The Broken Realm

by Sarah M. Cradit

  Esmerelda laughed through her tears as she held the boy tighter. “I can’t believe it’s you. That you’re really here, all the way in Greystone. You must tell me everything, Brandyn! Everything!”

  Ravenna stood at Jesse’s side as they watched the reunion unfold. He didn’t like the way she sidled up to him, as if they were allied in yet another thing. “It seems your seer was not wrong in his predictions, after all.”

  “He isnae my seer,” Jesse muttered, but his frown quickly melted into something warmer, for he hadn’t seen Esmerelda experience real joy in so long he’d forgotten what it looked like on her.

  “There’s much to tell,” Brandyn said, breaking the embrace. He wore a very serious look, far too pensive for a child his age, and the smile for his cousin was forced, for her sake it seemed. “But there are others who should hear it, too. Steward James insisted I should come here first.” This time when he smiled at Esmerelda, it was real. “I’m glad he did.”

  “Call me Kaslan, Lord Blackwood. Steward James is my father.”

  Brandyn nodded. The room came alive with the necessary introductions, and then it was Brandyn’s turn. He gestured toward the girl standing by the hearth, who’d said nothing yet. She was older than he was, almost at the point in her life where she’d be standing by a husband. “This is Storm Wakesell. She’s been my companion through everything, through all, and I would ask you to treat her with the same respect and brotherhood.”

  “I know her,” Kaslan said. “The Wakesells don’t look down upon us as some of the others do.”

  “Loyalty makes a man. Not a name,” Storm said.

  “Aye,” Kaslan said, flushing.

  “Storm, your family. Where are they?” Ravenna asked.

  Storm looked at Brandyn. “Whitewood isn’t safe for any who would see Brandyn back where he belongs. Where his father belonged before The Deceiver took our lord’s life in the cowardice of moonlight.”

  “They’ve sent men to us here,” Brandyn said. He looked at Jesse with the words, but stayed close to Esmerelda as if he, too, felt a responsibility for her. “They’ve all sent what they can.”

  “Aye,” Jesse said. “We’ve seen them come from all over the Reach. More every day, it seems.”

  “My father will aid, if we ask him. If we tell him there’s a proper resistance brewing out here,” Esmerelda said, brightening. “No one knows as he does what it is to see your own land taken by another. And Uncle Byrne was his brother.”

  “We’ve asked him. Again. He’ll send none,” Kaslan said, avoiding her eyes.

  “Yes, but that was before. Surely...” Esmerelda said, her words trailing into a whisper. Her eyes were wide with a whirlwind of emotions. She looked at Jesse, but he had already known this truth and kept it from her, to keep her mind at ease. “He has always said that the Reaches must be united in only one thing, and that is the protection of their lands and ways.”

  “Aye, but no one came when your father asked. When his grandfather fought the Rhiagains,” Kaslan explained. “And now he’s returning the favor.”

  “Your father did,” Jesse said.

  Kaslan waved his arm around. “Lot of good we are in Greystone. Until now, that is.”

  “Kaslan,” Brandyn said. “Can you take us back to your father’s inn? I have much more to share, but it will be easier if I only have to say it once, for everyone.”

  Kaslan nodded. “Lord Blackwood.”

  Brandyn’s eyes glassed over as he looked away from them, out the window and toward the field beyond the keep. “I am Lord Blackwood now. Though, it was not the way I saw it coming to pass.” He turned to Ravenna. “But I did see you.”

  Ravenna recoiled. “Me? What did you see?”

  “I saw another wielder of great magic, but not my magic,” Brandyn said. He looked up at her. “But as you stand before me, I see kin. You’re a Ravenwood, aren’t you?”

  Ravenna paused, then nodded.

  “All the way out here?”

  “My story is long as well, Lord Blackwood.”

  “When we all left Longwood Rush, my sister Emberley was on her way to your people. Did your paths cross?”

  “They did not, but it seems a lifetime ago that I left Midnight Crest. I was traveling with Drystan and Lisbet Dereham, and Eavan Quinlanden. We got separated in the Hinterlands, and then I came across Jesse and Esmerelda.”

