The Invisible Ring bj-4 Read online

  Too many things hidden, Jared thought, as Blaed joined him. A Green-Jeweled Queen pretending to be a Gray. A broken Black Widow who wasn’t broken. A mind-damaged man who kept showing flashes of training and intelligence.

  And, possibly, an enemy who might wear the face of a friend.

  Too many questions.

  Jared put those thoughts aside. There wasn’t time for questions. But later, when they were all safely tucked away in the clearing, he intended to get some answers.

  Using Craft to balance the two steaming mugs, Jared rapped once on the wagon’s door and went in without waiting for a response.

  The witchlight he’d created earlier had grown small and dim, the power that had sustained it almost exhausted. He couldn’t see her face in the gloom, but opening his first inner barrier a crack was enough to sense her pain—and her fear of the male strength that might descend on her now that her ability to protect herself was so impaired. Wasn’t that why she’d chosen the cold solitude of the wagon to the warmth and company in the stone building?

  After feeding the witchlight a few drops of his Red strength so that they’d be able to see each other, he thought about using a warming spell to make the wagon more comfortable.

  And decided against it.

  “Here,” Jared said, handing her one of the mugs. “This brew won’t help your bruises or your knee, but it should ease the other discomfort a little.”

  She cradled the mug for its warmth. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  Jared sat on the opposite bench and sipped his coffee. He understood the hesitation. One of the first things the Blood learned when they began their formal training was how to probe food and drink for substances that shouldn’t be there. It didn’t always work. There were subtle poisons, substances that were harmless until they were added to something else, sedatives that could react fast enough to leave a person at the mercy of an unsuspected enemy. She’d be a fool not to test it.

  Watching her rub her finger around the mug’s rim, he wondered if she could do even that much Craft right now.

  “I made a cup for Thera, too,” Jared said.

  She took a tiny sip, then stared at the mug in surprise. “It tastes good.” She studied him without quite looking at him. “Where did you learn to make a healing brew?”

  “My mother is a Healer. I picked up a few things.” Which wasn’t quite a lie. He had picked up some basic healing Craft from Reyna. The moontime brews just didn’t happen to be part of it.

  But the words did what he’d expected them to do. A Healer was a respected woman, and there was the implicit faith that a Healer wouldn’t create a brew that would harm.

  He knew better. In places that stood in Hayll's shadow, Healers weren’t always well trained or respected, and some had made the choice to harm others in order to save themselves.

  Watching her shoulders relax as she took another sip, he felt relieved that the healing Craft was still strong in Dena Nehele.

  He didn’t want to hurt her. She was hurting so much already. But her self-imposed exile had made it possible for him to talk with her privately without calling attention to it, and there were questions he had put aside while they returned to the clearing, ate, and settled in for the evening, too weary to do anything more.

  So he tried to keep his voice gentle and soothing, and sent out psychic tendrils of reassurance so that his strength and maleness wouldn’t intimidate her so much she wouldn’t talk to him.

  “Lady . . .” Jared paused. Frowning, he sipped his coffee. What was he supposed to call her? Did the people in the court address her as Lady Arabella Ardelia? Formally perhaps, but surely not in a normal conversation. Lady Arabella? That made him think of a fair, dainty woman who wore ruffles and lace, not this tall, strong-boned, solid-muscled young woman with generous curves. Lady Ardelia?

  Yes.

  A woman as strong as the land, with a heart of fire.

  The Lady, on the other hand, might have a different opinion.

  “What do your people call you?” he asked, surprised at how much her answer might disappoint him.

  For the first time since he’d entered the wagon, she looked directly at him. Her lips twitched. “My father calls me Bella. My mother calls me Belle.” Her expression darkened, and her lips curled in a silent snarl. “My cousin calls me belly button.” She sipped the brew and muttered under her breath, “I never liked my cousin.”

  Jared wisely raised his mug to his lips, covering the smile. “Which do you prefer?”

  “Lia,” she said. “When I was seven, I decided I wanted to be called Lia. So that’s what everyone calls me now— except my parents.”

