Birthrights_Revisions to the Truth Read online

  “Tonight?” He’d never in his life been so forward.

  Her lips parted as if to answer, but she left without responding. He watched until she was out of sight before dropping onto the furs, her taste still on his lips. Unable to lie still, he rose to his feet and paced. He worried his tactless words had put their lessons at risk. The passion in her kiss was undeniable, but Nikla was unpredictable, a trait he found thrilling—and frightening. What will I do if she never returns?

  Welloch, Chapter 18

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  When their mother, Siroth, didn’t return, Brorsidst looked after and raised his twin sister. Dyrmor grew strong, fierce, clever, and independent like a Dragon. But always her woman’s body longed to return to the realm of Man. It was a longing Brorsidst didn’t understand. But at his sister’s insistence, he accompanied her south. The first settlement they encountered was Welloch, a remote village founded by former slaves who were the last remnants of the Tunga tribe. The inhabitants of Welloch spoke with reverence about a mighty Dragon who’d freed them from their chains. They begged Dyrmor and Brorsidst to join and protect them. Thus Dyrmor became Mother to the Tunga, and the Tunga became the Dragonborn.

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  —Excerpt from the Tungresh,

  the sacred scrolls of the Dragonborn

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  Welloch

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  After skipping both the midday meal and dinner, Quint’s stomach grumbled its displeasure. He had no appetite for food. He wanted Nikla. He’d tried to keep busy, but even in the midst of conversation, his thoughts wandered always back to her. If only she’d said something before leaving, anything to clarify where we stood. Not knowing was torture.

  He’d repeatedly gone over those final moments in his mind. I was too forward. I went too far. But as much as he berated himself, he clung to the knowledge that she’d returned the embrace with passion equal to his own. Nikla was not like the silly girls who giggled and whispered to each other when he passed. Proud but humble, determined but patient, she embraced her people’s culture while remaining unencumbered by its restrictions. Still, she was Dragonborn. He worried he’d offended her and feared she wouldn’t return.

  He pulled the soft fox-fur blanket to his chin. Having grown up in Bothera accustomed to such luxuries, Quint hadn’t appreciated the comparable extravagance of his own tent. But Nikla’s lessons had prompted him to spend less time pining for an audience with the Mother, and more time mingling with the people he’d been sent to protect. He was now shamed by how generous they were to him with the little they had.

  Quint yawned. Sleep—he yearned for the sweet elixir to speed the passage of time. But his mind continued to race, and his body, no matter that he willed it to rest, tensed in anticipation. When the dawn arrives, I’ll go to her. Forget propriety.

  But, as is so often the case, when he stopped chasing sleep, sleep caught him. It brought enchanting dreams—dreams vivid as life itself. Nikla was there. She’d slipped away from her uncle’s house and into his tent to lie with him on the furs. He could feel her nakedness, her small pert breasts pressed against his back. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his neck, a warmth that spread down his body to his loins. He could feel the rough skin of her fingers on his stomach and her silky unbraided hair on his shoulder and arm.

  He turned to her in the darkness and pulled her against him, his lips searching out hers. There were no words—no apologies or clarifications—just the hushed moans and quickened breaths of two moving together as one.

  “Tell me,” Quint asked afterwards, as they lay next to each other, her head cradled by his shoulder, “what happened to Dyrmor and Brorsidst?”

  He couldn’t see in the pitch of night, but somehow knew she was smiling. “Dyrmor grew up strong and clever under the care of her Dragonbrother. When she reached adulthood, she became Mother to the Tungan slaves Siroth had freed from the Allawa.”

  “Did she marry and bear children?”

  A long pause followed before Nikla spoke. “She married.” Her voice turned sad. “But the Tunga were her children. She aged at the pace of Dragons, so she ruled a very long time. Under her wise leadership, and with Brorsidst’s support, the Dragonborn reclaimed the land they’d lost and became a great nation.”

  “That’s a nice story.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Dragonbrother?”

