Innocence and Silence

By E.M. Prazeman

For the love of his nation, he will go to war.

For the love of a man, he will defy death.

For the love of freedom, he will destroy the connection between hell and earth, and sacrifice all he has ever known.

"I've read thousands of books, most of which were momentarily entertaining but ultimately forgettable. There's a treasured handful, however, that meant a whole lot more, ones I not only vividly remember but have prized enough to read more than once. Each book in The Lord Jester's Legacy is brilliant, imaginative, and unforgettable, standing amongst the best fantasy epics I've read; collectively the series is nothing short of phenomenal. With melancholy I close the final page of Innocence & Silence, knowing that the trilogy is finally done, yet cheerfully look forward to reading the series again. And anything else in this verse that Prazeman publishes in the future ... she's really that good." – Lawrence Kane, ForeWord Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wyrd Goat Press
• Release date: Feb 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310730764

E.M. Prazeman

EM Prazeman is, of course, a pseudonym. The person behind the Mask Trilogy is a Czech refugee from the '68 invasion living in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, indulging an ancestral love for writing, painting and gardening. EM has studied mathematics and engineering, judo and karate, and isn't a bad shot. But can't throw knives worth a damn.

Book preview

Published by Wyrd Goat Press

Copyright 2014 E.M. Prazeman

SmashWords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold, reproduced in any format, or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to SmashWords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Kamila Zeman Miller

http://wyrdgoat.com

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

EPILOGUE

Chapter One

No! Little Ellen shoved Mark with more force than he expected from a four year old. You’we wong!

President Rohn Evan’s eyebrows lifted but he didn’t look up from his letters. Not yet four feet tall and already she speaks with an adult woman’s confidence that men, in general, are wrong.

Mark tried to ignore him. I’m not wrong. We must wash your hair.

No danjuh soap! Ellen tried to shove him again but he caught her arms this time.

She hated the hair dye. It had taken him a while to figure out what she was saying when she’d first started calling it danger soap. He didn’t blame her. It stank, and it stung, and he wished they didn’t have to use it but if anyone realized who she really was .... You have to take your bath. Her brindle hair, dyed an even color of oak brown, had begun to grow out enough to show the unmistakable and rare royal coloration.

She struggled in his grip. Mark let her go. I hate you!

He didn’t let her see his flinch. You can’t go outside to play until you’ve had your bath.

No! She pushed on him.

Do you two always have to argue wherever I’m trying to read? Rohn protested.

She likes the library– Mark narrowly avoided getting punched in the belly. Her fists didn’t impart much force but they still hurt.

And the curiosity room, and the billiard room, and the veranda .... He slapped the letter down and sat back, rubbing his eyes.

She won’t go into your private suite. Mark’s temper lifted. He wasn’t sure if his heart had begun to tap faster on its own, or if Rohn’s had forced it to match. Anyway, we’re leaving. He took the struggling, kicking little girl toward the door.

She bit his hand and he hissed in pain. He picked her up and she smacked him in the face.

You mustn’t let her get away with that, Rohn told him.

Mark took her into the hall and sat her down on the floor. Gale, his massive guard dog, pressed her substantial weight up from a sprawl on the hall runner into a half-seated position to watch them. Ellen, listen to me.

No!

You hit me and you bit me and now you must be punished. You have to stay right there until I tell you it’s time, and then you have to tell me you’re sorry.

I hate you.

Rohn settled into the entryway. She’s a monster.

No monstuh! she shrieked. I’m a giwl!

Only a monster would harm such a kind, patient person as Lark, Rohn told her, using Mark’s jester’s name as he always did.

Keeping his distance not just from me but from Ellen.

Rohn– Mark protested.

She has to hear this.

Hear what Mark dreaded and feared might be true. She’s just a child. She doesn’t understand half of what you’re saying.

She’s a monster, Rohn persisted. She hurts the innocent with her words and her fists and her teeth and her anger.

I’m not a monstuh! The screech that followed made Mark cringe.

I don’t believe you. Little girls don’t hit their fathers, and little girls don’t bite. Only monsters bite.

Ellen started to cry. I’m not a monstuh.

Mark wanted to cry with her. He’d failed this child. From the beginning he’d dreaded that he’d be forced to do what he suspected the Saphiran Queen would have done–keep her until she was old enough to execute without feeling too terrible about it. After almost a year of working with her, she didn’t seem any better than when he’d first brought her to Hevether Hall. Once the shock of losing her parents had worn away, she’d horrified him with regularity.

Prove to me that you’re not a monster, or I will take Lark away and you will have a nanny instead. Rohn employed his softest voice. Mark wondered if that quiet tone gave her fearful chills like it gave him.

I hate you!

Mark expected her to launch herself at Rohn, fists clenched, but instead she flung her arms around Mark’s neck. He drank in her show of care. So often it seemed she didn’t care about anything, least of all him.

