Chapter 2075: Returning Home

The carriage jolted over a rut in the road, and Jocelynn woke with a start.

She’d been dozing. The rhythm of the wheels always did that to her on long journeys. She rubbed her eyes, pushed back the leather curtain over the window, and let the smell come flooding in: brine and tar, wet timber, woodsmoke and fish.

Overhead, the sound of gulls wheeling and squawking blended with the clarion ring of ships’ bells to produce a symphony she hadn’t heard in years.

Blackwell.

Her heart swelled in her chest, and her whole body felt lighter. Below the ridge road, the city tumbled down the cliffs toward the great circular harbor, its slate roofs gleaming wet in the grey afternoon light. Ships crowded the quays. Beacon Island stood guard at the harbor mouth, its lighthouse already lit against the coming dusk.

She hadn’t been home in... how long? Six years? Seven? Owain disliked her traveling. He disliked a great many things.

He traveled less himself these days. Not since the Demon Lady of the Vale had come for him in the High Pass, nearly nine years ago. He’d survived it, but only barely. He walked with a stick now, and he couldn’t lift his sword arm above his shoulder. His temper had grown blacker with every month that he couldn’t ride to war.

The Holy War of her youth had gone on to be called the Bear Trap War. At first, it seemed to pay homage to Owain’s personal crest, the claw marks of a bear across a sword. Owain had been the bear that led a force of Templars, Inquisitors, and hundreds of Holy Warriors to capture Airgead Mountain.

With Loman at his side, calling down luminous arrows from the sky like the Holy Lord of Light’s own judgment, Owain had accomplished what his father hadn’t. He’d driven the Crimson Knight away and returned with the head of the Cat Lord mounted on a pike. Lothian’s ascendancy as a duchy seemed all but certain.

Thousands of Holy Warriors poured in from across the sea. The Aleese pushed south while Owain and Liam Dunn prepared to lead the assault on the Vale of Mists. But that was when the jaws of the bear trap snapped shut.

The Horse Lord came roaring out of the south with dark witchcraft, chariots and long-horned demons the likes of which the world had never seen. And in the High Pass, the Demon Lady of the Vale stopped retreating and fell upon Owain’s forces with evil powers no one could defend against.

A man called ’halt,’ and a hundred soldiers stood still in ranks, waiting to be slaughtered. A plain-faced handmaiden with amethyst eyes walked among the knights, and they turned their swords against their own companies. And the Crimson Knight, thought to have been defeated, came to personally claim Loman’s head.

It had been a massacre where nineteen men in twenty lost their lives. Some nights, Jocelynn wished that Owain had been among those to fall, but his life wasn’t so easily claimed, even in the face of certain doom.

For a time, Owain had sworn vengeance on the Vale. He’d all but beggared the march in an attempt to raise another army and hold on to the Vale of Mists... He’d failed. The Church withdrew its support after Loman’s death, and without the Church at his back, Owain hadn’t just failed to raise another army; he’d failed to transform Lothian March into Lothian Duchy.

Now, his old wounds haunted him, and it was all but impossible for Owain to ride to war again.

Caleb rode for him instead.

That was why she’d sent Ashton here. To Blackwell, to her father. Four winters ago, when the boy had come to her with an eye swollen shut and a split lip. He refused to say whether he’d received it from his father or his brother. She’d never found out. She’d only known that she had to get him away from both of them before it happened again.

It was the only brave thing she’d done in the twenty years since her sister’s death at her husband’s hands.

The carriage rolled through the gates of Blackwell Manor and came to a stop in the courtyard. A footman opened the door. Jocelynn stepped down, her joints stiff from the long road, and caught sight of her reflection in the carriage window. A woman in her late thirties, in a fine grey traveling gown with the Lothian setting sun stitched on the collar. There were faint lines at the corners of her eyes and a few strands of grey in her honey-blonde hair.

When had she gotten so old?

"Lady Jocelynn," a crisp, masculine voice called.

Jocelynn turned to find an old man crossing the courtyard toward her, leaning on a cane as he walked. His back was bent, and his mustache had gone snow-white, but she’d have known those stormy eyes anywhere.

"Sir Elgon," she said, smiling brightly at the knight who had served her faithfully for her first two years in Lothian before Owain sent him back to Blackwell. "Oh, it’s good to see you."

"And you, my lady. And you." He took her hand in both of his and squeezed it. Then he turned to the tall young man at his side, broad-shouldered and fair, with a brand-new knight’s belt buckled at his waist.

"You remember my boy, Selwyn?" Elgon asked. "He was named for Daere’s father," he said when he saw her confusion at the familiar name on such a young face. "Selwyn stood his first vigil at midwinter," Elgon finished proudly, clapping the stalwart young man on the shoulder.

"Sir Selwyn," Jocelynn said. "Congratulations. Your father protected me through some very hard times," she said. "Learn well from what he has to teach you, and you’ll be one of the finest knights in Blackwell."

"Thank you, my lady," Selwyn said with a deep, respectful bow befitting a Marchioness. "Father tells me you used to ride on his shoulders through the halls," he said with a wide grin as he rose, letting the formality fall away.

"Everyone rode on his shoulders," Jocelynn said. "My sister and I fought over whose turn it was."

Something passed across Elgon’s weathered face at the mention of her sister, but in a blink it was gone, and his smile faded with it. He glanced toward the manor’s great doors, and lowered his voice.

"Before you go in, my lady," he said. "You should know that your father hasn’t been well. Not since the letter came from the convent." He hesitated. "About your mother."

Jocelynn’s breath caught.

Her mother had left Blackwell the winter after Ashlynn died. She’d gone to the Sisterhood in DuCoumont and taken her vows as a Confessor. Since then, she’d never come back. Not once. Not for Jocelynn’s wedding. Not for the births of her grandsons. She wrote, sometimes. Short, formal letters, always signed ’Sister Maela.’

"When?" Jocelynn whispered.

"Two months ago, my lady," Elgon said quietly. "The Convent said it was her time, that she’d given all she could to help those in need. Ashton took a fast caravel upriver as soon as he heard. He was with her when she passed," the old knight said.

Two months. Two months and no one had written to her. Not her mother or the sisters at the convent. Not her father or her son.

Just like that, Jocelynn lost her mother, Caleb lost his grandmother, and she’d never known because no one thought to tell her... Or perhaps they had told her. Perhaps they’d written letters that had been tossed into the hearth in Owain’s office. Perhaps they’d sent messengers who’d been chased away by Sir Rain or Sir Franc.

She didn’t know, but if anyone could tell her the truth, anyone still would, it was her father...

"I need to see Father," Jocelynn said, standing up as straight and proud as she could. "Please, take me to him..."