“Don’t even think about telling me what the stakes are,” she said, punching him again.
“You know I wouldn’t.”
“Good.”
“So … when are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Oh no. You might be able to get away with that nonsense with other people, Amelia Grace, but don’t try it with me.”
She narrowed her eyes, but he only raised an eyebrow.
“That’s not going to work. I just took a plate of cookies into the common room. Nobody’s there. Let’s go.” He marched her into the room at the end of the hall.
The common room in the hallway for the guards’ families was much like the one upstairs the royal family used, just as large, and kept up just as well. King Stephen and Queen Charlotte were adamant about providing the best accommodations they could to the families of their staff and servants. Actually, the furniture in here stayed nicer, since there were fewer children with sticky hands wandering in and out.
Grabbing two plates and two cookies from the counter, Ben led her to one of the couches in the back of the room near the fireplace.
“All right, little bird,” he said once they were sitting down, “drop your worm. What’s going on?”
“Queen Quinn has offered me the position of Head Nurse in the baby’s nursery.”
His face lit up like candles at the harvest festival. “Really, Mia? That’s wonderful! Congratulations! What an honor.”
“Thank you.” She started to beam a little at his words.
“Are you going to accept?”
“Yes. I’ve already told her I will. She already spoke with Queen Charlotte and King Stephen and it sounds as if they’re fine with it. And I’ve just finished talking to my parents. Apparently, my mother has anticipated for a while that it might happen, but nobody wanted to get my hopes up.”
“That must have been a difficult conversation. My father was coming with me – I really can’t imagine having to tell him I was leaving otherwise.”
“It was hard. But my parents are proud and willing to come visit. And they’ll be traveling with us to go to Philotheum for the ceremony, so the good-bye won’t be immediate. My mother’s going to help me pack tonight after the children are asleep – but I think I might start a little before then.”
“We do leave in just over a week’s time. We – that sounds very good, Mia. The castle in Philotheum is nice, but somewhat more mellow than here. It’ll be good to have more company to spice it up. Perhaps we can even show them our version of choice.”
“So long as it’s not your version.”
He laughed – a deep, long, genuine laugh that made her feel at home for a while before his expression turned serious again. “And then there’s Thomas.”
“Yes.”
“What is going on between the two of you lately, anyway? Something seems off – it’s not like it was before we went to Philotheum.”
She shook her head. “It hasn’t been, and I don’t know what to do, Ben. He’s been so different since you left. I know it’s hard for him, how much he misses Quinn and William … but he won’t talk to me about it. He just wants to pretend it doesn’t bother him, I think. But then, as it’s gotten closer and closer to time for Linnea to leave, he’s really pulled away from everyone.”
“Have you tried confronting him about it?”
“I half have … but I don’t know how to do it without hurting him. And then, to be honest, ever since I realized that Quinn and William would be raising a baby in a castle where they wouldn’t have had a baby nurse in many cycles…”
“You’ve been dreaming about that job.”
“Yes.”
“Without telling him.”
She nodded, picking at the cookie on her plate. It was in crumbles, though she hadn’t managed to take a single bite. “It’s not like I didn’t want to tell him, but it just seems like every time we do talk lately, we end up arguing, and I hate that. So then I just stay away from him, because I’m afraid he doesn’t want to hear what I need to say.”
“Hmm… Is that making things better?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“So it sounds like you’re not talking to him, he’s not talking to you … and nobody’s happy.”
“I love him, Ben. More than anything. How do I tell him I’m leaving?”
He frowned, fidgeting with his own cookie. “Do you want to keep your courtship with him?”
“I want to, but now, I don’t know if it’s possible. I’ll be in Philotheum, five days away, and he’ll be here. Probably angrier than he is now, with all of us gone.” Now she was picking apart one of the berries that had been inside the cookie, getting red goo underneath her fingernails, but she didn’t care.
“Well, it can work. I courted Linnea for seven months while I was there and she was here.”
“Yes, but you knew you were going to get married at the end of it. Thomas isn’t old enough to get married.”
Finishing the last bite of his cookie, he reached across and took the cookie plate out of her hands, setting it down on the table beside him. “Mia, I realize how difficult it is, and I understand your reservations. I get why you’re having trouble talking to him, but … I don’t believe this will be impossible to work out, if it’s what both of you want. But I do know that not talking never solved anything. Whatever happens, you have to talk to him.”
“And what if doing that ends our courtship?”
“That would be devastating. I’m not going to lie. I’ve ended a courtship before and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. But after a while, ending it isn’t worse than staying in one that isn’t working, and where you can’t talk to each other. Talk to him.”
“How do I do it, Ben? Help me out here.”
He smiled. “How about you go to the kitchen and request a picnic dinner for the two of you, with your favorite foods. Then, go prepare one of the empty guest suites with a fire – maybe some candles, whatever you’d like. And later, take the dinner up there, just the two of you and talk. Start off with telling him your feelings for him – tell him that you don’t want to end your courtship; he needs to know that part. And then tell him your news. Perhaps the two of you can figure out the rest of it together.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“Well, you’ll always have me, little bird. There will be lots of new guards to meet in Philotheum. I’ll introduce you.”