I mean it, Rohn assured her. I will take your father away.

No! She hugged Mark tighter, her slight arms all but choking him.

It was a dangerous and awful bluff. Mark began to fear that Rohn might not be bluffing, but then Rohn’s expression relented. You might be a little girl after all, Rohn remarked. Little girls hug their daddies just like that. I’ll give you another chance.

Thank your goodfather for his kindness, Mark prompted softly.

Thank you, she said resentfully, but at least she said it. The rare show of obedience gave him hope. She tucked her face against Mark’s neck. He lifted her into his arms and she settled comfortably against his chest.

A year ago he could have never imagined himself as a father. Now, he couldn’t imagine being anything else, though she wasn’t of his bloodline. Had it been like this for his own parents–the doubts, the fears, waking in the middle of the night and not finding sleep again until he'd seen for himself that she was all right ...?

Rohn gave him a long, dark look before he retreated back to his work.

It seemed every day they faced a new challenge that tied his heart tighter to Ellen and forced Rohn further and further away.

A young servant girl with a bucket of cleaning supplies came out of the neighboring room and stopped hard. Oh, excuse me. She blushed and curtsied.

If you want to start on the library, I think we’re finished with it, Mark told her. He moved out of the way to let them by at a distance more comfortable for them. Another servant emerged, carrying a soft broom, and followed the first one into the library. He cast Mark a shy look before he began his work.

Mark set Ellen down and knelt before her. Sometimes he wondered what the servants thought of his parenting. More than once he wished he could ask some of the older ones for advice, but unfortunately they would probably have difficulty answering honestly. Besides, they didn’t know, could never know, who she really was. Without that knowledge they might advise him poorly, assuming that they’d dare to advise him at all.

Ellen touched his face with her tiny fingers, her gaze uncertain. She probably didn’t know what to expect. Mark didn’t know what would help her understand. He’d learned, though, that keeping it simple usually helped. My hand hurts, Mark told her. It was a thin strategy, but sometimes it seemed that was all he had to try to help her to learn how to care about people. I think it’s a monster bite. What do you think?

She shook her head.

Monster bites hurt, and this hurts. Let’s have a look. She watched intently as he slipped the glove off.

Please don’t let her be fascinated. He wanted too much for her to be appalled.

He had just a few reddened tooth marks. Nothing serious. What do you think? he asked her. Is that a monster bite?

She touched it gently. Put owie goo on it? she suggested.

An excellent idea.

Gale followed them, silent and serene, her scarred ears and face testimony to the lengths she would go to defend her master.

On their way down to the medicine cupboard Trudy stopped them. She curtsied. A package just came in for you. I left it outside your office.

Thank you, Trudy. He had Ellen put the salve on his hand first. She wrapped it loosely in gauze, and then the two of them, with Gale leading the way, trooped up the stairs to what had once been a guest suite’s sitting room. That guest suite had become his permanent residence, and he’d had each of the rooms converted to suit his purposes.

The office now had heavily carved doors and muffling to prevent eavesdropping, and had a three-turn key system to which only he and Rohn had keys. Ellen always gazed at the door to his office with a solemn curiosity before she went in. He wondered if the Meriduan national birds reminded her of something.

An oak box large enough to hold a fancy hat took up half of the side table he had by his office door for letters and packages. A large bundle wrapped in oilskins took up the other half. Whenever a ship came in, and sometimes two came in one day, there were always more letters from all over the islands, and, less often, the rest of the world. If he wasn’t able to burn half of them he might drown in them. As it was, the small percentage he was forced to answer took up hours of his day every day. He opened his office door and Gale and Ellen ambled in.

Gale flopped heavily on her favorite rug. The red floral pattern was matted in her increasingly darkening fur to the point where only a trained eye could detect the stylized peonies and leaves. Mark had decided to leave it until she’d finished shedding in hopes that the dense mat would protect the design. The shed fur lay thick enough that little if anything could get through.

Once an almost perfectly pale cream dog, over the summer Gale had grown in a light strawberry roan color frosted with heavy black guard hairs. In a few years she’d be entirely black, the characteristic adult color of her rare breed.

Mark turned over the battered box in his hands first, though he wanted to tear into the bundle first and foremost. It took him a moment to realize where the foreign script and strange tax stamps had come from. It’s from Bel. He chuckled. It’s your new hair soap.

No danjuh soap! She repeated herself and took it up like a chant, fists white-tight, stomping her feet while turning in a circle.

I’ll tell you what, he began before she could work herself into a full-blown tantrum. I’ll try it first.

No danjuh soap!

Soap for daddy’s hair? he offered.

She stopped and her eyes widened.

We’ll start a new fashion in Perida. He hoped that it came with instructions in a language he could read.

