Episode 100: A Boy & A Brooch (Bentley)

Bentley barely saw the race. It ran past in a blur of horses and people and voices and an announcer, and that smell of dirt mixed with concession stand food.

He let Shea claim the modest winnings at the end. As usual, they’d bet carefully but come out with a net gain in the end. No alarming sums of money involved, but they walked away with enough to buy a decent amount of wood for rebuilding Gean Hwels.

While Shea watched the race, Bentley watched his own mind as it played and replayed the moment his mom had removed her glamour. Alive. Deception for the sake of forcing him to rule.

She could have told him, she could have not lied. She could have…

The worst part…no, the second worst part, was the expression on his grandfather’s face. He hadn’t been surprised. Bentley didn’t think he’d known, but the fact that he’d guessed or seen it coming frustrated Bentley.

All his life he’d had a sense of belonging to his family, the feeling that he and his mother and grandfather were all part of this ruling thing together.

Now he wondered what they’d really thought of him; his grandfather’s lack of surprise made it likely that he thought Bentley needed this kind of push. His mom’s actions made it clear that she thought he did.

He didn’t want to ask Shea and find out that she thought so too. Her parents, and her uncle, had all avoided ruling for around a thousand years, but they’d stepped up when the need arose. They’d done well, served their kingdoms, performed all of their duties as rulers.

The need hadn’t arisen in this case, it had been manufactured. He’d wanted to take Shea on a tour of some of the nicer realms, ease into the transition of ruling over the next decade or so. Instead, Shea was pregnant, they were ruling, all the demands were suddenly and drastically on them.

Unnecessary.

At least he’d said the words to ensure there was no confusion about who made the decisions now. If his mom would hurt him with this, there was no telling what else she would do. Now everyone knew Cheyenna had stepped down in favor of Shea and Bentley.

Shea tugged on his arms, pulling him out of his mind. He was so trapped in his hurt and anger. He almost couldn’t see a way out.

“I think you should take me shopping with our winnings,” Shea teased. Her touch, her voice, her presence, pulled him out of his irrational anger.

He knew it was irrational. He knew it was totally justified. 

“I want a girl horse and a little jeweled brooch,” Shea continued.

It was sunset at the downs in the trading realm attached to Noc Thui. Shea practically glowed. He flipped his hair back. “That’s it?” he teased. “What about a whole fleet of horses?”

She laughed, and then her face fell as her eyes scanned the crowd of people fleeing – departing – the racetrack. “What about a boy?” she asked. Her eyes had stopped wandering, which meant she’d found the one. He followed her gaze toward a short black-haired boy with olive skin. “How expensive are people?” she asked. “Two, three thousand nocthens?”

“You want a slave?” he mused.

He scanned through why, since Shea’s family weren’t casual slave-keepers. Eyes on the boy, he skimmed through possibilities; first that the boy would be a threat to them when he was older, but that wasn’t it; next that he mattered to the kingdom. Yes, he did. Not just the kingdom, but their family.

He scanned through more and his eyes settled on Shea’s stomach. She grinned at him. “Huh,” he said. “I guess Declan won’t have my problem.”

Bentley had taken hundreds of years to find a wife. What was the point in dating, when his luck magic told him it wouldn’t work out, or the girl wouldn’t be right for the kingdom? Until Shea, he’d always gotten a bad feeling about one or the other thing, occasionally both. He’d had girls he’d liked, girls he’d kissed, but in hundreds of years it had never gone beyond that. Where was the point in dating when you knew it would end? Dating was about building toward the future, and Bentley knew the future he built with any of those girls wouldn’t come.

“That’s really too bad,” Shea teased. She held his hand and pulled them together so their shoulders touched. “I enjoyed your problem. Sawing down trees at four years old…”

Bentley laughed at the memory. One of their earliest ‘dates’ after he’d been de-aged so that Shea could grow up with him, he’d tried to build her something. Instead they’d been caught with a saw, in the woods, in the middle of the night.

Thinking back, it must have been bizarre for adults who were his friends, to punish and raise him as a child again.

It also reminded him how easily he and Shea had connected. There hadn’t been any waiting for Shea to notice him, or for his four-year-old self to remember that Shea was important. They’d met, both of them kids, and they’d never really been apart since.

“We can’t afford a human and your brooch,” Bentley teased back.

“I’m very greedy today,” she agreed. “Can I call it a craving, since it’s for Dec?”

“Dec?” he laughed. “Are you going to inflict Tris on the other?”

“Or Tan, to follow in your Prince Hair legacy.”

They both laughed, and just like that she’d dissolved half of his misery over his mom. He should be happy his mom was alive. He knew that. He couldn’t sink back into that pit, even if he wanted to. He wanted to obsess over it until he solved the riddle. What was so wrong with him, that she had to go and do that?

He focused on Shea, on their moment, on the fact that they were about to buy their future daughter-in-law’s dad. “Dec and Tan,” he joked. “Do we just go in and buy him? It feels weird that they aren’t going to protest.”

