Twenty-Seven

Our accommodations were breathtaking. We had clean clothes, warm water for baths, and all the food we could possibly want, but I was miserable, wanting nothing more than my son. Britleigh refused to leave my side, and the three of us- Britleigh, Maia, and I- shared my bed. We were prisoners no longer, but neither were we home. We wandered in a strange in-between land, waiting, waiting, not knowing what we were waiting for.

Finally, the Queen came to visit me. “I think we need to have a discussion,” she said. “I’m sure you have questions. I don’t know that I’ll have all the answers, but I’ll try. And I certainly have questions for you.”

I nodded, taking a deep breath. “Where is my son?” I asked, for this was the most important question I had for her.

“We’re looking for him,” she said. “We’ve interrogated Kandal and we have an approximate location. I know the woman of whom you spoke. She’s a seer and a beggar, but not necessarily an evil woman. Agatha may have actually helped you. In not telling you of the deal Kandal used her to strike, she ensured that you wouldn’t keep your silence. Had you known that his intended use for your son was as insurance, you never would have told us about all the things that happened to you on this trip. He was under the impression that Agatha had laid the plan out for you. Clearly, she did not. He sold your son to a nobleman in an outlying town, a minor city between the Western Colonies and here. If you spoke up, Kandal would send word to this man to kill your son. If you kept your silence, the man would raise your son as his own.”

“And the man? Have you found him? Do you know where to look for Forrest?”

“We sent troops several days ago. They should be back any day now, hopefully with your son… That’s all I know for the time being.” She paused, looking at me. “Forrest,” she said. “That’s a very old-fashioned name. Why did you choose it?”

“His eyes,” I muttered. “They’re this astounding color, like a forest in summer time.” I halted myself. I didn’t tell her she’d recognize them if she saw them. I hadn’t quite reasoned out the explanation for this. I thought that, perhaps, this color was more prevalent in the East. Where I was from, I’d never seen it before in anyone but Forrest and his father, but perhaps here it was common.

“Well, I hope to see those eyes soon,” she said quietly, patting my hand. I gazed into her kind, patient eyes, and for the first time in days, I had hope.

“What other questions do you have for me? Surely you have some,” she said. “You must know that we never intended that you be treated in this manner.”

“In which manner did you expect me to be treated, then?” I asked, the question arising more sharply than I’d intended. I was thankful to be alive, thankful for this woman’s many kindnesses, but now I was suddenly reminded of the fact that all of my troubles arose because of her command. “Did you expect that Kandal and his men would kill me quickly? Slice a blade through my throat and allow me to bleed out on a kitchen floor? Were those your orders?” The queen pulled away from me, alarmed at my outburst, and I calmed myself, employing my nearly forgotten Mona Lisa smile. “Please, tell me what happened,” I said, starting again. “I know nothing. I was awoken in the middle of the night by an army, ransacking my home. Everyone I knew was killed. Is my-” I choked, not wanting to know the answer to the question I was asking, but knowing at the same time that it mattered. “Is my husband still alive? Chan?”

“He is,” she said, her voice sad and quiet. “He’s in the dungeons below, answering for his crimes. We know that he and your father-in-law are primarily responsible, but there’s one other guilty party here, a man named Oscar. You’ve never heard of him…? No, of course not. Well, once your husband reveals to us the location of his cohort, we’ll deal with him… swiftly. Tell me, if you don’t mind my asking. Do you have the strictest of affections for the man?”

Something in her open, honest face made me want to be open and honest, too. I hesitated for only a moment before I allowed the truth to spill from my lips.

“Not in the least,” I said. “He is a cruel, broken man, and I want nothing to do with him.” I bit my lip, thinking of his fate. Did it rest in my hands? Would my words- my lack of support for him- cause his death? As cruel as he’d been to me and to Mayla, I didn’t want his death on my conscience. “I can’t condemn him to die, though,” I said weakly. “I don’t mean that.”

“You have nothing to do with his fate,” she said comfortingly. “Do you know what your husband has been involved in? Do you know why this war was started, why your household was destroyed?”

I shook my head. In all honesty, I hadn’t even really given it much thought. I had few gifts, but one of them was the ability to take what was handed to me and work with it. My mother had told me often that this was a trait of a good First Wife: to be un-questioningly obliging, flexible, silky soft and malleable. And so I was.

“Do you want to know?”

“Of course I do,” I said. “If I’m allowed to know, I want to know.”

