Jozsef looked away from the pillar, at the profile of the old man beside him. He straightened. 'Lukacs is still my son. What will happen to him?'

'You understand the importance of maintaining our traditions.'

'I also know, Lord, you have the authority to dispense as you see fit.'

The old man nodded, then turned and looked at him. The chips of jade were flecked now with azure. 'I do, Jozsef. And I would hesitate to cast out any son of yours for a transgression even as serious as this. But other things have come to light.'

Jozsef closed his eyes.

'Last night in Buda a young woman was raped. Pretty thing, by all accounts. The girl has accused her betrothed of the crime.' The Fnok shook his head. 'It's not often an incident like that gets reported, or even taken seriously when it is, but this girl is a bit of a fighter, by all accounts.'

'And what does this have to do with my son?' Jozsef felt as if he balanced at the edge of a precipice, the Fnok's finger resting against his spine.

'Hopefully nothing, my friend. But they picked up the boy shortly afterwards and threw him in the cells. His defence is a strange one. He maintains he was kidnapped by a hosszu elet sharing your son's name, who supplanted him before going out to meet the girl. At this stage we know little more than that. We have not had a chance to speak to the boy ourselves.' The azure flecks in the Fnok's eyes had faded. 'The palace has asked us to investigate. That's unprecedented. Regardless of what has or has not taken place, the fact that the palace has even requested that we cooperate, demonstrates the lack of trust we now enjoy in some quarters. The king notices the tide turning, Jozsef, and seeks to distance himself. You must bring your son before the tanacs, and give him an opportunity to clear his name.'

'Yes, Lord.' Jozsef hesitated. 'If I may ask: what will happen to the boy in the cells?'

'Guilty or innocent, he will hang. The stakes are too high for any alternative. Your task is simple, Jozsef. Go back to G.o.dollo. Return here with your son.'

Lukacs was looking down at the courtyard through the leaded windows of the music room when he saw his father ride in under the arch. He watched Jozsef dismount and hand the reins to a servant.

If you knew what I'm about to tell you, Father, perhaps you'd walk a little less upright.

Lukacs headed down the stairs to his father's library. His stomach fluttered in antic.i.p.ation. Not fear exactly; he had grown too confident for that. But even the most basic of interactions with his father brought nerves. Considering the magnitude of what he was about to reveal, it was testament to the changes he'd wrought in himself over recent weeks that he only needed to admit a slight anxiety. Overriding everything was his thirst to see the expression in his father's eyes when the man realised that, ultimately, he had failed to impose his will on his son. Lukacs's situation was now a fait accompli. With his rejection of the vegzet process, he had made his transition to kirekesztett inevitable. Nothing Jozsef could do now would change that. Perhaps if his father had listened, perhaps if he had consented to Lukacs's requests, this might have ended differently. Instead, he had lost both his son and the respectability he valued above the feelings of his offspring. Jozsef had not listened; had never listened. Lukacs would ensure that his father heard him properly heard him before he left G.o.dollo for the last time.

Smirking as the door to the library swung open, unable to mask his smugness even as his stomach flipped and his heart raced, Lukacs watched his father enter the room and come to an abrupt halt.

Jozsef stared. Lukacs met his eyes and stared back.

His father took a breath of air and it seemed to catch in his throat. He shuddered. Bizarrely, his eyes filled with tears. Then he crossed the room, raised his fist and swung it at his son's head.

Lukacs was so surprised that he failed to react. The blow caught him on the cheek with a force so brutal that he heard something crack in his face. He staggered, fell to his knees. When he looked up, Jozsef punched him again. Blood burst from his nose. He spluttered through it, pain blinding him. The fist slammed into his skull a third time and when he sprawled on the floor, Jozsef kicked him so hard in the stomach that the air exploded from his lungs.

Hands grabbed him, lifting him to his feet. He blinked away tears to see his father's face, inches from his own, eyes a mad burst of colour. Jozsef snarled and hurled him backwards into a bookcase. Lukacs's head struck a wooden shelf. He fell to the floor a second time, accompanied by a rain of books. His father strode to a bureau Mazarin, yanked out a drawer and began to riffle through its contents.

Lukacs tried to focus on healing, on repairing the damage his father had done. But he was too shocked to concentrate. 'Wha . . . you doing?' he slurred.

'I know, Lukacs, you hear me? I KNOW!' Shaking, his father dragged the entire drawer out of the desk and dumped it on top. 'The Fnok knows too. They all know, but they wish to offer me this. You knew what you did when you raped that girl, Lukacs. You knew what the penalty would be. The tanacs will not allow bad blood to thrive.'

'Wait, Father. Rape?' He tried to work out how anyone could know, and once he worked that out, wondered why anyone would give the story credence, especially so quickly. Especially his father.

Did they all think so little of him?

'Don't lie to me, Lukacs. And don't make this harder than it already is.' Jozsef found what he was looking for. From the drawer, he picked up a dagger and unsheathed the weapon, turning it over in the light. Tears washed his cheeks. 'You've thrust a knife in me just as real as this.'

