25. A Never-Ending Conundrum

Chapter 25

A Never-Ending Conundrum

E rran laid out the terms to his father, speeding through the parts he sensed wouldn’t be received well, which was, to be fair, most of them. He’d expected a fight, but all he got was a turgid silence and a stare so rigorous, he wondered if his father had even been listening.

“You went to Obsidian Sky,” Rylahn said at last. He drew each word out with exaggerated emphasis. “So you do know. You do have names. You’ve known all along .” He wedged his tongue between his teeth and clamped down. “Your wife’s imprisonment is on you. You. You had the power to free her, and you didn’t.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted me to free her if it meant you executing her friends.” Erran’s defense of his choice wasn’t as strong as it sounded. He’d made the same argument to himself, every single day of Mariel’s confinement. Those weeks had been unbearable, but he could not have faced her if he’d given into the urge. “I’m still not telling you. I’m sorry, Father.”

“Are you?” One of his father’s eyes twitched.

“Mariel wasn’t the woman I wanted to marry. Yet when you told me to, I did, out of loyalty to you. And now she’s my wife, and I love her, and my loyalty belongs first to her. As it should. As yours is to Mother. As you raised me to act.”

Rylahn’s eyes rolled. “Do not hurl my teachings in my face as twisted lies. Your loyalty to her should have ended the moment she told you who she was.”

“Aye, perhaps,” Erran said, nodding. “Instead I listened. It wasn’t easy to hear. Was even harder to see. But that isn’t the man I want to be, blind to the results of my own accounting, my own choices. When we were on the island, everything she told me was so hard to accept because the man she spoke of was not the man I know. My father is an honorable steward, I told her, a man who loves his people. Loves his wife, his children. It just doesn’t reconcile with my own experiences, and yet...” He cast his eyes aside, finding his words through the twisting discomfort of a life slowly crumbling. “I believed her. I opened my eyes to what she was telling me, and I am not...” His mouth tightened with a surge of sadness, an awful gut-punching of grief that held just as much guilt as anything else. He’d never needed to rely on his words for anything so crucial, and he had no confidence in his capability, only his sincere desire to help. “I cannot return to the person I was before she showed me the man I want to be. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll find I’m becoming the man you raised me to be as well.”

Rylahn shook his head at his desk.

“I need you to hear me this time when I tell you what she means to me. Father. ” Erran waited for his father to look up. “This isn’t lust. She’s nay Yesenia. She is the realest thing I’ve ever felt, held, touched. She’s the most incredible woman I have ever known. Without her, there is no sunset, no sunrise. No color in this world. Not for me. And I believe in her. If you make me choose, I will choose her.” He tapped his chest. “But I’m asking you not to, because it doesn’t have to be this way. You’re not like Yesenia’s in-laws, those feckin’ bootlicking tree-dwellers who conspire with the crown against their own people, but that’s where this has all led us. Starvation. Homelessness. Death. You’re better than this. The Southerlands is better than this. So many times I’ve told Mariel and the others that you’re a good man, and this is your chance to make me an honest man.”

“I don’t even know what to say to you anymore, Erran,” Rylahn said. His eyes were so red and heavy, Erran doubted he’d slept at all. No matter how tough he was acting, he was terrified. He loved Sessaly. He was the singular reason she’d become a spoiled brat, because he’d overindulged her, given her everything she’d ever asked for. When he’d been tough on Erran, because he felt he had to be, for his daughter, he only had tender kindness. There were times it made Erran jealous, but his mother reminded him that Sessaly would become a woman and be offered in marriage to the most strategic match their father could find, and it wouldn’t matter if she loved him or even liked him. Her life would become the property of her husband, and her choices as well. Until then, Rylahn would give her the world to make up for it.

“I propose,” Erran said cautiously, “you start with one of Obsidian Sky’s asks. Just one. It will cost you nothing except your time.”

Rylahn threaded his hands and waited.

“Ride with me through the lake district.”

“Erran—”

“You’re the steward, and you should do this anyway. It’s part of the job. And if you find that what you see is the image of the province you intended to build, then there’s nothing more I can say.”

“You want me to ride through lands I’ve ridden through a thousand times?”

“I remember when the visits stopped, the same time the taxes went up and the land seizures began.” Erran shook his head. “Set aside for a moment that others want you to do this. Don’t you ?”

