The Truth-Teller's Tale by Sharon Shinn
“Eleda. Adele,” Melinda snapped. “Come with me right away. I think—” And she turned away and fled back down the hallway before completing her sentence.
I think there’s going to be trouble. No need to say it out loud.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Adele and I followed Melinda down the corridor that led to the dining room, then down another hallway that paralleled the dance floor. Clearly Melinda had been in this house often enough to have a fair idea of where she was going. We could hear the music distinctly, though muffled somewhat by the thick walls, and the low soothing murmur of indistinguishable conversation. I hurried to catch up.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded. “What happened?”
“I just saw Karro yank Roelynn off of the dance floor and pull her out of the room,” Melinda said over her shoulder. “There’s a little den right down this hall—the closest place for one to find privacy, I think, if one had just exited the ballroom.”
“Did he see her dancing with Alexander?” Adele asked.
Melinda half turned to give Adele an unreadable look. “ ‘Dancing with Alexander’?” she repeated. “That would be one way to put it.”
I was about to ask for more details when our attention was arrested by the noise of a choked cry. It sounded like Roelynn, and it sounded as if it had come from behind the closed door just ahead of us. Without hesitation, Melinda twisted the knob and stalked into the small room.
What greeted our eyes was a horrifying sight. Roelynn, in her rose and silver gown, was backed up against a dark-paneled wall, her hands flat to the wood behind her, her head thrown back as if to scream. Karro stood over her like some black bird of prey, a hulking, dangerous presence, reeking with fury. He had both hands around her throat and appeared to be trying to choke the life out of her.
“Delton Karro,” Melinda snapped in a hard, authoritative tone. “Let her go!”
Karro whirled around to face us, but he did not drop his hands from Roelynn’s throat. Consequently, she stumbled in a half circle around him in some grotesque parody of a maypole. He repositioned his arms and jerked her against his body so that she was suddenly standing with her back flat against his chest. He had one arm crooked around her neck—and a small silver dagger pointed at her throat. I was so shocked that for a moment I could not move or think, but I heard Adele gasp and I saw Melinda move closer.
“Step away from us, Dream-Maker,” he warned, and it was clear by his voice that he was so angry he had temporarily slipped into the realm of madness. “This quarrel has nothing to do with you.”
Melinda was enviably cool at the best of times, but now she was positively icy. “Drop your hands from that girl’s neck and talk to me,” she said. “Tell me what disaster has brought you to this pass. There must be some way it can be mended.”
“It will be mended well enough!” Karro shouted. “When I have beaten her senseless and locked her in her room! Shameless, disobedient girl! She defies me at every turn—she flirts with every handsome commoner who comes her way—when she knows, she knows of the plans I have for her, the life I could make for her—”
“Father,” Roelynn squeaked, but he uttered an inarticulate cry and seemed to squeeze his arm even tighter. She whimpered and lay still.
Melinda took a step closer, and now she tried a different tack. Extending a hand, she spoke in a coaxing voice. “What plans?” she said. “What life? I’m sure whatever you’re angry about now is just a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding? A misunderstanding? Did you see her, dancing the night away with that lowborn boy, that man, that—that nobody! I asked someone, ‘Who is it who has claimed my daughter’s attention all night?’ and I was told, ‘Oh, he’s the dancing master’s apprentice.’ The dancing master’s apprentice? Some cast-off poor relation of a bad branch of someone’s noble family, no doubt! When I had such dreams of her! When I was planning to marry her to the prince!” He contrived to shake her so hard that I was sure her very bones must be rattling.
“There’s still plenty of time for your great dream to come true,” Melinda said, still in that soothing voice. I wondered if Adele and I could tiptoe around her, sneak up to Karro, and assault him hard enough to free Roelynn. It seemed too risky, and yet I felt terrified and foolish, standing there doing nothing while Melinda tried to calm his rage. “She was just dancing with this young man. A harmless flirtation. Who’s to say that she won’t marry the prince after all?”
