When the women had gone, Venture sat back down and said, “Sir, I’m sorry I betrayed your trust.”
“My trust? What about my daughter? What about her future? If people find out about this—” He stopped abruptly, then with a piercing look, said, “Is she with child?”
“Sir, no! There’s absolutely no way she could be. I swear it.”
“Then why has your brother kicked you out of his house?”
So that was the rumor, that he’d been kicked out. Venture told Grant the story of the night Jade had sneaked out to meet him, and how his brother had found out. He told him about his promise to his brother, and his decision to tell Justice the truth.
Grant struggled to speak. His eyes filled with tears Venture knew he wouldn’t shed. “How am I not to feel that those I trusted most, who owed me their devotion and respect more than anyone else alive, made a fool of me in my own home? You two and your childish games—”
“Games! This isn’t a game!” Venture recovered himself and lowered his voice. Of course Grant was angry. Of course he was shocked. He couldn’t expect him to assume the best of either of them right now. “Sir,” he said, “I intend to marry her one day.”
“You don’t actually think you and a young lady—”
Venture had never heard Grant use such a condescending tone, not with him, not with any of the servants.
“Why shouldn’t I? When I’m no longer bonded—”
“This is outrageous!”
Venture dared to shake his head at his master, allowed his eyes to ask,
Who are you? Where’s the great man I know?
Grant’s shoulders drooped. He turned his back to Venture. “How could you do this to us, Vent?” he asked the window.
“I love Jade, sir.”
He wheeled around. “Do not speak of my daughter so familiarly!”
“She wouldn’t have me speak of her any other way, sir.”
“So it’s the wishes of a foolish girl you respect more than the wishes of your master?”
“I’ve caused her enough pain, respecting your wishes over hers.”
“Get out of here, Venture Delving. Go home. I’ll talk to my daughter now. Come straight here tomorrow morning. I will have made my decision what to do with you by then.”
Maybe a little time to adjust to the news was what Grant really needed. Venture shut his mouth and left before he could make things any worse. As he closed the office door, though, Jade rushed up to him.
He put his hand on her cheek and tried to smile for her. “I’m going home. He wants to talk to you alone.”
Jade pulled away, shaking her head. She threw the office door open. “You said we’d all talk!”
“I changed my mind,” Venture heard Grant say sternly.
Venture was out of sight, but not yet out of earshot when, to his dismay, he heard Rose Fieldstone say, “How can you blame her for falling in love with him? I tried to warn you. The boy is nearly perfect. He’s the picture of what a young girl dreams of.”
“He isn’t nearly perfect. He
is
perfect. Perfect for me!”
Venture’s heart swelled for Jade, that she would say such ridiculous things for the love of him.
“He is a bonded servant!” The walls shook with Grant’s shout.
“Yes,” Rose said, “that’s the only obstacle in the way of a young lady falling for him, and you taught Jade to virtually ignore that obstacle. It’s one thing to treat a servant boy with respect, and quite another to treat him as though he were a member of the family. Did you honestly think Jade would prefer to see a handsome and capable young man like Venture as a brother rather than a suitor?”
“That was never a choice for her, and she knew it.”
“Well, apparently she’s made her choice anyway.”
After a sleepless night, Venture went directly to the Big House. He found Grant sitting, looking worn but calm, behind his desk.
“Sit down,” Grant said.
Venture settled anxiously in a chair. Grant leaned back in his own larger, more generously stuffed chair, and crossed his arms. Behind him, the drapes were drawn against the Summer’s Second Month sun. A breeze from the open window stirred them, and flashes of daylight glimmered through.
“I asked Jade yesterday why she loved you. She had a lot to say. Mostly things I’ve always known about you. The things that made me care for you as a little boy. Things that you developed as you grew, that made me admire you as a young man. Traits that made me think what a shame it was that you found yourself in this station, and yet made me wonder if your lot in life wasn’t part of why you possessed them at all.”
Grant was quiet, thoughtful for a moment. Venture knew he ought to say something, but before he could find the words, Grant continued.
