Firebrand

“Find me in the stables tomorrow morning around the ninth bell,” the captain told him. “We have unfinished business.”

  “I am sure we do,” he murmured.

  The captain turned on her heel and struck off down the corridor.

  Karigan’s father gazed after the captain with a perplexed expression on his face. “I do not know whether to be pleased or afraid when that woman wants to see me. She always strikes me as being taller than she is.”

  Karigan could agree on the last, but didn’t dare speculate on the former.

  After a few moments, he turned to her. “You look very tired, and I shouldn’t wonder why after all you’ve done today.”

  “I am.”

  “Why don’t you rest, and I’ll come back around at supper. Meanwhile, I’d best make sure your aunts do not take over the entire castle.”

  Karigan hugged him good-bye, and before she dropped into bed, she was drawn by curiosity to the traveling chest they’d deposited on her floor. Inside she found the items of hers that had been sent home after her “death,” including a certain blue gown with silver threading that had been cleaned and repaired of the abuse it had once received. She laughed, wondering what her aunts had made of its condition, and hung the gown in her wardrobe. She also discovered a tin of Cook’s ginger snaps in the trunk and ate two right away.

  She kicked off her boots, took off her shortcoat, and lay in bed. She pulled her comforter to her chin, and with Ghost Kitty purring beside her, fell soundly asleep. She did not awaken hours later when her family tiptoed into her chamber to retrieve their cloaks. Her father did not rouse her for supper, but let her sleep in peace.

  The ghosts came to tell her their stories, but even the most insistent among them failed to disturb her.

  UNFINISHED BUSINESS

  As the city bells rang nine hour, Laren Mapstone tended her horse, Bluebird, in the Rider stables. Despite the frigid weather, the warmth of all the horses made the old building bearable, even snug. The contented sounds of horses munching on hay, their snorts and whickers, comforted her and were so very normal after the previous day’s magical incursion. When, she wondered, would the next attack come, and the one after that? Would they be able to fend off whatever came next? Even worse, she’d had word that a prisoner had escaped during the chaos, had walked right off castle grounds during the fighting. Immerez. A guard had gone missing with him, which meant, despite all the precautions, Second Empire’s operatives were still infiltrating their ranks.

  She worked a curry comb over Bluebird’s fluffy winter coat. She never spent enough time with him for her schedule was fraught with meetings, and attending the king, and attacking all the administrative needs of the messenger service.

  “Good morning.”

  Laren looked up from where she was currying Bluebird’s belly, and had to look even higher for Stevic G’ladheon was tall. He stood on the other side of the stall door, his hands deep in the pockets of his long beaver fur coat. He wore no hat, and his cheeks were ruddy from being outside.

  “Good morning,” Laren replied, setting the curry comb aside and dusting her hands off.

  Bluebird stuck his nose out to snuffle Stevic’s shoulder. Stevic patted his forehead. “Hello, old fellow.”

  Unfortunately, “old fellow” was apt. Bluebird was up there in years with more gray than ever speckling his blue roan hide.

  “I’d have brought some kauv—” Stevic began. When she frowned, he tried again. “Tea?” At her nod, he continued, “Yes, well, I would have brought tea, but I fear it would have frozen solid before I got here.”

  “It was a nice thought,” she replied.

  An awkward silence fell between them. The stables were quiet, aside from the usual horsey sounds. Hep, who had recently been promoted to stable master, and his assistants were off securing a load of hay, and her Riders were engaged in training, or lessons, or other duties.

  “You mentioned yesterday that we had unfinished business,” Stevic said. “How might Clan G’ladheon be of service to the Green Riders?” He bowed, hand to heart.

  Laren regretted his formality when once their relationship had been more genial, warm. He blamed her, she knew, for all the dangers his daughter had faced since becoming a Green Rider. It had been difficult enough to tell him Karigan had been sent into Blackveil, and then, months later, on a crisp autumn day, the sky a clear blue and the trees laden with apples, she appeared on his doorstep unbidden, and he seemed to know why. When she informed him Karigan had been declared dead, he had crumpled to his knees, his grief so profound she still trembled to think of it.