Rylahn rubbed his temple with his fingers. His heavy breathing sliced through the quiet. “Go check on your mother, please. She’s not handling this well.”

Erran’s heart sank. “Will you not even consider what I’m saying?”

“Please,” Rylahn said. He stood with an old man’s energy, slow and creaky. “I have somewhere I need to be.”

“Mariel,” Destin pleaded, “I know how you feel about him, but it’s not safe for us here. Either of us. There’s naught he can do about it, and you know it.”

Mariel wasn’t sure how to tell him he was wrong, because she didn’t actually believe he was.

They were sitting on a bench in the center of the maze that had been sculpted upon one of the lower cliffs on the Rutland estate. It sat at the outer barrier of where they were allowed to wander during their lockdown, house arrest with more legroom. But at least now she could see Erran... draw strength from him, which was not an easy thing for Mariel to admit, but her marriage had been a series of self-challenges that had made her stronger than she’d been since her parents had left her and Destin to fend for themselves.

But it didn’t mean she was strong enough to fight the Rutlands.

“You’re going to have a baby,” Destin said. He pulled her hands into his with the urgency of a child.

“That’s what keeps me safe,” Mariel replied. She withdrew her hands, folding them into her dress. “But you’re not safe. When Erran returns, we’ll talk to him about getting you out of here. He’ll know a way to sneak you past the guards.”

“You’re only safe until you deliver!” Destin spun on her in frustration that said, You’re not getting it, but she was. She was an incubator, at least to Rylahn. Maybe to Hestia as well. Certainly to the men and women whose salaries they paid. But she was, at most, a couple of months along. There was time to figure out what to do about her predicament. Destin’s required a more immediate answer. “Mariel!”

“I won’t leave without my husband,” she said stoically, stubbornly. Erran had been gone when she’d woken that morning, and while he hadn’t left a note, she suspected where he’d went. He should have been back already, and the fact that he wasn’t left a dark crevasse of fear and uncertainty in her belly. Remy and Augustine wouldn’t hurt someone Mariel loved, but Magnur and Alessia were less predictable. Their short fuses were rarely lit with reason. They’d lose no sleep over taking a life if they deemed it necessary. “And he would never let them hurt me, Des. I know you think he’s weak?—”

“I think he would die to protect you, and if you stay, he might get the chance.” Destin groaned softly under his breath. “Is that what you want? To force a conflict?”

“Force a...” Mariel scoffed and gestured around. “We are already in conflict, Des. Someone tried to burn the keep down. They kidnapped Sessaly. Don’t forget we weren’t on the side with the torches. We were the ones being torched.”

“The steward is convinced it was our people behind it. You won’t sway him otherwise.”

“Maybe I won’t have to.”

“How so?”

“I ken Erran went to see Remy today.”

Destin did a double take. “Pardon me, what ?”

Mariel sighed. “I didn’t ask him to, but he knows they can help. They might be the only ones who can help.”

“What would help is if the steward gave the feckin’ lands back to their rightful owners. It’s not an unreasonable ransom demand, Mar, and he won’t. Not even for his own daughter...”

Rylahn was beyond reason. One day, Erran would be the steward, and he would right the wrongs done, but how many years would it take? How many more would die before then?

She couldn’t say the words aloud because they truly frightened her, but for the first time in her life, Mariel didn’t have a plan, nor did she have any power. The one card she’d thought to play was beyond her ability because she wouldn’t get ten steps beyond the perimeter before the guards dragged her back. Erran had played it for her, but he was even less likely to win with it than she would have been. Even if Remy agreed to hear him out, it wasn’t the same as listening.

And as much as she wanted to continue helping her people, she wouldn’t do anything that risked the safety of her child.

How could she tell Destin she’d given up though? Even in his pleading, he was looking to her to say what came next. To give some sort of direction. But the only fight she had left in her was the one needed to protect her own.

“You won’t leave without him?” Destin crossed his arms. “And I won’t leave without you. Seems we have a conundrum.”

Mariel laughed. “When have we not had a conundrum, Desi, eh? Our whole lives have been one never-ending conundrum.”

Crunching steps in the maze had them exchanging wary looks. None of the guards had followed them in. She’d heard one of them whispering about how easy it was to get lost inside.

But it was Rylahn who emerged from the path. Alone.

“Mariel, might we speak? Just us?”

