Selfish Is the Heart Read online

  “Ten years, Cassian. Ten long years. Is that not a long enough penance?”

  Cassian shook his head. Roget sighed. Cassian poured his friend another pint from the pitcher between them.

  “You could come back at any time and be welcomed. You know that.”

  “I know it. I don’t wish to return to the priesthood.”

  Roget let out a truly astonishing belch, even by the standards of those whose company they currently kept. “And yet you stay on with the Order. Tell me again why this is so, as I know it’s not for the abundance of opportunities to partake in sensual exploits. Presuming you’ve kept to that vow as well, which I’ve no doubt is true based upon what I know of your stubborn nature.”

  Cassian shrugged.

  “It truly is a penance,” Roget said when it became apparent Cassian meant not to answer. “By the Arrow, Cassian. Truly? I meant it in jest before, but I’m right?”

  “You’re drunk. We should go back so you can sleep it off. Have you not a service to lead in the morning?” Cassian stood.

  Roget didn’t. He shook his head and pushed away his mug. “Oh, brother. Still, now? Think you she’ll come back? And what then? What do you hope to gain if she does?”

  “I don’t stay—”

  “You have ever been the poorest of liars,” Roget said.

  Cassian sat. He poured himself another mug of ale, meaning just to sip at it, since drunkenness did naught for him but bring about an aching head and regret. “I made a promise to my brother.”

  “Your brother,” Roget said as though the words tasted bad, “is dead, ten long years hence. He’s unlikely to hold you to such a promise from his place in the—”

  “Don’t you say it,” Cassian warned. “I know what you thought of him. He was my brother, my true brother of the blood, not merely of the heart.”

  “Your mercy.”

  The men both drank while around them the merriment went on. Roget leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his bald head. He looked younger without the thick lines of ceremonial cosmetic around his eyes. Cassian blinked, remembering suddenly the sting of it.

  “He’s gone, Cassian.”

  “I know it.”

  “Yet you still punish yourself for what was not your fault?”

  “I played as much a part in it as anyone.”

  “If anything, the blame rests upon her and him. Not you.”

  “This story,” Cassian said, “will never have another ending no matter how many times the tale is told. Say no more, Roget. I know full well what you think of it. Of me, and my choices. I tell you now as I’ve told you before, I can’t return to the priesthood. Nor do I wish to. I’m . . .”

  “Say that you’re happy in your place and I’ll reach across this table and punch you in the teeth.”

  Cassian raised a brow. “Not very peaceful of you.”

  “I’d be acting as your friend, not a priest.”

  “You are still and will always be a priest first, Roget, it’s your nature and your life. Aside from that, you know that I could whip you easily, even if you were not eight mugs ahead of me.”

  He’d meant to make Roget laugh, but his old friend only shook his head. “Even if she comes back . . .”

  “You would do well to bite your tongue,” Cassian said coldly, “brother.”

  Roget sighed, shoulders lifting. “Ah, you wound me, but then you have ever done as you pleased and none could stop you. I think that’s why I miss you so.”

  “You needn’t miss me. You see me every time you make your rounds to the Motherhouse.”

  “Once you’d have been there with me during every service. Now you don’t even attend.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “I know you won’t,” Roget said.

  Cassian drained his mug and pushed it aside. “The hour grows late. I’m for home. Are you joining me?”

  “I supposed I’d best, else I’ll never make it back.” Roget cast a grin toward the pretty barmaid he’d ogled earlier. “And as much as I’d like to discuss the finer aspects of philosophy with that lovely maiden, the morn will come too early and I’m older than I was yesterday.”

  Cassian laughed despite himself. “We are ever older than we were the day before.”

  Roget sighed and stretched, rubbing a hand over his pate. “Ah, lad, but not all of us live the good, clean life you do. All that exercise. You still rise with the sun and practice the Art?”

  “I do.”

  Roget grimaced, but made no comment. “Come, then, brother. Lead me home by the hand as though I were the bumbling, drunken fool you’d have me be.”

  Again, Cassian laughed. “I’ll lead you, but not by the hand.”

  “Sinder’s Balls!” Roget exclaimed. “You’ll not suffer me even such affection as that! I’m mortally offended.”

  “You’re mortally intoxicated.”

  “Mayhap a bit of that is truth,” Roget admitted. “But know you this is the only time I ever become so. With you.”

  Outside in the night’s crisp air, Cassian breathed deep. “And why is that?”

  “Because I know you’ll not indulge. And because”—Roget spit into the dirt by their boots—“I know it gives you pleasure to look at me in such a state, that you might feel superior. And as your everlong friend, I like to make you happy. If such a thing were possible for you to be and which, my friend, I fear is not so.”

  “You are drunk,” Cassian said and slung one of Roget’s arms around his shoulders. The words, barely slurred, stung. “You’ll remember none of this on the morrow.”

  “But you might.”

  “I’ll do my best to forget it.”

  “You would do your best to forget other things,” Roget said, but thankfully kept his line of conversation from continuing, instead bursting into a song that kept him occupied during the walk from town to the grounds of the Order.

  “Quiet!” Cassian laughed, knowing it would do no good.

  “What? So that all who reside here, all those lovely ladies, the simpering twits, the giggly gadflies, might maintain their view of you as the imposing and cold-as-stone Master Toquin?”

  “Yes.” There was no point in denying it.

  Roget snorted laughter and made pause to loose himself from his breeches to piss in a long, hard stream into the bushes at the edge of the drive. “You might be better served if they knew you as I do, Cassian. As a man who can make the best of jokes.”

  It had been overlong since Cassian had been that man. He watched as Roget tucked himself away. The moon had gone behind some clouds. The Motherhouse loomed in the distance, but he heard the faintest sound of laughter and voices from behind the stable and caught the scent of woodsmoke.

  “Someone’s having a party,” Roget remarked.

  “Not of our concern.”

  “Tell me something, brother.”

  Cassian sighed as they trudged up the gravel drive toward the back of the manse. He’d regret this late night in the morn, but not as much as Roget would with his swollen head. “What?”

  “Do you really think you’re so strong?”

  “I do.”

  Roget straightened, his voice steady and no longer slurring. “Because you hide yourself away from everything in the world and avoid all that would tempt you to life? You think that’s strength?”

  Now angry for the first time this night but not the first time with Roget, Cassian threw off his friend’s hand. “You shouldn’t drink so much. It makes you stupid.”

  “What makes you stupid, Cassian? Ah, that’s right. Naught. Not a bedamned thing, is that so? Not drink, not drug.”

  “Why would I seek to be stupid?”

  Roget laughed, low. “Ah, and there I hear the glimmer of anger in your voice. Careful, brother. You’ll have me thinking I’ve had a rise out of you.”

  Cassian swallowed hard before answering. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Alone.”

  “Of course alone,” he snapped.

&nbs