The Broken Realm

2. The Ramblings of a Swindler-2

“You could if you were hungry enough.” Jesse pulled the bow from the hooks. He gripped the center of the arch in the carved wood and drew back the string with ease. His head fell to the side as he pretended to find something to aim at. He released it and handed it to her. “I could teach you.”

“No need,” Ravenna said. “I spent some time in the woods, gathering some foods that were familiar to me. I never should have let myself become accustomed to meat.”

“You don’t eat meat at...”

“The Rookery,” she finished. “I’d never tasted it before my training with the men of Wulfsgate.”

Jesse nodded slowly. She pulled the questions from his mind.

“You want to know how I came to love a man, and not one of my own.”

Jesse laughed. “I cannae say a word about love, sorceress. I’ve never known it myself.”

“What you do for your brother is love.”

“Aye. But it isnae the same.”

“What happened with Drystan wasn’t intentional,” Ravenna said. “By the time I realized it, it had gone too far.”

“And Lord Dereham wouldnae allow you to wed his son?”

“It wasn’t Lord Dereham. I didn’t want to end up plastered frozen upon the side of Icebolt Mountain for treason against my blood.”

Jesse’s eyes widened. “They have you train with men, but would kill you for bonding with one?”

“Yes. Exactly that.” Ravenna glanced toward the window. She could see Esmerelda in the distance, taking her fears out on the poor linens. She would have liked for them to be friends. Ravenna had even tried at the task, attempting to engage her on the return voyage from the Hinterlands by asking about Ryan and her life in the Southerlands. But Esmerelda blamed Ravenna for turning them back south. Ravenna had been the one to push them to depart the Hinterlands, but she suspected that the Medvedev’s inexplicable fear of her would not last once the shock dissipated. They would return, with others, and there’d be enough of them to overcome whatever they feared in her. When that happened, they’d be captive in a place unknown, bound with magic unknown. At least free they could plan to help Drystan and the others.

Our cause is not yours! Esmerelda had hissed at her, growing weary of Ravenna’s attempts at kinship. I came to take refuge with my husband’s people, and now we are forced to abandon this for your whims!

I wouldn’t ask you to abandon your cause. Only to realize how futile it becomes if you are a prisoner of the same peoples you believed would shelter you.

They might have done so. Because of you, we will never know.

Neither of us has to leave behind our causes, Esmerelda. We only have to be wiser in pursuing them.

There is no ‘we,’ Ravenna. Only you, and whatever you’ve done to Jesse to make him follow you.

There was no use in insisting Ravenna had done nothing at all to Jesse. Whatever confused feelings Jesse harbored, they were his own. She’d seen glimpses into his dreams of her... his flushed, feverish face when he’d wake, struggling to make sense of them. But she hadn't sent the dreams.

“Ravenna.” Jesse shifted, holding his hands crossed over his torso. “I’ve made a decision. I should have told you sooner, but I’ve been running between here and the Mule, and—”

“You’re staying. Until the child is born.”

He c****d his head. “How did you know?”

Ravenna tapped her temple. “I don’t intentionally read your mind, but sometimes I can’t help myself.”

Jesse blushed. Likely recalling a few things he’d prefer she didn’t take from his thoughts. “Right. Aye, Esme and I are staying. She’s safe here, and there may be nowhere else in the kingdom I can protect her right now.” He swallowed, nervous. “She’s carrying my brother’s son or daughter.”

“You don’t need to work so hard to persuade me of your motivations. I understand them well enough,” Ravenna said. She stepped around him and leaned in to whisper, “Would you like me to stay with you? Is that where this is going?”

Jesse took a step back. “You should do what your conscience compels you. As I am.”

“I wasn’t asking about your conscience.”

“I would help you rescue Drystan and the others. But it may be months before I’m free of this duty. I cannae ask you to wait months.”

Ravenna thought of her own dilemma. Drystan’s imprisonment was only part of it. It was too early to be certain, but if there was life growing within her, she had few options in protecting the child from the grasping hands of others. The Derehams would never let her keep from them their future heir, no matter how unwilling Drystan was to embrace his birthright. And she equally couldn't spend her life in Wulfsgate married to a Dereham, so close to her ancestral home, flaunting her treason, gazing perpetually over her shoulder for the rest of her life. Her sins would catch up to her.

No, there was no future in the north with a child of Drystan Dereham. Or anywhere, if the Derehams believed he was the father.

“Ask me. I can always refuse,” Ravenna whispered. She shouldn’t enjoy the pronounced ebb of his throat as he watched her mouth move; as he remembered how she looked, lying beneath him in the world of his dreams. She didn’t love him as she did Drystan, but she needed him, and though she was still beginning to understand the strange plan formulating in the back of her mind, she needed him to need her.

Jesse inhaled a deep breath. The heat rising off him was palpable. “I willnae ask that,” he said, quickly recovering the hitch in his voice. “But you are welcome to stay, for as long as you need. Your secret is safe, as are you.”

