Selfish Is the Heart Read online

  Yet she wasn’t utterly without heart, so she said quietly, “All things in their time, Tansy.”

  Tansy said naught in reply, and after some time Annalise fell to sleep.

  Kellen. What is this?” Cassian spoke more severely than he’d intended, but the boy had near run him over as he rounded the corner.

  The boy held something behind his back, face a guilty mask, mouth smeared with what looked, suspiciously, like tumbleberry jam. “I don’t have tarts in my trousers!”

  Cassian crossed his arms and pressed his lips together so as not to laugh. “Indeed?”

  Kellen shook his head but couldn’t look Cassian in the eye. Cassian, however, had been a boy, and even though it felt like a hundred score years ago, he could still recall how grand an idea stealing a tart might be until the thief were caught.

  “Show me your hands.”

  They were dirtier than the lad’s face. Cassian sighed, shaking his head. Kellen hung his, scuffing a foot along the bare wooden floor of the hall.

  “Kellen, you know I’ll have to ask you to turn out your pockets.”

  Kellen looked up, eyes wide. Raised in a house of women, he’d had no shortage of coddling, this Cassian knew. He’d been disciplined as well, never harshly and always with love . . . but never by Cassian.

  “Sir?”

  “Turn them out.”

  Kellen did, reluctantly. The left held naught but a few stones and bits of paper folded into boats. The other, several tumbleberry tarts wrapped in a napkin. Falling apart, oozing jam, they smelled delicious and probably tasted so, but they’d made quite a mess.

  “Not only did you take what wasn’t yours without permission, Kellen, but you made a mess of your trousers, and they’ll have to be washed. I know you don’t launder them. You’ve created work for someone else with your foolishness. But worse than that,” Cassian said sternly, “you lied to me. And that, lad, is what I find most deserving of punishment.”

  Kellen swallowed hard. His eyes glinted with tears, but he didn’t cry. He looked into Cassian’s face bravely, then nodded. “Your mercy, Master Toquin. I . . . I shall prepare for my beating.”

  “What?” Cassian stepped back, appalled. “Mother Above, Kellen. I don’t intend to beat you!”

  “You don’t?”

  “Lad, have I ever raised a hand to you? Has anyone in this house ever?”

  “Mother Harmony once washed my mouth out with soap,” Kellen confided.

  “For what reason?”

  Kellen sighed and looked shamefaced. “For cursing.”

  Cassian’s own mother had done the same to him when he was about Kellen’s age, and more than once to Calvis. He sighed. “Walk with me.”

  They fell into step. Cassian looked down at the lad, who’d clasped his hands behind him in an identical fashion, whether in direct mimicry or by natural inclination, Cassian didn’t know. He took the boy into the kitchen, where Cook was dozing by the fire. She startled to consciousness when Cassian cleared his throat.

  “Ah, Master Toquin. And you,” she said with a jabbing finger at Kellen. “Didna I chase you and yon companion out of here already once tonight?”

  “Kellen. Return the tarts.”

  “But sir!” Kellen looked distraught, small face turned up, eyes wide.

  Cook snorted. “What? Stole some tarts, did he? Well, think you I’d want them back after them grubby hands has been all over them?”

  She narrowed her eyes and heaved herself up from the chair to put fat fists on her hips. “It was the other one put you up to it, eh? Don’t tell me it wasn’t, I heard him whispering to you, when I’d have given you summat to fill your bellies, eh? But he wanted the tarts, not my day-old biscuits.”

  Cassian looked at the boy. “Is this true? Was it Leonder who put you up to it?”

  Leonder, a year or so older than Kellen and another of the Order’s Blessings. Kellen shook his head. Cook tutted.

  “Kellen, remember what I said. It wasn’t the theft but the lying I’ve issue with.”

  Kellen looked up at him again. Cassian could see the struggle in the lad’s eyes. He waited for the boy to speak.

  “It was me,” Kellen said with the barest wobble in his voice that led Cassian to believe he wasn’t being utterly truthful. “I am the one who stole the tarts.”

  “This fact isn’t in question. But tell me, lad, if it was Leonder . . .”

  “It was me.”

  Cook snorted and waved her apron at them. “Never no mind, Master Toquin. It’s not the first time someone’s snitched a tart or two from the rack, and it won’t be the last. The lad’ll suffer enough the next time he’s denied his dessert, which I think should be the punishment.”

  “For the stealing of the tarts, yes. I’d say a full three days of no dessert should suffice.” Cassian did his best to look stern. “But for the lying, I’m afraid there will have to be somewhat else.”

  Cook snorted again. “That I’ll leave to you, and you’ll get yourselves gone from my kitchen before you do it!”

  Cassian took the boy out the back door and into the yard, though not beyond the light spilling from the windows. Darkness cloaked the rest of the yard, a light from the stables in the distance. Here they were mostly in shadow.

  “Sit,” he said.

  Kellen sat on the wooden bench outside the kitchen door. Cassian sat beside him. He said nothing, remembering full well how the anticipation of the punishment was oft more difficult to bear than the punishment itself.

  At last, he looked at the boy. “When I was your age, my brother discovered a desire for a certain kind of apple grown in a neighbor’s orchard. We had apples of our own, and peaches, and ferlas, but Calvis decided that the golden apples of our neighbor were sweeter. The neighbor, unfortunately, was no friend to our family and had refused to allow us permission even to gather the fallen apples, the ones he couldn’t sell.”

  “So what did your brother do?”

  “He decided the sweetness was worth the risk, even though it was wrong, and he snuck into the orchard to gather as many as he could. The problem was, Calvis wasn’t content simply to take the fruit from the ground. Since he’d been denied what he really wanted, he thought to pluck fresher apples from the trees themselves. Only he couldn’t do this alone. He needed someone’s shoulders to stand on so that he might reach.”

  “You?”

  “Yes.”

  Kellen looked at his hands, still sticky and dirty from the tarts. “Did you want to go with your brother, or did he talk you into it?”

  “My brother was ever able to talk me into trouble, but I was the one who decided whether or not to follow him. In the end, I was the master of my conscience.”

  “What happened?”

  “We were caught. Calvis fled. I was not so swift. Our neighbor, Lord Veldant, was well-deserved in his reputation for fury, and our father was not inclined to defend sons who’d done so blatant a crime. I’d been caught with the apples in my hands, you see. Foolish. Lord Veldant took it upon himself to beat me with his own belt.”

  Cassian could still remember the sting of leather on his bare flesh, the crack of the belt. The pain. The shame. And below it all, the anger that he’d been left to take the punishment for both when it had been his brother’s idea.

  He looked at the lad next to him. Kellen’s face, shadowed but still lit enough by the kitchen lamps to see, had gone still. His mouth worked. Cassian put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, feeling the small muscles twitch and strain.

  “I took the punishment for my brother because I had no other choice.”

  “Leonder said he would fight me if I told it was his idea. And . . . sir . . .” Kellen coughed with a shrug. “I wanted the tarts, too. It was Leonder’s idea, but I did it. I took them. I should take the punishment.”

  Cassian could take no pride in this lad, nor shame either. But as he squeezed the boy’s shoulder again and stood, he felt a little of both. “You’ll suffer the next few days after meals. But no