Benton had cast a frowning look at Luca’s correction. “That will do, of course. We’ll bring him in mid-morning, if you—”
“No,” interrupted Shianan. “He stays, and you’ll collect your fee in the morning.”
Benton hesitated. “With all respect, m’lord—”
“I will write you a sale. Do you doubt I’m good for it? I will be working in this office all of tomorrow, so come at your leisure. I intend to set him on some of that work myself. And if he stays with you,” Shianan added, pulling Luca away from his captor and looking darkly at his bloodied face, “it seems he won’t be fit for service.”
The second man bristled defensively. “He was lying, we thought, about belonging to you. And he got loud when we made to take him away. Why’d you say he wasn’t yours?”
“I said I wasn’t missing anyone,” Shianan corrected. “Why didn’t you mention his name? He told you he was stolen, yes? Well, I thought he was lost for good.” He nodded toward the office door. “Go inside, Luca, and clean yourself up. If you two will step in, I’ll write a sale for you.”
He hastily scribbled a contract—“thank you, I’ll see you in the morning”—and locked the door behind the traders. In the living quarters, Luca had set lights and was sponging at his nose. Shianan paused as Luca turned, and for a moment they stared at one another.
Luca broke the silence first. “I’m so sorry, Master Shianan. I couldn’t think of anything else but to say that I was yours, and they never would have brought me this far without profit. I’ll earn it back for you, I’ll hire myself out—I’ll make it up somehow.”
Shianan ignored this. “Luca, what happened?”
“Eight hundred—it will take time, but I’ll earn it back—”
“Luca,” Shianan interrupted firmly. “I am not worried about the money. I would have paid far more. Didn’t I tell you no one could afford your price?”
Luca looked at him with surprised eyes as he lowered the reddened rag.
He was too pale behind the blood. “Sit. Do you need something to drink?”
Luca gave a half-smile. “The irony, master.”
Shianan cast him a reproving look. “I can handle a bottle myself, thank you.”
“No, please, I’d better have water. I don’t trust my head to anything stronger yet.”
Shianan brought a cup and sat to face him. “What happened to your head?”
“I proved a few weeks of training with a staff does not enable me to hold my own.” Luca reached to probe gently at the side of his head. “The swelling’s mostly faded, I think, but I still have aches.”
Shianan rose. “What kind of aches?”
“Dull, slow... I want to sleep. A constant dull fuzz, not coming and going.”
“Give me that light.” Shianan stood over him and parted his hair, frowning. “You have some bruising yet, but it’s old. Look me in the eye.” He studied the pupils, watched how they followed his movement. “I’ll guess you didn’t have a proper chance to recover?” He returned to his chair. “You’ll sleep long tonight, see how that does for you. Tell me where you’ve been.”
Luca laughed grimly. “Oh, Master Shianan, it’s a tale worthy of song. I have been a draft slave and the enslaved master of a slave. I have been a stranger from the eastern desert and a leper. I have been the homecoming guest of honor and the impostor of a dead man. I have been abducted by bandits and sold into slavery. And I have now been over the table six times, which could surely earn a prize if there were one.” He held up a hand tiredly to indicate the new wrist cuff.
Shianan stared, his heart twisting in his too-tight chest. “Didn’t you go back with Jarrick?”
Luca took a breath. “I did. And I was freed, and I even went home. But—it was no home to me, that’s the quickest way to say it. It’s all I think I can say on that for now. And so I was coming back here, as a freeman.”
“Here?”
“I wanted to take up business. I had a potential partner, or at least someone who might need an assistant.” He stopped and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I was so close. I had money, prospects, a place I wanted to go.” He huffed a grim sob of a laugh. “Well, at least I got to where I wanted to go.”
“What happened?”
“Our caravan was attacked. Hired guards were part of it. They took the cargo, the people, everything. We were sold as slaves. I didn’t want to go to the salt flats, so I told those two I’d been stolen and you would pay double my purchase price.” Luca paused. “Thank you.”
