Firebrand

  “I will never understand,” Enver said, “the cruelty your people inflict on one another.”

  “I don’t understand it either, except that it has always been so. Can we move her? Can we—can we leave?”

  “What must be done, will be,” he replied. He wrapped the blanket around Karigan as he gently lifted her and placed her over his shoulder.

  “No carry,” she muttered.

  “Shh, Galadheon,” Enver said. “There is no carrying. It is just a dream.”

  She quieted.

  “Come, little cousin. The gryphons will be our escort.”

  Estral followed Enver out of the pen, reveling at the sense of freedom she now felt. But they were not really free, not by a long way. She had the presence of mind to grab her coat, and Karigan’s, off the table, along with their weapons. She put her coat on and slung Karigan’s bonewood over her shoulder. She girded herself with the saber just to make the carrying of everything easier.

  Before they stepped outside, Enver extinguished his moonstone, and then they were out the door. The night felt silent, clear and cold. Mister Whiskers and his mate padded alongside them. At some point, she had changed into her gryphon form, a panther with raven wings that shone sleek and glossy in the moonlight. She needed a name. Midnight, Estral thought, would suit.

  She wondered how Enver had gotten through the guards to reach Nyssa’s workshop, then spied the bodies of Reed and Burson, their throats cut. Smoke still wisped from the bowl of Reed’s pipe cupped in his lifeless hand. Enver came across as mild and naive at times, but it was deceptive. She wondered how many more bodies lay in the encampment and woods.

  Nyssa’s workshop was outside the keep’s wall, away from the shacks the people lived in. Perhaps the encampment’s inhabitants did not want to hear the screams of her victims. Whatever the case, it worked in their favor.

  Enver stepped into the woods, Karigan limp over his shoulder, and there was a shimmer among the trunks of trees—Mist! The mare trotted up to them, moving as silently and sinuously as her name.

  “Little cousin,” Enver said, “you will ride with the Galadheon. I have arranged a new camp that will show no evidence of our presence.”

  “What about you?”

  “I will follow behind. Mister Whiskers will escort you. His mate will stay with me.”

  “Midnight.”

  “It is past midnight.”

  “I mean, her name. Mister Whiskers’ mate. She needs a name.”

  “Ah, yes. Midnight and I will follow. We must hurry now. It will not be long before your escape is discovered.”

  He bade Estral mount, and placed Karigan before her. “Do not worry about the reins. Mist knows where to go and where the traps are. Just hold on to the Galadheon. Mist will not let you fall.”

  Shouting erupted from the vicinity of Nyssa’s workshop.

  “There will be one awaiting you at the campsite, who will aid you. You must go now.”

  Before Estral could ask “one what?” Mister Whiskers launched into the air, his great wings carrying him aloft above the trees, and Mist moved off at a trot, then a canter, gliding effortlessly through the woods, so smoothly that Estral hardly felt she was on a horse, at all. While it could have been a struggle to hold on to the dead weight that was Karigan, Mist’s subtle adjustments of stride and balance made it less difficult for her.

  Like following the Eletian ways, Mist avoided underbrush and low-hanging branches. She ran swiftly, and unhindered, and so Estral was surprised at how quickly they left the forest for the plain beyond. Mist put on a new burst of speed as she navigated the rocky and hummocky terrain with ease.

  Estral glanced up and saw the dark shape of Mister Whiskers against a field of stars. Had she been less exhausted from her ordeal and not holding onto her terribly injured friend, her awe would have been far greater. She held Karigan close and prayed she wasn’t hurting her badly.

  Mist’s gait was so gentle that after a time, Estral caught herself dozing off. She shook herself and tightened her hold on Karigan. She had no idea how much time had passed when Mist finally slowed to a trot, then a walk. To her dismay, Mist walked right into a rock—and through it! She felt nothing at all at the passage, just air, and decided it must be an illusion. Both tents were set up in a bowl-like depression in the bedrock, and the horses were hobbled nearby. Condor neighed shrilly as if sensing Karigan’s condition, and Mist whickered back. He quieted. Mister Whiskers glided into a graceful, feline landing.

