Chapter 18
FAREWELLS
The day Thea left, they took me again to that dingy hall to talk to Father about my power.
I had avoided their questions, as best I could, told them about the slow gathering, that my well of power was empty.
And I’d stayed with my sister, and went outside to place my hands on the grass of the courtyard, regardless of the stares and whispers, to look at the sky, the only things I could think to do.
I let the power coalesce inside of me, not letting myself use a single thread or a breath of it, feeling the way I pressed it down under my skin like the frightened child I had been before.
But unlike before, I could feel the trickle.
I could feel that empty space, the space that had grown before, after the Pthralhirgar, after I exhausted myself at the wall.
It was bigger.
When Thea and her escort disappeared out through the gates, out of sight, on her way to a life far removed from these walls, I stood again in that threadbare throne room, looking up at the baron, the sickly ruler of the House of Belnor.
He wasn’t a massive wolf on its hind legs, or a giant feline scenting my blood. He was just a man. It seemed unfair that someone so unimpressive could do so much harm.
Father’s minister was again there on the platform, the one who’d supposedly been so very punished for selling me. Of course they were all up there and I was standing on the floor again, though this time without bonds on my wrists. At least, on some level, they knew they shouldn’t tie me.
The minister spoke for him. “Now, Lady Rowena…” The title was new. “You had informed us that you had enacted pyromancy just prior to our men reaching you at the orc encampment. That in deflecting oncoming aberrations, you had exhausted the breadth of your power.”
“I burned them to death.”
There was some uncomfortable shifting in chairs, which was odd. This was the power they wanted, but they weren’t comfortable with me having it, were they? All this time trying to get me to burn things, and they weren’t really happy when I did.
“Yes, well, we had discussed that it would take you some days to rebuild your reserve of…fuel, as you put it.”
I had not put it.
“It has been more than a month. While no one expects you to be ready to take out a building, it would behoove us to start exploring what you’re able to do.
The family annals—" he waved to an aide with a couple of books in his arms, "—have records of sorcerers doing quite a few things besides burning. While gouts of fire may be useful in a siege, and others knowing we have such a scion will be helpful to keep enemies at bay—" how did he manage to sound so condescending when it was my power talked about? "—there are other abilities that should serve us sooner, if you could suss out a visiting noble’s motivations and thoughts, for example. We’ve proffered a soldier for you to practice on.” He referenced a man standing to the side who looked singularly nonplussed.
I considered wrapping the tendrils of power around the ferret-like minister’s mind, cracking it open to my gaze like a nut, but the intimacy of it, after Khal, left a sour feeling in my stomach. “No. Not that,” I said, and didn’t care about the ripples of annoyance over the room.
“If you’re not able to do it yet, that isn’t a problem. It’s just something that you should practice, if you’re going to render aid to your father.”
“And what about my husband?” I asked. Faces around the room flinched. It didn’t matter if they were upset now, now that Thea was no longer in this house. I raised my eyebrows. “Why only my father?”
“Well now…” the minister spoke again, the effort of keeping that fake courtesy in his voice straining. “You don’t have to worry about that again, my dear. That’s been cleared up, and we can put it behind us now.”
“But I married Khal Drazha’s-son.” I let my gaze sweep them, let them look away. “To save Thea. We agreed in this room. You had me on my knees, with ropes on my wrists, right…there.”
“Well that wasn’t valid, it’s been settled, so you don’t have to worry your head about it now. If we could look forward—"
“But what about my husband?” I stared back and forth, my face empty. It must have seemed to them that I’d lost my wits, and I didn't care that they were squirming. “You talk like I’ll be playing the dutiful daughter, but I’m a wife now. Shouldn’t I be a wife?”
And now none of them wanted to look at me.
The ferret-minister cleared his throat, put on a false air of soothing. “Well you don’t have a husband right now, but it’s…er…possible that some sort of betrothal could be arranged. There are single men among the knights, and you could be given a place within the castle—"
“So you want to give me away again.” I didn’t know if I was going to laugh or scream. “Give the toy away, snatch it back, give it away again. Like a child who doesn’t know how giving works.”
His nerves frayed. “Young lady, we have been patient, but you are before the baron of Belnor. You will hold your tongue—"
“Aldous,” my father said. “That’s enough.
