Lynn Flewelling - The Bone Doll's Twin

They got leave from the arms master and followed Tharin into the labyrinth of noble dwellings that filled the grounds between the two great palaces.

The house that had belonged to Tobin’s mother was actually a small wing attached to the outer wall of the Old Palace, surrounded by its own walls and courts. The gardens inside the main courtyard had been well tended, but once inside the house itself Tobin felt a strange emptiness close in around him, even though the hall had fine carved furnishings and brightly painted walls. Half a dozen servants in livery bowed to him as he entered. The steward was a middle-aged man Tharin introduced as Ulies, old Mynir’s son.

“I grieve for your loss,” Tobin told him.

Ulies bowed again. “And I for yours, my prince. I am honored that he served you and your family, and hope that I may do the same.”

Tobin turned slowly, taking in the great hall, with its ancient sideboards, hangings, and elegant carvings on the beams and walls. A broad staircase led up to his left.

“Your father carried you down those stairs the day you were named,” Tharin told him. “You should have seen this room, filled with all the great nobles of Skala. The king himself stood just there at the bottom of the stairs with Prince Korin on his shoulders. By the Four, how proud we all were!”

Tobin looked up at him. “Where was my mother? Was—was she well then?”

Tharin sighed. “No, Tobin, she wasn’t. From the night of your birth she wasn’t, but that’s no fault of yours. She stayed up in her room.”

“May I see it?”

“Of course. This is your house now and you can go anywhere you like. But the upstairs rooms haven’t been lived in since your mother left. Your father and I used chambers on this floor when we were in Ero, and the men have a barracks in the back court. Come on.”

Tobin looked around for Ki. “Well, come on!”

They were halfway up the stairs when Brother appeared above them, waiting for him at the top.

He shouldn’t have been there. Tobin hadn’t called him all day.

Actually, he hadn’t called him since that first night, he realized guiltily. There’d been so much to see and do here that he’d completely forgotten.

Yet Brother was there all the same, staring at him with black, accusing eyes. Tobin sighed inwardly and let him stay.

“Did you see my twin, Tharin?” he asked. “The one who died?”

“No, I was away at Atyion that night. By the time I returned all had been dealt with.”

“Why didn’t Father ever talk about that, and tell me what the demon really was?”

“I don’t know.” Tharin paused at the top of the stairs, not realizing that his hand brushed Brother’s shoulder as he spoke. “Perhaps out of respect for your mother? She couldn’t bear the mention of it, especially in the early days. It made her quite—wild. And then there was all the gossip around the city of ghosts and hauntings. After a while none of us spoke of it at all.” He shook his head. “I assumed he’d said something to you on his own. It wasn’t my place.”

He lifted the latch of a door just across from the head of the staircase. “This is it, Tobin, the room where you were born.”

The corridor floor was freshly laid with rushes, and smelled of strewing herbs and lamp oil. In the room beyond, however, Tobin recognized the stale smell of disuse. The shutters were open but the room was dismal and cold. Gooseflesh prickled up his arms as he stepped inside.

It had been a lady’s bedchamber. A few tapestries still hung on the walls—faded scenes of ocean creatures and forest hunts. There were fish of some sort carved on the mantel, very pretty, but the hearth was cold and full of soot, and there were no ornaments or dolls on the bare stone mantel.

Across the room Brother stood at the foot of a high, tall-posted bed with a bare mattress. He was naked now, and Tobin could see the line of blood-crusted stitching on his chest again. As Tobin watched he climbed onto the bed and lay down on his back. Then he was gone.

“Do you know how my brother died?” asked Tobin softly, still staring at the bed.

Tharin looked at him. “Stillborn, Nari said. Never drew breath. But it wasn’t a boy child, Tobin, it was a little girl.”

Ki gave him a questioning look; surely he’d speak the truth to Tharin? But here was Brother again, standing between them with a finger to his lips. Tobin shook his head at Ki and said nothing.

Instead, he turned away, seeking some sign of his mother in this empty room. If she had changed so terribly the night he was born, then perhaps there was some trace here of who she’d been before—something to help him understand why she’d changed.

But he found nothing and suddenly he didn’t want to be here anymore.

The other chambers along the corridor were the same: long since deserted and emptied of all but the largest furnishings. The more he saw, the lonelier he felt, like a stranger wandering somewhere he did not belong.

Tharin must have sensed this. He put an arm around Tobin’s shoulders and said, “Come back downstairs. There’s a place I think you’ll like better.”

They went down through the hall and along a short corridor to a cozy, dark-paneled bedchamber that Tobin recognized at once as having been his father’s. Rhius hadn’t been here in months and would never return, but there was still a feeling of life in this room. The heavy dark red hangings around the bed were just like the ones at the keep. A pair of familiar shoes stood on a chest. A half-finished letter in a bold scrawl lay curling on the writing desk beside an ivory portrait of Tobin. Tobin breathed in the familiar mix of scents: sealing wax, oiled leather, rust, herbs, and his father’s own warm, manly smell. On a shelf by the writing desk Tobin found a collection of his wax and wooden sculptures—gifts to his father over the years—lined up and saved just as Tobin had saved the tokens his father had sent to him.

All at once the ache of loss he’d managed to hold at bay returned full force. He clenched his teeth against it, but the hot tears came anyway, blinding him as he sank down. Strong arms caught him; not his father, but Tharin holding him tight, patting his back as he had when Tobin was very small. There was another hand on his shoulder, too, and this time he was not ashamed at showing weakness in front of Ki. He believed him now; even warriors had to grieve.

He wept until his chest hurt and his nose ran, but in the end he felt lighter, freed of some of the burden of sorrow he’d carried so deeply. He pulled away from them and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “I’ll honor my father,” he said, looking around the room again with gratitude. “I’ll carry his name into battle and be as great a warrior as he was.”

“He knew that,” said Tharin. “He always spoke proudly of you.”

“May I have this room as mine, when I stay here?”

“You don’t have to ask, Tobin. It all belongs to you.”

“Is that why Koni and the others are wearing different uniforms now?”

“Yes. As your parents’ sole heir, you take the rank of your mother and all your father’s holdings fall to you.”

“My holdings,” Tobin mused. “Can you show me?”

Tharin opened a chest and took out a map. On it Tobin recognized the outline of the Skalan peninsula and the territories to the north of it. A tiny crown on the eastern coast marked Ero. He’d seen maps like this before, but on this one there were other places marked in red ink. Atyion lay to the north, and Cirna was a dot on the thin bridge of land that connected Skala to the mainland. There were red dots up there in the territories, too, and across the mountains on the northwestern coastline where there were almost no cities at all. Which ones would Ki like best, he wondered?