“I shall find it difficult to woo you with so many ill-tempered generals lurking in the area.” Vorik tilted his head toward the table where Dolok and Mosworth had settled on one side andJhiton opposite. Numerous of their soldiers stood behind them as the two parties faced each other.
“Generals?” Syla asked to emphasize the plural. “Is your brother ill-tempered?”
“Usually, quite.” Vorik smiled, his back to the room as he faced her, the expression for her alone.
Fel stood far enough back to give them a modicum of privacy. He had been the one, after all, to suggest this plan.
“If you can’t woo me, you’ve no hope of getting islands out of me,” she said.
“You know I’m here for the cobbler.”
“I know you’dlikea cobbler. I doubt that’s why you’re here.” Syla gazed into his eyes, inviting an explanation.
Whyhadthe dragon riders been brought along? And what did the tribal leaders truly want? Since they’d barely acknowledged her, she doubted they’d come because she’d invited them to negotiate. If anything, they were using her invitation as an opportunity, but to do what?
Vorik spread his arms, as if he didn’t know why he was there. Syla doubted that, but she wasn’t surprised he wouldn’t tell her. Since she’d learned without a doubt that he had nothing to do with the Freeborn Faction, he’d stopped trying to pretend he was anything but a loyal stormer, his older brother’s dutiful soldier. She couldn’t fault him for that, but she wished things could be different.
Syla lifted a finger to wave the server to them. He’d been around the castle for years, and she managed to dredge his name from memory.
“Rodderen, isn’t it?”
He blinked in surprise. “Yes, Your Highness.”
“Please go to the kitchen, and see what’s in the pantry. If there are fresh baked goods, have them wrapped up so that we may send them along with the stormers. As a sign of goodwilland a desire to foster something besides hostility.” Syla needn’t have explained her reasoning to the server, but she wasn’t accustomed to giving orders and expecting to be obeyed. At the temple, she’d been treated as an equal among her colleagues. Further, she was reluctant to test her power in the castle and find out that the staff wouldn’t obey.
“Ah.” The server looked at Vorik, then bowed and backed away. “Yes, Your Highness.”
“Do you think the rest of my people will be as easily won over as I was by a cobbler?” Vorik rested a hand on his chest.
“That would be nice—it’s fortunate that the castle baker survived the massacre because she makesexcellentdesserts.”
Vorik grimaced at the wordmassacrebut didn’t try to absolve himself of having been involved, nor did he suggest that it was a melodramatic word for what his people had done. It wasn’t.
“I also wanted to send the server away. I think he’s someone’s spy.” Syla looked toward Relvin, but there were, as she’d already gotten the gist, many people with their eyes on the throne. With a chill, she recalled the now dead Sergeant Tunnok from Harvest Island proposing to her on behalf of his eighty-year-old father and suggesting that if the old man couldn’t get her with child, he would gladly step in.
“Your position here is tenuous,” Vorik said, more of a statement than a question.
She needed to get intelligence from him, not the other way around, but it sounded like he could already tell that. “For now. I wasn’t in anyone’s plans.”
“Are you intending to insert yourself into their plans?” Vorik looked at the back of her hand, though the birthmark had stopped glowing.
“Is that your way of asking if I’m going to attempt to arrange my coronation?”
“More or less.” Vorik looked her up and down. Assessing her physical fitness and presentation to determine if it was suitable for a monarch?
Maybe not. His gaze lingered briefly on her chest. He might simply have their past liaison in mind.
Syla had a thousand things besidessexto worry about, but her body heated under his gaze, a tingle that had nothing to do with magical power flowing through her.
“I haven’t decided,” she said. “I would have to gather allies and probably win the support of the populace. Since I’vehealeda number of our local people, the latter might not be that hard, but most of my allies are fellow healers. We’re not an overly martial sort.”
“You’d have the power to acquit yourself against formidable enemies if you wished.” Vorik smiled, gazing into her eyes now.
Oh, that was nice. Not only the smile but the encouragement and belief behind it. What she’d done to earn it, she didn’t know, but she wished she could lean on him—trusthim—because she dearly needed someone supportive. Right now, beyond those healer colleagues that had survived the destruction of Moon Watch Temple, she had Sergeant Fel and Aunt Tibby and not many more.
“Captain Lesva was vehemently irked that you didn’t give up your secrets to her when she attempted to extract them from you,” Vorik added.
“You mean when she tortured me?” By the eyes of the moon, that had been an excruciatingly painful hour that had seemed like an entire night. The only good part had been that the interrogation had been delivered through magic that hadn’t maimed and disfigured her the way physical torture would have, and it had been within her ability to heal the damage that ithaddone. Mostly. More than once, she’d woken from nightmares,that woman’s hard face inches from hers. Mental traumas were never as easy to heal.
