Джефф Мариотт - City Under the Sand

“Father!” Rieve cried through her own sobs. “No, Father! I won’t believe it!”

“I’ve known for a long time that there was something wrong,” Solyara said. “That he hated elves, but couldn’t stop looking at them. That there was a fire burning somewhere deep inside him that I could never see, never extinguish. I didn’t know the extent of it, but I should have found out, I suppose. I was afraid to push too much, afraid of what I might find.”

Myklan drew himself back to a seated position. His eyes were rimmed with red, and sand coated his face where tears had dampened it. “Yes,” he said, more composed now. “I’m sorry, Solyara. My Rieve, my Pietrus, I am so sorry. But it’s all true.”

He pointed a quivering finger at Aric. “You … yes, I am your father. But it is not true that I abandoned you, although I admit, to my shame, that I did your mother.”

“How can that be?” Aric asked.

“You must have known, all these years, that you’ve had a secret benefactor. Someone looking out for your interests, interceding from time to time. Gifts, financial assistance. Your smithy …”

“That was you all along?”

“None other.”

“I thought … never mind. I never dreamed it was my own father, doing those things.”

“It’s true, boy,” Tunsall said, “that Myklan’s the one who recommended I commission Rieve’s sword from you. He spoke highly of your work.”

“I had means,” Myklan added. “I knew you were there, knew your mother was gone. You needed help, and I was able to help. I never hated you, Aric. Keyasune, yes, by the end, but mostly myself.”

The rest of it, Aric had figured out on his own, just from seeing the mark on Myklan’s face and knowing his history through the knife.

But this … this came as a shock.

More than that. He felt sick. He felt like he had been stabbed in the gut.

He had told himself it was the Shadow King. If not him, then some wealthy stranger, who had taken an interest in him for reasons he could not fathom. There had never been any clue, any hint that it had been his own father doing those things.

He wondered, if he had known that, if he would have found a way to refuse those gifts. Without someone’s interference—Myklan’s, as it happened—he might be a blacksmith’s apprentice. Instead, the shop’s owner had handed it over to him, without hesitation. Paid off, Aric had learned. Now he knew who had paid him. Myklan wasn’t particularly frightening—or wasn’t, unless to human men in the company of elf women—but he had plenty of wealth to spread around.

He owed Myklan, it was that simple.

He hated the man. The idea that Myklan was his father, and had left his mother in her time of need, and had murdered people through some bizarre compulsion, made him want to pluck his own eyes out so he wouldn’t have to see his closest friends staring at him. He didn’t want to look at his father. Hot tears stung his own cheeks, and he turned away from the others and swiped a hand roughly over his eyes.

Myklan was a liar and a killer. Aric had killed, too—these last few days he had killed many, had lost himself in killing, come to think it was something he was good at. Was that inherited from his father?

But Myklan was a liar and killer who had taken an interest in his son, albeit from a distance. Who had gone out of his way to help Aric. Could he be entirely hateful? He told himself it was necessary.

That was a question Aric could not answer. Someday, perhaps. Not tonight. Not while he burned with rage.

“It’s true, and Pietrus, I am sorry that you were blamed for my crimes. I never meant for that to happen. I tried to control myself—as Aric said, I tried to resist, but I just couldn’t. There’s something inside me, and it drives me to do these things, and if I could cut it out with a knife I would happily do so.”

“You need to make amends,” Solyara said. “You can’t let them blame Pietrus for this. Or ruin everyone’s life because of what you’ve done. Bad enough you’ve ruined your own.”

“I … I know,” Myklan said. “I will. When we get back to the city. While Sheridia is helping them battle … whatever it is. I’ll go to Djena, I’ll tell her … I’ll tell her everything. I swear it.”

Aric took some comfort in that. Rieve and her family would be allowed to return to their home, their lives. There would be a scandal, of course. But if Myklan was willing to take the blame, then the others might get past it.

The conversation tapered off. No one, Aric included, wanted to press it anymore. People settled down under blankets, between the twin blazes that held off the night but could do nothing against the darkness in men’s hearts. No one spoke to Aric, not even Ruhm. He was alone again, here in the company of those he’d considered friends. He had seen the truth and spoken it, that was his crime—that, perhaps, combined with being half-elf. Being the event that had, after all, driven Myklan to murder.

He wasn’t surprised that no one came near him, no one accidentally brushed him as they settled under their furs. Before they reached Nibenay, if they did, the others would probably find some reason to leave the group, not to help him battle Kadya and Tallik, after all.

It would be Aric’s fight in the end. One individual, trying to make a difference, despite the odds.

Quiet sobs erupted here and there during the night, and Aric doubted anyone would get much sleep. But, to his own surprise, he drifted off quickly, while Corlan stood guard.

Corlan’s head drooped toward his chest. He was in danger of falling asleep before his turn on guard was over. The breakneck trip from Nibenay to catch Rieve, then captivity in the raiders’ fort and the wild escape—these things had sapped the strength from him. Activating his psionocus had taken more energy than he had expected, as well. But someone had to stay awake.

He shook his head to clear it, then rose to his feet and walked around camp. Snoring, wriggling forms were barely visible beneath heavy layers of furs—an arm over here, a foot there sticking out, but for the most part his companions were well covered. The fires had diminished a little, and fuel in this part of the land was hard to come by, so he didn’t stoke them quite yet. He would before it was time to wake Amoni for her shift—the fires couldn’t be allowed to go out, or everyone would freeze, furs or no.

Walking around the outside rim of the fires’ warmth, Corlan considered the night’s drama. Myklan, a murderer? Hard to believe. The man had confessed, though. And in truth, he had never known Rieve’s father that well. Solyara, yes, and Tunsall, and even Sheridia, who had often been busy at some pursuit or other that Corlan now knew probably involved her magic. Myklan kept to himself, though, when he wasn’t out overseeing the family businesses. On those occasions when Corlan had spent time with him, it often seemed that his thoughts were elsewhere, far away. Now Corlan realized, with a shiver, that at any of those times he might have been thinking about his killings, or dwelling on the lust for elf women that was the source of his self-loathing.

One aspect of Myklan’s confession, though, came as good news to Corlan. He had recognized a growing attraction between Rieve and the half-elf Aric, and that, on top of his unthinking response to Rieve’s troubles, had made him worry that he was losing her. But if she and Aric were half-siblings, then Rieve wouldn’t act on that attraction, however strong it was.

His feet crunched on the desert sands as he walked in circles, determined to remain alert. He didn’t know something else heard him, something that lived underground but could sense prey moving about on the surface.