  “My other sister, Gabi, was headed to the Hinterlands, with two companions.”

  Ravenna looked at Esmerelda. “We did not come across Gabi, but we did rescue one of her companions. Brook. Steward James is caring for him at the pub, for now.”

  “Only Brook?”

  “I’m afraid so. He told us his sister and yours were taken by the Medvedev.”

  “Taken?” Brandyn repeated. “They came to them for aid!”

  “Aye,” Jesse said. “So did we, but what we found was anything but. We fled here after they accosted us.”

  Brandyn’s eyes widened. “You really do have quite a story to tell.”

  Ravenna nodded. “But mine will stay within these walls only, as Esmerelda’s will. No one can know who we are, or that we are here.”

  “But has any harm come to Gabi? Did Brook say?”

  Jesse answered for her. “We suspect she’s been taken wherever they took Ravenna’s companions, but we know nothing beyond that.”

  “I don’t understand. None of this makes sense.”

  “Aye. We share that feeling. I know you may be thinking of rushing off to save them—”

  “No, Jesse,” Brandyn said. “I could, and then what? Bring her back to a Reach in turmoil, tell her she has no home anymore? We have work to do here first.”

  “Let’s have at it, then,” Kaslan said, leading the way.

  * * *

  “Esmerelda.”

  Esmerelda dropped the basket of linens near the door at the sound of Ravenna’s voice. Even if they weren’t all crowded together under one roof, she’d know it anywhere, from its lyrical, otherworldly sound. If she didn’t know what she knew about the Ravenwoods being from Beyond, she might think they were instead Guardians themselves. Witnessing Ravenna’s effortless beauty, her grace and perfection was a gift, though not to her.

  Esmerelda had been raised to know her own beauty. It was her singular value, beyond the command of her name, and though she wished to be known for more, she’d embraced it, for what has value also has power. As a woman in the Southerlands, even a Warwick, she had all the power of a bird screaming from a gilded cage.

  “I have washing to tend to, before the men return.”

  “The men will be a while. Let them do their business, and we can do ours.”

  Esmerelda pointed at the basket. “That’s what I intend to do.”

  “You spend your days washing so exhaustion will find you at night,” Ravenna said. “And you have no one to share your fears with. Or, so you think. But you can share them with me.”

  Esmerelda nearly snorted, then remembered how indelicate it would sound. On the heels of that reminder, she recalled that there was no one here to make this observation, but the moment had passed, and to do it now would be not only indelicate but strange. “With you?” She picked up the basket again, determined to be far from this conversation, from Ravenna. Her thoughts about the sorceress were wrapped in complexity, but most were a reflection of her own shortcomings. Her jealousy, for one.

  The sunlight was coming over the eastern edge of the forest. Enough light now for her to see her work. When she’d once tried to start her labor before the sun’s crest, she’d discovered later all the dark stains in the fabric still there when the light arrived.

  A year ago, the very idea that she’d be this concerned about linens would have been a jest to her.

  Ravenna scooped the basket from Esmerelda’s arms. “I’ll help you, Esme. I have some things I’d like you to hear. You don’t have to talk, if you don’t wish to.”

  “My name isn’t Esme.”

  “
Jesse calls you that.”

  Esmerelda flushed. She pushed past the sorceress and made her way toward the lull in the river’s rush, the hidden pool at the base of a small waterfall, near the forest edge. There was no sense in telling the sorceress to leave her alone. Ravenna knew nothing of boundaries, or respecting another’s wishes. If she did, she would’ve left them in the Hinterlands.

  Ravenna dropped to her knees and started the washing. “Drystan wears a necklace. One I gave him.”

  “Now you have your men wearing jewelry, do you?” Esmerelda muttered as she pulled one of Jesse’s shirts from the basket. He’d been wearing the old wardrobe of Easlan James, from when Easlan was a younger man, a fitter one. He looked like he belonged in them. Like a lord.

  “A pendant,” Ravenna went on. “Bound by magic. I told him what it was when I gifted it to him, and he wore it willingly. A tracker.”

  “Oh, aye? A tracker? Love,” Esmerelda quipped.

  “Did you know you slip into speaking like Jesse when you’re cross?”

