The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [71]
“Are you telling me that I’m Aberwyn?”
“Exactly that.”
Still holding the wine Cup he rose, stood dazed for a moment, then wandered over to the window, where he set the cup down and leaned onto the windowsill with both hands to look out. When Jill started after, Salamander caught her arm and motioned her to sit back down.
“Aberwyn needs you badly,” the gerthddyn said. “By all dictates of honor, you’re not truly her inheritor, but you’re the only one she’s got. If you abdicate, the fields and streets will run with blood.”
“I know what happens when there’s no heir for a rich rhan.” He was a silent for a long moment. “But a lie’s a lie.”
“Rhodry!” Jill and Salamander both spoke at once.
With a shrug he turned around and leaned back on the sill, and his smile was a painful thing to see, filled with mockery and weariness.
“Listen to me, a cursed slave still, talking of honor. Ah ye gods, can’t you understand? You can fill my head with all the fine words in the world, but I still don’t know who I am.”
“Don’t you believe us?” Jill said.
“Of course I do! But it’s only words. I don’t truly remember one wretched thing. I don’t feel who I am! Ye gods, try to understand that!”
“I will, my love, and my apologies.”
With a toss of his head he left the window and sat back down, reaching out a hand to catch hers and squeeze it.
“You I know, Jill. And I remember exile and disgrace, and riding hungry and lying wounded, but now you tell me I’m a gwerbret—by the hells, not even a poor country lord or some landless courtier, but a gwerbret!”
“Umph, well.” Salamander rubbed his chin again. “I can see where it would take a bit of getting used to, truly. But try, brother of mine. Oh by the love of every god, try, and take the blasted rhan, too, because if you don’t, Death will sail into Aberwyn’s harbor and ride her roads.”
“True enough.” Suddenly Rhodry looked close to tears. “And it’s the common folk who’ll suffer the worst, isn’t it? When the lords take their sons for riders and trample down their crops and siege their cities, Oh truly, they’ll suffer and starve and suffer again. Ah by the hells! I may be naught but a bastard born and now a slave, but cursed and twice-cursed if I’ll let that happen!”
Jill frankly stared at him. Never had she heard him or any other noble lord admit such a thing; truly, for all his fine honor, she’d never seen Rhodry do anything that showed he cared one whit for the ordinary folk below him. He’d always been generous to beggars, of course, but because a noble lord was supposed to be generous, and he’d respected his fighting men more than most lords, but then, they were warriors and in his mind his equals. But the farmers, the craftsmen, the merchants, the priests even—they’d meant exactly as much to him as his horses, creatures to provide for when he could and use up when he couldn’t.
“Is somewhat wrong?” Rhodry said.
“Naught. It’s just been such a strange road to ride lately.”
“Now that is true spoken with a vengeance.” He turned to Salamander. “Here, elder brother, since you seem to know so much, how did I get to these blasted islands, anyway? All I remember is waking up in the hold of a ship in a Bardek port, and there was a man named Gwin who seemed to be my friend and a man named Baruma who was a demon-spawned enemy from the third hell. We traveled round for a bit, and then they sold me to a man named Brindemo in Myleton.”
“That comely and erudite slave trader we have already met, and from him we heard some of your sad story.” Salamander paused to frown into his wine cup. “Gwin, I know not, but Baruma—ah, Baruma! Jill first learned of him in the Bilge at Cerrmor, where, apparently, he had you knocked over the head and taken prisoner. Remember any of that?”
“Not a thing.”
“And then they loaded you onto a ship and took you off to Slaith, a secret pirate haven in the Auddglyn. I doubt me if you remember that, either.”