Blood & Bond

by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

  Shianan could feel his face flushing. “I will try something, my lord. I never meant to give offense.”

  “Offending a mage could be dangerous,” Soren warned with a wry smile. “You might consider whether you want to pursue this.” Outside, they could hear a servant admitting the newcomer. “Becknam, I have my duties, but I hope to see you soon. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need anything.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” Shianan bowed and backed appropriately away.

  As he returned to the office awaiting him, he thought of the stacked paperwork rather than the bleak and empty room containing it. Something had changed, but invisibly, like a plate of bedrock which had shifted but left the grass growing above. He was still only the bastard, a commander in the army and a stranger in the court, but he had a new master and he was not quite alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “TRADER MATTEO!” JARRICK pointed toward the front of the caravan. “I’d like the slave from wagon three.”

  The trader frowned. “I said you could manage for yourself on this trip.”

  “You also said if I needed him, I could ask.”

  “And you need him?”

  Jarrick clenched his jaw. “He is my brother.”

  “So you say.” Matteo gave a grim smile. “I’ve heard every variant of every story. I think my favorite is the one where the slave knows some secret treasure and must be questioned in private. As if I can’t guess what jewels they’re after... You want him sent to you privately, no doubt?”

  Jarrick’s breath caught and he felt his face go scarlet. “He is my brother, truly. We will sit in the sight of others, if you—‍”

  Matteo made an annoyed gesture. “Keep your explanations and promises. But he’ll be chained again. I won’t lose my record to your... brother.”

  Jarrick nodded, thinking it better than to argue and risk the chance of speaking with Luca. What they had to say could not be said before others. “Thank you.” Some part of him was galled to thank the man for releasing his own brother to him, but the merchant in him knew the value of smoothing the way for future negotiations.

  He went to the fire where two slaves crouched. One scraped at a nearly empty pot with a wooden implement, and the other dished up a bowl of steaming soup and handed it to Jarrick. It burned his tongue, so he waved the bowl gently in the air as he went for a drink. A small slave was determinedly hefting a water bucket to his shoulder, but he paused long enough to let Jarrick dip a drink before shuffling toward the rear of the caravan.

  Jarrick took a tentative mouthful of soup. He was not sure how to approach Luca. He had not really spoken to him—only those few words in the baths, when Jarrick was mad with relief and Luca dizzily resentful with illness, and all witnessed by Luca’s master whom Jarrick had earlier obediently attempted to murder. There had been no understanding there, no reconciliation. No healing.

  The soup wasn’t good, but fine meals weren’t a priority in a caravan of human merchandise. He started toward the wagon he would share that night with the trader.

  The trader was not there, but Luca was. He sat in the empty bed of the wagon, arms crossed over his drawn knees, chin resting on his upper wristcuff. His face was without any particular expression, his eyes hollow.

  Jarrick was suddenly afraid to speak. He stopped and looked at his brother across the short distance. After a moment Luca’s eyes blinked and he raised his head. “Jarrick.”

  Jarrick swallowed. “Luca.”

  Luca’s eyes shifted. “Or, I should say, master.” He licked his lips. “After all, I am your property now.”

  “Don’t, Luca.” Jarrick felt as if he’d been punched. “You know that isn’t what I want.”

  “No?”

  Jarrick wanted to pull his collar away from his neck, but it was already loose. “Come away a little distance, where we can talk.”

  Luca’s jaw tightened. “As you order.”

  Jarrick, stunned and hurt, watched him unfold his legs and ease off the rear of the wagon. He did not know what to say, so he led Luca silently to the edge of the camp, where they were in plain view of anyone caring to look but shadowed enough that their conversation could not be read. Jarrick sat on the matted grass and stared at his cooling soup.

  “I waited—I didn’t think our first talk should be in front of all the others in the line.” After a moment Jarrick realized Luca was still standing. He looked up at him. “Sit down, won’t you?”

  Luca made a stiff bow and obeyed.

  Jarrick’s heart sank. “Luca... I am not your master.”

  “Trader Matteo and the others think otherwise.”

