To save herself if, when the moment came, it seemed her life outweighed that of her attacker.
Not only had she not killed the kidnappers, she hadn’t severely disabled them. She figured they could have bound their wounds and been on the road in less than twenty minutes if they had been able to rent horses or turn their carriage team into mounts.
But the sound of horses, when she heard it, came from the wrong direction. Wen cocked her head and tried to guess how many were in the traveling party. More than two; probably not more than five. And moving at a brisk but hardly breakneck pace.
Which caused her to think of a question she really should have asked before this. “Will anyone from Forten City be coming after you?” A fragment of their previous conversation surfaced in her memory. “You mentioned an uncle.”
“He’s not really my uncle. I just call him that.”
“Whoever he is, will he be coming after you?”
“I’m sure he will.” Karryn did not look sure at all. “I mean—of course he will, won’t he? When he realizes I’m gone.”
“Why wouldn’t he know you were missing?”
Karryn glanced away. “Maybe I didn’t tell him where I was going. Maybe I told him I was going someplace else.”
Wen felt her breath leave her in a hiss. Oh, she would be very glad to be rid of this troublesome, disagreeable girl! “Once he realizes it,” she ground out, “will he send a party after you? Will they be coming from the southwest?” She indicated the road in front of them.
Karryn looked uncertain. “I don’t know. Where are we?”
Wen pointed again. “Southwest is Forten City. Is that where your uncle would be starting out from?”
Karryn nodded. “Yes. Do you think that’s him coming?” Her face was suddenly hopeful.
“Maybe. Though he’s brought an awfully small troop with him if it is.”
“Maybe he couldn’t raise too many soldiers.”
An odd thing for a serramarra to say, Wen thought, but just then the first of the horses trotted into view. Wen motioned Karryn to silence, and they crouched down even farther behind the trees, though they both peered out from behind the trunks. It took another minute for the riders to pass in front of them—a party of four men, all dressed in black-and-gold livery, and mounted on exceptionally fine horses. Wen felt her heart clench in actual pain as they passed before her, elegant, alert, disciplined, deadly.
“They look like soldiers,” Karryn whispered in her ear.
Wen could only nod.
“Maybe they would help us,” Karryn added. “If we told them what had happened to me. Maybe they would help you fight Tover and Darvis.”
Wen shook her head, still unable to speak.
“Why not?” Karryn persisted. “Do you know them? Who are they?”
The girl simply would not shut up, but it scarcely mattered now. The soldiers were out of view, not having spared one glance in the fugitives’ direction.
“They’re Queen’s Riders,” Wen managed to say. “No help to be expected from them.”
Karryn squirmed, seeming to find it impossible either to sit still or to get comfortable. “How long will we have to sit here?”
Wen took a deep breath. Easier to do once the Riders were gone. “Until your friends ride by.”
“They’re not my friends.”
Wen didn’t bother answering. What were Riders doing in this part of the world? What mission were they on for Queen Amalie? Was there some kind of trouble in Fortunalt?
Not her business. She had no connection to anyone at the royal court in Ghosenhall.
Karryn continued to fidget for the next ten minutes, but she grew quickly still when Wen sat up straighter and made a motion for silence. Yes, there was the sound she’d been waiting for—horses’ hooves, probably from a pair of animals, traveling fast. In another minute, two riders galloped into view. Wen didn’t need Karryn’s sharp intake of breath to realize these were the devvaser and his accomplice. They appeared to be mounted on fresh horses bred for the saddle, so they’d probably rented or purchased the animals at the posting house, and they were riding hard.
Karryn only relaxed once the sound of hoofbeats had died away. “Now what do we do?” she asked.
That was, indeed, the question. “I think we find something closer to civilization,” Wen said, cautiously coming to her feet. She didn’t know how long the devvaser would continue onward before he began to wonder where his victim might have gone to ground—and came back to look for her. “A good-sized town, perhaps, where there might be a garrison of soldiers who would be inclined to protect you as we head back to Forten City. Wanting to earn your uncle’s gratitude, you see.”
Karryn nodded. “All right.”
Wen surveyed her. The girl still looked defiant and sulky, but exhaustion was showing through her big eyes and rosy complexion. If she’d been abducted a day and a half ago, she’d probably been strung tight with tension ever since. “Where might the nearest sizable town be found?” she asked.
Karryn shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know where we are.”
