The group had been at the Silk House two days when Idris unwrapped the texts he had hidden at the bottom of his prosthetics chest. In a velvet shawl was the full confession of Dravid Orrost; beside it were several books that the librarians would rather he did not have outside of the palace, books that theorised about magical weaponry, necrotic energies and the fae. The attendants of the Silk House brought him hot spiced tea and floral rice cakes, and he sat in a cushioned alcove by the veranda door and began to read.

The confession was thorough. Dravid started with his understanding of his parentage – Lord Orrost was his father and a low-ranking courtier was his mother and he would never know the throne that his siblings would stand beside – and how that fuelled his desire to please his aloof father, and it spiralled from there. He trained as a knight, then became a general, and was close enough to his father that he was allowed into the war room during the conflict with Cressida’s kingdom. He saw only opportunity in the war. It made him bitter and hateful. He loathed the aria magicians that his father relied upon, sneered at their magic as a cheap compensation for a good tactical mind. All of this was expected, until Dravid stated that he received word of a magical artefact that had been uncovered on the edge of the enemy kingdom and he might want to investigate.

Idris shivered as he read and re-read the description.

Dravid travelled to Outer Arbedes, a series of ancient ruins that had once belonged to the Imperial Kingdom, many thousands of years ago. The ruins were partially excavated long before even Idris’s grandfather was alive and then left well alone, due to the fae that had claimed the site as their own through a mixture of time and fearmongering. In his confession, Dravid claimed that he stopped outside of Outer Arbedes to consult with a man who would only refer to himself as The Remaker. The Remaker lived in a hidden tower, the entrance impassable without an invitation and a sworn oath, and even as he sat and thought of that strange place, he could not pinpoint exactly where it had been or what it looked like. All he knew, he wrote, was that he entered, and when he left, he had a map and instructions.

To my shame, he wrote, I know not what The Remaker looked like, whether he was man, woman or anything in between. The whole experience was a blur of nothingness. I returned to my retinue dazed but unharmed and I found the dagger the next day.

Idris sipped his now cold tea thoughtfully and wrote in his own notepad,

- Remaker

- Tower

- Outer Arbedes

He sighed, watched the rain sprinkling from the edges of the veranda. Outer Arbedes might be a good place to start looking for the breastplate. But…

There was a knock on his suite door. Gently, he placed the confession under one of the cushions, stashed his notebook and called for the visitor to enter.

“It is only me,” said Riette, looking around for him.

“Down here,” he called. She turned, and smiled seeing him.

“You have countless chairs and pools to pass the time in.”

“I like the floor. Thank you, though.”

“Look at you,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and grinning. “Why, you look positively serene compared to even five days ago.”

“It is… difficult to describe the particular magic of this place,” Idris said, his gaze again falling on the waterfalls, the rain, the mist and steam.

“A far cry from the palace, hmm?” she said, settling beside him on the cushions.

“From everything I am used to, actually.”

“Lila tells me you have been sketching dragons.”

“Only waterwings. They like it out by my deck. I think I might be close to persuading one to snatch a fig from my hand.”

“My father used to tell tales of water dragons migrating upstream to Crescent Crest for many years,” said Riette, sighing wistfully. “Alas, all gone by the time I was a child. I do adore waterwings, though. I never understood why we chose mountain cats for our crest instead of dragons.”

“Probably the same reason the Eremonts chose a morning thistle.”

“Why did they choose morning thistle?”

“It is…” Idris tried to remember exactly how Uncle Haylan had described it. “’The understated hero of the medicinal world.’ Every scrape and cut, morning thistle paste. Every headache, morning thistle root. You know if Willard tries to feed me morning thistle I can smell it before it even passes my lips? It makes me gag,” he said, over Riette’s laughter. “To hear my uncle talk, morning thistle would solve all of the world’s problems.”

“The black clematis?” she said, frowning.

“I chose that. The clematis is a funny flower. It is particularly difficult to kill.” Idris tilted his signet ring so that Riette could see it. “If you cut it back, it returns the next year with a vengeance. It is the plant that comes back from the dead. My father used to curse the clematis outside my bedroom window. I always rather liked it.”

“I see. And the pentagon is your casting hand.”

“Correct.”

“It must have been freeing,” Riette said casually, “to make your own crest. To forge your own destiny.”

“Oh, I… I do not have an official crest,” said Idris, feeling the heat in his cheeks. “Only the sigil. It is the unfortunate part of having no family name to speak of. I have no claim to the Eremont crest. I can allude to it and it is a useful way for others to identify me, but… it is no longer mine.”

The sordid tale of his arrival at the palace was known only by few, and most of the people who had been directly responsible for his circumstances were dead. The understanding in court was that Idris was taken in by King Gael purely on the basis of his attunement, and the rest was conveniently forgotten in collective memory, or else it had never been shared.