  “And your cousin,” Jared added, not bothering to hide the grin.

  She muttered something extremely uncomplimentary.

  Lia. The name flowed over him like a warm summer wind. Lady Lia. He could imagine the village children calling to her to see the new puppy, the new kitten, the new bit of Craft that had been learned. He could hear the affectionate way the men and older women talked about her. Have you heard what Lady Lia’s been up to lately?

  And in the court, now and when she established her own . . . Lady Ardelia. The strong young Queen with too much courage.

  Which brought him back to the beginning.

  “Why?” he asked quietly.

  For a while Lia just sipped the brew and didn’t answer. Then she sighed. “It’s the last time, you see. The Gray Lady was attacked after the spring auction, and her escorts were killed. Dorothea SaDiablo was behind that attack. The Gray Lady insisted that she had to go to Raej one more time so that our enemies would know that the strength of a Gray-Jeweled Queen still protected Dena Nehele. The males in the First Circle felt that the risks far outweighed whatever might be gained. They politely requested that she remain within the borders of Dena Nehele—and then they pulled out every scrap of Blood Law and Protocol they could find about the rights and privileges of males in the First Circle. By the time they were done, she realized their request really amounted to a command— which they vehemently denied, of course.”

  “Of course,” Jared said politely.

  She looked at him with keen suspicion.

  “That doesn’t explain why you’re here,” Jared pointed out.

  She fiddled with her mug. “She couldn’t go to Raej again. Even if the First Circle hadn’t found a way to stop her, she couldn’t go. We almost lost her the last time, and if we’d lost her before—” Lia quickly sipped her brew.

  “Before?” Jared’s green eyes narrowed as he watched her.

  “Before the new Queen was fully trained to take her place.”

  Which meant that the majority of the Warlord Princes and other Queens in Dena Nehele had already agreed to accept the Gray Lady’s chosen successor.

  “Why did they send you? Why not a more experienced Queen?”

  She worried the ragged edge of the blanket beneath her. “Well, I look a lot like Gran, and I’m the only other Queen in the family.”

  For a moment, Jared couldn’t think of anything to say. Couldn’t think at all. “Gran?” His voice cracked and rose to a squeak. “Gran? The Gray Lady is your grandmother? How?”

  Lia blinked. “The usual way. Her daughter had a daughter.”

  Jared drained his mug. All right. An illusion web spun by a gifted Black Widow had been able to fool the eye, had been able to somehow mask the fact that Lia wore a Green Jewel so that strangers wouldn’t be able to tell it wasn’t the Gray Lady. But there was nothing that could fool a male into believing any other kind of witch was a Queen—especially if he focused his attention on her.

  So it made sense that they would need a Queen to impersonate a Queen. And maybe the family bond made it easier to create the illusion web, especially if Lia resembled her grandmother. Maybe there hadn’t been another Queen willing to take the risk. Or maybe the Gray Lady hadn’t felt she could ask someone outside of her family. Or . . .

  Jared’s shoulder blades twitched. He kept h
oping there was another answer because, if there wasn’t, he was going to be furious all over again, and he couldn’t afford the luxury of telling her what he thought of the males in her Territory.

  “So,” he said pleasantly while the anger started simmering his blood, “since you were the only other Queen in the family, and the Gray Lady’s successor, you decided to do this yourself.”

  She eyed him warily. “Yes.” When he started swearing again, the kind of inventive curses that were designed to make another man flinch, she snarled at him. “Why are you so snappish about my father?”

  “What kind of man would stand back and let you do this?”

  “What would you have done if your Queen ordered you to let your daughter go?”

  “I would have fought it!”

  “He did! He lost.” She winced and wrapped her left arm around her belly. “And now he’s going to yell at me when I get home. He’ll hug me and get teary about the bruises, and then he’ll yell at me.”

