Arrows Of Change (Book 1) (8 page)

Ashlynn grinned up at him with unrepentant delight at his
reaction.

He glowered back at her. “Lass, the last time a woman washed
me, it be me own mother.”

Laughing, she gained her feet and said, “Well, this isn’t
quite how I thought your first day in the city would go, but it seems we’ll
have nothing but trouble today. Regardless, welcome to Estole.” She smirked at
him impishly.

Just what had he gotten himself into?

Ash and Riana didn’t get far before they were hailed by a
young girl standing just outside the door. “Ash!” she called in excitement,
running the rest of the distance and throwing her arms around Ash’s upper
thighs.

Bending down, Ash returned the embrace with a bright smile.
“Gwen. I’m home.”

“Welcome home.”

Riana stepped around Ash to get a better look at the girl.
She was six or seven, with thick black hair in ringlets, deep blue eyes, and a
cherub face. The resemblance between her and Edvard was uncanny, and Riana knew
that the girl was likely a sister of the king. The blue silk dress she wore
said she was royalty all by itself.

Turning, Ash motioned to her. “Gwen, this is Riana
Ravenscroft. She’s my partner. Riana, this is Gwen Knolton, my sister.”

Sister? With the last name of Knolton? Puzzled, but not sure
if she should ask, she simply took it in stride. “May harmony find ye, Gwen.”

“I greet you, Riana Ravenscroft,” Gwen responded in an
adorably serious manner, as if she were pretending to be a grown woman.
“Partner? Are you his wizard-partner?”

“Aye,” she hesitated, not sure about that herself. She
darted a look at Ash’s face before adding, “For now, at least. Me da can also
partner with a wizard, y’see, so it be atween me and him at the moment for who
will partner with Ash.”

“We’re hoping that one of them will partner with Ashlynn,”
Ash explained. “So right now, we’re just spending time with each other, and
figuring out who works best with whom.”

“Ohhhh.” Gwen nodded sagely. “I see. Edvard sent me to find
you.”

“He did?”

“Yes. He said, before you build the wall, he needs to talk
to you.”

Ash let out a put-upon sigh. “Why do I get the feeling that
he’s going to change that very nice blueprint I drew up?”

“Because he wants to make the wall bigger?” Gwen asked in
all innocence.

Ash glowered down at her. “Of course he does. Maybe it’s a
good thing I got that extra lumber after all. Alright, where is he?”

“His study.”

Grumbling to himself inarticulately, Ash patted her head in
thanks before he turned about and went back inside the castle. He didn’t go
back upstairs, though, but headed down a hallway that led toward the back of
the building. Riana followed him, her eyes more on her surroundings than on his
back. This hallway seemed cramped compared to the others she’d seen, with
barely a rug on the floor to soften a man’s tread. There were plenty of
windows, though, looking out over a perfectly kept garden. Her eyes kept
darting to look outside, and she nearly plowed into Ash when he stopped in
front of a door.

He gave two quick raps on the wood before stepping through,
not even giving the man a chance to call for entrance. “Edvard?”

“Oh good, I caught you before you started building. Come in,
come in.” Edvard rose from his armchair and moved to a table that was big
enough for a man to make a bed on.

Riana halted in the doorway, eyes wide as she took in the
room. Never, in all her days, had she seen so many books! The walls were covered
with them from floor to ceiling, with nary more than a space here and there for
a window to let light in. The floor was covered with multiple rugs, with softly
padded chairs in every corner and four arranged in the center of the room
around the large table.

“I looked at the immigration reports this morning,” Edvard
said as Ash joined him at the table, “and the wall that we planned to build
will barely suffice. At the rate we’re growing, we’ll be pushed to the brink of
the walls within a year. We need to push it out, give ourselves more growing
room, or we’ll be in desperate straits.”

“How much further?” Ash asked cautiously. “Remember, I
didn’t bring a lot of excess lumber with me.”

“I know. But instead of here,” Edvard pointed to a line
drawn on the map in front of him, “let’s put it more southeast, about here.”

“Edvard!” Ash protested in a near whine. “I said I didn’t
have that much extra lumber!”

“No? Then, what about here?”

“Well, that’s certainly more plausible, but if you do that,
the south gate will have walls bracketing either side of the road for several
hundred feet, and that’ll congest the traffic even more.”