  “Like my father,” Esmerelda corrected. “Like salt and sand.”

  “But your mother was from elsewhere, was she not?”

  “The Northerlands,” Esmerelda answered, but Ravenna would already know that, for the Derehams and Ravenwoods were notoriously close. It was one of only a few things her mother and father ever crossed words on. Khallum believed the Derehams were more loyal to the Ravenwoods than the realm. Gwyn insisted it was more complicated than that, that only a Northerlander would understand.

  “Lord Dereham’s sister.”

  Esmerelda preserved an ounce of power this time in keeping her counsel.

  “I know Lord Dereham. He’s a good man, if unsure of his leadership. Drystan is like him in this way. Neither were meant for the seat at Wulfsgate, but your Guardians had other plans for them.”

  “This cannae be what you came here to tell me.” Esmerelda ran her fingernails down a dark spot on Jesse’s shirt, pulling out the stain.

  “This tracker,” Ravenna went on. “I could be standing at the Courtyard of Regents in Midnight Crest and he upon the fiery shores of the Wastelands, and I’d still detect him. The magic knows no range too far.”

  “You trust him that much, do ye?”

  Ravenna ignored the jab. “I tell you this so you understand the magic has no limitations. No limitations in this kingdom.” She paused her washing. “When he was taken by the Medvedev, I lost sight of him. I can no longer sense him at all.”

  Esmerelda cooled her blood, conscious now of her speech. “Perhaps your magic is not as strong as you think it is.”

  “This magic is bigger than me and my capabilities. It’s an ancient magic. I know its worth. That is not in question.”

  Esmerelda laughed. “So you think he went Beyond?”

  “I don’t know what Beyond is, any more than you do. I know that he went where we cannot go, not without a Medvedev to extend invitation. I know we could wander the rest of our days in the Forest of All and never find them, unless they wished for us to.”

  “Jesse could have.”

  “He has their blood, but not their wisdom. Their experiences. He is not one of them, not in their eyes. Do you not understand that they would have killed him?”

  Esmerelda threw the shirt against the bank. “You want to know why I am always cross with you, Ravenna? It’s because you always say things... things like this, as if you know all, as if only you could know a thing. But you don’t know! You don’t know Jesse, or what the Medvedev would or would not have done. You can only guess, as I can, but now we will never know the truth of it, for we are here, and they are there, and that is precisely how you seem to want it.”

  Ravenna regarded her with eyes that nearly glowed. Esmerelda’s eyes were often said to glow, too, but they lacked the unsettling intensity of the sorceress’, and she felt that, too, was another thing separating them. “Say what you mean.”

  “You need me to? Or can you pull it from my head?”

  “I could. But that would make me no better than you think of me.”

  Esmerelda did snort this time. She enjoyed the sound of it. It was the sound of her father, and his men. Of strength. “You’ve distracted him. Spelled him. I see how he looks each morning when he wakes, as if his thoughts are no longer his own.”

  “Whatever Jesse feels—”

  “Whatever Jesse feels? So now there are feelings between the two of you?”

  “That isn’t what I meant. There’s nothing between us. I have no power over him.”

  “You tell me of this magical tracker that can keep your lover in line, and then in the next breath insist you have no power over another man?”

  “My magic doesn’t work that way,” Ravenna insisted. “I cannot control a man’s thoughts. If I could have... I... I think I would have persuaded Drystan not to love me to begin with. I would have spared us both this pain.”

  Esmerelda laughed. “You make no sense to me.”

  “I should think you, of anyone, would understand how conflicting it is to be in the middle of a love that is forbidden,” Ravenna charged. “Would you not have swayed Ryan’s thoughts away from you, to save him?”

  Esmerelda’s hand fell to her belly. “I didn’t know my father would send him to that terrible place.”

  “Nor could I have known that Drystan would be taken prisoner. But we are, you and I, both of us in denial if we claim that we did not know it would end poorly for them both in some manner.”