“She asked me which young man I’d ever met who was half as worthy of her love. And I couldn’t think of one. Add to that the special relationship I helped create between the two of you, out of my own foolishness. How can I blame her, given all that?”
Venture’s shoulders relaxed with relief. Grant was still angry, but he understood, and he was trying. “Sir,” he said quietly, “I don’t know what to say. I wish I deserved such kind words. I’ll never feel right about deceiving you or my own family. But I truly love Jade, with all my heart.”
“I can’t say I don’t understand this. But how can I condone it? No gentleman would have allowed such feelings to grow between himself and a lady without telling her father of his intentions. You know that, Vent. And you know that if I’d known what was going on between the two of you, things would have been a lot different in this household.”
Venture’s heart sank. Grant was right; if another man had done the same, Venture would have considered him dishonorable. But what could he have done? Told his master, when he was just a confused fourteen-year-old kid, that he thought he was falling in love with his daughter? He’d come to him as soon as he knew how she felt about him, as soon as he knew there was a chance of their relationship having a future.
But
, he wondered with a pang of guilt,
would I have told him if we hadn’t gotten caught? How long would I have kept up the lie?
Grant rolled his pen between his fingers. His green eyes were rimmed in red. “How can I allow you to carry on a relationship with Jade? You’re too young to be thinking about marriage, about taking care of a family. By the time you’re ready for that, who knows how you’ll feel about her?”
“I know how I’ll feel. I’ll—”
“You don’t know anything!” Grant leaned forward sharply, slapping the pen against the desk under his palm. “You’ll lose interest in her, and her reputation, her future, will already be ruined! What sort of prospects do you think she’ll have—”
“Jade doesn’t care about her prospects, she cares about being with me.”
“That’s enough! In a few years, you’ll understand. So long as both of you are under my authority, I have no choice but to forbid you to see Jade.”
Venture leaned forward, pushing back the voice that warned him against this. He looked into Grant’s eyes, the same green as Jade’s. “Sir, I must ask you then, what is the price of my freedom?”
Grant tried to blink away the surprise, the renewed sense of betrayal, but Venture had already seen it. And Venture knew he hadn’t expected this. Even after all he and Jade had told him, after all he’d said about understanding it, Grant hadn’t really understood just how serious this was.
Grant looked away, and then, in a businesslike way, answered, “Two thousand silver coins for a year of service is the going rate, isn’t it?”
“I’ll have your money next week, sir. I intend to win the Championship.”
Grant just stared at him for a long time. Did he think Venture could do it?
It was a crazy thing to say. Of course he wanted to win, felt the pressure to win this year. If the Championship was discontinued, he’d never have another chance to really make it. But he hadn’t even made it into the top five last year. Hoping to win, training to win, fighting to win, those were entirely different things from
needing
to win. But he did need to win. This could be his only chance not just to prove himself in the arena but to ensure his financial security, to secure a place for himself in the world of influential men. Not to end up, at best, an underemployed guard whose weapons could be taken away at the slightest accusation, due to his bonded past. At worst, a back-alley fighter. And now, it was his only chance to be free to see Jade.
Finally Grant said, “And if I refuse to allow you to fight anymore?”
Whether it was a false threat or not, that was going too far, to think of ruining his career and all he’d worked for. “Sir, I don’t believe you would do that. You aren’t the sort of man to build me up into a world-class fighter for nothing. But if you did forbid it, sir, I’d have to ask my friend Dasher Starson for a loan, and I’d have the money by tomorrow.”
A long, dark silence fell between them.
Grant broke it. “Since such payment would be buying access to my daughter, I choose to exercise my rights as your master to take away your ability buy your freedom or to pay back any loan. I thought that you, above all others, would understand that my daughter is not for sale.”
“Sir, you know that’s not—”
“Enough! You will continue to serve this house until you are nineteen years old, as your mother agreed. We both know she would expect you to fulfill that duty, especially in light of my generosity to you in providing you with a future career—a career you’ll have to wait until you’re of age to resume.”
“Sir, what are you saying?”
