Calla looked startled, as well she might. “But you’re leaving in two days.”
“Yes. But traveling with the recruits, we’ll be going at a wagon’s pace—it won’t slow us down to have you riding in comfort. What do you need but clothes?”
She frowned, thinking, and then said, “What about our journey back? You’ll be going on, won’t you?”
“Yes, most likely … though that depends on the king. With the unrest in Fintha, he might want me to stay here. In either case, you’ll have an escort back, the same as when you came north at first.”
“Well … yes, then.”
“Good. I’ll leave you to pack. Jamis, come with me to Duke’s East; we’ll talk on the way.”
The boy still seemed subdued, but perhaps he was just thinking hard. Arcolin told a groom to saddle his horse and Jamis’s pony, then led the way to the mess hall. “We might as well have something in our saddlebags,” he said. “I’d like to go on to Duke’s West, and it’s always wise to carry a meal with you.” The cook, as he expected, offered Jamis a honey roll and gave Arcolin three cheese rolls.
They were halfway back to the stable, where a groom held their mounts at the entrance, when Jamis spoke. “Da … you don’t have to make me your heir if … if it’s better for your own blood to inherit. For the king and all.”
Arcolin stopped short. “Jamis. It’s true I don’t have to make you my heir. But I want to make you my heir. And the king will not mind, and you will make a fine duke someday.”
“But if I’m not a good enough soldier? Captains have to be better than other soldiers, don’t they? And commanders better than captains?”
“There’s no reason to think you won’t be, and even so—by then the dukedom may be able to support itself in other ways than by war in the south.” He started to say “Don’t worry about it,” but the boy was already worrying about it, and he knew from experience that a boy Jamis’s age could not stop worrying by trying.
When they reached the horse and pony, Arcolin picked Jamis up and set him in the saddle, then mounted. “When I was your age,” he said as they rode out the gate, “I did not think about heirs and things—and I should have, perhaps. I spent my time with half brothers and others like me—bastards.”
Jamis frowned. “No fathers?”
“No. Our mothers were not married to our father. He was a king. My half brothers included both princes of the realm and other bastards. We were … security.” Jamis merely looked thoughtful, so Arcolin went on. “If the princes got sick, or were killed, or even died later, one of us might be made a prince and then a king. But when we were very young, we didn’t know that. We all lived together in the boys’ hall and trained together in the salle and the soldiers’ court. We all thought—we young ones—that we were princes, all alike.”
“When did you find out?”
“When I was a few years older than you. I had a brother, as I thought—a half brother, in reality a true prince—who began ordering me about and hitting me. I complained about it to the boys’ hall steward, who gave me a smack that near knocked me down. He told me what I was and that I would be the other’s servant as I grew up and it was time I learned my place and stayed in it.”
“What did your father say?”
“I knew better than to complain to the king. I saw then that some of the others were clearly like me and some were not. Some became friends with those they served—not all the princes were as mean as mine. It was my destiny, as everyone there saw it, to come to manhood as the other’s servant, to do his work, endure his mistreatment. So … when I was old enough … I left.”
“Did they chase you?”
“No. By then I knew enough of the king to tell him I was leaving and make no complaint. He was not a bad man; he wished me well and gave me a ring—a royal ring—to wear if ever I wished to return or to show if they came searching for me, to prove who I was. Enough money for a start. ‘You might still be king someday,’ he said.”
“Do you still have the ring?”
“No,” Arcolin said. “I gave it to the dragon.”
“What did you do after you left?”
“Went to Valdaire—well, I started for Pliuni, the nearest city, but I met people on the road who said Valdaire was the place for a youth who knew what to do with a sword. And there I was lucky enough to join Halveric Company, and from there I was able to join the Guard in Tsaia and then this company. I’d met Kieri Phelan when he was with Halveric.”