It did. After they dressed into castoff clothes, one of the cook’s assistants helped them make a mash of some odd-scented but not unpleasant herbs that turned the water a deep, ruddy black and thickened it to the consistency of good cream. They took the liquid to Mark’s washroom, draped anything that might stain with rags, covered their faces in heavy oil and creams, and then Mark applied it with elbow-length oilcloth gloves he’d had made for the purpose.

The dye turned his blond hair into an odd cherrywood color, and the light brown hair that grew from the nape of his neck and behind his ears turned into an auburn that matched what the dye did to most of Ellen’s naturally brindle hair. She giggled and laughed at him, especially after it dried. Looking in the mirror, he had to admit that it in no way looked natural, but it wasn’t a horrible color.

Unfortunately, it took two washings to cover the line of grown-out hair that threatened to reveal Ellen’s brindle, and the color was brighter at the hairline than the rest. It had been a worthwhile experiment, but he would have to try again with something else. In the meantime this would serve. At least she didn’t mind the scent as much, or complain about it making her skin feel, as she put it, crinkly.

Ellen settled on the floor of his sitting room to play with her wooden alphabet books. She made up stories of her own to go with the pictures while he leafed through the letters and gazettes hoping to find a letter from Verai. The whole lot smelled like rosemary and sweet tobacco. The bundle had been pressed tight under a heavy clamp so that it took up as little space as possible on the ship. Some of the wax seals on the letters that lay near the top and bottom were crushed to powder. Fortunately, no one had attempted to send him anything fragile.

He lifted the second to last letter. The one beneath was from some jester in southern Cathret.

His chest twinged with pain, and he closed his eyes. It would be at least another week before a post ship that had a chance of carrying letters from Hasla would arrive. There was always a possibility that Verai would try to send a letter the long way around to try to avoid some of the caprices of postal services during the war, but it was so expensive and took so long that he’d be better off sending it by sacred messenger. Mark had sent him money to do just that, but he didn’t know if it had ever arrived.

Although the various reports in the gazettes about the war made him shiver, he’d grown accustomed to them. It helped that the articles were so far out of date that they were practically historical accounts. One small item, however, punched him deep in his gut.

New Ship Nearing Completion in Hullundy Bay. A Secret Benefactor donated the funds to build a Fantastic New Ship of Unique Design. The four-masted beauty will take her maiden voyage within the month, and if she proves out, will help steer the war toward its proper course.

He believed with a potent and irrational anger that this was the ship Gutter had begun to build from Mairi’s hull fund. He shouldn’t have been surprised that the Church would seize any and all property associated with Gutter the Regicide. Mark couldn’t make a convincing arguement that the Church had acted illegally. But the loss of that impossibly lavish gift slapped his face, and he felt a powerful passion like he’d never known.

He wanted that ship.

He recognized Rohn’s knock. Come in.

Rohn worked his way to the sitting room and halted in shock. What in the hells did you do to your hair?

Ellen covered her face with wide-spread hands and giggled at Rohn’s horror. You don’t like it? Mark tried to lighten his voice but lingering anger honed points onto the consonants.

Rohn’s mouth made a thin line. Two ships came in today with important news of the mainland war. I’m calling an emergency meeting tonight. I expect you to attend. Rohn had an untidy stack of folded letters in one hand, and a sealed letter in the other. And this arrived as well. He offered the sealed letter. It had come from within Perida. The ink was still fresh enough that its sharp scent lingered on the paper.

Mark stood and bowed. Rohn looked them both over with a guarded, disapproving glance, handed the letter to Mark, and stalked out.

That means early dinner and early bed. Mark didn’t give Ellen time to protest about going to bed–it had become a dreaded word to her, along with nap–beyond opening her mouth with shock. We don’t have much time. What would you like to do before dinner? As usual she didn’t seem to comprehend the adult-phrased question, but he always asked that way first. What do you want to play? he asked.

Ellen closed her mouth and considered so deeply and seriously that ruffled lines formed on her forehead. When she thought of something she relaxed and looked at him sidelong. Pway at de beach. She pointed out the window toward the dangerous rocky shore for emphasis.

He dreaded taking her to the beach and she knew it, but he was helpless before her. She’d accepted the new hair dye with grace. All right.

She squealed and danced in place.

Let’s put on your beach dress and sandals, he told her, but she had already started to run to her room. Gale loped after her. He rang for Trudy once he got to Ellen’s front room, the one she was required to keep clean. And she did, for the most part, though she’d left a blanket strewn across the floor. He picked it up when she wasn’t looking and tossed it on her bed, then sat down and read the letter Rohn had given him while Trudy helped Ellen get dressed. It was from Bell. His lord and master wanted to host a concert with Lark as the featured performer. They made a handsome offer of payment.

Mark’s first thought wasn’t joy at the opportunity to do some honest work, but rather whether Ellen could tolerate his absence for four hours.

