Chapter 15 Stone and Saga #6
“Not because I love them any less,” Sesto replied quickly.
“I suspect I love them too much, and it’s not a burden they deserve.
We’ll be seeing them often enough. Both of us will work with Asterin in his translation business, but Daire and I will be acquiring our own place.
We met with Asterin’s solicitor in Oldcastle today, and he has two properties he thinks will suit us well, and tomorrow we’ll see them both.
But we hoped you might be kind enough to offer us a few nights here until we settle. ”
“Stay as long as you like. It’s small, but there’s a den, and I can sleep there while you two take my room.”
“You’re expecting me to protest, but I know better than to argue with you. Your temperament has not had three decades to simmer as mine has, and I’m too tired to abscond of my judgment,” Sesto said.
Jesstin clapped his hands on the table. He was glad to have the men there and wouldn’t mind if it took longer for the solicitor to get them into their own place. They’d know more about what to do with the boy too. “Taven, I take it he’s...”
“Afraid so,” Daire said in his soft, affected tone.
Jesstin had noticed from the start how Sesto had been soothed by it.
“He’s gone in peace though. He was waiting for Lady Elloven, and his patience was rewarded after all.
He passed the morning after she left, and we found him with a smile on his face. ”
“Even in the end, Considine...” Jesstin had a wisecrack loaded, but not the heart to sling it. “Good for him.”
Sesto and Daire exchanged looks before Sesto spoke next. “We stopped by the citadel to visit with Emrys, and he shared a peculiar story, one you might add color to.”
Jesstin crossed his arms. His head fell back. “He didn’t know who I was. It was fine.”
“He is not fine, Jess, and I believe you know it,” Sesto replied. “Anduin is coming home soon, Asterin said. Either Emrys will step down or fate will decide for him, but he’s not well.”
Jesstin nodded, sighing. “I know he isn’t. I didn’t expect to run into him, and I wish I hadn’t. It wasn’t good for either of us.”
“You’ll be glad of it one day,” Daire said.
“I don’t trust time to fix my problems,” Jesstin said.
“My world is smaller now, but I appreciate what I have. Rhiain, As, all they did was worry about me, and if I’d come home thirty-three years later.
.. The more I’ve thought about it, I’m glad they don’t remember me, because it means all those years agonizing were erased too.
I can live with that. I’ll see them in the afterlife, now that I know my soul isn’t damned. Maybe they’ll remember me there.”
“You’re trying awful hard to convince us,” Sesto said.
Jesstin shrugged. “Now we don’t have to talk about it again.”
Daire frowned. “They’re still your family, Jesstin, no matter what.”
“Were,” Jesstin said sardonically. “Were my family, Daire. The Conductor stole them from me.” He laughed. “I can’t even claim that, actually. I sold them away, for her.”
“Do you regret it?” Daire asked. Sesto clucked his tongue in warning, but Daire had fine-tuned his selective listening over the years. “Would you have done differently, knowing what you know now?”
Jesstin shook his head at the table.
“Have you heard from her?” Daire asked, also ignoring Sesto’s perturbed hiss. “Seen her?”
“No, and respectfully, in my home, we don’t speak of her.”
“Forgive me. I just find it sad for it to end like this.”
“It ended before it even began, Daire.” Jesstin stuffed down a deep ire he didn’t want to direct at Daire, who meant well but was about to send him down a dark spiral. “It ended the night I murdered her brother. Can we leave it there?”
“I’m afraid we cannot,” Sesto said. He held a hand out in gentle redirection, which Daire finally heeded. “We heard something today from Asterin’s solicitor. He’s been working with Elloven.”
“He’s what?” Jesstin flipped both of his hands up. Dropped them onto the table. “How? Why? There are hundreds of solicitors in the region.”
“Asterin has been helping her get her property and estate settled. He never stopped looking after Esme all these years. Asterin thinks the woman he’s helping is Elloven’s daughter, but that’s not relevant.
What is relevant is something the solicitor mentioned offhand.
I don’t expect he realized we’d take a deeper meaning from what he said or he’d have held his tongue. ”
Jesstin closed his eyes to steel himself. “Sesto, Daire, I don’t know how many fucking ways to say this, but I don’t want to know about Elloven, to see Elloven, to think of—” He took a hard pause. “Why? Why would you bring her up?”
Sesto leaned in. “Because there’s something, dear boy, we believe you’ll want to know.”
“I assure you, I do not!”
Sesto glanced at Daire in hesitation. “There was an incident in Oldcastle two nights ago. She left the solicitor’s late and was waylaid by weather, then found herself at a tavern across the way for the evening, alone, where Castien and two dozen soldiers cleared the place out, cornered her, and threatened her. ”
Jesstin’s hands traveled back to the table. “Say that again?”
“There was an incident—”
“I know what you fucking said! I need to think. Give me a moment.” Castien. Fucking Castien. And Sesto had thought the man was neutered? Neutering a vicious dog didn’t make it less vicious; the only way to stop it was to put it down. “Is she all right?”
Sesto nodded. “Physically, she was not harmed. But a comment she made to the proprietor of this tavern made its way to the solicitor. It may be gossip. It may be nothing...”
“Well, you clearly don’t believe it’s nothing, or you wouldn’t be ripping my fucking heart out, would you?”
“Neither of us believe this is mere gossip,” Sesto said, as steady as if he were speaking with an unstable child.
“She called herself Shioven, Jess. Shioven. Have you met anyone else with that name? If what she said... if she meant what she said... then tomorrow night will either end in her triumph or her destruction, but I daresay either outcome will be just as devastating for Elloven. And, whether or not you’ll admit it, you. ”
Jesstin gripped the edges of the table. Hearing her name and the threat of danger had the same effect it’d had every other time, since the night he’d rescued her from the mobs screaming at her carriage.
Perhaps it would always be that way. Perhaps escaping her was only possible when he knew she was safe, but when had Elloven Hawthorne ever been safe?
“Tell me what she said,” he said. “And I’ll decide how to handle it.”