Bones of the Empire (94 page)

Phaesys smiled slightly and waited until Oria had finished before he went on. “After that year, I managed to apprentice myself out as a servant to a household. I was treated no differently than any of their cattle, and I asked for nothing more than that.”

“How does that get us to…this?” Estin asked, nodding slightly toward where the kits were trying to be stealthy.

“My masters found out about the edict,” Phaesys continued. “They decided that it might improve their station if they sent me to the council to make a delivery of goods. The expectation was that I would be executed and they would be heralded for willingly giving up a slave to appease a council member. I knew their intentions but did not shy away from my fate. They gave me an order and I obeyed.”

Putting a hand on Phaesys’s shoulder, Oria explained, “He chose a good day to come. Sirella was becoming scarce before she left my service, and the politics of the council were pushing me to the point that I am certain I would have begun killing people by week’s end. Given his background and my need for someone I could talk to, I chose to spare him, though I had few options in that regard. I needed someone who understood the politics.

“I could not simply ignore a council edict, even one that was created for my benefit. I had to exact a punishment on him that would show he had been through enough and that I was sparing him in the end. It was the only way I could employ him to help me reason my way through the council’s games. Honestly, I intended to make him wish that he had been executed.”

Estin watched Phaesys a little longer, wondering just how much he had changed in the last few years. Finally, despite his better judgment, Estin reached down and took Phaesys’s hand, pulling him to his feet so they could be eye to eye—or close to it, given that Phaesys stood several inches taller than him.

“What’d she put you through that was good enough that she thinks you should be standing here?” he asked, trying to meet Phaesys’s gaze. “Feanne would have beaten me to a bloody pulp, but I’m guessing Oria was more creative?”

“Much,” Phaesys replied, smiling more broadly. “She ordered me stripped of any remaining wealth I had…which was little more than my sword and armor that I had kept hidden over the years. Then I was to prove that I could help others, rather than myself. Failing, I was to be executed. I began taking in those who were displaced or most hurt by the war, and I cared for them in Oria’s home. Marr is actually my ward…my step-daughter, if you will. Her own parents died in the months after the mists came through.

“After a year of serving both Oria and the orphans of the city, Oria gave me a choice. I could either be set free and leave Corraithian lands with no further edict over me, or I could stay and be sold as a slave, marked until the day I die, with no opportunity to ever hold title again. I asked which she would prefer, as my debt was to her. She refused to answer, and I had to trust my heart. I was promptly sold as a slave…to Oria.”

“Slave?” Estin demanded, pushing Phaesys aside to confront Oria directly. He forced her back a step. “How dare you? Just kill him! After what we went through—”

“After what we went through, it was a valid test of whether he has changed,” she snapped back, planting a hand on Estin’s chest to keep him from coming any closer. “The council wanted him dead, given who his father was. Banishment was one option, but they would have hunted him down with no consequences. Slavery and the limitations that placed on him was the other. By making him my slave, I can keep him around, and I can allow him to live as I see fit. I was protecting him. Every day he came to me and asked me to forgive him again and again, until I believe it hurt me more than him to go through this. I needed him in my life. You of all people should understand, Father.”

“You had children with your slave?” Estin countered, his anger not diminishing in the slightest.

“I had children with my mate!” Oria growled back at him. “We are as close as you and Mother, but I cannot marry him under Corraithian law or he would be able to lay claim to my lands. The council wouldn’t stand for that. They’d kill us both to keep it from even being a possibility.

“Life is inconvenient, Father, but we are making the best of it. If I leave my seat on the council, I can marry Phaesys, but if I did that, people like Marr would die. I am picking my battles the way you and Mother taught me. I am not happy that I put Phaesys in the position he’s in any more than I’m happy he betrayed us all those years ago. For now, it balances out.

“I have named him my paladin—my personal guard who will sacrifice anything and will never possess wealth of his own. That title protects him, keeps us together, and allows me to do what I have to with the council. What other direction would you have me go that doesn’t sacrifice someone or something that our family considers important? Would you choose any other path if this was the only way that you could keep your family together, while saving others? If so, I may have idolized you without merit. I am doing what is right for my family and my city. As soon as I can be sure the city no longer needs me, I will set it aside to be with my family. For now, I have no regrets.”

Estin’s temper fell apart, and he looked past Oria to the kits, who were still watching from the shadow of the wagon. He watched them scamper back toward the tents. Finally, he turned to Phaesys. “Will you be entirely honest with me?”

“Of course,” Phaesys answered instantly. “Ask anything. I swear I will hide nothing.”

“Tell me if you are happy with this arrangement. Being property, even to the person you are mated to.”

Phaesys nodded, taking Oria’s hand in his. “I swore that I would give anything to be back in Oria’s life. I would have given my life every day for eternity to make amends for what I did. I presented her with the weapon to execute me more times than I can count, and would still make that offer if I believed it would make her life one bit more pleasant. If this is what it takes for us to be together, I will endure the few hardships that come with it.”

“Hardships? Does she whip you daily or something?”