  Had the trader said something to him, too? “I don’t care what they think. I am not your master.”

  “Then what are you?” Luca kept his eyes on the fallen leaves, but his voice was angry. “You take me away without consulting me, you have me chained in the stable and the line, you—‍”

  “That was none of my doing! I could not get into the stable last night, I tried. And you saw yourself I wanted you out of the line this morning. Trader Matteo worries too much over losing you to escape. He hardly believes we’re brothers.”

  Luca flinched.

  Jarrick softened. “Luca—I’m sorry. For all that happened, I’m sorry.”

  Luca said nothing. Jarrick could see little of his face, bowed as it was, and after a moment he took another mouthful of soup, just to occupy himself. Luca glanced at him and then returned to the leaves again.

  “I couldn’t wait for another caravan,” Jarrick said. “The names of all our conspirators are on a single sheet of paper, in my handwriting. And Shianan Becknam told me himself he wanted me out of the city by dawn.”

  “Because you tried to kill him.”

  Jarrick had no answer which he had not already found insufficient. He stared at his soup. “Have you eaten?”

  “Had mine already.”

  “You want some of this?”

  Luca shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

  Jarrick tried to take another sip, but it was tasteless. He set the bowl aside. “You want to tell me about it?”

  Luca crossed his arms and hunched forward.

  “Luca, talk to me.”

  “Is that an order?” came the strained answer.

  “Flames, Luca, I said—‍”

  Jarrick froze with sudden insight. Luca was not grinding Jarrick’s nose in his unhappy position. He was keeping Jarrick at arm’s length and testing, even begging, perhaps unconsciously, to be told he was not a slave but a brother.

  Jarrick’s ire melted and he moved impulsively toward his younger brother, catching him as Luca looked up in surprise. Jarrick threw his arms around him and pulled him close. “Luca, I’m sorry. I asked everyone I could find, but Trader Matteo won’t be moved. As soon as we cross the border, I promise— You are my brother, Luca. I’m so sorry I did not find you. I’m sorry I did not stop them that day. I didn’t know—I couldn’t react... Luca, I’m sorry.”

  Luca, stiff in his arms, softened. “I...”

  Jarrick gulped and released him. “Tell me, Luca. I should hear it all. It’s my penance to hear it.”

  Luca drew back. “I don’t know that I want to tell you all.”

  “Then tell me what you can.”

  Luca crossed his arms. “At—those first days—I kept waiting. I was in one of the little closed stalls where they put rebellious slaves to stew and starve, or where they put freshly enslaved soft merchants’ sons to realize the world has utterly changed. I sat there in my own dirt with my wrists clamped together, waiting for Father to come for me.” His throat worked. “Then they put me to work grinding grain, and I was so relieved when the trader warned I shouldn’t be whipped before my sale.” He gave a little bitter mockery of a laugh. “I didn’t realize that left the switch and anything else the stockmen could think to use.”

  Jarrick clenched his fists. “We thought you’d make a clerk, that you’d have a soft place doing numbers.” />
  “Sandis didn’t want that. He wanted to see us debased.”

  “I know.”

  “It did not happen, though. A man came looking for a slave to draw his children’s cart and I begged for the work, promising I would tell them histories as we went. That stopped him. He didn’t believe I could, of course, but when he tested me I knew everything I’d claimed.”

  “You were always reading histories.”

  “It saved me. He thought me a bargain, an educated slave for the price of an unconditioned mill-grinder, and he took me as a tutor for his son and daughter.” Luca took a deep breath. “It was not a bad place. I was a slave and that galled, but I was fairly used. I thought I had hard work then, though later I knew... But I’d gone to Furmelle.”

  Jarrick nodded. The Furmelle slave uprising had scattered lawful citizens in flight and dumped hundreds of captured slaves onto the market, drowning the labor economy. Their house had observed and profited well by those events. “What happened then?”

  Luca shrugged. “It was all nightmare. My master’s family hid in their home behind locked gates. I was taken by soldiers one day on the street. My master would not claim me; they were afraid. Of all of us.” He hesitated. “As a merchant, you must know what happened. There was enormous supply and little demand for rebellious slaves, even cheap ones. We wasted and rotted and starved until someone purchased my lot at an obscenely low price.” He smiled weakly. “I should have been insulted.”

