Agents of the Crown- The Complete Series

by Lindsay Buroker

  The gem grew warm in her palm, and she sensed that mournful sorrow within it again. She wished she could help, but it didn’t speak to her, didn’t give her any clues as to how she might ease its pain.

  A few days earlier, Zenia had looked up dragon tears in the castle library, hoping to find information on the specific one she had—if it had been linked to a king of old, as Targyon had said when he gave it to her, it might have been written about in a journal. But she’d only found general information with few drawings of individual gems.

  Would the elven princess have any knowledge of it? Zenia hadn’t been in her presence since her return, but she’d heard Targyon had given her and her retinue suites in the castle. Zenia wouldn’t presume to knock on her door to ask, but Yesleva had known all about the Eye of Truth, and elves had once been the keepers of dragon tears.

  “I’ll find out a way to ask her,” she murmured.

  A twinge of uncertainty emanated from the gem.

  Zenia frowned. Because it knew something about the princess that she didn’t? Or did it not want an outsider prying into its background?

  She noticed the envelope on her dresser, the one with the avoid-the-elf note inside. Could the princess be the elf it was warning her about? Was it odd that Yesleva had shown up at the same time as these elven wardens?

  When the note had first come, Zenia had thought it applied to Lornysh, since he was the only elf in the city she knew, but now she wondered.

  “Maybe we’ll do a little research tomorrow,” she murmured.

  This time, the gem seemed contented. Or was it all in her mind?

  7

  Jev borrowed one of Targyon’s steam carriages and a driver for the trip out to Dharrow Castle, hoping his bruised body might find a cushioned seat more comfortable than a saddle. The highway was as smooth as Targyon’s chef’s cucumber dip, but the rutted road leading up the hill to Dharrow Castle reminded Jev of a dip he’d once had with olive pits mixed in, poised to ambush unsuspecting teeth. At least the jostling kept him from thinking overmuch about this meeting. Or worrying about Lornysh. The night before, Jev and Cutter had visited three different cultural venues, but they hadn’t spotted Lornysh at any of them.

  They had spotted someone in a dark green cloak with the hood pulled up.

  An elf, Cutter had been certain, and Jev had been tempted to confront the person, but the figure had disappeared into the shadows before they reached him. Perhaps it was just as well. Jev didn’t think his ribs could handle being thrown against any more stone walls this week.

  Jev peered warily out the window as the carriage reached the pond with its moat meandering around the castle walls. He half hoped the drawbridge would be up and nobody would be on duty to lower it.

  “Right,” he mumbled.

  Not only was the drawbridge down, but an elegant steam carriage painted with the Bludnor family’s red and silver colors was parked outside the castle. Jev had come up well before the lunch hour, intending to speak with his father, but it seemed Fremia had been eager to meet him. He grimaced at the thought, already uncomfortable at the idea of this lunch date.

  As soon as Jev’s carriage drew to a stop in front of the drawbridge, one of his cousin’s sons, Teeks, ran out waving a dented wooden sword that looked like a favorite chew toy of the castle hounds.

  “Hello, Uncle Jev,” Teeks blurted, waving so hard his arm was in danger of flying out of its socket. “Are you here to tell stories? About noble battles? And the trolls in the swamp? We heard about them and that you single-handedly slew them all!”

  Actually, Lornysh had single-handedly slain them. A lot of them. Jev and Zenia had taken down far fewer.

  But Jev dared not bring up elves in the castle since it was a sore subject, and Zenia… He certainly hoped he could one day share stories involving her, but with Fremia’s carriage here, this wasn’t the day.

  Jev ruffled the kid’s hair. “Not until after I talk to my father and… the woman who’s here visiting. Maybe there’ll be time after lunch for a few stories and a battle—” he waved at Teeks’s sword, “—if you go easy on me. I’m still recovering from injuries.”

  “From the trolls?” Teeks’s eyes shone brighter than the sun in the clear blue sky.

