Page 21

Chapter 21

Elliot

E lliot should have hated finding himself back in the saddle so quickly. And certainly his muscles had something to say on the matter. But riding with Avery unharmed beside him made everything else fade into the background.

He only had to close his eyes, and he could feel her in his arms again, the reassuring solidness of her body telling him that she had survived the abduction.

It went against the grain to just leave the men to go free, but his concern for Avery and Mattie outweighed his desire for vengeance. If they had tried to keep the men prisoner, they might have ended up escaping or overpowering them, and Avery or Mattie could be hurt in the process.

As soon as they all felt far enough away to be safe, they stopped and made what camp they could for the night. There were no bedrolls to make it comfortable, and the food was basic, but both women ate ravenously.

“I’ve never been so hungry in my life,” Avery said through a mouthful. “I don’t think they can have fed us once.”

“Not while we were sleeping,” Mattie agreed. “The sleeping potion negates the necessity—but they pushed it to the extreme of its limits. Any longer and we might have been in serious trouble.”

“Just don’t eat too much,” Elliot warned them both. “You’ll make yourselves sick if you do that.”

Avery reluctantly put her remaining food down, rubbing her stomach. “Do I want to know how you know that?” she asked in a soft voice, but there was something darker in her eyes.

Elliot shrugged. “I’ve never gone days at a time without eating if that’s what you’re worried about. But my mother has never been a very…consistent person. Sometimes she forgot to prepare food, and sometimes we ran out of both food and coin. But when she did remember, or she found a source of wealth again, she liked extravagance.”

Avery’s face turned thunderous. “But you were just a child!”

“Don’t worry,” Elliot said with a smile, trying to keep things light. “It wasn’t so bad when I was little because my dad was the opposite of my mother—he was stability personified. Meals were regular affairs in my early years. And once it was just me and my mother on the road…” He shrugged. “I was basically a youth by then, so I learned to find odd jobs where I could and to hide the coin from my mother. That way I could always source food for us when we needed it. I learned how to cook, too.” He smiled ruefully. “That’s probably why my cooking is so terrible.”

“Elliot, I’m so sorry,” Avery’s gentle voice was almost too much for him, and he cleared his throat.

“Those years are long behind me. I haven’t traveled with my mother for years. For obvious reasons. There’s no need to feel sorry for me.”

“I think I’ve heard of her,” Mattie said, her eyes narrowed in thoughtful concentration. “Is her name Opaline?”

Elliot’s mouth went dry. “Yes,” he said stiffly, “it is.”

Mattie nodded. “There’s a reason Lorne knows so many roving merchants. There aren’t many like him and your mother, and we always end up crossing their paths.” Her lips pursed. “Your mother doesn’t have Lorne’s reputation, though. I wouldn’t call her a merchant friend.”

Elliot held his breath, his heart thudding in his chest, but Mattie didn’t say any more. After tutting a few times, she returned to her food. Elliot’s shoulder slumped as he let out a quiet breath of relief. If Mattie did know more about his mother’s history, she was apparently going to keep it to herself.

Avery gave him a questioning look, but he turned away from her to look into their small fire. She didn’t press him, but his earlier relief weighed heavily in his belly. Avery had secrets as well, but it no longer felt the same—not when her secrets were to protect others while his were to protect himself.

He still remained silent, however. How could he tell her about a past he still hadn’t made peace with himself?

The next morning, they were back on the road early, all eager to reach the hamlet as soon as possible. When it finally came into view, nestled on some hills overlooking the ocean, they pushed their horses to a faster pace without needing to discuss the matter.

Avery led them to a comfortable cottage on the fringe of the hamlet, surrounded by a bright garden full of different colored roses.

“Aunt Sylvia!” she called before she had even dismounted. “Uncle Ewan! Dahlia! Ash! I’ve come to visit!”

Four people poured out of the cottage as she slid to the ground—a girl and boy a similar age to Avery, followed by a middle-aged man and woman. The four of them surrounded her, all exclaiming joyously as they engulfed her in a group embrace.

Elliot could almost see Avery’s stress lifting, and he tried not to feel jealous. He wasn’t sure if he wished he held that role in her life or if he just wished he had an equally loving family to return to.

“What are you doing here?” her aunt demanded, once they all separated again. “Don’t tell me you’ve come to stay permanently?” She sounded hopeful.

“Don’t be ridiculous, mother,” the girl said. “Avery wouldn’t do that.” She was gazing at Avery with an adoring expression, reminding Elliot of Avery’s long ago words about her younger cousin who loved to travel as much as she did.

“Mattie!” Avery’s uncle—Ewan she had called him—finally spotted the record keeper. “What can possibly bring you out to these parts? Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?”