Destin stood, making himself big with his stance. “So you can interrogate her more? Nay. You’ve something to speak about? Speak to me.”

Rylahn swept his eyes over Destin. A flicker of... something was there, but it left before she could understand. “You and I have matters as well. I’ll find you later.”

“You misunderstand me. I won’t leave her to be harassed by you.”

“It’s you who misunderstands, Destin. Now leave us.”

Mariel nodded to show him it was all right.

“Mariel,” Destin hissed.

“It’s all right,” she said. “He can’t hurt me.”

“I’ll be just at the outside of the maze. I’ll hear if you yell.” He backed away with his dark gaze fixed on Rylahn.

The moment he was gone, she regretted it. Vulnerability crawled through her marrow. She was alone and undefended, with a man whose life would be drastically simpler without her in it. Even if she screamed, no one would come. Not for her.

“Where’s Erran?” she asked, hoarse.

“Helping his mother. At ease, Mariel. I’m not here to hurt you.” Rylahn gestured at the bench. “May I?”

Mariel inched farther to the left.

Rylahn sank onto the bench with the stiff awkwardness of one who had forgotten how to sit. He slapped his hands atop his knees and said, “There’s something I need to tell you, and there’s no point in wasting breath getting there. I knew your mother. Ofaelia. When she was still a Braeloch.”

“My mother?” Mariel retreated into her shock. More questioning she’d been prepared for. Harassment. Threats even. He’d shown her an entire arsenal of tactics over the past weeks. But not once had he ever mentioned her family. “How?”

“My father’s grocer purchased our cabbages and carrots exclusively from the Braelochs.”

“All right. And?”

“He liked them so much, he eventually went into business on the side with her father, Cohle.” He shook his head and blew a pursed breath. “Your grandfather’s vegetables were the best in the region. The land around the lake is fertile and generous, which you know. His peers said he should raise the taxes to pocket from Cohle’s success, but my father didn’t want the man to suffer. We can both eat more , he used to say, so instead, he invested by doubling the Braeloch lands. In turn, Cohle tended that land for free, and all profits for the extended acreage belonged to the Rutlands. It seemed overly generous, even for my father, but I was just a boy—fifteen, perhaps, the last time I went with him. I didn’t yet understand the ways of men.

“Your mother was a few years older than me. Ah, Ofaelia was a force. A sharp wind when a breeze would suffice. Southerland women often are, but she was different. Cohle used to say she could command the skies themselves. I always knew the moment she’d stepped into the field because the birds would fly to this large tree at the north end of the property and wait for her to finish her business before returning.”

No one had ever described Mariel’s mother to her that way. By the time she was old enough for memories, her mother had been whittled down by the demands of a hard life. The image of Ofaelia storming through a field, sending the birds aflutter, seemed a fiction too great for a man of Rylahn’s voided imagination, but there was nothing in his face suggesting he was being anything but earnest in his remembrance. “She never mentioned you.”

“Aye, she wouldn’t have. I was a mirror to her shame.” Rylahn squinted at the midday sun. “But we were friends, I think. Father’s deal meant more visits to Mistgrave and the lake. I liked talking to her. For all she unsettled me, there was an ease to the way she moved through the world that was foreign to me. It was as though she never needed to question where she stepped, for she was confident the world would adjust to her stride.” He looked upward with a sigh that was almost wistful. “What I didn’t know then, inexperienced in the ways of men as I was, was that my father had more than gold on his mind when he made the deal with Cohle. I wasn’t the only one who looked forward to visiting the Braelochs.”

Mariel turned so she could look at him better. She held her patience to let him finish his own way. Whatever else his words intended, they were a confession, and there was a reason he’d chosen her, his greatest antagonist, to hear it.

“Ofaelia tells me one day she’s with child. For the first time in our acquaintance, she seemed unable to find her words, but she finally gets out that it was my father who put her in that state. She assured me there was nothing untoward, that they were in love .” Rylahn scoffed. “Aye, and in the next breath said my father wanted nothing to do with any of it. The whole time, right under my nose. While I’d be learning the harvest with the men, she and he were rutting like barn animals in the stables. It was the only time I ever saw her cry, and I did nothing. I didn’t understand why her confession had turned me inside out. She was five, six years older than me and never looked at me with anything but the regard of an older sister. But first love can be a dangerously powerful thing. Erran knows. I could do little but watch him tear himself in two for someone...” He trailed off. “He had to learn the hard way. As I did. But in my woundedness, I chose not to believe her. I called her a liar who was trying to destroy my father and our family, and I promised she’d come to regret her lie. That the next time she saw me, I’d be there to collect on my promise.”

