A/N: I noticed an accident in an earlier scene, calling Tully Berthen's great-grandmother. She's his grandmother, not great-grandmother. She had Onlé, who had him.
——
The labyrinth of caverns that make up most of Marsdenfel are mapped now, or at least the ones in use are. The others are slowly being added, and Berthen's careful that those assigned to map-making are distant and distracted enough to hinder them noticing (or confirming) there's too much labyrinth for the mountains they're presumably in.
The fact that Marsdenfel usurps terrain beyond its borders is one reason they were never mapped before the realm fell to Grehafen's rule. It's magic, part of whatever the Crystal did when the Bynd was made, but it could be easily misunderstood as part of the imperialism that brought elves to these shores to begin with.
Not all elves had stolen land from the natives, but the other thieves had been fringe groups, small communes seeking to expand outside the boundaries of larger realms. The elves had barrelled in on others' territory as an empire—one that claimed lands nobody else wanted, where food wouldn't live or grow without the elven magic, but in doing so made itself oh-so-helpful and influential where it landed.
The Surrenians weren't the only ones who gave the ostensibly benign imperialism the side-eye. They were just the only group large and vicious enough to ensure elves never got a foothold in their lands to begin with.
Or such was commonly believed, at least.
Berthen traced the...troubling...part of then cave map with a finger, almost wishing he'd kept some of the non-elves in the realm, just to have someone to send out and confirm where these various caves of Marsdenfel ended up. Dakadza might've been a good choice, except he was likely to survive for centuries, and who knew if he'd keep his discretion once he better understood what he could gain, if he auctioned it?
'Always assuming the worst,' Malor would say with a chuckle, running a finger down the bridge of Berthen's nose as if he knew how well touch could anchor a survivor. Maybe he did. Berthen had never asked, and now he never would get a chance to.
He never dared chance to. He hated his predecessor too much for the recklessness that had enabled his assassination, saddling Berthen with this mess.
A bristle of sound tickles his skin. Milkweed brushes against his tongue—his great-grandmother's scent.
"What?" he snaps, even before turning around with a scowl.
Ethen's age-whisped white hair looks apt to break, but her skin is smooth, reinforced by her affinity for the creatures that live in people and keep them healthy. No one's ever told Berthen if her son shared that magic, but his mother didn't. Ethen had shared the family's knowledge about healing with that granddaughter anyway, knowing that Onlé would use it in ways that she wouldn't or couldn't.
Ethen had taken Onlé from her parents because her son and the girl he'd impregnated had been children, themselves, and Tully's father was nobody to be trusted with an opportunity to control a child.
She'd taken him because Onlé had never admitted who his father was, just that the male had been murdered like so many of Marsdenfel during their enslavement, and Onlé herself had played a fool so the king controlling them wouldn't realize what she was.
This great-grandmother, Ethen, had thus raised him, surviving even where the slavery had destroyed her children and grandchildren. After Marsdenfel gained its freedom, King Leathin had adopted him, but she'd seen him through his vulnerable years, done what she had to so he survived to today.
And Leathin, curse him, had ensured that she might outlive Berthen, too.
Ethen is well aware of all this, and she's still willing to voice displeasure at his choices, even though he's her king now. (Technically, king of all the elves, not that most other elven realms respect that.) It's...comforting, though he'd be better off with fewer reminders that he could have chosen to keep Malor.
But even aside from how that would have endangered his boyfriend and affected how other realms viewed his, Malor was the human son of a slave. They'd liked each other, a lot. Maybe even loved each other. But their worlds were so far apart that they had to work through the differences even when Berthen was an adopted heir and Malor was tutoring him.
They would have grown apart eventually. Breaking things off before their relationship's natural ending still burned Berthen's gut, though.
Ethen thankfully doesn't bring up the topic again, just squints at the two maps he has out.
His fingers itch to hide them, but she's too old to live much longer, too frail to survive any attempts to steal the information from her—and knows him too well to be offended by his calculation.
The one he's compiling of all the caves is on parchment made from sheep, which are raised in the valley that's most of the territory Marsdenfel claims above ground.
The other map is of Surrenian lands. He's one of the few elves who escaped Grehafen able to read, and the 'highborn' jerks he displaced from Breidentel have no interest in the archives. Fortunately. He hates to think what one of them could have done with this, had they found it first.
It would be far safer to burn this, to pretend he'd never found it, but...
He glances at the cave map again. If that section is in Surrenian lands, can he truly afford to? What had making this map even cost?
"Rumor is that Tully knows a Surrenian exile," Ethen comments, finally, giving that illegal map a dubious poke, so he's right to be concerned about what made that parchment.
He snorts, though his grandmother very well might. "Rumor says she knows a goblin, too."
Surrenians and goblins share most of this entire land mass. They're quick to kill any who seek entry, even for trade, and leaving seems similarly restricted, considering how rare they are outside their own lands. They cover too much land—and swallowed too many of the other tribes and clans native to this land mass—to lack a thriving population.
Ethen's lips thin from the casual discussion of gossip, or maybe of his grandmother. Tully's father ruled Breidentel, never married, and sired dozens of illegitimate children that he then weaponized. Many became his private soldiers and maidservants. He'd meant Tully to be an assassin and spy.
