Page 7

Chapter 7

Avery

A very had left the hamlet on impulse. She told herself she just wanted to get away from undeserved thanks and praise from the villagers and to distance herself from the thief before he made another attempt to rob her. But she knew the truth was more complicated.

Elliot confused her. She didn’t want to hear whatever smooth explanation he produced in case it confused her further.

She should have stopped quickly to change out of her wet clothes, but the discord in her mind spurred her on for too long. Eventually she scolded herself for foolishness and directed Nutmeg into a clump of trees. By the time she was in dry clothes, she felt a lot more settled. She should have changed sooner.

But as she walked back toward her horse, a figure limped between the trees. She watched open-mouthed as Elliot approached the cart with single-minded focus.

For the first time, fear overwhelmed her confusion, her curiosity, and even her indignation. Who was Elliot, and why was he so fixated on her and her wares?

Before she’d formed a conscious plan, her dagger appeared in her hand. Springing across the space between them, she grabbed his arm. Twisting it, she spun him against the side of the cart.

Chest heaving, she leaned in until there was no space separating them.

“Enough!” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you following me? If you can’t give me a convincing answer, I’m going to have to take measures to ensure you can’t follow me any longer.”

She pressed her dagger into the side of his thigh, to show it wasn’t an empty threat. She’d never hurt someone who wasn’t physically attacking her before, but if Elliot refused to stop following her, she had to do something to make him. There was a healer in the hamlet they’d just left, and she’d make sure he could make it back there, at least.

Elliot froze, his eyes on hers and his breathing quickening. They remained frozen there, the tension building until Avery felt as if she might snap.

Or perhaps it was Elliot who was going to break. His muscles leaped beneath her grip, reminding her that he was stronger than he had first appeared. She had a dagger against his leg and one arm in her grip, but she was suddenly unsure that was enough to hold him.

Her breath caught at the awareness that he could turn the tables on her, but he didn’t move, continuing to look down into her face. She licked her lips, making his eyes drop to them. She immediately let him go as if scalded, jumping back to put distance between them.

He looked at her, his eyes just as wide as hers and his pupils dilated. She needed to get herself together before she entirely lost control of the situation.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

A slow smile spread across Elliot’s face, lighting up his eyes and throwing her off balance. When he looked down at his feet, her eyes followed.

She closed her eyes, embarrassment filling her as her muscles relaxed. How had she made it all this way without remembering that all his possessions—including his boots!—were in her cart?

“Apparently I’m not the only thief in this clearing,” he said, making her eyes snap open again.

His smile was a mixture of smug and amused, and she wanted to groan. Instead, she answered with as much dignity as she could muster.

“I apologize. I didn’t realize they were still there.”

“That’s what you say,” he replied. “But how do I know you’re not just a thief? Maybe that’s why you hurried off so quickly.”

“What? No! I—” She broke off as she saw that his eyes were laughing at her. She narrowed her own.

“All I’m saying,” he said with surprising gentleness, “is that sometimes there are reasons for things. Sometimes there’s more to a situation than the most simple reading suggests.”

Avery adjusted her hold on her dagger, not quite ready to put it back in her belt.

“Very well,” she said. “If you have an explanation, let’s hear it. I suppose you’ve earned the right to a hearing, at least.”

“Do you mind if I get changed first?” he asked with exaggerated meekness.

She nodded and gestured toward where his pack was tucked under the cart’s bench. He grinned and walked over to it. She winced at his limp. He’d followed her all that way without shoes while she rode in comfort? After his earlier rescue, the idea left a sour taste in her mouth.

He disappeared into the trees, and she busied herself unhitching Nutmeg and lighting a small campfire. The afternoon was turning chilly, and they could both do with the extra warmth after their ordeal.

He reappeared, his face turning appreciative as he caught sight of the flames.

“Thank you.” He slipped down to sit beside it, holding his hands out to the warmth. His hair still glistened with moisture, but the rest of him was dry, and his feet were shod again.