~ 31 ~
Earned
Mistle River Valley, Eirentheos
ZANDER WAS STILL pleased with himself when he climbed into the back of the wagon to return to the castle from Mistle Village. Telling Bryce Ragland that his dog would most likely be fine had been one of the most satisfying experiences of his life, even if it had come at some personal cost.
His whole body was aching now – from the experimental rabies vaccine, from the fierce cat bites and scratches running up his arms and deep in his left hand, from the antibiotics William had dosed him after the cat attacks. Getting the wild animals out from under that porch and into a bag so they could be taken to the clinic had turned into a treacherous task. But he’d accomplished it.
If he’d known they were going to have to kill the cats to test them, he might not have gone to such extremes, but he didn’t really care. It would have been nice to save the cats, too, but he understood the circumstances – he was lucky enough to have probably rescued Digger.
He contemplated all of that, drifting half in and out of sleep – the day really had wrung him out – watching the scenery as they rode in silence for a while. The area was all farmland mixed with patches of heavy forest; from the road he could see down to the wide, rushing river that must irrigate the area.
“Whoa, what is that?” he asked, as a large structure came into view on an uphill slope of the river. Water rushed from it, creating an enormous waterfall. “Is that a power plant?” he asked William and Thomas.
Maybe they’d been traveling for longer than he’d realized, and it was time to give the horses a break. Or maybe – judging by the grin on Thomas’ face – he just wanted to show off the incredible architecture here.
The river was breathtaking here as thousands of gallons of water flowed through the concrete dam above, breaking into whitewater caps on the rocks below. They had a right to show this off a little. The sight captivated him. “How did you do all of this?”
William jumped down from the wagon seat. “It took nearly three cycles just to build it, after Nathaniel and my father researched it for several cycles before that.”
“That would be like thirty years in my world.”
“Yes. We don’t have the same level of production of the raw materials you do in your world, either. It all had to be done from scratch. The goal was just a start of electricity, enough for lights for the capital city and some of the outlying villages, without a huge disruption to the flow of the river, and we actually managed it. It’s definitely one of our biggest accomplishments here, ever.”
“Can you store electricity and everything?”
“No. It’s a run-of-the-river power station only. There’s no reservoir and no electricity storage. We use it as it’s generated.”
Marcus and Nathaniel were off their horses now, leading them to a spot where the water collected in a small, calmer pool. The temperature felt even lower here, near the spray from the massive waterfall. Zander pulled his jacket tighter. “What happens if the river freezes?”
“It doesn’t usually, but if it does, then, yeah, no electricity until it thaws again.” Thomas said.
“What do you do?”
William shrugged. “Use candles and lamps. The same thing Quinn and Nathaniel and I do at home in Philotheum. We’re not dependent on the electricity for heating or cooking, the way you are in your world, and we don’t have plans to change that anytime soon. The lights are nice, though, especially in the clinics.”
“Are you going to do something like this in your kingdom?”
“Yes, but it will probably take just as long as it took us to do it here. None of the people who helped work on this project are in Philotheum. Most of them are working now on surveying the land around a different part of the river to start building a dam that would serve some other communities here. My brother Maxwell is very involved in that project, along with two of my father’s brothers. Thomas, too, has been drawing up some of the maps.”
“I have to do something productive with my time,” Thomas said, shrugging.
“Well, I have an idea about that,” William said. “I wanted to talk to you about it today.”
“Tell me it involves finding Tolliver myself and giving him what he actually deserves rather than waiting for the army to find him and arrest him again.”
“You know it doesn’t.”
This didn’t feel like a conversation Zander should be part of, but walking away from them in the middle felt just as awkward as staying, and besides, he sort of wanted to hear about this. He was with Thomas. Actually, if Thomas wanted to take off right now and go searching, Zander would probably follow him.
“Oh come on, Will. At least if I caught him and killed him, Quinn wouldn’t have to worry about the consequences of ordering the execution of a prince who also happens to be her half-uncle. Everyone could blame me.”
“Blame Eirentheos, you mean. And that’s if you succeeded in the attempt without getting killed yourself, which is unlikely in the extreme. We don’t know where he is or who helped him get out of prison. Whoever it was had no problem murdering three guards on top of getting in and out of the prison undetected – well, undetected by anyone who survived.”
Zander hadn’t heard that part. He hadn’t heard anything, actually since that first night. Everyone seemed to be keeping the problems quiet – or at least behind closed doors. He knew Quinn had been spending the bulk of the last couple of days in meetings.
“I’m not actually going to do it, Will. But I’m not happy about waiting around here while two armies go on a wild goose chase. He could be anywhere.”
“We got some intelligence from Philotheum yesterday that suggests he could be in the Mousike River region.”