Mariel’s hands formed a knot in her lap. It was too much, all of it, but he hadn’t spoken so openly about anything to her before. He might never again. And what he was saying, it made some sense, more sense than a man who comported himself as a decent conscientious steward caring for naught but gold. She could deconstruct his words later, but she might never hear them again if she stopped him now. “Are you actually suggesting Destin is your father’s son ? That’s he’s your... brother ?”

Rylahn made an ambiguous shrug. “It was because I believed her I was so full of rage. Not long after, she was married off to Astin Ashdown, another local farmer, and several months later was a mother. My father sold the land to Cohle for a fair price, and our visits stopped. We found another farmer to supply our cabbage and carrots, and the name Braeloch was never again mentioned. Even on progress, we gave the lake a wide berth.” He paused briefly. “Two years later, my father was dead—heart stopped when he was out riding. No physician could tell us why, when he was otherwise in perfect health, but I knew it was her. And in her absence, it was all too easy to let the blame fester, to replace the grief. Anger is always easier, is it not? I ken you know better than most.”

His story was so utterly preposterous, but Mariel could neither move nor speak. She stared at her lap with a dread still forming.

“I didn’t return until I was steward myself. She wasn’t the same woman at all. A wisp of who she’d been... a mother twice over, another on the way. I dealt with her husband only, but I would catch her watching me from the window. Hiding. Not once did she come down. And I looked at the land, the prosperity, and contrary to my vow, she’d not suffered at all. She was thriving. And I was still grieving my father—my youth. It was blinding, how furious it made me. I knew nothing else. I couldn’t make myself see her again, so I delegated stewardship to my most ruthless officers, gave them some... ideas on how they should govern, and walked away from it. You know better than I what happened next.”

“Aye, because you were a craven bastard who couldn’t even face the wreckage of his own tantrum! And you made everyone suffer for the actions of one, actions that had naught to do with you at all!” Mariel’s breathing pitched and crashed. The dull roar of the surf beyond the maze reminded her she was alone and isolated with a man who loathed her—and apparently her mother—enough to destroy an entire region in the wake of a broken heart that he should have had the better sense to subdue.

Rylahn didn’t even seem to hear her. “Years later, when Korah Warwick came to me with a list of ten potential brides for Erran, I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw the name Ashdown. Number eight on a list ordered by importance of birth. No one expected any serious consideration to be offered beyond the third name on the list, but ah, I chose you. Korah, Hestia, even the late Lord Warwick asked me to reconsider. The Rutland name is second only to the Warwicks, they said, as if I didn’t know. Any marriage made must reflect that.” Rylahn flexed his hands over his thighs. “I told them a highborn wedding would require planning, dowries... contracts upon contracts. The Ashdowns weren’t even barons anymore. They’d been stripped of lands. Titles. They’d fallen so far, I didn’t even need your signature, Mariel. I could have wed you to Erran either way. Even after all my explaining, they still didn’t understand why I would let my son, my heir, marry someone so far beneath him. Even I couldn’t quite see the edges of the grudge I’d held for so many years.” He bowed his head, pulling his hands across the back of his neck. “When I look at Destin, I see my father. When I look at you, I see her. Ofaelia.”

Mariel wanted to avail herself of the dagger in her boot so she could press it to his throat and carve the truth away, but his words had unlocked the final box of her childhood confusion. How and why it had all changed so fast . Why she, a pauper, had been chosen for a prince. The disproportionate disgust Rylahn held for Destin, despite his string of excuses for the reasons he couldn’t send him to the gallows. The only disconnected piece of the puzzle was that Rylahn had told her any of it.

And then she knew.

“This is some final confession, but you’re not dying,” she drawled. Her hands wrapped around the bench. Her legs readied to spring. The sea was just ahead and beyond. Rylahn’s leg was so bad, she wouldn’t even have to run fast, just fast enough for him to lose her trail. A quick climb over a bush and she’d be free. The rest she could sort later. “Tell me, will you wait until I’ve delivered to dispose of me, or do you wish for my child to die too?”