Avery twisted her own wet hair behind her, the movement catching Elliot’s attention. His eyes lingered on her movement until she met his gaze, making him quickly look away.

“You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met,” she blurted out and immediately flushed.

She hadn’t meant to say that. It felt too revealing because what she really meant was that her reaction to him was the strangest she’d ever experienced. She was usually good at reading people, but all the signals she got from him were muddled and wrong.

She expected him to be either offended or annoyed, but instead he dropped his head into his hands and groaned.

“I’m well aware,” he said in a muffled voice. “And believe me, you have no idea.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Enlighten me, then.”

Elliot straightened and sighed. “Just promise you’ll listen with an open mind. I swear that everything I’m saying is true.”

Avery tried to hide how intrigued she was, staring at him as coolly as possible from the other side of the fire.

She must have succeeded because he sighed again.

“You’re a roving merchant, so you must be well aware that everyone born in the kingdoms is bound to their birth kingdom. With the exception of your bloodline, everyone pays a price for any time they spend beyond their kingdom’s borders.”

“Of course I know that. I may not have gone to a regular school, but I still received an education.”

He nodded, ignoring her snippy tone.

“And I’m sure you’ve met enough people to know that the Legacies keep most people content with that situation.”

“Most, but not all,” she said softly, reminded of Olivia.

“Right.” He nodded. “For some people, their desire for new and different—or their love for adventure—is so strong that it can’t be satisfied within their own borders. The Legacies aren’t enough to stop those people, but they all pay a price for their wanderlust.”

“And that’s you?” she asked, unconvinced. She had met people like that, and he didn’t have the air of one of them.

“No.” A weight seemed to settle over his shoulders. “That was my mother.”

“Your mother?” Avery looked thoughtfully into the fire and then back at his face. She had seen children who paid the price for their parents’ desire to travel, but she still didn’t know what that had to do with Elliot following her.

“You do know I’m interested in an explanation for why you’re following me, not your whole life story, right?” she asked tartly.

He winced and laughed. “Sorry. But the reason I’m following you started twenty-one years ago.”

“Considering I wasn’t even born then, that’s impressive,” she said dryly before gesturing for him to continue.

“My mother always resented being trapped in one place, and she was determined her child would be free to travel. She and my father lived near the mountains, so when it came close to her time to deliver, she crossed over the border to have me in the mountains.”

“You’re a mountain baby?” Avery had met a lot of people in her life, but she’d never met one of those. “I’ve heard people avoid giving birth in the mountains since the results can be…unpredictable. The few expectant mothers in the remote mountain communities travel into the kingdoms to have their babies. But you’re saying your mother did the opposite?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Avery leaned forward, eyes glistening. She had been curious about Elliot from the first moment she saw him, but her curiosity swelled at his confession.

“So?” she prompted when he didn’t immediately speak. “What happened?”

“I’m not tied to any one kingdom, just like my mother hoped,” he said. “I can travel freely—sort of.”

“Sort of? What does that mean?”

He braced his arms on his knees, his hands dangling down between them and his head drooping in the same direction.

“The Legacies didn’t bind me to a particular kingdom, but neither did they leave me completely free. I’m told the birth was very painful, and the birth attendant who had accompanied my mother gave her a candlestick to hold. It was the easiest item at hand of the right shape, and she gripped it like a lifeline to keep herself from breaking my father’s hand with the strength of her grip.”

“Let me guess—it was a three-branched candelabra?” Avery asked slowly, her eyes widening.

Elliot dropped his head all the way into his hands. “Yes,” he whispered.

“Sorry, what was that?” Avery asked, leaning forward in an effort to catch his subsequent words.

He looked up and spoke more forcefully.

“Yes. I’m the butt of the Legacies’ worst joke. I’m not tied to a kingdom; I’m tied to a candelabra. Instead of being confined within borders, I’m punished whenever I get too far from the candelabra.”

“Being away from it makes you weak and sick?” Avery asked, remembering the way he had looked in the trees and how quickly he had seemed to recover.

“Dizziness, nausea, a splitting headache, weak legs—everything,” he said glumly.

