The High Lord (Legends of Trianon: Starla Book 2)

by J. A. Comley

  “Fear not. If she enters this wood, we shall catch her.” The grobbler's fading voice, trailing deeper into the shadows, was the only indication that the creature was moving away from them.

  “Now we're done, men. Let's return to the City before our absence is noted.”

  The others nodded and split up, heading back to the City by different routes, trusting their allies within to get them back inside undetected.

  “Oh, no,” said Mika, materialising half-way up a tree as Gaby jumped down from the golden leaves with Heny in her arms, “what will we do?”

  “At least we know that she is still alive, though, no doubt, under guard,” Gaby said, staring off in the direction of the City. “And we know she kept her promise.”

  “Whatever guard she's under can't be that good if the Baron thinks she'll get a chance to escape,” Heny commented, blue eyes narrowed.

  “Unless the Baron plans to help her escape,” Gaby said sagely, then sighed, tossing her white curls over her shoulder in agitation.“Never mind the whys and hows, we must just be ready. We need to find and foil any grobbler traps we can.”

  “Thatwillbeverydangerous,” Flek said, words blurring together with the speed of his speech.

  “I know, but I see no other way. Heny, you try and find the main grobbler camp and keep an eye on them. Mika, I need you to stay close to the City. Try and see if you can get to Starla first if she manages to escape. I'll keep tabs on you through the trees and send messages with Flek if necessary. I am going to use my magic to find help find the grobbler traps,” she said, her voice determined.

  “And before those Makhi realise you haven't left Galatia,” Mika added before flying off towards the City Wall to keep watch, letting herself turn invisible again.

  ***

  The echoes of children crying and monsters snarling still crashed around Starla's head, all backed by the image of the High Lord, wreathed in his magic and utterly unstoppable. They walked in grim silence back to the inn. Starla kept her eyes on the cobbles in front of her, unwilling to see the fear- and hate-filled eyes that peered from windows and doorways. News of the attack had spread faster than they had walked, the streets eerily quiet and all the stores shuttered and locked.

  She thought about what she had witnessed, trying to make her mind up about the man beside her. Her early shock had passed and now, as she sorted through the rest, a heart-wrenching ache filled the space, pain for the father and his children, pain for the High Lord who had tried to save them, whose duty to protect Galatia meant killing those who could not be saved.

  She glanced up at him from under her lashes. His face was all hard edges and ice, his eyes colder than ever before. He had maintained a careful distance between them, as if afraid to frighten her, but his stance told her he was ready, that if she decided it was all too much and fled, he would stop her, keeping her prisoner as his duty demanded.

  And the man beneath the duty? What does he want? What is he feeling after all that?

  He passed her parcels to a terrified servant as they reached the inn, who bolted inside as soon as Starla told him to put them on her bed.

  She looked at the High Lord again. He was staring resolutely at the door frame. Slowly, it dawned on her that he may be avoiding her eyes because he didn't want to see the same fear and hatred that everyone else showed him. She felt her heart reach out to him, to the Larkel his presence in her mind had shown her. His responsibility was to keep the people safe. Kyron had used that to create a rift between him and his people.

  “I'm sorry,” Starla said, her voice soft as she sought his eyes. “I'm sorry you had to do that. I'm sorry the people are so scared that they direct their anger at you instead of him.”

  His eyes snapped to hers, uncertain, searching. The ice in them vanished and a deep well of pain was visible for a brief second before he looked away.

  “They are right to hate me,” he whispered. Starla was sure she had misunderstood. “I am sorry you had to see that. I should have been paying more attention. If I had, those children wouldn't be facing a death sentence.”

  Starla flinched at the raw pain in his voice and reached out to place a hand on his arm. She wanted to offer some comfort but didn't know how. He refused to meet her eyes. She let her hand fall away.

  Before she could find the words, a youth ran around the corner, threw a badly-aimed fruit at them, which splattered at her feet, and took off again, yelling over his shoulder.

