Page 51 of Thief of Roses
“Indeed, I was.”He halted his efforts to give her his attention, one hand covered in pitch to finish the walls.“I do not know what the topography of the area around us might look like now, but when I was not bound to the land, the river kept washing out the wood bridge until we built one of stone.”
“The one with the dedication on it to the Great Holy asking that it may stand a hundred years?”
“I built that bridge.”In a rare display of delight and pride, he grinned, all tooth and variegated gum.“Not alone of course, but I designed it and went down with the masons to construct it.It took a year, but I am gratified to know that it still stands.”
“I didn’t think that the de Vaccas approved public works like that.Special dispensation?Or a royal road?”
Baró’s expression shuttered and his voice dropped.“Luca de Vacca stayed here several times.”
“Special dispensation then.”An uncomfortable suspicion germinated in Rivani’s mind, a suspicion no bigger than a grain of sand but one she could not ignore.“Before or after he was king?”
“Before.”
“Did you ever host his brother, Arturo?”
Baró stilled like prey caught in a predator’s gaze.“He was here too.”
“Ah, look at my Baró,” she teased, trying to ease his tension, “hob-nobbing with the royalty.”
“How do you know so much about the de Vaccas?”The amusement he displayed at her pronouncement of hob-nobbing gave way to something more serious despite the light tone.“Are you a secret historian, Rivani?”
“No, Baró.But the Rivani tell stories.And the de Vaccas instigated the Great Persecution even if the sentiment did not arise with them.It would be difficult not to know about them when they played so important and detrimental a role in our history.”
“I am sorry.Of course there are stories.”
“Not all of them are bad,” she said.Unable to leave her suspicion alone, she elaborated.“There’s one of a de Vacca — Arturo de Vacca,” she baited, “who we call The Rivan Prince.Though obliged to placate his family, he helped shelter and safeguard the Rivani, fund their escapes, and set up new lives elsewhere.”
Baró shrugged and redirected his attention back to the smokehouse.He resumed pitching the sides.“The Rivani give praise to one who did too little.”Bitterness laced his words.“I understand working within the confines of an existing structure to change it, but not using his position to better the lives of the Rivani constituted a moral failure.I was such a one and I condemn myself for my weakness and cowardice daily.The Rivani should do the same.”
“I’m not saying that there should be praise heaped upon him for doing a fraction of good in the face of overwhelming harm.But the stories do not just recount misery.There’s hope too.The Rivan Prince features often in our stories.”
Baró bristled and shivered.
“Though a claimed son of the king,” she continued, “Rivan sorceresses could see the magic of his true father’s Rivan bloodline.”
“I heard the rumors about the prince at the time too.”He wiped his hand on the straw pile nearby and took long hurried strides back toward the keep.“I’m cold and going in.”
Rivani flinched.Something struck a nerve.Baró had never been curt with her before unless he was experiencing the Magic, but that came with a different set of behaviors, other types of redirection, and that ceased when they abandoned the active use of magic.She gave him a respectable head start before she followed, lest he feel pursued.She found him in the solar that they now used for joint comfort when they did not feel like using the kitchens.
“May I share the fire or do you need space?”She waited in the doorway.
He sat on the floor, his back to her, tail curled around his bottom, legs crossed in front of him.His back tensed when she spoke.He turned his face in profile to answer and hesitated, not seeming to know what he would prefer.At last, he sighed and turned his face away.
“I would rather your company.”
She removed the cloak and folded it over the chaise between them before she circled the piece of furniture so that he sat between her and the hearth.She let the silence continue for some time.
“What happened?”She asked when his shoulders finally eased.
“I feel so disconnected from that time, that life,” he confessed to her, or rather confessed to the fire.“Being reminded of — of people I knew and other mundane failings of mine that aren’t soul-staining crimes.”He shrugged.“Old wounds reopened.”
She gazed at his back.The small pebble of far-fetched suspicion that Baró could have been the Rivan Prince of the campfire stories and songs grew to boulder size with every new piece of his puzzle.And if somehow, that figure had also become the Fir’Darl...
“May I touch you?”
He nodded and she moved to the edge of the chaise, reaching out to rub his shoulder.
“I did not mean to revive old, useless hurts.”
