Harbor (On the Wind #3)

7. Orestes

CHAPTER SEVEN

ORESTES

I ’d never expected to be much of a diplomat. I’d never wanted to be a diplomat, never asked for it, and even now would prefer to be on the wall in Crane lands, fighting to protect my people. Or in the cloth house in Hawk lands, fetching and carrying for Miss Maeve, who used to wonder at my ability to carry whole rolls of cotton into the spinnery, and giant bolts of cloth from the looms to the dye house.

There, I’d belonged, even if in some ways, I hadn’t. They’d accepted me, wanted me there, cared about me, even if I hadn’t been born into their clans and families. They hadn’t given a damn about who my father had been—all that had mattered was that when given the choice to back my father or Brett, I’d done the right thing.

Here? Well, for some reason, the king of Urial seemed determined to pick a fight with me.

The servants had admitted Urial didn’t have a standing army, and it wasn’t as though the king could fight a war fueled only by his personal spite, so I wasn’t sure what his game was. Was he so certain that we didn’t want a war either, that he was willing to risk his people for a few meaningless insults? Did he think me the kind of man who regularly accepted abuse?

Did the way my father had treated me as a child somehow show on me, like someone had written it on my cheek?

Really, though, if anything, knowing that should have made him hesitate to do it now. I had grown less accepting of such behavior over the years, and in the end, when my father had tried to kill my best friend, I’d sided with Brett. The end result had been my father’s death, and any sensible man who knew about it wouldn’t risk testing me further.

But he didn’t know about it. Couldn’t know. We didn’t tell foreigners about our woes in Nemeda. Sharing with strangers had only ever resulted in suffering, so we’d stopped doing it.

Still, the whole situation had me restless.

Tybalt had given me fine rooms, well-appointed and warm and richer than anything I’d ever had back home. But instead of luxuriating on the enormous bed, I wrapped a blanket around myself and climbed the stairs to the battlements in the front of the castle. Once there, I climbed the crenellations to reach the top, so I could look out at the landscape.

Well, stare out into the dark, since the moon was a mere sliver and not much could be seen.

Being atop their castle walls was like being back on the Crane wall, almost—a place I’d called home for a third of my life—and it was a relief to feel something like home. Admittedly, the wall had been infinitely more dangerous, and sitting atop it in the open air foolish at best—a good way to get caught out by a passing southerner.

But Urial had never seen a southerner, and truth told, it was probably forever safe from their constant warring. We could barely handle Urial and its frozen reaches, and there I was wrapped up entirely in a warm blanket. The southerners? Well, they were unlikely to manage it at all.

The notion of them dropping where they stood, turned into blocks of ice, was a lovely thought.

“Tybalt is going to be a problem,” someone said behind me, and for a second, I thought they were talking to me. Warning me off the lithe, pretty man, because I’d already known full well he was trouble wrapped in a lovely package.

But I turned to look, and there was no one behind me on the wall. Rather, there were two men standing in the shadows of the nearby stone, on the battlements beneath me.

The second man gave a snort. “Tybalt is always a problem, but never a serious one.”

I thought that perhaps he was the king. He had that same timbre to his voice, the same slight tremble and pitch that came with age.

His partner’s voice, I didn’t immediately recognize. It wasn’t the prince, clearly, nor anyone I’d spent much time around. But most of the people I’d spent much time around had been servants, so that was no surprise. He was younger than the second man, no doubt. His voice was deeper, and frankly, he sounded irritated. “He’s worried about how you’ve been acting. He’s been interceding with the Nemedan. He might do something else.”

The second man scoffed. “That’s impossible. It’d be the first time in his life the fucking idiot worried about anything. He’d have to learn how to do it first, and learning is beyond him.”

For a moment I just sat there, stunned at the casual cruelty of the comment. From a man I was almost certain was Tybalt’s own father. I remembered all too well what it was like to disappoint a terrible father. The way he knew all your weaknesses, whether you’d tried to keep them secret or not. The way he could use them against you, stabbing you in the gut with his hate and then twisting the knife in the ways that he knew would cause you the most possible pain.

“If you’re not worried,” the first man said, though he sounded annoyed. “But if he gets in the way...”

“Then you’ll kill him. You can’t tell me you’re not capable.”

And that? Well, I’d had one of the worst fathers I could imagine, but not once had I imagined him saying that about me. So easily dismissing my life, suggesting someone else would kill me if I got in his way. I didn’t doubt he’d have killed me if I’d gotten in his way, but this was worse, somehow. Cold and bloodless, giving a stranger permission to do the job.

I already liked the flirty prince more than was sensible, especially since he hadn’t followed through on his flirtations. Now? Now, I thought I might just protect him from anything that came at him.

No one deserved a father like that. Not Tybalt. Maybe not even me.