Chapter 18.4.2

Wallen’s eyes widened, round and blue. "Why, Gerard? Why did you treat me like dirt, to be spat upon and ignored? Do you still hate me so, after all these years, that you’ll turn from me when you can?"

Those words cut like a knife, exposing what I thought he, in his arrogance, would never see. I fumbled with the more immediate answer. "My Lord, at Rockridge we were being watched by the Lady Victoria, for she knew me despite my disguise. You were close to being found out, and would have suffered greatly – as I did, after you left me to the wolves!"

He frowned. "What do you mean? Sharp was to tell you that we were leaving, so that you could return to Songless and wait for us there."

"The first I knew of your leaving was in Lord Guerney’s private chamber in the middle of the night, after you’d fled." My gestures were curt, angry. "From there I was taken to the torture chamber, where I was to die by dawn."

He leaned forward eagerly. "How did you escape? How did you know to come here?"

I raised my hands, then paused. If I explained how Peter had saved me, I would have to explain who Peter was. I would have to tell him of my own choice, and my plans to not return to Songless. Nothing I wanted to face at the moment. I simply signed, "It is a long story, and there is not much time for it. Take your lady and go to Lord Guerney, for it is time to end the game."

He gave me a tired look. "I don’t know, Gerard. I don’t think I want to go back. There is a freedom in this life, a freedom from the hate my father left to me, a freedom to roam the world and travel its paths, a freedom to be myself – not just a hated name and the son of a hated face."

This, despite the bruises, the hunger, the discomfort? He must have been spelled. "Who told you this?"

"Sharp and I were talking, and I came to see it."

The Bard’s revenge. As the Bard-killer had taken Sharp’s father, now Sharp would take the Bard-killer’s son. The hurt that Sharp had pushed aside at Songless was a deep one, after all. "Sharp is like the wind. He travels from one place to another, making no more of a mark than a bent reed, a reed that straightens itself when he has gone. He holds nothing; nothing holds him. But you are Lord Reinard. You have a castle you must defend and subjects you must protect. And you have a duty, my lord. You must return to your lands, and there make peace with the Bardhall and the church. This is your path, my lord. You must walk your path, and let Sharp walk his."

Wallen was quiet for a long time. Then he said quietly, "Tomorrow. When Lord Guerney calls us to the steps, the truth will be known. And then we will return to Songless. Gerard, will you stand beside me on the steps?"

A hard question, after all he had led me to. He was asking me to risk my life for his father’s sins, sins that had shut me out of the Bardhall. Forgive, urged the god in agony. I did.

I nodded.

"And then you’ll return to Songless with me?"

I looked away, knowing that it was time that I walked my own path, as well.

Without further words, he left.