Harbor (On the Wind #3)

15. Orestes

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ORESTES

I cleaned myself up as best I could in Tybalt’s rooms, redressing in the same clothes I’d worn the day before—not that the people of Urial were likely to notice or care what I wore—and slipped out into the hallway.

He’d left me on my own, which had felt a little like escape, which was... odd, to be honest. Yes, I was enormous and lots of people ran from me, particularly people like the Urial nobility, who seemed to judge everything almost entirely on sight. But Tybalt knew me, at least somewhat. Surely he knew by now that I wasn’t going to hurt him.

At least, not deliberately.

In the hallway, there was a beautiful woman in a lavender dress pacing back and forth, looking distraught. A child in a similar dress, with golden curls and bright blue eyes clung to the edge of the corridor, biting her lip, one arm curled around herself and the other almost holding the wall, as though for support.

The child was familiar.

A bruise on the side of her neck reminded me. The child who’d been desperately trying to reach the future queen.

The woman, still pacing away, hadn’t noticed me yet, so I dropped onto my haunches and met the child’s eye. She leaned into the wall, like she wanted to disappear, but didn’t say a word. Didn’t scream or turn away.

So instead of saying anything, I pressed my hand into the spot in my neck where hers bore a bruise. She didn’t say anything, but winced and dropped her gaze.

I reached into my belt pouch and pulled out a small container, holding it up. It was slightly golden inside the glass, though not quite as dramatically so as the flowers the Hummingbird Clan distilled it from.

The girl narrowed her eyes, looking at the container, and after a moment, let go of the wall and drifted over toward me. I unstoppered the vial and let some oil drip onto my fingers, holding them out toward the girl.

She leaned in and sniffed it, then looked up to meet my eye for the first time, cocking her head inquisitively.

“It’s called arnica,” I told her. “I always keep it on hand for bruises. I’m prone to getting injured, you see.”

She gave me a highly dubious look that only a child could manage, as though to ask how a huge fellow like me could ever be bruised.

I grinned back. “I wasn’t always the biggest man in every room, you know. My sister used to call me a runt, when we were children. I didn’t start growing till after most children do.”

She took a half step back at that, not frightened, but as though she needed to step back to take me in, because I was so very big. Again, she seemed dubious.

I gave a dramatic shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe someday you’ll be as big as me. I can’t tell, are you a runt now?”

At that, she started giggling, shaking her head and burying her face in her hands.

The woman came up next to us, staring at her with round eyes. She knelt down on the stone floor, strangely intent on the girl, then turned to me with a tremulous smile, her eyes watery. “I haven’t seen her laugh since... since her father passed.”

The girl shrank a little at that, reaching out to put a hand on the lady’s shoulder, as though in apology.

“She hasn’t spoken since then either,” the lady told me.

“Sometimes it’s hard,” I said. “There are big things in the way, and we have to figure out how to deal with them before we can talk.” I wiggled my oily fingers. “Now, can I put some of this on your bruise? It’ll help it go away faster, I promise.”

The child bit her lip again for a second, but then nodded. So I was as gentle as I could possibly be, as I smoothed the oil over the bruise on her neck.

“I’m sorry this happened to you. That wasn’t an appropriate thing for him to do at all. If we’d been in Nemeda, I’d have put him on the floor for grabbing you like that.”

Her big blue eyes went round in shock, and then she threw herself at me, wrapping her little arms around my neck and clinging.

I blinked, and her mother covered her mouth, sniffling.

What the fuck had I done?

“What... what happened?” her mother—Lady Penelope, if I remembered correctly—asked me.

“A man in black at court. Brown hair to his shoulders, with a scar just here”—I motioned to the top of my cheek, near my temple—“grabbed her and yanked her about, when she tried to go to you.”

She let out a frustrated hiss, putting one hand on the girl’s back. “My brother,” she said. “He wanted this marriage so very badly. I can’t believe he’d hurt Olive just to maintain appearances in court.”

The girl turned to look at her mother, then, hesitantly, turned and pulled up the sleeve of her dress to reveal another bruise.

Penelope’s eyes went round. “Did Eric do this as well?”

The girl nodded, and her mother’s warm blue eyes went as hard as chips of ice. She turned to me. “Sir, you have my permission to do whatever you might have done in your homeland if you ever see my brother lay hands on Olive again. I told him it isn’t his place to discipline my daughter. Apparently he needs something stronger than words to learn.”

Not that I’d had any particular opinion on her before, but the lady certainly went up in my estimation at that.

It could be a very bad thing for future peace between our peoples, but frankly, the council should have thought of that before they’d sent me off to be a diplomat. They all knew that I had a soft spot for children, and I was inclined to beat the hell out of anyone who hurt them.

And now the child’s mother had even given me permission to do so. The next time I saw the man—Eric, apparently—lay a finger on his niece, he was going to regret ever having been born.

I inclined my head to Lady Penelope. “With pleasure, my lady.” Then I turned back to Olive. “Can I put oil on that one too?”

She held out her hand to me, letting me spread the arnica over her wrist, and then she pulled up her dress, making her mother gasp and giggle nervously, showing me a bruise on her knee that looked like perhaps she’d scraped it on the stairs. Dutifully, I wiped oil on it at well.

Then I held up the bottle. “Lady Olive, I think perhaps you should keep this. It seems you might need it more than I do. I can send a letter home asking for more.”

Olive ducked her head and glanced at her mother, who bit her own lip. They looked so very alike. “Are you sure, Lord...”

“Orestes,” I told her. “Not lord. Just Orestes. And I am entirely certain, my lady.”

“If you’re just Orestes, then we’re just Penelope and Olive.” She turned and nodded to Olive, who finally took the bottle from me, gingerly, as though she was afraid I’d change my mind and snatch it away. “We appreciate your kindness and generosity, Orestes.”

Olive nodded vigorously, and I smiled and ruffled her hair. “I appreciate the two of you treating me like a person and not a wild animal.” I smiled at her, then bowed head and shoulders in the Nemedan style. “And it is an honor to meet you properly.”

She beamed at me, and carefully returned the gesture precisely as I’d given it.

“We look forward to seeing you again, then,” her mother said.

And oddly enough, for the first time in Urial, I found that I looked forward to seeing someone who wasn’t a servant or Tybalt as well.