Avery frowned. “I know everyone responds to leaving their kingdom differently, but I’ve never heard of a reaction that strong—or that painful. It’s usually described more as a discomfort, but one that can start to feel unbearable as time passes.”

“Well, that’s for people tied to an entire kingdom. Apparently concentrating the bond into something the size of a candlestick amplifies it.”

Avery winced. “So you can go where you like, but you have to have the candelabra with you?”

He nodded. “My mother thought it was wonderful. But I’m sure that if you imagine me as a boy, you can work out how I felt.”

Avery thought what a gang of children would think of a playmate who carted a bronze candelabra with him everywhere he went and winced.

“But you must have explained it to your friends?”

Elliot shook his head. “You’re the first person I’ve ever told. My mother made me promise to keep it a secret. She was worried someone could use it to control me.”

He stated it matter-of-factly, but Avery felt the weight of the confession. He must have endured teasing—and sometimes pain and illness—for years. And not only had he been alone in it, but he’d done it all with the added burden of knowing the situation could easily become worse.

But he was telling her. Which meant he was desperate.

Or it was all a lie.

She shifted uncomfortably at that possibility. She had spent her life traversing kingdoms that contained talking birds, giant pumpkins, shifting landscapes, glass that bent as easily as cotton, and mirrors that could reveal a person’s true emotions. But Elliot’s tale was the most nonsensical one she had ever heard. Why had it taken her so long to question its veracity? Why did all her instincts tell her to believe Elliot?

“You’re telling yourself it can’t possibly be true, aren’t you?” he asked ruefully.

She flushed at being caught out.

“That’s the other reason I don’t tell people. It sounds like something I made up in a fever dream.”

“But you didn’t,” she said softly, sure of the words as she spoke them. “I’m good at reading people. I don’t think you’re lying.”

He stared at her across the flames, a look in his eyes that made her own drop away.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

She didn’t know how to reply. She didn’t think he was lying, but that only meant he believed his own words. And it didn’t mean he was a trustworthy person.

She cleared her throat. “But how did I get involved in this? If you’re saying the candelabra I have in my cart is the one you’re tied to, why did you return it to me? Stealing it only seemed to make you more sick.”

“That’s because it was the wrong one.” He rubbed at his temples. “I only got a glimpse of you holding it back at the smithy, and I just assumed…And then when I was retrieving it from the crate, you interrupted me before I got a proper look at it. It was only when the weakness hit that I realized it wasn’t the right one.”

“But it’s the only one I have,” Avery protested. “So why are you still following me?”

“Because if I get too far from your cart, I’m in so much pain, I can barely move,” he said simply.

“So you think…what? That someone hid it in my cart, and I don’t even know it’s there?” she asked. “What led you to think it was at the smithy in the first place?”

“Because my camp was raided one night, and a bunch of valuables were stolen while I was sleeping. Thankfully, I slept with my main coin purse on my person, but I had foolishly left the candelabra in my pack. By the time I woke up and realized it was gone, I was already too weak to have any hope of catching them.”

“So what did you do?” Avery asked, feeling more concern for him than she wanted to admit.

“Did you ever play that game Hot and Cold as a child?” he asked. “You know, the one where someone hides something and then guides a searcher to find it by giving instructions on whether they’re getting warmer or colder?”

Avery nodded.

“I was basically stuck in the kingdoms’ worst version of that game. Except instead of someone telling me if I was getting hotter or colder, I had to judge for myself based on whether my symptoms got incrementally better or worse.”

Avery winced.

“It took a long time,” he continued, “but I eventually tracked the candelabra to the smith in Henton. But he wouldn’t deal with me as a customer unless I joined a six-month wait list for a commissioned piece and returned on my allocated day.”

Avery grimaced, knowing that part of the story was indisputably true. The smith was famed for his inflexibility. It was the only reason she hadn’t gone straight to Henton six months ago and pleaded Bolivere’s case on their behalf. He’d even turned her away when she arrived a few hours early for her assigned slot. She knew the smith had already finished her lamp—she had seen it—but he had still made her return the next day.