Wen’s temper snapped. “By all the gods in Gillengaria, child, why not? You’re the serramarra! When you’re old enough—assuming you have the brains to survive that long, which I am starting to doubt—you will inherit every scrap of this land! Shouldn’t you know where every road, every river, every town, every house is situated? Isn’t that what it means to be marlady? That you own the land—and, in a sense, it owns you?”
“Well, I don’t know!” Karryn fired back. “All my father cared about was where every gold coin in the land might be situated! I don’t know how a marlady behaves! And I don’t know where any town is! So go ahead and leave me if you want to, but stop telling me how stupid I am!”
And with that, Karryn flounced off, back toward the road, in full view of any chance passerby. Wen stood there, watching, as the girl stomped onto the road and set out in a most determined fashion in the direction they had been headed before.
The gelding gave a high whinny and clambered to his feet, tired of lying there, tired of inaction—tired, perhaps, of arguments between bad-tempered women. Wen stroked his nose, refolded the saddle blankets, and sighed heavily.
Tempting as it was, she could not abandon the girl to the many hazards of an open road in Fortunalt.
Leading the gelding by his bridle, Wen set off at a light run until she caught up with Karryn, and then she slowed to a walk. She couldn’t bring herself to apologize, but it was pointless to keep quarreling. “We need a plan,” she said. “I think we look for the nearest town. I didn’t come this way, so I don’t know what’s down this road, but eventually we’ll arrive at a place where we can ask directions. As soon as we can, we probably need to buy another horse.” She paused a moment. “I don’t suppose you have any money.”
Karryn merely shook her head. She was watching her feet as if she wasn’t sure she’d remember how to walk otherwise.
“And I don’t suppose you have any rations.”
Karryn shook her head again.
“Are you hungry? I’ve got some food in my bag.”
“I ate at the inn,” Karryn said in a subdued voice.
“Not much, I’ll wager. Do you want an apple?” It was a peace offering.
Karryn accepted it. “Yes, please.”
They came to a halt long enough for Wen to scoop two pieces of fruit from her bag, then they were on the move again. The exercise actually felt good, though they’d need to ride again soon. Walking would take them too long to get anywhere.
Wen remembered something that had been bothering her. After polishing off her apple, she asked, “Why did you think your uncle might have trouble rounding up soldiers to come after you?”
Karryn loosed a sigh and tossed her own core to the side of the road. “Jasper—he isn’t the kind of person that soldiers listen to.”
Wen digested that a moment in silence. “What kind of person is he?”
?
??He’s a scholar. He reads books and he writes them. But he’s not very physical. I can’t imagine him holding a sword. Or fighting with anyone.” She gave Wen a sideways glance. “He’s much taller than you, but I’m sure you could knock him over without even trying.”
Never having met the man, Wen was sure she could, too. “Well, even if he’s not a soldier himself, he could doubtless round up the House guard to come after you. Couldn’t he?”
“I suppose so,” Karryn said doubtfully.
“Is there a House guard?”
“Sort of. Many of my father’s soldiers were lost in the war.”
Of course. And the queen would have had a vested interest in making sure Fortunalt didn’t build up a private army again anytime soon. Still. A House had to have its own soldiers or who knew what could happen?
Well, the kidnapping of the serramarra, that’s what.
“Let’s go on the assumption that this uncle was able to find a dozen or so men to accompany him on a search for you,” Wen said. “Would he have any reason for thinking the devvaser was the one who had run off with you?”
“I never told him about Tover asking me to marry him.”
“So he probably wouldn’t. And since he doesn’t know where you were when you were kidnapped—gods and goddesses, you really put yourself into a bind, didn’t you?”
Karryn lifted her chin. “Well, maybe he figured it out anyway. He’s pretty smart.”
“Who is he? How did he come to be named your guardian?”
“He’s my mother’s cousin. His name is Jasper Paladar. He came to stay with us after my father died.”
“Did your mother invite him, or did the queen select him to look after Fortunalt until you turn twenty-one?”
Karryn shook his head. “Not my mother. Not the queen. It was the queen’s consort who chose Uncle Jasper.”
That made Wen widen her eyes. Cammon had selected Jasper Paladar to shepherd this girl through the final years of adolescence? Then the bumbling scholar that she’d been envisioning couldn’t be so useless after all. Cammon never made mistakes about people. “Do you like him? Your uncle?” Wen asked abruptly.
Karryn nodded enthusiastically. “So much more than my own father! He’s very kind. And he explains things to me. And he understands things, even when you don’t tell him.”