I never thought to be a father. Once again he couldn’t imagine being anything else. And now, especially, he felt a grim and depthless inadequacy.

His own father had never been home. He barely remembered his mother. How could he parent this child with so little memory of good examples to follow? And how dare he contemplate doing something about a ship he knew better than to claim when he had this far more important responsibility to consider?

This household is all she has. I must temper my reaction and look at this logically.

He never expected an inheritance, much less from a man who was still alive. Over the past several months, a few items at a time, Gutter’s property had been arriving from various places, mostly from Hasla and Vyenne but also from Osia and some items even managed to escape Cathret. Mark already had many of Gutter’s favorite paintings, including some he’d never seen before. He was glad, too, if for no other reason than to keep them safe. That was more than enough of an inheritance, and one that, strictly speaking, he didn’t really need. Rohn had more wealth than he knew what to do with, and he gave Lark a generous allowance.

But the fact that the ship that Mark and Gutter owned together would not escape the well-deserved persecution of the man who had killed Cathret’s King still galled him, though he couldn’t explain why. It wasn’t as if the ship could serve as an apology for Mairi’s loss, or give any comfort to the widows and orphans of the men who’d burned alive when Thomas set Mairi on fire. Mark should have rejected the exorbitant gift from the very beginning.

He still yearned for it with a passion he hadn’t felt since he left Saphir. Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, he read over the copies Gutter had sent of his right to the hull fund and the ship it was building. The painting Gutter had made of it haunted him. Though it wouldn’t influence Cathret one bit, Mark had even amended his contractual bond with Rohn to include the ship and had a copy of the contract he’d signed with Gutter made to include in the paperwork, in case Lark died or went mad.

It was hopeless. The only reason Meridua hadn’t been forced into the war the moment Lark returned home was because Cathret couldn’t prove that Lark had been directly involved in the regicide. If he tried to claim the ship, that would change. Not because his claim would prove anything, but because Cathret would want to keep that ship for its war efforts, whether it deserved to keep the ship or not.

Meridua’s role in the war was already changing. Rohn’s expression revealed as much when he announced the meeting. Mark suspected that after tonight, though she might not be forced to choose sides, Meridua might finally enter the war as a combatant rather than a neutral power.

He wished he could tell someone, anyone, what they were really fighting for. He would risk his soul to do it, but he didn’t know for certain if he understood the spiritual war himself.

Gutter had lost his sanity, and Mark didn’t dare trust Gelantyne. Anything and nothing they told him could be true.

Karl, William, and Trudy accompanied Mark and Ellen to the beach. In Cathret, where he’d spent much of his life, Ease was typically cooler than the month of Plenty and Mark might be inclined to wear a nightcap to bed. But during Ease the islands in general and Perida in particular sweltered under a summery sun and the populace sweated in heavy, muggy air that even the sea breezes couldn’t quite thin. They all carried fans and used them constantly, except Ellen, who kept throwing hers down. Mark, as always, ended up taking it away from her and fanned her face with his own. She closed her eyes with childish bliss and glee, her mouth curved into a satisfied smile, until the coach stopped. Ellen surged to the door and pounded on it until he let her out. She leapt down the stairs onto the sand with Gale close on her heels, rushing toward the waves with wild, animal joy.

Karl had only just recently begun to be something more than a stranger to Mark. The shy man had admitted that he’d always wanted to learn how to play the guitar, so Mark hired an instructor and they learned guitar together. Though Karl had trouble finding the music, he practiced so diligently and often and intelligently that Mark was certain the music would eventually find him.

William had seemed like family from the start. He was Philip’s nephew. William was a young man only a pair of years younger than Mark, but he seemed very innocent and nervous and uncertain. He worked overly hard at any task they put him to. No doubt he worried about proving himself worthy of the job he’d earned in part because of his relationship to his murdered uncle, the man who’d once been Rohn’s stablemaster and driver. As far as William was concerned, his uncle had died a hero, and Mark had no reason to disagree.

William’s job had become more difficult now that Rohn was president of the Meriduan Islands. He’d begun as a messenger and stableboy, but Mark decided shortly after he’d arrived that Rohn needed a valet, and William seemed the best-suited to the work.

Mark needed all three servants to help him whenever he took Ellen to the beach. Ellen had no natural fear of the water. She had them all running to save her from the potentially deadly waves at one point or another. The only time they let her into the water was to splash around in the shallows at the safest area near the end of the beach farthest from the road. Ellen delighted in pretending to drown there and Gale happily rescued her.

They built fortresses for her and buried her legs in sand and trapped colorful little fish in ponds they dug for them and then returned them safely to the sea. They weren’t the only people enjoying a day at the beach, but the others were accustomed to them and paid them little heed.

The jester and his little illegitimate daughter with their servants and a giant sailor’s dog. It surprised Mark, considering the timing of her arrival, that no one seemed suspicious that she might be a certain princess. Even the other jesters on the island seemed willing to accept her as he’d explained her to them.

