My father stirred, and both of our attentions shot to him. She moved to his side, her arm cradling his head. “Branson?” I heard the hop
e in her voice.
Incoherent rambles were all he offered back. There was still no change. I watched her shoulders slump.
“We’ll talk more later,” I said.
She shook her head absently. “I wanted to be with him. The physician forbade it, saying my presence only agitated him.” She looked up at me, her eyes sharp, fierce as she had once been. “I will see the physican executed for this, Jezelia. I will see all of them dead.”
I nodded, and she turned back to him, her lips grazing his forehead as she whispered to a man who couldn’t hear her, who might never hear her again. I was ashamed I had ever called him a toad.
I lingered, staring at them together, feeling dazed, watching the desperate worry in her eyes, and remembering how my father had called for her, my Regheena, the tenderness in his voice, even as he lay delirious. They loved each other, and I wondered how I hadn’t seen it before.
* * *
I looked down at the Royal Scholar still seated on the stone floor. He’d been there waiting for an hour.
“I see you still have all your toes,” I said.
He stretched out a leg and winced, rubbing his thigh. “You and your henchmen were convincing. I assume I can move now?”
“I’ve always loathed you,” I said, glaring down at him. “I still do.”
“Understandable. I’m not such a likable fellow.”
“And you hate me as well.”
He shook his head, his black eyes looking unapologetically into mine. “Never. You exasperated, annoyed, and defied me, but it was nothing less than I expected. I pushed you—perhaps too hard at times. Your mother wouldn’t let me discuss the gift with you, so I did as she ordered. I tried to make you strong in other ways.”
I held on to my hatred, nursing it like a treasured habit, like a nail I had chewed down to the quick. I wasn’t done. I wanted more, but I already sensed a truth beneath his deceptions.
“Get up,” I ordered, trying to make every one of my words sting. “We’ll speak in your former office. My mother is resting.”
He struggled to his feet, his legs stiff, and I motioned to a guard to help him.
He adjusted his robes, smoothing out the wrinkles, trying to regain his dignity, and faced me. Waiting.
“My mother seems to think you can explain everything. I doubt that.” I put my hand on my dagger as threat. “Your lies will have to be very good to convince me.”
“Then maybe my truths would be better.”
* * *
I saw, once again, the Royal Scholar I had always known, the one who could snarl and spit at the slightest provocation. His ears flamed red when I accused him of sending scholars to Venda. “Never!” he shouted. When I told him about their dirty work in the caverns there, he jumped to his feet and paced his office, calling out the names of the scholars. I confirmed with a nod after each one. He whipped around to face me. Now it wasn’t just anger I saw in his face but stabbing betrayal, as if each scholar had personally gutted him with a knife.
“Not Argyris too?”
“Yes,” I said. “Him too.”
His rage caved inward, and he faltered, his chin briefly trembling. I heard my mother’s words again. Of this much I’m certain. He never betrayed you. If this was an act, it was a very convincing one. Apparently Argyris was the lowest blow. He sat down in his chair, his knuckles tapping his desk. “Argyris was one of my star pupils. We had been together for years. Years.” He leaned back in his chair, his lips pulled tight across his teeth. “The Chancellor claimed I kept losing my lead scholars because I was difficult. They all left with little notice for remote Sacristas in Morrighan. So they said. I went to see Argyris a month after he left, but the Sacrista said he’d stayed only a few days and then moved on. They didn’t know where he had gone.”
If he was angry when I told him about the scholars, he was incensed when I questioned him about the bounty hunter sent to slit my throat. He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head, mumbling stupidity under his breath.
“I was careless,” he finally said. “When I found the books missing and your note in their place, I went about looking for them.” A single brow rose and he shot me a pointed stare. “You did say you reshelved them in their proper place. I thought they would be in the archives.” He said the Chancellor found him and his assistants tearing the shelves apart and asked what they were searching for. An assistant jumped in with an answer before the Royal Scholar could say anything. “The Chancellor was furious and searched through a few shelves himself before he stormed out of the room yelling for me to burn the book if I found it as I’d been ordered to do in the first place. After five years, I found it odd that he even remembered the text, since he had declared it barbarian jibberish. “I began wondering about him at that point. I even searched his office, but turned up nothing.”
That didn’t surprise me. My results had been the same. The Royal Scholar leaned forward, the anger draining from his face. “I was required by law to sign the single warrant for your arrest and offer a bounty for your return. It was posted in the village square, but that warrant didn’t include murder. I never sent a bounty hunter to kill you, nor did your father. He only sent trackers to find and retrieve you.”
I stood, walking around the room. I didn’t want to believe him. I spun to face him again. “Why did you ever hide the Song of Venda away in the first place? My mother told you to destroy it too.”