Songweaver's Awakening

Chapter 34 - Lladwen

Author's note: If you've made it this far, THANK YOU so much for sticking with me! :D

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Like the shadow he was, Lladwen followed in Helen's footsteps down the streets of Javhineel.  Helen had none of the assassin's bloodline in her.  She moved with a grace born of confidence and victory.  He'd had doubts, Lladwen had to admit.  Creeping, sinister doubts that plagued him when he was alone in the middle of the night.  He hadn't been certain, like Helen had, that her plan would work.  She'd told him, in confidence, that Anestan was clever, and her greatest rival.

“But,” she'd said, raising one finger, “she doesn't understand people the way I do.  Everyone has a price.  Everyone has a weakness.  People are predictable, and they act in predictable ways.  If you take a good measure of a person, you will know exactly what they will do when faced with a given situation.  I have watched Anestan since she was a child.  She thinks herself cold, but that is because no one has ever really loved her.  I didn't count on him loving her back.  I thought it might happen.  I thought she might turn uncooperative.  It's worked out well.  Farahd has dreams for his people, for the outskirters, for this country.  He no longer has any dreams for himself.  He's a broken man, Lladwen.  There's very little left that is keeping his heart beating.”

She'd conveyed this to him with no remorse and no pity.  She could do the same thing to me if she chose.  It would be easier for her, even.  All she would have to do was to tell him that he was no longer of any use to her and he would break.  Lladwen sighed a little and shook his head.  Morose thoughts, those.  His mind always seemed to turn to darker things when he wasn't paying attention.

Helen went straight to Haman's house, through the back door, and to the study.  She turned to face him.  She wore a scarf over her bright red hair and a plain indigo dress.  “Wait for me here, Lladwen,” she said.  She disappeared down into the wine cellar.

Lladwen leaned against the wall, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.  She shouldn't have been so confident in her schemes or her control over the Hajinni people.  Oh she was so like their ancestors—too much like them.  Two days ago he'd overheard the physician, Ganij, speaking to one of the soldiers, telling him that he didn't believe Anestan guilty of poisoning Farahd.  Two days and he hadn't yet told Helen what he'd heard.  The physician and some of the soldiers were now gone—this, too, he hadn't pointed out to her.  He'd never kept anything from her before, and the longer he waited, the heavier the information seemed to weigh in his mind.  Lladwen frowned as he thought.  He wasn't even sure why he'd done it.  Did he want her to fail?

“I’m done, for now,” Helen’s voice said at his shoulder.  Lladwen had to repress a jump.  He’d been so engrossed that he hadn’t heard her coming up the stairs behind him.

In her hands she clutched several sheaves of paper, their edges brown and worn.  “Is there something wrong?  You look unsettled.”

The words were on the tip of his tongue, but then his gaze fell upon the portrait in the study—the woman with the sparkling black eyes and slightly upturned lips.  She was neither pretty nor handsome, but there was something in her face that suggested she was pleasant to talk to.  “Leja, Haman’s wife.  She’ll be back sooner or later, once she finds out he’s dead.  Their children have inherited this place.  They have inherited the archives too, if they know of it.”

Helen tilted her head to the side as she considered his words.  “No.  Even after she finds out he is dead, she won’t be back for a while, not until the eldest son is grown.  I think she hates this house as much as she hates Haman.  Besides, even if she does decide she has forgiven him, it is unlikely she’ll get back while we’re rummaging around in the wine cellar.”  She smiled, a mischievous look in her eye.  “And even if she does catch us, what can she do?  I’m the First Seat’s adviser, one of only two left.  I am the savior of Hajinn.  What could she say about me?  She rode horses with her skirts pulled up over her knees before she married Haman.”