Exile (14 page)

Something was wrong, Robert realized as he woke in the barn under the brilliant slanting rays of the sun. The cow had not been milked. Or fed. And he had slept far too late. Not that he minded the extra sleep or opposed the task of milking. It was just—the barn had always been his father’s domain, and the chores were always done before sunrise, especially during harvest.

Robert scrambled from his pallet, tugged on his clothes, and hurried toward the cabin. He swung open the log door, then stared aghast. A rind of cheese, a basket of eggs, and a heap of green onions crowded the narrow sideboard. At the kitchen table, a squadron of apples awaited execution at the hands of Robert’s mother, who was annihilating slabs of salted bacon. Even though porridge was common breakfast fare. “Mother, what is this?” Robert eyed the growing mound of chopped meat.

“I am serving omelets,” she said, then spun, despite the sharp knife in her hand, to check the hearth.

Omelets? Since when did his mother know how to make omelets? “Mother, no one expects a palace breakfast. Is father all right? The sun is past up, and the cow—”

“Your father can milk the cow later. I needed him to press the other apples for cider.”

Cider? In midsummer?

She carried a thick skillet back over to the table, swept the massacred bacon into the pan, and then hurried over to the sideboard, still not relinquishing the knife. “I thought you should rest, but now that you are awake, can you please go outside and assist Her Royal Highness with the well?”

“She asked you to call her by her name,” Robert said.

“Yes, um ...,” his mother stammered, snatching the onions and carrying them over to the table. “I will try to remember that in her presence. Now please go help her. She wanted to wash up, so I sent her with some soap out to the well, but I’m afraid that handle might not—”

“Mother.” He wanted to tell her that Aurelia did not expect to be treated like a princess.

But a male voice snarled at him. “Robert, attend to your guest.”

He turned to see his father laden with a bucket. Mr. Vantauge stepped over the threshold and lowered the container with a thud. The stern expression on his face brooked no argument.

Baffled, Robert retreated out the door and around the cabin’s side.

Where Aurelia, her figure bent over, face obscured, was washing her hair.

Water poured over her bare neck and down the long dark tresses, longer without their waves than he had realized. She lowered the bucket, then traced her fingers through the brown wet strands until a white lather gathered beneath her fingertips.
A frontier sky, she was beautiful.

Desire flooded Robert’s body.

Her soapy hands fumbled for the bucket, and he moved to pour the water over her unsuspecting head. She laughed.

Her laugh was even more beautiful than the rest of her.

The suds drained from her hair to the ground, and she twisted the dark clean tresses with her hands, ringing out a fraction of the water, then stood up, the long wet strands flying over her head, spraying the air, and dampening the back of her smock.

She arched her back.
More than beautiful.
Then she stretched into the sunlight. “It’s so lovely here, Robert. No wonder your parents never wished to return to the palace.”

Perhaps he should warn her. “Aurelia, I don’t know what’s wrong with them, but my parents seem—”

Her hand touched his arm. “Don’t worry.”

He knew that look, her you-worry-too-much look, often followed by disaster. “I just think you should be prepared,” he said.

“Your mother has been working very hard on breakfast.”

“I know, but she—”

“It will be wonderful, Robert,” Aurelia said.

And perhaps she had some kind of insight, because the extravagant scent of cooked egg, melted cheese, green onions, and fried bacon came floating out the window, along with his name, her title, and an invitation to breakfast.

She hurried to accept, and Robert followed, gaining ground so that they stepped into the cabin at the same time. The steaming concoction on each of the plates at the wooden table would have put the royal chef to shame.

“It smells exquisite,” Aurelia murmured.

“I’m afraid we only have apples.” Mrs. Vantauge stood, pouring natural cider into each mug, then gestured to her own chair at the table’s end. “I’m certain you’re used to fresh strawberries.”

Strawberries? On the trail?

“Everything looks spectacular.” Aurelia glided into the offered seat.

Robert’s mother gave a faint smile, then hurried to the now almost barren sideboard and returned holding a basket draped with a blue cloth. “I’m afraid the bread is cold. I’ll be certain to bake fresh—”

“Mary,” Mr. Vantauge growled from his own chair, “please sit down.”

She glanced back toward the sideboard, but its surface was clear, and she lowered herself onto one of the benches along the table’s length. Robert waited a moment to make certain she did not spring back up, then allowed himself a seat on the opposite bench.

Mr. Vantauge immediately began to eat, and Robert followed his cue, the omelet’s warm, spongy texture tumbling down his throat.
Amazing.