Shianan shook his head. “I told you, I’m not worried about the money. But I’d meant for you to be a freeman. You had your family and your homeland.”
Luca looked frustrated. “I told you, I chose to come. I wanted to find a place where no one knew me, where I could make a fresh start.” He looked down at his cup. “I haven’t made much of a start, have I?”
Shianan rose. “Finish your water and go to bed. You need rest, that’s obvious, and the story can wait until morning.” He reached beneath the bed and dragged out the rolled mattress. “Here.”
Luca glanced at the mat. “You still have it?”
“What would I have done with it?” Shianan hesitated and looked at the returned slave. “You weren’t supposed to need it again.”
Luca made a half-hearted smile. “Sorry, master.”
“King’s sweet oats.” Shianan shoved the mattress across the room, too fiercely. He lowered himself into a chair and rested his forehead against his hand. “Luca...”
He heard Luca shift in the chair. “I didn’t want it to be this way. I didn’t want to ask anything of you.”
“That’s not it at all.” Shianan blinked away traitorous tears. “I’m angry with myself for being glad you’re back.”
Luca stared at him, and then Shianan saw the rigidity drain from his shoulders. “I’m glad to be here,” he answered, his voice almost a whisper. He laced his fingers together and squeezed his knuckles white. “I have been a Furmelle slave, I have suffered daily abuse at the hands of the Gehrn, I have been a draft slave. I do not wish to be a slave, but this is the least of the three years of hell I have endured.” He straightened and looked levelly at Shianan, drawing a breath. “But this I do say to you: do not sell me again, not even toward my freedom.”
Shianan looked away. “I meant well by it. I thought you should go to your brother.”
“It was not so simple as that.” Luca’s throat worked visibly in the candlelight. “You sold me. The only thing I ever asked, the only thing you promised.”
Shianan sighed and rubbed his face. “I’m sorry, Luca. I am. I only... I meant well, believe me. That’s all I can say.”
“That was the only time you treated me as chattel, as a thing. I hadn’t known that you could.”
The words scorched Shianan like coals. The ground shifted beneath him, and he saw for the first time what it had been for Luca—not what Shianan had meant, but what had actually been. For a moment he couldn’t breathe.
He struggled for a response, keenly aware nothing could be adequate, and found only self-loathing and questions. “Then—then why did you come here again?”
Luca looked steadily at him. “I had the idea that, if I did, you might say you were sorry for it.”
For a moment Shianan could not answer. Words could not be sufficient. But at last he forced his mouth to work. “I’m sorry.”
The short sentence burned. He had thought Luca was only hesitating to approach what he really wanted, just as Shianan did. He had not imagined Luca might not have wanted family and freedom, that he might have considered Shianan’s liberation a betrayal. Sick horror filled him at what he had done, what Luca must have thought of him. “I thought it was the best thing for you.”
“At first, I didn’t see how you could,” Luca said. “But then I realized why you had.”
Shianan closed his eyes, as if that could stop Luca from penetrating his soul and seeing all. “I am sorry. Luca, I am so so
rry.”
“I understand it now, I think. But do not do it again.”
Shianan opened his eyes and met Luca’s gaze. “No.”
The word hung between them, too small for its significance.
Shianan took a breath. “We can write to your brother, buy you passage—”
“Don’t.” Luca shook his head and winced as he moved too quickly. “I can’t go back. Not yet. Not—not now.”
Shianan wanted to ask, but there was too much laid bare tonight. Luca would explain when he could.
“All I could think of was making it to Alham. I can’t think of what’s next, not yet. I just needed somewhere before I could even think...” Luca raised his eyes and fixed them on Shianan. “It seems you have the keeping of me now.”
Shianan’s chest tightened. “You...” He placed his hands on his knees. “That is a heavy burden.”
“It does not seem to be mine to manage.” Luca smiled for the first time, grim and determined.
