Song Of Unmaking. Caitlin Brennan

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      This child was not easily bribed. His jaw set and his eyes narrowed. But Murna had raised many a child. Her own eyes narrowed even more formidably than his.

      He was headstrong but he was no fool. He sulked and dragged, but he went where he was told.

      The fog was leaving Euan’s wits—and none too soon, either. “I don’t suppose that’s mine,” he said.

      “So his mother said.” Murna sat on the stool that stood at the end of the bed.

      “Who was she?”

      “Her name was Deira from Dun Gralloch,” Murna said. “Her father was—”

      “I remember,” Euan said.

      That had been another winter before another war. There was a gathering of the clans around Dun Eidyn, to celebrate the dark of the year and plan the spring’s battles. It would be far from Euan’s first battle, but it would be his first war against the empire.

      He was full of himself that night, and full of honey mead, too. He looked up from his newly emptied cup to meet a pair of eyes the color of dark amber. Gradually he took in the rest of her, smooth oval face, neatly braided hair the precise color of her eyes, and tall body, well rounded, with deep breasts and broad hips.

      When he smiled at her, she did not smile back. She lowered her eyes as a modest woman should do, but she watched him sidelong.

      He found her in his bed that night, curled up, asleep. When he touched her, she woke completely. She was older than he was but still a maiden—though he did not know that until after it was done. He did not know her name, either, not for the nine nights she spent in his bed.

      They spoke of everything but that—the world and the people in it, the One, the empire, the dreams they had and the life they hoped for. She was the first mortal creature he told of his dearest dream, not only to be high king but to sit in the throne of the emperor in Aurelia. She did not laugh at him, either. She said, “I’ll make you a son to give you strength, and to stand beside you when you take that throne.”

      “I’m going to do it,” he said.

      “I know you are,” she said. Her eyes were dark in the lamplight, drinking in his face. There was something odd about her expression—not sad, exactly, but somehow wistful.

      Then she kissed him and he forgot everything else. Five years after, he remembered little of that night but warmth and laughter and such pleasure as a man could never forget.

      Toward dawn, she kissed him one last time, letting it linger, then drew away as she had done at the end of each night. But she paused, bending down again. Her voice was soft in his ear. “Deira,” she said. “My name is Deira.”

      He reached for her to keep her with him. He opened his mouth to ask her the rest of it—her father’s name, her clan, everything—but she slipped away. That day the people of Dun Gralloch left the gathering. That night, his bed was empty. Deira was gone.

      He meant to find her. But first there was the war, then they lost it, then he was sent as a hostage into Aurelia. He had not forgotten her, but five years was a long time. He would have expected that she had married and borne another man sons—that was what any sensible woman would do.

      Now that he knew what had become of her, he surprised himself with grief. Out of it, he said to his mother, “She really is dead? Was it the child?”

      Murna shook her head. “There was plague the year after he was born. He lived. She died. Her father sent him to me as her last gift, with a message. Keep him until his father comes for him.”

      “Was she dishonored? Was she mistreated? Did—”

      “She was treated as well as she had a right to expect,” his mother said. “The child was allowed to live. He was sent to the king’s house for fostering. That’s more than most fathers would do for a daughter who despoiled herself.”

      “I would have asked for her as a wife,” Euan said.

      “I’m sure you would,” said Murna without expression. “Will you give the child a name, then?”

      “Of course I will,” he said. “I’ll do it today.”

      That surprised her. He did not see why, but there was no denying it. “Are you sure?”

      He frowned. “Why? Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”

      “No,” said Murna. “No reason.”

      That was not the truth, but something kept him from challenging her. There would be time later, he told himself. He had come here to ask her advice, not to find a son—and those other matters were pressing.

      It was odd how, after all that had happened, even to the unmaking of a priest, Euan remembered little of what he said to his mother or she to him. But he remembered every moment of the exchange with his son.

      That was his son—the child of his body. He was as sure of that as he was of his own name and ancestry. He would give the boy a name of his own and the life that went with it, firstborn son of a prince of the Calletani.

      Murna brought the boy into the hall after the men had gathered there but before the day’s meal had been spread on the tables. That was the time for petitions and disputes, for men to come to the king with things that needed doing or settling.

      Euan had been listening carefully to each one. Some needed his father’s decision, others the warleaders’ or the priests’. As he had when he was young, he committed each to memory.

      He did not hold his breath waiting for his mother to bring the child. She might make him send for the boy—and he was prepared to do that.

      Late in the proceedings, as two men of the warband argued heatedly over the ownership of a crooked-horned cow, Euan saw his mother standing among the rest of the petitioners. There was a plaid over her head as if she had been a common woman. The child was too small to see among so many grown folk, but Murna looked down once and said something.

      Euan did not need that kind of proof. The boy was here. He knew it in his gut.

      His heart was racing. For a man to claim a son was a great thing. For a man to do it the day after he had come home from a long exile was greater still. It was like an omen, a promise that his dream would come true.

      The petitions that had fascinated him now seemed terribly tedious. There were so many and they were so trivial. If they stretched out much longer, there would be no time.

      Just as he was about to rise up and roar his mother’s name, the last petitioner finished his rambling tale and received quick justice from the king. Euan paid no attention. His eyes were on the child, whom at last he could see.

      His child. His son. No one could mistake it. There was no sign of his mother in him except for a certain air, a deep and inborn calm. He was long-limbed and rangy like a young wolf, and his eyes were wolf eyes, amber-gold and slanting in the long planes of his face.

      He was royal-clan Calletani, like his father and grandfather and all their fathers before them. The One himself had marked him for what he was.

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