“Oh. Curses. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Riana drifted over to the table to peer down at the map
herself. They’d drawn boundary lines that indicated where the new borders for
Estole would be, right over an old map of the estate lines. She could tell from
the different colored ink. Then, over that, there was a fine blue line drawn
around Estole itself, smaller than the land, which she took to be the proposed
area for the wall. Interestingly enough, the line was drawn completely around
the town. Why they would do that, when they were right next to the Narrow
Channel, she had no idea.

“Be there a reason why ye be blocking the channel?”

Both men stopped dead and looked at her.

“Why?” Ash asked, puzzled.

“Aye. why? The wall be to block armies and the like, right?
I do no’ think an army can march over water. So would it no’ be better to build
the wall so it ended on the shore, and let the water be a wall for ye?”

Edvard gaped at her. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

“It would also open up trade, if we didn’t have a wall
standing there blocking merchant ships,” Ash muttered, almost to himself. “And
it’ll give more space to people that want to live along the shoreline. Edvard.
Were we so focused on a completely enclosed city that we missed the obvious?”

The new king rubbed his forehead with a pained frown. “That
or we’re so sleep-deprived and short-handed we’re making snap judgments when we
shouldn’t be. Thank you, Riana, for stating the obvious. We’ll do exactly as
you suggested.”

She hadn’t actually meant to do anything of the sort. She’d
assumed they’d had good reason to have the plan they did; she was just trying
to get a sense of why they wanted it done that way. “Er, ye be welcome.”

“Ash.” Edvard pointed to another scroll lying on the table.
“I’ll entertain your lady-partner. Draw me up new plans.”

Resigned, Ash went around the table and got to work.

Edvard gestured her to a set of chairs on the opposite side
of the room, ones that were warmed by the sunlight streaming in through the
windows. “Let’s give him a little space to work. He does better that way.”

She noted that for future reference and followed his lead.
As she sat, Edvard went to a nearby table that had a bowl of fruit and a knife,
with a stack of plates. “So, I take it that Gwen found you, as you came to see
me.”

“Aye, that be so. She be a pretty lass.”

“Oh, adorable. She knows it, too. Uses every whit of that
beauty and charm to get things out of me.” His indulgent smile said he didn’t
mind. “I feel comforted that Ash spoils her just as badly as I do. But I
suppose that’s the prerogative of younger sisters, getting their brothers to
spoil them rotten.”

The open, candid way he said this encouraged her to ask the
question she hadn’t thought proper to ask before. “So, Gwen be…?”

“My half-sister, born to a woman that used to be my nanny,”
Edvard admitted easily. “Apple? Sure? Do you mind if I have one? Many thanks.
The fact is, my father was very free with his favors when he was alive. I have
six half-siblings, in fact. Well, six that I know of, at least.”

Riana’s eyes crossed. “
Six
?”

“Astonishing, isn’t it? I mean, really, was that all the man
did in his spare time? Not all his lovers were common-born, either; some of
them were aristocrats. I have four sisters and two brothers, the youngest of
which is Gwen.” He peeled the apple with deft fingers, all the while imparting his
sinful family history as if it were common knowledge. For all she knew, it
might well be. “Some people like to claim that it was because he was unsure of
how things would turn out. After my mother had me, you see, she was weakened so
much that she was never able to have another child. The doctors strictly
advised against it. And I wasn’t much stronger for the first few years of my
life. No one really expected me to survive or amount to much. Ha! Fools, them.
I grew stronger as I got older. But anyway, people thought it was my father’s
fear of not having an heir that made him hop from bed to bed as he did.”

Something about his tone said that Edvard didn’t buy this
story. Feeling as if she shouldn’t ask but unable to quell her curiosity, Riana
encouraged him, “Ye do no’ agree?”

“Well, I have a brother that’s two years older than me, so
that rather disproves the theory, don’t you think? And it doesn’t explain Gwen
either, as I was sixteen when she was born, and completely hale and hearty at
that point.” Edvard sank into his seat, slices of apples clustered in one hand.
“Actually, Gwen was the linchpin to this whole thing. Are you sure you don’t
want a slice? Best apples available this season.”