At least for now.

When the sun began to settle too near to the horizon, they packed up their beach things and wearily returned home. Ellen dozed off in the carriage in the few minutes it took to return to Hevether. Reluctantly Mark woke her to dress for dinner. They ate a sleepy meal with Rohn and his wife, First Lady Winsome. As always, Winsome spoke little except directly to her husband, and they retired directly after dinner to their suite.

Mark took Ellen to her room and dressed her for bed. She crawled into her large, fluffy white bed, listened to him sing while he brushed and braided her hair, and then settled on her side to wait while Mark fetched the book they’d been reading. It only took a few pages of The Golden Mare before Ellen dozed off to sleep. Mark tucked her velvet horse under the blanket beside her and sat by her bed a while.

Any day, any hour, Lord Jester Gutter and Gelantyne could make their way into the house and kill her, and there was nothing any of them could do about it.

Not so long as Gutter had the Innocence mask.

Mark had nightmares about finding Ellen’s blood-soaked body in this very bed. Sometimes in the nightmare her body would get up and go about its business while he frantically searched for her head, hoping to put her together again.

She’s not a monster. She’s a little girl. Every little girl kicks and bites and screams until she learns better. And she’s come such a long way–

A long way from when he’d found Ellen kicking Gale as hard as she could. Gale had let Ellen brutalize her rather than harm the little girl. The memory of it still horrified him.

Sleeping peacefully, after helping wrap his barely-injured hand so apologetically ....

She’s not like her father. She’s not a monster.

Mark read his way through the most important of the letters, mainly jesters of high-ranking nobles from Cathret trying to lure him in, jesters writing from Vyenne, jesters writing from Hasla, and Osia, even Nuech and Melssa. Occasionally a noble would write him directly, and he even got some letters from various churches. A Dellai Wromsen in particular tried to convince him that it was very urgent that he come to personally receive extremely important information regarding ‘a certain mask.’ His most recent letter almost tempted Lark, but not enough to reply with more than a promise of excellent hospitality if the dellai came to see him.

Rohn quietly opened the door. It was time to leave. Mark signaled Gale to stay. The dog was their only hope to resist the Innocence mask. Gale didn’t react the same way to masks as human beings did. It was a slim chance that she would be able to defend Ellen from Gutter or Gelantyne, but that thread of a chance was better than no hope at all.

Mark slipped into his suite to arm himself. Rohn stood by, waiting in silence. He’d armed himself with a pistol and rapier as well. In addition to his usual armaments, Mark tucked a long, slim dagger through his belt at the small of his back. He also clipped two smaller knives, one in each boot, to straps just under the cuffs. It wasn’t comfortable but he’d gotten accustomed to them pressing into his calves.

How will you explain your hair? Rohn asked. Aren’t you worried that by changing her hair, and matching her by coloring your own, people will know you’re hiding something? There is but one family that has such unusual hair that anyone would feel compelled to cover it.

Mark shrugged. She’s insecure about me. She wanted to have hair like mine, and I told her it wasn’t possible. She threw a fit, so, at the risk of spoiling her, we dyed both to match. He smiled. It may even be true. I’m sure that you saying something disapproving about indulging her too much will only add to the story’s veracity.

Rohn bowed his head. Lark ....

Mark paused as he reached for his mask.

Rohn lifted his chin and straightened his spine. Chances are she will be murdered before the year is done.

Glacial fear trickled down inside him. Have you heard something?

No, I haven’t heard anything, he said impatiently. Of course I don’t want anything to happen to her but you and I both know that the odds that she’ll see five, never mind the unlucky age of seven, are next to none. You love her like a father–

Considering what I did I owe her a father. Mark didn’t want to talk about any of this. They had nothing to say to each other on the matter. We have a meeting to attend. Is Winsome coming?

You love Ellen like a father and it will destroy you to lose her. The next time she hits you I will use it as an excuse to find her a nanny, and I want you to keep out of my way.

That won’t help in the least. You can’t shelter me from this. And may I remind you that Ellen is the only thing that’s keeping me here. If I didn’t have to see to her I’d be in Cathret looking for Gutter. Mark realized how that must have sounded only after Rohn’s expression drew back and his gaze tightened with hurt.

He couldn’t correct his statement without complicating Rohn’s marriage even more than it already had been. He contrived to brush out his hair one more time. Mark turned away and pulled the ribbon from his hair. Unwilling but unable to resist, he drowned in the flood of loneliness that always came when he thought about Rohn and Winsome. And as always when loneliness tore into his belly, he also thought of Verai in Saphir and the lover Verai had lost to marriage and how Verai and Mark both might have healed each others’ pain if only they could have stayed together somehow.

