“Your father has still had visions since he started taking it.”
“But there is no way to know about visions it prevented. It’s just not an option. I’m not taking it!”
Torian’s voice rose, and Emariya couldn’t help thinking he sounded like a petulant child.
“Even if it means losing your mind?” Emariya asked, her voice small.
With an exasperated sigh, Torian said, “Can’t you see? I’m risking the awful things they make me see
for
us. Weren’t you just as determined to use magic before, to help us at the fjord no matter the cost to you?”
“That was different.”
Now who sounds like a child?
Emariya chided herself.
“Why? Because it was you doing it, not me?”
His accusation stung, but she refused to consider the fact that perhaps it hurt so much because she knew he was right—at least about that.
“Torian, my brother and my mother, they thought their cause was noble too. They were blinded by their goals into misusing people and my mother misused her gift. I don’t want to follow that path. I want to do the right things for the right reasons, not the wrong things for the right reasons.”
He rolled back toward her once more. “So do I, but that may not be a choice we have.” His eyes took on a haunted shadow. “Emariya, if what I saw was true, Terin may no longer be on our side.”
Emariya gasped, trying to picture the lighthearted, happy girl she’d known conspiring with Reeve.
She couldn’t imagine it. She didn’t want to.
“Do you understand now, why I desperately wish I didn’t have to see? Do you realize what I’m facing for you?”
As someone who’d had to accept her sibling’s betrayal, Emariya could honestly say that she could.
“Just promise me we’ll face it together. We’re on the same side; neither of us must endure what comes alone.”
Wordlessly Torian pulled her close, cradling her against his chest. The solidity of him supported her, giving her a sense of being safe and protected.
But now who would protect Terin?
A large sweeping hill afforded the travelers an expansive view of both Damphries and the surrounding area. The rolling hills, just beginning to turn green with the first hints of spring, gave way to a mild valley that should have offered them easy passage to the normally open gate—the only way through the wall enclosing the fortress-like estate.
Instead, the gates were drawn and fortunately so.
“Did you realize that many people lived in the Uplands?” Jessa asked. Despite her dislike of horses, Jessa decided she’d suffered more than enough bouncing along in the wagon bed, and had reclaimed her easygoing mare.
Eyeing the throng of people below, Emariya shook her head. “We barely saw anyone on our way through before. Where did these people come from?” At least three hundred men, women, and children blocked the way to Damphries. From the tattered tents and thriving campfires, she expected they hadn’t just arrived.
“So the rulers of the estate just boarded up and refused to deal with them?” Blaine asked, incredulous. “Why have they not struck this madness down?”
Glaring, and wondering yet again what Jessa saw in her cousin, Emariya sighed. “It would seem so, yes. And the
Councilor
who leads here hasn’t struck them down because they are our people.”
“Then this is the price you pay for not enforcing order,” Blaine shrugged. “People need to be managed for their own good. How many lives might be lost to this foolishness, that would not have been if they feared the
Councilor’s
response?”
Jessa’s lips pursed into a straight line, and trouble filled her eyes. “If they would just follow our laws in the first place, instead of gathering here inciting a riot, it wouldn’t even be a question of how to deal with them or how many might be harmed.”
Emariya watched Jessa wavering, knowing her friend was searching for the line between right and wrong. Turning back to Blaine, she said, “Perhaps that is why they call your father a dictator, instead of a leader.”
“You don’t see us with this sort of uprising.” Blaine’s haughty tone turned defensive. His bay mare shifted nervously beneath him, feeling the tension.
“But you don’t inspire loyalty, either. Can you honestly say that if Kahl and Alara made a push to return to the throne, people wouldn’t just as easily follow them as you?” Emariya asked.
Blaine didn’t get a chance to answer. As if her grandfather had heard his name, he brought his own horse close. “Enough. Focus on the problem at hand.” Kahl pointed across the valley. “Your Highness, are those your men on the other side of the valley?”
Torian squinted, putting his hand across his brow to try and block the glare of the sun. “It looks like it.”
