Duty-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book II ]

24

When he looked back around some time later as the oats were bubbling merrily away, he saw that Ealin had fallen asleep, her knees curled up to her chest and the soles of her feet resting on the seat of her chair. She looked terribly young, thin almost to the point of sickness, and, even in her sleep, she looked afraid.

He did not wake her until he had portioned out the oatmeal into two bowls. Although he was a big man and quite hungry himself, he gave her the larger portion; she clearly needed it more than he did. He settled himself on the floor near her chair with his back against the wall and whispered, "Ealin." When she did not stir, he said her name again, a little louder.

She sat up straight at once, her limps taut, and was half out of her chair before she seemed to remember where she was. Then, rather than springing into action to run, she shrank back into herself.

"Your meal is ready." Uachi held up the bowl.

Looking from the bowl up to Uachi's face, Ealin seemed prepared to reject the food. In the end, she accepted the bowl with reluctance and began to spoon up the porridge. As she lifted the spoon to her mouth, the wide sleeve of her habit slipped down her wrist. In the shadow of the cuff, Uachi saw the pale ridge of an ugly scar.

Without comment, he turned to his food. He began to eat the poor meal without pleasure.

"Do you live here?" asked Ealin.

Uachi looked up at her again and judged her expression. She was not looking at him. He thought, at first, that she must be playing a game; after all, his heritage was no secret. Like almost every other Arcborn man or woman in Penrua, he wore the marke writ boldly across his cheek. But her face seemed free of any humor at all, and he remembered that there had been Arcborn servants in the palace once.

"Now I do, I suppose," he said. "But I didn't always." As he turned his attention back to his meal, his gaze caught again on the scar at her wrist. It was no mark from a burn or an accidental slip of a knife; it looked deep, and he noticed the thin ridge of a second scar crossing over the larger one.

"Where did you live before?"

"I lived a long way from here." Uachi took another bite of porridge, then used his spoon to scrape the last thin slop from the bowl. "In the Duskwood."

"The Duskwood," Ealin echoed.

"Yes. It's a forest. Have you not heard of it?"

The young woman shook her head. "I have not been outside of Karelin before."

"Still, you must know of the Duskwood. Even I did, as a child, well before I did any traveling of my own, and I was born in the Holy City."

Ealin had stopped eating with about a third of her porridge left in the bowl. "Is that man—the man with the brown hair—is that man the Glorious Emperor?"

Uachi pushed himself to his feet and stood looking down at Ealin, head cocked. Again, he searched her face, but there was nothing but frank innocence and curiosity in her features. "I don't think so. Not much glorious about him. He likes to think he's got a handle on things, but they haven't gone naming him anything grand like that yet. I think that's something for the history book writers to handle, don't you?"

But it was Ealin's turn to look puzzled. "Then where is the Glorious Emperor?"

"Woman, you're going to have to help me out. I don't know who this Glorious Emperor is." She could not mean the emperor who had most recently held the reins of Penrua. There had been nothing glorious at all about that man; the Arcborn rebels had called him the Corpsemaker, a rather different name.

"The savior of Arc. The one who will return things to the way they should be. The bringer of order and light. You must know, surely; does he not live here in the palace?"

Uachi looked at her blankly. "I've heard a lot of rubbish, but I haven't heard this."

Ealin frowned. "Emperor Korvan, the Sovereign of Souls—? How long did you live in the Duskwood, to not know of him?"

Feeling as if the wind had been struck out of him, Uachi muttered, "Apparently not goddess-damned long enough."

I might have mentioned that there are four POVs in this book: Matei and Mhera, of course, and two surprises. The first was Kaori.

Here's your second surprise POV, my friends: everyone's favorite grump, Uachi. :3 I hope you enjoyed seeing through his eyes. Spoiler alert: the next chapter, coming Sunday, will also be an Uachi chapter!

What did you think of this sparring match between Gella and Uachi? I had waaay too much fun writing that.

Thank you for reading! I appreciate every moment you spend with me here in the Holy City more than you can know.