20. Border Towns

Chapter 20

Border Towns

A s a boy, Erran would join his father on progress around their territory. Rylahn had instilled in him the importance of being seen by their people. The visits had stopped when he was still young, and until he’d asked Mariel to take him to the places she was trying to help, he hadn’t equated the particulars of the timing.

Their visits had ended around the time Mariel’s life—and the lives of the people she loved—had been taken from under her.

Whitecliffe was responsible for the lake district and the border towns of the Northeast. He recalled his father explaining that many of the villages were near enough to the Easterlands that they’d adopted their more gentile way of life. Their accents were near nonexistent, which was also true of many in Whitecliffe, they never uttered words like “salt and sand,” and they preferred their seafood from ports north of the border, like Briarhaven, or from their freshwater lakes. But import costs were high, and they relied heavily on food from the land, land that, until roughly a decade ago, they’d owned and farmed.

Mariel had explained they’d only have time for two villages: Everspring and Mistgrave. Erran at first had questioned whether Mistgrave was the best use of their time, since they’d recently visited Loch Ethereal, but the dark look she gave him, paired with the words you saw what you were supposed to see, reminded him he was there to listen.

She had little to say on their ride northeast, and he left the silence for her to command.

Everspring was beautiful on the approach. It had the same lush forests as at Loch Ethereal, which reminded him of his boyhood visits, when he’d pretend they’d stepped out of the Southerlands altogether, into a whole new world. He never told his father about it. Rylahn had never outwardly discouraged Erran’s imaginative side, but he hadn’t seen value in cultivating it either.

They rode under a trellis of broken metal. “E ring,” it read, the letters spaced so far apart, it made no sense. It took him embarrassingly longer than it should have to realize it had once been the town’s name, the entrance to what should be as picturesque as the past half tick of riding, but he already knew would not be.

He swallowed his dread and followed Mariel underneath.

The road more closely resembled a path, used enough to be rutted but not enough to be clear and clean. Weeds grew over the sides, some in the middle. Cratered holes were full with the remnants of a recent rain. There were so many, they had to navigate around them.

Erran’s first question weighed on his tongue— why have the roads not been tended with tax funds?— but he already had the answer. The first of many there’d be no point in asking.

“There used to be training guilds along this row.” Mariel’s first words in over an hour. “Whitechurch will never let the guildhalls go elsewhere, but many apprenticeships start here. Started here.”

Erran followed where she pointed and saw a line of attached, pitched buildings. All of them were missing windows. Most had also been mined for boards and other parts. They seemed to belong to a time before. He remembered the fact about the training guilds, and his last visit to Everspring returned in startling relief—the vivacious town center, as full of people as Whitecliffe. A mordant stench of decay had replaced the absolute assault of so many great foods cooking at once. Citizens had eaten right there in the town, around a fountain, which he could now see was not only overgrown with weeds like everything else but had crumbled away in parts. The basin was missing an entire side, and rainwater ran down it like a sieve.

“Where do people...” He shook his head at his folly.

“Live?” Mariel veered south, down another inconspicuous path. “Not here. Not anymore. A few families stayed because they had nowhere else to go. I don’t know how they’ve fared. I don’t have the heart to find out. We’ll go to Mistgrave now. There’s more to see here, but... I don’t have the heart for that either.”

Erran hadn’t realized how pitched his pulse had become until they were clear of the main village and back in the woods. He adjusted in his saddle, working up his courage for whatever was next.

“You can ask questions if you want, Erran. I know you’re being respectful, but it’s better you know.”

He cleared his throat, wondering where to begin. “You said this resulted from land seizures and taxes?”

“The land seizures came last. It all started with taxes on the food we grow. We’d always paid fifteen percent, but it was after... Well, it was after a visit your father made here years ago when we received the news taxes had been doubled to thirty percent. The number increased exponentially with profits. Wealthy farmers either moved away or were thrust into poverty almost overnight. I ken he saw all the plenty and couldn’t allow an opportunity to pass. Mind, this was in addition to the sixty percent land tax, which is the highest in the entire Reach. Then and now.”

Erran invited the acerbity of her sting. He would neither look away nor shy away from the truth she was offering, which was a gift, no matter how deep the ache in his chest.