  Jarrick cleared his throat. “I looked for you, Luca. Really, I did. But there were so few records.”

  Luca shook his head. “You would never have found anyone in that chaos.” He licked his lips. “You want more?”

  Jarrick clenched his fists. “I asked for everything.”

  Luca cupped his hands about his knees. “Cheap labor goes to hard, menial work. I was set to pick lettuces. But we’d been chained for weeks, and at the end of the day, they called me too soft for the work and sold me in the twilight to a passing tinker.”

  Jarrick waited. “And?”

  “And I lived the next year and more chained to the cart’s shafts. He was afraid. I was a Furmelle slave, no matter what I hadn’t done, and he was ill. So he kept me chained where I could not escape and could do no harm.” Luca gave a sad, bitter smile. “Actually, he may not have been a bad man, if not for the pain and the drink he took for it. But I didn’t have him without the pain and the drink. I went over most of the Faln Plateau chained to that cart.”

  Jarrick nodded slowly, only half-rejecting the image of his brother shackled to an angry drunkard’s cart. He could not avoid this. What was painful to hear had been horrific to live. “Go on.”

  “And then he finally died, working on some tools for the Gehrn. The Gehrn high priest took me.” Luca drew his knees to his chest.

  Jarrick knew he was staring but was unsure of what else to do. “What then?”

  “I wanted to die.” Luca nearly whispered, his eyes fixed on the ground. “I would have been happier never to wake in the morning. You know the Gehrn are a militaristic cult? He treated me as an animal—I half became an animal, too ashamed even to think of myself as myself.” His body was rigid. “I hated it until I didn’t have the will even to hate anymore.”

  Jarrick’s mind reeled with possible horrors, but he didn’t have the courage to ask which were true.

  “Then Shianan Becknam came for the Shard of Elan, to create a shield against the Ryuven. When the high priest went to Alham, he brought me to serve as usual. He—I was also—I was also a component to a ritual for the Shard, which needed the blood of a prisoner of war. Since I had come through Furmelle, I sufficed, and he flogged me.”

  Jarrick sat immobile, thinking of the stripy scars on Luca’s unconscious body.

  “The shield collapsed—I suppose you heard about that. Master Shianan took me from the prison, kept me himself instead of letting me be sent to auction again.”

  Jarrick saw again the injured commander flat on his stomach, sobbing with the effort to pull a sodden corpse from the river. “He thought well of you.”

  “We were friends. He was my master, but he was my good friend.”

  A sudden, desperate fear stabbed Jarrick, that Luca might attribute higher qualities to his savior of convenience than to the brother who had searched across countries for him. “Masters don’t befriend their slaves. You were glad to be away from the high priest, surely, and—‍”

  “Shut up, Jarrick.” Luca’s voice was flat and acidic. He closed his eyes. “He remade me. He gave me a chance to escape and be free, though I couldn’t recognize it at the time. He—he promised never to sell me. Until you.” He opened his eyes again and glared at the dead leaves.

  Jarrick tried to swallow against his closed throat. “Me?” He gulped. “Do you mean you would have—you can’t have wanted to stay. He was kind enough to you, but you were a slave there.”

  “And what will I be in Ivat?” demanded Luca. “You might take the cuffs from my wrists, but I have been sold once already there. How can I go back to those same people—‍”

  “They are not the same people.” Jarrick’s head drooped and he blew out his breath. “Nothing is the same, Luca. Father’s changed, very changed. He drinks, and he eats viante. There are stretches in which he is nearly himself, his old self, but then there are periods when he hides in his rooms and will not open the door.” Jarrick rubbed at his treacherously damp eyes. “Thir manages things now, when Father is—unable. Sara will be married soon. It isn’t the same, Luca. They will be glad to see you.”

  “Will they?”