“Of course you’re always welcome, with or without notice,” his wife said with a reproving look at him.

“But of course, of course,” he said, undaunted. “Mattie knows that. There’s not a roving merchant home in six kingdoms that isn’t open to her—just as her record-keeping hall is always open to us.”

Mattie slid off her horse and shook herself down. “I’m sure I would have sent warning ahead if I’d had any intention of visiting,” she said. “I didn’t leave home voluntarily.”

Ewan’s eyebrows rose as he threw a look at his niece.

Avery held up her hands in protest. “It wasn’t me who forced her out.”

“I think this is a story that might be better told inside,” Elliot said, suddenly reminded of their arrival at Mattie’s house in the capital. It already seemed infinitely long ago.

“What happened?” Sylvia drew closer to her niece, placing a concerned and protective hand on her arm.

“Have you had an adventure?” Dahlia asked, a note of longing excitement in her voice.

“If they have, I’m betting it was unpleasant,” her brother drawled.

“Yes, it was,” Elliot responded shortly. “And so I would like to get the ladies somewhere more comfortable. We’ve all been on horseback for days.”

“And who are you again?” Ash looked Elliot up and down, not giving away his opinion of the new arrival on his face.

“This is Elliot,” Avery said. “He’s traveling with me.”

“Traveling with?—”

“Not together like that,” Mattie interrupted, the laugh clear in her voice. “Isn’t that right, Avery?” She gave Avery a knowing look.

“Yes,” Avery said defiantly. “That’s right. But he’s just ridden for days to rescue us, so he deserves consideration from all of us.”

“I didn’t end up doing much rescuing,” Elliot said. “It was mostly the parrot.”

“Of course it was.” Frank preened himself from his usual perch on Nutmeg’s saddle.

“Is that mangy thing still with you?” Ash peered at Frank in disgust.

Frank turned a half circle on the saddle, flicking his tail at Ash. “Mangy boy,” he croaked. “Full of fleas.”

Ash flushed a dark red and started toward the parrot.

“Oh don’t start that again.” His mother caught his arm and hauled him toward the cottage door. “You know how Frank is. But there’s no separating him from Avery.” She threw an amused look over her shoulder. “We tried hard enough when she was traveling with us.”

Elliot grinned sympathetically in return, although his antagonism for the parrot had significantly receded since the bird’s pivotal role in Avery’s rescue. Elliot was well aware he would have struggled to even track them without Frank.

Inside, the cottage proved just as cozy as the outside. They didn’t have nearly as many unusual teas as Mattie, but the kettle seemed to boil non-stop, and Elliot’s cup was never empty.

Even better, it turned out that both Sylvia and Ewan were excellent cooks, and the spread that was soon before them left nothing to be desired. Not that you would guess it from watching Dahlia. She picked at her food and sighed, too busy alternating between casting longing looks at Avery and hopeful looks at her mother to eat much.

But from the stern looks Sylvia was sending back, she still didn’t consider Dahlia old enough to leave home and go traveling with her older cousin. And Elliot didn’t think the story they were about to tell was likely to soften Sylvia.

Sure enough, Avery’s family were just as horrified by the tale of their recent misadventures as he had expected. Sylvia’s response seemed to be to ply them all with a variety of sweet food, a form of sympathy he was happy to accept.

Mattie and Ewan went into a long conversation about the security of the record-keeping hall which went largely over his head because he was too busy watching Avery. She was clearly happy to be reunited with her cousins—the closest thing she had to siblings—and the three of them talked almost too fast for him to follow, catching each other up on the various happenings since they were last together.

“It can be a bit overwhelming, can’t it?” Sylvia murmured to him with a look of half exasperation, half affection. “But you get used to it eventually.” Her warm smile invited him into the family circle, and he remembered that she had been the one to marry into the roving merchant clan. And now she was looking at him like a fellow outsider being brought into the fold.

She seemed to have misunderstood his and Avery’s situation, just like Mattie had done. But he couldn’t protest when she’d given him nothing more than a look of shared sympathy. And the more he watched Avery’s family, the less he wanted to protest. Apparently Avery’s uncle had loved traveling just as she did, and yet here he was, settled with his family. Perhaps Avery would also have a change of heart?

“I don’t know how you do it, Mattie,” Ewan said from the head of the table, his voice catching Elliot’s attention. “We’ve only been here for two years, and I’ve had to take up running to try to soothe my itchy feet.” He chuckled, but there was clearly real discomfort behind it.