Lukacs gasped through the pain. If he were found guilty by the tanacs, the sentence would be capital. With sudden clarity, he understood that his father did not intend things to go that far. Jozsef would not suffer the humiliation of seeing his son on trial.

Coughing, spitting blood from his mouth, he used the bookcase to pull himself upright, gagging from the agony in his face and torso.

Jozsef sprang across the room, shoved him against the shelving and put the blade to his throat.

Lukacs tried to move his head but he was pinned. Could he repair the damage quickly enough if his father cut his throat? Possibly. But what if Jozsef didn't stop there? What if he kept cutting? The thought panicked him and as Lukacs struggled, the blade of the knife bit, its steel drawing a line of fire across his throat.

He was so close to his father's face he could see the individual pores of his skin, smell the tobacco on his breath, the mint oil, feel the wetness of his tears.

Jozsef moaned. He pressed his cheek against Lukacs's forehead. 'I loved you, you stupid boy. Despite everything I loved you, always loved you, always. And then you did this. You did this to me. To your family. To yourself. To that stupid girl. Why, Lukacs? Why? I don't want to do this, I really don't, but I must.'

'You don't have to do anything, Father.'

Jozsef bellowed. With his free hand he hauled Lukacs away from the bookcase and slammed him back against it.

The shelf cracked his head and the knife sliced deeper. Lukacs felt the blood beginning to course down his throat, hot and thick.

And then, with eyes now as black as the heart of a solar eclipse, with spittle hanging from his chin and with monstrous strength, Jozsef ripped the blade through his son's neck. Lukacs's eyes bulged. He felt blood erupt from him. Saw it gush over Jozsef's forearms. Heard it spatter across the floor.

His father held him, face contorted.

Lukacs tried to speak, tried to twist out of Jozsef's grip, tried to focus on his throat. But the pain was too great. He felt his legs buckle, and when they surrendered completely, his father braced him against the bookcase.

He coughed, choked. Spasmed.

Shadows rolled over him. His felt his head lighten. His thoughts began to spin away from him, unravelling in terror. His lungs emptied and this time when he took a breath, he found that he could not, found that his lips were numb, that his arms were numb, that his world was darkening, that his, that . . .

Balazs Jozsef relaxed his grip on his son's body and allowed it to thump to the floor. He turned, staggered to the bureau Mazarin and plunged the knife deep into its wood. Panting, sobbing, he roared again and upended the heavy wooden desk. Papers, candles and writing implements flew everywhere. Jozsef collapsed among the ruins. Weeping, he pressed his palms against his skull.

How could this have happened? How?

Was it his fault? Had he failed the boy somehow? He thought of his dead wife and moaned. He knew that the grief of her pa.s.sing had made him retreat from the world, from the responsibility he bore to his sons. What would she think if she could see this? What would she say? Her middle son a rapist. Her husband soaked in his blood.

Raising his head, Jozsef forced himself to look at Lukacs's body, at the gashed throat from which blood still pulsed in an ever-weakening tide. A dark image. A nightmare image. But it was for the best, he thought.

No.

Yes. It was. Kinder this way. Better for the boy.

You must not do this.

Better for everyone.

NO!.

Shaking, mumbling, he crawled back across the floor. Reaching his son's side, he turned Lukacs onto his back. The boy's eyes were closed. His chest was still.

Jozsef placed his hands over Lukacs's ravaged throat, closed his eyes.

Pushed.

He felt a stinging in the flesh of his fingers, a resistance, as if he were pressing his hands into mounds of broken gla.s.s. The pain intensified and then, suddenly, he was through. Heat rushed through his wrists. Clenching his teeth, joined now to the boy's skin and muscle and flesh, he felt his blood surge out through his fingers.

'Come back,' he whispered. 'Please, son. Come back.'

As the warmth drained from him, Jozsef began to shiver. Thirst raged in him. He felt himself grow weaker, felt his stomach tighten and growl.

Beneath him, Lukacs twitched. His hands flopped against the floor and his legs kicked. Then he sucked in a huge lungful of air, sat up and screamed.

Jozsef tore away his fingers, sending up a shower of scarlet rain. Lukacs's throat was raw, dark handprints marking two patches stripped of skin. But even though the flesh beneath was livid, the gash had closed.

The boy opened his eyes, blinked. He stared at his father and Jozsef could not begin to imagine the thoughts that gathered behind them.

When Lukacs spoke, his voice crackled like splintered wood. 'Was it not enough to kill me once?'

'Get out.'

His eyes were dreadful. They shone with terrible intensity. 'You loved me, you say. Am I to be appeased by that? You tell me you love me and then you-'

'Get out, GET OUT!' Jozsef shrieked. 'Curse me for being this weak but I cannot destroy my own flesh! They will hunt you for what you have done and rightly so. Leave now. Take what you must. I renounce you as my son. You are no longer hosszu elet. You've made your choice.' He hissed the last word like a curse: 'Kirekesztett.'

Lukacs stared. He clambered to his feet. One hand to his throat, he stumbled from the room.

'Balazs Jani is waiting outside, Lord.'

The Fnok took a breath and sighed it out, feeling his chest sink beneath his clothes. A week had pa.s.sed since his first conversation with Jozsef. When the horologist returned to the tanacs townhouse three days later, he came without his son and with an explanation of what had happened.

