Lora of Two Worlds

The two explosions also startled everyone in the governor’s palace. By then, the rebel lay in a pool of blood. The fighting inside and out had settled.

Alvin, shielding von Klein, appeared before the astonished crowd, especially Claude Baldwin. But Tobias the Rat never showed. No one mentioned him. Claude Baldwin breathed easier.

The men who’d seen the explosion were dead. The living couldn’t say what had happened.

So, amid doubts, they listened as von Klein solemnly declared: he would report the rebel’s atrocities to the King, petition for Sheffield’s commendation for restoring order, and recommend his appointment as marcher duke of Yorvik.

Fortunately, the Odenheim guards imprisoned in the military stockade had only minor injuries. All fifty accounted for. Back at the guest house, Roland told Fulke:

”Go to the boats and fetch Ashford. Tell him the gifts can be handed over to Yorvik. Everyone rests tomorrow. Day after, we sail home.”

Alvin sat motionless. A strange feeling gnawed at him: If his sister was going to raid a prison, she wouldn’t have left the boats out of it. He’d left Ashford with thirty men...

Lyle, standing by the door, haggard, bleak, reached out and stopped Fulke:

”No need. Ashford and the others... when you were taken, the rebel ordered them all killed. They fought. It wasn’t enough.”

In the cell, they’d feared this. Hearing it confirmed was different. The room went silent. Everyone looked at Alvin.

He rose slowly. His eyes were ice. One word at a time:

”Take me to the docks.”

At the canal bank, Alvin and Roland wept. Especially Alvin, since he was old enough to remember, he had never lost his composure like this.

Leon, standing under a distant tree, felt a weight in his chest. Reborn, he knew outcomes, not processes. He couldn’t anticipate every variable.

This time, there’d been no time to prepare. He’d plunged into an unfamiliar Yorvik, reacting to each blow as it came. How could he have covered everything?

If not for Lora’s strange, clever improvisations, he couldn’t bear to think how it might have ended.

But the road had started. There was no turning back.

During the half-day stop at Berenford, he’d visited the retired Chancellor Clifford Quentin. Clifford, astonished, then overjoyed, had talked through the night with Leon. He’d agreed to approach the Weybrook marcher duke, Hayes Jensen.

The He family cared about their people. What was good for Weybrook would make them loyal to a crown that served the realm.

In the notes he’d given Duke Osler, he’d slipped a short letter. It didn’t say who Leon was, but it told Osler, in Leon’s name, that one man’s power serves one domain, not the realm.

Only when frontier lords and a strong crown move as one, does the realm prosper.

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Yorvik’s Sheffield: Linnie was the thread. And Lord Horn, the unexpected kinsman, was a bonus.

The coal and iron mines: entrusted to Sheffield, but not left in his hands alone. Leon would find a way to bind him to the same boat.

Step by step. Looking back, each step bore a clear footprint. And on each footprint stood the same person: his little cousin, Lora.

Nearby, the Odenheim brothers were directing men to retrieve the bodies from the water. Words were useless now. Leon turned and walked away.

By the carriage, he found Lora, watching her brothers from a distance.

”Let them cry. Better out than in.” He passed her without waiting for a response, not wanting her to see the grief on his face.

In his former life, after his false conviction, his mansion’s guards had been slaughtered. Only two attendants spared. The dead had included the men who were, in this life, still alive and kicking, Linn and Lyle.

He’d thought he’d grown numb to such scenes. But the hard shell around his heart had cracked, he didn’t know when. And underneath, a living heart pulsed again, with joy and anger and sorrow.

Lora watched his retreating back. She didn’t know why he hurt so.

The blame for the killings fell on the dead rebel. Sheffield offered every assistance.

They dragged the river for bodies. Some had been carried far. They’d bury them in Yorvik. This would delay them several days.

Lora and Leon stayed away from the river. Both idle in the guest house courtyard.

Then, a familiar voice from the gallery. Linnie, dressed to the nines, came hurrying back.

She saw Lora, leaning on the pavilion railing, tossing pebbles into the pond, and rushed over, alarmed:

”My lady, big trouble!”

”What’s wrong?” Lora sat up straight.

From the second-floor window, Leon saw the pavilion below. He told Lyle:

”Go down and see what’s happened.”

Linnie sat beside Lora, urgent: ”Sheffield told me today, take men and go find the land my father left me. He says: mine the coal as fast as possible. We need money. What do I do?”

”That’s not bad. He’s short of coin, that’s why he treasures his rich wife. You know that, don’t you?”

”But... the deed is fake, isn’t it? Where did you get a Gibford deed...”

Lora laughed, took Linnie’s shoulder: ”My dear Linnie, do you think I’d send you into the Sheffield residence with a fake deed?”

”I was... desperate... Is it real? There’s really coal under it?” Linnie was stunned.

This wasn’t what she’d imagined. She’d thought Lora wanted her to sweet-talk Sheffield into rebelling. Once von Klein was rescued and Sheffield was marcher duke, he’d have everything. Why would he quibble over a piece of land with a woman he fancied?

Instead, he cared about the land. And the deed was real.

Oh my, what a roller coaster. She’d scared herself.

She patted her chest, beaming: ”Then I’ll tell him, I leave today. Find the land, dig the coal, bring it to him.”

Lora laughed again: ”You’re funny. Coal isn’t a jar of gold you just dig up. Mining takes time. But, I can go with you.”

”Really?” Linnie was ecstatic. With Lora, she’d walk to the edge of the world and not be afraid. She jumped up:

”I’ll go tell Yuanzhong. We’ll prepare. Leave at dawn.”

Lyle, sitting with Corin under the gallery, didn’t need to ask. The courtyard was small. He’d heard everything:

”Have you been to Gibford?” he asked Corin.

Corin spat out the grass root he’d been chewing: ”If I follow, then I have.”

Following the young lady, life was never dull.

When Alvin and the others returned, Lora told them about going to Highgarden.

Roland had sent Fulke to buy the land, but he’d half-thought it was nonsense. ”Treasure by the eastern sea”, a wandering herbalist’s tale.

But his sister had insisted, pointing at maps with authority. Mother’s money was plentiful. Waste land was cheap. He’d let her have her way.

Now she was going to dig for treasure, in earnest.

”Don’t worry. I’ve talked to Lord Horn. He and his son will come with me. We can’t stay in Yorvik long-term. I plan to hand the coal operation to them.”

”So you’ve arranged everything. Not asking our opinion?” Roland’s eyes bulged.

Alvin said: ”Roland, if she’s decided, you go with her. I’ll hold things here. Three, four hundred li. By carriage, ten days round trip. Yorvik business will be done by then.”

At dawn, they set out. Three women in one carriage:

”I begged forever. Father finally let me come. Yangyang, that promise of a brother. Still good?” Faye.

”Ah? But this trip to Highgarden, only Roland is coming with us. How about, I lend you a cousin instead?”

Outside, on horseback, Roland heard and snickered: These girls and their ideas.

Leon: ...