Page 53 of To Touch A Silent Fury (The Bride of Eavenfold #1)

Tani

A full day later, as the season progressed unerringly closer to my doom, noon light basked through my window.

I was beginning to go mad from the lack of anything to do.

I’d attended the kitchens this morning as well, and I planned to find the library this afternoon once the weight of leaving my dragon’s side had lessened.

He curled up tighter beside me on the bed, as if he sensed my intention to leave.

I patted his side, and he purred into my mind.

He, at least, was a constant source of distraction.

Half my time in the last week had been spent staring down at him.

Wainstrill opened the door without knocking.

“Guest for you,” he said, gruffly.

My heart jumped. I stood, smoothing my skirt and grabbing the beads from the near table. “Who is it?”

“I thought she’d asked for me,” a low and unfamiliar voice responded from outside of the door. My heart sank, and I didn’t want to think why. “Are you sure these are the right rooms? ”

“His name is Master Theollan,” Wainstrill supplied. “He’s one of them Brothers. Are you expecting a Brother?”

My interest spiked back, and I hooked the beads over my ears. “Yes, of course. Please send him in.”

The man stepped into my room, his nose immediately wrinkling.

I should have thought of that. The combination of a dragon and raw meat had the place smelling somewhere between a butcher's shop and a barn, hardly the best recipe for a man of the Scentlands. Though, I hadn’t expected him to appear within days of my discussion with Seth.

I stepped forwards, dropping into a curtsy. “Master Theollan. I did not expect you so soon.”

He took me in from head to toe, and I made the same assessment of him.

He wore well-fitted riding boots, sturdy leggings, and a purple tunic indicative of his ties to Lavendell.

His white hair, signalling his status even a mile away, was nearly as long as my own and braided halfway down his back.

He bore no facial Mark, for his Fated condition still sat unmet.

Theollan’s Fate was bestowed shortly after I arrived at the Brotherhood, so he must be around nine years my elder. He was attractive but stern, with a face reminiscent of a bird of prey with a widow’s peak and narrow cheekbones.

“I just arrived,” he said, his own study of me clearly not what he was expecting. “The King’s Advisor suggested you were eager to meet with me. I must admit I am at a loss as to why.”

“The King’s Advisor spoke true, though I did not expect you for some days yet.”

“I was travelling from Manniston and was not fifty miles from the city when the messenger found me.”

“How fortunate.”

“Quite,” he said, wrinkling his nose once more.

“If you are not too weary, shall we take some air in the gardens? ”

He nodded, his stance visibly relaxing. It must have been worse than I thought, or his scent sensitivity was greater than most. “As you wish, my lady.”

Theollan followed me out into the small empty gardens. It was warm, reaching the point where the sun was its most evil, burning the flesh before the truth of its heat became apparent.

I walked over to the lifeless pond, and then turned to him. “Master Theollan, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

I offered him my bare hand, and he took it, lowering his head in the imitation of a kiss on the knuckles, though his lips did not meet my skin. But his hand was bare, too, and I felt all of his emotions.

At the surface of him, curiosity warred with suspicion.

His curiosity must have won out, to have brought him this far, but I sensed an unease there.

It was bigger than me; he was uneasy being in the city, maybe even in the kingdom.

There was something he distrusted, a wide level of prickling uncertainty.

However, beneath it, there was a sturdy foundation, his mind was a lake with few ripples.

He had honed it intentionally, focusing himself to be aware of the follies of every outcome and, by such knowledge, was made unflappable in the face of them.

Theollan was a man of great thinking and reflection, one not keen for risk, but intrigued by the knowledge that could be wrought from adventure. He reminded me of Groulin, and also, to an extent, of Seth.

He narrowed his eyes and dropped my hand. “The pleasure is all mine. Though, I cannot understand why a woman from the Soundlands would have any interest in the Brothers. I thought you hated us.”

“I have a proposition for you.”