“You may not wish to stay near me, Luca. I’m a target for Prince Alasdair, I’ve angered the king, and Prince Soren himself had to root me out of my hiding hole. I don’t know that I’ll make a good master for either of us.”
“Then I’ll have to ferret out some more fraudulent accounts, I suppose.”
Shianan smiled, his face flexing stiffly. “I’ll be happy to have you to do it.” He gestured. “Go to bed. You look like you were dragged the entire length of the road.”
Luca nodded gingerly and started toward the mattress. He hesitated as he toed off his worn boots. “Master Shianan. The bandits near Cascais, are they—could someone be sent to—”
“A squad will be dispatched.”
“They took other prisoners.”
“We’ll sort it out tomorrow, Luca. A night more won’t make a difference. You need rest and I need—’soats, I don’t even know what I need. Go to sleep.”
“Good night, then.”
Shianan went back to the unforgiving stack of paperwork, leaving the door to the living quarters ajar for no reason he could define. He was glad Luca had come back, glad beyond all excuse. King’s oats, if Soren had not urged him back, if he had delayed only a few hours, he would have missed Luca entirely.
And how could he be pleased that Luca was a slave again?
But something Luca had said... Yes, it was good to have a friend near again. It was good to have someone nearby to trust wholly.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
LUCA SLEPT LATE THE next morning, later than Shianan had known him to do. He didn’t wake until Shianan accidentally jostled a chest lid. Luca jolted awake, wincing. “Is it late?”
“No, no.”
Luca squinted at the laundry. “Oh. Here, let me get those. I’ll take them and—”
“Luca, let it be. How’s your head?”
A knock at the door interrupted, and Shianan rolled his eyes. “They didn’t wait long, did they? Wanted their coin, of course, and I can’t argue that. But they could have given me time to reach a moneylender. No, stay in bed.” He went to the door and pulled it roughly open.
Ariana looked at him with wide, staring eyes. He froze, startled. She took a breath and spoke first. “You’ve come back.”
“I—yes, plainly. I’m back.”
She waited a moment, as if expecting him to say something more. When he didn’t, she lifted her chin slightly. “Weren’t you even going to tell me you were in Alham again?”
Shianan flinched. The chill temperature of the outside yard began to creep through the open door.
“I overheard some soldiers talking in the yard. That’s how I learned you’d returned.”
Shianan made a vague gesture. “I came only yesterday. I haven’t been here long...”
“Long enough for it to be gossip. And I had thought I might have a claim on you above that of a common soldier.”
Shianan’s heart stopped in his chest. He drew a quick breath, seeking an explanation to offer. “I have something to do, an errand. When I return—” He stopped himself. If Ariana would fare better without his dangerous influence, as he’d told himself, how could he justify going to her once more?
She opened her mouth as if to reply, but no sound came. Instead she looked at him levelly for a moment, and Shianan could not read her expression.
She pulled her cloak about her and adjusted the collar minutely, the muscles of her jaw tightening as she held his eyes. “It seems we both have demands in our work. If you should want to speak with me later, you know where to find me.” She turned and walked across the courtyard without looking back.
Something seized Shianan, clawing up his stomach and into his chest and through his lungs, making him sick and pained and breathless all at once. His limbs froze and he could not break his paralysis as he watched, speechless. Ariana passed the fountain and turned in the direction of the Wheel.
Luca came and gently shut the door, blocking the cold breeze which ruffled papers on the desk. “Master Shianan,” he began, but he did not finish.
Shianan turned and walked away, sitting on the edge of the desk. He sighed. “I think we have long passed the point where I tell you to keep clear of your master’s business.”
Luca faced him and waited.
Shianan took a slow breath. “I suppose you know I stole the Shard for her? I expected to die then, I did. But I didn’t, thanks to you, and I somehow got up the—I would have asked her hand. To marry Ariana Hazelrig! But I’m not really a free man, and I went to ask the king’s leave...”