“And then,” she said, the gentle forest passing them by. “It was raised once more, to forty percent. The wealthy, as I said, most just moved to another region, under another steward. They could do that. But the rest, the everyday families, were already living harvest to harvest. They had to ration. Children were prioritized, getting most of the greens and fruits because they needed them to grow. Gradually, the lack of nutrients started affecting the men, who could no longer tend their lands like they once had and couldn’t afford to hire help. And when they could not pay their taxes, because there were no longer any profits, they were given no clemency. No time to make it right. If taxes were due and unpaid on a Tuesday, the repossession agents would arrive on Thursday.”

“That’s so unjust,” Erran whispered. “Mariel, I swear to you, I’m not defending him, but it’s so hard to imagine my father doing this. I feel like I hardly know him anymore.”

“Honestly, Erran, I ken your father didn’t know the extent of it. Most men like him prefer not to, so they can sleep at nights. They delegate the tasks to barons and guards and give them full discretion over the management of things. The last time we saw him around these parts was right before the famine started.”

“Nay, he knew. Some part of him did. It’s why we never came back,” Erran mused aloud. He constructed a clearer image in his mind. “He couldn’t face it.” He swallowed. “Because he’s a coward.”

“Most men are, when they have the privilege to be.” Mariel rewrapped the reins in her hands. “Few men have that luxury though.”

Erran didn’t ask what had happened to the displaced working-class families. Mariel had already given him a grim view when she’d told him about her parents. Her sister. How many other thousands of mothers and fathers and siblings and bairns had their own stories? How many generations had ended so rich men could grow richer, beyond anything they could ever truly need?

I love you, he wanted to say. So much so that I want nothing more than to reverse time and fix all of it, even if it means we never would have met.

She went silent again until Mistgrave. They entered from a different road than the one he remembered from their idyllmoon, which was, as Mariel had shared earlier, the point. Like Everspring, there were remnants of an old sign, but none of the lettering remained. It was merely an arch.

“Remy and Augustine lived just north of the border, in the Easterlands, but they didn’t escape any of this. When the blight came, after the land wasn’t turned over properly each season, it spread to their family’s land as well.” Mariel sighed. “And the steward of their land, I ken, saw how well the efforts had gone for your father and instituted the same ones there. It happened to them in the same order. Crops died. Adults were next. Then the land was taken. Almost seems like there’s a formula to it, doesn’t it?”

Erran nodded through his overwhelm. It was a grief weighted heavier by guilt, compounded by the shame of daring to feel sadness for something he was indirectly complicit in. Had directly benefited from.

“Our homestead on Loch Ethereal was transformed into a retreat for the rich, like many other lake properties, but most of the land...” She turned down another path, which winded downhill, and they emerged onto a cliff overlooking a massive valley. Within it were various shades of death brown and, between those sparse patches, what remained of homes. Some had been burned out, others stripped for parts like the main row of Everspring.

“This is all I have in me today, Erran.” Tears raced down her face, spilling off her chin. “I just cannot... cannot relive it all.”

He stretched a hand between their horses. When she took it, her fingers almost limp in his, his composure crumpled with all he wished he could say. But none of it would have made a bit of difference. Words were as useless as the hollowed-out hovels that had once housed vibrant, loving families.

“I will...” Erran forced back the despair that was not his to claim. “I will...”

“I ken you’ll try.” She squeezed his hand and released it. “I don’t want to lie to you anymore, so you should know I’ll be visiting my friends tonight. I’m going to tell them it’s over. Obsidian Sky is done. Don’t follow me. Don’t... ask me where I’ll be. Just trust me to know what I’m doing and let me do it.”

He nodded. The valley blurred through his tears. “Aye, Mariel. Whatever you need.”

Destin might have been many things, but a liar was not among them. He’d humiliated himself and others, had failed to live up to his responsibilities, and had been a liability, but he did not lie to the people he loved.

He truly struggled with his decision not to tell Mariel the Obsidian Sky meeting had been moved an hour earlier, so he could have some time with the others himself before she arrived. There were things he needed to say—and they need to hear—and she was already burdened with enough pressure. He could take this one from her.

Alessia nestled near Magnur on the far log. From the haze in her eyes, she’d already been drinking before she’d arrived, but Magnur was stone sober. Even when he drank, it had little effect on him.

Remy and Augustine hovered on different sides of the second log, each staring in opposite directions.

Destin settled on the third and took a moment to warm his hands on the fire they’d built before he’d arrived.

“Aye, so what’s this about then, Des? And why the secrecy?” Alessia blurted. When she leaned forward, Magnur put a hand on her back. A recent development. Or an old one Destin had failed to notice in his thrall to the drink.

