Jarvit

Jarvit Ch11 p4

‘I will read it to you,’ Ciara’s voice was firm and yet Tiatra could sense the emotion she felt seeing her father’s handwriting. ‘Dear daughter, if you are reading this then it is likely that I am no more. I write in haste. D’Braggatio is here without warning and he is angry, much has happened that necessitates my immediate departure from our home.

Know that I have missed you since you became a Devotee and I have always loved you. It was hard to send you so far away but I wanted you to be safe. If D’Braggatio finds out about my keeping the boy and where you are then he would pursue you. I have done much to make a man ashamed but I have always held you in my heart, my daughter, so very like your dear mother.

I have wealth hidden in the place you so feared as a child, you know where, it is all I could horde over the years. The boy has been taken. I fear His Grace now knows all as he was seen going into Sudlow’s and that cowardly fat oaf of a notary is sure to reveal everything. Jarvit was seen with D’Braggatio and so I must fly from Ludhigh or be destroyed.

The brooch belonged to your mother and the seal belongs to the boy, who must also be dead by now. Give it to the Interpreter in the Great House of Listening if you can, she will recognise its significance.

If I live I may never see you again but my fortune I give to you to do with as you will and remember me with fondness, for you are the only one likely to do so. I regret harbouring the boy but I promised his mother I would and I thought that his father would likely reward me well for his safekeeping. But that will not happen now.

May the Will of the Worthy be with you my daughter.

Urick Hep.’

Tears stood in Ciara’s eyes as she laid the letter down and turning to Silva she took the brooch and clutched it close to her.

‘Look at the seal Executioner,’ she said in a husky voice. ‘You are now the most senior of all those of us left who follow the Worthy, do you know it?’ Silva gave the seal on its chain to Tiatra who took it with a hand that shook as though she had the ague. She closed her eyes and clutched the seal tight. She unfolded her fingers and held her palm open flat as she raised it to eye level. Then she dared to look. The silver seal lay still in her wrinkled palm. Tiatra focused her failing sight upon the design. She closed her eyes again and remembered.

Tiatra had just been made Executioner and was preparing one of her first rituals. She directed the Devotees in their duties as she oversaw the cleaning of the place where the Sprightly took his first position as he entered the Hall. A messenger rode up and jumped from his horse. Then he ran up the steps to place in her hand the scroll bearing the word of the Worthy, all the way from the Great House. In her hand. She swelled with pride to have been entrusted to deliver the sealed letter to her Interpreter. Fearing she might never be so trusted again Tiatra scrutinised the red wax seal as she walked along so that she might commit its design to heart before she handed the parchment over. Tiatra sighed. She had received many such scrolls since then but none of them had borne the mark impressed by the silver seal that she now held. A large sun with a willow tree behind it, the Hearer’s seal.

‘It is the Hearer’s seal,’ she breathed as she opened her eyes. ‘The Hearer’s seal.’

‘What? And it belongs to Jarvit? That can not be,’ Silva stood up and took the seal from Tiatra. She studied it well before handing it to Ciara who also took a close look at the design.

‘Anyone could have made this,’ Silva said. ‘It need not be the Hearer’s seal.’

‘But someone would have need to copy the design somehow. If Ciara’s father has kept this safe for the last fifteen years then I am certain it is the Hearer’s own. She was in Ludhigh at the time of her death. It seems probable. But why would he say that the seal belonged to this Jarvit?’ Tiatra was confused. Ciara shook her head in bewilderment.