  Since he wanted to do a bit of yelling himself, Jared leaned forward and patted her shoulder gently. And found he now understood his father’s outbursts while still able to remember how it felt to be on the receiving end. “Doesn’t seem fair, does it? Getting yelled at when you’ve already been through a hard time and survived it.”

  She shook her head and sniffed.

  The pats changed to soothing circles.

  Jared hesitated. “There had to be other ways of letting Dorothea know the Gray Lady is still a formidable adversary. Was going to Raej to get a few more slaves really worth this risk?”

  Her eyes became brutally hard. “There are no slaves in Dena Nehele,” she said coldly, and shifted just enough to let him know his touch was no longer welcome.

  Hurt by the withdrawal, he matched her coldness. “Well, if you keep your precious Territory clean of the stink of slavery, what do you do with the slaves you buy?”

  “Send them home, of course. That is, if they want to go home.”

  That stopped him.

  Stopped his brain, stopped his heart, and withered his anger.

  “Home?” Jared’s voice broke. His heart started again with a leap. “You send them home?”

  Cupping both hands around her mug, Lia finished the brew. “Yes, we send them home—or invite them to stay if ‘home’ is no longer a safe place for them.” She closed her eyes for a moment and took a couple of deep breaths. “Dorothea SaDiablo wants nothing less than to control the entire Realm of Terreille. That’s been her goal since she became the High Priestess of Hayll centuries ago. Since outright war would have devastated the Realm, she had to find a different way of waging war on the rest of the Blood.”

  “Fear,” Jared said softly. “Over time, fear between the genders would undermine a Territory.”

  Lia nodded. “And she has time since Hayllians are a long-lived race. The seeds of distrust are sown village by village while she nurtures the lighter-Jeweled witches who have the same twisted nature that she does. Strong males who might not submit to one of her pet Queens are usually Ringed young, before they become ‘dangerous.’ Mature males who challenge the new rule are declared rogues and are either hunted down and killed or go into hiding. All of the dark-Jeweled witches and most of the Queens are broken young so there’s no one left for the males to bond to except Dorothea’s chosen.”

  Jared set his mug on the floor and clasped his hands tightly, unable to say anything. Would slavery have been his fate even without that youthful mistake? Would the Shalador Queens have demanded he submit to a Ring of Obedience in order to control his Red strength?

  No. Not in Shalador.

  “It happens slowly,” Lia continued. “Over several generations. On the surface, nothing seems to change because it’s so subtle at first. A new interpretation of Protocol. A wariness when dealing with the stronger witches. Rumors. Stories of mistreatment. The alliance with, and dependence upon, Hayll grows and grows until the day comes when one of Dorothea’s pet Queens rules the Territory. By breaking or enslaving the strongest and the best, they keep the rest of the people submissive, too afraid to fight or speak against them.

  “For a long time, Gran couldn’t see any way to fight Dorothea except to form strong alliances with the Queens in the neighboring Territories. Then, a few years ago, a Queen’s nephew was taken from the court where he was in training, along with three other young Warlords. She searched for weeks, trying to find some trace of him. She’d almost given up when she received an unsigned note that said the young Warlord was unharmed and continuing his training—in the High Priestess of Hayll’s court. If the Queen welcomed Hayll’s next gesture of friendship by agreeing to meet with the Hayllian ambassadors to discuss some ‘concessions,’ her nephew would continue his training, unharmed. If she refused, as she’d been doing for several years, her nephew would be sold as a slave at the Raej auction.”

  Feeling chilled, Jared wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. “She refused.”

  Lia nodded. “One of the witches in her First Circle volunteered to go to Raej to buy the Queen’s nephew. She took two guards with her. None of them came back.”

  “So the Gray Lady went the next time.”

  “Yes. Besides wearing the Gray Jewels, Gran can be very intimidating when she wants to be. Her friendships with Queens outside of Dena Nehele have always been discreet, so there was no reason to believe anyone at Raej would connect her with the young Warlord.”

  Jared’s heart thudded against his chest. “She bought him?”

