Page 166 of Silverbow
“Why did Peytar Ralenet put a price on your head? That was weeks before the business in Innesh, was it not?”
Oryn nodded as Enya looked to him in question. She swallowed audibly. “I was raised Enya Ryerson…but I was born Enya Trakbatten.”
“Well, isn’t this a surprise?” Alsbet mused.
A puff of hazy blue smoke clouded Leon’s features. “My advisors will have a field day,” he muttered.
“I don’t mean to bring you any trouble, Your Highness, I only ask to rest here until we go on to the Vale.”
Leon waved his pipe. “If you spend enough time in Drozia, you’ll find I don’t much care for what my advisors think.”
“The Vale?” Alsbet asked, eyes sliding to Oryn. “You mean to leave us quickly?”
Enya tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I…I may have also stolen Preya’s clutch from Blackash Keep.”
The words came out in such a rush, Oryn wasn’t certain Leon and Alsbet understood until the Prince of Dwarves threw back his head and roared a laugh. Alsbet inched to the edge of her chair and gestured wildly at the saddlebags. “Simdeni’s green earth. You have them?”
Oryn held his breath as one by one, Enya reverently unwrapped the eggs and set them on the low table. He sat forward. He’d never actually seen them out of their wrappings and only once had he ever seen the remnants of a shell that had been shipped to Drozia to be made into a necklace for a long dead queen. They were spectacularly dazzling in the firelight. His gaze snagged on Enya as she placed the last on the table, a soft smile lighting her features. It was a smile he hadn’t seen from her before, one of pure joy and triumph.
Leon came to stand at his wife’s shoulder, pipe clutched between his teeth as he stared down at what had been Estryia’s greatest treasure. “Well…” he puffed. “Well…”
“If Pallas learns they are gone, and who took them, he may retaliate against anyone who shelters her,” Oryn warned.
Leon waved his pipe. “Let the bastard break himself on my wards, on my mountains.”
Something loosened in Oryn’s chest at the words. Enya was gaping at Leon.
“I can’t believe you stole them,” Alsbet murmured, still staring at the clutch that lay before her.
“Enya stole them.”
“We’ll put them in your vault for safekeeping,” Leon said. Oryn nodded. The vaults below Drozia were the safest place in Elaria, but his foster brother looked to Enya. “Hervault.”
“My vault?” She asked in surprise, her brows knitting together. “I don’t have a vault.”
“Of course you do, girl.”
Oryn looked from his brother to his bounty, his own brows rising.
“But Pallas-” Her protest died with a wave of Leon’s hand.
“You were not surprised she just uttered a name that the world never expected to hear again,” Oryn said slowly. “You knew.”
“The mountain does not yield its secrets, least of all the secrets of its vaults,” Leon answered. “But yes, I have two Trakbatten vaults in the royal wing.” Enya silently mouthed ‘royal wing’ as she stared in astonishment. “In the weeks before her wedding to Pallas Davolier, I received the most curious letter from Maia Trakbatten asking me to disentangle the royal treasury from her personal fortune. No easy task, but it was done.
“Maia fled her throne, leaving her vault without a next of kin for some time, but five years later, when the world had moved on, I received another curious bird, naming her Heir.”
Oryn watched Enya’s face, full of shock and wonder.
“Then came a third. Asking for the vault to be split again, leaving half to the Second. When news of a bounty for an Enya Ryerson reached us, I had my suspicions. How many Enyas would be worth ten thousand gold marks to Peytar Ralenet? And when we heard she was with you, we assumed you had figured it out.”
If only.
“Trakbatten eyes,” Alsbet murmured.
forty
Liam