  “From the dwarven ship that exploded after we fought the trolls. I had healers work on me after that, but I’m bruised and battered again from a run-in with a shadow golem yesterday.” He wriggled his eyebrows, certain Teeks would be interested in hearing about that.

  “A shadow golem! What did it look like?”

  “Shadowy.” Jev made himself head for the drawbridge as he spoke. “You couldn’t reach out and touch it, but it had powerful magic and knocked me across the room.”

  Teeks bounced at his side as they walked through the gate. “How did you defeat it?”

  Jev appreciated his nephew’s certainty that he had defeated it, even if he hadn’t done anything. “Actually, I was with a mage, and she defeated it with the help of her dragon tear.”

  “It wasn’t that inquisitor, was it?” his father asked from the side.

  Jev jumped. He had expected to have to hunt down his father out on the property where he would be repairing a fence or laying new shingles on a roof. Instead, the old man stood next to the gate guard and wore a frown like a monsoon cloud.

  “She’s one of His Majesty’s Crown Agents now,” Jev said, “and, yes, she was the one.”

  “You remember what I said, and stay away from her until after you’ve planted your seed in your new wife’s womb.”

  Teeks stared at the old man, his mouth dangling open and his sword drooping.

  Jev patted him on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go see if Mildrey has any snacks in the kitchen.”

  “It’s lunchtime in an hour,” Jev’s father said. “Don’t encourage the boy to ruin his appetite.”

  “I see you’re in as cheerful a mood as ever, Father,” Jev said, relieved when Teeks ran off. The kid did not need to hear about seeds and wombs for a long time. “But if you’ve been grumpy because you’ve been worried about me, have no fear. None of the battles I’ve been in lately have managed to permanently damage me. Or my seed planter.” Jev quirked an eyebrow.

  Maybe he should have been polite and circumspect around the old man, as he had been in his youth, but he’d lost his stomach for it. And it wasn’t as if his father had set the tone for a friendly chat.

  “Save your clever lip for your friends,” the old man said. “We need to talk before you meet with your new lady. Follow me.”

  “Fine by me.” Jev took a deep breath and braced himself. He had to get in what he wanted to say before his father launched into a lecture, though Jev didn’t know why the old man felt compelled to do so. He was the one being an ass. First, he had promised that Jev could take the summer to find a wife, but then he’d arranged a marriage scant days later.

  The old man stopped in front of the courtyard fountain, though he eschewed the flat stone lip and the shady bench to stand in the sun. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Jev.

  “It’s bad enough I’ve got gossiping women telling me you’re cavorting around the city with that ex-inquisitor,” Father said without preamble, “but now you’ve begged the boy king to interfere with our affairs?”

  The boy king? Was that how he and his peers referred to Targyon? Damn, Targyon did have an uphill battle when it came to earning the respect of the old guard of zyndar primes.

  “We haven’t been cavorting,” Jev said coolly. “We’ve been working together on assignments. We are colleagues now, you know.”

  “Which means you walk around the city with your hand on her ass and tongue down her throat?”

  Jev frowned. “Whoever the source of your gossip is hasn’t been truthful with you. There’s nothing like that going on.” Alas. “I wouldn’t besmirch Dharrow honor by acting so, and it upsets me that you would believe such slander instead of simply coming into the city and asking me if it’s true.”
<
br />   The old man didn’t uncross his arms, but the pompous certainty on his face faded somewhat.

  “I’m also disappointed that you didn’t come to the Air Order Temple to visit me when I was injured,” Jev said. “I would have come to visit you. I almost died. Did you hear about the trolls?”

  “Yes. I didn’t realize—Wyleria made it sound like you would be fine. And I’ve been busy here. You’re never here, and your brother is gone, and all my remaining relatives are women. That doesn’t leave many people to run the estate.”