His mother lifted her fork but let it hover in the air. “Your Highness ...” She paused, then corrected herself—“Aurelia”—and turned to the young woman who appeared to be having as much trouble as Robert not inhaling the entire omelet in a matter of seconds. “Our son informed us of your expedition. Is it near completion?”

“Oh.” Aurelia’s fork stilled in mid-bite, then lowered. “We haven’t seen the western coast or the Valshone Mountains or—”

“And do you intend to visit all those places?” Mrs. Vantauge’s eyes moved to Robert.

His own focus turned to Aurelia.

Until this moment, she had never mentioned any goals beyond the desert. Which had seemed, at the outset, so distant.

“W-we ... I hope ... to see as much as I can,” she stammered. He noted the switch from plural to singular. Was she doubting if he would come with her, now that they had reached his home?

“We’re traveling to the Geordian next,” he said firmly, for the benefit of everyone at the table.

Mrs. Vantauge, still not tasting the masterpiece in front of her, gave a shaky nod, then turned her attention once again to the princess. “And will you travel as yourself or as a commoner?”

“I’ve found that it’s easier to travel as one of the people of Tyralt, rather than as someone above them.” Aurelia retrieved a slice of bread, tore it in two, and held out half of it to Robert.

He accepted the half.

His mother’s fork clanged against her plate.

But it was Mr. Vantauge who spoke, his voice as harsh as it had been all morning. “And what will your expedition be worth if you refuse to bring with it the authority of the crown?”

“A leader is not defined by a crown,” Aurelia replied, rephrasing one of Robert’s statements to her—a quote Robert himself had retrieved from his father.

Mr. Vantauge stood abruptly. Plates slid and cider splashed. Robert’s mother rescued the pitcher, though a beech-wood bowl of apples rolled onto Aurelia’s lap, then tumbled to the floor. His father paid no heed. Instead, he stormed from the cabin.

Robert rose, furious. But two hands from opposite corners captured his wrists.

“I need your help,” his mother said, pointedly handing him the pitcher.

Aurelia’s eyes focused on the still open doorway, a dangerous look on her face.

He started in front of her, but she tugged him back.

“Stay here.” And with that, she strode after his father.

Chapter Thirteen

LOVE OR DEATH

“LET HER GO, ROBERT.” HIS MOTHER CROSSED IN front of him and shut the door.

“Mother, you don’t know—,” he started to say. Aurelia might feign strength, but she was more than capable of being damaged.

“No, Robert,
you’re
the one who doesn’t know.” His mother’s blue eyes met his. “And it’s time you did.” She ducked her head, though her thin shoulders remained straight. “Perhaps too late, but there’s nothing any of us can do about that now.”

“About what?”

Mrs. Vantauge plucked the pitcher from his hand. “You realize this charade of hers can never last. The rumors have been up and down the Gate for months. Even here, your father and I heard about you traveling north. With her.” She tilted the pitcher over the nearby cider bucket.

His stomach sloshed along with the pulpy gold liquid, the fear that had stalked him from Fort Jenkins confirmed. If the rumors were that rampant, sooner or later they were bound to reach the palace. “Does Father think the assassins will follow her across the Gate?”

“Your father isn’t worried about
her,
Robert.” His mother set the emptied pitcher onto the table. “He and I are worried about
you.
”

“She’s the one in danger, not me.”

“You are in at least as much danger as she is.” His mother eyed the fallen apple wedges and crouched down, rapidly beginning to pick up the fruit. “Robert, she is a princess.”

“I know that, mother.” He bent to help, retrieving the overturned bowl.

“But you don’t seem to understand what it means.” She thrust a bench to the side. “It’s not something you can ignore. Or pretend doesn’t exist. And you can’t help her pretend either. Sooner or later, she’s going to realize she can’t run away from who she is. And she will go back.” The blue eyes looked up at him. “Have you asked yourself where you will be then?”

He had, more times than his mother had any right to know. And he had come to one conclusion: it did not matter. Because he would not, and could not, do anything differently. He couldn’t
not
be in love with Aurelia.

“I’m aware of who she is,” he said softly. “She is a person who deserves to be treated like one.”

His mother snatched the bowl from his hands and carried it to the opposite side of the table. “Your father used to believe that about the king.”

Robert stood, his shoulders stiffening. She had no right to compare Aurelia to her father.

His mother lowered the bowl to the table, her head down, obscuring her face, then rested a hand on the back of her husband’s chair. “Brian was raised for his position,” she said. “As a son of the Vantauge family, there was never any question that he would serve the king. Your uncle, of course, inherited his father’s place, but both boys were raised to believe it was a duty, and an honor, to support their ruler.”

The stiffness drained from Robert’s shoulders. He did very much want to understand his father’s relationship with the king. “But Father changed his mind. Why?”