My daughter has been through a lot.” He waved a hand, and the guards that had been starting to step forward moved back to the wall.
There were only two of them today, and the one servant.
Father turned his gaze back to me. He looked uncomfortable, still.
I was always going to be a reminder that he’d sold his flesh to orcs, wasn’t I?
Before, I’d been a reminder that he’d cavorted with whores in the lower city, the feral child he’d made, and now I was a reminder that he’d sold his child.
The way his eyes went sad and his gaze stuck on me brought bile into my mouth.
He nodded, once, the closest thing to an apology I was likely to receive.
“I know this must be confusing for you. But you’re home now.
Aldous has been reprimanded about what happened.
You can leave this in the past, and stay in your place here. ”
He was just a man, this graying figure. He was just another man, like the ones in the warrens, like the people Khal saw good in. Maybe there’d been good in him once. Surely the horror that rolled through me looking at his bland face, this echo of childhood terrors, should be misplaced.
Surely it was wrong to want him to die screaming, and to want him to say it was all a lie and he loved me.
But maybe wanting hope wasn’t what was broken.
I’d seen good in the world, now. I’d met at least one person who’d never sell me, probably more.
Piotr would never have sold me. Probably even Vrathgar would have fought for me.
Khal’s people weren’t like this man, weren’t like the ones here.
And maybe it wasn’t me who had been broken, yearning all those years.
Perhaps it had never been me who was broken at all.
“Did you know he’d paid the orcs in colored water?” I looked at the man on the low throne. “Did you know the potions he gave them weren’t real, when he handed me over to them?”
He hesitated, his hesitation an entire answer. His face was sad. “I’m sorry, Rowena. Things…” The minister was glaring, beside him, and the baron of Belnor waved his ineffectual hands. “Things were difficult. We make hard choices, in war.”
I nodded, inhaled, and it stung, it stabbed deep into that child inside of me, but it didn’t hurt as much as I’d imagined. “I suppose I’ll have to put it behind me,” I croaked out. “Since there are such easy choices to make now.”
He smiled sadly again, and I hoped the revulsion didn’t show on my face. The minister beside him cleared his throat. “Yes, well, now if we could begin—"
“You were a father to Thea, sometimes,” I interrupted.
“I think she loves you a little. I…” The smile wiped off his face as I said it.
“I think maybe I did too, once.” They were quiet, like they couldn’t decide if I needed to be restrained again, like they couldn’t remember if they had that authority over a sorceress.
“I just wanted you to know that my mercy is for her. We’re done. I couldn’t care less about you.”
Anger twisted his expression into something ugly, something fitting, and it was a relief to see that puppy-eyed falseness leave. It was a relief to see him as he was, as he should be, for a fitting goodbye. “You need to remember your place.” He gestured to a guard.
“I do. It’s next to my husband.” His man was coming towards me, and I threw out a hand. “Stop.”
And the guard stopped with one foot raised, his eyes bulging, frozen in space, his hand out towards me.
I looked back at the pallid man on the throne, whose face was growing even more white.
“You live at my sister’s discretion,” I said.
“Do you understand? You live for her. If you ever deal falsely with her or with my husband’s people again, I will burn this place so completely they can’t reuse the stones. ”
The minister spoke again, outrage. “Miss Rowena, this is inappropriate—"
“Weren’t you punished for selling someone without his permission, minister? Wasn’t he very angry at you? Or are you still just a convenient meat shield so he can pretend his sins aren’t his own?”
My father tried again. “If this is about wanting a husband, you could choose from—"
“Oh, I get to choose now?” I took a step closer, and the stupid man’s eyes bulged on his throne. “You know I can burn this place to cinders, cook you in your clothes, so now I get to choose? How little, and how late.”
The other guard pulled out his blade to rush, and I threw out the other hand. “Hold.”
He held, his sword in the air and his mouth open, like a little toy soldier. I wasn’t even tired.
“I’d thought about demanding a dowry from you, making you pretend to be even that much a father. But I’ve changed my mind. I want nothing from you. Only the assurance that you’ll let me go.”
“Young Miss,” the minister hissed. “This is not a negotiation. You are in your father’s house—"