He glanced at Luca and saw he’d guessed the outcome. “No, it didn’t go well. And I lost my temper, which is hardly wise before a king even if one is not a royal bastard.” Shianan shook his head. “I said... I’ve never said such things before. And then I had no chance at all of being with her, and I couldn’t—you see, don’t you, that I couldn’t stay and face her? Tell her that I’d ruined my only chance?” Shianan raked his fingers through his hair. “I am a fighting man by training and by trade, Luca. Why is it that I do not hesitate before a mortal opponent and yet I cannot move myself even to call back a woman?”
“You must write to her.”
“What?”
“It’s easier to write. Take the time to formulate the words exactly as you mean them, not as you think of them haphazardly and half-panicked, and put them on paper. Then let her see your thoughts with time to think on them and hear them, without the need to reply in the moment.”
Shianan gave him a smile which mocked them both. “Did you spend your time wooing and winning fair hearts while you were away?”
Luca did not smile in return. “In my anger I called my sister a whore.” He looked pained. “Those were my first words to her in years. I needed a careful letter to repair that damage. But she read it and heard me.”
Shianan sobered. “I see.” He nodded toward the courtyard. “But my lady mage is only as far as the Wheel. Will she read through a letter in place of hearing me?” He forced a shrug. “And I shouldn’t taunt the both of us with what we cannot have.”
“Can’t you? You are a freeman. You may do as you wish.”
A flash of anger went through Shianan. “I am not as free as that, Luca.”
“Forgive me, but I’ve had opportunity to reflect on the nature of freedom recently, and you are freer than you think. The king influences law, but even he cannot break it, and marriage is binding. If you were to openly marry her—”
“After specific prohibition?” Shianan demanded. “’Soats, man, he already told me I was lucky to escape with my balls. They used to do that to bastards here, you know.”
Luca stared at him incredulously. “With all respect, master, your line is barbaric.”
“Heh. At one time it was probably considered judicious to visit the sins of the fathers upon accidental children. Rather like drowning unwanted kittens, I suppose.” Shianan exhaled. “But regardless of what specific—act he intends, he is the king, and I am a bastard.”
L
uca nodded silently.
Shianan’s voice faded hoarsely. “And so, what can I tell Ariana?”
“Tell her that for your part, you love her,” answered Luca softly. “Don’t leave her to wonder.”
Shianan looked at him, wondering at Luca’s unsaid reasons, and considered. It was not far from what Soren had advised. Yes, he owed Ariana that much. She was an intelligent woman, if idealistic, and she would understand.
His suit had been naturally clandestine, which was fortunate. He did not want any shame attached to her. And at least there had been no commitment, no arrangement between them.
He clenched a fist. Ariana would understand. She had the sense to see past her optimistic idealism and recognize necessity. He only had to explain.
He sighed. “I need paper.”
SHIANAN PUSHED HIS fingers through his hair. His letter to Ariana was proving beyond difficult.
Luca bumped open the dividing door and carried a dustpan through the office. “Do you need anything?”
Shianan frowned at the half-filled sheet, marred with dripped ink and struck-out words. “Everything.”
“It’s not coming well?”
He sighed. “I don’t want to pretend that she isn’t everything she is, and she deserves better than simple rejection. But it’s not as easy as it sounds to protest that she’s my most precious thought and so I will not even pursue her friendship, now the king knows what I intended.”
Luca gave him a sadly empathetic look.
Shianan looked down at his sheet and abruptly drew a savage line across it. “And whatever I write must be perfect, because she won’t hear it once but again and again, each time she looks at it. And I cannot make it clear even to myself, so how to her?” He shook his head. “Sorry. Go ahead with whatever you were doing. I’m just arguing aloud.”
Luca nodded and opened the office door, reaching around the frame to tip out the dust. Shianan set his chin in his hand, looking out into the courtyard. Two men crossing at a distance made him think of Luca’s transport.
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