“Did you find out who put fear in the boy?” Jervis prompted.

That's about as good a place to start as any. Vanyel took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said, and began his tale.

Jervis and Savil heard him out in complete silence, hardly even breathing. Savil's face was expressionless; Jervis, though, looked ready to call somebody out. Vanyel, for starters.

“That's it,” Vanyel finished, starting to slump with weariness, his shoulders aching with tension. “That's what I found out. And you have to admit, the answers I got certainly fit the symptoms.”

“Dammit Van,” Jervis said tightly, plainly holding his temper in check, “I am bloody well tempted to call you a damned liar to your face!”

“Why?” Vanyel asked bluntly, too weary for diplomacy.

Jervis colored, and growled. “Because that's nothing like the things Tashir's been telling me! The way he tells it -”

“Wait a minute! Do you mean Tashir's been talking about his family to you?”

“He trusts me! Can't the boy trust somebody other than you?”

Vanyel told himself that Jervis was only reacting much the way he would if the boy were in his protection, and managed to cool his rising temper. “Why don't you begin at the beginning, and tell me what you heard?”

What emerged was nothing less than a fantasy, if what Vanyel had learned was true. In his long talks with Jervis (and it seemed that there had been several), Tashir had painted a perfect, idyllic family for himself, one in which the members were forced by circumstance and enemies to present a very different face to the outside world than the one they showed each other. His mother, for instance; Tashir depicted her as the long-suffering plaything of her Mavelan relatives. According to him, once she discovered Deveran's kindness, she took a stand firmly by the side of her wedded lord, but played the part of the discarded, unwanted spouse so as to give the Mavelans no reason to think she could be used against Lineas and its ruler.

And according to Tashir's tale, Deveran was not the bitter, half-impotent dancer on the line between Baires threat and Lineas politics. He was supposedly a stern but kindly patriarch of the Linean throne. Deveran, so Tashir had told Jervis, had only disinherited him under pressure from his people. No, there was never any question in Deveran's mind as to who Tashir's father was. No, there had never been a fight, never been anything other than a small misunderstanding that they had settled that very night.

Fiction, first to last.

“That doesn't even square with what the boy told me!”

Vanyel retorted, disgusted with the game the youngster seemed to be playing. “He told me that his father hated him - that knocking him to the ground that night was only out of the ordinary because Deveran hadn't knocked him about much in public before!”

“Hell!” Jervis replied, his face flushing. “The boy was half - crazed an' scared outa his wits.”

“All the more reason that he should have told me the truth - he didn't have time to make up some tale!”

Jervis started to protest, and Vanyel raised his voice to interrupt him. “And the part about the fight wasn't just from Tashir, it was from Herald Lores!”

“A fathead,” Savil put in reluctantly, “but an honest fathead.”

Jervis lunged to his feet. “An' how much of this is 'cause you want that boy's tail?” he snarled, hands knotting into fists at his sides.

Vanyel went hot, then cold. “If that's what you think, I see no point in any further discussion. Think what you like - do what you like - but obstruct me, and I'll haul you off to Lissa in manacles.”

Jervis froze.

“Before I am anything else, armsmaster, I am Herald Vanyel, and my first priority is to my king and land. If I judge this boy is a danger to either, I will give him into Randale's custody. Not mine, armsmaster. But I must, and will have answers, and I will not permit anyone to even attempt preventing me from finding those answers.”

Vanyel rose stiffly from his stool, pivoted, and stalked towards the door.

He hadn't taken more than a few steps, when Jervis' strangled, half-smothered “wait” stopped him in his tracks.

“Why?” he asked, not turning.

“Because - I - we gotta figger out this thing.” Jervis cleared his throat. “All of us.”

Vanyel turned back, still angry, but suppressing it. “Very well. If we're going to figure this mess out, you'll have to take my word as being at least as good as the boy's.”

Jervis plainly didn't like that, but only protested, “How in hell can we take two stories that're that different?”

“Look at the one that fits the symptoms,” Vanyel's voice was grim, and his face felt tight. “He's afraid to let women between the ages of eighteen and forty even touch him - assume the story he told you is true - Ylyna alternately beating him and loving him, and then trying to seduce him -”

He wiped his forehead, and his hand came away wet with nervous sweat.

“Gods. Think about how Treesa treats every attractive male, including me. She comes on to every man like a flirt. It's only a game to her, but think how that must have looked to Tashir - the way he'd react. Given my version is true, you could predict he'd do just what he did - panic, and let his Gift act up and frighten her off - just as I was told he did with his mother. Think about how he hides from Withen! And think about the way he clings to you, Jervis! Everything makes sense.”

Jervis faltered. “Well, yes, but -”

“And everything points straight at Tashir as the unconscious murderer,” Vanyel continued, heartsick.

“Now that I will not believe!” Jervis shouted, surging to his feet. “That boy is no kind of a killer! Hell, he damn near castrated himself in practice yesterday, pulling a cut when Medren lost his helm!''

“Who else could it be?” Vanyel shouted back, overriding Jervis' protests by sheer volume. “He had the power, he was at the scene, and he had the motive! There's nobody, nobody, with any kind of a motive except Tashir!''

“No!” Jervis insisted, eyes going black with anger. “No, I won't accept that! Look how he kept from hurting anybody in Treesa's bower.”

“But crazed with fear, wild with anger, can you speak for that?”

“Even crazed - how could he kill that Karis? He loved that old man, he must have, to trust me so much just because I look like him!”

Vanyel sat heavily back down onto the stool. “I don't know,” he admitted in a low voice. “That's only one of the things that's been bothering me. In all of the cases of Gifts gone rogue that I've ever heard of, the rogue never hurts anyone but the ones directly in his way. Everybody was killed in this case, and that doesn't make sense. It might make sense if he panicked completely and thought he was killing witnesses, but he didn't have enough time to reason something like that out, not from all I learned. And from what I know of his personality - no. I can't see him killing in cold blood even to save himself.” He rubbed his pounding temples with his fists. Fits of anger always gave him a headache. “The first half of the story fits, but the second doesn't. I just can't reconcile the two.”

“There're other questions,” Savil pointed out from her seat on the cot. Vanyel looked at her in surprise; he'd forgotten she was there. “Lots of other questions. Some of them may tie in, others may not, but the fact is there's too many of them. Lord Vedric's behavior is certainly peculiar. It doesn't in the least match what I've heard of him. Either the man has reformed, or he's up to something. Then there's the puzzle of the Remoerdises, the Linean Royal Family. Why did Deveran insist that only those related to his family serve in the palace? Why is the place built on top of a damned mage-node? Why are the Lineans so completely against mage-craft?”

Vanyel shook his head. “You think those questions are crucial?”