  “It’s not a nice story.” She rolled over into his chest and draped her leg across his thigh. He held her, and they slept.

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  Quint woke, his mind fuzzy. The inside of his tent was dark, but he could tell it was morning by the splinters of light that jabbed through the cracks in the hide walls. He was content—cheerful even—the panicked anticipation of the previous night gone.

  He reached out beside him for Nikla, but she wasn’t there. The furs at his waist were wet and sticky, but that sometimes happened during dreams. “Nikla?” He sat up, her absence clearing his thoughts. The contentment with which he’d awakened vanished.

  He started to stand, but a sharp pain shot through his hand, sending him back to his knees. “What the—” He picked up the object that had stabbed him and, despite the dim light, recognized Nikla’s hair comb. She’d told him it was her mother’s, all that was left of her besides memories. He’d never seen her without it anchoring her braid.

  I knew it wasn’t a dream! He relaxed. There would be more lessons.

  Dermot had cautioned him to avoid relationships with the people he advised. “It can only end badly,” the former slave had warned.

  But Quint knew it was too late to heed his friend’s advice. No matter the trouble it causes, Nikla’s worth it.

  Riverbend, Chapter 19

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  The Truth does not teach how to satisfy one’s desires. It’s a tool with which we may learn to live despite them. The measure of a man lies not in his accomplishments, but in the extent of his resistance.

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  —Edric Cullen,

  Founding Father of the Council of Truth

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  Riverbend

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  Artifis Fen took a deep breath, inhaling the feculence of the Maze, the nose-biting odor of old urine and discarded cooking oil. “This,” he said to himself, “is real life.” He was fed up with the perfumed and manicured lords and ladies and their incessant squabbles. He craved release, and what was on offer in NewTown couldn’t whet his appetite. Moons had passed since he’d last made this trek. He pulled his gray wool hood low to conceal his face, spurred forward by the tingle of anticipation.

  “Lookin’ for something, handsome?” A plump woman beckoned from the shadows, her curled brown tresses arranged to hide the wrinkles on her face. She moved closer, her nubby linen dress slit up the side to reveal a squishy, pallid leg. He noticed the raised ruddy scar around her ankle and looked about for a handler, fingering the hilt of his dagger.

  “Don’t worry, there’s no one ‘round to tell.” The woman tried to grab his arm, but he shook her off. He’d known better than to make eye contact, but his curiosity had bested him. She trailed after as he walked away.

  “If I’m not your type, there’re others—” her voice wavered between plea and enticement—“young, old, dark, fair, skinny—soft and comfortable like me.” She reached again to tug on his sleeve, and he fought the urge to strike her down there in the street.

  “Surely one will tempt you—or two or three if that’s your fancy. C’mon.” She flashed a broken-toothed smile and grabbed his arm instead of his sleeve. “No harm to peek. No charge to look.”

  T
he First Lord coolly disengaged and strode away as fast as he could without drawing attention. The woman wasn’t at all appealing. He’d still wanted to peek. The Maze was full of mysteries. His mind raced as he imagined what he might have found.

  It was a fool’s temptation. He knew this—the difference between the titillation of a clandestine visit to the Maze and hazarding real danger. He might reside on the other side of the Inge, but Artifis Fen was not naïve. With a knife in his back, the power he’d accumulated would mean nothing.

  He ducked down the next alley, checking back to ensure neither the woman nor anyone else followed. With the moon hiding behind the clouds, the only light came from a dim street lamp on the corner. It was a place that wished to remain undiscovered.

  The street, once a back alley for the row of connected stone houses on either side, was now a dark dead end. Every door but one had been stoned over. The lone remaining door’s top barely reached his navel, a reminder of the time when servants had been expected to enter and leave upon their knees. Hard to believe this section of the Maze once housed the wealthiest in Riverbend.

