the troubling thought aside. This was a celebration. He had been a man for months, but tonight, for the first time, he truly felt like one.
When Achan awoke the next morning, he found Matthias standing beside his bed. Achan yawned long and hard. “Good morning, Matthias.”
“You’ve lots of wounds, sir.”
Achan glanced down to see that he had, as usual, kicked off his blankets in his sleep. He rolled his sore shoulder in an attempt at a stretch and yawned again. When he looked back to Matthias, the boy held his hands before his face, knuckles facing Achan, fingertips blackened with soot.
“I’ve wounds too, sir.”
Upon closer inspection, it was clear that Matthias’s fingertips were not covered in soot, but black for another reason. “What happened?”
“I was hunting with Father but got lost. A long while passed ’fore he found me. I was frozen.”
Achan recalled Master Ricks’s words when he’d offered the boy to Achan back in Tsaftown. He’s a good boy, but took a bad frost to his hands. He can use them fine, just not for the detail of tying knots.
Frostbitten fingertips? “Is it painful?”
“No, sir. Can’t feel a thing.”
“And here I thought you’d been playing in the fireplace.”
Matthias giggled. “I know better than that.”
The boy’s contagious laugh made Achan chuckle until Matthias pointed a blackened finger at Achan’s chest.
“What happened to you, sir?”
Achan glanced down. “Oh, a host of things.”
Matthias’s expression fell. Everyone who had seen Achan’s scars was always fascinated—or horrified. Why would little Matthias be any different?
“Pick one,” Achan said, “and I shall tell you the tale.”
Matthias’s eyebrows lifted into a pale arc, and his eyes flickered over Achan’s chest. He pointed to the still purpled scars on Achan’s right side and shoulder.
“Good choice. Those are bite marks,” Achan said in as eerie a voice as he could muster. “A cham tried to eat me.”
Matthias’s eyes widened and flicked to Achan’s neck. “Is that why you wear that?”
Achan fingered the claw. “It is.”
“You killed it?” These words were whispered with awe bordering on disbelief.
“With a knife to its throat.” Achan couldn’t help but enjoy the look of admiration on the boy’s face.
“That’s why Sir Shung calls you Little Cham?”
“No. He calls me that because Cham is my surname. Was.” Achan frowned. His answer had clearly confused the boy. Matthias may as well know the full tale if he’d be working with Achan for the rest of his days.
“I grew up as a stray in Sitna Manor,” Achan said. “Worked in the kitchens as the cook’s boy. I milked the goats, got firewood, and kept the hearths hot. One day Sir Gavin offered to train me as a squire. It’s against the law for a stray to serve in the Kingsguard, so I trained in secret. But Lord Nathak found out and banished Sir Gavin. I’d learned enough of the sword by then that Lord Nathak made me one of Prince Gidon’s squires.”
Matthias’s brow crinkled. “But you’re Prince Gidon, sir.”
Achan