a few minutes before she was able to let go enough of Conli to pat them in reassurance.
The private room was nothing more than a rectangular table with chairs around it and a door that kept out the noise from the main room. With ten people inside, it quickly felt cramped, but Siobhan closed the door anyway and stood in front of it, guaranteeing that no one tried to casually enter.
Wolf looked from one face to another before asking in alarm, “What happened?”
“Now that’s a question I can’t fully answer.” Siobhan kept her voice level, painfully even. “Denney. Conli. I haven’t asked this question for six years as I felt I didn’t have the right to pry or poke at old wounds. But that comes to an end tonight. What is your relationship with each other?”
Conli stared at Denney’s bowed head, where it rested against his chest, for a long moment. Then he sighed in resignation before finally looking up. “She’s my niece.”
Everyone stirred, half-surprised at his answer. Even Siobhan hadn’t expected that. She’d always assumed Conli as Denney’s father. “Niece.”
“You know I come from a family of apothecarists on Island Pass?” he asked. “Well, we often took goods and supplies to Quigg or Converse, distributing them there. My brother went to Quigg, I went to Converse, usually. But then one day he said he was tired of going that direction and asked to trade. I didn’t think anything of the request and switched with him.” Conli’s face twisted into a bitter smile. “For ten years I didn’t think anything of it or why he avoided Quigg entirely. Then one night, he and my father got too far into their cups, and started talking. I discovered my brother had tangled with a Teheranian woman in Quigg, leaving her with child. I was outraged that he had so casually abandoned her there. Here, of all places! By doing that, he’d consigned both of them to a life of either drudgery or prostitution. He knew that. He knew that.” Conli’s eyes closed in a pained manner. “I argued with him, my father, my mother, begging them to at least go get the child. They wouldn’t.”
“And then?” Hammon prompted quietly as Conli stalled.
“I left the family.” Conli looked at him with sad eyes. “Our relationship wasn’t good to begin with, as I liked to study surgery, which they thought was beneath our family. But knowing that I had a niece or nephew out there, abandoned to the world, when that child should have had all the benefits and protection of my guild…I couldn’t live with that. I packed up and went to Quigg. It took me three months to find her.”
“My mother had been sold to a brothel after having me,” Denney picked up the story quietly, although she didn’t release her hold on Conli. “I was ten, turning eleven, when Conli found me and bought my freedom. My mother felt she deserved to be there, so she wouldn’t leave. No matter how we pleaded with her, she refused to go. So I left with him instead.”
“We haven’t heard from her since,” Conli admitted with a heavy sigh. “I try to check up on her whenever we pass through the city, but it’s so easy to lose people here. I haven’t heard a word about her for the past decade. Anyway, after I had Denney, I knew we couldn’t stay anywhere in Wynngaard. It was too dangerous for her. So we went east instead, into Robarge.”
“We stayed in Converse for a while, but we didn’t like it there so much,” Denney admitted. “And then we went on that trip to Goldschmidt with a caravan, the one that Deepwoods was an escort for.”
“And you were so welcoming to her, so kind, I couldn’t help but think it was the right place to stay,” Conli finished heavily. “The rest you know.”
Yes, so she did.
“I’m sorry,” Denney whispered. “I’m sorry. We should have told you before this.”
“You should have,” Tran agreed. Stepping forward, he stroked her head in a gentle sweep of the hand. She looked up at the gesture, startled by it, only to see him looking back at her with kind eyes. “If you had, Denney, we’d have known how to protect you better. You’d never have been threatened by those men.”
“We understand why you didn’t, though,” Wolf added softly. His mouth curved in a sad way, empathy and dark memories chasing their way across his face. “At first, you were scared to say