  There were no markings on the weathered wooden door, nothing to indicate the plain servants’ entrance was the access to a brothel famed throughout the Lowlands. Even most residents of the Maze believed the stories of the Cache to be fabrications, the product of ale and bluster. Only a select few knew otherwise. Fewer still knew the location.

  The door swung open just as he bent to knock. “Welcome,” a woman’s voice called from behind the door. He knelt to enter.

  The sweet aroma of incense and the soothing burble of running water greeted him as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. The structure had been erected over a natural spring, and water pooled against the rock wall behind the entrance. Candles flickered at the end of the hall, where a woman sat behind a heavy slab of dark wood balanced on four rough-hewn blocks.

  Artifis stood and moved toward the light. The woman’s delicate white hands, with long tapered fingernails, rested on the polished wood. Her blue eyes shone with the candles’ light. It was not her eyes that held his attention, though, but her long white throat flowing into full breasts that threatened to spill from her plunging neckline. Pinned to her shoulder was a red carnation, signifying the presence of her blood flow, the reason she was manning the entrance.

  The woman motioned for Artifis to sit on the narrow bench pushed flush against the wall opposite her. He sat stiffly on the edge while she rang a small porcelain bell that flooded the hallway with tinkling echoes. Despite an open invitation, he’d not visited the Cache for a long time. Ever since he’d launched the cursed war in the Fringe, its demands for attention and the petty nuisances of the other Lords had pilfered both his free time and energy.

  “Good sir.” Salazar appeared in the doorway behind the desk. “I feared you’d forgotten the way.”

  Artifis stood, and Salazar clasped his hand between his own, his yellow teeth exposed behind his split-lipped smile. The First Lord was taller than most and well-built, but Salazar stood almost a head above him. “I’m getting older, and it’s harder to bend through that dwarf’s door of yours,” Artifis joked. Something about the giant of a man always put him at ease.

  Salazar laughed and opened his palm toward the hostess. “Most would slither on their bellies to be with her like. Plus, it never hurts to make a man feel big in this business. Have you found equal accommodations closer to home?”

  “Equal? There’s no equal to the Cache in all the land.” Artifis realized how starved he was for this type of banter. These days he was either ordering people about or having to parse his words to avoid offending the delicate sensibilities of childish lords.

  “That is what I intend.” The big man clapped Artifis on the back and led him past the desk and down the hall.

  Unlike the dens Artifis had frequented in his youth, the Cache had no open lounge where whores lazed between servicing patrons. Salazar instead ushered each customer to an immaculate private room. There he presented a woman selected to satisfy the customer’s stated tastes. Not once had his choice disappointed the First Lord.

  “I have someone special for you,” Salazar said before closing the door, his expression sending shivers of anticipation down Artifis’ spine.

  The First Lord sat on the edge of the bed, and two women with carnations on their shoulders entered with a selection of nuts and fruits. “Water only.” He anticipated the next question. The blonde poured a glass from a nearby pitcher, while the dark-skinned beauty, with streaks of flame in her otherwise dark eyes, cleaned his face with a steaming hot cloth.

  “Anything else?” she asked once finished. He shooed them away, impatient for Salazar to return.

  When the knock finally arrived, Artifis tensed, his fingernails scraping rhythmically against the ridged bed cover. The first moment of introduction was his favorite part of the experience. “Come in.” His voice cracked like a teenager’s.

  The door creaked, and he caught a glimpse of a pale shoulder supporting a long green satin dress. The woman’s flowing hair, a cascade of blonde and red streaks, reminded him of a sunset after a storm. When the door swung open, Artifis dug his fingers into the bed to keep from falling off. Before him stood the spitting image of a young Roslin, his first and only love. How could Salazar have known? Where did he find this beauty?

  Artifis had met Roslin when he was just a boy touring RatsNest with his father, the First Lord at the time. “The Council exists, son—” his father had waved his arm to display the misery surrounding them—“so the whole of the Lost Land does not become thus afflicted.” Artifis had been old enough to know, though his father had directed the words to him, they were meant instead for the others with them. His father’s main concern for the slum was that only the servants, and not the area’s troubles, crossed the Inge into NewTown.