  “Captain?” Stevic said. “You wished to see me, did you not? Is this regarding further supplies for your messengers?”

  She willed the memories to vanish and forced herself to the present. “Yes, there is that.” She removed the envelope sealed with the mark of the Green Riders from an inner pocket of her greatcoat and handed it to Stevic. “Mara and Elgin came up with a list.”

  “I trust the supplies have been satisfactory thus far?” The envelope disappeared into one of the voluminous pockets of his fur coat.

  “Yes. Yes, of course. Excellent.”

  He bowed again. “It is my pleasure to serve. If that is all, I wish you a good day, Captain.” He turned to leave.

  “Hold, merchant.”

  He halted and turned back to her. Was that a gleam of amusement in his eye? Infuriating man.

  “Is there something else?” he asked. “Anything else I can do to serve the captain of His Majesty’s Messenger Service?”

  Damn his formality. As if there hadn’t been more between them. “I realize we have not been on the best of terms ever since Karigan went into Blackveil, which I admit I find . . .” What? Sorrowful? Aggravating? Distressing? She settled on, “Unfortunate.”

  He said nothing, just stood there waiting for her to go on. Of course, he would, just to see her flounder. She was sure of it. She took a deep breath and continued, “Those of us who serve the king have a range of duties to perform, and certainly some of those duties can be dangerous.”

  “It seems to me,” Stevic replied, “that certain of those who serve the king go into danger more often than others.”

  “Certain of those who do go, do so because they are extremely capable. Others just seem to attract trouble. Karigan is both. She is one of my best Riders as her performance during yesterday’s attack should make abundantly clear.”

  “Tell me, Captain,” he said, “which are you?”

  Bluebird appeared to watch them with his ears pricked as though viewing a sporting match. Wind whistled through the cracks of doors and shutters, stirring up a fine dust from the rafters.

  “What is your answer, Captain?”

  She pursed her lips, unsettled by his intensity. “All messengers face danger in the course of their duties.”

  “But not all go into Blackveil.”

  “No, but three did. One of them never came home. The king could have just sent soldiers, but he wanted his Riders to go because of their competence.”

  “Would you go into Blackveil if he asked?”

  “Of course.” She had, in fact, volunteered, but Zachary refused her.

  Stevic studied her for a moment, and then something about his posture relaxed. His features became easier. “I know you have faced dangers of your own. Karigan has told me a little. I know, also, that because of your position you are often in the middle of political struggles, which cannot be easy.”

  “No, it is not,” she murmured, recollecting how, after the assassination attempt on Zachary, she had opposed the schemers who wanted a “deathbed wedding” for their wounded, unconscious king. Moving up the wedding, they believed, would ensure a continuity of leadership, should Zachary die leaving no heirs of his blood, but doing so, she argued, violated king’s law for it disregarded his choice of successor, whose name was seal
ed in the Royal Trust. When Laren threatened to expose them, they’d drugged her and placed her under house arrest. Her future had been uncertain, her very life in jeopardy.

  “I have always assumed that this—” He reached across the stall door and traced the scar that began on her chin, the poorly healed brown scar that slashed down her neck and disappeared beneath her collar. She started at the warmth of his touch. “I have always assumed it happened in the course of your duties.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Brigands along the road.” That was the short, less painful version.

  He withdrew his hand and waited as if he expected more. What did he want? The whole bloody story and its nightmarish details? Instead, she said, “I was younger, a mere lieutenant during Queen Isen’s reign. If I hadn’t been with another Rider, I would have died.” She had almost died anyway. “Is that what you were waiting to hear? That I, too, have experienced close calls?”

  “In a way,” he admitted. “It is a confirmation and a relief.”

  She was incredulous. “A relief? A relief I was nearly gutted and almost died but for the grace of the gods?”

  “Gutted?”

