A House Divided

Chapter 19

Weeks passed, and still no one spoke to Lach about returning to sea. Cianne was surprised. She had long suspected Lach was happiest when he was being thrashed about by the waves, but he gave no indication that he had any desire to return to his post. Listlessness had settled over him, alarming his mother to the extent that she had all but begged Cianne to look after her son.

"I must return to my duties, but I know if anyone can help him, it is you," Moiria said, and there wasn't the slightest trace of disgust in her words, of disdain in her tone. She was so desperate for her son to be well again that she was willing to countenance even Cianne's interference.

"I'll do what I can," Cianne promised.

She too was anxious about him. This new Lach wasn't her spirited best friend, always up for a laugh or an adventure. He had become a man who had ceased to find any pleasure in life, whose grief threatened to drag him down into the darkest depths.

"She wants to go through his things, you know," Lach said, startling her as he entered the room in his mother's wake. He must have been hiding around the corner, waiting for Moiria to leave before he came in.

"Lach, you frightened me," Cianne said, pressing a hand to her chest and turning to him with wide eyes.

He lurked in the doorway, blinking. Pale spring light flooded the sitting room, Moiria having decided days ago it was time to start opening the drapes again. The room was opulent, the floors covered in thick, forest-green Shaper-woven carpets, its walls paneled with rich, dark wood bearing a burnished gleam. The furniture was dark, heavy, buffed to a high shine, its cushions intricately embroidered in navy and emerald tones. Daylight highlighted the richness of the colors and the quality of the workmanship, creating a pleasant effect, but when the light was low the room had always struck Cianne as oppressive. It felt even more so when Lach strode over to the window and yanked the drapes closed with a vicious snap of his wrist.

"That infernal light gives me a headache." He slumped into a chair, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

Her brief glimpse of his features had been ghastly. She had known he wasn't faring well, but the dim light had concealed the deep hollows in his cheeks, the waxy cast of his skin, the plum-colored shadows under his eyes. His once handsome face had become cadaverous, his eyes sunken, lips chapped and flaking, as if he had gone weeks without food.

Come to think of it, he had. Cianne couldn't remember the last time he had eaten, and the realization prompted her to ring for tea.

"You have to eat, Lach," she said, in response to the way his lip curled at her action, his face spasming with revulsion.

"I can't eat. I can't sleep. I can't do anything until I know the truth," he said, his voice harsh, scratchy.

A twinge of guilt ate away at her. Here she was investigating the circumstances of his father's death, and yet she wouldn't tell him a word of it. He was living in torment and she wouldn't do anything to ease his pain.

"The Elders have asked her to go through your father's things, you know that, Lach. They have to know what the state of his affairs was. It concerns the House as a whole," she said, trying for a reasonable approach. She thought he might respond to it, given the many times he had tried to get her to see what he insisted was reason when it came to the House.

Turning on her like a rabid dog, he snapped, "She wants to move on."

"Lach, your mother... She and I have had our differences, that's no secret, but she did love your father. You know that as well as I. You're hurting, and I understand that, but you know she grieves in her own way, just as my father grieved in his after my mother died."