A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,139
Bleda’s knife and ushering him into her chair.
“Leave us,” Erdene said to them all, “I would have this time with my son.”
There was some hesitation, especially from Yul and Tuld, but Erdene’s word was iron, so they retreated and disappeared into the shadows.
“The Sirak braid is the mark of a warrior,” Erdene said as she stood behind Bleda, unbinding the knot he’d tied his hair in. “Are you a Sirak warrior, Bleda?”
“I am,” Bleda breathed.
“Have you faced another warrior in battle, looked in their eyes and known that one of you would live, and one of you would die?”
Bleda’s mind raced back to the clearing at the woodsman’s hut, when he had fought the Ben-Elim. And before that, to the Kadoshim and Ferals in Drassil.
“I have,” he said. It was a solemn burden, knowing that you had taken another’s life, that you had stolen all the years they might have had and reduced them to a sack of skin and bone.
But better than the alternative, as Ellac had said to him after his first kill, when tears had blurred his eyes and his hands would not stop shaking.
Erdene took a fistful of hair from the side of Bleda’s head and cut it away, shortening the sides, then began to shave the stubble and tufts that remained. She worked around his head in silence, just the rasp of Bleda’s knife against his skin. When she had shaved his head, leaving only the portion that would be used for his warrior braid, she placed the knife on the ground and began to braid his hair. Bleda sat quietly, memories sifting through his mind, of his youth as a Sirak prince, living happy and free in Arcona. Of the day the Ben-Elim came, when Kol had thrown his brother’s head at Erdene’s feet. When he had been taken, torn from his family to become a ward of the Ben-Elim.
“I have always been faithful,” Bleda whispered. “In here.” He placed the palm of his hand over his heart.
Erdene said nothing, continued to braid his hair, finally tying it with a leather cord. She came and knelt before him, placing a hand upon his.
“I know you have,” she said, meeting his gaze with her sea-grey eyes. “I will say things to you now that have long been unsaid. We Sirak, we guard our feelings like treasure, and we wear the cold-face like a shield, but there is also a time to speak from the heart.” She looked around, probing the darkness. “This is for your ears only, and who knows if we will ever get a chance to talk like this again.”
Erdene took a deep breath, holding his gaze. “It broke my heart, the day you were taken from me,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “And my heart has ached every moment from that day to this.”
Bleda opened his mouth to say something but she held up a finger.
“Ellac has reported to me through the years, and what he told me has made my heart soar. What a man you have become. You have a rare balance inside you, my Bleda, of courage and wisdom. You stood against the Kadoshim when Jin would not. You took your own counsel and stood for your friend, Riv, against the Ben-Elim, and against Ellac’s advice. I know you… feel for the half-breed, and yet you would sacrifice yourself. You would do your duty in wedding Jin to ensure peace for your Clan.”
Bleda blinked, knowing that he could not go through with the wedding.
But now is not the time to talk about that.
She lifted his hand and kissed it. “I am proud to call you my son and feel glad in the knowledge that the Sirak will have a good king after I am gone.”
Five years of worry evaporated at Erdene’s words. Bleda had been so scared that Erdene would think him unworthy and a traitor to the Clan, because he had been raised as a ward by the Ben-Elim. There was so much that he wanted to say to his mother, so many things that he had practised saying in an imagined moment like this, and yet it was all like mist, now, fading in the sun. Instead he smiled at her, deep and heartfelt, and she smiled in return.
“There is one last thing I wanted to say to you. You remember when I visited Drassil last year, and I spoke to you on the weapons-field? Do you remember my words to you?”