  “No one wants you here, outlander! Go home and take your Corruptions with you!”

  Starla sighed, wishing there was a way for the people to be sure that neither she nor the man beside her were the cause of their problems.

  The High Lord glared at the spot where the youth had vanished then looked at her again, his gaze turning calculating. “There is something I want to show you. Will you come with me?” His tone indicated a change of subject.

  “Of course,” Starla said, happy to talk about something else and determined to show him that she didn't hate or fear him.

  He led her down the road and through the streets of the city.

  “Here,” the High Lord said as they reached the top of the narrow footpath they had been following through one of the Residential Districts. They had been walking for some time, each lost in their own thoughts. After so long in silence, his voice made Starla jump.

  Along the way, she had begun and discarded hundreds of questions in her mind. Her own feelings about the High Lord conflicted with the warning the Sacrileons and the Baron gave not to trust him. The people's innate fear of him, and his own cold precision when carrying out his duties seemed at odds with the pain and care he revealed privately when those duties forced him to make hard decisions. He had admitted to killing people, but only as a way to save others and only when the people in question were doomed to die anyway, being ripped apart by Kyron's magic.

  Kyron is the one who deserves the dark aura of fear and hate.

  Sighing, she came to a stop beside him and looked up. Whatever she thought the High Lord might have been taking her to, it didn't prepare her for the sight she beheld. Before her, claustrophobic and miserable, spread hundreds and hundreds of tents far off into the distance to where the Tower Wall shone.

  “These fields were once filled with flowers and soft birdsong,” Larkel began, his voice solemn. His fingers lightly brushed her wrist, and she saw his memories of the place, entirely unrecognizable to what now lay before her. “They were our Festival Fields. Used for birthdays and weddings, for Trimoon and Starsong.”

  Starla watched the people moving between the tents as he spoke. They looked wretched. Dirty and thin, many of them maimed. Dust billowed from under their footfalls. Everything before her was just various shades of brown. She remembered her first look at the city and the brown smudge that seemed to mar its otherwise glittering façade.

  “Now it is a refugee camp, holding most of the surviving Cosmaltians, and a few Galatians from the outer towns and villages that made it here with nothing to their name,” Larkel continued, sorrow and anger in his voice, the laughter and joy of his memories fading along with his presence as he removed his fingers. “The King does all he can for them, but without so many of our farms, we are struggling to keep everyone properly fed. If it weren't for our magic, we would have failed already. There are several aid tents. The main one is just there, but volunteers are scarce.”

  Starla turned away from the tents and looked up at the man beside her. His left hand gripped his staff tightly, the muscles in his back tensing as if wanting the power flowing in his veins, shrouding him in an aura that engendered fear, to somehow fix everything in front of them.

  They have to be wrong about him. I cannot reconcile any of their words with his actions.

  His bright indigo eyes cut to her, weighing her reaction. “We have been under siege for over ten years, Starla. Kyron fights his wars by watching his enemies tear each other apart. He sends in spies and poisoned food, Corruptions. He seeds chaos. Th
is has been our life for so long, now, the people don't know how to trust any more, never mind whom. All they know is war, and all they want is a day of peace.”

  “I understand now,” Starla said, remembering in a new light the hostile stares she had been getting before the attack. She saw herself as the people here must: someone unknown, who might be the next disaster; or maybe someone good, but either way, another mouth to feed.

  She remembered all the refugees she and Father Joe had helped, how she always wished she could do more for them, but how their eyes always shone with gratitude. Her acts of kindness, though small in her mind, were immense in theirs.

  “I want to help.”

  Larkel's eyes widened at the sudden steel in her voice, then they shuttered. “Starla, it might not change anything. The people may never view you differently.”

  “I don't want to help because I want people to like me, High Lord. I want to help because people need it,” she said, emerald eyes flashing at his insinuation, the words cutting. “You said volunteers were scarce. Well, where do I sign up?”