“Close to Dovelnia.”
“Yes. Which makes sense. We believe he still has a lot of support in that area.”
“Of course he does. Hector was building support in that area for half a generation. Quinn should be having people arrested and questioning them.”
“Yeah, Thomas. A lot of potentially false arrests would be fantastic for Quinn’s cause.”
Thomas kicked a rock that went sailing into the river, though the resulting splash was insignificant compared to the force from the raging waterfall.
“Quinn and I are as angry as you are, Thomas. But anger isn’t the right way to resolve this. We don’t know exactly who we’re dealing with besides Tolliver. If we jump on this too quickly and start accusing people of being involved, we risk alienating the people who support Quinn. We need to do this the right way and recapture him without setting off any more political difficulties than we already have. So right now, that means waiting, and letting the armies do their jobs. Quinn and I actually have reason to believe that it may not be anyone from that region anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t had the chance to tell you about this with the way things have been the past couple of days, but we recently found out that Hector may have had an accomplice who traveled to the other world. It may have even been him who actually killed Samuel.”
“Who?”
“A man named Rahas. I’ll explain more about it later – show you the letter that we found. But if he’s still around, and he easily could be, then he might be the one who is helping Tolliver now.”
Zander knew he’d never heard that name before, and yet, a strange sense of familiarity washed over him when he heard it – almost a feeling of déjà vu. He knew, suddenly, that he was supposed to tell William and Thomas something – something important – but he couldn’t remember what. As he listened to the conversation, he struggled to remember.
“And he knows about the other world.”
“Yes, he’s been there. So right now, the most important thing we can do is get Zander and Owen safely back there and get the gate closed before anyone finds out it’s open. That means staying here and doing what we need to do while we wait to hear from the armies.”
“Not like I have any choice anyway, William. I’m here in Eirentheos, and he’s probably all the way over on the other side of Philotheum. I’m still sixteen, and I’m stuck here.”
Zander stared out over the water as he waited for William to say what he was going to say. “Well, actually, this whole Eirentheos-Philotheum thing is what I wanted to talk to you about.”
For a moment, Zander forgot that he wasn’t supposed to be listening and he glanced over at them. Thomas was frowning, but there was a tiny gleam of hope in his eyes – Zander wondered if this conversation was going where he thought it might.
“Back at the castle today, Quinn is going to be speaking to Mia. She’s going to officially offer her the position of baby nurse.”
Good for Quinn. It was about time for that, Zander thought.
“Now, before you react to that on a purely emotional level…” William put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Mother, Father, and Quinn all know that sometime today I was planning to ask you if you’d consider coming to live in the castle in Philotheum with us.”
“As your…?” Thomas’ voice had an edge to it. William should have led with the second bit if he didn’t want Thomas to react on an emotional level. Really not wanting to get caught eavesdropping now, Zander stared purposefully at the white caps breaking agai
nst a jagged boulder in the middle of the river.
William was impressive as he rose to the challenge in his brother’s tone, though. “As our brother, Thomas. As a friend and confidant. As whatever you want to pursue in Philotheum. We’re not asking because we feel sorry for you. We’re asking because it’s what Quinn and I both desperately want, and because, quite honestly, we need someone there with your range of skills, and your knowledge of so many of the things we’ve done here with the clinics especially, but also the power.”
“I’m not an adult, William. Have you forgotten that?”
“I don’t believe that’s a designation that relies solely on a number, Thomas. And Mother and Father agree. You’ve earned the right to be called a man, and to either live here in Eirentheos or to come with us to Philotheum as an adult. It’s your choice, of course, what you want to do. This is a sincere invitation, not a command.”
That finally managed to crack through Thomas’ armor. Though he didn’t turn to look, Zander could hear the smile in his voice. “You’re serious.”
“Quinn is sitting on her hands to keep herself from writing to Ruth and asking which apartment has the best view.”
“You’re not going to let me pick my own?” He was joking – the audible grin was so big now he was nearly laughing.
Zander heard a soft thudding sound – perhaps a friendly punch on the shoulder –and he turned around in time to see the two of them hugging.
The feeling that filled him now was so unexpected that he forgot everything else. Although he’d already realized sometime in the last few days that he was actually enjoying himself here – that he found the whole world fascinating and the people were beginning to grow on him, too – he’d never felt like this. For a moment, he almost wished that he were over there – that someone was telling him he’d earned the right to be called a man and inviting him to go and live in a faraway castle, to help rebuild a kingdom torn by recent strife.
Back in his own world, he’d just been told he wasn’t enough of a man to choose what he wanted to study in college. And maybe he wasn’t, he thought, swallowing hard as he watched the brothers. He’d never really done anything for anyone except himself. Never made any hard choices – heck, he hadn’t even made a choice about what he wanted to study, and there he was asking for someone else to pay for it.
Canes of Divergence (Dusk Gate Chronicles) Page 32
