Two Queens (Seven Heavens Book 1)

by Holden, Ryan

  Slowly the pain ebbed. It was still there, just smoothed down a bit. He felt exhausted. Tears came again and he tried to stop. The heaving hurt him. He started humming.

  “I'll come back,” she whispered. He sat there in the night air, body cold yet aflame. She returned quickly with a blanket. It was no blanket such as he had known but comfortable enough. At that moment, he wished he could give her one woven from Kerry's fleece. A kingly present, not one a slave could give. He kept on humming.

  She paused after wrapping it around him. She moved to sit down beside him and eased him until his head lay in her lap. Her deft fingers ran over his head, pushing, rubbing, stroking, weaving through his hair. The pain diminished. She set him down and left. Oh, that he could sleep on her lap! He missed his mother. She would have taken care of him.

  In the cloudy world between waking and sleeping he saw her in the distance but she would not answer his cries. Sleep came and bore him into the darkness.

  Seventeen

  The sun rose to western mountains no longer endless. Far to the north they diminished into the plain. Their way became populated and they traversed many paths. It was a way no longer but a broad road meandering through the fertile Arcadian valley, poised between Kyriopolis to the northwest and Orion's beloved Mount Finola to the southeast, also lying between the northeast Pine Forest where the Silvani hunt and, back along the very path Orion traveled on, another ancient city in the deep south. Vineyards and orchards covered the land except where low stone walls threaded around open fields. They were but a day's journey from Avallonë, Orion heard.

  He spoke with Simon once more. “I've done as I've promised. Let me sell her.”

  “Yes, you have, I gather from the remarks of passing merchants.” He almost smiled.

  “Our deal?”

  “What deal? You think I treat with slaves?” His voice became cold.

  “You still need me.” He felt something crack.

  “And why? You've cleaned it, told me what it is, and showed me that even a witless girl can ride the thing.”

  “If I let her. One word from me and Kerry will not bear anyone. You little know the bond between us and our kardja.”

  “You do that and I'll beat Desdemona. I'll tear her hair out in front of you.” His hand swept out, pointing at her. The others started listening. “Can you let that happen? No, because you're a fool. When Theo played the fool and freed you, did you flee? No, coward. When you were on the other side of the river with nothing but the girl in your way, did you flee? No. You lack the courage to do what it takes.”

  Orion swallowed. “But you don't know how to sell her. You don't know her genealogy, or anything.”

  “Isn't that my profession, selling things to fools? As to your ridiculous story about her birth, even a child can come up with a better lie.”

  “It isn't a lie.”

  He grabbed Orion. “And why should I care? How would I know? That's your problem. You deal in truth and honor and loyalty. You can't survive in this world. I ran a risk letting you deal. You could have escaped countless times. But no. You are a slave to your silly ideas, thinking you could have it all. Turns out you were no risk at all.”

  He shoved him down. “You thought you could outsmart me? Think over that tomorrow when you stand in the slave market.” He turned away.

  Orion sat there, palms sweating. He had one more secret left, but what was the use? Better to let the new owner get the foal for free with Kerry then help Simon anymore. He wept. He could no longer avoid the truth.

  He was not Kerry's owner. He had failed.

  The wagon continued on. He jerked to his feet and plodded along. The sights and smells of the fruits they passed went unnoticed. Why didn't he flee when he could? Kerry was valuable: whoever bought her would treat her well. He should have saved his own skin. He could have gotten the ring another way and eventually bought her back.

  Once again he was living in an impossible world. What chance did he really have in getting the ring? Once he did, what was the use? Drift from here to there, a wanderer without a home, a precious but unusable trinket in his pocket? Or sell it, and live the life of a rich man, knowing he had lost not only Kerry, his father's legacy, but sacrificed his mother's inheritance as well.

  Perhaps it wasn't a bad thing to be a slave. To forget about himself, constantly having to do something for the owner. Not worrying about escaping, or Kerry, or the ring, or his mother's kin. It would be much simpler.

  He was startled at something by his side. It was Desdemona. He looked at her.

  “I'm sorry,” she said.

  He kept on walking. His eyes saw Kerry, bound by a lead cord to Simon's saddle. He was taking no chances with his prize.

  She fiddled with her hands. “I wish you didn't have to leave us. It will be so dull.” She stopped. “Oh, I'm so rude.”

  “Please stop,” he said. The dull ache inside him grew larger. His foolish mind could flit from a smashing success to accepting slavery in a moment, but he was not his mind. He thought of Theo and Desdemona. He wondered how Kerdae and Enda fared.

  “Please, let me. I don't remember my parents, I have no family. When you shared Kerry with me. That was the best thing that ever happened.”

  He felt ready to cry. He needed to be strong, stern, ready for the cruel world ahead.

  “At least I don't think I remember my parents. I have some images that seem to me memories of dreams. My favorite is lying in a crib with my mother singing me to sleep. I can never see her face, but I know it must be beautiful. Not like me.”

  He looked at her. Nothing that he could see had changed from when he first saw the hooded figure in front of Kerry. But perhaps he had changed. Something in her that Kerry realized the first second they met. “But I know it can't be true, for I've seen the same crib in a shop and that was when the crib first entered my dreams.”

