The meeting with Lord Hobbs took place in Lord Hobbs’ private rooms in the palace. Although Maric was over an hour late, there was still food laid out waiting for him on the small, two person table that sat in front of a window that overlooked the city. Brayan remained standing by the door while Maric and Lord Hobbs sat down at the table.

“How has the city been treating you, your highness?” Lord Hobbs asked. “I hope you ran into no troubles with whatever errands you needed to run this morning.”

“No,” was all Maric offered in response. He knew Lord Hobbs had deliberately steered the conversation in a direction that would give Maric an opportunity to apologise for being late and he had no intention of taking the bait. “I asked you to come up with a resolution for the issue with the peasants and their food shortages before I left. Have you done that?”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Lord Hobbs said, and Maric was already sure from the smug smile on his face that he wouldn’t like his answer. “I thought it over, and you’re right. Letting my workers starve is inefficient. I don’t want to have to train new people every season.”

“A logical position.”

“On the other hand, I’d be a terrible businessman if I simply agreed to be the one who loses out whenever harvests are bad.”

“You’ve come up with a way for nobody to lose?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that.” Lord Hobbs gestured towards the pastries in front of him, welcoming Maric to try one. Maric didn’t respond to the offer and Lord Hobbs shrugged and continued talking. “I don’t think my plan is quite legal under the current system, so I might need your help in changing that, but essentially it would work through debt. I would give the workers a larger cut of the harvest during lean years and then when the next good harvest comes around, they would pay off that debt. With a healthy amount of interest, of course.”

“It was my understanding that they never had much to spare, even in the best years. With interest added on as well, would there realistically be any chance of them repaying the debt?”

“Oh, no.” Lord Hobbs smiled as he shook his head. “They’re not supposed to pay it off. You see, as long as they’re in debt to me, they have to keep working for me, which gives me further leverage. And I pay taxes, so this benefits the crown as well. What do you think?”

Maric stared at him for a long moment before turning to Brayan. “Brayan, can you bring Thayne in?”

Out of all of his men Maric, had specifically requested that Thayne be one of the ones standing guard outside the door, but he hadn’t told any of them why.

“Yes, your highness,” Brayan said, and then he opened the door, leant out, and murmured something to the men outside. 

A moment later, Thayne stepped into the room.

He looked as confused as anyone else about what he was doing there, but as usual he didn’t look concerned. He was nothing special when it came to combat, but Maric valued him for his calm, analytical mind.

“Thayne, I have a job for you,” Maric told him.

Interest lit up in Thayne’s eyes. “Yes, your highness?”

“I need you to calculate approximately how much a field worker would have to earn in a year, in coin, in order to sustain themselves and their family. I’m sure you can figure out all of the factors better than I can, but you’ll need to take into account how many children they typically need to support, the price of basic food and clothing, supplemental work opportunities outside of the growing season. Things like that.”

Thayne had been nodding slowly as Maric was talking, eyes gone distant and thoughtful. “I can do that.”

“Good. Get me a number before dinner time this evening and then, Lord Hobbs, that will be what you pay your workers for a season’s work. No more messing around with sharing out crop yields. You can sell your entire harvest and they can buy whatever food suits them.”

“Your highness, I’m going to have to respectfully veto this idea,” Lord Hobbs said. “That would take huge amounts of power away from me and provide no benefits in exchange.”

“No,” Maric said.

“No?”

“I’m not asking you. This is simply what is happening. I gave you an opportunity to present your own idea, you came up with something that would ultimately only make things worse for your workers, and now here we are.”

“I understand and I’m willing to come to a compromise, but your plan is simply unacceptable. Do you forget that I sit on the council? It’s within my power to veto changes like this.”

“That’s absolutely not true,” Brayan contributed from where he was still standing guard near the door.

“No, he has a point,” Maric said. “Legally, he can’t overrule me, but it’s like leaving food unattended on a low table because the dog isn’t allowed to take food from the table. It’s awfully hard to ensure rules are followed when you’re not looking.”

“I wasn’t suggesting I would defy you,” Lord Hobbs insisted. “But the council does have the power to alter laws when we agree it’s in the best interests of the city, and I do hold sway with them. If any changes you make don’t work for me, they may not be around for very long.”

“Because you’re the single most powerful man in this city.”

“Exactly.”

“Hm.” Maric turned to Brayan. “Can you send someone to ask Paige if she wants this man’s job?”

“Excuse me?” Lord Hobbs asked.

Maric turned back to him. “I don’t know her very well, but she seemed like a nice lady. Owns some horses. I’m fairly sure the only other person I’ve met since arriving in this city who I actually liked isn’t literate, so my options are limited.”