“But you are an Eremont,” said Riette. “Your uncle, he was blood family.”

“I was an Eremont. That much is true.”

“Who sits in Temple Hill?”

“Nobody.” Idris shrugged. “Unless my mother returned and nobody deigned to tell me.”

“Do… do your parents not…?”

“Speak to me?” he said. “No. They do not. They are either deceased or choosing to ignore me. I do not know either way. They do not respond to my letters.” He gave a pained sigh, thought of the best way to explain it. “It is not surprising. There are many questions I wish to be answered and I do not know if they know how to answer those, or if they are willing to look inside themselves and make admissions. Nothing that happened was what they expected. It is likely easier to pretend I do not exist.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“I am prying, I apologise,” said Riette, but Idris shook his head.

“It is a complicated situation. Technically, I am a ward of the kingdom, if that makes more sense. My parents did not claim me within the required time and the King drew up a contract to protect me, essentially. It stated that I gave up all claim to the Eremont line and Temple Hill in return for all of the medical treatment I needed, tutorship, room and board and diplomatic shielding. All I had to give was consent. That, and my promise that I would use my particular talents in service of the crown.”

“You were a child, though, were you not?”

“Eleven. Yes.”

“The contract?”

“Made binding by a kind of aria magic even rarer than my own. I cannot begin to fathom it.”

“Black bells, Idris,” said Riette quietly.

“It sounds worse than it is. I have not wanted for anything,” he said. “The King always treated me like family. Uncle Haylan was granted guardianship and given leave to do as he pleased, but he chose to stay. He wrote to my parents every month and received only one response, after my sixteenth birthday, from my mother. I never found out what she wrote in that letter, but I swear my uncle had more grey hairs after he read it. He was particularly kind to me in the weeks that followed. Within the year, he had passed, and the Eremont seat at Temple Hill remained vacant.”

“What do you think it said?”

“That I am not my father’s son, most likely,” he said.

It was something he had not freely shared with anyone but Cressida. Even now, it felt strange leaving his lips, like a curse he was speaking against his own flesh. Once, he had spoken it to Uncle Haylan, and Haylan had said, “Eat your supper,” and they never mentioned it again.

“I hold no ill will towards my parents,” he said into the silence. “They did what they thought was best. They are probably embarrassed and ashamed and apologetic and know not how to speak with me about it. But the reality is that they have not been parents to me since I was seven. My mother went to the Imperial Kingdom and my father… he went with her, I think, although I would not know. I hardly remember their faces. To claim me is to admit that something went wrong, either in their blood or their marriage. Healer arias have passed down the Eremont line for three-hundred years. I am their only son.”

Riette was quiet. She gazed out at the dragons, swooping in for their lunch.

“It is a particular kind of cowardice,” she said at last, “to shun your only child.”

“It is cowardice I understand. I do not blame them.”

“How do you claim a family name?” she said.

“Adoption.”

Or, the other technicality, marriage, although he did not say it. The dominant line’s name passed down. His mother was Eremont, his father some lesser branch of another healer house.

“And the King?”

“I think it was on his mind. He passed, though, before he could broach the subject with Uncle Haylan. Cressida was crowned and the matter was forgotten.” He smiled in what he hoped was a comforting way. “She did give me Gleesdale, though, and I am assured it is beautiful, although I have never been. Green fields and quiet marsh, apparently. A small manor, with some acres for farming. I can go there if I wish, but I do not wish. The palace is home, and I have made my own family. A name is unimportant.”

“Is that why you left the ball?” said Riette, her face tinged with guilt. “I did not think and I assumed –“

“Bells, no, Riette. No. In truth, I would have liked to have the courage to approach your brothers and spend some time with your family. I… I felt unwell, and had been feeling unwell since I entered the ballroom. Fainting on the dancefloor would have looked worse than fainting outside.”

“I can loan you some brothers?” she said, with a weak smile.

Idris laughed. “Are there many going spare?”

“Oh, at least seven. You can have them all.”

“I will not deprive you of your full stock of brothers, but I thank you for your generosity. Here, come feed the waterwings with me. I have some dried figs.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon baiting dragons with figs, coaxing them further up the deck, holding out their arms in the hope one would be brave enough. When Lila came to check on them, Idris had a waterwing nibbling a fig not an inch from his finger; Riette shushed Lila and chivvied her inside so she could see.

“There, now,” Idris whispered to the little dragon, admiring its green scales and thick legs. “A little sugar before your dinner, hmm?”

The dragon’s forked tongue flicked out, tickled the edge of Idris’s finger, but when he saw he had an audience, he yelped and took to his wings again, circled, and snatched the fig away on his eventual exit.