  “Your face. It's bruised.” He raised his chained hands to touch it. “Did Simon beat you?” A slight shudder passed through him.

  “No.”

  “Then what? Did you fall?”

  “Oh, no. I'm rather contagious to bruising. I often find similar hurts on myself as on my patients.” She laughed, as if it were a trifle.

  Orion kept looking at her. “If you didn't know your parents, how do you come by your name?”

  “It was given me by a sour old lady who tried to make me help with the housework in Avallonë. I kept on getting sick all the time so she eventually turned me out. I'm much healthier in the country. As I was saying....”

  Orion looked at her. Her face reminded him of Enda's right before she asked Astra if she were a witch. “Yes?”

  “Can you hum for me?” she blurted out.

  Orion felt his face redden. “I'm not very good.”

  “I'm sorry. I'm being rude again.”

  They walked on in silence for a time. Suddenly the girl kissed him on the cheek then fled to the wagon.

  “Please sit.” The girl with raven tresses extended her pale hand. Paris rose from his bow and accepted. He sank into a rich brocade that formed the skin of the well-stuffed chair. Ah.

  “As you wish, my lady.” He smiled at her, eyes bright. This was where he belonged. He took in the small antechamber: a wide window looked into the heart of the city and kept the room well lit on days like today. A low stool on his right held a seven-piece candelabra, wicks unlit, at the ready for darker days. It was cunningly wrought in silver with two leaping horses as its base, a clear goblet for oil in between them. He looked closer. One was a unicorn.

  “Such beauty,” he said.

  “You like it? I am glad. The unicorn is my favorite. I must show it to you when it is lit. The light plays on the stand most delightfully.” She sat with hands clasped on settee,. Her right arm had a rest should she want it, and her back as well, with room to her left should she wish to put her feet up.

  Paris looked around the room. A spinning wheel stood in the corner between the window with spools of thread h
ung on the wall behind. “My lady's handiwork?”

  The girl blushed. “Not half. Mother wishes me to make myself useful but Rhoda is the adept.” She looked at the older girl, not quite twenty, who was brushing her hair. Rhoda bent her head.

  The silence grew. “Mother says you are of Kyriopolis.”

  “Yes, that is true. It is a great city, though not so beautiful as your own.”

  Her eyes dropped. “I have been there once, long ago. I do not remember it, save marble columns in a long portico. But I have the word of many I know and art's depictions also. You need not hide your pride in your home, even here in Avallonë. Is it your home?”

  “The family of Paris have lived in Kyriopolis many years. I am the eighth to bear the name.”

  She turned bright red. “Oh of course.”

  He raised his hand. “No need to apologize. It is not for the royals to concern themselves with a house so humble as mine.”

  “As humble as yours! But yours is the pride of Kyrian nobility. It is uncouth, aye even unjust, to say so.”

  “Fortune has favored us.” He shrugged.

  “Rhoda, you must help me. This lord is much too self-deprecating for our taste. Rhoda!”

  The young woman swayed forward and kept brushing.

  The girl continued. “I do insist that you stop. If you do, you shall remind me of my unspeakable rudeness and I shall take it amiss.”

  “As you say, Princess.”

  “How were your travels? I wish I could travel, but father does not like it. There is always so much happening here for my parents.”

  “My travels were satisfactory. Yet the greatest joy I take from them is in their recent completion, leaving me in happy circumstance.”

  “Do you have a house here in Avallonë, then?”

  “No, though that has been a fond wish of mine.”

  Rhoda stepped back and set the brush down.

  “Come come, you must be our guest. I shall speak to Mother on this matter. Rhoda, you must remind me. I wish to see you again, Lord Paris, but my tutor has my next hour. Good day.”

  He rose and bowed, then exited. She was still a child. The obvious infatuation with the unicorn myth and speech that both unthinking and excessively polite grated on him. But she had a taste for the foreign and exotic—he must have some stories ready, he noted—and was too spineless to be any real hindrance. Pretty? Incontestable. Were their places swapped the maid would do no worse.

  Once outside the palace he spit into the dirt. Royals and nobles: donkeys and peacocks! The barrier his fathers had never been able to breach. But not him.

  That night Desdemona did not bring Orion his food. He looked on as the others scrambled over the food in the trough. They'd been fed better, a last attempt to make them appear healthy and strong. There was even some food left over at this last supper. He could take some, no fight needed. His stomach writhed. He let Aeneas throw it away and curse them roundly for wasting good food. Eat it yourself, lame old man.

  He felt so alone that night. He thought of his neighbors, the red bearded men he would likely never see again. Perhaps some of them were like Theo: inquisitive, talkative, often doing the wrong thing by accident. He wondered how many more of them there were. Did Simon kidnap them as he had him? They seemed to make this trip each several times a year: how many hundreds of slaves had gone through his hands?

  Orion shuddered. And he was just one of them. Even if he could speak to his mother's kin, why would she care? There were many people here, more passed by each hour then he'd ever seen in Darach. He spoke more like his father than his mother. He was dirty. Life was valued where he came from. Here? There seemed to be too much of it.