He hated slavery. He would never do it to the people of Nivern. The worst thing he’d ever done to his people, so far, was introduce them to radios, but that had been mostly Shea’s friend Hannah’s fault.

Bentley got the modern-vs-tradition debate, and he tiptoed down that line carefully.

“Maybe they don’t want him,” Shea said.

That wasn’t it. They were wary of him, because he was up to something, and they would like the idea of him being someone else’s problem before he got caught.

“What should I name my horse?” Shea asked.

He knew she was trying to distract him. He must have some kind of tell whenever he thought of something negative. She wouldn’t know that this time it had been about the slave boy and not about his deceiving mom or her desperation to force ruling on him.

He sighed at himself. It would be weeks, months, possibly years, before his relationship with his mom recovered. If it ever would.

Shea wanted a horse name.

They were here for a slave boy she wanted for their son. She’d called it a craving.

“Honest Craving?” he joked. He bet there wouldn’t be any overlap with other horses on that count.

“I was leaning Trumpet or Tambourine,” she said, “but I love your idea more.” She kissed him, then trailed her lips across his cheek. “Honest Craving. She’ll race well.”

“She’ll win here in two years,” he confirmed. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and focused on her, on the permanence and goodness of her. He loved knowing that he would never have to live without her. He hated knowing that she would live without him, but that was hundreds and hundreds of years away. For now, they had now.

There were about two dozen booths that specialized in the trade of people, so it took them a few minutes to find the booth that owned this boy.

“Hi,” Shea said to the owner, an older, skinny woman. She had the same olive skin as the slave boy they wanted, which made Bentley wonder how she could enslave her own race, her own people.

He trickled down through a cascade of guesses and found his answer: She was a slave herself, with a higher status.

“We’d like to buy a slave,” Shea said.

“Man, woman, or child?” the woman asked. “Different prices.” She looked at their clothes, and Bentley bit back a frown. They tried to dress decently for races so that traders and bettors saw professional breeders with good racing stock. It would make the slave more expensive. “For an old man, five thousand nocthens.”

“This one is a younger man, just exiting his childhood,” Shea told him. She pointed toward the stall where the boy worked, selling trinkets.

They could just pick the most expensive slave on the market, and look rich to boot, and see if they could get charged the highest possible fee.

“Boys are ten,” the old woman told them flatly.

“We have to pay to feed him,” Bentley argued. “We’re saving you money now by taking him off your hands.”

“Eight, then,” the woman conceded.

He could feel that they wouldn’t get the cost any lower. He could also sense the woman’s suspicions about what they wanted a slave for. Their clothes marked them as probably Elesarian and the last kingdom to practice slavery had freed them almost twenty years ago.

Shea must have noticed the wariness too, because she asked, “What would he cost if we bought some horse crops with him? He seemed a bit unruly and we’re curious about the slave market.” Shea flashed a smile at Bentley. “He seemed like a good choice since we’re experienced with breaking horses.”

“Riding crops?” the woman asked. She was surprised, her other line of suspicious thought fully derailed. Bentley squeezed Shea’s hand. “Another fifty,” the woman decided.

“Eight thousand fifty, for the slave?” Shea confirmed.

“And the riding crops. Two of them, genuine leather.”

Bentley paid from their winnings. There wasn’t much left after this. They’d have to run another race – maybe in Babylon, where no one ever came close to suspecting them. The woman wrote out a note, a stamped ticket which told the boy’s handlers that they’d bought him.

The old woman left the booth, to get the boy. Shea shook her head in annoyance. “We should have just stolen him.”

“Someone else here cares about him,” Bentley told her. “Stolen, it would have caused problems with them. Bought, they won’t worry. We’re buying peace, not a boy.”

“Peace is expensive,” she complained, but he could see from the way her eyes got vague and then very focused, that he’d felt what he felt. They weren’t just buying this boy, or peace, they were saving his life.

All for Declan.

Bentley felt bad for the boy, that no one wanted to save his life for his own sake, not even them.

The woman returned, boy in tow, and shoved him toward them.

“Where’s his stuff?” Bentley demanded. “He had toys, a notebook…”

Shea rested her hand on his arm. “He doesn’t need toys, Bentley.”

They led the kid away from the booth, all of them quiet. Bentley was relieved that the boy wasn’t going to try to run. He was too curious to try it at the moment, and by the time he wanted to try it he wouldn’t have access to travel packs.

“What’s your name?” Bentley asked him. Something that started with a D, he thought.

“Dakai, sir,” the boy said, head bowed.

“Ever left Noc Thui before?” Bentley asked him. Technically, this market was in a separate realm, but it was linked to Noc Thui and could only be accessed by going through Noc Thui first, even with travel packs.

“No, sir. What am I being hired for, sir?”

Holding Shea’s hand, Bentley put his hand on Dakai’s back and transported them home to Nivern. The silence was deafening, after the roar of the market. The only smell was that of fresh air, the wind was colder and sharper, the only noise was a light breeze.

