Rescuing the Captive: The Ingenairii Series (39 page)

He was physically weak as well. But soon he would find Jeswyne, and hopefully find out what had happened in his life, while he rested and healed and thought about Vincennes. He scrambled up the hillside to the railing around the pavilion’s patio, and climbed onto it.

“
Hey you, get out of here. This is imperial property; no vagrants allowed here. Move along,” A housekeeper poked her head out a window to shout at him. Alec paused for a moment, his brain racing to reconstruct its own native language.

“
Wait!” Alec called. “Wait. I am here to see the imperial family. I am a part of the imperial family. Is the Empress Jeswyne in the city today?” he asked.

The woman scowled and shook her head at him, then disappeared inside the building. Alec shrugged and started to walk towards the doors of the building, only to be met by a guard who blocked his way. “You heard the maid. You need to leave; go back down to the river with the others,” he ordered. “Where are you from, anyway? That’s some accent you have.”

“
I’m not homeless; I’m the empress’s consort. I’ve been away to a strange land,” Alec argued. “I’m the one who killed the demons,” he explained, hoping that clarified his identity.

The guard looked at him in disgust, then reached out and grabbed his collar. Despite Alec’s protests, the guard hauled him to the porch railing and forced him back onto the hillside. “Now get away before I have someone pick you up!” he ordered.

Shocked, Alec climbed and slid down the hillside to the empty promenade. It was clearly not the season for the promenade. Only a few people dressed in shabby clothing walked the pavement when Alec reached it, and he walked among them as he decided to walk across the city to the official palace complex. It was nearly sunset in Michian, he realized, and by the time he reached the palace the sky was fully dark.

The guards at the palace were no more welcoming than the guard at the pavilion had been. Alec went down the road and stepped into an alley. He took a deep breath and prepared himself for an unpleasant feeling. He would simply transport himself into Jeswyne’s room in the palace. Although it would be painful, it would be the simplest way to put an end to his homeless wandering. He closed his eyes, and imagined the spot, and suddenly he found himself inside the palace.

The room was decorated differently than he remembered, but there was water running in the bath, a reminder of how much Jeswyne loved to take hot baths. Alec was on his knees, he realized, a consequence of the pain of pushing his energies too hard in his injured state.

Suddenly there was a very loud high-pitched scream. Alec raised his head, and saw a middle-aged woman standing in a robe at the bathroom doorway, screaming at him, then he heard a door open behind him, and men were rushing in to grab him aggressively. He was slammed down onto the floor, then pulled back up and dragged out of the room.

He was dazed. Within five minutes Alec found himself in a small room in the headquarters of the Palace Guards, being interviewed by three men.

“
How did you get in that room?” a captain, one unknown to him, asked.

“
I am Alec, the consort to the empress. I have the ability of the restorers to move from spot to spot. Is Anatoli here, the commander of the Guards?” Alec replied.

“
Anatoli is not the commander. Jeswyne is not the empress. Alec is not her consort. Do you want to tell us the truth, or shall we beat it out of you?” a guard out of the ranks replied.

“
Who is the empress?” Alec asked. “When did Jeswyne leave the throne?”

“
Rubiata has been empress for twelve years. Now the point we have to know is how did you get into that room?” the captain repeated the question.

Alec’s head was reeling. He closed his eyes. “He’s a mess; he’s not going to talk. Put him in a cell tonight, let him sleep off his stupor, and we’ll talk to him tomorrow. Put an extra patrol out tonight on the grounds, and put an extra guard outside Duchess Grinstra’s room,” Alec heard the captain say.

Twelve years
, Alec thought to himself. Jeswyne had been gone twelve years.
At least twelve years,
he corrected himself.
How long ago were we married? Has she passed away too
? The guards had not even come close to recognizing the notion of a couple named Jeswyne and Alec on the throne. He was in a time far from his own apparently. He laid on a wooden bench in his cell, and wondered where he could find the answers to the many questions he had, of what era he was in and what had happened to Jeswyne.