Karro shook his daughter again, growling low in his throat. “Yes, that’s what she’ll do if I have anything to say about it, but she—she has other ideas! ‘I love him, Father,’ she said to me as I dragged her off the dance floor. She loves him! She thinks she loves him! We’ll see how much she loves him when she’s been starved for a week.”
“All girls talk that way when they’ve been dancing with attractive men,” Melinda said in a dismissive voice. “Why, I’m sure tomorrow morning she won’t even be able to remember his name.”
To my complete astonishment, this was the moment Adele chose to speak up. “Anyway, even if she loves him, this young man does not love her,” my sister said in a soft voice. “I know his secret.”
Everyone in the room grew very still. Karro swung his heavy head toward Adele, and Melinda and I pivoted slightly in her direction. Even Roelynn, trapped in her father’s brutal embrace, seemed to strain to hear what Adele might say next.
“What’s that? He has a secret?” Karro cried. “Who are you then—oh, the Safe-Keeper. I know you. And you know a terrible secret about this young man? Tell it to me now.”
She couldn’t, of course. A Safe-Keeper could no more repeat a confidence than a Truth-Teller could speak a lie. But I saw her clench her hands and take a deep breath and seek the right words.
“Yesterday morning, I saw that man—Alexander—at the chapel with a young girl from Merendon,” Adele said, speaking as calmly as if she betrayed secrets every day. Every word she said slammed like a stone against my rib cage, because I could tell that every word was true. “In stealth and secrecy, with only the pastor and one other for witness, they were married. You need not fear that Alexander will disrupt your plans for your daughter’s future.”
“Well!” Karro exclaimed, and his voice was richly pleased. I was sure he must be smiling, but I could not look at his face. All my attention was on Roelynn. Her cheeks had gone deathly white at Adele’s words. She sagged in her father’s arms, as if only his grip kept her on her feet, only his dagger against her throat reminded her to breathe. Alexander wed to another! It seemed absolutely impossible. But I could see that Roelynn believed Adele—as I believed her myself. “Well, this is splendid news indeed! Did you hear that, daughter?” he demanded, rattling her against him once more. “Yet again you’ve displayed the poorest imaginable judgment and chosen a man entirely unworthy of you. When will you learn? When will you realize you must be guided by me? Will I really need to beat some obedience in you—now, this very night?”
He must have relaxed his chokehold on her throat just the tiniest bit, for Roelynn managed to spit out an entire sentence. “The only time I will ever do what you want of me is when I am dead, and I lie in the grave you have provided,” she said very fast and very hard.
He uttered another wordless cry and seemed swept with red fury. Making a quarter turn on one heel, he slammed her head twice against the paneled wall and pushed the dagger closer home. I saw a dot of blood form in the hollow of her throat above the lace-encrusted bodice.
Melinda called his name again, and the three of us moved closer, but now he brandished his knife in our direction and seemed quite prepared to use it on any of us. I could think of only one thing to do to calm him from his mindless rage and restore even a modicum of sanity to the scene. Promise him what he wanted.
“You need not worry for Roelynn’s future,” I said, raising my voice to be heard among all the oaths and pleas being loosed into the room. Everyone quieted down and looked at me, and I swallowed hard, ho
“Yes, yes, speak then if you have anything to say!”
I swallowed again, my throat so tight it was hard to breathe. “All your plans for Roelynn will come true,” I said, my voice sounding scratchy and strained. “She will marry no one but Prince Darian.”
“Aaaahh!” Karro said, releasing a long, silky syllable of satisfaction. I kept my gaze on him, but I could see Roelynn close her eyes as if she had just been cursed, could see Adele staring at me in marveling disbelief. As for myself, I could scarcely believe I had been able to speak the lie, the first one I had ever uttered. My tongue did not choke me; my lips did not refuse the tainted words. I had not been brought down by lightning, or shriveled from within by the judgment of my own implacable conscience. A false word offered as a true one and the world did not end. I was as disillusioned by that as I was terrified by my present situation.