  Mist halted, and just as Estral wondered how she was going to get Karigan off without dropping her, Mist knelt onto the ground.

  “Let me help,” said a woman appearing seemingly out of nowhere. She supported Karigan while Estral dismounted. The two of them, holding Karigan between them, lifted her. “To Enver’s tent,” the woman said.

  They carried Karigan into Enver’s tent, which was softly lit with another moonstone. It seemed much bigger inside than it appeared from outside. The woman started to lay Karigan on her back.

  “No,” Estral said. “She is hurt on her back.”

  “I see blood on her front.”

  The stab wound. Estral hoped it had not reopened, but assumed Nyssa had been more than thorough with the iron. “It is worse on her back.”

  They settled her on soft bedding. In the light, her face was flushed and glistened with sweat. The woman, Estral saw now that she had a moment to breathe, was Eletian.

  “I am Nari,” the woman said. She carefully pried the blanket from Karigan’s wounds, and spoke sharply in Eltish.

  Estral could not bear to look again. She had already seen too much. Mister Whiskers, now in his cat form, crouched at Karigan’s feet, watching with large eyes. Estral glanced at Nari, who was busy with a bowl of water and cloth, and began to clean the wounds. Estral told her all that had been done to Karigan at the hands of Nyssa so she would know what needed tending.

  Nari was silent at first, as if taking it all in; then she said, “I will care for your friend, all her hurts, until Enver returns.” She glanced at Estral. “You have been through much, too. Perhaps you will wish to rest? Your tent is ready for you.”

  Estral nodded, and feeling more weary than she remembered ever having felt before, she stumbled across the campsite and crawled into the tent. Her bedroll had been laid out for her. She removed Karigan’s bonewood from her back and unbuckled the swordbelt and placed the saber aside. She crumpled onto her blankets and wept. Wept as she had not since she was a child, wept for what she had done to cause her friend so much harm, wept knowing that she did not deserve forgiveness.

  HILLANDER EYES

  Immerez did not envy Terrik, who had received the “honor” of explaining to Grandmother, upon her return from Birch’s camp, just how two captives had escaped in the night, and about the unrest among her slaves. The three of them walked together toward the curtain wall of the keep.

  “What did you say?” Grandmother asked, halting. “Flying cats?”

  “Two of my men swear they saw it,” Terrik said, looking a little red around his ears. “But it was dark. Some of our sentries, though, looked like they’d been mauled by a catamount.”

  “But flying?” Grandmother persisted.

  No, Immerez did not envy Terrik.

  “As for the captives,” she said, “Green Riders can touch etherea. The one could have used it to escape.”

  “No,” Immerez replied. “I saw her. She was in no condition. Nyssa had already worked on her. They had to have had outside help.”

  Grandmother raised her eyebrow at him. “Flying cats?”

  He shrugged, and they resumed their slow walk toward the wall’s gate. Many more guards were on duty after the previous night’s excitement. When it had all happened, he’d been with Nyssa in her chambers. He smiled, thinking of his time with her. Torturer she may be, but when it came to the bed chamber, sh
e preferred to play a submissive role, an arrangement he found more than tolerable.

  A gaggle of children came to mob Grandmother and tug on her skirt. They laughed and talked in high-pitched voices, vying for her attention. She patted them on their heads and urged them to go play. They ran off in a pack as though they had not a care in the world.

  “About the Greenie,” Immerez said as they passed through the gate and into the keep’s courtyard, “you met her once in Teligmar. She was the one who deceived us by taking Lady Estora’s place. Name’s G’ladheon.”

  “Yes, I recall. She was brave or foolish, that one. She also went on to steal the Silverwood book from us, for all the good it did her king.”