  Lia shook her head. “He wasn’t there. Not that time. To justify her presence, she bought a couple of other males, choosing by instinct. Once she got them to Dena Nehele, she offered to help them return home. At first, they didn’t believe her and kept looking for a trap. When they finally did believe her, they didn’t want to go home because, at best, it would put their families at risk and, at worst, they’d end up dead or enslaved again. So they stayed.”

  “And the Gray Lady continued to buy slaves.”

  “It became a subtle way to fight Dorothea. Some of the males went home, fiercely determined to keep Hayll’s taint from spreading. Others settled in Dena Nehele or one of the surrounding Territories.”

  Jared cleared his throat. “Did she ever find her friend’s nephew?”

  Lia shuddered. “Yes. The fourth time she went to the auction.”

  Someone hesitantly knocked on the wagon’s door. Grateful for the interruption, Jared answered swiftly.

  “Here,” Blaed grumbled, thrusting a plate of sandwiches and apple slices at Jared. “Thera got hungry. She also wanted another mug of that brew you made.”

  “I prepared two more gauze bags before I came out here,” Jared said as he took the plate and the two filled mugs.

  “I know. The brew’s in one of those mugs, too.” Blaed scowled at the mugs and then shrugged. “You’ll know which one when you taste it.”

  Jared thanked him and hoped Blaed made it back to the stone building before he fell asleep.

  They ate in companionable silence. Jared didn’t want to break the easiness between them, but Lia had only told him the first half—the half, he noticed, that didn’t have much to do with her.

  Jared rubbed his face, willing himself to stay awake a little longer. “All right. The Gray Lady needed to make one more appearance at Raej. I understand that. Sort of. But, Lia, once you’d purchased the slaves, why didn’t you buy passage to a Coach station closer to Dena Nehele’s borders?”

  “I was going to but . . .” Lia bit her lip. “The message came, and I got scared.”

  He remembered the note she’d been given just before she went into the ticket station. And the fear in her after she’d read it. “What did it say?”

  “ ‘They’re waiting for you in the west.’ ”

  “Do you know who sent it?”

  Lia shook her head. “A masculine hand, but I didn’t recognize the writing. I thought it might be a trick, too. That’s why . . .” She waved a hand to ind
icate the wagon, supplies, everything. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You did well, Lady,” Jared said with warm approval. “But wasn’t there a Coach station near the inn where you got the wagon and supplies? Why didn’t we take another Coach from there to Dena Nehele instead of making this journey?”

  Lia turned her face away from him. Her fingers worried the blanket. She nibbled her lower lip.

  Jared felt the warning prickle between his shoulder blades. His heart began to pound painfully against his chest. “Why didn’t we take another Coach, Lady Ardelia?” he asked softly.

  “Everything cost more,” she said hurriedly, defensively. “You have to hire two guard escorts if you’re going to buy slaves so that one can stay with the slaves while the other accompanies the buyer, and they charged me a third more than the witch ahead of me. I couldn’t go into the auction grounds without the escorts, and when I argued about it, that bastard in charge just smiled and said, ‘That is the fee, Lady.’ And the bidding went higher than we’d anticipated, always more than the person’s ‘working value.’ ”

  She was no longer talking to him, explaining to him. He wondered how many times over the past few days she’d argued this with herself.

  And what, exactly, was she trying to justify?

  “I think some of the other buyers were just bidding against me to force the price up,” Lia continued, sounding more and more desperate. “But it was the last time, don’t you see? I couldn’t walk away from the ones we’d been asked to look for. I couldn’t. I tried to fool them by bidding on a few slaves and stopping when the price started to climb, but it didn’t work, and after buying passage for the first Coach, there weren’t enough marks left to buy passage again so I had to do something else, didn’t I?”

  Jared considered the expense of purchasing the horses, wagon, clothing, and supplies for this desperate gamble. Outfitting them for this journey probably cost her half the fare for herself and twelve slaves.

  But that still wasn’t an answer. In his youth, he’d given enough explanations at breakneck speed to know when someone else was trying to provide a smoky truth to hide the real reason for something.