Karro was smiling widely now. “And if you say it, it must be true. My daughter will marry the prince after all. This dancing boy—all the other riffraff she consorts with—they all will amount to nothing. Her wild ways, her saucy manner—none of that will be enough to disgust the royal house. Roelynn will marry Darian.”
“She will,” I said, my mouth so dry the words would scarcely come out.
No one else had a chance to speak. There were sudden voices in the hall, mostly male, and the sound of jostling bodies. “This way!” someone called, and in a moment, the door burst open. Nearly a dozen people poured into the room. There was so much motion and commotion that it took a minute for me to sort out what was happening. I saw Micah charge through the throng of people and rescue his sister from his father’s hold—I saw Alexander, a half step behind him, snatch her limp body from Micah and shield it with his own. Indeed, she seemed so frail and he so stricken that they sank in a double half-swoon to the floor. There, Alexander cradled her against him, holding her so tenderly and seeming so unaware of anything else going on in the room that I was afraid they might be trampled. Then I saw Gregory move over to stand between them and the milling crowd.
Watching the two of them together, I began to have my doubts about the veracity of Adele’s story.
But she had spoken the truth. I might have been able to speak a lie, but I had not lost my ability to recognize a falsehood. Alexander had married a village girl yesterday morning.
Or perhaps . . .
Before I had a chance to work through it, there was another influx of angry men into the room. There were now maybe twenty-five people in the den that was designed to hold comfortably about a quarter of that number. Adele, Melinda, and I found ourselves shoved toward the wall across the room from where Gregory stood guard over the couple on the floor. I craned my neck, straining to see around velvet shoulders and starched collars to observe what was happening now.
“Delton Karro!” exclaimed one of the new arrivals. “You are accused of piracy on the high seas!”
“What?” bellowed Karro. He hauled the great bulk of his body around to face this new travail and seemed filled with so much force and energy it was as if he had not expended any of it on his daughter. “Who accuses me? What is the specific crime?”
“I accuse you!” cried another voice, and a second man stepped up beside the first. Finally, I recognized them both. The first was the harbormaster, an old but iron-willed former sea captain. The second was Mac Balder, Karro’s chief rival, a cadaverously thin man with sunken cheeks and wispy white hair. Around them crowded some of the richest and most important men in Merendon, as well as several of the visitors from Wodenderry.
“I accuse you!” Mac Balder repeated, shaking his finger in Karro’s face. Karro batted his hand away. “You sent one of your clippers out to harass my Melva Blue, and now it’s missing, overdue in port by two days. Your men brought down my ship! Massacred my sailors, I’ve no doubt—yes, and stole my cargo, too! Do you think to sell it here in the Merendon shops once I tell everyone that you’re a thief and a murderer? Do you think the queen will want to partner with someone like you when I tell her what kind of man you are? You’ll be run out of Merendon, you liar, you scoundrel—you—you—killer.”
Indeed, there was such a roar of outrage from the gathering that it seemed likely Karro would be thrown out of the city this very night. Bodies pressed closer to him; hands reached out to cuff him across the face or shoulders. I thought it possible that any number of people, myself included, might be crushed underfoot by the reckless, furious crowd.
But two figures forced themselves between the angry townspeople and the embattled Karro. One was the harbormaster, who held up his hands for quiet. The other was Micah, who looked pale but determined.
“My father would not do such deeds,” Micah called, his voice barely audible above the boil of the crowd. “My father is an honorable businessman.”
“I’ve never cared much for the cut of his honor!” someone shouted in response.
The harbormaster held his hands even higher. “Let us hear what Delton Karro has to say in response to these accusations,” he commanded, and the noise around him subsided somewhat. “Let us hear his defense.” He turned to look at Karro, where he hunched against the wall, defiant but just a little apprehensive.
“I didn’t bring down the Melva Blue,” Karro claimed, panting a little. “I admit it, I wanted to—but I didn’t do it.”
