Chapter Text
The boy was small and had a gray cast to him in the early morning light. His clothes were hastily cut down from an adult's, he had no shoes, and his hair was still damp from being scrubbed at the inn before Aranessa arrived. Thjazi introduced him as Azune and explained that he needed somewhere safe for him to go.
"And your first thought was... me," she said, instead of 'your wife, your childless wife, the woman who married for the promise of love and family who now sleeps alone next to an unfinished nursery.'
Thjazi had his hand on Azune's shoulder, holding him steady. He clearly wasn't doing well in the Banner, but why her instead of one of his hundreds of friends and contacts all over every corner of the world?
"Show her your trick," he told Azune.
The boy went paler and looked between them.
"I know you're tired. Just once, and then you can go back to bed."
Azune held his hands up in a basic fire somatic. He whispered a word and flames licked along his fingers without burning him. It lasted a handful of seconds, then faded into nothing. He looked exhausted after a weak, early casting of burning hands.
"Good job. Go rest," Thjazi said.
Azune took their room key and slumped back upstairs.
"Young, to already show powers," Aranessa said.
"He's twelve."
"He's not."
"Not from what I'd call a prosperous village."
Aranessa's stomach was twisting on itself.
"I picked him up three weeks ago. He keeps catching camp crud. Can't keep anything down. He's starting to having trouble keeping up when we move camp."
"And why do you think I can do anything?"
Azune was perfectly built to grab her heart strings and twist, but she was a Lady of a Sundered House, not some farm wife with a spare cot and a half dozen children already.
"He's a dead ringer for old Uncle Tamril, isn't he?"
"Do you think I can show up with a strange twelve year old and claim... just anything?" He was a red haired sorcerer. On the scale from passing resemblance to dead ringer, he and her late Uncle Tamril might share a written description from a lazy court clerk.
"I think if he stays with me he'll be dead by the end of the month, and I know that if anyone can find somewhere for him it's my Lady Royce."
She closed her eyes and rubbed between them.
"He has no one, Nessa. He was standing abandoned on a street corner. I fed him and he cried."
"Twist the knife, why don't you?" she muttered.
"Set him up as someone's page. Hell, give him a job as a stableboy and somewhere to sleep. I just need somewhere he won't be killed or captured if the wrong person finds out I've got a baby sorcerer."
"Cormoray?" she asked.
"And Einfasen, and some smaller houses have independently sent forces. The one thing I have going for me right now is that the Torn Banner all knows which sign not to attack."
The idea of House Einfasen getting their hands on a boy that small who was already showing powers turned the churning discomfort in her stomach into stony dread. "I'll take him. Damn you. I'll take him."
"My generous lady. I find myself ever more in your debt."
"I expect you to make good on it once you're done playing soldier."
"I will," he vowed. A tired, sorry mockery of 'I do.'
"Julien, you are going to befriend Lord Azune," his father told him.
Julien scoffed. "He's a baby."
"He is two years younger than you."
"He's an idiot," Julien said. He finished tying the sides of his doublet and turned around to check himself in the mirror.
"Then it should be easy for you to find common ground," his father grit out.
Julien rolled his eyes. The boy had been adopted, officially, but he was just some bastard with a borrowed name and who knows how much blood. Possibly none. He'd seen the boy twice. He didn't exactly scream House Royce.
He tried to breeze past, to go meet his friends for some archery. His father grabbed his shirt collar and wrenched it up. Julien froze.
"He is your lord and you are his vassal. You will befriend him. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, sir," Julien ground out.
His father released him and Julien darted away.
Azune was in his room, sorting buttons on the rug.
"He's tired today," Lady Aranessa said. "If he can't handle company, don't feel obligated to stay."
"Thank you, my lady," he said. Julien sat on the floor with Azune. Lord Azune. The boy glanced as high as Julien's chest then cast his eyes back down. He portioned out some buttons for Julien and went back to his work.
That, at least, was Royce through and through. Julien, personally, had never found joy in the button jar, and he'd been offered the brightest, shiniest, and most sortable buttons the Golden Orchard had. But he knew more than one fully grown adult who still fell victim to its charms on long days.
Julien ignored the buttons and watched Lord Azune. He was thin and palid, and looked years younger than he was supposed to be. He'd been sick most of the winter. A cold when he arrived turned into a brief fight with bellows and left him with pneumonia that had only cleared a week earlier.
"Are you really Lord Tamril's bastard?" Julien asked.
"I don't know," he said.
"He'd have to be your grandfather, wouldn't he?"
"I don't know," he said again.
"You don't know much, do you?" Julien asked. "Did fever dull your brain?"
He hunched in on himself and nudged the row of buttons he was working on into a straighter line.
"That happens sometimes."
"Lady Aranessa says I just have a natural strangeness. That I shouldn't fight it, and should see what gifts it offers."
"Are you a changeling?" Julien scoffed.
He sat with the question. He had the look, with odd colored hair and the mark on his face, and his long, thin fingers and knobby knees. He looked like a fairy's best guess at a young boy.
"A changeling is someone stolen from their parents and given to the fey," Azune said.
"That's one sort."
Azune started to slowly put buttons away. "I don't feel good. I'm going back to bed."
Thank the dead gods. Julien had only wasted fifteen minutes entertaining the stupid boy. He could still see his friends today.