Blood & Bond

by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

  He was such a fool. “I mean, if I thought of asking....”

  Now Ariana looked angry. “I will have whatever friends I please, Shianan Becknam, regardless of whether you approve of them. I know you must hate the Ryuven, and I wish that weren’t so, because I do love Tamaryl even if he is the Pairvyn. He is my dear friend and I owe him my life. Maru, too, cared for me when I was helpless in the Ryuven world, and now he is helpless here in my world. They deserve better than a public axing to please a festival crowd. Is that what you wanted to know? Did you mean to ask if I would distance my friends?”

  “I—‍”

  “I won’t. I would no more abandon them than I would abandon you when some brute refers to you as the bastard. I hold my friends more dear than that. Do you understand?”

  Shianan looked at her a moment, his chest burning, and then he looked away and began to chuckle sadly.

  “Shianan!”

  “Yes, my lady mage, I understand.” He did. It was clear now why he was fascinated by this woman who stood too passionately by her convictions while he bowed to pressure. “I am sorry to have upset you, Ariana. I did not mean to do so. I would not ask you to give up your friends, even the Ryuven.”

  “Then what did you mean?”

  He shook his head. “I wish I had your bravery.”

  She caught his hands. “You are brave,” she said, and her voice was low and serious. “I don’t mean only in fighting the Ryuven, though obviously that’s true. But you face—every day, you have—with the king—‍” She hesitated, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, as if she feared her own words. “Just, you’re very brave, Shianan. And I am in awe of it.”

  He stared at her, unprepared for such open admiration. “I...”

  She smiled at him, open and kind and strong like he wasn’t.

  He looked down and fought for breath. “I am not brave, or I could speak right now.”

  “I think sometimes we most fear those we most cherish,” she said quietly. “It is easy to speak to someone whose opinion may not matter. But to someone whose respect we want, that’s an entirely different consideration.”

  He blew out his breath. “I do care about the king’s opinion. Perhaps too much.” He tried to swallow. “But if you think I am brave, I will find a way to speak to him.”

  Her eyelids flickered. “About?”

  Sweet all, he could not bear the shame of facing her if she accepted him now and then the king forbade it, leaving him helpless to act. He wanted desperately for Ariana to see him victorious, to see him with the strength she had, to stand by his own mind, and that meant he could not bare his vulnerable desire until he knew he could act on it.

  Energy flooded him like the start of a battle, mixed with a new heat that flushed his entire body. He leaned close to her, breathing the scent of her. “I will speak to the king. Let me be brave and speak to the king.”

  Her eyes threatened to engulf him. “And then you’ll tell me what it is you want to say?”

  “I promise.” He squeezed her hands between his. “I’m going now. Please, don’t call me back. I am not brave enough to walk away from you.”

  She smiled. “Then I will wait until tomorrow.” Her smile broke into a wide grin.

  He wanted to kiss her—but he was not that brave, not yet. After he had conquered the king’s audience. “Tomorrow,” he confirmed, and then he reluctantly dropped her hands and backed away. “I’ll come to your office in the afternoon, or possibly the evening. Good night!”

  The chill night air bit at his flushed skin, but he hardly felt it. Now, he would prepare. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, blocking the quiet street around him. The king could be generous toward him, yes, his title and Fhure proved that.

  Tomorrow. He would chance it all tomorrow.

  MARU EASED BACK SILENTLY, hoping the floor would not squeak and betray him. He had not meant to spy, but the commander and the rika had been intent upon each other and had not noticed him as he drew back from a conversation which was clearly not to be interrupted.

  He had not heard their words, but they had been so clearly a match, so close in intimate conversation, their postures conflicted and hopeful... He would not tell Tamaryl yet. His friend was occupied enough in finding their way home and grieving the loss of Parrin’sho. He did not need this fresh disappointment, too.

  Maru hunched his mismatched wings and slipped up the stairs.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  LUCA’S HEAD HURT, A hurt that reached down his spine and through his arms and about his stomach, so that if he moved he might be sick. Noise swirled about him dizzyingly.