He looked over at his wife, his face softening as he watched her clearing dishes. “She endured the discomfort of travel for my sake for twenty years. Now that it’s my turn, I don’t know how she did it!” He sighed heavily. “It’s only fair, of course. And I would rather have her and our beautiful children than travel, but some days it feels even more stifling than I feared.”

Elliot quickly faced back toward Avery and her cousins, his brief hopeful thoughts dying. How could he ask Avery to join her life with his, knowing that sooner or later, she would have to sacrifice the thing she loved most?

The cottage suddenly felt stuffy and overly warm, a cage around him. He had just experienced a short period without Avery at his side, not knowing if she was safe. And he had only truly been able to breathe again when she was safe in the circle of his arms. He couldn’t imagine a lifetime of such days.

But where did that leave him?

He wanted to get up and walk out—to find some release in the cool air outside. But before he could take action, Avery turned abruptly from her conversation and called down the table to Mattie.

“Thanks to Rene’s interruption, you never did answer our question back at your house. Do you know how our ancestor transferred his bond from his kingdom to his own body?”

Elliot froze, his attention successfully diverted and all thoughts of a walk forgotten. How could their purpose at the record keeper’s hall have slipped his mind?

“Why do you want to know that?” Sylvia asked, turning back to the table. “Do you think there’s a way for other people to do it?”

The obvious hope in her eyes hit Elliot hard, reminding him of an infinitely purer version of his mother’s dream.

Avery looked at him questioningly, and he shrugged, giving her family a basic outline of his situation. It should have been difficult to tell four virtual strangers at once, but somehow it wasn’t. They were Avery’s family, and they were a unit built on love and trust in a way his family had never been. She trusted them, and he did, too.

“A lamp?” Dahlia asked, fascinated. “Of all the strange things! I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“No one has,” Elliot said dryly. And he usually made sure to keep it that way.

Avery gave him a private smile of encouragement, slipping her hand into his and squeezing it gently. His earlier tension melted away at the feel of her hand in his, despite the fact that he had no new answers. He kept their fingers wound together, as they all turned questioning looks on Mattie.

The record keeper leaned back with a smile that indicated she was pleased to have an audience.

“It’s not something the histories spell out explicitly,” she said. “But I’ve spent years studying the issue and piecing together what happened from mentions in various accounts.”

“And do you think you’ve found the answer?” Avery asked eagerly.

Mattie’s face lit up, swept away in the topic. “Yes, actually.”

“Well?” Elliot asked, unable to keep himself silent.

“The first roving merchant—our distant ancestor—was from Halbury.”

Avery nodded, so clearly that was general family knowledge.

“That’s undisputed,” Mattie continued. “But most people assume he was one of the rare individuals whose desire to travel and find new horizons was so strong that it overwhelmed the Legacy’s tie to his home kingdom. But from what I’ve read, I don’t think that was true at all. I think he was someone who loved his hometown and was perfectly content to remain there. It was only after the tie was broken that he became interested in travel.”

“What?” Avery stared at her. “How is that possible? Why would he ever have broken the tie in that case?”

“Exactly!” Mattie sounded triumphant. “Most of our family are interested in the more recent histories—the accounts of the various regions that can be of use in their own travels. But I discovered a mention of our original ancestor’s personality before the tie was broken, and I was so surprised and curious that I combed through all our oldest records, looking for clues.” She paused dramatically. “And my conclusion is that he didn’t want to break the Legacy at all.”

“You mean someone else did it to him against his wishes?” Elliot asked. “But why? And how?”

“Don’t forget he was Halburan,” Mattie said.

“You mean a bargain?” Avery eyes widened, as if she was picturing the scenario playing out.

Elliot sucked in a breath. The Halbury Legacy loved bargains. But it also required stakes of real value. If you wished to make a bargain in Halbury—one with the weight of the Legacy behind it—you had to be willing to put something valuable on the line.

“So the tie wasn’t something he wanted to give up, it was a price someone enacted from him. His sacrifice was breaking his tie to his beloved home.”

Mattie nodded. “And it was only after it was broken that he developed any interest in travel. Even then, he didn’t actually leave his home town until his wife passed away. After that, it was too painful to stay there, so he began traveling—and discovered he loved it.”

“Did she die very young?” Elliot asked, surprised.

Mattie shook her head. “Younger than him, but it’s another mistaken idea that the tie was broken when he was a young man. He was already married with grown children before the crucial bargain.”

“So his children had their tie broken at the same time—not when they were born but as adults?” Dahlia asked, sounding fascinated.

Mattie nodded. “There are several mentions that confirm it.”

