“It would have been normal to give up when Maedald was involved. Its reputation has faded a little now, but back then it symbolized northern magic, and Ibaen Hallanak, the ‘Staff of Light,’ was still alive. Yet Garon went all the way to Maedald. If he was going to go mad, he might as well do it properly, people must have said. A mere child of the Billin! Fortunately, Hallanak was fair and acknowledged that Galbert’s group had been wrong to kidnap me. But Galbert wasn’t at Maedald, and Garon acted on Hallanak’s words in his own way. A few years later, he found Galbert and killed him. Quite legitimately!”
Sara broke off and burst out laughing.
“Galbert must have been bewildered too. All because of some captive he’d lost years earlier, whose name he’d even forgotten. At least he learned what happens when you earn a child of the Billin’s hatred. But Garon lost every other lead while chasing that useless man. Galbert knew nothing at all about where I’d gone. Of course, Garon must have guessed. When someone vanishes, you suspect the slave traders first. But ten years had gone by. How could he begin searching again? And yet he seems to have believed without a doubt that I was alive somewhere. Yes, we children of the Billin don’t die easily. We survive even with the Billin bleeding us dry.”
As her words proved, Sara had survived. She was still stronger than she looked. Looking back, Beka too had possessed a body that did not readily wither with age. Sara raised her interlaced fingers and gave a bitter smile.
“If he couldn’t find me, he would make me find him. That was the absurd idea that started it all. He thought that if he spread the name Garon Vendigate across the world and made everyone on the continent know him, it would reach my ears eventually. Of course, there are ways of winning fame by doing great deeds, and he preferred that. But how easy is that with your bare hands? Garon chose the quick way. Notoriety piles up in the blink of an eye. And people always want that sort of story. Delphinad, the center of the continent, was the perfect stage. His judgment was right. Exactly eight years later, I heard the name of Garon Vendigate, the Shadowhawk who ruled Delphinad’s darkness.”
“So that was why he became an assassin?”
It was hard to believe. Had he deliberately become a merciless murderer simply to recover his wife? Sara sipped her cold coffee and frowned.
“Why, is it hard to believe? You needn’t believe it. I never thought southerners understood anything, and I’m hardly going to start now. But there was something Garon hadn’t expected. He thought that if I heard his name, I would come looking for him. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that I might not want to. Men lack imagination.”
More than ten years had already passed. Sara had been sold south twice, then killed her master, a notorious arms dealer, and was caught while fleeing. A man rescued her just before her beheading. He was the son of the man she had killed by a concubine, and had been his father’s enemy. He took over his father’s property and made Sara his concubine. Two years later, when his wife died, he erased Sara’s name from the slave register and married her. Three years after that, her husband was killed by her elder brother, who had come for revenge. Sara fled again, this time with a young son.
“Would I have wanted to appear before Garon like that? I couldn’t even be sure he would let my son live. And yet I wanted to see him once, even from a distance. In the end, I went to Delphinad. Yes, that one thing went just as Garon had imagined. I thought no one would ever discover me among all the people of the continent gathered there, but I was wrong. I hadn’t expected this, but Garon knew almost everything about the stream of immigrants passing through the city gates. He’d been expecting me. It took him less than ten days to find me. One day, he suddenly walked into the room where I was staying in return for odd jobs at an inn. I was so bewildered and afraid I wished I could stop breathing.”
She had protested that their bond was already severed, but it was no use. Garon declared that they were husband and wife, and that the son she had borne was his child. It would have been wonderful if that had let them become a happy couple again. But the notoriety that had brought about their reunion now stood in the way. Garon was the Shadowhawk, hunted by countless enemies. A wife and child would be his weakness and, if discovered, plainly the first to be sacrificed. The very existence of his family had to be kept absolutely secret. So their strange married life began, consisting only of clandestine meetings. They had recovered three years after fourteen apart.
“Three years. That’s short.”
“That sort of thing can’t last long. There are too many eyes in the world.”
