Redemption

by Anne Osterlund

  He froze, his eyes hollow.

  Oh … no. Hadn’t he been offering moments before to throw himself under a wagon? He had no right to look at her now as if she had struck his chest with the point of a bayonet.

  His voice had gone hoarse. “Why? What are you afraid of?”

  Everything. Now the point was in her chest, and there was nothing she could do to remove it. A hundred terrors rushed into her mind. Exclusion. The childhood hurt of being left out of her father’s second wedding. Pressure. The constant reminders, both spoken and unspoken, that she had to marry for the good of Tyralt. The suitors, one after the other. Men who treated her as a commodity and talked to her father instead of her. And the man her father had chosen. Who had tried to have her burned to death in her tent and had murdered thousands of her people.

  Was she afraid of marriage?

  Yes. The very concept terrified her.

  But was she afraid of Robert?

  No.

  Robert was safety. And freedom.

  And too precious for her to marry. He was too good, too patient, too giving. She could never deserve his love. And she could never risk …

  This war could end only one of two ways. In her sister’s death. Or her own.

  Aurelia knew the odds.

  And she knew when she died—when she was caught and dragged into the Central Plaza—no longer only accused of treason but guilty of it, there would be no mercy.

  I won’t place any other name ahead of mine.

  She could not allow Robert to propose marriage. Could not face the thousand ways her sister might murder him.

  Aurelia couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe.

  “What am I afraid of?” The possibility that my choices will lead thousands of men to their deaths. Isn’t that enough? But she could not voice that fear any more than she could voice the personal one. “I am afraid that we may lose another wheel. That we may run out of salt pork. That hauling that stupid cannon and its ammunition will cost us days. That if we straggle into the Fortress like this, in such a mess, Lord Lester will never pledge his men to us.”

  Robert drew away from her. Toward the exit. He lifted the canvas flap and hovered there. As though considering heading out into the darkness.

  Don’t, she wanted to tell him, but the protest lodged in her throat. Had she wounded him again with her flippant response? Of course she had. How could he love her? She had no skills to navigate love.

  “Look, Aurelia,” he said at last, then spoke slowly as though thinking through the words. “We can travel ahead of the men, cut into the forest, and arrive at the Fortress ourselves.”

  Her response was reflex. “I can’t leave these men while they’re on the Gate. It’s my duty to see them across.”

  His stance went tense; his hands clenched at air.

  And she realized her reference to duty had undermined her earlier dismissal of Valerian. “But once we cross,” she scrambled, “you and I could still ride ahead. The Oracle and the Heir could take the men to Transcontina; then Lord Lester’s men could rendezvous with them there.”

  Robert turned back toward her. He knelt, his gaze down, and reached for her hand. She found herself trembling.

  His eyes lifted now. Blue. Blue depths she had never intended to hurt.

  “All right,” he whispered.

  His hand squeezed her palm. Then withdrew, as he returned to his own pallet.

  Had he really intended to ask her to marry him? Surely if he had, he would not still be here. Still with her.

  She lay down, closed her eyes. And tried not to think about all the ways she might lose him.

  Better to think about the Gate.

  • • •

  The trek on the mountainous trail demanded blood, perseverance, and nerve. Three men died, two from illness and one from battle injuries he had not disclosed. Several horses went lame, and more than one wagon almost tipped over the path’s edge. Every day Aurelia set a goal for how much ground to cover, and every night she learned her forces had failed to reach it. Delays came in a thousand forms: arguments, men who slept too long, goods that came off the backs of horses and wagons because supplies had not been tied down properly, firearms that went off by accident.

  Rain resulted in slides and boulders blocking the path. There was little cover to be procured beneath the wagons and even less chance of finding dry ground along the treacherous cliffside. The only solution was to continue. To ensure that each step, each delay, was one fewer than must be faced the following morning.

