Spring 1641, Hasselden

Spring 1641, Hasselden

Another wave rolled in, and riding it Eyresteus landed his boat on the beach.

Kandaren looked at the old man dragging it further up the shore. Not a good day then. Otherwise Eyresteus would have called from his boat to get the other fishermen to help him land his catch.

Greybeard, harpoon and boat moved like shadows against the setting sun, but Kandaren didn't need to see to know every movement, every sound and even the feeling of wood polished smooth as Khanati silk. A childhood spent and lost by the sea had taught him well, and when it claimed, first his father in a storm, and then his mother during a winter that heard her racking until she only had her life left to cough up, Eyresteus took him in.

For seven years he had been mentor, grandfather and father in one. Now he was only an old man who had once been the center of the world, and he had grown old.

Self conscious of his uniform he backed away before Eyresteus could notice him. Right now Kandaren only wanted to be the happy youth who had managed to forgive the unfairness that took his parents, and that youth had no place in the Holy Inquisition. And his mission here had no place with decency.

Eyresteus must have known whatever it was that ate a young boy's mother from the inside, and it was all too obvious that he never forgot it.

"See your dad," his wife had said half an afternoon earlier, unholy light shining through threadbare blankets covering her body. She must have known he would see it. She must have known he would see it healing her, and she had always been the one knowing people.

Now he had seen the man who was his father in all but name, but he didn't plan to be seen. Later he would lie to his staff master, and someone, somewhere around Hasselden, would live on to use the forbidden powers. Decency. He wouldn't kill a healer who took such a risk to help a poor woman.

Kandaren shrugged. That was a lie. He wouldn't kill a healer who gave his father's wife a few extra years. Lie or not, all that mattered was that he wouldn't kill.