Oria’s barely controlled anger told Estin he had probably gone too far, but Phaesys gave him nothing in his calm expression. “No. What I endure doesn’t come from her. Because I cannot be her husband and she is the most powerful woman in Corraithian lands, I must watch day after day as other men attempt to talk her into marrying them, so that they can lay claim to her estate. I consider it a constant reminder that my mistakes put me in the shadows near the woman I love, rather than at her side. If she accepts their offers, I would be required to protect both her and her husband, and I would do so without question. I will never be her equal, but I will never complain about that.”

The abrupt change in Oria’s demeanor to near tears told Estin it was no easier on her than it was on Phaesys. Finally relenting, Estin nodded and held out his hand to Phaesys. “Welcome to the family. Glad to see your relationship isn’t any more sane than the rest of ours.”

Phaesys took Estin’s hand, and for the first time that day, Phaesys calm surface broke. He pulled Estin into a hug, sniffling as he did so. It was awkward for Estin, having wanted to kill Phaesys earlier, but the world changed too fast for him to hold on to that anger. Instead, he held Phaesys as long as he wanted. Eventually Phaesys backed away and cleared his throat as he tried to regain his composure.

“That leads me to another question,” Estin thought out loud, pointing back toward the tent. “Marr?”

“Is with Rinam, yes,” Oria answered, looking slightly uncomfortable.

“Rinam is just shy of six. Is that right?”

“Pretty much,” Oria said, drawing patterns in the sand with a toe to keep from looking directly at him. That simple expression reminded him of her mannerisms when he had last seen her, even with so many years in between.

“How long have they been together?” he finally asked. “She seems really nervous to meet Feanne and I.”

“Officially they have been together about six months, since she was declared an independent adult, no longer under Phaesys’s watch. That was when they set out looking for you two.” Oria continued to fidget. “She is nervous because I may have told her stories about you two that put me in a position of trust with her, while making her fear you two, lest she break Rinam’s heart.”

Estin groaned and tried to ignore the chuckles from Phaesys. “Unofficially?”

Phaesys spoke up when Oria hesitated. “About nine months, since about six months after Marr moved into Oria’s household. We had other issues at the time they began sneaking off. We were unable to address it before they were rather attached.”

“Elia and Atall are a little more than six months old,” Oria added, smiling sheepishly. “When Phaesys pointed out that Rinam was getting a little…close…with Marr, I was in no position to care, as I was still figuring out how the whole pregnancy thing worked. I am always aware of what happens under my roof, but I was in no place to deal with it. Now, it would break my heart to separate them. They ran off together with Theldis and Alyana, thinking they would go find you two. By the time we heard from them the week before last, I hardly felt it was appropriate to start a fight over their relationship. The three barely remembered you two, but they were so excited to get on the road and find you both. I did not want to dull their enthusiasm with an argument.”

“The pirates…your idea or theirs?”

Oria rolled her eyes and put a hand to her forehead. “Theirs. I told them in one of my notes that if they needed money for their travels, I would provide it. Somehow that was relayed to some rather unpleasant people as a reward for finding the two of you. I’ve paid out near enough money to buy the city of Altis just keeping my brothers and sister from getting themselves killed by people who were trying to collect on that supposed offer. I had actually assumed this latest news was another false claim.”

Taking her free hand in his, Estin leaned forward. “Can you ever forgive us for being gone this long?”

She tightened her grip on his hand and smiled. “Tell me that it was worthwhile. I want to know you had good reason and that, if nothing else, you found a way to kill Arturis.”

“We did. We found out how to kill all of them.”

“I assume the retreat of the mists three years ago is your doing as well, along with the collapse of magic?”

Estin shrugged. “You’d have to ask your mother. I got myself in trouble again and missed some of the action. I’ve been stuck on the ocean for a long while.”

Oria smiled and nodded, clasping his hand more tightly. “I just need to do one thing before I can say all is forgiven, and that’s actually why I asked you out here alone.”

“What?”

Oria held up a finger to have him wait. Removing the veil and handing it to Phaesys, she slowly rolled up both sleeves and fastened them above her elbows with silk cords. Then, shifting the hem of her robe to keep it from tangling her legs, she turned and punched Estin in the jaw, knocking him over backward.

Landing with a thud, Estin spit out a mouthful of blood and checked to be sure she had not broken his jaw. When he looked up again, Oria was standing over him, offering him a hand up, stretching the fingers of the hand she had hit him with.

“That,” she said, yanking him to his feet, “is for hitting me in the face with your tail. My eye swelled nearly shut for days, and I still have a few scars on the inside of my mouth from where my fangs cut in. Now, all is forgiven. I didn’t want Mother out here when I hit you, because she would have taken my ears off before she thought it through.”

Laughing despite the pain, Estin hugged Oria and breathed in the scent of her now that he was close enough to get past the oils the Corraithians seemed to use to coat everything. A rough greeting from his lost child was far better than anything else he could imagine.

“So when do I get to see these lands of yours?” he finally asked as Oria led him back toward the tent. “We’ve got to be hundreds of miles from Corraith.”

Keeping an arm around him as they walked, Oria replied, “A little more than a hundred, and you have already seen my lands. We’re on my lands. Most of the river is mine, along with large sections between here and Corraith itself. Once you’ve gotten done catching up with everyone, I’ll let you two find a place anywhere under my banner that you want to live. You’re not sneaking away again. You will live anywhere you want that I control.”