  It had, Immerez reflected, kept it out of Grandmother’s hands, preventing her from doing whatever it was she had intended. “There is something more you should know about the Greenie.” They paused in the sunny courtyard, and he told her about the girl’s strange mirror eye. It made him shudder to think of it, it was so inhuman, and it did not help that Grandmother looked disturbed.

  “Are you sure it was not a false eye of some sort?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” he replied. “I could almost swear images started to form in it. It startled me so much I stopped looking and figured you’d know what it was.”

  Grandmother gave Terrik a sidelong look. “And we won’t find out now, will we.”

  “We have teams out searching,” Terrik said. “They can’t have gotten far.”

  “I hope not for your sake, Captain,” Grandmother replied. “There is no telling what that Green Rider saw of our position here, and she’ll take it back to her king. Now, about the uprising of my slaves . . .”

  They walked in a leisurely way around the exterior of the keep, scattering chickens. People called out greetings to Grandmother. She was much loved by them, and feared. They should fear her, Immerez thought. She would not think twice about sacrificing any one of them, not even the children, if it meant furthering Second Empire’s goals.

  Terrik told her about the fight that had broken out during Smurn’s weekly sermon. “The Greenie started it, really,” he said. “She resisted the guards, and it inspired the slaves to rise.”

  On the backside of the keep, they came to the broken part of the curtain wall and stepped through. Terrik explained how the worst perpetrators had been dealt with, and the rest put back to work.

  “It was later,” he said, “when one just went absolutely berserk.”

  They continued on to the dig, where the slaves filed in and out of the underground passage, lugging their baskets. They looked like sleepwalkers to Immerez, uncaring of the world around them, their only goal to simply make it through another day. One had been singled out to stand by the rock pile, burdened with a heavy log borne on his shoulders, his wrists shackled to it. He shifted to keep his balance, his teeth gritted and whole body trembling. His battered face gleamed with sweat.

  “If he falls or drops the log before time is up,” Terrik told Grandmother, “we’ll pull one of the others out of the passage to beat on. He’d been helping some of the weaker ones. Now he’ll see where that got him, and teach the others a lesson, too.”

  “Why didn’t you just give him to Nyssa?”

  Terrik shrugged. “He’s one of the best workers. He wouldn’t be of much use after a session with Nyssa. Plus, this way he is a very visible example.”

  “I approve.” She stepped closer to the man. The entirety of his focus appeared to be on staying upright. “He is beat up, Captain, but he looks familiar.”

  “The guards had to subdue him after he went berserk. No cause that we could figure out, but he sure has some good training.”

  Immerez looked sharply at Terrik. “What do you mean he has training?”

  “He’s not just a brawler like we thought, but has some real warrior training. He put three of my men totally out of commission and wounded a pack of others. I can only imagine what he’s like on the battlefield.”

  Immerez gazed more intently at the man. Shaggy hair, a full beard, and bruises and welts on his face partially obscured his features.

  “You remember him, Grandmother,” Terrik said, “that fellow, Dav Hill.”

  “Who?”

  “The man you got from the groundmites.”

  “Oh, now I remember. He looks even worse than when he came in. We never did hear his whole story. We should make a point of it now, perhaps.”

  Immerez stepped right up to the man, grabbed his forelock and lifted to see his face. He looked familiar. Immerez tried to see beyond the grime, the cuts and bruises, the eye swollen shut.

  The eyes . . .

  Immerez took a step back. The almond-shaped eyes. “He has Hillander eyes.”

  “He said he was from L’Petrie, on the border with Hillander.”

  “No,” Immerez said. “I mean he has Hillander eyes. Grandmother, do you realize who you have here?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Immerez laughed. He’d been in chains the last time he’d seen King Zachary. Oh, the irony. The beautiful irony. It took some imagining to see beyond the ravages of captivity, but he knew that face. There was no mistaking it. And Terrik’s description of his fighting skill? Only further evidence.

  “Grandmother,” Immerez said, “this is why that Greenie was poking around here. It has to be. This man is her king.”