The hells seemed kind when measured against the pain he felt when he thought of Verai. Mark might use Gutter or an attempt to reclaim his ship or an effort to mitigate the agony of war through diplomacy as his excuse to travel to the mainland, but once there he feared he would shape his mission any way he could to see Verai again.

Just for a moment. I would travel through fire and fight past a thousand jesters to see him again.

But the sort of man who would leave a little girl undefended would not be worthy of a man like Verai.

I need your help here, in Perida, Rohn told him roughly.

You have advisors far more schooled and practiced than I am at running a country under threat of war. Anyway, as long as Ellen needs me, I’m staying. Until I hear something about Gutter’s whereabouts, anyway. Then it will time to face him and secure Ellen’s future if I can.

So this is what remains of our bond. The bitter loneliness rang clear as a gull cry. Before Mark could compose a response Rohn left and shut the door behind him.

Chapter Two

They held the meeting at the court. Rohn, his numerous secretaries, various governors or their representatives from every island, plus Lark and all the other officials’ jesters, crammed themselves in a long double line where the judge, herald, primary defendant and the defendant’s witnesses usually sat during a trial. The podiums, seat boxes and table had been removed to make room, and a few narrow tables allowed each of them space for a little paperwork and a glass of water. Behind them, a long line of personal servants, including William, stood by. All the citizenry of note that could fit in the pit and the surrounding stadium seating had packed themselves in, sometimes with men standing, kneeling or sitting in the aisles. A few women sat in their husband’s laps with as much decorum as could be managed under the circumstances. A large number of citizens who couldn’t make it into the meeting had gathered outside. Listeners at the door passed on what little information reached their ears as it came.

The air warmed past stifling in short order. Those who hadn’t brought fans made them from anything they could find at hand. Lark loosened his neckerchief to no avail.

Just as Rohn called the meeting to order a sacred messenger arrived with a puzzle scroll. Under everyone’s unrestrained curiosity, the messenger stopped behind Lark’s chair, asked for his signature and accepted the traditional gratuity.

Gutter’s seal covered the keyhole.

Lark felt a little faint. He couldn’t exactly excuse himself from the meeting to read it.

Rohn’s body shielded him from much of the audience, but not from his neighbors. The message would be in code, but that would only shelter the contents. Inevitably, codes became recognizable to those who hunted and studied them. Lark couldn’t afford to give anyone even a glimpse of any of Gutter’s codes in case that same person saw it again and made a connection that they shouldn’t.

He’d read it under the table. He gave his closest neighbor, Bell, a sharp look. With a laugh, Bell, turned just enough to make it awkward to glance in Lark’s direction. Thank you. Their duties sometimes put them at odds, but he considered Bell the closest thing he had to a friend among the island jesters.

Lark fished out the key Gutter had given them for their shared puzzle boxes–he always carried it with him–and broke the seal.

What if Gutter is trying to kill me? He knows which key I’d use, and if he gave me the wrong puzzle lock on purpose ....

He’d been poisoned once before. He didn’t want to repeat the experience.

Hells. Nothing for an entire year. This couldn’t have arrived when I had nothing to do but take Ellen to the beach? Why did the messenger wait until now? Or has another ship arrived from the mainland?

Lark carefully slid the key in. It successfully turned to the left on the first cut. He flinched when it clicked. He slid it in deeper. It easily turned left again. Three, right, click. Four, left, click. Five, right–click-pop. The delicate metal sheaves parted as the puzzle scroll hinged open, exposing the unharmed pages of a letter written over in the convoluted cipher Gutter had taught him as their own private code. The central chamber had nothing in it.

Rohn read a report aloud about how the Church in Cathret had begun to prop up some sort of government independent of the nobility. The priests wanted to organize the Cathretan commoners behind them to oppose Duchess Anne and her followers. The duchess, her entire family and all her supporters were declared regicidal schemers and treacherous Saphiran agents whose only ties to Cathret were land rights to which they had no moral connection or sense of obligation.

Lark, the first page began in a hasty scrawl. Lark held it under the table at a shallow angle and huddled over the table so that anyone trying to read it would make themselves obvious.

pleas come to port deep where ill leaf sign if can i knew its dangerous but no one anywhere no safe haven i trst only you saphiran regents have accord to plan declared me murdrer an only bearer of regicide sin but none of us expect my survival or the long trot the allolai took upon me and now alone

A shock rushed through him. Had Gelantyne abandoned Gutter? If so, who had the mask? He hoped that Gutter only meant he had no allies to help him, but the cold, tight feeling in his gut suggested otherwise.

in cathret with no way out and i cant death without passing on the kings mask to someone Good no one could resist abusing her but you my boy my son come claim your inheritance and then deal with me as you will i would make an excelling bargain for your beloved meridua in her dealings with saphir cathret and in fact any nation in war or out of it if your love if it still exists for me prevents such use i would consider it a kindness if you brought gracian with you to end my life so that i may dissolve beside my beloved lord who i miss more than i feared i would and also perhaps i might ask sorry of the friend I killed for I love him as i love my lord in spite of their unforgivable flaws be careful take no chances i would not ask but for this masks sake love

Thomas

The grammatical errors and occasional misspellings could have been deliberate but Lark’s gut tightened even more. Madness danced too clearly in the pen lines to dismiss the possibility that the words accurately reflected a deteriorating mind.

