Ben cut him a smile. “Nice recovery, Defensor Rayen. But I’m fine.”
“Fine here meaning both drunk and hungover?” Jakes whispered.
“Oh, Defensor, your flirtation doth take my breath away.”
Jakes’s eyes flashed wide. “Shh—” But he cut off his shushing and ducked his head. “I don’t want to give those vultures”—he motioned back toward the Inquisitors tent—“a reason to cause trouble for you. Even if the nobles of court look down on a royal and a guard, I have to believe the Pious God, at least, can forgive us.”
A year as one of Ben’s defensors, yet Jakes was still the earnest orphan who had come to Deza desperate to serve the Pious God.
Ben exhaled, almost a growl. “I have enough experience dealing with the gossip and macabre interest of the court. Let them try to spot another heretic in the Gallego family—they will find nothing irredeemable in me. Sex before marriage is a sin, but not a condemnable one.”
Jakes bowed his head, and Ben hated the formality of it, though it was necessary. There were some things in Ben’s life that crossed political lines more than religious—and the fact that the heir to Argrid had maintained a relationship with a commoner for ten months now was borderline reprehensible.
Argrid allowed a measure of freedom among nobles to choose their own partners—so long as those partners were also of nobility, to not be unequally yoked. Elazar hadn’t forced Ben to find a partner yet, but if he knew that Ben had given his heart, his soul, and most of his waking thoughts to one of his guards, who until his post as a defensor had been the orphaned son of a merchant, well . . .
Ben did his best not to think about what his father would do. His relationship with Jakes was just one more thing he had to keep staunch control over.
Ben made his voice lighter, but it sounded pained to his ears. “You know I don’t think of you as a sin. . . . I mean, I’m not ashamed of us.”
Jakes cocked his eyebrows. “You should be. I’m not even a captain, for the Pious God’s sake.” He smiled.
Ben winked at him and pressed forward to keep from taking Jakes’s hand.
The morning heat was slightly more bearable on the ship’s deck. Ben tugged at the thick velvet of his sleeves as he neared the line of raiders kneeling amid a circle of defensors. He didn’t know how anyone managed to survive the conditions of Grace Loray to leave in the first place. The island was a week’s sail away, and supposed to be hotter and more humid than Argrid’s sweltering capital.
The salt-seasoned wind did its best to steal Ben’s hat, thrashing the feather against his face. Four of the raiders looked Argridian: varying shades of russet and brown skin, black hair, angular features, and dark eyes—not uncommon, since any raider who dared sell magic here tended to blend in. But the last raider, a Mecht, drew Ben in. Blond, pale, and brutish, he embodied everything Ben had heard about that country’s clans and their endless, bloody wars.
The Mecht looked up, his glare biting with an intensity that Ben recognized.
The Eye of the Sun flower gave the temporary ability to control fire. Only the Mechts had figured out how to harness its power—and, more, how to make Eye of the Sun permanent. Eye of the Sun warriors became infernos in human skin, living proof that botanical magic was the Devil’s work.
Before Ben could ask if this Mecht had undergone the ritual to absorb the flower’s abilities, the raider exhaled, smoke streaming from his nostrils.
“Bárbaro diaño,” a defensor spat. Barbarian devil.
A few others muttered prayers. But Ben smiled.
An Eye of the Sun warrior. Fascinating. The only ones he’d seen before had found themselves dragged back to Argrid as examples by Church missionaries for refusing to accept the Pious God. Their executions had been through pistols, not flames.
“How is it that an Eye of the Sun warrior has come to be in Argrid?” Ben asked.
“He ain’t our regular crew,” said one raider, most likely the captain, his voice thick with the Grace Loray accent that trilled his r’s. “Picked him up as a hired hand in the Mechtlands, not a month ago. If he’s the reason for all this, take ’im.”
The Mecht snarled to the deck.
It wasn’t that simple. The captain knew it. The Mecht knew it. And Ben did, too, his stomach squeezing as the boat rocked.
Jakes walked past him, discreetly brushing his hand along Ben’s hip as he joined the other defensors to circle the raiders.
Ben pressed his hands to his chest, wrists together, fingers cupped upward in the stance of prayer. The defensors on deck did the same.
“Our Pious God, show us the ways of purity, honesty, chastity, penance, and charity,” Ben prayed. “We thank you for opening heaven to those created of the Devil’s hellfire and evil. May you purge our lives of temptations so we may reflect your pillars. Praise the Pious God.”
“Praise the Pious God,” echoed everyone on deck, save for the raiders.
“You have been detained by the Inquisitors of His Majesty’s Church of Argrid,” Ben continued, addressing the raiders now. “Unholy items have been found in your possession. If you do not repent, the Church will purify Argrid of your irredeemable soul.”
The Church had written this speech so detainees would have fair opportunities to repent. Everyone caught with plants was guilty, and admitting it was the only thing that could save their souls. They would still be rehabilitated for a time, but they wouldn’t burn.
Fair had had a different meaning under Ben’s uncle—back then, the accused were assumed innocent until the Inquisitors passed a sentence based on careful analysis of Church doctrine. Were their sins rooted in magic? If so, did they have evil plants that had been proven dangerous, or did they have pure magic used for healing or growth?
But Rodrigu’s betrayal had destroyed the luxury of assuming people were innocent. After his death, the Church had disbanded the remaining Inquisitors, and those who resisted had been burned as well. The only duty of the Inquisitors that the Church hadn’t eliminated was searching inbound ships, but they had bastardized even that duty by giving it to careless aristocrats.
“I won’t repent for made-up sins.” The captain spoke again. “My crew ’n’ I are as innocent as you are, especially with that group from Argrid in Grace Loray right now. You wanna condemn us for stuff yer own men are negotiatin’—”
“Quiet!” a defensor snapped. “You’re speaking to the Crown Prince!”
Ben bit his tongue. You’re right, he wanted to tell the captain. The Church still ordered the arrest of anyone carrying Grace Loray’s botanical magic, even when a contingent of Argridian diplomats was negotiating a peace treaty with the island’s ruling Council.
When Ben’s uncle and cousin had tried to change the Church’s stance on magic, Ben had watched them die. Anyone who supported the war had been exterminated as well.
Ben didn’t have much hope that a new treaty would change Argrid.
Another of the raiders dared to chuckle. “The Prince. You ain’t as good-looking as they say, but maybe if you were the one kneeling . . .”
Jakes punched the man so hard he flipped into the raider beside him. The movement caused a distraction, and just as Ben registered that, the Mecht raider did, too.