Loss #2
Stevic found this reasoning ridiculous. She’d all those years of experience, experience that no magic could replace.
Surely King Zachary would see the value in that and keep her by his side in some capacity, even if tradition required her to leave the Green Riders.
The queen had told him how fond Zachary was of Laren.
He had sent this rescue mission to retrieve her from Varos, which said much.
No matter the tradition, Stevic did not think the king would set her aside.
Not that he wished her to continue to serve in the line of danger.
“The most difficult part of this,” she said, “which is not easy to express, is the grief.” She paused, swallowed hard. “The loss of something I’ve known the whole of my adult life. The companionship and certainty that came with my brooch, that sixth sense. It made me who I am.”
“Laren,” he said softly, “ you have made you who you are. No brooch did that.”
“Thank you, but I am not sure it is possible for anyone else to understand, not even another Green Rider.” She sighed.
“Elgin did not when I told him, for he was a Rider for a much shorter period. Most Riders are still young when their brooches abandon them, with a full life of new possibilities ahead of them. I’ve known more years of my life with mine than without, and I can’t even begin to explain how it’s been in its absence.
I could not allow the Varosians to know that I no longer possessed the gift for which they abducted me.
They would have simply killed me as I wasn’t young or attractive enough for other uses.
I had to pretend I still had my ability.
I—” She shuddered, and could not seem to continue.
“Laren?”
She sat there, taut, her eyes closed. “I can’t—. . . I can’t—”
He stood and moved to sit next to her. “Yes, you can.” He put his arm around her shoulders.
“You are free of Varos. You are free now to grieve.” He felt her fighting for control of her emotions, the quaking of her body.
“I know it is hard for you. You don’t want anyone to see you as weak.
You could not let the Varosians see, and you don’t want anyone else to see.
But it is not a weakness to grieve. You do not have to bury it anymore.
It’s just me here, and no one else has to know. ”
An abrupt sob escaped her, then another, and he drew her to him, her face pressed into his shoulder as she wept.
He held her as she released her grief, and all that she had experienced as a captive of the Varosians.
He gently rocked her and murmured quiet encouragement so that she could release her emotions unimpeded.
Laren Mapstone, he thought, had so long had to lead and take care of others that he wondered who had ever taken care of her ?
When was she ever, as a Green Rider officer, allowed to express her true emotions?
That she did so with him now was a privilege.
When she finished, she pulled away, wiped her eyes with the sleeves of her robes, and snuffled. “Thank you,” she said. Her words were a little shaky.
“If you ever need a shoulder,” he replied, “I will ever be at your service.” One release of emotions, he thought, did not mean she was over the grief and trauma. It would be a lengthy recovery.
She nodded, sniffed once more, and then in true Laren Mapstone fashion, stood and placed her hands on her hips. “Right. I have done enough talking for now. I want to hear what is happening back home.”
Stevic, of course, wanted to hear more about her time in Varos, and about “manipulating” King Farrad Vir, but it could wait.
She deserved to hear whatever she wished, though, of course, none of what he had to tell her was current.
He recounted how he had ridden cross-country from Selium to Sacor City in the wake of Melry’s abduction, only to learn that Melry had escaped, and that Laren had been taken by the Darrow Raiders and sold to the Varosians.
“To my surprise,” he said, “the king had sent a message from the front to reside with the queen in anticipation of my probable return to Sacor City. Of course, he must have known I would agree to the scheme of bringing you home, should his embassy fail.”
He did not linger on the details of his preparation for the voyage, but told her what he knew of the war, which was almost nothing.
“The king and his army were still encamped by the Wingsong Mountains holding siege of the keep at the Eagle’s Pass. Your Riders had searched for you, but failed, and the king called them off.”
“Yes,” she said. “The Varosians hid me with magic.” She sighed. “I can only hope that Zachary has retaken the keep and brought humiliation to the enemy.”
Stevic was about to agree when a knock came on the cabin door.
“What is it?” Stevic called.
“Chief,” Eloni said, “Roderic is ready for the colonel if she’s still wanting to be seen to.”
Stevic glanced at Laren. “Are you up to this?”
Her smile was grim. “I will not be free until this disk is gone.”