Gutter had signed as Thomas. He’d written no date nor a location. He could have written it anywhere at any time. He might even ....

Mark couldn’t allow himself to believe that Gutter might be dead. Intellectually he knew it was possible, but it simply didn’t seem plausible that the world’s greatest jester would write such a letter to him and then vanish from the world forever. His heart believed that Gutter was alive and waiting for him.

He put the letter back in the case and locked it.

Gentlemen, ladies, President Evan declared to the sweating crowd in the stifling room, the merit of the ugly accusations and intrigues that drive this war do not concern Meridua. The Cathretan Church, however, very much concerns us all. Will we allow the Cathretan Church, or for that matter any Church, to govern men? This potentially dangerous practice, should it take hold in Cathret, may spread should northern Cathret win her war. It is no longer a battle between nobles, but between nobles with a traditional claim and an institution founded on ancient practices with no regard to the value of human life. Will what is sacred be translated to law? If so, then what of matters that are not sacred–will this mean that the Court will not only hear criminal matters, but hear disputes that are matters of property and commerce? With sacred poetry as their only guide, I fear the potential for confusion and abuse. In my great-grandfather’s time, the Cathretan Church only served as a protective agent in a few cases where commoners feared that the noble with their charge might act against their best interest. Now that same Church has both hands in every inheritance and indenture. I have heard of a case where an orphan became an object of trade as the Cathretan Church played politics with the nobles who wished to profit from his misery. Lark managed not to blush. It probably wouldn’t have shown past his mask anyway, but he felt exposed and wished Rohn hadn’t mentioned it, even on an anonymous basis. "Will one body have power over every aspect of our lives from birth to death, and perhaps even beyond death?

We can no longer be content with discussing such matters in our taverns and in the privacy of our homes where no action is taken upon them. If Cathret’s Church becomes Her government and if She seizes Hasla and makes that nation Her own, then that great and mighty nation will have the power to take not only the whole of the continent, but our own nation as well if She so chooses. No noble, no commoner, no force known to us could check the Church’s ambitions, whatever they may be. Several people cried out. If this form of government seems more sensible than our Constitution then better that we embrace it on our own terms. And if we decide that Church and Government must remain separate then we must oppose this government forming in Cathret with great determination. I do not believe that this is something that a president, governors and representatives can decide, even with the trust of our people so recently given to us behind us. I propose a nationwide vote. The wording of this vote will be perhaps the most important thing our nation will read after the publication of our constitution. Should we decide to call for a vote, I command that all of Meridua’s representatives gather at Hevether Hall to write the articles of vote in a fashion that equally and fairly represents the courses we must choose among. The wording must respect all that is noble, and sacred, and should also reflect our democratic ideals so that whatever path is chosen will allow us to move forward in a fashion that will not undermine all that we have fought to win for our nation and our people. Lastly, it must be fairly worded so that it can be understood by all, and so that each proposal will clearly chart a course for our nation to follow once the vote is in.

Barons, ladies and jesters rose up and the uproar heated the room even beyond the sweltering discomfort they’d suffered before. Lark remained in his seat and waited for people to calm down, but they didn’t. It was as if Rohn’s proposal had set fire to the room and now everyone screamed and burned alive inside it. He felt Rohn’s heart beating fast, lifting Lark’s own to match, but Lark wasn’t afraid. No one was fighting, no one was killing anyone, no one wanted to hurt anyone. They simply had too much to say, too many questions, and too many fears. Rohn had shattered their sense of secure distance from the war and forced them to do something about it. It didn’t help that people were still getting used to the idea of commoners having power. Putting such things that nobles and jesters usually decided amongst themselves to a vote was in itself a radical idea.

Rohn had also neatly hinted about what Lark had worried about ever since he’d left Saphir, though Lark doubted that anyone had caught that seemingly small but very important detail. There was a war going on in the realms of allolai and morbai, perhaps between morbai and allolai, or perhaps the divisions were as complicated as the divisions of nation and faith that existed in the world of the living. That war had manifested in Cathret and Hasla, thanks to Gelantyne, and they had to decide what side they were on without knowing what good or evil they might aid.

I don’t trust Gelantyne, I don’t trust those he’s warring with, and no one knows what other forces might exist or what they might do.

Lark stood and worked his way around to the narrow space between the frontmost table and the rail, warming his voice under his breath. When the time seemed right he began to sing the first verse of The Last Hope. He gradually strengthened his voice until everyone quieted down. The president must recognize each person before he or she can speak. Please. Everyone please sit down. We have to take turns or no one will be heard.

