Page 9 of Ties of Legacy

He looked up and realized the merchant girl—Avery, she had called herself—and her vicious horse had left without him even noticing. She had taken the candelabra with her, but that didn’t matter, since it was the wrong one.

But how could it be the wrong one? He struggled to think through the pounding in his head.

He had been only mildly uncomfortable all day as he trailed close behind the cart. It was only when he ran away from it that the pain had set in. His candelabra had to be there.

He couldn’t think it through properly with his senses spinning so badly. He needed relief, and apparently that meant getting closer to the cart.

He tried to stand and staggered, collapsing back onto his knees. Walking was out of the question, then. He flattened his hands on the dirt and crawled forward instead, inching back toward the cart. It took two minutes of slow progress before he noticed a change. But the lessening pain and dizziness allowedhim to move faster, and the symptoms began to decrease rapidly.

He was so relieved by the freedom from pain, he nearly crawled right into the open space in front of the wooden shelter. He caught himself just in time, though. Slumping against a tree trunk, he tried to think the situation through with a clearer head.

The evidence of his symptoms told him his candelabra was in Avery’s cart. It had to be. And yet she had claimed she didn’t have any others.

It was possible she was lying, but she had seemed astounded and indignant rather than duplicitous when she had assured him it wasn’t there. And he had searched the whole crate himself to find the one he had taken. There hadn’t been a second candelabra.

That meant the one he’d glimpsed in her hand at the smithy hadn’t been his. And yet, she had to have taken his candelabra. If she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to leave the smithy, and he wouldn’t need to be near her cart now.

There was only one possible answer. He had watched the smith night and day since his arrival in Henton, but there had been a gap between the thieves selling the smith his candelabra and Elliot’s arrival. During that time, the smith must have already melted down the candlestick for its brass and reshaped it into something else.

His stomach twisted. After lugging the thing around with him for his whole life, he’d thought he hated it. But the thought of it being destroyed and made into something unfamiliar hit him hard. As much as he detested being tied to it, the candelabra had been a part of him.

He leaned his head back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes. How had he reached the point where he had an emotional connection to a candelabra? His mother had a lot to answer for.

His stomach tightened further. He already knew about his mother’s faults, and he didn’t want to think of her. He had enough worries in the immediate moment.

His emotional reaction wasn’t what was important, his physical response was causing him trouble enough. Apparently, the process of being melted down hadn’t destroyed his tie to the brass that formed the candlestick. Instead, it had strengthened it. With the added complication that he now had to retrieve an unfamiliar item instead of one he knew better than his own hand.

Avery had warned him not to come near her again, but somehow he had to test every item she had bought from the smith. Should he just take the whole crate?

It wouldn’t be as easy to do now that she was on alert. And he had no idea what the items had cost her. If customers were willing to seek out a smith in Henton and wait six months for their orders to be filled, the smith must be unusual. Who knew how much his creations cost? Elliot probably didn’t have enough coin to reimburse Avery for the whole crate. His coin had been steadily dwindling for a long time, and he had already left more than was comfortable in the crate for Avery.

There was also the question of how to succeed at such a theft. He didn’t like his chances. If he couldn’t get away with a single candelabra, he wasn’t going to outsprint the horse with a heavy crate full of metal.

Which left him where?

He would have to follow Avery, of course. He had no choice but to stay near her cart. Should he try to explain the situation to her?

He groaned. Despite his failure with the smith, he should have approached Avery openly from the beginning. Now she would never trust him. She must have thought him odd and untrustworthy at best, and it might have been worse than that.He wasn’t sure what he’d said to her through the haze of pain earlier. Any story he told her now would seem like a ruse to get his hands on her wares.

He would have to trail behind her until the next town. Both Avery and her watch horse slept beside the cart on the road, but Avery had disappeared into the inn at Henton. When she next reached a town, surely she would rent a room and put her horse in the stables. That would provide him an opportunity to access her cart.

In the worse case scenario, he would just have to wait until she sold the smith’s creations. If someone departed with the item Elliot was tied to, he would know almost immediately. And then he could offer to buy it off them for three times as much as they’d paid—even if it cost all the coin he had left.

He groaned. He’d seen a couple of items in Avery’s cart that had to be from Auldana, and she couldn’t have been there anytime recently. What if she didn’t sell his item for another three kingdoms?

His mother had celebrated that his tie to the portable candelabra allowed him to travel freely, but Elliot was sick and tired of roaming the kingdoms without friends, roots, or stability. He was ready to settle down, and he’d selected the capital of Sovar as his future home. He’d been on his way there when the thieves had struck.

And now?—

He sat upright, his eyes flying open. Avery had said she was going to Bolivere. If he had to follow her, that meant…

He groaned. Of course she would be going to the one place in all six kingdoms he had determined never to visit.

But it didn’t matter how much he didn’t want to go to Bolivere. He couldn’t be separated from the cart—especially now his symptoms had worsened. For all he knew, it was possible he would actually die if he got too far from it.

He eventually dozed against the tree trunk, but it was a restless sleep, and the night passed slowly. He was woken by the sound of Avery packing up camp, murmuring to her horse while she did so.

She checked the canvas over the cart suspiciously before setting out, but she seemed satisfied that the knots hadn’t been touched while she slept. He expected her to head straight for the road, but when she turned in his direction instead, he had to scramble back through the trees to stay out of sight.

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