There was another swell of outrage at this acknowledgment, and then the harbormaster shouted at them all to be quiet again. “How can we know that what you say is true?” the harbormaster demanded.
Karro pushed himself away from the wall, scanned the room—and pointed straight at me. “There. That woman. The Truth-Teller. She’ll repeat what I told her two days ago about Mac Balder’s precious ship.”
Now every person in the room had turned to stare at me. I couldn’t help myself—I stole one quick glance in Gregory’s direction, and found the encouragement on his face to be supremely comforting. I took a deep breath and stepped out a little into the mob of men. “Yes, indeed, you stopped me on the street in the middle of a rainstorm and told me a terrible thing,” I said in a clear voice. “You told me you had sent out one of your own ships to intercept one of Mac Balder’s, that you were jealous of his foreign cargo and you wanted your own men to bring it to port. You said you thought there was a good chance of bloodshed, too.”
Now the noise in the room was deafening, men shouting and waving their fists, Karro hollering back with his face reddened by rage. I saw Micah wrestle his father to the wall as if to keep him from leaping across the assembled company to strangle me as he had strangled Roelynn. It was a good five minutes before the harbormaster was able to quiet everyone this time, and even then, Karro’s voice could be heard in a manic rant. “She lies! She lies! The Truth-Teller lies!”
I waited till I thought people might be able to hear me, and then I spoke again, copying the cold tone Melinda had used earlier. “I do not lie,” I said. “But I admit that when Karro told me these things, he believed he was speaking to my sister, the Safe-Keeper. He thought he was confessing to someone who would keep his dreadful secret.”
“Ha!” Karro cried, straining against Micah’s hold. “Then it was your sister I spoke to later in the day, when I came to your parents’ house! I told her I had rescinded my orders. I told her that my heart misgave me and I had called my men back. I told her I could not do such a terrible thing, bitterly though I hated this man Balder. She knows—I told her. Ask that other girl!”
And now all eyes in the room turned toward Adele.
She stepped away from the wall with her usual poise and dropped a quick curtsy to the gathered crowd. The look on her face was grave and absolutely unreadable. The harbormaster said to her in a stern voice, “Is Karro telling the truth? Did he indeed tell you the
“He certainly did speak to me that afternoon,” she said, her voice much steadier than mine had been. “But I am not at liberty to repeat what he said to me. I am a Safe-Keeper, and I do not reveal such secrets.”
Karro howled with fury and frustration. The mob erupted into fresh accusations of perfidy and surged forward again as if to destroy him on the spot. I heard voices demand that Karro be incarcerated, that he be forced out of town, that he be hanged, that he be thrown into the ocean to drown. Once again, the harbormaster was able to beat them back to a state of semi-reason.
“We do not have proof!” the harbormaster shouted. “We do not have definitive testimony! We cannot convict or punish the man based on the evidence of one missing ship! Ships are late into harbor all the time!”
“He is still suspect!” Joe Muller called back. “He should be dragged from his house and put in chains until we have discovered the truth of the matter!”
“He’s a damned unscrupulous man, is what he is!” cried another voice. “Maybe he hasn’t brought down Mac’s ship, but he’s lied and he’s cheated and he’s bullied men before this, and I say it’s time the whole kingdom knows him for the unsavory rat he is.”
More men called out details of their own past dealings with Karro, and I could see that, whatever else this evening might bring, it would be the ruin of Karro’s reputation. He could see it, too. His face, so ruddy with rage all night, was growing pale and lax; I could see a layer of sweat shining along his forehead. He tried to counter his neighbors’ accusations with a voice that grew more feeble and unconvincing with every word. “No . . . you misunderstood . . . no, I never meant it that way . . . perhaps that was not quite fair, but we can work out a better deal. . . .”
Beside me, I felt Melinda shake out her gold and white skirts and then take a decisive step into the crowd. She had to push and tug a little, but as soon as all the men realized who moved among them, they hastily cleared a way for her. In a few moments, she was standing before Karro. She was not a tall woman, but at this moment she appeared to be gazing down at him.