Alec awoke with a start. Somehow, amid his worries and confusion, he had fallen asleep, and now his cell door was open and a voice was telling him to get up. The door slammed shut, leaving a small tray of bread and water. Alec sat up, and tried to assess the state of his abilities. He felt he could use his powers a little, any of his powers, but not for very long. He hoped he would be able to convince his interrogators today to take him seriously, and answer questions for him. And then he would know something, something that would let him begin to think about what came next. He was already halfway convinced in his heart that some great passage of time had occurred, another passage of time he did not yet remember or know about, a time when Jeswyne would have passed beyond him, just as Bethany had.

He sat down in a small windowless room with three men, perhaps the same three who had been with him the night before, though he couldn’t be sure. “I feel better after sleeping last night,” Alec decided to speak first, to take control of the session if he could. “I don’t know what has happened in Michian in the many years since I was here. I have powers,” he discretely examined the men, who had grim smiles on their faces, “that have made it possible for me to do many unusual things. For instance,” he reached out and gently touched a rash on one man’s hand, making the rash vanish, “I can heal people.

“
I can do other things too,” he continued as the man lifted his hand and stared at it. “I can move like a restorer,” he translocated himself to a corner of the room behind the men. “That’s how I got into the lady’s room last night,” he spoke, making the men jump and twist in shock at his display. He walked back to his chair and sat down, as the men edged away from him.

“
I didn’t come here to hurt or scare anyone. I came to find my family, who were the imperial family, when I was last here. That may have been many years ago. When I find them, or find out about them, I will leave. Will you help me?” he finished his explanation, pleased that he had not been interrupted. He was already sensing how wounded his abilities were just from the two mild demonstrations he had given.

“
Are you a demon?” the officer of the group asked quietly, as if he thought he was facing his death.

“
No, I am just a man with special gifts,” Alec replied. “Will you answer my questions?”

There was no answer, which Alec took as a positive answer. “None of you have heard of the Empress Jeswyne, daughter of Emperor Sergey?”

The men all looked at Alec with blank faces. “I didn’t study history, sir,” said the man whose hand had been treated.

“
Do you know of a land called the Dominion?” Alec asked.

“
Yes sir. Your accent sounds a bit like theirs, but harsher too,” the officer answered.

“
Are the Dominion and the Empire on good terms?” Alec asked a different question.

“
We trade with one another through the mountain pass, and sometimes a restorer goes up there,” the third man replied. “My uncle is a trader.”

“
Do you know when the Dominion and the Empire were at war?” he tried to hone in on something the Guard members might relate to.

“
Oh, I think there was a war, but it was before my grandfathers’ days --- long, long, before,” the oldest man in the group, the officer answered. “We haven’t had a war, except for pirate skirmishes, in generations.”

“
I see,” Alec slumped back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“
Sir?” he heard one of the interrogators ask.

“
Yes,” he looked at them.

“
You really just want information?” the youngest guard asked.

Alec nodded his head.

“
I’ll take you to the old emperor’s great aunt Lessla. She knows all about the old times of the dynasty, I’ve heard,” the guard said. He looked at the officer.

“
It’s a little late now to ask me, isn’t it?” the man responded with over-exaggerated sarcasm. “I think that’s a good idea, but her highness is not an early riser. Would you like to rest for a few more hours?”

“
I’d appreciate that, and to make it easy on everyone, I’ll go back to my cell,” he intercepted the nervous expression on the officer. He stood up, and the others did as well.

“
This will go down in my career history as the strangest interview I’ve been in,” the officer said. “Carmil, please take him back to his cell. When the dowager duchess awakens, you may request an audience,” he said as he held the door open.

Back in his cell, Alec lay on the bench with his hands beneath his head, wondering at the situation, wondering what to do. The elderly duchess would tell him something, he couldn’t be sure what, and when he was done listening to her, he realized, he would be no closer to seeing Jeswyne than he had been before. He apparently was years too late.

