Page 40 of Sword & Sacrifice

He knocked lightly, waited a few seconds, then turned and started down the road again, determined to return to town before nightfall.

The door opened behind him. “Can I help you?” a woman’s voice called.

Valerian sighed and turned back toward the manor. He recognized Mrs. Rutter, the same housekeeper who had served Lord Endre for over four decades. The years showed in her graying hair and deepening wrinkles. She should be retired by now, sitting around a fire, fat and happy with a dozen grandchildren. Instead, she continued to serve the same master, a fate that might have befallen Valerian if he hadn’t been given a way out.

“Hello, Mrs. Rutter,” he said, giving her a charming smile perfected on the girls—and boys—living in the town near Master Imus. “You’re even lovelier than the last time I saw you.”

A confused furrow formed between her brows, and he wondered when she’d last heard a compliment. “Do I know you, young man?”

“Forgive me, it’s been a long time. My name is Valerian Sommers, I used to—”

Her eyes widened and she gasped. “No! Little Val? He should be twenty-five by now, you look barely sixteen!”

He pursed his lips, wishing he had worn a glamour, but the one he’d designed to age himself sometimes flickered between fourteen and forty, disturbing anyone unused to magic. Although slowing his aging was good for his studies, people tended to take his adolescent appearance less seriously.

“Yes, well, magic is a wondrous thing,” he began, cut off when she stepped forward and pinched his cheeks, alternately tugging them and smooshing them together.

“I’ll say!” she exclaimed with a laugh. She finally released him and patted her own weathered cheek. “Do you have any to spare for an old gal like me?”

Unfortunately, the spells he knew only slowed aging, they didn’t reverse it. “Someday,” he promised, adding it to his list of future projects. “I’m here to see Lord Endre.”

Her smile fell, her face growing solemn. “Oh dear, have you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“So you haven’t,” she murmured, covering her mouth with her hand. “Well, it’s good you’re here. Since he raised you and has taken care of your schooling for all these years, you deserve to know.”

Valerian wished she would stop speaking so vaguely. “I think it’s best you tell me.”

She nodded and ushered him into the house, “His lordship has fallen ill.”

Valerian waited for the words to have some effect on him. Sadness for the man who had offered him a future he never would have afforded on his own. Triumph to outlive someone who had orchestrated his abuse, even if the lord had never wielded the tools of it himself. Pity or surprise, since the last Valerian had seen of Lord Endre, he’d been a man in his prime. Thirteen years could change a lot, but he thought the lord was only in his fifties, too young for death to notice him.

All Valerian felt was apathetic acknowledgement. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he lied. “Should I come back another time?” Finally, an emotion: eagerness to delay this task. He would gladly leave the lord to his sickbed if it meant Valerian could return to Master Imus guilt-free. I’ve done my part, answered Lord Endre’s summons, it’s not my fault he couldn’t receive me.

Mrs. Rutter’s lips quivered and her eyes watered in sorrow. “I’m not sure there’ll be a next time. You should come in, show him what a fine man you’ve become.”

Valerian suppressed his irritation and pasted on a smile. “Of course, if you think he’ll want to see me.” Then another thought occurred to him, and he added, “Though perhaps you should ask Young Master Maksim. I don’t want to intrude on his time with his father.” Appealing to Maksim left a sour taste in Valerian’s mouth, but he swallowed it down. Anything to get out of here faster.

“No, no! I’m sure the young master will be glad to see his childhood friend again! You’ve been separated for so long, and he’s asked about you often.”

The sourness spread from Valerian’s tongue down to his stomach, invading his body with the reminders of Maksim. Again, he had the urge to turn and run before Maksim ever knew Valerian had been within reach.

But he wasn’t the same boy who had taken the beatings in the young master’s stead. Not the same child who had been forced to endure whips and fists and fury. Though Valerian’s body remained in the awkwardness of adolescence, he had grown in other ways.

While he was stuck in his own thoughts, the housekeeper ushered him into the house. He hadn’t even realized he was already standing in the foyer until the door closed behind him, trapping him inside.

He forced his breathing to remain steady, his hands to rest loosely by his side, as the housekeeper guided him through the manor. The lord’s quarters were on the second floor, taking up a large chunk of the back of the house. Valerian never had any reason to visit Lord Endre’s personal rooms, but they were close to the nursery, where he had spent his earliest years as Maksim’s ‘playmate.’

His steps slowed as he passed the nursery, closed off ever since the young lordling had outgrown it, waiting for his own brats to one day inhabit it. Valerian’s first bedroom had been a small side room in the nursery, barely big enough to fit his cot. Once he’d outgrown it, he’d been given a room in the servant’s quarters, which came with a desk he used for his studies. That room was on the other side of the house—he didn’t intend to revisit it on this trip, or ever again.

When they finally reached the lord’s bedroom, Mrs. Rutter knocked tentatively. Someone answered the door, and they shared a whispered conversation.

Tell me he isn’t well enough for visitors. That I should come back later.

Instead, the medic stepped out and a familiar face smiled at Valerian. “Oh, Val, look at you!” Chesna exclaimed.

Chesna was one person Valerian was happy to see again. When she pulled him in for a hug, he wrapped his arms tightly around her. He wanted to tell her how much he’d learned over the years. How the scars on his back had almost faded.