“You were close that time, sir,” said Lila.

“Ah, I was. Tomorrow, perhaps. Little fiends.” He brushed down his knees as he stood. “Is there something the matter, Lila?”

“Willard wants you,” she said. “It… he has questions, I think.”

“Of course.”

“I will leave you and your master then, Lila,” said Riette. “I have bothered him for long enough.”

“We will dine together, tonight,” Idris said, and the soldier smiled and nodded.

“That would be nice. Thank you.”

“For now, I must tend to my apprentice… although I do not feel qualified for it.”

Lila followed Idris to Willard’s rooms, on the lower level of the Silk House, with a view out to some of the blackstone deposits deep in the mountain. Willard was sitting on his little balcony, beside some of the moss that dripped with waterfall spray, and he turned to Idris and said, “This is normal, ain’t it?”

Idris stared. Willard’s hand was outstretched over the rail and the whole thing was glowing gold.

“I… I do not think so,” said Idris quietly, hurrying in. “How did you do it?”

“I was doing my stances and my hand things, like you asked,” said Willard, watching the spiralling lights around his fingers. “I can feel the aria right strong here, ‘specially near the moss and flowers. Well, I breathed in, and I did my Travellers, and…”

He gestured to his hand.

“Are you concentrating on it?” said Idris, kneeling to examine the back of Willard’s hand.

“Not so much.”

“Can you still feel the aria in your bones?”

“Aye.”

“But this… this is not…” Idris wracked his brains, trying to think of how this was happening. “You should not be able to speak to me if the aria is still in your body,” he said. “I…”

“Remember Joa?”

Joa claimed to be Willard’s father and was also a fae prince. Their brief stint in the fae realm in the spring was not Idris’s favourite memory, but he did recall the noble well – thanks to Joa, the scar in Idris’s arm was permanent. He nodded.

“He talked and walked around and all sorts when he did fae magic.” Willard shrugged. “Mayhaps this is the same?”

Idris sat and stared.

Nothing happened for a few minutes. Willard stood, watching the light, and Idris, wordless, could do nothing but watch, either. Not even Magus Arundale could commit such a feat; it felt nearly impossible that a novice could manage it. Eventually, the gold glitter passed through Willard’s fingers like sand, and he let out a sudden, long breath that sounded like the fae arias from the bells, and then it was silent.

“Interesting,” whispered Idris.

“’S’not ‘interesting’. It’s weird,” said Willard. “You don’t do that.”

“Do it again.”

“Dunno if I can.” Willard returned to his basic stance, closed his eyes, took his breaths, but it did not matter how much he did it – the lights did not return. “Does this mean I have more reading?” he asked glumly.

“It does,” said Idris. “Um… Lila, are you still here?”

“Yes, Sir Idris.”

“Take note of these texts, for me? I will ask the librarians for them when I return.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“And…” Idris hesitated. “I have some information about the Spirit Glass. Let us discuss it quickly, before dinner. I do not want Lady Riette mixed up in this awful business.”

Once Lila had the list of books written down, Idris told them about Dravid’s confession.

“You think this Remaker knows where the rest of the armour is?” said Willard.

“It is possible, but we at least have a place to start looking,” said Idris.

“Outer Arbedes,” said Lila, frowning. “Where is that?”

Idris tried to say it casually, but he failed. “About a day from Marbury.”

“Where your folks used to live?” said Willard. Idris simply nodded.

“The Queen cannot sanction you to return to Marbury,” said Lila.

“It is hardly forbidden for me to go, but yes, you are right,” said Idris. “The Queen also does not know about the fae bargain. If we go to Marbury… it has to be on our own. What she does not know cannot hurt her. Her, or my family.”

“And Lady Riette?” said Willard.

“No, she cannot know. It is not wise for her to be part of this.”

“We’ll need to plan this,” said Lila. “Leave that to me. In the meantime, Sir Idris, this is meant to be a relaxation trip. Why did you bring those awful documents with you? Where did you even get them from?”

“Neither of those answers are relevant. Suffice to say I have been ignoring them during my healing and now that I am feeling better, it is important to have resources at my disposal that make this Spirit Glass destruction quick and painless. I am not having another healer take a third steak off my leg, thank you,” said Idris.

“Ain’t sure it’s steak from the leg,” said Willard, thinking hard, and then, “not that it matters.”

“At any rate,” said Idris, trying to ignore the hedge witch, “we may not even need to go through Marbury. I will need to see a map, but I think there is a forest road which takes us close to Outer Arbedes without entering Marbury proper. It has been a long time, though.”

“Can you think of a good excuse to visit Marbury that the Queen won’t suspect?” said Lila.

“I can think of something,” said Idris, remembering the clematis outside his bedroom window.