  Laren clenched her hands at her sides. Bluebird nickered as though to comfort her. “The scar doesn’t stop at my throat.”

  He backed away as though struck. “I am sorry. I did not mean to overstep—to pry. I—” He cleared his throat. “What I mean, is that I am relieved that the one who sends my daughter into perilous situations knows those dangers firsthand and does not make such decisions lightly. I mean, I am sorry you’ve known those dangers, but . . .”

  Laren decided to let him flounder this time.

  “I cannot find the words,” he said at last.

  “So, the merchant’s golden tongue has turned to tin?” She could not help herself but gloat a little.

  He laughed. It was a full, hearty laugh that seemed to clear the last of the tension from the air. When he subsided, he said, “I apologize for my questioning. It is not easy to hear your only child is dead. Then the shock of her return . . .”

  “I have had to inform too many families of the loss of their children during my time as captain. Far too many. And I know it was the same for my captain when I was a young Rider, and for his captain before him.”

  “It must be extremely difficult.”

  “It is. I care about each of my Riders, and the last thing I ever want to do is tell a parent they have lost a child.”

  Bluebird turned in the stall, presenting his rump as he lipped stray bits of hay from his bedding. Laren patted him and stepped out of the stall. She latched it soundly behind her and turned to face the merchant once more.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “I should tell you how capable your daughter is, and maybe that would make you easier about her work as a Green Rider. Knowing Karigan, she probably doesn’t talk much about all she’s done.” Laren had overheard enough of Karigan’s conversation with her father yesterday to know this was true.

  “I would like that,” he replied. “She does have a knack for leaving out details.”

  “She knows how much you worry, and admittedly, some of the things she’s done are hair-raising, but it only further exemplifies her competence.”

  She gave him the details of stories of which he had heard only the basics, like those of Karigan’s rescue of the then Lady Estora in the Teligmar Hills, and more of her experiences in Blackveil than she had told him the day before. Laren didn’t tell him everything, certainly little about Cade Harlowe, whom Karigan had been so careful to keep to herself. Another subject she avoided? Karigan’s mirror eye. Few knew of it for her own protection.

  So many secrets.

  Even as Laren attempted to enlighten Stevic about his daughter’s adventures, she held back much. How calculating was the exclusion of details, how it could manipulate emotion and opinion, and make certain truths mislead. How she could soothe the worry of a father by emphasizing his daughter’s cleverness.

  “Not only is Karigan able to find her way out of insane situations,” Laren concluded, “but she helps people along the way, like that ash girl yesterday. It was not only the queen she kept safe.”

  Stevic had bowed his head so that it was hard to know what he made of it all. She rubbed her lower back. The cold had crept up from the floor into her joints. The city bell rang ten hour.

  Eventually he said, “She would have made an excellent merchant, but it is clear she was meant to serve the realm and its people, and not just one clan. I thank you for telling me what she would not, though I sense there are details even you are holding back.”

  She gave him a tight smile. “Greenie secrets.”

  “Hmm.”

  Bluebird rubbed his head on her shoulder, and she turned to pat him, only to find it wasn’t Bluebird, but the horse in the neighboring stall. He was at least sixteen and a half hands high, and was white with a splattering of black spots.

  “No nibbling, Loon,” she told him in a stern voice. He stopped and shook his mane and blinked at her. She turned to speak to Stevic again, but paused and stood frozen for a moment.

  “What is it?” Stevic asked.

  She glanced back at Loon. He’d returned to his hayrack, paying her not a whit of attention. How was it she knew his name? He’d been brought by the horse trader, Damien Frost, last spring with all the other new horses. Loon must have partnered with one of the newer Riders and someone had told her his name, but she couldn’t remember anything about it. She’d have to ask Elgin when she next saw him.

  “Laren?” Stevic asked. “Something wrong?”

  She noted his use of her name and smiled. “No, nothing is wrong.”

  He nodded, getting that intense look in his eyes again as he gazed down at her. “I believe our business is not quite complete.”