  The final descent offered the greatest obstacle: a washed-out portion of the trail featuring a gap spanning almost five feet. While a horse could cross by hugging the cliff, no wagon could squeeze along the diminished path. Instead boulders had to be hauled to fill the gap. The back of a wagon was partially dismantled and three of its lengthwise boards stretched across the wash. Every vehicle had to be steered with the aid of rope, gravity, and a lone man to direct the wagon tongue as he walked along the central board.

  Aurelia feigned serenity when Robert volunteered for the job.

  He also somehow managed to escort her across. The weight of responsibility had helped suppress her fear of heights, but only sheer pride and his insistent grip forced her along the edge of that wash.

  She went first, of course, knowing if she could not, she had no right to lead any of these men anywhere.

  In the end, the trek took nine days—three times as long as she and Robert had required in their solitary journey along the same trail. But on the last day, Aurelia watched astride Falcon from the base of the Gate as the final wagon, then the final mules bearing the pack cannon and ammunition, covered the final two hundred feet of descent.

  Scattered cheers echoed in celebration of the first great hazard crossed.

  For Aurelia, it marked the start of another. The task ahead was as perilous as the path she had just traversed, only this time the cliff and roaring falls were within her. She knew returning to the Fortress was vital. Had even managed to sound convincing when she had explained to Valerian and the Oracle the need for her to ride ahead, though the Heir had become grudgingly still when he had learned who already filled a place among her escort.

  Robert now rode up to her side, his shoulder brushing her own. “Ready?” he asked.

  She had left her mother without saying good-bye.

  The silent leave-taking had not been animus, but it might have been misinterpreted. What am I not afraid of? The question was even more terrifying than marriage. Because fear had locked her mother away. And no matter how determined Aurelia was to avoid that fate, her own fears continued to mount.

  Along with the pressures of revolution.

  Chapter Eleven

  SHUTTERED

  Aurelia was not prepared for her mother’s death.

  You should have been, the tangled spruce of the Asyan seemed to say, a week after the departure from the Gate. High branches tried to smother the edge of the Fortress garden in unrelenting shade. Cold mist dripped from the limbs.

  A chill stalked Aurelia’s soul as she stared at the elaborate tombstone. Glyphs carved the polished surface in relentless swirls, and the lengthy epitaph failed to touch the need inside her.

  Tears had refused to come.

  Three days before, an armed forest squad had drifted from the trees, almost as soon as Aurelia and Robert had entered the foliage at the Asyan’s rim. The stoic strangers had turned away the additional members of her escort, then informed her of her mother’s death from illness. Aurelia had thought, at the time, that shock had severed her emotions. That her grief would eventually slip loose when she reached the Fortress. And the tight, dark seal coating her own anguish would disintegrate like the flesh shoveled beneath the soil almost two months before. Unbeknownst to the world.

  But rather than providing a place to grieve, the thick log walls of Lord Lester’s domain had offered only rejection. The courtyard had been filled with armed men, and the entrance had
been locked. “His Lordship is in mourning,” a footman at the doors had stated, making no move to lift the chain, nor effort to send a message. Which meant Lord Lester knew of her arrival. And had barred the doors against her.

  Aurelia had pulled away from the crowd. And from Robert, who had seemed to think a solution could be found in speech. She had turned deaf to his words, tugged loose of his supportive grasp, and run, her instincts pulling her toward the garden. Marred now by this ghastly monument of stone. She stepped around its base into the sea of bluebells and blue delphiniums she had first witnessed from the high, distant window above. The Blue Room. Now shuttered.

  Dry eyed, Aurelia halted at the sight of that window and rifled through sparse memories of her mother. The illusory moments from Aurelia’s early childhood. A lost laugh. Then the dark chasm of abandonment. And at last, the woman who had become Lady Margaret, terrified of shadows from her past—her husband’s infidelity, her son’s grave, her daughter’s touch.

  I never loved her, Aurelia realized.