He hoped she had enjoyed a good life with him. He thought again of Bethany, abandoned while he had been trapped with the demon; she had deserved a better life than he had left her. They were both evidence of the costs he had suffered for himself, and worse, inflicted on the women he loved. Now that he believed he was free to go to Caitlen and try to have a relationship with her, he realized that he didn’t want to subject her to the likelihood of also being disappointed in him, of being led into a life of expectations that would never materialize.

There was a noise, and Alec realized he had fallen asleep. The door was open, and Carmil was waiting for him. “The duchess is having lunch, and would enjoy telling you the history of the dynasty,” the guard said.

Together they walked through the corridors of the palace, which, at times, felt very familiar to Alec. They entered a room, where a woman was sitting at a small round table, many utensils laid out about her plate and its twin that awaited him to sit. A pot of tea was sitting on the table, and Alec was struck by an impulsive memory of sitting with Jeswyne in the forest of primeval Oyster Bay, learning to perform the tea ceremony. He looked at the room again, stopping to intently take in the shape and configuration of the dining room. It had been a parlor once, the room in which he had proposed to Jeswyne by carrying out the tea ceremony of affection.

Overwhelmed by the memory, he took his seat, and before speaking to the duchess, a tiny lady, wrinkled and gray, he began performing the traditional tea ceremony with her, arranging his silverware, then waiting for her to respond. Her eyebrows shot up, and she held her glasses close to her eyes, examining what he had done, then she responded with the proper rearrangement of her own utensils. Alec poured her cup of tea, then replaced the pot, and she poured his cup, and so the intricate steps followed one another, as a pair of servants with the food waited discretely.

When the last step was complete, the duchess looked at a servant and nodded, then waited as bowls of soup were placed before the two diners. Carmil remained standing at the door, observing, satisfied that no violence appeared likely in a meeting where spoons were swapped silently.

“
I was told I was going to recite history to a young visitor,” the duchess finally spoke, in a voice that has high-pitched and quavered. “I didn’t know that I would be tested in high court etiquette. You are clearly a master of the ancient traditions; I could probably learn more from you than you will learn from me.”

“
I wish that were true, my lady,” Alec replied, giving a gentle smile. “But there is a great deal that I don’t know, and I hope that you will share what you know with me.”

“
Try me. I’m as old as dirt; if anyone here knows any of the family history, it will be me. My own great-aunt Tressma made me learn all of her old family stories, and she was old when I was born. I was the youngest child of the emperor Lyman, you know.”

“
Did you hear of an Empress Jeswyne, who had a foreigner as a consort?” Alec asked.

“
Jeswyne the Long? Married to the King of the Dominion, Alec the Demonslayer?” Lessla said. Alec nodded his head.

“
Aunt Tressma told stories about Jeswyne, but she was already in the crypt before Tressma was born,” Lessla told Alec.

“
Why was she called the “Long?” Alec asked, his heart dropping at the confirmation of Jeswyne’s passage in the distant past.

“
Because she ruled for such a very long time; she was empress for over sixty years, along with her consort,” Lessla told him.

Alec smiled. “Was her reign a happy one?” he pried.

“
She tried to do several great things; some of them worked and some didn’t, but the empire was at peace during her reign, and it prospered,” the elderly noble answered as she sipped the tea Alec had poured.

“
Do you know if she was happy?” Alec asked, drilling down to the only thing left that he could hope to find on this trip.

“
There is a portrait of her, smiling as a young girl. Would you like to see it?” Lessla asked. She motioned away the servants, who were about to bring the second course, and carefully stood up. “Give me your arm,” she commanded in the matter-of-fact manner of an elderly person who expected to need help and receive it. They started to walk towards a wall, not the door to go into the hall, and Alec stopped, as he realized the picture was right in front of him. “I always think that she must have been a happy person, to have such a painting made as a portrait – no furs, no crown, no throne and scepter, just great joy in life at a happy moment.”