Today was not the first occasion Fion Trellec had cause to bemoan his decision to become a father again.
With his other children, it had been easy.
In his heart, he knew that his long-lamented Briar had been entirely responsible for the smooth management of the Trellec household. It was just that he had become used to the parade of clean and dutiful children presented periodically for his approval and had thought he played some role in that achievement. His children had grown up largely out of sight and gone on to make something of themselves in the world. Fion had told himself that their success demonstrated the good sense of his hands-off parenting.
But with age had come some little wisdom. That he had not seen any of them since remarrying was a growing matter of guilt. He was not too proud to admit the estrangement was largely his fault.
His second wife — second in every way possible, he now recognised — managed to embody everything Briar was not. Where she had been understated, Trivian was all excess. Where he had become used to calmness, his days were now spent trying to quell towering rages.
He now well understood, with rueful appreciation, the breadth and depth of bounty offered as her dowry. Her father must have been dancing a jig to get her out of his hall.
Nothing was ever quite right for the second Lady Trellec, and those in the village had quickly learned that House Trellec was no longer one on which to call. Old acquaintances made excuses to avoid social visits. Cherished, long-standing staff found other, less confrontational positions. Piece by piece, his old, comfortable life was dismantled and replaced by something peculiarly dissatisfying.
Nevertheless, even with all that disappointment, things would have been acceptable. That is, if it had not been for Drunnoc.
Even in the womb, he had deeply affected Trivian with his malevolence. He did not just kick; he attacked with vigour and focus. Once born, everyone whispered about how unnerving it was to hold a baby that stared as if seeking to identify weak spots. When he was not biting, he was pinching. When not crying, he was screaming. Fion was sure that much of Trivian’s unhappiness had, at its root, the incessant torture of Drunnoc’s presence through early childhood.
“Boys will be boys,” that upstart Knight had said. Fion disagreed. He knew boys, had been one himself, and he knew that his youngest son was something different. Fion had been no paragon of virtue in his youth. More than once he’d felt the sting of the old Steward’s stick. But Drunnoc? He was something other. There was a predatory presence lurking behind those flat eyes. He did not mind admitting that, at times, he feared it.
As he had grown, the boy had begun lying as quickly as breathing. Fion had lost track of the times he was, against his inclination, absolutely convinced by sincerely expressed regret for one heinous act or another. Lord Trellec was not a man given to naïve self-deception, so he could not understand his recurrent shock when the same thing would happen the following day. That lack of genuine remorse, while knowing the advantage in displaying its simulacrum, was most troubling.
Likewise, he was all for his boys enjoying hunting and fishing — did not their trophies still line the walls of his hall? — but there was something sinister about how Drunnoc went about it. Indeed, rarely was enough left of the animals he caught for mementoes.
And that wild pack he called his “friends” . . . Geril. Blount. Yorul. All several years older and all lesser sons of the other High Houses. None of them had any of the restrictions on their behaviour that came with a responsibility to the family name. They had all the wealth, all the arrogance, and none of the humility that must attend such power. He had heard stories of each of them that quite chilled even him. If it was possible, he felt that those jackals were encouraging Drunnoc to wider and wilder excesses.
In his more reflective moments, Trellec genuinely feared for a world in which Drunnoc grew to prominence. It had taken all of his considerable will not to hand him over to that damned Knight and be done with it all. But Drunnoc was his son, and, as the bitter voice in his head reminded him, the only one around that he could still call his.
With a crash, his boy entered the Banqueting Hall, startling the retainers in attendance. “I want her head!”
Life had been much more manageable when his children were seen and not heard.
Fion raised his cup for one of the hovering servants to refill. He recognised it was an indulgence, but eating alone in the giant space was one of the few pleasures he had left in life. He waited until she had returned to her place against the wall before addressing his son. “Drunnoc, she is a Knight of the Road. Even if we had the capacity in the Keep to attempt something untoward, the political fallout would be seismic. I do not wish to bring down our House because you cannot control your darker impulses for a few days. The Darkhelm is an irritant once every ten years. I may have thought to use your indiscretion this morning to demonstrate the cruelty of this method of justice, but that was a miscalculation. It seemed to me, in the moment, that the casual slaughter of a young girl over such a slight thing would bring the Houses together against these barbaric Tours. But you were not the right foundation upon which to build that castle. That was my error. Thus, we will keep our heads low until she leaves and things can return to normal.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
The second figure that had followed his son into the Hall now spoke. “She humiliated him. In front of the whole village! She should never be an irritant for Drunnoc again. People need to know what happens if they disrespect him.”
Trellec turned to look with distaste at Veron Geril, one of the least appealing of Drunnoc’s “friends.” As solid as Drunnoc was wiry, as stocky as his son was tall. Trellec could never shake the feeling that he needed a wash after spending time in the young man’s company. If the rumours were true — and for the money he spent on unearthing them, they had better be —Lord Geril spent almost as much of his wealth as Fion to keep news of his own son’s misdeeds from public view.