Thank you, Lark. Rohn gestured to Perida’s new mayor, who started going on about expense and how half their fighting men were already scarred and crippled from a war with Cathret. Lark went back to his seat. He should have been paying attention, but his thoughts kept returning to Gutter hiding somewhere on the Cathretan shore with the Innocence mask.

If Gutter didn’t have Gelantyne, then whoever did have the mask might be on their way here. They might have even arrived from the mainland on the same ship as the letter.

Gelantyne might even be at their house at this very moment.

As soon as the realization struck him Lark stood back up and pressed his way to the nearest exit. Rohn cast him a sharp look but didn’t stop him.

Lark gasped in the fresh air outside, the horror of his nightmares about Ellen’s headless body in a blood-soaked bed rushing with agonizing clarity into his waking mind. Where was their carriage? He darted among the many carriages and horses lining the street near the court, searching for it. If he didn’t find it soon he’d borrow someone’s horse–

He found their carriage and leapt up. He wasn’t entirely sure how to work it, but how hard could it be? He started by releasing the brake.

Lord jester, allow me. Karl dashed up from a dark place in the gardens of the unnaturally quiet church beside the court.

While Karl lit the lanterns, Lark made room for him on the seat. Thank you. Please hurry.

Karl expertly maneuvered the carriage out of its place among the others and onto the street. Home? he asked.

Home. As fast as you dare.

A roaring in his ears drowned out the ever-present sea. The oppressively dark jungle around the road once they’d left town made the night seem darker, and the distance longer. What was usually a short, pleasant ride seemed to last forever, even at the wild pace that Karl urged the horses to take. The animals, unaccustomed to galloping in harness, never mind taking such a fast pace at night, interfered with each others’ paces more often than not. It wearied them and frightened them so much that Karl had to draw them back to a trot before they hurt themselves or each other. For a mad moment Lark wanted to climb out to them, unhitch one and ride it the rest of the way but he knew it would be more likely to get him or the horses hurt or killed than speed his way toward home.

At last, Hevether Hall’s dark walls came into sight as the road opened onto the rocky promontory they called home. The horses, weary and halfway to panic, stretched their strides without prompting as they came to the smooth carriageway leading up to the turnaround.

Lark didn’t wait for the carriage to slow down. He climbed down the side and leapt as soon as he was sure of his landing. He’d never been so terrified in his life, not when he’d been ambushed in Perida, not when he sailed around the Talon in monstrous waters and evil winds, not even when he had dashed to Grant’s room the night of the massacre. The mask should have sheltered him from his wild fear, but it seemed to offer him no protection at all.

Ellen! He raced up the stairs, half-sobbing from fear, on the verge of being sick, his frantic heartbeat choking off his breath. Ellen– He threw his weight against the door where it stopped against the latch. He fumbled with it before he managed to get it open, biting back a curse–

Gale greeted him, tail wagging. Ellen had sat up in bed and whined sleepily.

Lark threw himself onto his knees and hugged her. He breathed in her scent. Of course she was all right. She was all right.

Ellen whined again and hugged him around the neck. He lifted her onto his lap and rocked her. It’s all right, he breathed, and then he hummed one of her favorite lullabies. It was more to soothe himself than her.

Trudy pushed into the room from the neighboring room where she stayed when Lark was away. What’s happened? She looked pale and afraid, her skin as white as her nightgown in the faint moonlight that came in through the window.

Nothing. She’s fine. I’m sorry I frightened you. The last time the house had been roused to a late night disturbance had been the night of the massacre, and Trudy had almost died. She’s safe. We’re safe, Trudy. There was no reason to believe Gelantyne had come to Perida, but no reason to believe he hadn’t. I want you to go to your own room and bar the door until I’m sure there’s no danger.

She looked like she wanted to argue, but she laid her hand over the scars on her throat and left without a word.

Sing song, Ellen said crossly, smooshing her face into his shoulder.

Lark closed his eyes and began a lullaby.

No. De hor-sey one, she said in halting but insistent speech.

Her natural contrary nature, rather than bother him, helped calm him down. Which horsey one?

Wi de ship an horsey on wadder.

He sang The Storm Mare to her and rocked her, but of course she didn’t go back to sleep. She wanted a drink of water, and then to go potty, and then milk, and then a cookie. He didn’t oblige her the cookie and she whined until he gave her the silver horse toy she loved best. She played with it sleepily, the covers drawn up to her belly, pillows bracing her back.

Consciously or not, he’d allowed himself a certain amount of fatalistic comfort when he believed Gutter had the Gelantyne mask. They’d had their chance to kill Ellen in Summer Sky Hall, but they’d left her with Mark. Perhaps he’d even foolishly believed that they’d leave her alone forever. He wouldn’t have