His mother’s face paled. “Because of me.”

The pull to know the truth drew Robert closer. “Tell me what happened, Mother. Why did we really leave the palace?”

She sank down into her husband’s chair. “I wanted your father to tell you before you left, but he was so upset, and ... I wasn’t strong enough to talk about it.”

Strong enough? Was Robert asking too much? But if he had learned one thing from his failure at the palace, it was that he needed to understand the forces controlling his life. “Please tell me,” he said, taking her hand.

She stared across the room at the blank wall beneath the loft. “I came to the palace when I was fifteen. My parents had passed away from a fever, and I moved to live with my grandfather, Colonel Lorance. You have no memories of him, do you?”

Robert shook his head. As long as he could recall, he and his father had been his mother’s only family. “He was a soldier?”

“A lord by birth, but he served the former king in the cavalry and always preferred his military title. He taught your father how to ride.”

Robert had known that his mother came from an aristocratic background and had married
down,
as Chris put it, but he had never known any real details.

“They became very close,” she continued, “and that is how I met your father; Colonel Lorance introduced us. He thought Brian had potential and believed that, despite your father’s upbringing, he could learn to make up his own mind.”

Robert bristled at the idea that his father had ever needed to be taught to form his own opinions.

“Brian admired Colonel Lorance very much, but your father wanted, more than anything, to prove his own worth, and he was so, so proud of being named royal spy.”

Of course he was. No one had managed to fill Mr. Vantauge’s role at the palace since. Including his son. Robert slowly released his mother’s hand and made his way over to the hearth.

“But the royal spy works for the king, Robert, not for himself.”

Yes, well that was a lesson he had learned the hard way. Crouching down, he stirred the gray cinders with a metal prong.

“And the king ...” She stopped.

“Isn’t always worth supporting.” He said the treasonous words for her.

“You’ve learned that lesson,” she whispered. “I was afraid you might.”

His gaze turned of its own volition to the sword now hanging on the wall beside his parents’ bed. “How did my father learn it?”

“The king was worried about a group of people who were gathering to protest poor working conditions. He wanted to know who was behind the meetings. Your father was assigned to find the ringleaders.”

Again Robert stirred the cinders, watching them swirl. He knew the story could not end well.

“Colonel Lorance tried to convince your father that the people were doing nothing wrong. He showed Brian the drudgery of the children hired by bricklayers to pour clay. Your father agreed that the situation was bad, but he believed if the people behind the meetings talked directly to the king, they could make their points heard; and Brian didn’t support their secrecy. He found out the names and gave them to His Majesty.”

Her voice stopped. Robert looked up to see her lips moving with no sound coming forth.

“And what did the king do with the names?” he prompted softly.

“He called in the men on the list,” she said, her voice shaking. “They all told the same story ... were stripped of their jobs, and allowed to leave.”

But?

She continued, “They bought their freedom by telling the king the names of the aristocrats who had given money to their cause. Colonel Lorance was the greatest contributor.”

The metal prong fell from Robert’s fingers.

His mother’s eyes turned gray with tears. “He was charged with attempting to incite public rebellion,” she whispered. “And he was executed.”

There were worse things than disapproval, Aurelia told herself, as she steeled her will and entered the gap at the edge of the sliding barn door. She had faced intimidation before, but unlike with the Lion and Lord Lester, she cared what Mr. Vantauge thought. This man, above all others, Robert admired most.

A high wall of tightly stacked hay bales blocked her path, rising clear to the loft and dropping down in steep double steps before her to the earthen floor. The potency of straw and dust clung to the air, and her sinuses stung as she eased her way along the narrow path to her right, then cornered the bales and found herself blinded by a slashing wall of sunlight. She winced, opened her eyes, and tried to regain her bearings, then plunged through the radiance.

Mr. Vantauge stood with his back to her, both hands planted against the far log wall, as if he were trying to push it away. The stance, the set to his shoulders, the dropped head—everything about him screamed that he wished to be left alone.

She was intruding. She knew that.

But sometimes intrusion was necessary. “You aren’t happy to have me here,” she said, entering the pungent corner inhabited by the barn’s lone dairy cow.

He did not move, failing to react when taken by surprise.

A rare skill.
No wonder her father had assigned him his post.

“I admit I can’t even milk a cow.” She let her gaze fall on the welcome barrier of the buttermilk-colored animal. “And I’ve never worked on a farm. I suppose most people on the frontier would be less than pleased with a guest in the midst of harvest.”

“What do you know about frontiersmen?” Mr. Vantauge pushed his way off the wall.