“I’m Bentley,” he told him. “This is Shea.” He grinned at Shea as a new feeling accosted him; they shouldn’t be the ones to raise this boy. If they did, his daughter would grow up in their house, with Declan. It was important that he find her himself. Bentley glanced back at Dakai. “My mom wanted to adopt a son,” he explained.

Vengeance is mine, he thought. He wished he could remember what movie that was from, or if it was even from a movie at all.

“Unfortunately, we don’t keep slaves, so you’ll have to learn a job you care about,” Shea told him.

“What?” Dakai asked. Bentley couldn’t tell if he was shocked or processing.

“School?” Bentley suggested. “Do you like to learn? First, you should meet your new parents.”

Dakai’s eyes were wide, his lips thin. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Bentley turned to face him and looked him in the eye. “We’re not going to hurt you or make you work. We want to give you a life outside of being a slave. Would you like that? New parents, a school, horses.”

He knew Jiacomo would hire the boy to work at the downs, to keep him busy and out of trouble. He got the sense that for Dakai it would start out as a job he resented and become something he loved, a personal investment in the kingdom, so that by the time Dakai’s daughter and Declan realized their affection for each other, Dakai’s family would be emotionally Nivernese.

“I guess,” Dakai said with a shrug.

Bentley couldn’t tell if he was a downtrodden slave or just a typical teenager.

“You were going to die,” Shea told him flatly.

Dakai looked at her.

“They knew what you were doing,” she said.

Bentley put his arm around Shea and added, “This protects your parents, too.”

The boy looked down the road. It was really just a track, with two ruts in the tall grass, the stretch of path that connected the palace and the downs. He looked back at Shea and Bentley. “Okay. I’ll go with you.”

Now that he was here. How nice of him.

“We have a special magic,” Bentley said, “and so does your new mom. So it’s very important that if we tell you something, you listen. Trust us. We just saved your life, we’re not going to hurt you now.”

They walked, in relative silence. Dakai asked a few questions about the country and the horses, and who they were. Bentley and Shea answered truthfully.

When they walked into the palace, he didn’t show any surprise if he had any. Bentley led him upstairs and knocked on his mom’s bedroom door. Jiacomo was in there, but luckily they weren’t interrupting anything.

His mom opened the door. “You’re home early,” she accused.

The anger washed back over him like a wave. Like a tsunami, blasting into him with the force of millions of tons of water.

Shea spoke, so he wouldn’t have to. “We found your son, wandering Noc Thui.”

Whatever his mom expected them to say, it wasn’t that. Bentley almost laughed, but he was too pissed off. Instead he watched her face as she worked from annoyance, with a furrowed brow, to surprise, her mouth partly open, to understanding – mouth closed, and then amusement as her whole face smiled towards Dakai. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Cheyenna.”

“Dakai,” he said. He was slightly less surly with her, which annoyed Bentley more.

“I suppose I should introduce you to Jiacomo,” she said, with a sigh.

Dakai shrugged his shoulders.

“So,” Bentley said. He flipped his Prince Hair hair and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed and his legs crossed, “when’s the wedding?”

His mom had missed their wedding. He’d promised Shea a real one, but now he didn’t want to. He wanted his mom to have always missed out on that because of her lie.

But he knew it wasn’t fair to Shea.

“We haven’t picked a date,” she said.

Soon. It would be soon, he could feel it, because…she was pregnant. He scowled.

She’d done this to force him to rule. She didn’t want him passing the throne off to the next kid, which she apparently suspected he would do, so she’d forced him to ascend.

That was a great way to foster healthy sibling relationships.

He breathed. His mom needed more kids. He’d pestered her for years to have more, because she needed something new and family-centered to help her move through the grief of losing his dad and sister.

“Let us know,” Shea said, since Bentley had resumed not talking.

They left.

Bentley breathed out like a huffing dragon.

He saw Shea out of the corner of his eye, struggling to find a new way to distract him. “If my line can give magic, and your line has luck, why can’t I give luck magic?” she asked.

“Have you tried?” He had a feeling she would be successful. They just didn’t need to go around giving that out to everyone, or what would be the use in them ruling?

“Not yet. Is Jiacomo my first victim?” she joked.

“I think he should be,” Bentley said. He saw where Shea was going with this – he loved his mom, he wanted her to be with someone she wouldn’t lose this time. Shea’s point: However much she hurt you, you still love her enough to want Jiacomo safe for her.

“Are you still seething mad? Or a bit less?”

He grinned at her. The anger was still there, but it was being gradually supplanted by other feelings. “We just forced her to adopt a slave. I think we’re even. And,” he added softly, “she’s alive.”

“She is,” Shea agreed. “And you have a brother. The first of a few?”

He nodded his head. He could feel them out there, a long line of children between his mom and Jiacomo. “Yeah, I think so,” he said.

She laughed. “Don’t sound so sad about it,” she teased.

He loved her. For her resilience and her understanding of him and for everything he could feel that she would be for this kingdom, he loved her. Loved, and needed.

He kissed her. “Let’s get Honest Craving and go home.”

They transported, together.

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