  He thought it would be different. He was his parent's only son. First child then her then only child once again. They were his only parents. And there wasn't much else. But say he met a relative, someone who saw a hundred, even a thousand—could it be possible?—others in the passing of one day. Who would care for him, when there were so many?

  He thought of the curse. Was this because of his mother? He knew there were powers greater than human and far more ancient. Why did some weak kardja live while a strong one died? Who could explain that? Perhaps some part of the Unicorn she spoke of was left in the very fabric of the soil beneath him, hurting him in every step. If so, better to die alone then bring the curse on anyone else.

  He didn't sleep that night. He looked at the stars. Flat and distant they seemed, devoid of their sheen. He wished to fall asleep and never wake.

  The next morning they continued on. No one spoke to him the whole morning. Simon and his crew were more lively in their actions, almost jittery, yet over all the rest a somber quiet settled as they neared their destination. They stopped for a short lunch where the last of the food was served. In the distance in front of them the faintest trace of the city of Avallonë could be seen.

  It was a long lunch. Simon had Desdemona, then Theo, ride Kerry until he approved of the performance. When the girl was done she walked back to the wagon. Orion, still undecided up to that point, made himself act. “Desdemona!”

  She walked to him but kept at a distance, as if ashamed of how open she was the night before.

  “I have something for you.” She looked curious but didn't come closer. He took the small clasp knife from his cloak. “I've used this often to remove a thorn from Kerry's coat. I want you to have it.”

  She took it and turned it over in her hands. “Thank you,” she breathed. There was silence. “What are the markings?”

  “They're words.” If he continued, he could not turn back. “'The Sun also rises.'”

  She looked up at his voice, face clouded. He began singing.

  “If our courage lights the match

  A new dawn may come to be

  And over despair hope we cast

  Others may ride in our calm lee.”

  He stopped in shock. He thought his mother sang it too. The female voice continued on alone.

  “East came enemies, east came a Friend,

  East came the one who both Makes and Mends,

  So never fear, in the east the Sun also rises.”

  She breathed a long breath. “You know the song?”

  “What do you mean? How do you know it?”

  “I didn't know. Until now. It is what my mother sings in my dream. How?”

  “This is the song my mother sang to me and my sister as we fell asleep.”

  “Your sister? Where is she?” Her voice squeaked.

  “She died a long time ago. She was sick and they sent her to Avallonë to be tended to.” He stared at her.

  Her face puckered. “Is your family—was your family wealthy?”

  “No. I mean, we never lacked for food, but no,” he said.

  She looked as if she stood on a ledge and wanted to step off it into the dark. “In my dream I saw a ring with a flashing stone on her hand as she tucked me in.”

  “You know of the ring?”

  “Therewas a ring?”

  Just then Simon and Theo returned. Aeneas, already in the wagon, clucked at the horses and the wagon started moving forward. Orion half fell at the first jerk then walked on dazed. Desdemona, Adara, his sister, walked beside him.

  He smiled at her. She smiled back then looked forward. He sneaked glances at her, breathing. He felt something bump his hand. It clasped his hand and he clasped back. He dare not look at her.

  “Where is Mother?”

  “Gone. Dead.”

  “For sure? Not like your sister dead?” She smiled then looked scared.

  “It's okay. Yes, for sure. I've stood at her grave.”

  “And father? Do I—we—have a father?”

  “Dead too.” Welcome home, Adara.

  “Oh.” She looked down. “So my name is—what was it?”

  “Adara.”

  “And your name is...” He told her his name and how he thought it was Brian for so many years. She liked this, how they both had two names. She lik
ed the “Orion” better and he was glad. She didn't say what she thought of “Adara.” He told her the names of their parents and began talking, hesitantly at first, then more easily, spurred on or diverted by her questions.

  “Desdemona! In the wagon!” Simon said. They both looked up. He rode back to them.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Just go, we'll speak more later,” Orion said.

  “When?” she asked over her shoulder as she headed toward the wagon.

  Oh no! What if Simon found out? His smile masked his face but worry crept in. He now hated his bonds. Why didn't they know this at the river? He was trying to help her, to do the right thing, but had condemned her. She was fine until he included her in his plot.

  He should have left her alone. How could she miss a brother she never knew of? Now he might ruin her life. She caught up with the wagon and climbed in, looking back at him.

  Might? He already had. Instead of a dream she had an enslaved brother she would see no sooner than she saw her parents who, by the way, are dead. You didn't know that, sister? Happy I could help.

  They passed houses and shops on right and left, as if a dozen Darachs welcomed their approach to the city proper. The moment Orion had so long waited for came: he had reached the city of his dreams. Where he wanted to go and become a great man. Now that the moment had come he could care less about the city. He hated it. What kind of place attracted slavers? Where kidnapping flourished? Where money ruled lives?

  He didn't know what he wanted. Well, he did. Freedom. And Adara and Kerry with him. For that matter, why not his parents alive once more?

  Right now there was only one choice. He had lost Kerry and his freedom. But Adara still had hers, or something not much worse. Once he left she wouldn't be mistreated. He hoped.