Letters from Memnara

The court at the Palace of Dariana was full when Lord Xenthos came.

He had asked for an audience that morning. By midday it was a hearing: every house with rooms in the keep had sent a witness, and every house that had not was learning of it before the sun set.

Lord Valcairn had expected as much. A father did not bring grief into the Palace of Dariana unless he meant for it to travel.

Lord Xenthos walked the length of the floor alone. He carried nothing: no offering, no scroll, no token of his dead. Lord Valcairn understood that too. The empty hands were the petition.

"My lord."

"Lord Xenthos."

"You know why I have come."

"I know what I have been told." Lord Valcairn did not move from the chair. "Tell me yourself."

Lord Xenthos's jaw worked. He was a tall man, narrow-shouldered, with the dry austerity of the Old Blood. The sort of man who had buried many before without weeping and would bury his son the same way, and break for it later, in private, where no one could use it against him.

"My youngest, Arius, is dead." Lord Xenthos's voice was even. It was the evenness of a man holding a blade by the edge. "Eleven years of age. Killed in his bed by a curse he did not earn and did not summon. The hand that placed it on him was Erini Alcerra. I have come to ask my lord for her head."

The hall held very still.

"Tell me how it happened," Lord Valcairn said.

"My lord knows..."

"Tell me how it happened."

Lord Xenthos's mouth tightened. He did not answer at once.

"She was at Antony Sanitos's side when the curse came for him. She is his betrothed. They are to wed in the spring." Each sentence cost him something. "Erini has, through her mother's line, the blood to touch our workings. She put her hand on Antony and lifted the curse from him. She did not know how to send it back, due to insufficient training, she did not know how to ground it. She moved it sideways, into the next room, where Arius slept, and she let it have him there."

"She lifted the curse from her betrothed." Lord Valcairn simply asked.

"She killed my son."

"She lifted the curse," Lord Valcairn said again, "from her betrothed. Tell me, Lord Xenthos. Whose curse was given to Anthony?"

The silence was very long.

"My lord..."

"Whose."

Lord Xenthos's hands closed at his sides.

"Tommin's."

"Tommin's what."

"Tommin's casting." The words came thin and hard. "My eldest had... he had reason to target Antony. He worked the curse against him. It was a single working, my lord. He has never raised the blood before. He has been spoken to. He understands the gravity of what he did."

"He cursed the man his cousin is betrothed to?"

"Yes."

"He raised blood against a son of House Sanitos, in violation of the accords your own father signed."

"Yes."

"And the curse he cast on Antony Sanitos found Arius in his bed because Erini Alcerra, who loves Antony, could not bear to let it kill him."

"Yes."

"And you have come to me," Lord Valcairn said, very quietly, "asking me to take her head for it."

"Arius was eleven years old, my lord. He was eleven. The girl moved the curse. The girl placed it into his body. Whatever began it, she ended it. In the body of my child."

"Your son killed your son, Lord Xenthos."

It landed where it was meant to land. Lord Xenthos's face did not change. Only the colour did.

"You will not punish her."

"I have not finished hearing the matter," Lord Valcairn said. "Sit down."

"My lord..."

"Sit. Down."

Lord Xenthos sat.

Lord Valcairn looked toward the rear of the hall. He had heard the doors. He had heard them some moments ago, in fact, and had been waiting.

"Antony Sanitos. Come forward."

The young man walked the length of the floor. He was twenty-three years of age, dark-eyed, still pale from a curse that had been on him for less than a quarter-hour and had taken something from him that Lord Valcairn could see in his gait and that no one in this room would ever appreciate the cost of. He stopped where Lord Xenthos had stood.

"My lord."

"You have something to say."

"Yes, my lord."

"Say it."

Antony did not look at Lord Xenthos. He looked only at Lord Valcairn, and his voice was steady in the way that a man's voice is steady when he has made a decision he is afraid he will not have the courage to make twice.

"Erini Alcerra acted to save my life. The curse that took Arius Xenthos was cast upon me. It was meant for me. It should have been borne by me. If a life is owed to House Xenthos for the death of Arius, my lord, let it be mine. I offer it. I offer it freely. I offer it now."

"Antony..." Lord Xenthos began.

"My lord, I am not finished." Antony's voice did not rise. "Erini did not know what she was doing. She is untrained in your way, her mother tried to protect her. She has never raised the blood. She had a man she loved dying under her hand and she reached for the only working she felt in her own blood, and she got it wrong. If she is to die for that, then by every right that exists in this hall, I should die first. The curse was mine to bear. I am here to bear it."

He stopped.

"Take my life, my lord. Spare hers. The marriage was meant to bind our houses. Let my death do what the marriage cannot."

The hall did not breathe.

Lord Valcairn looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at Lord Xenthos. Then he looked, briefly, at no one. At the air above Antony's head, where things that were not yet decided lived.

"No."

Antony's chin lifted, slightly.

"No," Lord Valcairn said again. "I refuse it. I refuse all of it. The girl will not die because the curse she lifted was not hers, was not earned by her, and was not, by the law of every house standing in this hall, hers to bear. She acted in love and in ignorance. She acted to save a life that ought never to have been in danger. The death of Arius is a horror. It is not a crime I will name in her."

He turned his head, fractionally.

"And you, Antony Sanitos, will not die in her place. The law does not take a life that is not owed. Your life is not owed. You will marry Erini Alcerra in the spring, as was promised, and you will live the life that Arius cannot."

Antony's eyes closed. He did not speak.

"Lord Xenthos."

"My lord."

"You came into this hall asking me to bury your son's crime under a girl's body. I will not. Tommin raised the blood against a son of House Sanitos. He killed his brother in the doing. He will live with that, every hour of every day, for the rest of his life. His house will live with it. You will live with it. I think that is punishment enough. I think that is more punishment than I have it in me to design."

A long moment passed.

Lord Xenthos rose. He bowed. It was a beautiful bow, the kind taught in childhood and refined across decades, and Lord Valcairn saw in it exactly what it was: the shape of obedience laid over the substance of refusal.

"My lord is generous."

"My lord is finished," Lord Valcairn said. "Go home, Lord Xenthos. Bury your son."

Lord Xenthos straightened.

"I will," he said. "And then I will bury hers. And his." His eyes flicked, once, to Antony. "And her father's. And her father's father's name. The Alcerra and Sanitos lines will pay for Arius, my lord, in coin you have not weighed. Not today. Not next year. But it will pay."

He turned, and walked the length of the floor, and the hall did not breathe until the doors had closed behind him.

Antony was still standing.

"My lord," he said quietly. "Thank you."

"Do not thank me yet," Lord Valcairn said. "Go to her."

Antony bowed, and went.

Lord Valcairn sat a long time after.

The young man had offered his life for a girl who had killed a child trying to save him. That much, the hall had seen.

What the hall had not seen, what Lord Xenthos had not seen, what Antony had not seen, what the girl herself did not yet know, was this: the curse Tommin had cast was not the kind that should have been movable at all. Not by Xenthos blood. Not by any blood living.

Something had helped her.

Lord Valcairn did not yet know what.