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“What about this sword?” I called out after him, holding up the blade, missing him already. I had a strange feeling about what would happen in the days that followed.
“Happy birthday, Anders,” Giancarlo called back, stopping for a moment. “The sword is yours now.”
I felt a surge of joy that overpowered everything else.
My own sword.
What could be a better birthday gift?
I buckled on the scabbard, sheathed the sword. When I looked up, Giancarlo was still standing there, looking like he was trying to remember something as he staunched his blood in the early light.
Suddenly his face brightened.
“Oh, and by the way, your father wants to see you.”
I groaned.
Chapter II
For a while now my father and I had avoided e
ach other. That way, he didn’t have to make excuses about why he never found time to do anything with me, to take me anywhere or teach me anything, and I didn’t have to hear about what a disappointment I was in my studies.
So, when my father asked to see me, my first reaction was curiosity. I mean, it was my birthday, but had he asked to see me on my fifteenth birthday? On my fourteenth?
There was a mirror framed by two small oil lamps in the hall just outside my father’s room. I stared at it for a moment before I walked in. My dark hair was all over the place. I ran my hand through it idly, trying to put it in order, push it back away from my forehead. I doubted my father would even look at me, but I didn’t want to be sent to the castle barber.
My green eyes stared back at me. I tried to smile but couldn’t help looking for all the new pimples that I could feel forming under my bumpy skin. Just thinking about it made it worse. But my father was waiting — I could almost feel his impatience floating in the air outside the room.
I walked in.
He was already at work. The light of the candles reflected off his bald head. Not that his skin was unusually shiny, or anything. He had nice, clean normal skin. Whoever’s skin I had, it wasn’t my father’s. His hair was blond, too, what was left of it. So I didn’t have my father’s hair either. Sometimes I thought the only thing I had from my father was his impatience.
There were papers and maps spread out all over his desk. Ever since we had moved to a new castle after my grandfather’s death — leaving King Lowen in the far North so my father could be a diplomatic liaison in Tuscany — my father had been pushing paper around. As liaison he was always busy, but never seemed to be doing anything, at least nothing like what I read about in books. Instead he was writing letters or talking to people on some diplomatic “mission” most of the time. When I was younger, a little after we had moved South, I had imagined he was a spy. Now I had no more illusions.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
My father looked up. “I take it things went well this morning?”
I fingered the sword pommel, self-consciously. “I didn’t mean to, father, but somehow I cut him.”
My father looked me straight in the eyes. “Sometimes people have to get cut. You’re alright, though?”
I nodded slowly.
“Use it well, and be careful,” he said softly, his eyes flitting down to the blade at my side.
“Father,” I said. “Why didn’t you take the sword?”
“That’s a long story.” He paused. He looked down at his desk, then. I got the feeling he wanted to tell me more, but if so, he never got a chance.
When he looked back at me, his face looked stressed. “I’m sorry, son. We’re going to have to lock you in. I’m going to be very busy tonight. We won’t return until late.”
“A lock down?” I asked, feeling angry for not the first time today. “I’m sixteen.”
My father shrugged. “Tomorrow you will have a banquet, if your work is done tonight.”
“I don’t even want a banquet,” I said. I was tired of all this mystery about where he went and why, but mostly I was tired of being locked in. I turned to leave the room but my father spoke softly, just a single word: Warte.