Quite how Jozsef could have been so convinced of his son's guilt, without even any further investigation, had confused them all at first. But it was, in its way, particularly d.a.m.ning. That he had let the boy escape brought its own consequence, one that pained the Fnok almost more than he could bear. The events of recent days had been the most difficult he had faced, but the security of the hosszu eletek rested with him. He must remain dispa.s.sionate.

Sitting at the great table in the tanacs chamber, the Fnok turned first to his right and then his left, meeting the eyes of the two elders beside him. Both wore the official horsehair headpieces of office. He felt the weight of the periwig atop his own head. It was not a pressure that comforted him. 'Are we in complete agreement, then?'

Pakov, to his right, cleared his throat. 'We must do this, Lord. I feel for the boy, naturally, but it is not just tradition that demands our intervention. Dangerous forces are lining up against us. Public opinion is shifting. We act not to punish the crimes of a single son, but to protect the lives of all.'

'The greater good,' the Fnok muttered. He held out his hands before him, eyes tracing the network of veins, the liver spots, the age. How he hated this. How long had he served? And all of it meaningless if he failed now to navigate safe pa.s.sage through the carnage Balazs Lukacs had strewn in his wake.

He took a long breath, feeling the air filling his chest, listening to it rasp into his lungs, as if through dusty corridors and into forgotten catacombs.

To a chamber guard, he said, 'Send him in.'

The door opened and Balazs Jani, first son of Balazs Jozsef, stepped into the room. He was dressed sombrely. Black suit, dark shirt. Still not quite a man, his eyes betrayed his feelings: silver flashes, green flecks. Fear, perhaps, tinged with anger; shame.

Jani approached the table, hands by his sides. He bowed his head. 'Lord. My lords.'

The Fnok strained to his feet and held out his hand.

Jani's eyebrows raised. He stared at the proffered hand for several seconds. Then he moved forward, bent and kissed it.

The Fnok took his seat. 'Jani, I am glad you have come.'

'You called me, Lord. What else would I do?'

'Of course, of course.'

'This is about my-' he caught himself. 'About the kirekesztett.'

The Fnok nodded. 'Yes, Jani. That is correct.'

'You asked my father to bring the kirekesztett to judgement. He failed to comply with your wishes. Lu- the kirekesztett . . . has fled.'

'We know that. Your father has told us what happened.'

'And now my father is to be judged.' A tear appeared on Jani's cheek. It seemed to anger the young man. His jaw clenched.

'Your father is a good man. Do not forget that. He has made a grave error, one that cannot easily be excused. But there is a graver matter here. More at stake. I wish to talk to you about that.'

Jani raised a hand and wiped away the tear. His face was set, determined. He gave a brisk nod.

The Fnok continued. 'When I first spoke to your father, we had only first reports of what happened in Buda. Since then, we have gathered more information. The accused boy has been interviewed. The additional details he provided lend credence to his story. The girl, after questioning, has corroborated it. I'm sorry to tell you this, Jani, but the rdg who raped Krisztina Dorfmeister was your brother.'

The young man bowed his head. 'I know. Like my father, I knew it the moment I heard.'

'So you also know what must be done.'

'His blood must be removed from the line.'

The Fnok stared at Jani, studying him closely. 'And someone, as a consequence, must be sent to complete that task.'

Jani frowned. 'You're not suggesting that I-'

Pakov, to the right of the Fnok, lurched forwards and banged the table with his fist. 'You presume to instruct the orokos Fnok?' he shouted.

'No. Of course not! I did not mean-'

'Enough!' The Fnok held up his hand. 'I will not have this degenerate into a brawl. Jani, you will listen and you will obey. If you do not, we will have no choice but to rule against the entire Balazs family.

'The evidence before us is enough to rule in absentia. The kirekesztett formerly known as Balazs Lukacs is cast out. His blood will be laid to rest. Your father has failed at his task. As the eldest son, that task now pa.s.ses to you. You will hunt down the kirekesztett and bring him our justice. Do so, and the honour of your family will be restored. Until then, Jani, we have no choice. Your vegzet judgement is suspended. You are refused rights to continue your courtship of the Zsinka girl. You will not see her, speak to her, communicate with her or her family in any way. Your brother Izsak is too young to aid you. Nevertheless, his future rights of vegzet are equally revoked until this deed is done.'

The Fnok leaned forward in his seat. Jani's face had blanched, eyes flickering in disbelief from face to face. 'Balazs Jani, do you understand the obligation you have been served by your Fnok?'

Jani closed his eyes, opened them. The green flecks had chased the silver away. He pulled himself erect. 'I understand, Lord. And I obey. The kirekesztett will receive your justice. I will stand before you again and you will return to my family the honour this rdg has stolen.'

'I pray that is so, Jani. Know that we do this not out of spite, nor out of punishment, but out of duty.' He turned to the men who flanked him. 'Gentlemen, we have ruled. The hosszu elet known as Balazs Lukacs is no more. From this day, until our justice is served, the disgraced kirekesztett son will be known as Jakab.'

CHAPTER 11.