This seemed to surprise him, and he looked around the garden as if expecting some audience. “This does little to ease my confusion. ”

I allowed myself a moment to collect my thoughts. Glancing down at the pool in the short silence, I wondered what Yvon was doing right now. My skin prickled under the heat, as if remembering the cold of the forest. Even now it would be cool and shaded under the great boughs of the trees.

I returned my gaze to Theollan, choosing my words with care. “The King’s Advisor, one of your kind, told me of some of the Fated Brothers of Eavenfold. You were included, since he was imminently sending for you. I found your story interesting and wanted to hear it from you.”

He squinted in the sun. His skin looked more used to it than most, or at least, he did not hide from its beating intensity.

For a Scentlander, he was actually quite tanned.

I would have guessed him from the Barrow, much like the cook had guessed me.

“You asked to meet me, to satisfy your curiosity?”

“In part, yes,” I replied, truthfully. In this, I believed, we might find a common understanding.

“And what about me aroused your particular fancy?”

“You are an oddity,” I said. “One of the few Fated who are neither full, nor Broken.”

He clasped his hands together. “It is not so rare.”

“But your topic, the pursuit you were granted. She was rare.”

Theollan nodded, studying me with lessening curiosity. “One of a kind, as far as we know.”

My hand shook at my side. “Do you have a theory?”

He barked out a dismissive laugh, and I jumped. “On Tanidwen Treleftir? A theory implies a chance of truth, of testing something until you are proven incorrect. If I had the truth, my Fate would be complete. All I have are loose ends.”

I gazed up at him. “Have you given up, then?”

“No,” he replied without hesitation. He was growing tired of me and my questions already.

“What is there left to study? ”

Theollan frowned, irritation leaking across his expression.

“I used to be looking to the long past, but now I am considering the recent past, and whether or not she is still alive. It seems she made her way to Unger Lift after the events at the Laithcart Games, so I was making inquiries in Manniston.”

My chest tightened. I didn’t expect he was trying to find me, rather that he had long dismissed me as some unexplainable magic, like the Moontouch itself. “You are seeking her out? Why would that help you to explain why she was touched by the moon?”

He sighed, rubbing at his forehead and staring out again across the gardens.

“Why should I tell you that? I mean no disrespect, since you are a guest of the Triad. You offer some bargain, and yet I cannot fathom what you could offer that I would need. I am an advisor to a prince, and you are a young woman with limited prospects.” The scholar unbuttoned the top of his shirt and pulled his scarf down, a small sheen of sweat at his brow.

He looked back down at me again, clearly uncomfortable.

“If this is merely to satisfy an outsider’s whim and felicitation, I cannot see the academic value in it. ”

I smiled. There was something about him, his awkwardness or his care for his work, that reeked of Eavenfold’s rigid instruction.

It was nostalgic in a way, to remember the place through the rote poor socialisation of its men.

So, I would give him something familiar, and make it a test. “I will tell you what I have to offer, if you could answer a question for me.”

He thought about this, then nodded. “One question.”

I breathed out, steadying my mind and my body in stillness. “What do you truly think of her? Of Tanidwen Treleftir. Not the whys of her existence, or the nature of her life and deeds. What is your impression of her? ”

Theollan blinked several times. He clasped his hands behind his back and looked out to the pillars for inspiration. “I pity her.”

I was glad to have grounded myself like a tree in a storm. It was only Yvon’s teachings that kept me from letting out a noise.

Instead, I waited, frozen as a deer. Pity. He pitied me.

Theollan continued to stare into the distance.

“I spent a lot of time frustrated by my Fate. I was annoyed that my life's work as a scholar would be reduced to finding what mischief had caused one girl to be born. I’ll admit I resented the posting.” He shrugged, speaking the words to the breeze and not me, unknowingly thinking out loud to his unwanted muse.

“Then I arrived in the Touchlands. Met her parents, travelled to Andiz.”

I let myself take the smallest of breaths then, the only sign of my hearing the words.

By the Twins, I missed them. Eavenfold had tried to beat it out of us.

Hate it though they might like, homesickness was one of the things that we all shared, unbound alike.