“So, what? You decided to rob the smithy?” she asked with a laugh. But the expression on his face made her falter. “Oh. Right. That was what you were planning.”

He sighed. “Believe me, I had no desire to become a thief, but what was I supposed to do? I only wanted to take back my own property. Except I couldn’t even do that. The smith sleeps in his smithy every night! And did you get a good look at the size of him?” Elliot shook his head.

“So you were lurking outside the smithy waiting for a chance to rob it. Did it ever occur to you that your presence might have been why the smith never left?” she asked wryly.

Elliot looked up, an arrested expression in his eyes.

“No, to be honest, it didn’t.” He laughed. “Apparently I’m not a very good thief.”

“I did notice that,” Avery said with a grin.

He rolled his eyes. “Why doesn’t that feel like a compliment? It should be one.”

“Did you ask the villagers?” she asked.

Elliot shook his head. “I’m pretty sure they thought I was a desperate customer who was hoping to change the smith’s mind. And, if not, that I intended to camp out there for the full six months. I avoided any proper conversations because I was afraid of accidentally saying something that might tip them off about my true intentions.”

“You looked desperate enough to be planning to camp there for six months,” Avery agreed.

Elliot grimaced. “After a game of Hot and Cold like mine, you would have been, too.”

Avery fell silent. An accident of birth had freed her to travel without any of the difficulty that weighed on Elliot. She had always been thankful to be born to roving merchant parents, but she had rarely felt that relief as strongly as she did while talking to him.

“But if you were wrong about me taking the candelabra,” she said after several moments of silence, “shouldn’t you still be stuck outside the smithy? You said you get sick if you go too far from my cart.”

“Exactly. My symptoms are sure proof that you did take the candelabra.” Elliot paused, his jaw tightening. “Or what’s left of it.”

“What’s left—oh!” Avery turned to look at her cart. “You think he melted down the brass and made it into something else?”

Elliot nodded. “And the process seems to have strengthened the symptoms. If they’d been as bad when the candelabra was first stolen, I would have been too weak to have any chance of tracking it down. I think if the same thing happened again, I might…”

He trailed off, clearly unwilling to say the final word, but Avery could fill it in for him. Die. He was afraid that if he was separated from her cart, he was going to die.

If that was true, she could instantly forgive him for trailing her for days despite her warnings. He must have been terrified.

“But why didn’t you tell me all this as soon as I left the smithy?” she asked. “I’m a merchant, after all. You could have just asked to buy it.”

Elliot sucked in his breath. “Well, yes. That’s obviously what I should have done. It seems quite clear in retrospect. But at the time, I was afraid you would dismiss me as a madman, and I would only succeed at putting you on your guard.”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t a totally foolish plan. If it really had been my candelabra—and if it hadn’t been for your unnatural horse—I would have gotten away that first time. Everything would have been fine.”

“For you!” Avery said indignantly. “I know you’re claiming the candelabra is rightfully yours, but I wasn’t the one who stole it from you. I bought it from the smith in good faith.”

“I know that,” Elliot said impatiently. “That’s why I didn’t steal it back from you. I’ve been saying that from the beginning. Surely the amount I left was enough to cover its purchase price at least twice over, if not thrice.”

“What are you talking about?” Avery asked.

Elliot cocked his head and glanced toward the cart. “I left you a pouch of coins! Don’t tell me you didn’t find them?”

Avery bit her lip, not wanting to admit she’d never even looked. He had said he wasn’t a thief, but she’d assumed that was standard blustering. It hadn’t occurred to her to dig through the crate when she had stuffed all the items from the smith back inside.

Elliot grinned, crossing his arms. “No wonder you kept threatening me.”

“I didn’t keep threatening you,” Avery protested. “It was only once or twice.”

Elliot laughed. “Oh, right, just a couple of times. Silly of me.”

Avery rolled her eyes and stood up, dusting herself off. “I acted perfectly reasonably in the circumstances. Are you going to continue to make a big deal out of nothing, or are we going to get on with testing?”