Unleashed, p.2
Unleashed, page 2
“Why do we have to stay this time?” they asked.
“Because the people need us,” George said.
“They need you. The captain and I have nothing to do with it, and nation building is not in our skillset,” Maro muttered, and I threw them a warning glance. George pressed her lips together, swallowing her reply. The hurt on her face had me taking a protective step forward.
“We’ll send ships to Sevnan,” I said. “Princess Evelyn has to be there.”
“She doesn’t have to be anywhere,” Maro said, and their mounting frustration caught even me off guard. “Because despite the months I have sailed to nowhere looking for her, we still don’t know if she exists.”
“She does,” George said with her usual stubborn tilt of her chin. “She has to. If not—”
“If not, you’ll finally have to step up and do the hard work yourself instead of sending us all on endless missions while you play princess.”
“Maro,” I said, but I might as well have been invisible.
“I’m not a princess,” George said.
“When it suits you.” Maro prowled the perimeter of the room like a predator.
“Stop.” I stepped into the firing line.
“This is very comfortable for you, isn’t it?” they said. “Staying here. Speaking for people who can’t speak for themselves without taking any real action. Trapping us all in the process.”
“You’re free to leave,” George said bitterly. “You’re always leaving. Have you spent more than two consecutive days here since we arrived in Hilltop?”
“You’ve trapped Lou here.” They pointed an angry finger in my direction, and I held up my hands. I had never complained about being at court. I was in Hilltop because I went where George did. Maro knew that.
“There is no princess,” they said through clenched teeth. “She is a rumor. A ghost. You are the only princess, and either you can lead Redmere, or you can leave them behind. What you’re doing now isn’t helping anyone.”
“Enough,” I said, voice rising so much that anyone passing in the hall could probably have heard me. I’d known Maro was frustrated, but I hadn’t realized it had gone this far. Still, they weren’t entitled to take that frustration out on anyone, and particularly not George. “This isn’t helpful either.”
Maro was breathing hard, eyes filled with deadly anger. George’s face was mottled with her own stifled fury, and she clasped her hands in her lap so hard the knuckles showed white. Finally, with a shake of their head, Maro gave me a stiff salute and slipped out the door.
At least somewhere along the way, my eye had stopped itching.
We took a few moments to collect ourselves. George rang for a flask of wine. I toyed with a knife, spinning the tip on my finger until the servant who arrived with the wine sent me a nervous glance that forced me to tuck it away.
“I’m sorry,” I said when we were finally alone again. “Maro doesn’t speak for me.”
“Then you shouldn’t speak for them either. If they want to apologize, let them do it themself,” George said, the words tight. Still upset, then. In fact, the strain in her voice said she was trying not to cry, which only left me feeling worse. Powerless. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, Maro was right. Whatever we were doing in Hilltop was no better than drifting on a windless sea.
I sat beside George, unwinding her fingers from each other and kissing each knuckle.
“We’ll do it the way you want,” I said, because even in this inertia, I had promised to trust her and not make decisions without her. If she wanted to continue on the diplomatic route, we would wait.
“Do you think the princess is really in Sevnan?” Her voice ticked up hopefully.
I couldn’t say. I believed Beverly had once had a sister. She was out there somewhere. But if it wasn’t Sevnan, then she very clearly didn’t want to be found, even by people like Maro, who could find a particular blade of grass in a field.
“I’m sure Maro will do their best to find her,” I said.
But she let go of my hands and said, “You should go with them. To Sevnan.”
“What? Why?”
“They’re right,” she said, and while the immediate threat of tears had passed, the defeat in her voice was worse. “You hate it here.”
I hated the endless hours of so-called diplomacy that led to nothing. I hated watching Lord Amphram and men like him find reasons to care and take no action at the same time. More than anything, I hated how lost George seemed these days, even if she didn’t know it.
I kissed her knuckles again, then followed it up with her lips and chin, then down her throat, until the tension left her body as I slowly unbuttoned her coat. The skin underneath was soft and warm, pulsing as her breathing turned rough.
“Lou,” she said, and I would never ever get tired of the way she said my name as desire thickened her voice.
We would be together forever. I had promised. She promised, over and over. Every night as we lay together. Every day when she looked to me for advice or comfort. I would do whatever I could to keep her happy and safe.
“Marry me,” I said.
“What?”
I hadn’t meant to ask. But now that I had, it felt as right as everything between us always did. Yes. Marry me. It was the last promise to make.
“Marry me.” I hurried to do up the buttons I had been so very recently intent on unfastening. “Right now. Tonight. We’ll get the others and find a temple, and we’ll be married by sunrise. No one else needs to know.”
The words had my heart beating so fast, the room began to spin around me. But with every passing second, my conviction grew. Here, at least, was something we could do. So that everyone would know who we were to each other. So that they stopped treating me like an outcast at court. So that Maro stopped questioning where my loyalties lay. They were with George. Forever.