  Larkel smiled, and with it, the very last of the horror from this morning faded from his features, leaving them a little softer. His eyes met hers, free from ice, something that made her heart skip a beat in their depths. “This way. I'm sure Horato is at the main aid tent. He'll be the one to speak with.”

  Horato turned out to be a rotund, retired Cosmaltian Makhi, with a ruddy face and a friendly disposition. The pointed ears and elongated pupils of his people were getting easier for Starla to ignore.

  “Of course, sweet lady. The camp needs all the help we can get. Let's see here. Fill out this form so that we know what you can do, and we'll get you started first thing tomorrow morning,” Horato said, handing over a form and a rather odd-looking writing tool which needed no inkwell.

  The High Lord tapped the sheet as it passed to her. She smiled up at him as the letters changed.

  Starla took a seat and had just begun to complete the form when Larkel sat down beside her with a form of his own.

  Starla grimaced. “Of course. Well, at least the camp will benefit from the High Lord's help, too.”

  “Starla, I help out here as often as I can but, usually, it is in magical departments like Healing or checking food for poisons,” the High Lord said his voice stiff. “Now, I will have enough time to help out in other departments, too.”

  “I'm sorry.” Starla shook her head, heat flooding her cheeks. “Please, forgive me.”

  The High Lord smiled, a small upturning of one corner of his full lips showing her no real offence had been taken.

  Starla thought of all the haunted eyes they had passed on the way to the aid tent. They didn't seem to hate the High Lord here. They were just instinctively fearful of his palpable power. She smiled. It would be a good place to see his true colours, for her mind to make the choice to either grant or deny the course her heart seemed set on.

  “Excellent,” Horato beamed as they handed their forms back a few minutes later. “Now a quick tour of the various aid tents and an explanation of the camp's layout. That way, you'll be ready to go as soon as you get here tomorrow.”

  Starla walked beside him as they returned to the Shanebury Inn, her stomach rumbling softly. Horato's 'quick tour' had turned out to be nothing of the sort.

  The sun was already setting, and lunch had been replaced by a lesson on everything about the refugee camp while Horato related a string of personal stories from his impressive seven thousand years, old even by Trianon standards, including a rather dubious tale in which he had been a traitor, in league with the organisation called the Unseen Hand. Still, Starla hadn't seemed to mind his past, even mentioning that the Guardians had told her some of that tale.

  She hadn't complained once, asking neither for food, water, nor rest and had shown a capable mind with her questions, and the ability to retain the information she was given. He had shared his mind with her as they went, letting his memories and knowledge help her along. In exchange, he had seen glimpses of her emotions and thoughts, memories of helping refugees on her own world, risking her life for strangers, simply because it was right. By the end of the tour, she had even been able to recognise the words for 'food', 'water', and 'clothes' without his assistance.

  “Would you like to learn how to read and write Pareon? I'd be happy to teach you,” Larkel said suddenly, wanting a legitimate excuse to spend more time with her. In his chest, his heart squeezed painfully.

  What are you doing?

  “I would like that very much,” she said, smiling, light dancing in her eyes.

  Larkel recognised the look. The excitement of new information, a chance to learn. He had the same insatiable curiosity, inherited from his father.

  I'm falling in love.

  He smiled at the thought, ignoring the nagging edge in his mind, filled with cold logic, that screeched a warning at him.

  “I can teach you over breakfast every morning.”

  “Excellent.”

  He watched her admire the glass-spun architecture and knew it was a lost cause. Nothing he had learned about her from her memories or her actions had dissuaded his heart. In fact, they'd only leant strength to it. For better or worse, he couldn't turn away now.

  “I'm sorry I can't accompany you to dinner, Starla,” Larkel began again as they reached the inn. He felt suddenly fearful of leaving her. Perhaps, in the night, her seeing him kill today would make her shudder away from him like everyone else. For reasons beyond his knowledge, that idea brought with it actual, physical pain.