“If only either would proffer the peace that has eluded me for so long.” Rylahn sank deeper against his thighs. His head faced the ground. “But peace and I are unacquainted.” He abruptly sat tall. “I won’t hurt you, Mariel. My son loves you, and I love him too much to break his spirit when he’s only just discovered he has one. But as I’ve just given you my testament, I’m asking for yours in return. For your full honesty. Will you, for once, give me that?”

Mariel cautiously settled back down, crushed so far to her end of the bench, she was half climbing it. “Don’t ask me for names. Those I will never give.”

“Do you actually love my son, or is it just another one of your lies?”

“Aye, I do.” Mariel felt lighter suddenly, not in the confession but in answering the question from the one person whose belief in her was absent. “It would be far, far easier for me were it all a lie.”

“Then tell me how that is possible, after all your hatred for us? After ten years of vengeance, why him , the son of the man you most hate? For if this is not retribution, it is one hell of a happenstance.”

Mariel already had her answer, for the many hours she’d spent contemplating it. She only had to decide how much was for others and how much was for herself. “I saw his heart, and I knew it was good. And when I gave him mine, he treated it with the utmost care. I knew he would never do to me what his father had.” He didn’t deserve the rest, the most vulnerable and raw parts that were hers alone, but she said it anyway. “He was the first safe place I’ve known since I lost my parents and sister. Anger is easier. There were years it was all I could consume. Love, forgiveness... They take so much more from us. They give us everything to live for and everything to lose. Nothing about loving Erran has been easy, but that’s not his doing. My armor was so thick and calloused, I’ve forgotten how to remove it. Still is. Yet somehow, he’s discovered a way, and bit by bit, I’ve let him.”

Rylahn frowned, considering her words. He stood. “I’m going to ride through the lake district with Erran.”

“You have?” Mariel rose with him, stunned. Her pulse hastened again, as though the fragile trust they’d built was crumbling. “Why?”

“He asked me to.” Rylahn stretched a tentative hand toward her. It landed awkwardly on her shoulder with a quick squeeze. “You’ll obviously do as you please, but I hope you will leave speaking with Destin to me.”

Mariel nodded remotely. The late afternoon haze only added to the surrealness of a moment she still didn’t understand. “Why... Why did you tell me all of this?”

But Rylahn didn’t answer. He cast another squinting look toward the sky and limped back to the maze path.

Erran wanted Mariel there. It was her story to tell, and he had no right telling it for her. But his father would only go if they went alone.

On the ride to Mistgrave, he told him why.

About Mariel’s mother.

About Destin.

The aftermath of his fateful choice.

And then he stunned Erran again when he revealed he’d told all of it to Mariel first.

“The truth is I’ve been here plenty in recent years. I come alone.” Rylahn led them down an unfamiliar path, which took them deeper into the woods. “To a place Mariel might want to see. You could take her sometime.”

Erran was still fuddled by everything his father had said, and so casually. He didn’t care about some place in the woods; he had questions, too fucking many of them. But his father refused to answer any.

Rylahn pointed as they entered a small clearing. There wasn’t much beyond the brush and fallen leaves, but in the center was a cairn. Stones of similar size were piled and stacked. “I made this for Ofaelia.” He nodded sideways. “Eh, maybe for Astin too. And their young lass. Never learned her name.”

“Whoa. Whoa, whoa.” Erran shuffled in front of his father. “You cared enough to build a memorial but not to fix everything you upended when your feelings were hurt? If you wanted to honor Mariel’s mother, that’s how you do it. Oh, and her name was Angelika.”

Rylahn’s knuckles went bone white as he twisted his reins. “There are things I didn’t tell you about the auction. There’s a reason it was necessary.”

“What does the auction have to do with anything I just said?”

“The contract I signed with the barons who took over the lake,” Rylahn said, “gave them fifteen years of prosperity. At the expiration, all authority was to revert to me, their services no longer required. The decrees they’d instituted and upheld would be undone, though they’d keep anything they’d earned in that time. But they wanted to renew the arrangement that made them very wealthy men. Why wouldn’t they? A taste wasn’t enough. It never is.”

The entire ride, memories from Erran’s childhood had become wisps of remembrances in his thoughts, only to be reframed with everything he’d learned about his father. Celebrations he’d held with other men had obviously been about the land confiscations. The barons who would approach Rylahn in the villages about his “beneficence,” sealing their proclamations with knowing looks, made far more sense. And, however illogical, Erran at last had an actual answer why carrots and cabbage had always been forbidden in their kitchens.

