Jervis flushed; looked dumbfounded. “Harm 'em? Me? What d'you take me for?”

“The man who broke my arm, Jervis. The man who's been trying to intimidate me on this very floor for the past week. The man that was too damned inflexible to suit the style to the boy - so he tried to break the boy.”

Jervis flung his helm down, going scarlet with anger. The helm dented the floor and rolled off. “Dammit, you fool! Don't you see that was what I was tryin' t'do? I was tryin' t'learn your damned style - and for Medren! Hell-fire! A fool could see that poor little sprout Medren was no more suited t' my way then puttin' armor on a palfrey!”

Vanyel felt as if someone had just dropped him into a vat of cold water. He blinked, relaxed his stance, and blinked again. Feeling poleaxed is getting to become a regular occurrence, he thought, trying to get his jaw hinged again. His knees were trembling so much with reaction that he wasn't certain they'd hold him.

Jervis saved him the trouble. He threw his gear over into his chest at the side of the practice area, stalked over to Vanyel's side, and took his elbow. “Look,” he said, gruffly, “I'm tired, and we've got a lot between us that needs talking about. Let's go get a damned drink and settle it.”

I shouldn't be drinking unwatered wine this tired, Vanyel thought, regarding the plain clay mug Jervis was filling with unease.

It seemed Jervis had already thought of that. “Here,” he said, taking a loaf of coarse bread, a round of cheese, and a knife out of the same cupboard that had held the mugs and wine bottle, and shoving them across the trestle table at Vanyel. “Eat something first, or you'll be sorry. Not a good idea t' be guzzling this stuff if you ain't used t' it, but there's some pain between us, boy, and I need the wine t' get it out, even if you don't.”

They were still in the armory, in a little back room that was part office, part repair - shop, and part infirmary. Vanyel was sitting on a cot with his back braced against the wall; Jervis was on the room's only chair, with the table between and a little to one side of them, a table he'd cleaned of bits of harness and an arm - brace and tools by the simple expedient of sweeping it all into a box and shoving the box under the table with his foot.

The armsmaster followed his own advice by hacking off a chunk of bread and cheese and bolting it, before taking a long swallow of his wine. Vanyel did the same, a little more slowly. Jervis sat hunched over for a long moment, his elbows on his knees, contemplating the contents of the mug held between his callused hands.

“Do you begin,” Van asked awkwardly, “or should I?”

“Me. Your father -” Jervis began, and coughed. “You know I owe him, owe him for takin' me on permanent. Oh, he owed me some, a little matter of watchin' his back once, but not what I figured would put me here as armsmaster. So I figure that put me on the debit side of the ledger, eh? Well, that was all right for a while, though it weren't no easy thing, makin' fighters out of a bunch of plowboys an' second an' third sons what couldn't find the right end of a spear with both hands an' a map. Your granther-he reckoned it best t'hire what he needed. Your father-he figured best t' train his own, an' that was why he kept me. Gods. Plowboys, kids, it was a damn mess. No, it weren't easy. But I did it, I did it - an' then along comes you, first-born, an' Withen calls in the real debt.”

The former mercenary sighed, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He gave Vanyel a measuring look before taking another drink and continuing. “I 'spect by now it ain't gonna come as a surprise t' hear your old man figured you for - what're they sayin' now, shaych? - yeah, figured you for that from the time you came outa the nursery. Times were you looked more girl than boy - gah, that stuck in his craw for sure. Hangin' about with Liss, fightin' shy of th' foster-boys - then you took up with music, an' gods, he was sure of it. Figured he could cure you if he made sure you never knew there was such a thing, and he got somebody t' beat you into shape. That somebody was s'pposed t' be me.”

He stabbed a gnarled thumb toward his chest and snorted. “Me! Kernos' Horns! 'Make the boy a man,' he says. 'I don't care what you have to do, just make 'im a man!' An' every day, just about, askin' me how you was shapin' up. I been under pressure before, but damn, this was enough t' make an angel sweat. I owed that man, an' what the hell was I supposed t' do? Tell him I never saw no beatin's turn no kids from fey if that was how they was bent? Tell him there were no few of the meres his father'd hired was shieldmates, an' looked about as fey as me an' fought like hell's own demons?”

“You could have tried -”

Jervis snarled a little. “And lose my place? You think there's jobs for old meres 'round any corner? I was flat desperate, boy! What in hell was I supposed to do?”

Vanyel bit back his resentment. “I didn't know,” he said finally. “I didn't guess.”

Jervis grimaced. “You weren't supposed to, boy. Well, hell, my style suited you, you poor little scrap, 'bout as well as teats on a bull. 'Bout the same as Medren.”

“If you knew that-” Vanyel bit back his protest.

“Yeah, I knew it. I just couldn't face it. Then you went all stubborn on me, you damned well wouldn't even try, an' I didn't know what the hell t' do! I was 'bout ready t' bust out, you made me so damned mad, an' your old da on me every time I turned around - an' if that weren't enough, gods, I useta get nightmares 'bout you.”

“Nightmares?” Vanyel asked. He knew he sounded skeptical, mostly because he was.

“Yeah, nightmares,” Jervis said defensively. “Shit, you can't live on the damn Border without seein' fightin' sooner or later. An' you likely t' get shoved out there with no more sense of what t' do t' keep yourself alive than a butterfly. Look, smart boy - you was firstborn; you bet I figured you for bein' right in th' front line some day, an' I figured you for dead when that happened. An' I don't send childer outa my damned hands t' get killed, dammit!''

His face twisted and his shoulders shook for a moment, and he finished off the wine in his mug at a single gulp. Vanyel could sense more pain than he'd ever dreamed the old man could feel behind that carved-granite face. Somewhere, some time, Jervis had sent ill-prepared “childer” out of his hands to fight - and die - and the wounds were with him still. His own anger began to fade.

“Well, that's what you were headin' straight for, boy, an' I just plain didn't know how t' keep it from happening. You made me so damned mad, an' then your old man just gave me too much leash. Told me I had a free hand with you. An' I - lost it. I went an' took the whole mess out of your hide.”

He shook his head, staring at the floor, and his hands trembled a little where he was clutching the empty mug. “I lost my damned temper, boy. I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of myself. Should have known better, but every time you whined, it just made me madder. An' I was wrong, dead wrong, in what I was trying t' force into you; I knew it, an' that made me mad too. Then you pulled that last little stunt - that was it. You ever thought about what you did?”

“I never stopped thinking about it,” Vanyel replied, after first swallowing nearly half the contents of his own mug. The wine could not numb the memories, recollections that were more acid on the back of his tongue than the cheap red wine.

He looked fiercely into Jervis's eyes. “I hated you,” he admitted angrily. “If I'd had a real knife in my hands that day, I think I'd have gone for your throat.” All the bitterness he'd felt, then and after, rose in his gullet, tasting of bile. He struggled against his closing throat to ask the question that had never been answered and had plagued him for more than a decade. “Why, Jervis, why?” he got past his clenched jaw. “If you knew what I was doing, why did you lie and tell Father I was cheating?”