  Jev thought about pointing out that his cousins Wyleria and Neama ran half the family businesses, and could certainly be trusted to hire people to fix things around the estate. It wasn’t as if the old man had to personally oversee everything. But Jev didn’t want to divert from the subject he’d come to speak about. Even though he ached to ask when his father had spoken to Targyon and what had been said. Jev had been certain, after the meeting the day before, that Targyon wouldn’t say anything to the old man.

  “Why did you say yes to the Bludnor marriage proposal, Father?” Jev looked around the courtyard, aware of a couple of white-coated butlers taking trays of beverages up the stairs to his grandmother’s balcony garden. What had been her balcony garden, before she’d been sent into exile. Was that where he was to dine with Fremia?

  “It made sense—I fought with her grandfather, so I know she comes from a brave and capable warrior line—and the girl is beautiful,” his father said. “I figured she’d keep you entertained in bed so you didn’t feel the need to stray.”

  Jev grimaced. He and his father had never discussed women, and he didn’t enjoy doing so now. “The last time we spoke, out by the road fence, you agreed I could choose my own woman, and you gave me the summer to do so.” That day, he’d thought it a ridiculously short amount of time, but it had been preferable to this. “Why did you break your word?”

  He chose the blunt words on purpose and wasn’t surprised when his father’s eyes flared with indignation. The old man had grown up having the Zyndar Code of Honor drilled into him as surely as Jev had.

  “I did not break my word. I simply accepted an excellent offer on your behalf to ensure you wouldn’t do something foolish. I was acting for your own good, for the good of my future grandchildren, and for all those who will continue the Dharrow line for generations to come.”

  “You told me I could choose my own wife and gave me the summer. And now, you’ve chosen for me. How is that not breaking your word?”

  Surprisingly, the old man’s gaze flicked toward the burbling water of the fountain. “I never said I promised anything.”

  “You don’t have to use the word promise. If you say something and then don’t do it, that’s breaking your word. It’s implicit in everything you say you’ll do. You taught me that.”

  Father’s gaze snapped back to Jev’s face, and he thrust a finger at his chest. “Don’t you dare lecture me, boy. I know I’m doing the right thing. Sometimes, that’s more important than words. And you forced it with your dishonorable actions with that, that common woman.”

  “Actions I’ve already informed you did not occur.” Jev shook his head in frustration. Who had told his father he and Zenia had been necking in public? Fremia? It was hard to imagine a teenage girl walking up to his father and confiding anything to him. The old man was as approachable as a rabid badger.

  Father squinted at him. “You deny kissing her?”

  Jev hesitated. “In public, yes.”

  “You think dragging her off to your room in the castle and screwing her there is any more acceptable? How many hundreds of people work in that castle? Everyone will know when she gets with child that it’s yours. And then what happens when she demands you legitimize it? Jevlain Dharrow, you will marry a zyndari woman and impregnate her with a son before you sleep with any others.”

  Jev’s fingers clenched at the crude language and the insinuation that Zenia would do any of that. “We’re not sleeping together, but I’ll tell you what, Father. I damn well intend to sleep with her. I’m not going to marry some girl who was playing with dolls when I went off to war. I don’t care how many enemies her grandfather slew fifty years ago. Zenia slew a dozen trolls last week. At my side. While protecting my back. Not that this isn’t the stupidest thing to base a marriage on, but she would make wonderful sons—and daughters. Of that, I have no doubt.”

  “She’s common.”

  “So what? I’m going to marry her.”

  His father froze. He truly appeared stunned, like a stiff wind could have knocked him into the fountain and he wouldn’t have noticed it.

  Jev realized they’d been yelling—several staff in the courtyard were doing an admirable job of not looking in their direction while listening intently. Belatedly, Jev regretted his raised voice, especially if Fremia had heard it from the balcony garden. Even if the girl had manipulated his father, Jev didn’t want to hurt her. He barely knew her, but the Zyndar Code made him feel he should protect women, all women, and not simply from physical enemies.

  “You will not,” Father finally managed to say. “If you do not marry that girl up there and do what’s best for Dharrow blood, I will disown you. I’ll choose another to inherit the estate.”