Garith rode up, looking annoyed. “What’s the hold up; why have we stopped?” Looking down the hill, he seemed to determine the answer to his own question. “Commander Plank said they couldn’t get through.”
“I don’t want to ride into there unprepared. As much as I hate to lose the time, we’ll ride around and join our men on the other side. Their insight may prove invaluable.” Torian gave her a tight smile before heeling his horse into a trot. He held his back proudly, and Emariya smiled. Making a decision brought out the confidence she loved and admired in him, which had also been missing in recent days.
Having a decision he could control must have helped his mood, at least temporarily.
She couldn’t help laughing at herself a bit as she recalled a time when his making a decision without giving her a voice would have annoyed her.
Reaching their own men took until long after the sunset. Emariya tried to keep from swaying in the saddle as they drew to a stop. She’d planned to spend this night warm inside of Damphries, in a real bed. Instead, she’d likely be attempting to negotiate a truce in the dark. Torian dismounted first, before reaching up to assist her. Butterflies took flight in her chest as his strong hands clasped her around the waist, lifting her off her horse easily.
She turned her chin upward, hoping for a quick, tender kiss before they began to sort out the present situation. A soldier ran forward, offering to take their reins, and Emariya sighed as Torian turned to question him without touching his lips to hers.
“Who is in charge?” Torian asked, all business.
The soldier nearly tripped over his own two feet, bowing. “I am, Your Highness?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“T-telling, Your Highness.” The soldier’s face, illuminated by a nearby campfire, burned red.
As night had fallen, so had the temperature. Emariya sent an exploratory force of her gift toward the fire and was soon rewarded when it burned larger, brighter, and warmer than before.
“Good, what’s the situation?” Torian asked the soldier, while turning a slightly amused eye toward her. She shrugged, flashing him an innocent smile.
The soldier, Sargent Corlin he said his name was, explained how they’d arrived in the area after coming through the pass. They’d made it through the Uplands without incident, but nearing this area the citizens had stopped them. Each time they’d tried to go around, the citizens fanned out, blocking their way. While the citizens were weakly armed, they outnumbered the soldiers three to one. “Plus, His Majesty was clear. Our assignment was to retrieve Princess Terin, and we were to cause no trouble to anyone who didn’t have her. He said you were working on peace, and we weren’t to compromise that.”
Emariya said a private prayer of thanks to her father-in-law.
“You’ve done well. Do we know who is in charge on the other side?” Torian paused before following the solider deeper into the camp, turning back toward her. His strong fingers gripped hers, and with a quick yank, he pulled her to him. “Don’t exhaust yourself. We don’t know what we will soon face,” he reprimanded, but his tone was gentle.
Taking courage from his softer tone, Emariya teased, “Warm me another way, then.”
Torian’s eyes danced in the firelight. “Later,” he teased, then kissed her briefly on the lips before releasing her all too soon.
Emariya sighed in frustration, then followed her husband through the camp. The command tent wasn’t as organized as the one Garith habitually erected for their group, but it served its purpose.
“From what we know, their leader is a hothead who goes by the name of Jimm.”
Jessa had crowded in behind Emariya. “Isn’t that the name of the farmer we helped on our way to Three Stone Pass?”
“I think so,” Emariya said.
“Has there been any fighting?” Garith leaned against the back of the tent, watching everyone.
“Not much, since a few early scuffles. They won’t let us pass, afraid we are here to reinforce the estates. The people inside the walls won’t come out. It’s been a giant stalemate since we got here.”
“Well, we need to get into the estate, and the rest of the Councilors will too when they show up.”
Emariya frowned. From the early reports, she’d assumed the citizens of the Uplands had risen in revolt near Damphries, not
at
Damphries. She hadn’t planned on Damphries being surrounded.
“Will this Jimm be likely to do you any favors?” Torian asked.
“Maybe. I honestly am surprised he lived.”
“Maybe, if he doesn’t know Khane tried to thrash his son you mean,” Jessa added, eliciting a chuckle from Blaine.
Emariya couldn’t help laughing either. Jessa never missed a chance to grumble about Khane.