“Did something happen to Mariel?” Remy asked. “She did come back, right?”

“She’s fine.” Destin’s throat was as dry as sand. He wished he’d had the forethought to bring something without spirits to drink. He’d left his waterskin at the Spires. “A little worse for wear. Nothing the steward’s healers couldn’t resolve.”

“The steward’s healers.” Alessia snorted and looked toward the sky. “That acclimated is she?”

“Auggie said the whisper in the Spires is they were on an island? Just the two of them?” Remy seemed like a man trying not to put a story together, like he was hoping Destin was there to disavow him of whatever his imagination had stitched into a tapestry of despair.

Destin nodded, bent over his knees. Mariel might have been unhappy with everything he was about to say, but it wouldn’t matter for long. “If they hadn’t been together, neither would have survived as long as they did.”

“But how... I donnae ken how they got there.” Alessia looked incredulous.

“After she split from Remy and Auggie in Sandycove, she rode for Devon, where the Mistwitch was anchored. The guards pursued her all the way there and she... jumped from the cliffs and swam to her ship. She didn’t know Erran had followed her.”

Remy shook his head, frazzled. “And he jumped in after her?”

“Aye.”

“And we’re expected to believe that the... the silk-stocking princeling would risk his own neck for her?”

“I ken the truth doesnae require belief,” Magnur muttered. He stared at the fire, expressionless.

Remy tapped his hand in the air, glancing to the side with a distrustful wince. “Did they mean to end up on the island? Why did Mariel think... Nay, this isn’t adding up.”

“She wasn’t expecting to run, and she followed her instinct,” Destin said carefully. He took a moment to read his friends, see where they were at with things. Magnur was simply listening, unruffled as always. Alessia was enraged, though there had to have been more to it than Mariel and Erran. Remy was in denial, and Augustine was unusually quiet. “But they got pushed off course in the Eastern Shelf and crashed. They’re both lucky to be alive.”

“I’ll never celebrate the survival of a subjugator,” Alessia quipped. “But aye, happy about Mariel.”

“And they were there for weeks ? The whole time, just the two of them?” Remy was still catching up. His inability to do so was a matter of will.

“We really thought she was dead,” Augustine said softly. She wiped her eyes. “We...”

“Aye, weeks. Erran’s mates were the ones who put it together. They—” Destin abruptly cut himself off. They had every right to know, but they’d inevitably put it back on him. They’d never believe Sam and Hamish had known just enough to prompt Destin’s memory.

It didn’t matter. Or wouldn’t, after the night was ended.

“They what?” Alessia’s tone verged on hostile. She’d never liked him.

“They knew Mariel was the Flame.” Destin wished again for something to wet his throat. “They knew she was there to stop the auction. And they said?—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Alessia leaped from the log. “You cannae just drop that on us! What do ye mean they knew ? How, Des? How, ’cos ye told ’em? Ye did, aye?”

Magnur tugged her back down.

Destin lowered his eyes. “Mariel told Banner’s men, and Erran and his mate heard.”

“Well, I donnae believe ye. Why the feck would she do such a thing?”

“Auggie and I were there,” Remy said faintly. “She was trying to... to pull the guards off of us.”

“And why are we only just now hearing about it?”

“There seemed no point.” Remy buried his face in his hands.

“It was more than what she said that tipped them off,” Destin said. “No one else knew about Banner, just the steward and Erran. And... Mariel. There was no other reason for her to be there that morning.”

Alessia turned her ire on Augustine. “Remy, aye, he’s too far up Mariel’s cunt to ever say a word crossways, but you ? Never said a feckin’ word about her saying what she said.”

“Mariel’s reasons are her own,” Augustine said into the forest. “Nothing came of it anyway.”

“Ye donnae ken this affects us all?”

“She’d never name any of us,” Remy stated. “Never.”

“’Cept, they know Auggie, aye? She works for the silver spoons. And it wouldnae be hard to tie you to her.” She pinched her finger, squinting. “Just a wee bit of digging.”

“Then that’s our problem, Alessia.” Remy met her wild stare. “You were more concerned with saving your own ass. Remember?”

“And why has this nay reached everyone’s ears by now? Wouldnae the attempted capture of the Flame be news far and wide?” Alessia demanded.

Remy shook his head at the sky. “Maybe you should go back to your blacksmithing.”

“Aye, you’d like that! So I willnae keep showing ye all the holes in your story!”

