Fortune and Fate (Twelve Houses) (65 page)

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Authors: Sharon Shinn

BOOK: Fortune and Fate (Twelve Houses)
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She cast one quick look around the room. There. At the door. A bulky figure, coiled and motionless, all his attention on her.
 
 
Justin.
 
 
Chapter 33
 
 
WEN LEAPT TO HER FEET, BUT THEN SHE FROZE. THERE
was no place to flee and she was not about to fight. For a moment they stared at each other across the width of the small tavern, and then Justin’s broad face broke into a blinding smile. His lips moved to shape her name, and then he threw himself across the floor to engulf her in a hard embrace. He was so powerful; it was like being crushed by some elemental force, inescapable and life-changing. He lifted her completely off her feet and tightened his hold for an instant before returning her to the floor and letting her go.
 
 
“I knew it was you! I knew it!” he crowed, apparently so happy to see her that he was, for the moment, going to ignore all the reasons she had run. “When that woman Moss spun away from me with that little move you and Janni always used—I knew it couldn’t be anybody else.”
 
 
Why hadn’t she foreseen that? All the careful training she had instilled in the Fortunalt guard was practically an advertisement to anyone who knew to decode it that a Rider was in residence. But her heart was too full for her to think too clearly. “Justin,” she said, her voice shaky. “You stupid man. Couldn’t you figure out that you weren’t supposed to come looking for me?”
 
 
He gave a scornful snort, one of his favorite conversational elements, and pulled out a chair at her table. Perforce, she sat next to him, perched on the edge of her seat. The young blond barmaid, who had surely noticed Justin the minute he walked in, was at their table in seconds, asking what they’d like her to bring. “Pitcher of ale,” Justin said. “Best in the house.”
 
 
Then he turned his attention back to her, intense in a way that only Justin could be. “Of course we all knew you were trying to avoid us,” he said. “Tayse told me not to go looking. But I wasn’t going to let you be this close and not try to find you. You’ve been gone too long, Wen. It’s time to come home.”
 
 
She shivered with longing at the word.
Home.
“Justin—I can’t. I don’t belong there anymore.”
 
 
“Yes, you do,” he said roughly. “There’s a place for you among the Riders, and everyone misses you. I’ve been to Tilt twice, looking for you, and Janni has gone, and so has Rett—”
 
 
Sweet words, inexpressibly sweet, but Wen wanted to put her hands over her ears and block them out. “No, no, no,” she said, talking over him, just trying to shut him up. “I can’t come back. I’m not a Rider anymore.”
 
 
Those words stopped him like a blade to the heart. He stared at her, his face stricken, and for a moment she thought she had persuaded him. Then he shook back his sandy hair and obviously decided to try a different tack. “All of us were torn apart by the events of the war,” he began.
 
 
She interrupted him. “Justin.
The king is dead because of me.
I failed Baryn, and I failed the Riders. I will spend the rest of my life trying to atone, but I cannot undo it, don’t you understand? I cannot erase it. It has stained my soul.”
 
 
He nodded slowly, making no attempt to brush off or minimize her guilt, for which she was profoundly grateful. “I would have felt the same way, if I had been the one beside Baryn when he fell,” he said seriously. “I might not have been able to live with the knowledge that he died and I did not.”
 
 
“Yes,” she breathed. “Exactly.”
 
 
“But you
have
lived with it,” he went on. “Two years. And you must have realized by now that your life is still valuable. Maybe there’s always this stain on your heart—maybe you never feel whole again—but you feel
alive
. You work around that stain, you put it behind you, and you look forward again. You live.”
 
 
She stared at him. Never much subtlety to Justin—even his philosophy was blunt as a hammer blow. “I don’t think I can,” she whispered.
 
 
“Wen,” he said, “you already have.”
 
 
At just that moment, the pretty waitress returned, bringing a pitcher and two glasses, simpering at Justin as she poured. Justin, of course, was oblivious to her charms. The only woman in the whole kingdom that Justin had ever noticed was the Lirren girl he had married.
 
 
No, that wasn’t right. Justin had formed close bonds with Janni and Wen—with Senneth and the mystic Kirra—he was attached to the young queen. Wen had always despaired of catching Justin’s attention, but, in fact, she had always had it. It just had not been a lover’s attention. It had been a friend’s.
 
 
And, apparently, it was not the sort of attention that she would be able to turn aside easily now.
 
 
Justin nodded his thanks to the blond girl, who departed as slowly as she could. “I’ve thought about it, over and over,” he said, taking a long pull at the drink. “Oh, this is good stuff. Try it. I don’t think your death would have changed anything. The assassin who killed Baryn came through
Tir.
The best Rider any of us will ever see. Once Tir was down, Baryn was vulnerable on that side. A blow to the chest, and Baryn was dead. Even if you had died, too, you wouldn’t have died defending him. You just would have died.” He took another big swallow. “It’s better that you survived.”
 
 
She used both hands to lift her own glass to her mouth, scarcely tasting the bitter brew. “Is that how you would have convinced yourself if you’d been standing on the other side of Baryn?” she asked at last.
 
