Don Bassingthwaite - The Grieving Tree

Chuut and the other ogres, meanwhile, seemed more confused by the sudden change in the status of the General’s guests than by Robrand’s shedding of his disguise. Robrand chuckled when Singe pointed it out. “They knew I was disguising myself. Do you think I normally run around faking crippling injuries?” His wrinkled, weathered face twisted and he rubbed at the leg he had been holding stiff. “Because I wouldn’t. It’s not very comfortable.”

Singe reached across the blanket on the ground that served as a dining table for their group-Robrand had a small folding table, but it would hardly seat seven people-and helped himself to an apple. The food eaten by the General was simple, but still significantly better than the rations they had been supplied with. Not that Singe wouldn’t have eaten pig slop so long as it meant he was eating with Robrand again-except that they could have been eating together much sooner. He looked back to Robrand. “Then why disguise yourself at all, old man?” he asked. “You knew it was us.”

Robrand grimaced again and eased back. “How long has it been since we saw each other, Etan?”

Natrac’s eyebrows rose. “Etan?”

The wizard took a crunching bite out of his apple. “Singe, Robrand,” he mumbled, then swallowed and added, “And it’s been almost five years since I even had a letter from you.”

“Exactly,” said Robrand. “Five years and a lot has happened in the world.” He sighed. “The war changed people, Etan. People I thought I could trust.”

His words had a bitter edge. Singe paused in the act of the biting into his apple again and looked up. Robrand’s gaze had drifted to a far corner of the blanket. To Geth.

The shifter’s eyes were down, his posture huddled. He did little more than pick uncomfortably at his food. Singe realized that he wasn’t the only one to notice the tension between Geth and Robrand. Dandra and Natrac were both watching him and the old man as well. Since they had unmasked the General, Geth had been silent and withdrawn. If he could have, Singe guessed, he would have fled.

A part of the wizard wished that he would. Another part wanted him to stay and squirm before Robrand, the man whose life he had destroyed in Narath.

A third part reminded him of what he and Geth had accomplished since their ill-fated reunion in Bull Hollow. Until their argument in Bava’s studio, he’d been close to forgiving the shifter. One look at Robrand’s face, however, silenced any questions of forgiveness. His eyes were bleak. Singe could guess at what was in his head: he’d felt the same himself when he’d first faced Geth in Bull Hollow.

He felt a surge of admiration for Robrand. He had confronted Geth with fire and steel. The old man had greater self-control. He didn’t deserve the ignominy that Narath had brought. Robrand hadn’t been the one who’d failed the town.

Singe hardened his heart. “Robrand, I-”

His old commander waved him to silence and sipped from a cup of watered wine, When he spoke again, his voice was calm once more. “One of Tzaryan’s ogres saw Ashi’s confrontation in the street and reported it. He was taken by her strength and-and by Geth’s gauntlet. When I heard him describe it, I recognized it myself. You don’t come across a gauntlet like that worn by a shifter every day. I tracked you down at the Barrel and discovered ‘Master Timin Shay.’” He glanced at Singe. “Didn’t I say you should chose a new alias?”

“It does the job,” Singe said.

“Either way,” Robrand continued, “you’re a distinctive pair. Although I’m surprised to see you together. I didn’t think that was likely to happen.”

Singe felt like Robrand had jabbed him with a knife. “There were … circumstances,” he said. It was a clumsy excuse.

Robrand shook his head. “I have a contract with Tzaryan Rrac, Etan. I have a duty to him. You were trying to gain access to Tzaryan Keep under an assumed name. I had to find out more. I decided it would be best to keep you close until I knew exactly what was going on.”

“And whether you could trust us?” Singe asked.

The old man’s face tightened for a moment, then softened again. “It would have been less risk to have Chuut restrain you in Vralkek,” he said, “but I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t want to think you’d changed that much, Etan-that if you were trying to get to Tzaryan Keep, you had a good reason for it.”

“And?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” Robrand took another sip of wine, then set his cup aside and sat back. “When did you know it was me?”

“I got suspicious this morning when Dandra described her meeting with you,” Singe said. “There was a familiar pattern in how you manipulated her: implicating House Jorasco in your supposed scars so that we’d be too busy speculating about that to question whether you really had scars at all, telling her you distrusted kalashtar so she thought it was her own idea not to betray you with her powers-”

Dandra blinked. “But Chuut was supposed to bring Ashi from the tavern, not me.”

Robrand’s eyes flashed and his mouth turned up in a wry smile. “Another lie. I beg your pardon. I know something of the skills of kalashtar. You might have been able to draw the truth out of me and you could have relayed that information to Singe or Geth, so you were the one I had to convince with my story-but I couldn’t let you realize it. Once I had you convinced, I knew that Singe and Geth would follow.”

Singe found himself matching Robrand’s smile. “If I need a new alias, you need new tricks. There were things through the day, too, like your note to us-written by Dandra so I wouldn’t see your hand-or the way the ogres who supposedly helped you dismount all the time didn’t look like they knew what they were doing.”

He looked at Robrand sideways. “You didn’t have Ekhaas gagged because she was a spellcaster-you had her gagged because she’d seen the General before. She could have given you away.”

“A clever man is most vulnerable when he’s trying to be clever,” said Robrand with a shrug.

Singe nodded. “I didn’t know for sure though until we actually met you. You were trying hard to hide your eyes in the shadows of the tree, but it was the hatred for House Deneith that gave you away.” He spread his hands. “Why even meet with us? You might have been able to get away with it if you hadn’t.”

“It was a risk I had to take,” Robrand confessed. “If I hadn’t, you would have just kept pushing.” He smiled. “Don’t deny it. You would have. At least this way, it’s out in the open and I have a chance to see you again, Etan.”

Warmth spread through Singe’s belly. “It’s been too long, Robrand. The last letter I had from you reached me in Karrlakton. You haven’t been in Droaam all this time, have you?”

“Tzaryan Rrac sought me out two years ago, just after the War ended.” Robrand took up his cup again. His face creased with memory. “He found me in Shavalant in Breland.”

“Shavalant’s hardly a village!”

“I’d been living in Xandrar before a few heirs of Deneith realized who I was and started making my life miserable.” He shrugged. “Shavalant wasn’t so bad.”

“You didn’t fight them?” asked Ashi.

Robrand looked at her and shook his head. “It would just have exposed me. Fighting doesn’t do much good when you’re one of the most reviled men in a dragonmarked house. No, I ran. Like a coward.”

Across the blanket, Geth stiffened.

Singe’s fingers clenched on the core of his apple. He flung it away into the gathering darkness outside the pavilion and wrenched the conversation in another direction. “Robrand, who is Ekhaas? Do you know what she would want with us?”