Destin cleared his throat so Remy would ease off. “Listen, listen. These mates of his, they’re no more keen on the public, or the stewards, learning the truth than any of us are.”

Alessia burst into maniacal laughter.

“I mean it. They love Erran. And Erran...” Destin clenched from head to toe, like a man expecting to be hit. “Loves Mariel.”

“Guardians on feckin’ high, you are nay serious!” Alessia flung her arms out, her mouth hanging wide. Magnur had given up trying to subdue her and just shook his head at the forest floor. “Nay, nay, nay, you’re telling tales, Des, because the Mariel we know?—”

“Loves him back.” Destin’s tension eased. The words were out. The truth was out. But the airless silence was almost worse than Alessia’s unhinged ranting. “Being stranded on an island you never expect to leave will do that, I ken.”

“Ye ken?” Alessia was seething. Her nostrils flared as she whipped her gaze around at the others. “Are none of ye gonna say anything about it? Remy? Aug?”

Remy and Augustine wore identical looks. Dazed. Wounded. Heartbroken. Even with all the hours and days and years he’d lost to the drink, Destin hadn’t missed how both Perevil siblings had been in love with Mariel. Mariel acted like maybe she was in love with them too, but Destin understood something about survivors that she perhaps did not.

It wasn’t surviving if the injuries were self-inflicted, over and over.

If a better way was never found.

A way out.

“Is this why you asked us here early? Too much of a coward to tell us herself?” Alessia asked.

“She doesn’t know I’m telling you, and she’ll be plenty angry for it, I’m sure.” Destin scratched his head. He needed to hurry. Mariel would arrive soon, and he had somewhere to be before she got there. “She wanted to tell you herself, but I did it instead, because I knew how you’d react, and she doesn’t deserve that.”

“ Deserve ? She’s betrayed us! Betrayed herself!” Alessia elbowed Magnur, aghast. “Say something!”

“You want me to say something?” Magnur ran a hand along his beard. “I joined Obsidian Sky for the freedom ye all offered. If we’re free to come or go, free to be involved or nay, then either Mariel is free to love as she chooses or I ken you all have been lying to yourselves all along.” He grunted as he stood, towering over the group. “I’ll be retiring now. Give Mariel my love. I’m grateful she’s home.”

Alessia gaped at Destin for several intense seconds before leaping from her log and racing after Magnur. “Wait! Mag, wait!”

Destin slowly exhaled, taking his time. “I can’t tell if that went better or worse than I expected.”

“She’s... She’s pretending, right?” Remy was still lost to his fantasies. “An exceptionally long con?”

“I’ve seen them, Remy.” Augustine’s voice cracked and shattered. “At the Spires. Seen them myself.”

“What?”

“Before, she could hardly make herself be civil. A bairn could’ve seen through her act.”

“What are you saying?”

“There’s an ease about her. When she’s with him... she has to pretend not to love him. I’d hoped and prayed I was wrong, but—” Augustine slammed her mouth shut. Tears flowed down her cheeks. “You know, if I know Mariel, she’s embarrassed. She’ll believe she’s lost the part of herself we love and respect, and I...” She wiped one eye, then the other. “I’ll nay contribute to that.”

“But she can’t love him, Auggie. It’s impossible.” Remy’s eyes flared wide in his desperation.

“Why, because we love her?” Augustine shook her head. “Remy, I told you before. Erran is well loved by his people. For his kindness... his uncommon empathy. Maybe she sees in him what others do, or maybe she sees that, through love, she can do more than she’s ever done with us.”

“She’ll never persuade a monster to stop terrorizing.”

Augustine shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But she’ll do all she can. You know that.”

“When Mariel gets here,” Destin said, “she’s going to call for an end to Obsidian Sky. Not for him. For you. Your names are known because you were there, but Erran, his mates... No one wants to take this further. It dies here. In this forest. And we let it die.”

“You make it sound so simple,” Augustine said. “Like there aren’t now three highborns who know two-thirds of the names of the outlaws who terrorized them.”

“Nothing about our lives has ever been simple, Augustine.” Destin searched for her gaze and locked it. He felt the full weight of his question as it left his tongue. “Aren’t you tired?”

More tears spilled. “Of course I’m tired, Des. But if we tire, where does it leave the people suffering?”

“There will always be suffering, but adding to misery with our own doesn’t ease theirs. Sometimes enough is enough. We’ve done enough.”