  Jarrick’s chest spasmed. Would they? He had not even thought to question that. Surely they would want to see Luca back home. Surely they would welcome him as a son or a brother, not a reminder of their most shameful moment. “Of course they will. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Luca clenched his fists and looked across the grass. “Why didn’t you come for me?”

  Jarrick stared at his stony profile. “What do you mean? I followed you to Furmelle, I asked everyone in the auction house, I looked in the records—‍”

  “You looked in the records! But if our house had sent around that you were seeking—if after you started ascending again, after word had gone around about Sandis and people knew—if you had offered a reward...” Luca bit off the words.

  Jarrick could not respond. He could not explain that no one ever spoke of Luca, no one mentioned what had happened, not their father, their brother, no client, no worker, no peer in the shipping industry... It was as if Luca had never existed. But Luca was right. If they had summoned the courage, if they had used the first fruits of sympathy’s profit to offer a reward, they might have found him.

  “And then, when I finally return, I’m dragged back on the end of a caravan chain, thin and footsore and filthy and beaten, and everything they see confirms I am nothing but what I was then, a pawn and a slave without merit or dignity.” His voice shook a little, as if he did not quite trust that he could say the words.

  “You were never...” Jarrick’s voice failed. He could not protest when Luca’s point was too clear. He had been sacrificed.

  For years he had wanted to bring Luca home. He had never thought Luca might fear to come with him. But he had been a fool; how could he have thought that Luca would be as overjoyed to see them?

  “How would you come, then?” He forced a smile and tried to lighten the question. “I cannot afford to let you triumphantly ride a horse through the gates. We’re faring better, but not that much better.”

  Luca acknowledged the weak joke with a minute lift of his mouth. “No.”

  Jarrick laced his fingers together and propped his chin on them. “Think on this, then: I have a friend with a small house outside Ivat, a little retreat in the lower mountains. He has generously offered to let me use it if I wish. I could take you there. You could rest a while, let—let the marks fade from your wrists, get your feet under you. You could come home when you felt ready.”r />
  Luca nodded slowly. “That might be good.” He rubbed unconsciously at the cuffs on his wrists.

  Jarrick exhaled unsteadily. “You don’t know how I did try, Luca. I did. No matter where I was, in what land, no matter who was with me, I couldn’t help but look at every black-haired slave we passed. I thought so many times that I’d recognized your walk or saw your profile, or... Luca, I thought you were dead, and still I couldn’t help but look for you. And then I heard your voice, and a moment later you were dead again.” Tears broke through his thin control. “You don’t know how glad I was, only you were so barely alive, and I was afraid that if you lived you would hate me. And I was so afraid he would not let you go, or he would ask so much that—but I would have to pay it, no matter what the price, and...”

  Luca sniffed. “Jarrick, I don’t hate you.”

  Jarrick threw a hopeful glance at him. “No?” He impulsively leaned toward his brother and embraced him again. “Thank you.”

  Luca wept quietly, and for a long moment they held one another.

  The sound of a forced cough made both Jarrick and Luca jump. Jarrick turned as Luca hurried to his feet.

  “It’s late,” Trader Matteo said gruffly, a dozen paces away. “Time to get back.”

  Jarrick turned to Luca. “Tomorrow, I’ll walk with—‍”

  “No,” Luca said. “Not where I’m chained. I don’t—just don’t.”

  Jarrick nodded.

  Luca threw a quick glance at Trader Matteo before starting toward the third wagon.

  Jarrick rose to face the trader. “Wait,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Can’t you let him free? I swear I’ll tell no one. Your reputation won’t suffer.”

  “Not yet. If you’ve waited for years, you can wait a few days more.”

  “If I waited—then you believe now we are brothers?”

  Matteo smiled without humor. “I’ve known since the commander-count first charged me with taking the slave.”

  “But why didn’t you let me have him?”

  Matteo shook his head. “A man does not become a slave incidentally. Men fall from honorable humanity through some act. When we collected him, there was mention of a brother, which matched your claim, but that did nothing to assure me your brother had not been enslaved for crime or debt, or that you were not another criminal come for him. I have no wish to be robbed or murdered, and I took precautions.”