Baron Titus Cawdor was a tall, broad-shouldered man with fierce eyes and a ready temper. He married the daughter of the baron of a neighboring ville, joining the families. He took over the other ville when his wife’s fa-ther-an excellent horseman-died in a mysterious rid-ing accident. His wife, Lady Cynthia, was never physically strong, and after the birth of the third child-all boys-she sank into a decline and a wasting sickness, accom-panied by a bloody flux that carried her off less than a year later. She was buried in the marble Cawdor family mausoleum.
Morgan Cawdor was the firstborn of the baron’s sons. Tall and as straight as a tree, he was everything that his father wished for. He could outride, run, wrestle, shoot or swim any of his fellows. He was kind where his father was cruel, considerate where the baron was a thin-lipped autocrat. Morgan took care to watch over his youngest brother, Ryan, protecting him from any danger.
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And the main danger was the second of the Cawdor sons.
Harvey Cawdor.
“Harvey,” Ryan said, his voice cold and far away. “Two years younger than Morgan and two years older than me.”
“Why didn’t your father do something to check him?” Krysty asked.
“Harvey was my bane. He was wicked. Fireblast! But such a bitter, evil bastard!”
Harvey Cawdor was everything that his older brother was not and lacked every one of Morgan’s virtues. His sole strength was an overweening ambition, coupled to an iron will to garner what he believed to be his right. His mind was warped and twisted, dwelling in dark corridors that were rank with the lust for power.
“They told me that his birthing ruined him. He was breeched, they said. One leg trailed, like this.. .and his shoulder was hunched and crook’d up.”
Ryan limped around the clearing, his right leg drag-ging a deep furrow, gouged from the soft green moss. His right arm was lifted, and twisted, giving him the lopsided walk of a hunchback. Krysty watched him, face solemn.
“I recall an old tape we had in Harmony. An actor from Europe. The paper was torn and the name was gone, but there was a picture on the label of a warped, bent man, long black hair, and a chain of gold. It was a play about a baron from olden times. Most had been wiped by the pulse. But the start was left.”
Ryan dropped his shoulder, sighing as he sat down once more by Krysty’s side. “Was this baron like Harvey? Blood-eyed bastard?”
“Uncle Tyas McCann knew the play. He said this baron killed old men and children and married the wife of one
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of the men he killed. How he could smile and smile and still be a villain.”
“Harvey smiled like that. If’n he could find some puppy to blind or a kitten to drown and save and drown again, that was when he smiled a whole lot. I learned early, Krysty, that when brother Harvey smiled it was time for little Ryan to get the fuck out of his way.”
The sound of the waterfall seemed to be changing, matching the somber mood of Ryan’s tale. It no longer chuckled brightly over the stones. Now it seemed to whisper and mutter of dark plots and inductions danger-ous. The afternoon was becoming colder.
Krysty shivered.
“What is it, lover? Want to go back to the others? I can smell woodsmoke. Jak must be getting his fish ready.”
“I’m okay, Ryan. Go on.”
“What happened to this crookback baron?” he asked.
“Got chilled.”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah. Be good if… Where was I?”
“Morgan and Harvey.”
She noticed that twice already, unconsciously, Ryan’s right hand had reached and touched the scar that seamed the side of his face, jagged from eye to mouth.
“Morgan and Harvey,” he repeated. “Morgan always tried to guard his back. Tried to warn our father against Harvey, but his mind was poisoned already and he re-fused to believe anything bad about him. One day Mor-gan went out in his hunting wag, with only one servant. It was found bombed out. Stickles did it. But they found boot tracks afterward.”
“And stickies don’t wear…”