Fortunately for everyone, Tully had been stubborn enough to fight that, but some part of her is still that little girl who'd only been valued for her ability to lie and kill. She's embraced those talents, turning them to her own purposes (protecting victims, mainly), to the extent that she can't even see the rest of herself.
"I think he'll marry her, if she lets him," he blurts, remembering how the king of the realm of the south had been eying her, last he saw them. Months ago, now, the night Leathin's illegitimate son was taken.
"She won't let him," Ethen retorts, the tone displeased. Many who don't know her well—including Tully—assumes that means she dislikes the woman, rather than recognizing it as displeasure at what the woman's had to survive.
Ethen taps the illegal map that he found in the archives and wishes he could pretend it didn't exist. "You found it?"
Not one of the persons he's punishing for their abuse of others by having them clean, she means.
"Yes," he answers. "I was alone." There were no witnesses.
The sour look she casts him is a pointed reminder of how much he's complained about Leathin doing that very thing—wandering off by himself—which gave the assassin opportunity to kill him.
He scowls. "I had my knives."
The fact that there's nobody known to be after him after the moment is irrelevant. They wouldn't have known about the male after Leathin if Tully hadn't recognized the assassin's animal form.
Ethen scowls right back at him. He sleeps with his knives. "You're going to scare the daylights out of whatever wife Tully finds you."
He grimaces. "You heard about that."
"Yes, I 'heard about' how you asked your grandmother to find you a homely wife from the east. From gossip." Why couldn't you tell me, yourself? her tone asks.
He closes his eyes. "This is to be a lecture, then?"
"No," she answers, surprising him. "You telegraphed something like this in sending your lover boy away. Your choice of envoy just surprises me, that's all. I thought that was what you sent Waislen for."
"People were supposed to think that," he admitted.
"Berthen," Ethen whispered. "What are you having Waislen do?"
"Something she offered to do," he admits, letting his tone say, and if you want to know more than that, you'll have to ask her.
It was dangerous enough for Waislen to tell him her plan. She's a bit safer from some if they think she's acting on his orders, but not all peoples respect that, and every person who knows is another vulnerability.
She'd said she would be safe enough out in the plains, had intimated that she had a plan to avoid falling prey to a necromancer herself, even with the vulnerability she'd have to infect herself with to be able to get out there.
He didn't ask how she knew about that contagion, didn't ask where she learned enough about red magics to understand why the other elven realms hadn't risen up to destroy the king who'd enslaved the high realm. Her knowledge means she knows a red mage—or experiments that way herself—and he doesn't want to know which. She's one of the few people he trusts, and he would rather fret than destroy that.
He hopes to the Creator that she's right: that she can protect herself, that she isn't just falling prety to another manifestation of the self-harm that scars her.
"May I take this?" Ethan asks, indicating the illegal map. "I think I can make it look dyed, mask the source."
He hesitates but nods. Reduced risk of someone realizing that someone made a map of Surrenian lands on parchment made of what looks like Surrenian skin would be well worth the temporary increased risk of the wrong person seeing the map.
"I understand why you chose to trust Tully with the choosing of your wife," Ethen says. "She'll find a good fit for what you're trying to do politically."
The but is practically spoken. His great-grandmother has been haranguing him about those buts since he sent Malor away.
But what about him, the person? As a man? He's more than his throne, and he deserves contentment in the very least, pleasure, even happiness.
Deserves it, but he can't in good conscience seek it because of the accursed politics Leathin dumped on his head.
"Berthen," his great-grandmother says, with a gentleness that makes the hairs rise on the back of his neck. "We both know I won't live to see you happy, but I'd like you to promise me that you won't give up on it. That you'll look for opportunity. That you'll even pay a little, if you have to, to grab it as your due. I don't just mean your taste for males, either. You don't like females, and both your wife and children will pay for that."
"You think I'd blame them for my choices?" he asks, incredulity warring with pain.
"No," Ethen answers. "But they're going to be affected. Just like you're affected by Tully's insistence on letting herself be harmed for others' sakes."
Oh. He let out a breath. "You think I take after Tully."
"I know her too poorly to be sure, but you—do I know you well, Berthen?"
He forces a nod, because she does. She even understands him some, and she's willing to admit the areas where she doesn't.
She returns the nod. "I never thought to give you throwing knives."
No, those had been from...
He looks down to the maps again. Tully had spent a lot of money on those knives, left them anonymously, and had thought him ignorant of their family connection.
Tully wasn't the sort to give a gift based on her own preferences, assuming others would share them. No, she must've seen something in him that made her expect he'd like it.
"She isn't happy, either," he observes, "and you don't want me to end up like her."
Thirty years like this, trapped in duty thrust on him that he doesn't want but can't trust anyone else to handle well... If he lasts that long, he might look for an assassin to end it for him.
And to think that his ancestry from his human magic means he could live centuries.
He shudders.
"Will you?" his great-grandmother asks. "Will you promise me to try to find happiness? Even after I'm gone?"
He swallows, realizing why she would seek him out to insist on this conversation now. "That's going to be soon, isn't it?"
She presses a palm to her face, the skin feeling thinner than it looks. "I'm sorry, Berthen," she says softly. "My kidneys won't be working much longer."
Elves didn't live quite as long as humans, in general.
Berthen drew a breath and didn't let his burning eyes well with tears. "I promise."