  Esmerelda stumbled over a response. Ravenna’s words angered her, for they struck at the heart of a conflict that had been burning in Esmerelda’s heart for some time. Though she had been given everything as a Warwick, she’d been given what others determined were her needs, never what she desired. And she had never wanted anything before until she’d fallen in love with Ryan Strong. The Guardians could not be so unfair as to deny her the only thing she’d ever asked for, no matter how unlikely, or impossible. Even as a woman, she believed there must be some equity in the eyes of the Guardians.

  Even as Ryan was taken away in chains, she held fast to the hope that the trials ahead were the cost of their eventual happiness. She ignored Jesse’s naysaying, his stalwart reminders that the Wastelands were no place for a man who wished to survive.

  “There’s a storm brewing. We’ll finish the wash later,” Ravenna said, standing. “I had hoped you and I could be friends. I still hope for it.”

  “I already have a friend, Jesse,” Esmerelda replied as she gathered the wet linens. “I need no others, and if you look upon me as fondly as you claim, as a friend, then you will do as a friend would do and leave Jesse alone. Leave me alone. Leave us and return to whatever fate you and your magic will design next.”

  * * *

  Storm stood with Jesse at the back of the bar. She perched at the edge of the long counter, hips cocked, wearing the same look as most of the men. She seemed to him more like them than the young woman she was, and lacked entirely in the awareness that she didn’t belong there. But Brandyn had made himself clear. She was to be wrapped into the brotherhood, as one of them.

  “The two of you. You’ve seen more than enough on your way to us,” Jesse observed.

  “I can’t speak for what Brandyn has seen. But I’ve watched a boy become a man.”

  “He’s eleven.”

  “Twelve,” Storm answered. “He turned another year during our travels.” She frowned. “Or so we believe. Time is strange now.”

  “Your blade. The one you cannae take your hand off. It’s good steel, but you willnae need it here.”

  Storm pulled it from its sheath, regarding the curved metal in the dim light. “There were two of them, not so long ago.”

  Jesse’s mouth parted. Recognition passed over his memory, of the night they’d spent in Parth. The group of children gathered at the corner table. The melee that followed. “It was you. Who killed those men at the tavern.”

  Storm grinned. “You were there?”
<
br />   “I wanted to help, but I had to keep low, for reasons you now understand.”

  She slipped the blade back in its sheath. “I didn’t need your help, anyway. I had it all well in hand.”

  “Did they come after you? I didn’t stay to see the matter resolved. I was afraid for... for her. I had to get her to safety. If I had known who you all were—”

  Storm waved a hand. “You did what all men came there to do. To not be seen. I would’ve done the same. Yeah, they came after us. Regretted it, too.”

  Jesse chuckled as he watched her. “I imagine they did.”

  A hush fell over the room. Easlan and Brandyn moved to the center of the candlelit room, as Easlan had the night he brought Joran Rosewood to sing his predictions. Well, he’d been right about this one. Jesse couldn’t deny it. The old man held court alone in the corner, in a swath of silver and white, wearing a satisfied grin that he’d earned, Jesse supposed.

  “Since that eve that Joran shared his secrets with us, we have seen more men join us. Men from all over the Reach. Men of the Reliquary. Men of the Sepulchre. Rush Riders.” Easlan landed his eyes upon Arturo Blackfen, who stood tall in the corner next to his impressive longbow. Jesse had met Arturo the day before, along with his traveling companion, a high-ranking member of the Reliquary called Rhydian Tyndall. “And now, the lord of our Reach has come to us, just as Joran said he would. And he would say some things to the men who have gathered to take back what The Deceiver has stolen.”

  Low, anxious energy rippled through the room. These men were cautious. Excited, for a Blackwood to be returned to them. Nervous, for that Blackwood was a mere child.

  Brandyn stepped onto the chair. Even raised up, he was a smallish boy. A final born, as the saying went in the Southerlands, when describing the child who had gotten the last pickings of what the mother’s body had to offer. But where he lacked in size, he made up for in intensity. Storm had said she’d watched this boy become a man, and it was in Brandyn’s eyes that Jesse saw a glimmer of that.

  “My father was murdered.” Brandyn didn’t ease into his speech. He spoke plainly, with an anger that had settled into all of their bones, taking root, festering into something newly awakened. “Murdered in his home. The work of a traitor.”