Ravenna eased off. “I’ll stay, for now. Until I have my own plan,” she said. Leaning on the tips of her toes, she pressed her lips to his cheek. She lingered like this long enough for him to shift in place. “Thank you for your aid, Jesse. You have no reason to help me. I won’t forget that you did.”

A crash startled them both. Esmerelda dropped the basket of wet clothing at the door and bolted up the stairs. Ravenna tried to speak, but Jesse had already gone after her.

Jesse perched at the corner of the bar, watching through the smoke as the Long-Trodden Mule slowly filled with unfamiliar faces. The men were representatives of the Great Families of the Westerlands, sent in the stead of their stewards. Jesse and his father, though from a Great Family themselves, seldom broke bread with men like this. He was more at home in the company of the merchant class. Theirs was a language he understood. Judicious with words, loud in intention. They needed no history between them to fall into familiar routines, of drinks and fun. No one cared who you were, what name you bore, what standard you had stitched into your armor.

These men filtered in quietly, bursting for something. Some knew one another, or had done business in the past, but they had never gathered to huddle over the future of their Reach. There was a low, nervous energy that passed through them, bouncing from table to table, a series of thoughts unspoken.

He waved at little Brook, who swept the floor with a sense of purpose, tongue wedged between the corner of his lips. Brook brushed his hair back and returned the greeting.

Kaslan leaned forward next to Jesse, arms spread over the bar. “Never expected you’d be part of plotting a war in the Westerlands, did you?”

Jesse almost laughed. “No. And I willnae be in a war, should it come to that. I’ll help here, how I can.”

“So you say. Wait till the promise of bloodlust spills through your veins.”

“We talking about me or you now?”

Kaslan chuckled. He pointed at a table of solemn men sitting together, each occupied with different distractions to avoid engaging each other. “They’ll say they have no fight in ’em. For some, might even be true. But men are men, Jesse. We’re born to the sword, and most prefer to die to it.”

“There’s been no war in our lifetime, or our fathers’.”

“Aye.” Kaslan’s eyes twinkled. “So we agree. We’re due.”

Jesse grunted. “Spend a year fighting the White Sea with a Strong man. That’ll satisfy your craving for war. My grandfather and his father before him paid their sacrifices to the sea, and I expect that’ll be my end someday, too. There’s a reason our skills are in such high demand.”

Kaslan stretched his jaw in a grimace. “I’ll pass on that one, friend.”

“The emissaries. Did they all return?”

Kaslan turned to him. “Didn’t you hear?” Jesse shook his head. “They already heard their reports. There was nothing new.”

“How can that be?”

“The Deceiver’s men are everywhere. Makes you wonder who’s guarding the Easterlands.”

“Nothing from the Southerlands?”

“’fraid not. Lord Warwick declined to provide any aid or wisdom to the cause.”

“Why are we here then?”

Kaslan grinned. “We have a special visitor. Lady Blackwood’s seer arrived this evening. He has a vision to share with us all.”

Jesse ground his jaw. “We’re here to entertain the ramblings of a swindler?”

“Wouldn’t have pegged you for a non-believer. Not after what you told us about your mother.”

“Isnae about believing,” Jesse muttered. “You should fear for the Westerlands if it’s come to this, Kaslan. It isnae a mage who will save your Reach.”

“This is about the mage in your bed, I think,” Kaslan teased. “She cross you? Leave you wanting?”

“There’s no one in my bed but me,” Jesse countered.

Kaslan jumped out from behind the bar. “Yet.” He winked and skirted off before Jesse could correct him. But what would he have said? He didn’t want or need the distraction of the bewitching sorceress from the north. She invaded his dreams without consent. She’d driven a wedge between him and Esmerelda, doing nothing other than existing in the same space. He didn’t want her in his bed. Nor could he wipe the fantasy of it from his mind.

He’d been away from home, and a life he recognized, for too long. That was the only explanation he could conjure for how she had affected him. His will and desires had never been so disconnected.

Jesse had hoped she would rise to his offer to leave, but her response earlier implied she had, inexplicably, something else in mind. Something he desperately hoped she hadn’t seen in his own troubled thoughts. He would stem it before it could sprout leaves and twine itself even further into the safety of the small estate in the woods. He had no other choice. Though he’d espoused confidence in Ryan’s mission outwardly, he was all too aware of the risks his brother took to restore the crown. There was always a fair chance he’d never return to see his deeds in action. Now there was a child, and if the father did not or could not return, the bairn was all they’d have left of him. It took little for a pregnancy to turn poorly. He knew it all too well, from watching his mother decline after losing several bairns.

Jesse had no control over the Guardians and their intentions, but he could protect the body and soul of Esmerelda Warwick, and that meant keeping her—and himself—from dwelling on matters that had no place.

The energy in the room shifted. The din of awkward conversation turned to the excitement of anticipation. Easlan James emerged from the room behind the bar with another man, and though Jesse had never seen him before, he knew he was looking upon Joran Rosewood. The Enchanter’s silver hair was thinning in his twilight years, but fell in patchy waves over his matching robes. He was an eyesore, practically glowing against the dingy browns and grays of the Mule. Easlan held him by the arm, and soon, Jesse saw why. Joran leaned heavily on a walking stick.