It looks like we’re going back there. We haven’t decided whether it's permanent or just temporary. Amer says going at all is foolish and dislikes the idea. I tend to agree with him. Kenric will live longer here, and we won’t have to make the long sea voyage to get there. I’ve taken the liberty of setting a tag here. I’m not sure if I can use it from that distance, and I hope I won’t have to test it. Amer hasn’t found anything in the archives indicating a distance limit, so it’s at least possible that there isn’t one. It might also be that no one’s tried it from that far away.
Fylson made it a point to get friendly with the rest of the trade delegation to see how they feel about magic. Since he’s male, they’ll talk to him. What he’s learned from them is pretty disturbing. It appears that most, if not all, of these humans lack any magic and are highly suspicious of anyone who does. He warned me to avoid using any magic where anyone can see me. They have some strange beliefs about witches and burning people alive who are believed to practice magic. What a bunch of barbarians! I guess that they’ve been purging anyone with magic for so long, they’ve bred this ability out of their population. At least it seems like my magic should still work, even if I need to be careful when using it.
I’ve told Kenric I like this less and less, but he seems to think there’s no choice, at least for now. The rest of the delegation is putting a lot of pressure on Kenric to return. I’ve asked if we can at least go on a different ship because if I’m trapped in a small space with those men for months, we might not all survive the ocean crossing. I might feel compelled to toss them overboard. Kenric agrees with my assessment and has noticed just how closely some of their eyes track my every move. He’s not a particularly jealous man, but he is protective. We’ll be leaving on the last ship, and we’ll have what would typically be the captain’s cabin, which will give us more space and privacy. I’d rather leave on the first ship, but all the puffed-up toads want to be on that one, so we wait.
I have trunks of things to bring with me, a completely new language to learn along with their customs, and quite a few ladylike activities. It also seems I need to get used to their scratchy, itchy clothing. I told Kenric that I’d be lining everything with Fey silk so I wouldn’t chafe. No one will see it, and my backside will be much less itchy. That conversation quickly turned into offers from Kenric to scratch all my itches, wherever they might be. It then led him to try and identify and scratch those itches. I really adore that man. These people have laws—actual codified laws—about who can wear what and even which colors are allowed, all based on these ranks, which confuses me. I have to learn an entirely new system of ranks and many laws about what I can and cannot wear. I’ve been working on understanding all that so I don’t get myself or Kenric into trouble.
I’ve spent enough time around the other members of the trade delegation to realize that I don’t like most of them. Rolf is pretty reasonable when the others aren’t present, but he’s the only one. When the others are around, Rolf falls in with their ideas and seems to be either in fear or in awe of the rest. The others I want to stab – repeatedly. They’re beyond frustrating to deal with.
They believe I should let the men make all the decisions. According to these idiots, I should stay in the background, like the furniture, because, as a woman, I’m only slightly smarter than a chair or table. One of them actually told me not to worry my pretty little head and let Kenric handle it. His advice was to look nice and not to fret because frowning isn’t pretty. That man will never know how close he came to dying or how much he tested my self-control that day.
I suppose that since magic can manifest strongly in either males or females, the Fey have different ideas about equality between the genders. Magic can be a great equalizer for physical strength. I’m used to being treated as an equal, even by males who are twice my size. I don't think I'll like the place Kenric's taking me to. If all the men there are like this, it's going to be very unpleasant for me. He's promised that if I hate it too much, we'll come back here. I know he's worried about the king and wants to get me as far away from Ellisar as possible. I’ve tried to tell him that the only way to do that is to pick up and run, so that Ellisar can’t find us. With Ellisar’s access to both his magic and many others’, that’s never going to be an easy task.
I know Ellisar the Asshat, and one puny little ocean isn't going to stop him if he wants to meddle in my life again. If Ellisar decides he wants to meddle, he'll find a way to do it, no matter how many leagues of ocean separate us. What I’ve never been able to decide is whether it’s coincidental or if he’s doing it on purpose. Amer suspects it’s deliberate but hasn’t come up with any more definitive answers than I have. Amer can’t decide if it’s because Ellisar wants me as his Queen or if he’s afraid of my popularity or both. At this point, I think I’d rather bed a rock troll than Ellisar. If he wanted me as his Queen, he should have started being a lot nicer a long time ago.