But the joy I expected to see on George’s face wasn’t there, only confusion. Once again, she pulled herself free, and the pause as she finished doing up the last button of her jacket was long enough for fear to creep into my heart before buoyant hope tried to send me aloft again. How could she do anything but agree?
Her words crashed me down to the timbers with a pain that splintered in my chest.
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?” It took two tries to form the simple question.
She shook her head, still fiddling with her collar. “Not now. Not— Why would you ask me something like that?”
Why? Why had I not asked her sooner?
“Because I love you. And you love me.”
If she denied it, I’d have been angry. I’d have heard the lie. But all she said was “I can’t.”
“Why not? It’s the perfect time. Everyone is here. Even Maro would come, though they might pretend inconvenience for the sake of appearances. We’re going nowhere. Why not now?”
“Going nowhere?” Her eyes narrowed, flashing with a rare burst of anger. “You asked me to marry you out of boredom?”
The question was ludicrous.
“Not boredom. Devotion. George.” I dropped onto my knees in front of her, pulling at her arms until she finally gave me her hands back. “I love you. You could be queen of Redmere. I know you could. And I want everyone to know—”
“So you’re staking your claim now?”
“It’s not like that. What are you saying?” Somehow, this conversation had fractured, and the pieces were spinning off in a million directions before I could catch them.
“Do you think if we’re married, you’ll be able to change my mind? That you can push me into being queen? I don’t want that, Lou. I never wanted it.” She pushed up to her feet, and I fell over my heels, trying to keep from being stepped on.
“I know. That’s not what I meant.” Though with every word that fell from her lips, I was less and less sure what I’d meant. It had been such a beautiful idea, and now it was shriveling into something rotten.
“The last person who tried to bully me into marriage, I smothered him with a pillow.”
My mouth dropped open. Few things in this world had ever left me speechless, but George would always have that special power. I couldn’t think what else to say. Was the idea of being married to me so awful that she’d rather one of us was dead? Had she finally realized that keeping a pirate at her side could only hurt her credibility to people like Cheray and Amphram?
George smoothed her hands over her stomach. She stood by the door, half turned away from me. The way her hair hung over her shoulder reminded me of how a Redmerian veil would have obscured her face. But her voice was clear as she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that last part.”
But her hand was on the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to go to dinner with Cheray and Lord Amphram.”
“I’ll come with you,” I said, rising to my feet.
“No.” She held up a hand to stop my advance. “It’s better if you—” For a brief second, her gaze met mine, eyes soft with apology. It was better if I didn’t. She didn’t say why, but I could fill in the answers myself. Because of who I was. And who she was, or who they wanted her to be, whether she would ever be ready to admit it or not.
“We’ll talk more later,” I said, though the thought filled me with dread. Another argument for us to dance around.
She must have had the same idea, because she said, “Go catch up with Maro. Make plans to go to Sevnan. Both of you. If it’s our last chance to find Princess Evelyn, I need to know we did everything we could.”
The words left no room for disagreement. Whether she meant to or not, she sounded like a queen issuing orders to loyal subjects, and I was nothing if not loyal.
“As you wish, George. Please stay safe while I’m—”
The door clicked shut before I finished speaking.
2
GEORGE
I made it a dozen steps down the hall before I had to stop and lean against the wall to keep from crumbling entirely. I’d handled that badly. Hells, the woman I loved had asked me to marry her, and I’d said I’d kill her in her sleep if she pushed the issue.
But I wouldn’t say yes simply because she was bored. And I certainly wasn’t sneaking off to a temple in a strange country with only the few people we trusted most to witness it. When I married Lou, it would be in front of everyone. I had spent the vast majority of my life ashamed of my feelings. I would hide nothing when it came to Lou.
She was hiding things, though. I could see it every time we walked toward the receiving hall. Every time another diplomatic mission sailed into the harbor on Cheray’s invitation, then sailed away without having promised more than a few bags of grain or some bolts of cloth to help support the Redmerian refugees who arrived in Hilltop. Most didn’t even offer to take families with them and resettle them in new countries and new lives. They’d offered their sympathy and left once more, confident their work was done. Lou hated all of it more than I did. The endless promises that led to nothing. Her inability to effect any change or simply to be recognized in any official capacity at court.
Maro was right. I’d trapped her here, even if she swore she was willing, and I owed her freedom, if only for a little while. She and Maro could go find Princess Evelyn. With a real princess to stand behind, surely, Cheray, Amphram, and all the others would finally be moved to action. Evelyn was the piece we’d been missing since the beginning.
Lou was gone when I returned. That was for the best.
Though not everyone agreed.
“You should have said yes,” Rosie said as we walked through Hilltop the next morning.
“I don’t like it when things are uneasy between the two of you.”
“Then she shouldn’t have asked me to marry her as a change of pace.”
Rosie smiled kindly, which only made the annoyance simmering in my stomach churn a little harder. “You know it wasn’t like that.”