It was probably a story Sara had not told in decades. Yet she seemed to have no intention of stopping now. Gene broadly knew what came next: Garon’s duel with General Nikephoros, and his disappearance. He took the book from inside his clothes. It contained the secret exchanges between Sara and Ven in Delphinad. He turned to the final entry. One sentence stood out, written in an unusually hurried scrawl.
Sara. I know you don’t want to see me. Tomorrow is the last time. I have something to give you. At the dock, two before dawn. Ven.
Looking down at the passage, Sara said, “We didn’t meet then. Garon didn’t come.”
“Why?”
“How would I know? He said all that, then simply didn’t come. And he vanished, so there was no chance to ask why.”
“But why did he call it the last time? Did he perhaps know something was going to happen to him?”
“Who knows.”
“And why did he say you wouldn’t want to see him?”
Sara was silent for a moment. She had spoken freely even of the most painful days of her slavery, yet now her expression suggested she could not bear to speak.
“By then, we’d already stopped seeing each other for a while. Two months, perhaps.”
An uneasy feeling made Gene hesitate before asking again. Jamalik’s remark that there had been only an old woman in the house flashed through his mind.
“My son, Gail, died. He was young… and foolish. He went outside wearing a bracelet Garon had given him. They took a child’s life as easily as picking a flower. Someone had already been watching. A secret like that could never have lasted three years. Yes, it wasn’t Garon’s fault, but I said our relationship was over. I couldn’t bear to go on living as I had without that child. It would have felt as though we were rejoicing that an obstacle was gone… You asked what oath he made? When we met again after fourteen years, I said my son would be in danger with him. He told me that wouldn’t happen, that he would protect the boy. He swore it. Just as we did in our homeland, he tattooed an Irko on his ankle and made the oath. When Garon accepted my request to leave after Gail died, it was an admission that he hadn’t kept it. But, you know, I hadn’t really wanted Garon to protect Gail then. I’d been afraid he would kill him. That’s common in Irkonik. Kill a child and take the woman. Yet for those three years, though he couldn’t see us often, Garon did his utmost to be a father. So sometimes things end even when no one is to blame.”
Sara did not cry. For a while she looked dazed, then turned to Gene and smiled bitterly.
“You said you met Garon when you were fourteen? Gail was twelve when he died.”
Perhaps Beka’s decision to take Gene as a pupil had not been a coincidence. Gene thought in silence about how Beka had treated him. At the same time, he remembered a man from long ago whose name he could not even recall, a man who had acted as a father to a young Gene, protecting him and his mother.
“I didn’t even avenge him. It would have been disastrous if I were discovered too. Afraid I would die as well, I buried him alone behind the farm. Once Garon vanished, I left Delphinad. I never returned. I lived as though I’d forgotten everything. And more than twenty years later, I heard that a young man who knew Garon was looking for me. Do you know what I thought? Oh, if only that child were Garon’s son. If the man who left me had had a fine son by someone else and sent him to me, how gladly I’d weep, if I were allowed that happiness in my old age…”
Disappointment must have made her study Gene’s face again and again when he first arrived, then turn cynical. Jamalik had told her in advance that Gene was not Beka’s son, but perhaps some little hope had remained. There were always children who grew up not knowing who their fathers were. And the Garon Vendigate she knew was not a man who readily took pupils. Gene found himself laughing helplessly at the thought that he wished it were true. It was impossible. No deception could have entered into his birth. Queen Sabina had searched so persistently, for so long, for a flaw in Gene, and had discovered none.
Gene said, “I’m sorry to disappoint you. To be honest, I feel a little regret too. It would have been better if it were true.”
Jamalik’s eyes widened. He looked at Gene, then quickly lowered them. Had Gene said such a thing in Epherium, more than one person would have collapsed from shock. Fortunately, the only people here were Jamalik himself and an old woman who would never have any connection with Epherium. Sara glanced sideways at Gene.
“Do you mean that? I don’t think you do.”
“Why do you think so?”
“I can tell by looking at your hands.”
“My hands?”
Gene unconsciously held one out. His hands were not fine. The joints stood out on his rather long fingers, and hard calluses and old scars marked them here and there. His palms were the same. Most people who saw such hands would have imagined a life of ceaseless labor. But Sara was different.
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