Destin had decided to leave before Mariel arrived. He’d delivered her message for her, for better or worse, and the two she owed the most to were still there.

He knew in his bones they’d never see Alessia or Magnur again.

Destin stood. “She’ll be here soon. I can’t tell you how to feel. And yet, try to remember all she’s done for us. It’s not for us to decide where and how she finds her happiness. But we can try to be glad she’s finally found it.”

“Where are you going?” Remy asked.

“To do what’s necessary,” Destin said. “Before I no longer can.”

Remy and Augustine were the only ones there when Mariel arrived. Augustine recounted everything Destin had said, while Remy offered only sighs.

Mariel felt herself paling with every revelation. She’d planned to tell her friends herself about Erran, in her own words, but her brother had taken that from her. In doing so, he’d driven off both Alessia and Magnur, and she might never get a chance to explain things. And then he hadn’t even stuck around for the aftermath.

“I see,” she said when it was all out. “Was he on the drink again?”

Remy shook his head with a short laugh. “He was as lucid as I can remember him.”

“Why then? Why would he say all that?”

Augustine slid in beside her on the log. “He wanted to help you. And we love you, Mar. We always have.” Augustine’s face had been hidden by the evening shadows, so Mariel hadn’t seen her tears before. “It defies all logic, but if you love Erran, who are we to tell you it’s wrong?”

“It is wrong.” Mariel wrung her hands over the warm fire. Everything she’d planned to say had to be scrapped. The team already knew Obsidian Sky was over. They’d learned the truth about her darkest secret but also her greatest joy. “Nay. Nay, it isn’t wrong. What he and I went through would bond anyone, but...” But it was more than that. I see him, who he’s meant to be. And he sees me as I am and loves me all the more for it. He sees what made me, and he would do anything to keep that hurt from others.

“But you love him, and that’s that.” Remy stood, dusting his hands down his pants with a hard breath out. “A quite unexpected twist, but you never did anything halfway.”

Mariel looked at his sister. Her first love, in a way. She and Remy had both filled that need, and she’d fulfilled theirs. But she saw now there were phases to a life, and she was no longer in the one that had held them so cosmically close. “Auggie?”

“Oh, ah, I ken we’ll manage,” she said, squinting tears away. “It was time.”

“Time?”

“There can be no momentum from a slow horse,” Remy answered for her. “We’d been slowing for some time now. All of us. The heist before the auction wasn’t our best work. We left tracks. We... doesn’t matter. All things have a season, and this season has been over for longer than we chose to admit. Now that they know our names, it’s over regardless.”

She sensed more unsaid. “But?”

Remy sighed. “But now we have to figure out what to do with ourselves, aye?”

“There’s something... else, Mar. I have a confession,” Augustine said quietly. “When I told you about Erran bedding all those women, it wasn’t true.”

Mariel smiled gently. “I know.”

“I didn’t mean to lie to you, but once it was out, I couldn’t take it back. I ken I was fearful you’d see he was different, and would fall for him, just as you did, in the end. I’m sorry.”

Mariel had suspected as much. “There’s no need for apologies, Auggie. I understand.”

Remarkably, neither seemed mad. There was sadness trailing between them, mostly unsaid, but they’d exhausted enough of it before she’d arrived, and she’d come upon the precipice of their acceptance. She supposed that had been Destin’s intention, to spare her the worst of it, but she would have liked the opportunity to have decided for herself.

“Erran has already promised to send gold where it’s needed. He’s committed to this cause too, just... legally,” she said, but at the mention of his name, they both went sour, exchanging disgusted looks. They weren’t there yet. Maybe they’d never be. It was enough for one night. She could only take one step at a time.

Above the rest, they were still her family. With their vigilantism behind them, perhaps they could even act like one.

“Where did my brother go? He didn’t say?”

Remy shook his head. “Only that he had to do what was necessary. You know Des. He rarely makes sense.”

What was necessary. The words were simple enough, but why did they settle in her belly like an undigested pit?

“You should go,” Augustine said, lifting for a chaste cheek kiss before turning and wrapping herself in her shawl.

Remy kissed her next, brushing awfully close to her mouth. He made a soft sound against her flesh before withdrawing. “This is one end, but it’s not the end.”

Mariel was crying too. “What I wish for the most is for it to be the beginning of something too, something we’ve waited a long, long time for, all of us.”

“Time will tell.” Remy blew her an air kiss and darted off after his sister.