  He’d never seen her look so aghast. “Are you certain?”

  “Very certain. He questioned me when they took me prisoner. I also saw quite a lot of his brother when he was hiding out with old Lord Mirwell. Amilton was sharper-featured, but the resemblance is unmistakable.”

  “This is fortuitous,” Grandmother said calmly, though he could see the excitement in her eyes.

  “Where . . .” the prisoner began in a voice much weaker than Immerez remembered from when he’d stood before that stern, unbending king. Look at him now.

  “Where what?” Terrik demanded.

  “Where is she? What have you done with her?”

  “He means the Greenie,” Immerez said.

  “Yes,” Terrik mused, “he would have seen her brought into the keep yesterday.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She is not your concern,” Immerez said. “Nyssa made her bleed. Painfully.”

  They did not expect the roar from this diminished man, or for him to charge with the log on his shoulders and spin. Terrik had been right—the man was a berserker, and it was Immerez’s last thought as the log smashed into him.

  Aaron Fiori, known as Arvyn the Bard to his Second Empire captors, sat before the fire in the great hall giving Lala her daily music lesson. It was not easy to concentrate on it, for he’d heard that prisoners had escaped during the night—the “Greenie” and someone else. He knew little more than that, but for rumors of flying cats. He could only guess there had to have been some kind of outside help. From what he’d overheard, Karigan wouldn’t have been in any condition to escape under her own power.

  He closed his eyes remembering the schoolgirl he’d known, of age with Estral. They were best friends. He was horrified to hear what had been done to her and thanked the gods she had gotten out, however it had happened. He prayed for her recovery, and hoped that someone would come back for him and the king.

  He attempted to focus once more on the lesson. He was trying to teach Lala chords to a ballad on his lute. She’d a natural sense of musicality, but she had not yet acquired the dexterity and strength to easily form the chords. Her singing, in contrast, was of the heavens, but of course it was Estral’s voice, her nuances of tone and style, with which Lala sang. If he closed his eyes, he would not have been able to tell the two apart. It chilled him every time he heard Lala speak or sing.

  Sadly, he was no closer to learning how she had acquired Estral’s voice than when he first arrive
d, and thus could not know how to return it. There was a spell involved, of that he was certain.

  “That’s very good, Lala,” he said when she finished singing and playing a simple lute tune. “It was lovely.”

  Lala smiled in that odd way of hers and cocked her head as she gazed at him. “I saw the lady whose voice I’ve got.”

  Fiori just sat there, digesting her words. As they sank in, he trembled with the effort to remain calm. “What do you mean?”

  “Last night. She was with the Greenie Nyssa striped, but she had a new voice, and kitties, too.”

  It took all he had not to reach out and shake her for more information. Estral had been with Karigan? Why? What had they been doing in the Lone Forest? With terrible clarity, he realized that Karigan had probably been looking for the king, but Estral would have been looking for him.

  Dear gods, what could she have been thinking?

  Worse were the other questions that occurred to him: Was she hurt? Had Nyssa touched her? Had she been the one who escaped with Karigan? He wanted to ask Lala all these questions and more, but a disturbance came into the hall.

  “I want him! Let me have him!” Nyssa cried. “I will flay the flesh from him!”

  Fiori had never heard her so worked up.

  “No, my dear,” Grandmother replied in a soothing tone. “He is too great a prize for rash retribution.”

  No, Fiori thought, guessing who “he” was.

  “Varius will mend our dear Immerez, have no fear,” Grandmother continued. “I will see to him personally and help as needed. There will be punishment, but we must use this opportunity to the fullest.”

  “What will you do then?”

  “There are so many glorious possibilities. I need to meditate on it.”

  “Arvyn,” Lala said, “you aren’t paying attention.”

  He tore his gaze from the two women and gave her some semblance of a smile, a very false smile, and continued the lesson though his mind reeled. Estral had been captured and he knew not her fate, and now they had discovered the king’s identity. Now all was lost.