“They’re stronger than the people in central Tyralt,” she said, stepping closer to the cow. “Maybe because of what they go through to get here. Or how desperate they have to be to come in the first place.”

“Don’t heroize them.” He hefted a shovel at his side and turned to face her. “They’re rougher too, harsher ... and less tolerant.”

“Yes, but they know what they want—what’s important.”

“And what is that?” The shovel’s point hit the earth.

“Freedom.”

His brown eyes drilled into hers. All his other features—his build, his hair, his hands, the muscles in his face—all these Robert had inherited. But not the eyes. There was nothing calm or comforting in those dark spheres. They were direct. Jaded. And hostile. “Does that frighten you?” he asked.

“No.” She stroked the cow’s warm buttermilk side. “Of course not. It’s what we have in common. I needed the freedom to go on this journey, to explore my country and see who the people are.”

“It frightens your father,” he said.

She considered the statement. Her father had never cared for anything that challenged tradition. “Maybe.”

“Definitely.” He scooped a pile of fresh manure with the shovel, walked past the cow and her, and pitched the manure out the window, then flung the shovel to the ground. “How will you rule if what the people want is to be free of your control?”

“I don’t want to control them. I want to help them.” She thought about the kuro boy back in Transcontina. She had begun to understand, after the rigors of crossing the Gate, how children could be desperate enough to sell themselves for survival. But she could never accept any law that allowed people to become property. “And to ensure they protect and respect one another.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Vantauge, plucking a low stool from beneath the window. “By virtue of the crown.”

Her temper rose at his sarcasm. “The people of Tyralt ultimately control their own destiny.”

He froze. “You realize it’s treason, what you just said.”

It wasn’t. It was common sense.
“The role of a leader is to help guide that destiny, not shape it.”

“And a leader ...” He quoted her statement from breakfast haltingly. “Is not defined ... by a crown.”

“Exact—”

“My son told you that.”

Had he?

Mr. Vantauge slammed the stool into the dirt. “And is that why you’re here? To find out where he got his ideas?!”

Her eyes widened.
No, of course not.
She raised her hands to her hips. “Robert is more than able to make up his own mind.”

“Then why is he obeying your orders?” He shoved the stool with his boot.

“I
asked
him to come on this expedition,” she said. “I didn’t order him.”

“Why?” he demanded. “Why did you ask
my
son?”

She staggered back from the question. There was more to the answer than he had a right to know. But she would not lie to this man. “Because”—the reasons spilled out of her—“he’s not afraid to argue with me or ask what I think; he’ll tell me when I’m being stupid or foolish or blind; and he doesn’t patronize me. He respects my ideas and isn’t afraid of a challenge. We can fight ... and still forgive each other. And he”—she blushed—“he looks at me with those eyes, and I know I can trust him.”

The truth.

She knew now, as she had not a month ago, that Robert’s thoughts of leaving her at the Fortress had not been betrayal. He could make hard decisions—ones she might not agree with—but he made them for the right reasons. And up on the high jagged Gate, she had learned to admire that quality.

Something shifted in Mr. Vantauge’s stance. His voice and head were low as he slid the squat stool over beside the dairy cow. “And you think it wise to continue your expedition, despite the obvious danger?”

“Wise?” She knew this question mattered to him, his son’s safety. Still, all she could do was answer honestly. She shook her head. “But it isn’t about me”—she paused—“or your son. It’s about Tyralt. There is so much I need to learn.”

His head came up, a new light glowing in those direct brown eyes. The line between his lips cracked, and the hardness in his chin relaxed. “Well, Aurelia.” He said her name for the first time, then gestured at the stool. “I imagine I could teach you something.”

Robert struggled with the revelation of his great-grandfather’s death as he helped his mother clean up the rest of the breakfast, his mind swirling like the darkening dishwater in the bucket around her hands. How had he managed to grow up in the palace never hearing about Colonel Lorance’s execution? Could such a thing be hushed? “Was it public?” he asked at last.

“Very,” his mother replied softly “To send a message.”

“Then why haven’t I ever heard of it?” He tried to hand her the heavy cast-iron skillet.

But she rejected it. “You were so young at the time, and then”—she shook her head, motioning at a knife—“other events overshadowed it.”

What could overshadow an execution?
“Which events?”

“The death of the crown prince.”

He dropped the iron pan.

“And the queen’s disappearance,” his mother added.

Yes, he supposed those would overshadow the death of a minor lord, though not, judging by the pain on his mother’s face, for his parents.

“And yet you stayed at the palace until I was fourteen,” Robert said, scraping the skillet with the knife. The crusted grime on the bottom of the pan refused to break free.

“It wasn’t easy for your father to leave.”