Sensing that he simply couldn’t eat in front of someone else
without them joining in, she finally gave up and accepted an apple slice.
“Thank ye.”

Beaming at her, he continued the tale, “You see, when Gwen
was born, I expected my father to own up to his obligations. I mean, the whole
country knew it was him that fathered her. You couldn’t
not
know, not
with the way she looked. Spitting image of him, in a more feminine way. But he
ignored her. When she reached two years old, I’d finally had enough, and I
cornered him about it one evening. He informed me, in an outraged tone, that he
‘wouldn’t concern himself with some base-born child, especially a girl.’ I
admit, I knew the man was selfish, but I hadn’t realized until that point how
bad he was. I reeled. I reeled for days, shocked that he could ignore his own
daughter, especially one as lovely and sweet as Gwen. But what shocked me more
was that his peers and our fellow aristocrats didn’t seem to find his take on
the matter odd at all. It set my blood boiling. I did what I could—made sure
that Gwen had support from the family, a good education, and I saw her often. I
didn’t have to worry about her much, considering who her family was.”

She blinked at him. “Sorry, I do no’ follow.”

“Gwen is Ashtian and Ashlynn’s baby sister,” he expounded.
Then he chuckled. “Look at that face of yours! What, you didn’t know?”

“No, I did no’ know!” she spluttered. “They do no’ look like
kin at all!”

“Of course not, Gwen took after
my
side of the
family. Why do you think my relationship with my wizards is so good, eh? It’s
because we’re family, in a sideways sort of way.”

Well, Ash had said at their first meeting that he and the
king were “blood-brothers,” but she’d assumed it was because of some
ritualistic oath. She hadn’t realized he’d meant the words literally, that they
were actually brothers connected by blood—in a way. The whole tangled knot of
his family tree was giving her a headache.

“Wait, ye be making me poor head spin. I’d think it strange
to call them blood-siblings when ye do no’ share blood directly.”

“Well, how else would you phrase it?” he challenged, unbothered.
“We debated it ourselves. We’re not step-siblings, after all. We aren’t full-siblings
or half-siblings of course. But we
do
have a relation to each other. So
how would you phrase it?”

She opened her mouth to give a response, but honestly
couldn’t think of a word or term that would fit. Their situation was too
unique, or the language too restrictive. Finally, she gave up and conceded the
point to him with a flip of the hand. “I take yer meaning. And then? What
happened next?”

“Well, my father did everyone a favor and killed himself. By
accident. He got drunk one night and rode home at breakneck speed. Quite
literally. It destroyed my mother—heavens know why, the man was atrocious as a
husband—but the rest of us were relieved. With him gone, I wanted to put a stop
to all this nonsense about not acknowledging my siblings officially, so I went
to properly register them with the court.” Edvard’s eyes darkened and went
hard. “Only I wasn’t allowed to.”

Riana didn’t have to demand an explanation. “Because they be
illegitimate?”

He dipped his head a fraction in agreement. “Yes. The whole
government fought me on it. I spent a good six months petitioning, going through
legal channels, even attempting a bribe or two. But with me as a fully
functional heir, they wouldn’t hear of it. Now, if my family line had ended
with my father and only bastards were left, they would have begrudgingly brought
one of them on and legalized them. But with me alive? No chance of that. And that
was when I stopped and looked, really
looked,
at the country that I
lived in. I looked at our laws, our customs, and the future that my beautiful,
amazing sisters would be forced into because of a reckless night of folly on
our parents’ part. And you know—I couldn’t stomach it. I just couldn’t. I
couldn’t tell Gwen, who was six by that point, that no decent man would ever
marry her because of her birth.”

Propping her head in her hand, Riana stared at Edvard in
fascination. “So ye immediately thought to overthrow the government and
establish yer own kingdom?”

“Well, no, I didn’t immediately jump into that,” he
admitted. “First, I drew Ash aside, as he’d studied law more than any of us
had, and we spent months researching, trying to find a precedent to turn all of
this over in our favor. But we couldn’t find it, of course. Actually,
researching like that told me just how corrupt and skewed our government really
was. Because of the research, I decided that the only thing to do was to split
off—form my own country and give people a place to go so that they could have a
chance at a decent future.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “It’s turned
out to be a more complicated enterprise than I’d imagined.”