“So you’re saying his love for his home was false?” Sylvia sounded unexpectedly frosty. “That anyone who doesn’t want to live a life of travel would feel differently if only they were freed? Don’t you think it’s a bit insulting to suggest that anyone who thinks differently from your family is just a puppet of the Legacy who doesn’t know their own mind?”

Elliot looked down at the ground. Part of him wanted to defend Avery and Mattie, but another part of him agreed with Sylvia. The two of them were in the same unique position—they had traveled for years because of a family member and found the experience wanting. Although Sylvia seemed to find some appeal in having her tie to Glandore broken.

Perhaps she wished for a future where she and her husband could alternate between periods of travel and periods of being settled, all without any ongoing discomfort from the Legacy? Would such a life be bearable for both parties?

His mind had wandered to a possible future with Avery again, but Mattie’s vehement response drew him back. “No, no, I’m not saying everyone loves travel deep down.”

Elliot expected her to be apologetic, but instead she fixed Sylvia with a stern eye. “You know me better than that, Sylvia. Who was it who advised Ewan that the time had come to settle down? You know I don’t think your feelings invalid. I’m merely making the point that most people aren’t free to make an informed decision. They’ve never tried traveling or visiting new places because the pull toward their own kingdom is so strong they can’t see past it. When our ancestors were freed from their bonds, it allowed them the freedom to make up their own minds. The bargain maker had two daughters and a son. One of the daughters and the son joined him to become the original roving merchants. But the other daughter’s heart never turned from her home. She visited her siblings and father on occasion, but she remained living in their original town until the day of her death. There are lots of reasons why people want to put down roots. I’m just saying that the Legacy’s pull makes it hard to know either way. It can mask some people’s underlying interest in travel.”

Sylvia sat back, nodding. Her eyes flicked between her children—the living embodiment of both extremes.

“So to break his tie to the lamp,” Avery said slowly, “Elliot would have to travel to Halbury and make a bargain?” Her mind was clearly not on her aunt and cousins.

Her face was tight, and she was carefully not meeting Elliot’s eyes. He could guess why. Their path to Bolivere was northwest, heading back to the river, to the top corner of Glandore—which happened to be almost as far as possible from the kingdom of Halbury.

Avery was even more desperate to get to Bolivere since Rene’s attempt to stop her, and she wasn’t going to divert her path to Halbury first. Which meant she was going to ask him to return the lamp to her—and then she was going to hand it over to the people of Bolivere. She had promised to help him find a way to break his tie afterward, but could they guarantee the townsfolk would give it back?

“I’m not sure if that’s the only way,” Mattie said slowly, making Avery’s eyes brighten. “It’s something I’m continuing to research.”

Elliot’s shoulders slumped. If there was another way, Mattie didn’t know it—at least not yet.

“If it’s that simple,” Dahlia said, apparently having reached the opposite conclusion on its difficulty from Elliot, “then how come others haven’t worked it out in all the years since then?”

Despite her false idea of the simplicity of the matter, it was a good question. Elliot’s own mother was an example of someone who would pay dearly for instructions on how to break her tie to her kingdom. As would Lorne, presumably.

But instead of Mattie answering, it was Avery who spoke, her voice thoughtful. “Because the people who’ve tried to break it are the ones who don’t think of their bond as something to be sacrificed. While the ones who would consider it a sacrifice aren’t trying to break it. All these years, everyone has been approaching it the wrong way.”

“Exactly.” Mattie nodded approvingly. “Most people are so busy pursuing what they want that they don’t stop to consider what they should sacrifice. If you ever want to apprentice to me, Avery, you’d make a good future record keeper.”

Avery shuddered. “No, thank you. I have no desire to settle down, even if it did mean managing a spectacular library.”

Mattie chuckled. “Well, if you ever change your mind…”

Elliot shifted uncomfortably. He had known from the beginning that Avery loved to travel, so there was no reason for it to hit him harder every time she confirmed it.

“So the Legacy is the real villain here.” Dahlia wrinkled her nose.

Mattie’s approving expression faded as she looked from Avery to her younger cousin. “I know you’ve never been to a regular school,” she said sternly, “but I also know that roving merchants teach their children better than that. The Legacy doesn’t have a consciousness. It’s not a person. It’s just a force that works to run each kingdom according to that kingdom’s history. It isn’t punishing anyone.”

“It feels like a punishment,” Dahlia muttered.

She clearly still hadn’t made peace with being forced to settle down. In a strange way, Elliot could relate. He didn’t know if he would ever make peace with his mother for forcing him to travel, and for?—

He cut off his thoughts. He didn’t want to dredge up old history, not with everything else going on.

When Ewan started talking to his daughter in a quiet voice, Avery tugged at Elliot’s hand.

“Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s go for a walk and get some fresh air.”