Free Tyrant's Blood by Fiona McIntosh Page B

as winds began to buffet him, shake his bones as though he were a rag doll.
    ‘Piven!’
    He opened his eyes, shocked and alarmed. Greven was shaking him by the shoulders.
    ‘What’s happening?’ Greven asked, looking suddenly old and dishevelled in his nightshirt. ‘A nightmare, I think,’ he said, answering his own question. ‘Rest easy now, boy. No more yelling. You’ve probably already forgotten it.’
    Piven swallowed, alarm still clanging like windchimes in his mind. He had not forgotten any of it…or her.
    ‘It’s nearing dawn. We might as well call it morning and make a start,’ Greven said, scratching his chest absently. ‘I’ll get some dinch on.’
    He left Piven to surface fully, rub the sleep from his eyes and drag himself upright. Lethargy pulled at him like a heavy blanket and his mood felt bleak. Greven’s bright whistling at the hearth irritated him and an uncharacteristic scowl darkened his expression.
    ‘You yelled someone’s name. Who were you dreaming about?’ Greven called.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Piven replied. ‘What was the name?’
    Greven returned. He was stirring something in a small pot. Eggs, Piven thought, he’s readying them for scrambling. He was not hungry. ‘Do you know, I heard you scream it but I can’t remember now. Can you?’
    Piven shook his head. Not only could he not recall the woman’s name but her features were disappearing from his mind. Suddenly he could no longer see her pretty face.
    Greven chuckled. ‘Ah well, fret not, my boy. Soon you won’t be having nightmares about women. You’ll be dreaming happily about them morning, noon and night!’
    Piven’s sour mood deepened.
    ‘Oh, would you look at that!’ he heard Greven mutter in disgust. ‘I think the wretched eggs are off.’ Piven watched Greven lift the heavy earthen jug and sniff. ‘Bah! Gone! They’re yesterday’s, aren’t they?’
    Piven nodded.
    ‘How can that happen?’ Greven asked, and although Piven decided his question did not require a response, he had a sickening feeling that he knew the answer.
    Reuth sighed. ‘Perhaps we sent word too fast,’ she said, wiping their son’s face with a wet flannel.
    Clovis grimaced. ‘Too fast? It’s been a decade!’
    She gave him a look of soft rebuke. ‘You know what I mean.’
    He finished tying the laces on their daughter’s dress. ‘There you go. Now you look pretty enough to eat.’ He pretended to chew her neck and his little girl squealed with frightened delight. He loved to hear her voice. And far from being embittered by it, he felt blessed by Lo that his second daughter reminded him so starkly of Corin, his first beautiful—now dead—child. Whether it was fact or his imagination, they seemed to share the same tone and pitch in voice; Corin used to squeal in an identical manner when he teased her. He could not risk his precious children—or Reuth, come to that. ‘We are not wrong. We can’t both feel so strongly about this child and be wrong.’
    Reuth looked over at him sorrowfully. ‘I worry that we’ve been searching for so long that we just want this to be him so badly that we’ve convinced ourselves it is so. Eat your oats, you two, they should be cool enough now,’ she said, pointing to the faintly steaming bowls in which porridge had begun to set. ‘Your father will pour the milk in, the jug’s too heavy for you.’
    They’d had food for the children sent up. They would eat downstairs in the dining room. Clovis trickled the creamy milk into two small bowls and the children greedily tucked into their first meal of the day.
    ‘Slowly,’ Reuth cautioned their son. ‘Or you’ll spill it.’ He’d obviously heard the same cautions so many times before that he neither looked up nor slowed down; the words had become a meaningless mantra, Clovis could see.
    ‘Listen to me, Reuth,’ he said, once the children were ignoring anything but their bellies. ‘I could feel his fear. The boy is Piven.’
    ‘Well,