That endorsement kicked the scholar up a notch in Wen’s estimation as well. Cammon trusted him, and this wretched girl admired him. Still. He hadn’t provided adequate protection for someone in his charge, and Wen believed that was about the gravest error anyone could make.
“Well. We’ll hope we encounter him very soon, headed our way, leading a mass of Fortunalt soldiers,” Wen said. “But I think our odds will improve if we ride for a while and start looking for a settlement of any size. And this time,” she added, “I’m sitting on the front of the saddle.”
Karryn laughed, which made her look less like an obdurate and frightened child, and more like a privileged and carefree young lady. “If you want. I can’t imagine it’s too comfortable no matter how we sit.”
“True enough,” Wen said, tugging the horse to a halt.
She’d just put her foot in the stirrup when Karryn said, “Wait a minute. I keep forgetting to ask your name! You know mine.”
Wen hesitated just a second, staring over her shoulder at the girl. Then she said, “My name is Willa.”
Chapter 3
THEY RODE FOR ANOTHER TWO HOURS AT A FAIRLY GENTLE pace. At first, Karryn chattered about topics that Wen found unutterably boring—her friends, her clothes, a ball she had attended last winter. But soon enough she began yawning heavily and allowing long pauses to build up between her sentences. Eventually her arms went slack around Wen’s waist and her head rested against the back of Wen’s. Wen waited with a sort of dour impatience for the girl to fall so deeply asleep that she loosed her hold and actually fell from the saddle.
They needed to find a place to stop, and they needed to find it soon. Fortunately, unlike Karryn, Wen actually had a moderate number of coins in her saddlebag. They’d be able to pay for food, a horse, and overnight lodgings if they needed to. If the tall, soft, wise, kind uncle didn’t catch up to them first.
When they came to a crossroads that looked like a major route, Wen ruthlessly shook Karryn from her drowsy state. “Wake up. Does any of this look familiar? Where do you think this road leads?”
Karryn sighed and sat up. “I thought you said we wanted to go southwest?”
“Eventually we do. But I’m wondering if there’s a bigger town closer to us if we head northeast?”
Karryn covered her mouth to hide another yawn. “I told you I don’t know. I don’t even know where we are.”
“Just think about it,” Wen said. “Marlords—and marladies—are supposed to have some mystical connection to their land. If—”
“I’m not a mystic!” Karryn exclaimed, sitting straight up. “We don’t harbor mystics in Fortunalt!”
“I thought you despised your father and everything he stood for,” Wen shot back. “He’s the one who hated mystics. You should welcome them.”
“I don’t hate them,” Karryn said stiffly. “I just don’t want anyone calling me a mystic. I don’t have any magic at all. I don’t want any.”
Wen sighed. “Well, all right. Do you think we should go left or right? Not that I’ll do what you say, but I thought I’d ask your opinion.”
“I think you should go straight,” Karryn said crossly. “That’s where the next town is.”
There was a little silence between them for a moment. “Really?” Wen said at last.
“I don’t know why I said that,” Karryn replied.
Wen was grinning as she urged the gelding forward. “Well, let’s just see. At any rate, I’m guessing your devvaser friend went left, chasing after us, so straight is a better choice than that.”
They had only ridden another fifteen minutes when they topped a low hill and saw a market town spread out in the shallow valley below them. It was nowhere near the size of Ghosenhall or Forten City, but there were shops, there were stables, there were inns.
“You might not have magic in your veins,” Wen said, a smile in her voice, “but you definitely have serramarra blood. Let’s go find food and a fresh horse.”
A meal revived Karryn and she claimed she didn’t need to sleep. “I want to go home,” she said. So Wen bargained with a stablemaster to buy an aging but well-behaved mare, and pretty soon they were on the road again. Not long after, they came to the crossroads and headed southwest.
“Here’s where it gets tricky,” Wen said. “We want to be on the road to flag down your uncle, if he’s coming, but we don’t want to be seen if the devvaser turns back to find you. If we hear anyone coming this way, we want to get out of sight, fast. So we need to ride slowly, and single file, listening very hard. And we need to be very quiet.”
She didn’t have much real hope of Karryn falling silent, but, in fact, the girl was just tired enough to need all her energy to ride. Wen sat straight in her saddle, head bent a little, all her senses alert. She probably should have hired an escort while she was buying a horse. True, she was a much better fighter than either the devvaser or his brutish friend, but she could get unlucky; she could be hit from behind; she could take a hard blow that incapacitated her and allowed the kidnappers to snatch Karryn again. Wen didn’t like the girl much, but she deserved more protection than a lone guard could provide.