Perhaps he was the only person in the entire Three Corners that Jessa truly didn’t like. Much like Blaine was quick to prompt negativity from her. Emariya pushed the thought aside, but vowed to try to be nicer to him.
“We need to meet with Jimm,” she said.
“Tonight, Your Highness?” Corlin asked.
Ignoring the weight of exhaustion pressing on her shoulders, begging her to find somewhere at least halfway soft to lie down, Emariya nodded. “We’ve no idea how long negotiations might take.
When the Councilors arrive, they need to be able to get through. I will talk to him at once.”
“Seems desperate to me,” Blaine remarked.
“And perhaps that is why your father sent you to
learn and observe.
”
Blaine folded his arms in front of his chest. “And perhaps he wants me to have an example of how not to be seen as weak. Let’s be honest, neither my father nor I believe you can bring your land to heel in less than six months.”
White-hot anger flashed behind her eyes as the candle lighting the tent flickered.
“Easy,” Torian’s soothing voice penetrated the anger and she bit back her retort.
“Jessa,” Torian said pointedly, jerking his head toward the entrance.
Emariya watched through narrowed eyes as Jessa guided Blaine out of the tent.
“He’s not our fight,” Torian said. “Focus on what we are here to do. You will win against him when you prove him wrong.”
Torian, Garith, and four guards escorted her to speak with Jimm, the self-proclaimed leader of the Uplands rising.
“You are looking much more alive and well than the last time I saw you, sir. It’s my hope we can all remain that way.”
“I know who you are, Lady Warren, my wife told me of how you helped me. I thank you for that, but it won’t sway me. Besides, you’ve no voice on the Council.”
Emariya smiled in what she hoped was a kind, non-condescending way. “It shouldn’t need to.
Hopefully reason alone will be enough to sway you.”
“I’m not interested in your reasons for being here.”
“I think you are. I mean, why do all this,” Emariya gestured around them, “if you weren’t trying to get the attention of the Council? If you expect me—us—to listen to your reasons, surely you should listen to ours?”
“My wife said you were going to bind the lines, that you didn’t care about keeping us protected.”
“Surely sir, if your wife told you that, she also told you what I said my reasons for marrying Prince Ahlen were. To bring peace to the people of Uplands. To make us allies, so you and your neighbors need not fear any longer.”
“That’s just swapping one fear for another.”
“We’ve already wed. Has catastrophe struck?”
Jimm opened his mouth, then closed it again. He frowned, scratching his head. “Not yet, no.”
“Then perhaps the binding is not as we all feared, and it was a false prophecy?”
“Maybe...” he didn’t sound convinced. “Even still, you can’t expect me to believe you care about us. The Councilors forgot the Uplands. We have no voice on the Council, and we were left completely to fend for ourselves.” He gestured out of the camp, toward Torian’s soldiers. “And now you send your new husband’s army to squash our uprising. How is that protecting us?”
“Sir, you misunderstand. I was under the impression that my brother had sent assistance from all the nearby estates to the Uplands. I don’t know who else thought this, but I at least, did.”
“What does that matter? Your brother’s the High Seat. Not you.”
He’d given her the opening she’d waited for. “Actually, not anymore. My brother was the High Seat, it’s true. But now my father has dismissed him, leaving me in charge.” From a fold in her cloak, she procured her father’s proclamation and handed it to Jimm for closer inspection.
Her father’s voice was in her ear.
Ask him if the Uplands ever suffered under my lead. Highlight
that it was Reeve’s doing that changed things.
Jimm studied the scroll. “I’m afraid I can’t read,” he said, frowning.
“Let me ask you this. Did you feel that the Council had forgotten the Uplands before my father’s disappearance?” Emariya noticed the man’s eyes softening.
“No, lass. Things were better under your father.”
“Then let me make things better again. We’ve come here to meet with the other Councilors. We have to decide, collectively, how to undo the damage my brother has done.”
“So what is it you want from me, then?”
“Just to allow us passage into the estate. I will confer with Lord Damphries, and then when they arrive, I need you to let the other Councilors through.”
Jimm started to shake his head. “No, no. If I let you through, your men might join forces with theirs. They’ve already threatened to stone us.”