I did, but I didn’t like the way she’d pushed it. The way she insisted I’d be queen someday. There had to be ways to help without putting myself on the throne. Lou was born to be captain. Maro could never be anything other than what they were. I was born to do what I could, but that didn’t include leading an entire country.
Here, for example, we were contributing where aid was needed immediately, and fortunately, diplomats slept late in Hilltop. While the court roused itself, Rosie and I walked the streets, looking for frightened veiled faces. We found more every day. Unlike Count Farnham, these were the ones who had truly left with nothing but children in their arms and landed in an indifferent nation. We brought the clothes and food we could carry and helped those who were willing, bringing them to kind families who could afford to take in one or two, or direct them to the markets where merchant farmers might offer to bring them out to the countryside to work as laborers.
Still, it wasn’t always that simple.
“No, thank you.” The young woman in the tattered veil and heavy skirt shook her head.
“But you can’t stay here,” I said, even as I passed her a skin of water. Her face was stained with dirt, and the wisps of hair that peeked out were limp and greasy.
“I’m not working some stranger’s farm. That’s what the duke’s man said back at home. That we were to leave our house and our village and go work for him. Never mind my mother was too sick to move and my brother had a babe whose mother just died.”
“Did the rest of your family come to Hilltop too?” I asked, looking around. We’d found her sitting at the mouth of an alley, shivering in the early morning damp.
“My father died before winter. My brother took his child to the city. They promised him a place in the palace.” She snorted. “What would he do in a palace? Serve fancy people like you? He only knows how to keep pigs.” The girl looked me up and down, and despite her unkempt appearance, there was still enough spark in her that her gaze said exactly what she thought of fancy people like me.
“Can we help you find some place to stay, at least?” Rosie asked, but when she put a kind hand on the girl’s wrist, she was quickly shaken off.
“I’m fine.” The girl stood. “I’ll make my own way.” And she disappeared into the busy market crowd.
“I don’t understand why they aren’t willing to accept a little support to get started again,” I said later, when Ender, Rosie, and I were gathered at the Cephyr and the Whale. It was a tavern near the harbor where we had taken to eating our evening meals when my presence wasn’t requested at Cheray’s table. Although there was plenty to eat at the palace, I could never shake the feeling there were eyes and ears on us all the time there.
“All they have left is pride,” Ender said. He and Rosie leaned against each other as they worked on their food. It was comforting at least to see them enjoying the meal. Ever since his stabbing in Norampar, Ender was still thinner and grew tired more easily these days. He needed the sustenance, though at his core, he remained the same man I had known since the first day on the Crimson Siren, with a kind smile for everyone he met and a heart that beat only for Rosie.
“They could have pride and a roof over their heads,” I said.
He said, “When I left my home, I spent many nights sleeping rough even after I’d been offered a place in a loft or by the fire because I was too proud to accept kindness. And too often, that kindness came with a price.”
“But I don’t want anything from them,” I said.
Ender and Rosie exchanged a look. He had an arm over her shoulder, and his grin could light the entire interior of the tavern as he glanced down at her and the hand she had on her swelling belly. She sighed happily as she ate, which was a relief in its own right. During the first months of her pregnancy, she’d been so ill, there were some days she hadn’t been able to keep anything down but water.
“They’ve never known someone like you,” Rosie said. “At home, people with titles like yours hardly see people like us as people at all. We’re bodies to carry out labor until we’re no longer useful or until we die. The years with the prince makes them all cautious.”
I picked at my food glumly. I didn’t like the way Rosie still saw herself as different from me. She was my best friend, and I would never make her feel less because of who her family was or the work she’d done before we’d escaped.
“How did it go at court this afternoon?” Ender asked me, and I gave him a grateful smile for changing the subject.
“The same.” With Lou gone, the mind-numbing nothing of the day’s negotiations had felt even more evident. The Divaran delegation had offered to take a few Redmerian families with them when they left Hilltop the next day, but the dozen or so who would journey to new lives in Divar was insignificant compared to all who continued to arrive from Redmere. In the past few days alone, we’d heard rumors of more than thirty bodies that had washed up on a beach north of the city. It wasn’t the first time. And still, the world looked away.
Behind my shoulder, someone cleared their throat politely, making us all jump. Vestrians had a habit of not announcing their arrival. They simply waited to be noticed. Outwardly, it might seem polite, but it had the added advantage of giving them a chance to listen in on conversations not meant for them.
It was Svi. He was every inch what one might expect a dockside tavern owner to look like. His skin was darker than the average Vestrian’s, and his accent was muddy, identifying no particular country of origin. He wore his hair slicked down tight to his scalp and tied fast at his nape with a leather strand. A scar ran over his face from the right side of his hairline, over his nose, to the left side of his chin. It gave him a crooked aspect when he smiled, which was often. His trustworthiness only went as far as he liked you, but fortunately for us, that was far enough.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Your Highness.” He gave me a deep and theatrical bow. Svi liked to tease, and he thought having a supposed princess among his patrons gave his tavern an air of reputability. “You have a visitor.”