 
He grinned. “Maybe. If I’d have been able to think again after it had happened.”
 
 
She tried the words out in her mind before she said them, but they didn’t hold any residue of pain. “If you’d been mad with grief, your wife could have helped you, couldn’t she? She’s a healer.”
 
 
“Maybe,” he agreed. “Though she’s better with bones and bleeding. Cammon might have helped me through, though. He’s got a strange way of dealing with despair.” He hitched his chair closer. “Hey! Come back to Fortune and petition Cammon to fix your heartache. I know he’d be delighted to learn you’re here.”
 
 
This almost made her laugh. “Justin, I can’t do that! Ask Cammon to make me feel better that I let his wife’s father die?”
 
 
He grinned. “Well, he’d do it. You know Cammon.”
 
 
She shook her head again, but she was smiling. She felt as if an iron vise had started to loosen from around her heart, or perhaps her lungs, making it easy to breathe for the first time in years. She wasn’t sure how far the clamp would unwind, though; she still inhaled with a certain caution. “So tell me,” she said. “All the gossip. What’s happening? How is everyone? What are the new Riders like?”
 
 
“Well, Tayse is just the same, of course, except even more serious now that Tir is gone. Janni is—No, wait, you don’t know! I’ve got a daughter.”
 
 
Impossible. “You’re a
father
? Justin, no, I can’t picture it. Tell me about her!”
 
 
He nodded vigorously. “Little over a year old. Ceribel. Looks more like Ellynor than she does like me, but you’d know she was mine if you spent five minutes with her. The most willful child ever born.”
 
 
“Can she hold a sword yet?”
 
 
He grinned. “You know she can. She’ll be as good as you are before she’s fifteen. Better than me by the time she’s twenty.”
 
 
“I can’t believe this. This is wonderful. Tell me more, tell me everything.”
 
 
They sat there for the next two hours, talking. Once Justin had rattled off the major events in the lives of their mutual friends, he demanded to know the details of her own recent story. He listened closely, interjected comments when he was impressed or disapproving, and finally brought the conversation around to the present day.
 
 
“Interesting job you have here,” he said. “I would have said I’d never give aid to any relative of Rayson Fortunalt, but I can’t help but like the serramarra. I wouldn’t want Ceribel to be judged by anything
I
did, but, Bright Mother burn me, it’s hard to forget that Karryn’s father is one of the reasons Baryn is dead.”
 
 
“She can’t forget it, either,” Wen said. “It makes it easier to forgive her.”
 
 
“So what’s your plan?” he said. “How long are you going to stay in Forten City? When can you come back to Ghosenhall?”
 
 
She smiled at him. Every time he said it, it was a little less painful. But it never seemed more possible. “Justin. I can’t leave her yet. Surely you’ve heard that she was attacked on the road about ten days ago—”
 
 
He nodded. “Heard it from every single person who was with you that day, including serra Karryn herself. Sounds like you were partly lucky, and partly good.”
 
 
“Exactly. And I need us to get better than good, in case our luck runs out next time.”
 
 
“You’re sure someone will try again?”
 
 
“Someone’s always waiting to try,” she said quietly. “You know that.”
 
 
He nodded. “But you’ve assembled a strong group here, and that one fellow—Orson—he’s pretty tough. He can slip into your place the minute you’re gone.”
 
 
“I’m not ready to leave yet,” she said.
 
 
He watched her a long time, his hands motionless around his glass. “Even if you’re never going to be a Rider again,” he said at last. “Even if you decide to stay in Forten City the rest of your life. You have to stop hiding from us. Come back to us, even if it’s just for a visit. Everybody misses you. Everybody worries about you. We need to know how you are. We need you to remember that you’re one of us.”
 
 
She felt shivery again, washed with a familiar panic. “Justin—I’m not sure I can do that. Ghosenhall—” She shook her head.
 
 
He leaned forward, intense again. “But you’ll come back to Fortune, won’t you? Tonight? With me? You’ll let Tayse and everybody see you?”
 
 
That was almost as frightening—and yet an insistent yearning was pulling her toward Fortune with a force that was almost irresistible. Only part of that was a desire to see Jasper again. Part of it—Oh, Justin was right. Part of it was a longing to surround herself again with Riders, comrades, the friends who helped her shape the very structure of her bones.
 
 
“What if they’re angry with me?” she whispered. “What if they can’t forgive me?”
 
 
He put his big hand over hers in a comforting, brotherly clasp. “You’re the only one who can’t figure out how to forgive,” he said. “Everyone else just wants you home.”
 
 
 
 
IN
the end, he persuaded her, but only because he vowed not to leave unless she returned with him, and Justin, she knew, was capable of carrying out that threat. So she packed her clothes, paid her bill, and followed him through the crowded streets of Forten City. Now the screws of the vise had tightened again on her heart; now her breathing was shallow and labored. What would Rett say, what would Tayse say? How long would it take them to recognize her when she first stepped through the gate? Would they hold off, would they approach only warily and with some restraint, or would they rush to greet her, endanger her ribs with their fervent embraces?

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