  His head itched somehow over the hurt, and he reached to touch it. But his motion was arrested by a blunt tug at his wrist, coinciding with another blunt tug at his other wrist.

  Sharp fear raced through Luca, burning away pain and illness. He opened his eyes and stared at the iron shackles binding his arms. He lay on his side in straw, facing a wooden wall. A light chain snaked through the scuffed straw, connecting his shackles to a ring in the wall. About him he heard the now-recognizable sounds of a slaver’s stable.

  Luca’s head pounded in fresh agony. He was a slave again—he didn’t know what had happened, but he was a slave again. He closed his eyes and tried to think. He remembered the caravan stopping, yes. And then the bandits had attacked. He had seen the guards fighting, and at first he had not realized that they were fighting among themselves, that some were in league with the bandits. That was when he had run with—

  Marla! He jerked upright to look for her. But the stall whirled about him and his vision blurred darkly.

  Hands caught his shoulder. “Easy, master,” whispered a familiar voice. “Be careful.”

  Luca could barely hear him over the blood pounding in his ears. “Cole?”

  “Shh, I don’t want them to hear. How’s your head?”

  “Where’s Marla?”

  “She got away, master. But we didn’t. Isen’s dead.”

  Luca choked down nausea, relieved for Marla, grieved for Isen, frightened for them. He blinked his vision clear. “What happened?”

  “Slavers and bandits. I’m overseer for their new slaves they’re selling off. You’re one of them.” Cole’s voice sounded worried. “I tried to put you in the back where you wouldn’t go as fast. I said no one would want to see you until your head was better. But they want a low price sooner rather than a high price later, so you don’t have much time.”

  Luca reached for his chest and realized his tunic was torn. He felt inside the unlaced shirt and groped futilely for the wallet that should have been there. “Where’s—‍”

  “They took it, master. You can’t buy yourself out. They took it.”

  Luca’s head throbbed. His inheritance... “You’ve got to get me out of here, Cole.”

  “I can’t, master. They took you half-dead to the smith and put the cuffs on you. I was only just able to put you here.”

  Luca reached two-handed to probe gingerly at the swollen wound and sucked his breath. “I can’t do anything. I’m chained to a wall. You have to do this.”

  “I can’t! I’m an overseer. If they think I’m helping you to escape...”

  Cole was terrified of losing his tenuous safety. Luca rubbed dried blood from his fingers. “You’re an overseer, and I’m just another slave waiting to sell. Why do you still call me master?”

  Cole hesitated. “I don’t know. You promised me a chance to buy my freedom. I wish...”

  Voices rose from the next aisle as two men began to argue over who had seen a particular slave first.

  Luca looked at Cole. “You have to release me. You’re an overseer, no one here will question you. We can walk out, as if you’re taking me somewhere else, and we can hide.”

  “Hide?” repeated Cole incredulously. “We can’t hide! We can’t walk out—‍”

  “We don’t have any other choice.”

  “Cole!” boomed a voice. Cole straightened and jerked to face the end of
the row, and slaves on either side shifted. A man came about the corner, tall and stern, and a few of the slaves ducked their heads. Luca recognized the traitor caravan guard who’d pursued him and Marla. Cole tensed as he started forward to meet him. “My lord.”

  “Where have you been—‍” He stopped and looked at Luca, sitting uncomfortably upright. “Oh, so he’s more or less awake now. Been rubbing his nose in it, I guess? No harm in that, I suppose. But you’ve got other work.” He jerked his head to indicate behind him. “There’s a man eight rows down who keeps arguing he’s a freeman, keeps demanding we let him go. It’s disturbing the customers. Go and shut him up, whatever it takes.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  The bandit glanced at Luca. “At least you’re sitting quiet. That’s smart. You’ll bring a better price if we haven’t had to hush you.”