  “It is really not a problem, High Lord,” Starla said, waving a hand, her kind smile lighting up her face. The shape of her lips seemed to pull at some long lost memory, some nagging familiarity. “I want to get an early night. Tomorrow will be busy.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, returning her smile, trying hard not to imagine what kissing her would feel like.

  “There will be a Makhi outside your room all night. Just a precaution.” He used the words to remind himself to behave.

  Starla nodded. After all she had seen today, she didn't seem to feel any anger or resentment any more. She seemed to truly grasp the level of threat their city faced. “I understand, High Lord.”

  “Just ‘Larkel’ is fine. There is no need to use my title all the time.”

  Her eyes searched his face a moment, making him uncomfortably aware of his scars. Again, he waited for the usual malice or amusement or blatant curiosity. It never came. Instead, he found only kindness, and something else he couldn't quite place. Something that twisted his heart, making it miss a beat.

  She smiled and bowed, her shawl parting slightly and setting his blood on fire. “Have a good evening, Larkel.”

  “Have a good evening, Starla,” he said after a moment, finding his voice. The thrill that had gone through him when she said his name had left him breathless. “See you early tomorrow. And please, don't leave without me,” he said playfully, then regretted the words as Starla's smile vanished and her eyes filled with regret and chagrin. “I'm sorry. I only mean that...”

  Starla shook her head as he let the words fade. “It's all right. It's not that. I was just … remembering. Another place.” She sighed. “See you tomorrow.” She turned, disappearing into the Inn.

  Larkel groaned then sighed. He thought he could guess where her thoughts had gone. In his mind, a memory that wasn't his surfaced of a man with long brown hair bending to kiss Starla, her eyes wet with unshed tears.

  “Am I early for supper, High Lord?”

  The High Lord turned reluctantly from the inn. “No, Redkin, you are right on time,” he said, finding a small smile for the old Makhi, more like a father to him than a colleague. “Shall we?”

  “Yes,” Redkin smiled broadly, leading the way up the street to their favourite restaurant. “So tell me, how was your first day watching the stranger?”

  ***

  The Makhi on guard was a stern-looking woman with iron-grey hair bound in
a high ponytail, and eyes the colour of sapphires. She had given Starla one curt nod then returned to her book.

  Starla turned to her door, trying to undo the tangle of emotions the day had created. So many memories and feelings that weren't her own, all clamouring to be sorted.

  “Good evening.”

  She spun to the voice, her mind immediately screaming a warning. The Makhi shifted off the wall behind her, snapping her book closed, and gave the Baron a polite nod as Starla bowed.

  “Good evening.” Starla resisted the pull of the fog in her mind, ignored the images of leering men. “I wasn't expecting to see you again after this morning.”

  He gave her a humourless smile. “I thought I would try one last time. Would you care to join me for supper?”

  Starla glanced back at the Makhi automatically.

  The woman shrugged. “As long as I accompany you, I see no reason why not.”

  “That is fine with me. Starla?”

  She met the Baron's dead gaze and nodded. A public setting would be useful.

  He led the way to a nearby restaurant, greeting people as they went. Starla couldn't help but notice how different this was to her experience in the city with the High Lord. While she was still attracting somewhat hostile stares, the man beside her was clearly well-liked, receiving warm smiles and happy greetings.

  On their arrival, she took a seat across from the Baron and watched the Makhi accompanying them sit down at the next table, order a drink, and lean back in her chair.

  “I heard you were caught up in a Corruption attack today. I am glad that you are unharmed.”

  Starla braced herself for trouble and took a deep breath. “Before my trial, did you speak to me?” Or do something that would make my mind form a link to an attack on Earth?

  His gaze sharpened, growing dark. “Whatever do you mean?” Then he nodded in a despairing kind of way. “I see what has happened. Larkel has tampered with your memories, made me seem untrustworthy. I suppose I should have expected as much, after this morning. Let me help you. I can file a complaint. I have the power to keep you safe.”