Trellec suppressed his habitual sneer when speaking to Veron. “I rather think it was his having his nose broken by a child half his age that caused the humiliation.” He turned his eyes back to his son. “Drunnoc, we’ve spoken of your responsibilities as the heir to High House Trellec, and they do not involve fighting with every waif and stray in the village. Put the Lady Darkhelm out of your mind. If we had anything like the power to do something about her on our own, she would not be Touring the village in the first place.”
“You are afraid of her!” Drunnoc’s wheedling voice grated across Trellec’s nerves. He raised his eyes to one of his favourite tapestries that ornamented the walls of the hall. He’d always found something oddly compelling about that depiction of the fall of House Irketh.
“Am I afraid of going it alone against someone who speaks, quite literally, with the voice of the Goddess? Yes. Yes, I absolutely am. If you are not, you have even less sense than I credit you. Had I allowed you to have been called to judgement today, there would have been nothing I could have done to protect you. Should a quarter of what we know you do in secret have become known, the Knight would have killed you where you stood. I flatter myself that my good name has managed to keep the worst of your behaviours from wider knowledge. Believe me when I say that would have been nothing in the face of the Justice of the Goddess. These Tours will continue until the Houses choose to act together against the vicious imposition of the Crown’s will. Until that moment, this is our reality. Meekly, we must accept it and seek to avoid unnecessary strife.”
Veron’s face darkened with rage. “We are Noble born! The Houses cannot allow her to do as she pleases to us. To submit in such a craven manner is pathetic. “
“Lordling Geril, if you choose to address me again in such a manner, I will remove your tongue.”
Veron was immediately silent. It was widely understood, if not openly discussed, that the seemingly pleasant older man in his ridiculous robes of red and gold had, in his youth, demonstrated a significant capacity for violence. “Apples and trees, my son. Apples and trees,” his own father had often said cryptically when the topic of Drunnoc’s behaviour was raised.
A chilling silence descended around the hall. A servant nervously crept forward to refill Fion’s goblet, pointedly ignoring those of the two boys, and withdrew to her place behind his chair.
“For the removal of any doubt, let me be completely clear.” A few of the servants staggered as
With as much dignity as they could muster, Drunnoc and Veron fled from the Hall leaving Fion to complete his meal in blissful silence.
The glares of those few servants still loyal to House Trellec went unremarked upon but not unnoticed by Drunnoc. Veron knew that his friend was adding them to the extensive list of slights for which there would, eventually, be recompense.
*
When they were far enough into the depths of the Keep to avoid being heard, they slowed their pace and retired to the shadows.
“Well?” The querulous, somewhat peevish tone of voice Drunnoc used when speaking to his father had gone. In its place was something almost deathly in its flatness.
Veron only grinned. Besides Drunnoc’s friends, no one understood him. They looked at the size, the thuggery, and the tantrums, and they thought they knew everything there was to know about him. “Bully without a brain,” they’d decided. Certainly, that was the view Drunnoc’s father held. But there was something else there that hardly anyone got to see, at least not more than once. His soul possessed a reptilian coldness hiding underneath that brutish mask.
While Fion Trellec congratulated himself on keeping Drunnoc’s misdeeds secret, the father only found out about that which the son allowed to be noticed. In the last few years, his little group of friends had established quite the infrastructure to abet all manner of secret crimes and cruelties. It was amazing what could be achieved with indulgent parents, unlimited funds, and the lowest possible expectations regarding conduct. At this stage their names were whispered with fear throughout the village and beyond. And yet, even now, only a select few were privy to the true face of Drunnoc Trellec.
It was safe to say, had that girl from the morning not possessed an unusually vibrant survival instinct, as well as sharp elbows, there would have been little of her left to sob in front of the Lady Darkhelm. There would have been no tearful public reunion with a mother who dared deny an underage Drunnoc service at the tavern a year or so back.
If revenge was a dish served cold, Lordling Trellec liked his both icy and exceptionally bloody.
“Well?” Drunnoc asked again, drawing Veron’s attention back to the present.
It had been quite the afternoon for Veron Geril. He had been tasked with locating any talent, local or otherwise, that was confident or desperate enough to cross paths with a Knight of the Road. Although he had long lost his surprise at the things people would do for money —it was so easily obtained, why were people so curiously needy for it? — he was astonished at his success. From those who had come forward, he felt he had chosen wisely, distributing his —well, Drunnoc’s — resources liberally to outfit a series of lethal encounters.
He was aware of the famed resilience of those who walked the Road. However, he had been unimpressed by the old woman, with her threadbare armour and soft voice. The Tours were an antiquated system of justice just waiting for a new generation to banish them to the past. In the face of what he had prepared for her, he did not feel this particular Knight of the Road was likely to offer trouble.
“Everything is as we discussed. Darkhelm will be dead before sunrise.”