  Cole ventured, “My lord, if you—‍”

  “Shut up and move. I’ve got enough to do without teaching you your work too. Get him quiet and behaving. And you, be ready to show for prospective buyers. I’m not renting space for you to play sickbed, I want you out and paid for. If you don’t sell today, you’ll auction tomorrow, so look sharp. Keep your head up so you don’t look half-dead.” He turned on Cole. “What are you doing still here, you overgrown swine? I can have you in a train for Salfield in twenty minutes. Move!”

  “Yes, my lord.” Cole cast a quick desperate look at Luca and then started away.

  Luca looked down at his chained wrists. It was as before—worse than before. What would happen to him now?

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  “THE CALM CONTINUES. There have been no confirmed Ryuven attacks since Groom Lake,” Ewan Hazelrig said to the assembled Circle. “If there are other Ryuven still within the shield, they are not showing themselves.”

  No, Tamaryl would not. Not to this dangerous foe.

  He eased back from the Wheel’s meeting room door and set off down the curved corridor. There would be maps in the Wheel’s library, which as a famulus he could enter without question. Once he had located Groom Lake, he would set out. He had to reach it before Mage Hazelrig, who would undoubtedly have reached the same conclusion: The Ryuven carrying the broken piece of the Shard of Elan must have died in the last raid, so that no others could leap across through the shield since. And the broken chip must be at Groom Lake.

  The library’s maps showed him the town’s location, tantalizingly close to Alham. He could reach it in a day’s travel if he hurried.

  He did not wait for a new day. No one questioned the fair-haired slave boy as he jogged out the city gates and along the coast road.

  GROOM LAKE WAS A MISNAMED fishing village on the sea. Tamaryl did not know yet how a slave boy would ask for the bodies of the slain raiders, but he was closer now than before.

  He had shivered through the night, not dressed for a late-winter trek, but he had arrived before Mage Hazelrig. He had to move quickly to keep his advantage. But now, on the outer edge of the town, he had no idea of how to start.

  “Hello, boy, are you lost?” A little girl waved to him. “Are you a slave? Where’s your master?”

  Years of practice allowed Tamaryl to react without undue humiliation or resentment. “I’ve lost him. We were going down to the coast road and I fell behind in the dark. Is this the way to Alham?”

  She shook her head. “You’ve come the wrong way.”

  Tam widened his eyes. “They’ll think me a runaway! I walked all through the night trying to catch up, and now your town elders will beat me!”

  “I thought slaves didn’t mind being beaten.”

  Tamaryl didn’t want to sort out this confused idea. “Can I sleep in your barn, just until I can start back to Alham? I don’t want anyone to see me. Or where are the slaves kept here?”

  She looked puzzled. “Fergus has a slave who helps on his boat. And I think the herbalist has one?”

  Not every town relied on the slave economy so prevalent in the rest of Chrenada. Fishing was a business which tended to favor skill and family cooperation, unlike plowing or road-laying or hauling. Tam had come to a community where he would stand out rather than blending in. “Can I sleep in your barn?” he repeated.

  She nodded. “Don’t frighten Duchess. She’s going to have her baby soon.”

  Duchess was a brown and black goat with a suspicious eye. Tam fluffed her bed of straw and burrowed into it, ignoring her judgmental gaze. He was cold, and hungry, and now probably hunted, and no nearer finding the broken chip.

  The pregnant goat was tethered in one corner of the barn with her straw, a bucket of water, and an armload of browse. Outside the reach of her tether, to her frustration, were a few bales of grass hay, set among barrels of fish and bundles of dried seaweed. One barrel had a large smear over the lid and side, where someone had spilled ink or paint.

  Or blood.

  Tamaryl sat up in his straw, earning another baleful look from Duchess. The Ryuven had raided here, and they had been in this barn, trying for the fish and seaweed. He got up and went to the stores, though of course no one would have left bodies to rot in the warehouse.

  People had died here. His people, the Chrenadan fishermen, others. They had died for these barrels of fish.

  “I brought you some bread.”

  He jumped, though it was only the girl, and then he felt foolish. “Thanks.”

  She looked past him to the fish and seaweed. “This is what the Ryuven wanted to steal.”

  He nodded, his mouth full.

  “They killed my aunt Tabbie.”