  She had wanted to love her mother. Had wished desperately to be loved by her. Had gone again and again to the Blue Room in hopes of filling the chasm caused by her mother’s long absence; but though that scar had healed, the love that had floated in a daughter’s youthful dreams had remained beyond reach. Fear had filmed Lady Margaret’s eyes and run like blood within her veins. A fear that had strangled her ability to love.

  And her daughter’s.

  Aurelia bent slightly. Her fingers tore away the flowers of a delphinium, lifted them to her face, and then let them fall. Their scentless beauty was as inadequate as her own heart. Her gaze rose again to the distant window. Was this death somehow her fault? Had her decision to leave the Fortress undermined her mother’s will to live? That would explain Lord Lester’s orders to shut out Aurelia. The leader of the forest escort had said that while others on the estate had suffered the same symptoms of fever, chills, and a wracking cough, only her mother had succumbed.

  A female voice came from the garden’s edge. “I don’t understand.”

  The familiar tone ripped Aurelia’s gaze from the shutters. She turned and found herself facing the flushed face and dark eyes of her childhood best friend. A gray dress curved over Daria’s large stomach, the skirt’s hem trailing unevenly in the dirt. She was pregnant. A stab plunged into Aurelia’s chest at the disappearance of the slender servant girl who had once been her own emotional support. Clearly Daria had found hers in the arms of her husband.

  The gray hem traveled through the sea of flowers. Then Daria’s gentle hand reached out to clasp her friend’s as though to offer comfort. “Why are you here?”

  Aurelia wished she could reply that she had returned in order to see Daria. Or even contemplated a reunion with her. But in truth—in truth, Aurelia had been too scared of facing the woman now buried under the ground. And this return had been driven by politics. “I came to see Lord Lester.”

  The grip tightened. “Then the rumors are true. You intend revolution.” Strange how her friend’s words were cold.

  “I came home to free Tyralt,” Aurelia spoke.

  “Why would you return? You had everything.”

  “In exile?”

  “Love,” her former lady’s maid continued. “You had love. How could you do this to him?” The hand withdrew. “Just because Robert isn’t an aristocrat doesn’t give you the right to take advantage of his heart.”

  When had this talk become about Robert? And when had Daria begun defending him from Aurelia? Though they had all been friends and classmates. And socially, the other two had been closer. “I couldn’t stay in exile.”

  “You could have married him and lived on the frontier.”

  The naïvety of the statement conjured a vision of charred homesteads. How could Daria not understand? But she had never seen the burned-out frontier or the refugees of the desert or the strife Valerian had described in the Valshone Mountains. She had not lived in the Tyralt Melony had created. Daria had been here, in the protection of her husband’s arms.

  “I love all of Tyralt,” Aurelia tried to explain.

  But her friend was shaking. “Then how can you do this to my husband?”

  I’ve done nothing to Thomas.

  “And my brother?”

  A distant image of a young corporal sprinted into Aurelia’s thoughts. “Is Filbert still in the royal military?”

  “Of course.” Daria stepped away. “As are all his friends. They protect the crown. They protected you.”

  She is afraid.

  “I know,” Aurelia whispered. She thought about all the young soldiers she had known growing up. Men who would now fight for her sister, not because they supported Melony. Or even because they feared the brutal cost of desertion, though they must; but because they saw their service to the crown as a matter of loyalty.

  “Do you?” The other woman retreated, her parting words disconnected. “Do you even know the meaning of the word love?”

  • • •

  “Robert.” His own name felled him. One second he had been questioning the ill-fated footman assigned to refuse Aurelia entrance into the Fortress, the next her hand had slipped free, replaced by the strips of Falcon’s reins, and she had disappeared. Into the surrounding flood of Lord Lester’s men filling the courtyard and spilling into the forest. Robert had tried to follow her, but then heard his name. His feet had stumbled, his brain unprepared for the recognition. And in that second she had been gone.