  Just then, a horse nose—she didn’t know if it was Loon or Bluebird—shoved her so that she neatly stumbled into Stevic’s arms.

  “No,” she said, looking up at him, “I guess it’s not.”

  EMINENTLY SUITED

  A full night’s restful sleep did Karigan a world of good, and so far this morning there was no reappearance of the strange ice creatures that had terrorized the castle the previous day. At breakfast, however, she heard about the escape of Immerez.

  “I thought you’d want to know,” Mara said.

  And with good reason. Karigan had been caught in his clutches more than once, the first time when she was carrying a desperate message to King Zachary before she was even officially a Green Rider, and the second time in the Teligmar Hills when she served as a decoy to draw away Immerez’s henchmen to enable Estora’s escape to safety. He had never forgiven Karigan for cutting off his sword hand.

  “Thank you,” Karigan replied, picking at her sausage, “I think.”

  “The king has soldiers out tracking him. I am sure they’ll bring him back one way or the other.”

  Karigan decided she would not allow this piece of news to overshadow her day. Mara was right—the king’s soldiers would bring Immerez back, and she felt too good after yesterday’s exertions fighting the ice creatures and then having a full night’s sleep, to get tied up in knots about it, though she suspected that some vestige of a shadow would follow her no matter how much she tried not to worry.

  After breakfast, she sought out Lhean, but learned he was still helping Merla with the warding around Estora’s apartments. Just after ten hour, she strode along the path to Rider stables to visit Condor, her breath fogging in the frigid air. She wore a new pair of wool mittens, a scarf, and a cap knitted by Aunt Brini. They were Rider green, and the envy of several of her fellow Riders.

  The large sliding doors to the stables were closed against the weather, so she entered through a side door. Like the Rider wing filling up with new Greenies who had heard the call, the stables were now quite filled with horses, and a new section th
at had not been used in decades was now occupied. It only made her happier to think about it.

  She turned a corner to where Condor’s stall was and halted. Down the aisle she saw her father, his height and beaver fur coat unmistakable. A Rider stood in his arms. Karigan squinted through the gloom and realized, with a start, that that wasn’t just any Rider, but her captain.

  What in the name of the gods . . . ? Clearly they were unaware of her arrival. They spoke to one another so quietly she could not hear their words. Her father placed his finger under the captain’s chin and tilted her face up, and she grabbed handfuls of his coat and rose on her toes to meet him in a kiss. It was no simple, friendly peck, either, but the lingering, intense kiss of romantic partners.

  Karigan blushed and did an about-face, and rushed from the stables, hoping the cold air would jolt her back to reality, maybe help her unsee the scene. Her father? And Captain Mapstone? She scrubbed her face and hurried back the way she had come.

  She had sensed there was something going on between the two of them, but it still took her by surprise. She slipped on a patch of ice in her haste but saved herself from a fall. Her father, she knew, still mourned her mother, and there had never really been anyone else, at least that she knew of, unless one counted the madam of a brothel in Rivertown, and Karigan did not. Now that she thought about it, she wondered how many fellow merchants had tried to marry off their daughters to her widowed and very rich father for a beneficial alliance. He had gone his own way, however, successful enough he did not require a marriage alliance. At least not for himself. He could get one, he believed, through his daughter and had tried.

  She wanted to be happy for him, but the captain? Not that there was anything wrong with the captain, except that she was her captain.

  “Ugh.” She was having a hard time trying to dislodge the image from her mind of their rather passionate kiss. It was fine for them to be intimate. She just didn’t want to see it!

  What in the hells did they even have in common? A few strides more and she thought, Oh, gods, ME. If not for her, it was unlikely they would have even met. Wind blew her hair into her face and lifted a fine powder of snow off the castle heights, which descended in a glittery cascade. Her father and the captain were at once an unlikely pair and at the same time eminently suited to one another. Both were strong-minded, which, she reflected, might make for an interesting spectacle. Her father would have to use all his charm to draw the captain out. She was not exactly an open book.