I was just as alone as the rest of them, but at least my peers had each other. I’d had no one, until Seth.

Now, their faces were fuzzy. I remembered my mother’s warm smile, so wide and often stained with the gorhh berries clinging to the edge of the near orchard. And my father’s eyes, crinkling at the edges when he spun me around in the air. They were happy. I hoped they still were.

Unaware of my spiralling thoughts, Theollan rambled on, and I forced myself to pay attention.

“It was somewhere I never would have been without my Fate, and my path gave me invaluable insight into their people, their customs, their ways. I spent over a span there, trying to find the answer when I could, but more than that, researching and living amongst them,” he said.

Then he flicked his head to me. “Anyway, that was not your question. The girl. ”

I almost interrupted then. Corrected my one question, forced him to speak about my parents again instead.

But then his eyes turned cold, and his voice shortened. “When I heard what happened to her… A Marriage Fate, and then Broken in the most barbaric and bloody of ways not a fortnight after. I pitied her.”

Theollan glanced at me as if expecting some challenge.

I only stared back, knowing there was more to come.

He pulled his braid over his shoulder, touching it.

“As much as it irritated me to have not found the answer, you must understand that Tanidwen Treleftir had become my life. The sole female Brother of Eavenfold, and a woman who could have been so much more but for ill luck… how could she of all people be given the most mundane Fate of all? Someone’s wife.

And she wasn’t even allowed to have that,” he muttered scathingly. “Pity is too soft a word.”

I had never been thus summarised in my life. The injustices were spoken with the speed of a chronicler concocting his tale of a life, and it was one of woe. For a Scentlander, he had seen through to me with such horrid ease. My throat closed as tears welled in my eyes.

He looked down at me. “Was that a thorough enough answer for you?”

I could only blink, and a telltale tear fell down my face.

Theollan’s brow rose, and he patted his chest for a handkerchief. He held the white fabric out to me, his palm proffered. I sniffed and reached for it.

My bare hand touched his skin once more.

I felt anger, frustration, and regret at the surface.

As before, the undertow was a temperate emotion.

At once, I decided to trust him. It was perhaps folly, but there was more folly in my decisions to date than this one.

It was not hyperbole when I had said to Seth that I needed all the allies I could get.

And Theollan’s base, his ocean floor, was one of justice and grace.

I did not take the handkerchief.

Instead, I placed my hand on top of his, and my other hand below his, containing his hand within mine. Opening the traditional greeting of the Twin Lands.

He completed the greeting as if on instinct, placing his spare hand on top of mine. We pressed, and then released.

Then I took the handkerchief, dabbing my eyes.

For a moment, Theollan’s confusion only grew. Why would a girl from the Soundlands know the family greeting of the Touchlands? Then, his face paled as he truly appraised me. My warm skin, my unnatural eyes and the disguise of what they might have been, the very roots of my hair.

He took a step back, and his hands jolted to his mouth.

I only smiled as another tear fell down my face.

“It cannot be.” He stepped around me in a wide circle, as if confirming I was not some apparition. The ghost girl of Eavenfold, haunting him. I thought of Sollie then and grieved for her that she was entirely alone. “How can it be?”

I lost my stillness as he circled, my body shaking with tension. I yearned to sob. “My offer is this: I will give you a theory to test.”

Theollan fell to his knees in the garden, holding his hands towards me. “Tanidwen.”

My name had never fallen with so much feeling. I held his hands in mine, gripping them tight. Awe and wonder scattered the stasis of his feelings, and I wanted to cry even more. “No one can know. I will help you reach your Fate, but you must help me.”

The Brother nodded, his eyes shining. “Tell me what you need. ”

It was clear into noon before Theollan left with a lingering look over his shoulder. I retreated into the shadows of my elegant cage and had a small nap curled alongside the sleeping dragon. I hoped I had found another ally in the Brother.

Strange, that I had spent so long estranged from those of my own blood, only to find the most acceptance in them. Seth, Ersimmon… and now Theollan. It was an order I had never wished to be part of, and now they were the only friends I had in the world.