  Lost. Amid thousands. His attempts to search for her had been futile. He did not have to ask why so many Fortress men had gathered. He knew the answer. That the news of Aurelia’s return had swept ahead of her arrival. No surprise there. Only in the fact that someone had recognized him. And apparently managed to follow him. He heard his name yet again.

  Then Thomas Solier emerged from the elbow-tight mass. “We need to talk.” Nothing had changed about the features of the man who had hosted Robert upon his last stay at the Fortress. Daria’s husband’s beige skin, nondescript hair, and medium height combined into a forgettable appearance—one that had likely aided the espoused courier in his true role as Lord Lester’s spy. “Now.” Thomas’s hand gripped Robert’s arm. There was nothing forgettable about that grip. The spy jerked his chin toward Falcon and Horizon. “In the stables.”

  Robert yanked his arm free, then forged through the members of the crowd. They parted—no doubt in response to the sharp threat of his stallion’s hooves. He paid no heed to whether the other man kept up with him.

  Soon the smell of manure surrounded Robert. He swept down the familiar stable aisles, his eyes low, avoiding the gazes of groomsmen who might or might not know him from his previous time there. Then he shoved open an empty stall and shooed Falcon into it. I’ve succeeded in nothing beyond the role of stableboy. What was I thinking almost speaking to Aurelia of marriage?

  Horizon snorted, tugging against his owner’s grip.

  Robert reached for his stallion’s halter. He had not proposed to Aurelia. Had not planned to propose. But somehow during his attempt to confront the woman he loved about Valerian’s intentions, the word marriage had stumbled from Robert’s tongue. And when she had stopped him, he realized he had been on the verge of his own proposal.

  Was he insane?

  She deserved better. She deserved—

  Better than anyone else could offer her.

  Valerian’s statement during the inane altercation on the cliff’s edge—his comment about the people of Tyralt not needing her to be a human being—had made Robert want to wipe the Valshone leader from the path. Perhaps what had saved the Heir, even more than Robert’s vow, was the certainty that Valerian could never have made that statement if he really loved her.

  Her humanity was why Tyralt needed her.

  Robert had learned, during that argument, that Aurelia had been right when she had told him other men didn’t see her. They saw her bravery. Her willingness to place herself in danger for the mi
ssion. Her dedication to Tyralt.

  But they did not see the young woman he saw.

  The one who cried in isolation from nightmares. The one who had raced Falcon with pure joy along the edge of the Fallchutes. The one who had scrubbed her hands raw as a scullery maid because he could not support her.

  Horizon reared, almost jerking Robert’s arm out of its socket. Belatedly he realized the stallion had entered the stall.

  Thomas yanked Robert away from the raised hooves, pulling him out of the narrow space and securing the stall’s door behind him. “Aurelia will be fine,” the spy said, as though reading his companion’s thoughts, then thrust a scroll into his hand. “This is for Tyralt.”

  Names. The paper was covered in names. Line after line of signatures unrolled to the floor.

  Thomas spoke again. “We heard confirmation of your mission twenty days ago.”

  Twenty days. The news had all but flown. Robert continued to unwind the scroll.

  At last the message at the top became visible.

  We, the undersigned, hereby agree to enter and serve.

  An enlistment.

  But Aurelia had not even been permitted through the Fortress doors to ask for military support.

  “I thought Lord Lester was in mourning,” said Robert.

  Thomas nodded. “His Lordship has not been accessible for consultation.”

  Which made no sense. On the frontier, an open enlistment could be expected, but never south of the Gate.

  Robert’s gaze shot back to the scroll. There was no seal. No opening aristocratic signature. “Who collected the names?”

  Silence.

  “How many?” Robert asked.

  “Three thousand one hundred and twenty-four,” came the rapid response.

  Over three thousand men had placed their names on a paper of enlistment without their lord’s approval.

  And Thomas Solier had collected them.

  The first was a hanging offense.

  The second—

  Robert’s gaze met Thomas’s. “You could be executed in the Central Plaza of Tyralt City for this.”