  “Promise?”

  Jev hadn’t meant it to come out so flippantly, but it did, and that seemed to shock his father further.

  “I am prepared to do my duty and manage the estate to the best of my abilities when you pass on,” Jev explained, “and to marry a woman and give you grandchildren, hopefully even the grandson that you want, but do not think that I want to be zyndar prime or have the sole responsibility over all of this.” Jev waved to include not only the castle but the lands and the villages of tenant farmers and craftsmen that needed to be managed and protected. “It is only my honor that keeps me here.”

  “You would be penniless and have nothing from me,” Father said, though he had lost all his certainty. He sounded like he was trying to convince himself that those things mattered to Jev.

  “I am perfectly capable of working a job and earning a salary.” Jev thought about pointing out that he was friends with the ‘boy king,’ as his father had dismissively called Targyon, but he didn’t want to bring Targyon back into this, nor did he want to imply that he needed someone else’s help to get by. “And you have nothing I truly want, Father.”

  This time, Jev crossed his arms over his chest as he waited for an answer.

  As he’d said, he wouldn’t walk away from his family—his honor would not allow that, even for Zenia—but if his father disowned him… by the founders, it would be such a burden lifted. Opening the door to his bird cage and letting him fly free.

  The old man looked toward the balcony garden. The bushes and vines and dwarf fruit trees up there almost obscured the woman standing at the railing and looking down at them. It wasn’t Fremia, as Jev had expected, but someone in her mid-forties. She had a large chest and wore a dress that revealed much of it. It took him a moment to place Fremia’s mother, Zyndari Bashlari Bludnor. Before the war, Jev had seen her numerous times at the social functions he’d attended on behalf of the Dharrow family.

  “Listen Jev,” his father said, drawing his attention back to him. “I spoke hastily. You know I don’t want to choose another heir. You vex me at times, as youth is meant to vex those older in age, but I do believe you are honorable and do what’s right.” His lined forehead creased more deeply than usual.

  Jev couldn’t read the thoughts behind the creases. One minute, his father was accusing him of acting dishonorably by kissing Zenia in public, and now, he agreed Jev was honorable? Jev was confused. His father was always obstinate and pigheaded, but one knew what to expect in dealing with him. Right now, he almost seemed wishy washy.

  “Let’s make a deal,” the old man said. “Go up and have lunch with the girl. Talk with her. Tell me she doesn’t stir your loins.”

  “Uh.”

  Loins? Dear founders, Jev had
been less disturbed by this conversation when his father had been yelling.

  “Give her a chance,” his father went on. “Like I said before, you can take the other girl for a mistress later if you must, after you’ve given me a son from a zyndari woman. We cannot set ourselves up to be mocked or ridiculed or turned into the butts of jokes. We are Dharrows. We are not the type of men to be gossiped about at gatherings.” His lips thinned, and Jev wondered again who had been feeding him all this gossip. Oh, he was aware it existed, thanks to Hydal, but it startled him that his father was aware. Usually, the old man stayed on the estate as much as possible and ignored the nattering of hens, as he called women and men who engaged in such behavior. Was young Fremia truly behind his current level of knowledge? Or…

  Jev looked toward the balcony again. Bashlari was still there, blatantly looking down at them. He didn’t believe she was close enough to hear them now that they were speaking in a normal tone, but she certainly was watching intently. Was she the one behind everything? That would make more sense than imagining a teenage girl having the gumption to speak with his father.

  “Father,” Jev said quietly. “Not her. Zenia has become a good friend. We are not—despite what the town gossips say—lovers, but I would like for us to be, and more. I don’t want her to be my mistress. Even if that’s considered acceptable, I’ve never found it to be honorable. I want Zenia to be my wife. I love her.”

  Father winced. “She’s a manipulative witch with a dragon tear. She wants to get her clutches into you and our family—”

  “She does not. I have no doubt she would marry me even if I were not zyndar. In fact, I’m positive she would prefer it if I weren’t.”