  She said it too matter-of-factly, and it made Tamaryl’s stomach twist. “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t answer. After a moment she said, “I thought you’d be asleep.”

  “I want to. I just was looking at the blood.”

  That made sense to her. She pointed at the rafters above. “One of them was caught up there. He was trying to fly in the barn, and Otser shot him with a crossbow, and he fell on the crossbeam. He hung there a moment, still flapping, and Otser shot him again and he fell onto the barrels. Scattered all over.”

  Tamaryl stared at her. “Did you hear about it? Or did you see this happen?”

  She pointed to the far corner. “I was hiding back there in the feed bin. I watched it. Afterward, when they were dragging out the Ryuven, I went and looked. I kept some flowers and shells which fell out of his bag.”

  Tamaryl’s breath caught. “Was there a crystal?”

  “Just shells and some flowers.”

  Had the Ryuven raider picked up some pretty souvenirs of the human world to take home to a friend or lover?

  “Where did they take the dead Ryuven?” If they had tossed the bodies into the ocean, hope was lost. Tamaryl couldn’t hope to dive in the winter-cold sea, even if the bodies had miraculously not been carried away by tide or scavengers.

  “To the midden pit, I think. They were wondering whether it would hurt the pigs if they got at them.”

  Tamaryl nodded numbly. He had known there would be no easy way to do this. Searching a midden for half-eaten, rotting corpses was no more than could be expected. He could bathe and vomit and bathe once he had recovered the fragment.

  After a bit, the girl left, conversation exhausted. Tamaryl was exhausted too, but he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he had searched where the Ryuven had fallen. He crawled around the area she had indicated, looking for any gleam. Would the fragment reflect in the dim light? What if it was covered in dust?

  There was a rat burrow beneath one of the pallets of barrels. Did rats collect trinkets like crows did? Could the chip have fallen down the hole? Tamaryl was unwilling to push his hand into the dark hole, lest an occupying rat bite his probing fingers. He went to the grass hay and fished for a woody stem, bringing it back to stab around in the burrow. Hearing no squeaks of protest and feeling nothing move at its touch, he screwed up his face and reached into the hole, glad no one was there to see the vaunted Pairvyn flinch at a rat hole.

/>   His fingers touched something hard, and he caught his breath. He caught it with his fingertips and coaxed it forward until he could grasp it, when his heart sank. It was curved, not angular. He drew it out anyway, revealing a tarnished brooch.

  At least he had found something. He put his hand in again, just to be certain, and his fingers found another object. This one was planar and cool, and again his breath caught. He cupped the object in his fingers and rocked it into his grip.

  It was a fragment of crystal, short enough to fit in his palm and wide enough to fill the fingers he closed protectively about it. It was salvation for Maru and Tamaryl.

  He could not stay and sleep. He could not risk being found and detained now that he had the fragment. He set the brooch on a barrel for the girl to find and left, followed by Duchess’s disapproving gaze.

  SAFE WITHIN HIS CLOSED room, Tamaryl stared at the piece of crystal on his little table. He felt a measure of guilt in hiding his find; he knew the White Mage would give him nearly anything he asked.

  At least, he would have believed that at one time. But that was before he learned Mage Hazelrig had hidden knowledge of Ryuven prisoners, before he had not saved the helpless Parrin’sho. Tamaryl was not wrong to keep the broken bit of the Shard of Elan to himself for a time.

  Mage Hazelrig hadn’t noticed his absence; he was on the road to Groom Lake. Tamaryl had hidden off the roadside every time he saw someone coming from the direction of Alham. Tomorrow, Mage Hazelrig would be supervising the excavation of the midden.

  The jagged crystal seemed to glow with reflected candlelight. Though small, it absorbed much of the power used on it, and he would need to exert himself to affect it at all. But it would amplify the results of his magic, as well, if he could work it properly.

  It galled him to be so weak.

  It frightened him, more than he admitted to Maru or even to himself most days. What if he did not recover? The Pairvyn ni’Ai could not return without power. The sho would tear him apart politically, and then the che would do it physically.