Aldric Vane's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The ledger sat open on Aldric's knees as he walked. One name accused him. The same name defended him. He read it a hundred times on the road and still made no sense of it. He needed someone who knew the man's mind. He knew only one person left alive who might. So he left Lunara at the grove and went to find Tomlin. Tomlin Voldonner had taught beside Aldric at the citadel, years ago, before a wasting sickness forced him out. Now he kept bees on the cold edge of Nordfrost and spoke to no one. Aldric found him among the hives, gloved to the elbow, lifting a frame heavy with comb. The old maester did not look up. "You brought that bird," Tomlin said. The phoenix shifted on Aldric's shoulder. "And a ledger you shouldn't have. Both stolen, I'd wager." "I need your reading of a man," Aldric said. He turned the page toward him. "He signed the charge that ruined me. Then he stood at my trial and argued for my life. Tell me why." Tomlin set the frame down. He wiped honey from his glove and studied the signature a long while. "A man does both when he was forced to sign," he said. "He accused you because someone stronger made him. Then he defended you to undo it, quietly, without naming his master." Aldric's chest tightened. "Then he's a coward, not an enemy." "Or a prisoner." Tomlin looked at him over his spectacles. "Guess wrong and you go to him with a knife. He shuts every door. Guess right and he hands you the one who owns him." "I could still be wrong." "You could." Tomlin walked to his hut and returned with a mirror framed in gold and old runes. Aldric knew it. The citadel had used such mirrors to read a witness true. "Speak his name into this under moonlight," Tomlin said. "It shows the last face he feared. That face is your accuser's master." Aldric held the mirror. Its glass caught the pale light and clouded. He said the name from the ledger. The surface swam, then cleared. A woman's face rose in the glass. Red hair. A scar cut across one eye. Tomlin's hand went still. "I know her," he said quietly. "Ishatra Leinne. A Rite-Master, disgraced years back. If she held his leash, she holds far more than that." Aldric lowered the mirror. The confusion was gone, and something colder took its place. His accuser had not hated him. Someone had used the man like a tool. Now he had her name and her face. "She won't be easy to reach," Tomlin said. "And she'll know you're coming the moment you ask a single question." Aldric wrapped the mirror in cloth and tucked the ledger beneath it. "Then I stop chasing the man who signed," he said. "I go after the one who made him."