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What I can say is that there has been a long-standing pattern of Ellisar interfering in my life to my detriment. Before I was old enough to be conscripted, there was a young man in my life, not unlike Ruvaen. Wyn was tall and powerfully built, with dark hair and stormy grey eyes. We were planning to get married before conscription because if I were pregnant, I couldn’t be drafted. Wyn, had he survived, would have been a good father. We weren’t in love, but we were very good friends.
The king blocked that marriage because Wyn hadn’t marked me yet. We began the process to resolve everything, but none of it was completed before my conscription date. Mostly, it wasn’t sorted out because Ellisar or one of his cronies kept interfering—papers got lost, testimony wasn’t taken promptly, and there was all kinds of bureaucratic delaying nonsense. That’s why my father was so insistent on having Kenric mark me immediately. My father knew the temple would inform Ellisar almost as soon as my mother stepped through the doors, and he was hoping to avoid a repeat of what happened with Wyn. Kenric’s casual comments about the king’s congratulations confirmed that my father was right.
Showing up at court the next day, marked by Kenric literally from head to toe, was probably one of the few moves that blocked whatever Ellisar had planned to prevent me from having this match. Maybe Amer is correct, and it’s because Ellisar wants me as his Queen. That would definitely boost his popularity. A large part of his unpopularity comes from his harassment of me. Every time he pulls a stunt that disrupts my life, he ends up caught in the backlash, which usually turns out to be highly detrimental to him. I don’t understand why he continues to do this. What will it take for that man to leave me alone? When the subpar training at the highly touted training centers came to light, Ellisar was blamed since he’d insisted on overseeing them personally.
When it was revealed that he had taken Lantecari from me, there was a huge public outcry. Why store weapons that we could be using in the border war in the royal armory, where they only gather dust? When the vaunted field guide failed to appear, tense meetings were held to question the actual allocation of funding for this project. That sparked another public outcry, as it seemed the king was hindering the war effort. Now that he’s taken back the honor name he never wanted to give me in the first place, there’s yet another outcry, and he’s more unpopular than ever. Honestly, I don’t know how that man manages to keep his crown. I’m surprised no other member of the royal family has assassinated him and taken the throne. I think most of us would be relieved to see a new king. Ellisar’s increasing unpopularity affects everyone to some extent. Some poisons have an impact on us, and Ellisar is too proud to use a food taster.
Once I was old enough for the draft, I was inducted and sent to training. I later found out that Ellisar had personally arranged for me to be sent to the training center with the worst survival rates. The training center commander showed me the letter, signed by Ellisar himself, swapping me with someone else. After I found Lantecari, he tried to take it, but the blade itself refused to be stored in the royal armory and reappeared in my bedroll. Magic like that doesn’t like to be trifled with and often has nasty consequences for anyone who dares to trouble it. He left it alone after that. I still don’t know what enchantments are on that blade, but I’d bet Ellisar knows precisely what’s on it, which is why he didn’t want me to have it.
When we became a bit smarter and started keeping records of the various creatures we were fighting, Ellisar had to get involved as well. We even developed our own system for disseminating new information through the war bands along the border. Ellisar tried to stop us from doing so and wanted to keep all the information for himself. We were given some meaningless bureaucratic doublespeak about creating an official field guide for everyone. In reality, we submitted reports, but nothing ever came back. It didn’t take us long to realize we’d never see this official field guide.
To keep Ellisar happy, we continued to submit the reports. Still, every warband reverted to sharing information as they had before, passing it from warband to warband, up and down the border. He tried to weasel out of giving me my honor name after the battle at Sah Sarhine, which we won. Not one of those things got loose inside the city. He’d promised an honor name publicly to all of us who were there. He didn’t balk at any of the others—just mine. He was pretty critical of the battle at Sheal Shaeras, constantly whining about how the residents had complained because we hadn’t reached the nursery before the creatures got inside and feasted on all the children.
He laid a massive burden of guilt on us about that, and I carried it, we all carried it, until Kenric took me to the tavern that night. I never thought to ask the people of Sheal Shaeras myself, mostly because I was afraid they’d say the king was right. It’s been one thing after another. If I find he does anything to Kenric, I might very well consider regicide. I love Kenric, and I’m not sure what I feel for the king, but I label it; it isn’t good. If I had to choose a single word, I would say I despise that man. No matter what I do to try and find happiness, he comes along and ruins it. No matter what I accomplish, he undermines it.
- Who do you think will pay the highest price for what happened here?