“As long as you’re under my authority, you won’t be fighting or training. You won’t set foot in a fighting center or on a mat anywhere. I not only refuse to fund your plan to win Jade as a professional fighter, I forbid you to participate in fighting in any way. If this is how you respect my trust, my generosity, then you can stay here and work full-time and find a way to fund your training on your own once you’re done.”
Venture thought of the Championship, possibly the last Championship, going on without him. He saw the young woman ready to pull the bribe from her cloak, saw the broken fingers and the sword sticking up through the hot puddle of blood, saw the masked man who’d ordered him to withdraw getting his way, thinking he’d beaten him with fear.
There were many places deep in Venture’s heart. The place he reached into for more when the rest of him had nothing left to finish a fight. The place the desire and power to fight the wicked boys who’d attacked Jade so long ago had burst from. Out of another deep, swirling place, a place he didn’t know even existed within him, spurted a bold claim.
“I’m going to the Championship this year, and I’m going to win! You will not stop me! That title belongs to me!” He stood up as he shouted, throwing his chair back behind him and staring down his master as ferociously as he ever had any enemy.
“You are a bonded servant! Nothing belongs to you!”
Never had Grant Fieldstone said anything like that to him. Never had he reminded him, even gently, of his place in the household, in the world. The words cut to his heart and made his hands tremble with rage.
“I am Venture Delving,” he said. “I am a fighter, and that belongs to me! I’m leaving this house, and I’m not coming back until I’m Champion of All Richland!” Venture threw open the door. “Get your sword if you want to stop me!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Another knock sounded on the door of Dasher and Earnest’s rented house, and Venture eyed it warily. The last time he’d answered the door, just moments ago, it had been Justice’s hired boy, delivering him a message. Justice informed him that he realized he couldn’t get Venture’s exemption revoked in time for the Championship, short of showing up at registration and making a scene about it. A scene that ran the risk of humiliating Grant Fieldstone and ruining Jade’s reputation. Venture had bristled at the implication that he might rashly blurt such things to tournament officials, or threaten to do so in order to keep his exemption. Justice had wished him good luck at his last tournament, at least until he was of age. His exemption would be revoked in a matter of weeks.
“It the lady!” Chance’s eye was pressed to the glass of the front window, in the crack between the curtains.
Venture hurried to the door and threw it open. Jade stood on the doorstep, holding a long, cloth-wrapped object. The look in her eyes threatened to bring out Venture’s tears over what had transpired just an hour ago between himself and her father. The tears he’d buried beneath his will to fight.
“I have something for you,” she said.
“Come inside.” Venture took the heavy package under his uninjured left arm and put a hand on her back. The last thing he needed was for someone to spot her, here. Still, it was good that she’d come. He’d been racking his brain trying to figure out how to say good-bye to her.
“Don’t worry, Father isn’t coming after you. He’s locked himself in his office.”
He was hardly reassured, but he nodded anyway and closed the door after them.
“Jade Fieldstone, this is Chance Morninglight.” The kid stood there beside Venture, staring at her.
“Pleased to meet you, Chance.” Jade offered her hand and he shook it, still speechless.
Venture had never seen him so dumbstruck; the combination of what he, Chance’s boss and protector, had gotten himself into with Jade, and her looking strikingly much more like a lady than she had the only other time he’d seen her, in the smithy, seemed to be having a profound effect on him.
“All right,” Venture said, putting a hand on Chance’s back and giving him a gentle shove. “That’s enough of that. Give us a minute.”
“Yes, sir. I go pack.” Chance raised his hand to Jade with a sheepish smile. “Miss.”
Jade gave him a nod and bit back a laugh. “He’s cute,” she said once he was gone.
“Yeah, he’s going to give me something to worry about in a few years.”
“You’ll never have to worry about me, Vent.”
“I won’t?” He drew her close with his free arm and brought his lips to hers, determined to forget, just for a moment, what had happened, what could happen to him, even who he was. He forced himself to keep his hand on her shoulder, but his kisses wandered from her mouth to her neck, then a little lower. He could feel her heart fluttering; his own was pounding.