Page 117 of The Flame and the Forsaken

One hundred ninety. The properties returned to their rightful owners.

Twenty-two. The days it took to oversee the successful transfers.

Ten. The years it had taken to prove Mariel’s life’s work had not been for nothing.

One million. The number of ways she had come to love her husband.

It hadn’t been as smooth as the facts and figures suggested. The barons wouldn’t give up their wealth and status without a fight, and there’d been a half dozen small uprisings from loyal serfs hoping to gain favor if their baron emerged the victor.

One skirmish ended with a guard killed. After the perpetrator was ceremoniously hanged in the Whitecliffe village square, the uprisings stopped.

Not every property had been neatly returned. Some were deemed appropriate forfeitures. For those currently imprisoned, they could plead their case once they paid their debt to the law. For those egregiously behind on taxes, they could reapply for their titles when they produced twenty-five percent of what was owed.

Rylahn had held the barons in the jail for two of the past four days, long enough to search their lands for Sessaly. But it was Remy and Alessia who’d found her eating breakfast with the wife of Baron Hundson, who was happy for the whole ordeal to be over—less so to discover she had sixty days to vacate her land.

Mariel sat across from her father-in-law in his office, in a seat typically occupied by men of importance. Erran was beside her but had nudged himself slightly to the side. His occasional smile showed his contentment in her taking lead on the ceremonious end of years of strife. She saw pride in his gaze, but it was she who was proud ofhim,for contriving a conduit to peace that avoided war. For convincing his father it was the best way forward.

“Everything we talked about is there.” Rylahn nodded at the long sheet of vellum she’d unrolled. He nudged the inkpot and quill her way. “Land has been returned to those eligible through a re-review of crimes and unpaid taxes. Those who were ineligible have a path for reclamation. Taxes have been lowered to a standard twenty-five percent but will scale for farms who reach specific profit levels, as defined here.” He leaned over his desk and tapped the page in the middle. “The third section details what we agreed to about the democratic elections for elected law officials. This should ensure repossessions are fair and in accordance to laws that are not unbalanced.”

Mariel could hardly read through her tears. All those years she’d turned their aggressors into one-dimensional monsters who would respond to nothing but threats. Rylahn had a long way to go to redeem the harm he had caused, but if she’d have known there was more to the man, they might have settled matters so much sooner.

“Will it not be legally dubious if a woman signs?” Mariel asked as she reached for the quill.

“Your brother, Baron Ashdown, will also sign. And right there, you see where Erran will sign, promising to uphold the fairness standards when he takes the mantle of stewardship as his own.” He returned to his seat. “You’resigning, Mariel, as a symbol of your commitment to quietly put an end to your own activities. No one will ever know it was you who brought all this to a head, because that knowledge comes with the risk of your bigger secret being discovered. And it can never, for if the public finds out, your fate will be beyond my authority.”

Mariel dipped the quill in the pot but hesitated before leading it to the page. The past rushed forward to remind her to never trust anyone but herself. Anything that seemed too fortuitous was either a trap or a missed opportunity for one.

“What is it?” Erran whispered.

“Doesn’t seem real.” Ink dropped onto the table. “I keep thinking about the way Yesenia and her husband trapped his brother into signing something like this, but there was no true accord. It won’t be long before Aidan Quinlanden finds a way to undo all of it.”

“My father isn’t Aidan.” He gripped her knee. “He’s a fallible man who did a terrible thing and knows it. Whether you can forgive that is a matter I cannot advise you on. But if I didn’t believe his heart was true, Mariel, we wouldn’t be sitting here. We’d already be halfway to the Northerlands in search of a new life.”

“Is there a reason you’re whispering?” Rylahn asked.

Erran seemed ready to make something up, but she’d come to the table in good faith and expecting the same. “Steward, I want to believe you’re in full support of everything on this page.”

“You’d be a fool to.” Rylahn scoffed. “You didn’t come this far trusting anyone’s intentions.”

“Not an especially comforting response,” she replied.

“It’s not me you should trust. It’s him.” He nodded at his son. “I have, at best, a year or so left before retirement comes calling. My leg has reached the end of its travails, and I no longer have the belly for politics. The two of you will be leading this region soon. Managing the barons will become your burden. If the Guardian of the Unpromised Future is less capricious than they say, the son will do better than the father ever could.”

Nothing could undo death. Starvation. Grief and tears and injury and suffering. Not even the treaty collecting ink splatters beneath her quill. It was a thought that had kept her up many nights. The best she could ever accomplish as the Flame was trauma avoidance. Not even the Guardians could turn back time.

But Rylahn was linked to her twice over. He was both her father-in-law and Destin’s half brother. Erran was right; he wasn’t Aidan Quinlanden, who still stood by every terrible thing the Quinlandens had ever done. Rylahn was a man capable of change and evolution, and if she couldn’t accept that such change was possible, then there’d never been much point to her work anyway.

She drew a deep breath and traced her signature on the line, adding one last rogue inky dot at the end. She passed it to Erran, and he leaned in to do the same. “What happens now?”

Rylahn pulled the page to his side of the desk and signed. “Pamphlets will be made and distributed across the region. Elections won’t happen until springtide, but I’ve put a temporary stay on any seizures until they’ve taken place.”

“And Obsidian Sky?” Erran asked. “Will there not be discontent when you make no arrests?”

Rylahn had held true to his word on immunity. But putting their names on any document, even if the document assured their freedom, was not something they could take back. It would have exposed them forever. In the end, Remy and Augustine accepted the offer, but Alessia and Magnur chose to protect their anonymity.

“When the thieving stops, they’ll eventually be forgotten,” Rylahn said. “If not, there are plenty of men set to die for other crimes. Pick two, get them to sign a confession in exchange for a handsome sum to their families when they’re gone.”

Mariel leaped up. She suddenly needed air, to breathe in the brine of the sea and drink in the roar of the endless surf. What she would miss most about life as the Flame were the nights in the forest, sleeping under the stars. Sometimes she’d stay at Remy’s or the hovel Destin had won gambling, but she always returned to her bundle of tattered blankets, Augustine beside her, smiling. They’d never needed words, and anyway, neither were very skilled with them. The culmination of so many years and so many tragedies spoke for them, allowing brief pockets of joy that words would have sullied.

---