“You’re replacing me? That’s your solution to this disagreement?”

Maric thought about it for a moment and then slowly nodded. “Yes. I’ve decided to win.”

#

Dara had been thinking about the promise he’d made to the prince ever since they’d parted ways, and by the time he’d finished Paige’s tour of the stables and mucked out three stalls, he had given up on the internal battle and finally admitted what he’d really agreed to. 

If he was to be what he wanted to be, he had to be a healer.

He hadn’t wanted to accept it, because that was an impossible thing to promise. He had tried so many times to get back what he’d lost. Everyone had. A healer was worth so much that nobody would give up on one easily.

But was it what he wanted? Yes. There was no denying that.

It wasn’t about the position he’d held. As long as he was safe and his needs were met, he didn’t much care about status. What he’d really loved about it had been having the ability to help people. To feel their pain and then do something about it. To save someone’s life or give them back their vision or their ability to walk. To know that, with just a few hours of work, he had permanently changed someone’s life for the better in a way they would never forget.

He remembered how it had felt, that heat inside of him that rose up at his command. It had to still be there, surely, or his body wouldn’t have been able to heal itself like it did. He just no longer had any conscious control of it.

He’d always thought it was a bit like trying to urinate while someone was shouting at you to hurry up. No matter how much you wanted to, no matter how much you needed to, it couldn’t be done unless you could relax.

He still didn’t know how he was going to overcome that problem. Maybe all he needed to do was spend a couple of years mucking out stables until all his worries had melted out of him.

Somehow, though, that just didn’t feel like the right answer.

#

It had been a busy day full of meetings and arrangements, but by the end of it new laws had been signed into place around compensation for field workers and Mathers’ and Raedon’s Auntie Paige had replaced Lord Hobbs on the council. Brayan didn’t have the relevant expertise to know if any of this was actually a good idea, but Maric had asserted himself and he respected that.

There was another, smaller feast being held in Maric’s honor tonight, but Maric wasn’t actually attending. Brayan had surprised himself with how relieved he’d felt when Maric had requested food be brought to his room and said goodnight an hour ago.

Part of it was probably the unfamiliar setting, keeping him on higher alert and burning through his energy more quickly. But he suspected, more than anything, it was Maric’s emotional state. That was taxing in a way that didn’t bring any of the satisfaction or comforting exhaustion of a hard day’s work. He just felt drained.

There was a knock on the door to Brayan’s room and Brayan shut his eyes for a moment, let a slow breath out, and accepted that he wasn’t done for the day just yet. “Yes?”

The door opened to reveal Raedon. “Maric’s asking for you. He’s… a bit drunk.”

“Ah. Okay.”

Brayan considered his jacket which he’d left slung over the back of a chair and decided against putting it back on. If Maric was drunk and asking for him late at night, this probably wasn’t a professional matter.

He crossed the hall and knocked on Maric’s door.

When Maric answered the door, he looked tired and distracted, but not completely gone. “Do you need something?”

“Raedon said you were asking for me.”

“Oh.” Maric’s eyes angled up and to the side as he thought for a moment, and then he stepped aside to let Brayan in. “Okay.”

As Brayan shut the door behind himself, Maric went and sprawled out on the bed. Brayan followed him over and sat down on the edge, not quite sure what Maric wanted from him.

Maric stared up at the ceiling. He looked deeply unhappy.

“Are you okay?” Brayan asked.

They’d been through all sorts of things together, seen friends die, but Brayan didn’t think he’d ever asked Maric that question before. He’d never felt the need to.

Maric turned his head to look at Brayan, then slowly nodded. When he reached out, Brayan shuffled closer and lay down. Maric untucked Brayan’s shirt from his pants slowly and carefully, but as soon as the task was complete, he folded his hands on his stomach and went back to staring at the ceiling.

“You can take him back, you know. If that’s what you really want,” Brayan told him. “I don’t know how the hell you’d make it work, but I think you proved today that what you can and can’t do is entirely up to you.”

“Don’t put bad ideas into my head when I’m drunk, Brayan.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let you make important decisions while you’re drunk. But tomorrow you won’t be, and it won’t be too late to decide that what’s happening isn’t what you want.”

Maric turned his head to look at Brayan and the raw emotion on his face made Brayan’s heart ache. “This not being what I want is no revelation, Brayan. I damn well know that.”

“Ah. I suppose so.”

“I can’t have what I want from him. It’s…” He waved his hands in the air above him. “Paradoxical. If I leave him here, I won’t have him, but if I take him away from the new life I’ve offered him and try to make him be a bed slave again, I won’t have him in any meaningful sense either. Because that would be monstrous.”

“I understand.”

“Brayan?”

“Mm?”

“I’m quite sad.”