“This won’t be easy to hear,” she said, but I waited quietly, encouraging her. “The Chan household is the biggest distributor in human trafficking in the world,” she said simply. “Your father-in-law had made his fortune off of the enslavement of women for decades, and your husband has been a very astute student. When he joined in the family business a couple of years ago, the trade went up nineteen percent in the West alone, and their resources are… far reaching.”

I shivered, shocked at my complete ignorance, thinking of the servants I’d witnessed being sold into the tent city. “I had no idea,” I mumbled, ashamed. I thought of the long journey here, and my mind went to a solvable problem, ignoring the insurmountable mountain of questions and shame surrounding the information I’d just been given. I would handle that later- at night, when the household was quiet and all I could hear were my own thoughts. Every night, in fact, for the rest of my life. “What can I do? Can I get my girls back? The servants that Kandal sold- can we send for them?”

“It’s already been done,” she said, waving a delicate hand. “We finally got the location of the tent city from Kandal and we sent troops just this morning. Tent cities, those awful places! They’re not supposed to exist on my lands, but sometimes they pop up in the lowlands, where the populations are dense around less guarded cities.” She looked at me strangely. “I didn’t expect you to be so willing to help. I knew that the West was backward, keeping their wives and daughters illiterate and shut in, away from the world. If you’ll excuse my brashness, I expected you to be dull and weak willed, due to your upbringing if nothing else. But here you are, barely held together with stitches and bandages and already trying to figure out how to save your servants. I admire that.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but the door opened and a man barged in. I cringed and flinched away from his eastern soldier’s uniform, but then I heard his deep voice, and I looked up in amazement.

There he was. Those eyes, seared into my memory forever.

“Mother I-” he said, and then he stopped, looking at me. “Are you-?” he took a couple of steps forward, then stopped himself. “Where is Alasbar?”

“Dead,” I answered, and then added, “In childbirth.”

He swallowed, and in that moment, my suspicions were confirmed. “And her child?” he asked.

“A son,” I answered. “My son,” I said pointedly. “Forrest.” I looked at his uniform. He was a very high-ranking general, it seemed. “He was taken by your men,” I said, “And sold to the highest bidder.” I hoped he realized this child was his own, and that the realization of what he’d let his army do stung him.

The color drained from his face, but then he looked angry. “Mother, have we sent troops to find the child?” he asked.

She nodded. “Of course, Trayne. They should be back any day now. It was the first thing I did.”

Mother. He’d called the Queen mother.

Perhaps those eyes weren’t as common here as I’d thought. I wondered what the Queen would say if she knew that the missing boy in question was her grandson.

“Why wasn’t I sent on that detail?” he demanded. “The boy-“

“The boy will be found and returned to Piya,” she said, furrowing her brow at him. “Trayne, not that I’m disappointed in your apparently deep interest in righting the wrongs that have been done here, but what is wrong with you? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Trayne looked past her and deep into my eyes. “I was not in charge of the army that destroyed your family,” he said, speaking over his mother’s head. “I was away on a mission when the command was given. Had I known, I never would have let Kandal take control of that mission. I’m deeply sorry for your many losses.”

With that, he turned and left, slamming the door behind him.

The Queen sighed. “My son,” she said. “He’s the very best we’ve got, and he seems to think he can be everywhere at once. But he’s beating himself up over this particularly hard. It was my mistake to send Kandal. If I’d known what kind of man he was…” She trailed off, perhaps noticing that I wasn’t really listening, half of my mind trailing after the man who’d loved my sister wife. If he was here, that meant Cheylin was here.

Cheylin.

I’d lost hope of ever seeing her again, and now the thought of being, somehow, in the same place as this brilliant, brave, mysterious woman made my knees weak. “At any rate,” Queen Bell was saying, misinterpreting the shocked look on my face. “You need to rest. Please join us for dinner tonight in our private quarters. And feel free to call upon me whenever you wish. You’re very much welcome here, Piya. You’re not a prisoner of war; in fact, I have a vision I’d like to share with you, later, perhaps, of something you might want to help me with. Together, I think we can make a difference in this cruel world.” She patted my hand and left, and Britleigh returned, bringing Maia. As I fed Maia and watched her sweet little face relaxing into sleep, I thought about the difficult beginning of her life. She’d been created in the most violent way possible, and she’d spent her first few moments of life alone in the cold corner of an old wagon. She’d been forced to endure cold and harsh conditions since the very beginning of her existence- first in my womb as I refused to love her, and second in the world as I struggled to survive. I was her mother, and I constantly felt that I was failing her, but maybe now I could set things right.