But it all added up to one thing: the man he’d known as Father was not the man others had called friend.

Still, he was there. Observing. Confessing.

“I should hope you wouldn’t want to renew such a foul arrangement,” Erran replied when it seemed his father was waiting for one.

“I never intended for it to exceed the fifteen years. That was more than enough time to make a point, and a year in, I already had deep regrets. I never foresaw how... bad it could get if I wasn’t there to oversee their choices. But if I reneged on a contract I signed as the steward of this land, then it would undermine all contracts, all laws. I cannot be above judgment. No man is.” Rylahn dismounted and crept toward the cairn. He crossed his arms as his shadow spread over the rocks. “The barons threatened a coup if I didn’t sign for another fifteen years.”

“And? Do not all the soldiers of our region answer to you alone?”

“Power is a curious thing, Erran. It may be absolute, but it is never absolutely yours.” Rylahn dug into his pocket and withdrew a round, smooth stone. He set it atop the pile. “Review our histories some time. You’ll see the way power in the Southerlands has transferred hands, often brutally. Read closer and you’ll see why.”

Erran glanced at the darkening sky. They hadn’t even started their ride through the villages, yet he craved home. Mariel. He missed his sister. His father’s conscience was a burden too big for Erran to carry. Rylahn would either honor the ransom or he would not, and the persuasion for such a choice had lived nowhere but within the man himself. “Dusk is fading, and we still have more to see. You can tell me whatever else you have to say at the inn.”

“We’re not staying the night. Everything you need to show me, I’ve already seen.” Rylahn mounted and turned toward the road. “The auction was my compromise to the barons for ending the contract. It was an immediate wound inflicted on the people to avoid greater injury. They agreed, on the condition I put an end to Obsidian Sky and make an example of its leaders. No one wanted that more than I, so of course I agreed. Heartily. I had no inkling two of them belonged to our family.”

A terrible thought came to Erran. “It wasn’t brigands at all who took Sessaly, was it? You know who has her?”

Rylahn stiffened. “I have my suspicions.”

“Why would they demand you return the land then? Land they wanted.”

“They’re testing me to see where my loyalties lie, if I have a weak spot. There’s at least two of them who still have their eyes set on my seat and welcome any excuse to make a play for it.” He spurred forward and back onto the road.

Erran caught his father’s pace. “Ah. And with this more recent agreement, you thought you could appease them with the names of two Obsidian Sky outlaws. You didn’t care who, as long as it wasn’t your daughter-in-law or... or brother.”

Rylahn didn’t answer.

“And the auction?”

“What about it?”

“Do you still intend to take all that land and give it to the men who watched entire families wither and die for their own sick benefit?”

“How else do you propose I bring your little sister home?”

Erran thought for a moment. There was something about the whole retelling that didn’t sit right, and it went well beyond the words themselves. “Those barons, did they commit any crimes in the act of... service?”

“Aye. You know they did.” Rylahn snorted. “Many.”

“Crimes they could be punished for?”

“If someone had the mind to, I ken.”

“These same men who held others to account could be held to account?”

“If you’re suggesting?—”

“I am.” Erran stopped riding and waited for his father to do the same. “Look, if the men who benefited from the land confiscated from criminals are they themselves criminals, then you have legal basis to confiscate those same properties. They’d be yours to allocate as you please.”

Rylahn shook his head. “I’ve already thought of that, but there are dozens of them, Erran. You’re not seeing the scope of the matter. We arrest one, the others know before we blacken their doorstep.”

“Don’t you see? All this happened for a reason. Mariel coming into our lives happened for a reason!”

His father sounded exhausted when he slowly said, “Son, I’m not following.”

Erran’s glee was concealed by the darkness. Mariel would have dozens of better solutions, undoubtedly, but he liked to think she’d be proud that he’d added to his cunning through her education. “You have an auction happening soon. Where all these criminals will be gathered to purchase more confiscated lands.”

Rylahn watched him, drained but attentive.

“Grandfather used to say any man could be a prolific fisherman if he stocked his own pond.” Erran couldn’t be certain the idea was a good one, but it could work. “The auction is a stocked pond, Father. Your pond. I ken if you really mean to undo the hurt and make things right, it’s time to go fishing.”