  While the lecture continued, the young Artifis had taken in the extent of the filth. Although parts of RatsNest were no different from the poorer sections of NewTown, to him, the Maze was a contagion apt to spread. He wondered why his father did nothing to address it.

  Then he saw her. Amid the decay, he spotted beauty that would change him forever. On the corner opposite, Roslin was selling wilted flowers. Her green eyes smiled at him from beneath a tangle of strawberry blonde curls.

  It was several days before he’d had an opportunity to return and purchase a bunch of sorry-looking lilies. Then he’d returned every few days to the same corner to purchase more wilted flowers. He’d subtly revealed his identity, but she’d been unmoved by his name. Nor had she been swayed by the heaviness of his purse. His persistence, though, had finally won her over. They’d shared fried pigeon fritters from a nearby stall. In time, they’d shared more—much more.

  As Artifis looked at the woman standing in the doorway, feelings he’d long suppressed returned. He didn’t know the exact moment he’d fallen in love with the flower vendor from RatsNest, but he suspected it was the first time he’d laid eyes on her. He moved his tongue across the tooth his father had chipped when he’d delivered the news she was pregnant, the response still fresh in his mind after many turns.

  “You will not—” his father had snarled as his fists pounded his eldest son—“mix refuse from RatsNest into the blood of this family!” He’d threatened to send Roslin and her parents to the mines. Artifis had promised to do anything needed to spare them. He’d married Ercilia Cullen less than a moon later.

  Marriage, though, hadn’t prevented Artifis from visiting Roslin in RatsNest. Even when his wife’s womb swelled with twins, he often sneaked across the Inge to spend time with his lover and their son. But his father’s deathbed ultimatum—“get rid of the tramp forever, or I’ll name Vademus successor”—forced his hand. That very day, Roslin and the boy had been banished to the Vinlands. With no proof, only the knowledge it was what he would have done, Artifis blamed his younger brother for their loss. He
believed Vademus had told their father about his secret rendezvous in an effort to steal his birthright.

  He’d not seen nor heard from her since the day he’d banished them, but her image was seared into his mind. “Roslin.” His voice was husky with desire. The woman looked confused and turned toward where Salazar waited in the hall. As Artifis moved closer, he picked out the differences—the curve of her chin, the sharp cut of her nose. Still, the resemblance was remarkable. He pulled her against him.

  After Roslin’s banishment and his succession to the Council of Truth, Artifis, drawn to the anonymity he found within the bustling crowds, had continued visiting RatsNest. He’d explored more and more of the area, his curiosity pushing him deeper into the warren of alleys that made up the Maze. Vademus claimed Artifis had lost a part of himself in those twisted streets and circumstances. Artifis knew he’d gained something as well. He’d learned the right to make laws wasn’t true power. True power was the ability to mold the opinions of those who must follow those laws. While the other lords spent time squabbling over land rights or petty business transactions, First Lord Artifis Fen made friends in dark places. What others transacted in public, he achieved with whispers in the dark. Unsaddled with the enmities of his competitors, he grieved with and comforted the widows and children of the men his whispers had slain.

  When father died, I should have brought her back. But Vademus is right, by then I was lost to the Maze. “Roslin,” he breathed into the woman’s ear.

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  “I don’t care the expense!” Artifis tossed the entirety of his purse, sending gold and silver coins rolling off the desk and onto the stone floor. “There must be no others.”

  He knew how to work with men like Salazar. Command and demand, and Salazar’s back would stiffen hard as a board—a board he’d be forced to break. “Just name the price.” The simple phrase kept the backs of such friends pliant. They wouldn’t hesitate to rob a stranger blind, but to a friend, they’d be fair—a stricter code than any lord followed. The people in the darkness, as he thought of such friends, might worship the same god as he, but theirs was a different Truth.