The two Weapons led her away from the throne, each stony-faced and silent.They passed through alternating shafts of dazzling sunlight and shadow as they walked to the far end of the throne room. Had Torne and Jendara once been this way? Stern and silent? Courtiers, servants, and soldiers who walked the corridors spared her a glance not at all.
They left the castle by a different entrance than she had come in, and passed through a courtyard, skirting the castle. The Weapons gripped her elbows, practically lifting her from the ground, as they escorted her past curious onlookers. They brought her to a whitewashed wooden building, the unmistakable odor of horse manure permeating from a not-too-distant source. The people here were all dressed in green and they were very curious. They stared at her.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“Rider barracks,” the Weapon to her left said, and that was all.
They entered the building, floorboards creaking beneath their feet, and a hint of leather in the air. It was far more appealing than the stone castle. Abruptly they stopped and the Weapon to her right threw open a door. They shuffled her into a room sparsely furnished with a bed, table, washstand, stove, and chair. Sunlight poured through a window, warming the place.
“You will empty your pockets,” said the Weapon who had been at her right. The other stepped out of the room and posted himself by the door.
“I will what?”
“Empty your pockets.” The man lacked any hint of emotion.
Karigan tossed the message satchel on the table—somehow she had managed to hold onto it—and dug into her pockets. She produced the moonstone, some coppers and one silver, the bunchberry flower with its missing petal, the sprig of bayberry, and Joy’s winged horse brooch. The Weapon gathered her things up into one large hand.
“The ring,” he said.
“The—No. You can’t have it.” She covered it protectively.
The Weapon stepped forward. “The ring. Until your identity and purpose is ascertained, we will hold these things.”
“No. Not the ring. All of these things, all except the brooch, were gifts. This ring was my mother’s. I won’t give it to you.”
The Weapon took another step toward her, his face implacable.
Karigan stooped into a defensive crouch. “The gods help you if you take a step closer. I’ve about had it. All I’ve done is deliver a message to the king, yet all I get in thanks is trouble. Well I’ll tell you, granite face, I’ve killed one of your kind, and if you take another step, I’ll do my utmost to damage you.”
That stopped him, though the threat didn’t seriously concern him. He didn’t even bother to draw his blade. “I doubt you could hurt any of us. If so, who was it?”
In a measured breath, she said, “His name was Torne.”
The Weapon’s brows knit together and his eyes flashed angrily. “Torne! A traitor of Saverill’s ilk. A deserter. Keep your ring, then. These other objects will be returned to you if it is found you are not lying.” With that, he turned crisply on his heel and glided out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Karigan supported herself against the table, her knees ready to buckle. What possessed her to challenge a Weapon? When she had killed Torne, F’ryan was in control of her body. She staggered across the small room to the bed and collapsed. Straw poked through the mattress ticking, but it felt, for all the world, like a feather bed to her overtaxed body.
A noise awakened Karigan. Someone was in the room bending over her bed, and it was too dark to see who. She reached out into the gloom and grabbed a handful of hair. Her assailant squeaked.
Karigan tugged harder.
“Ow! Stop it!” a girl cried out. “I’d like to keep my hair if you don’t mind.”
Karigan shook her head. The room was dimly lit by an oil lamp at lowest glow. Orange flickered around the edges of the stove door, and the room, she noticed, was quite cozy. She had slept well into the night. Her “assailant” was a girl of about twelve years old, dressed in messenger green. Her hands were on her hips, and her feet were spread apart, and to Karigan, it was like facing one of her own strong-willed aunts. You won’t finish dinner, eh? she remembered. Aunt Stace wouldn’t let her eat dinner for the next two nights.
“Uh, sorry,” Karigan said. She let a handful of brown hair drift to the floor.
The girl’s stance relaxed. “I’ll accept your apology. Most Riders are jumpy anyway.”
The girl’s name, Karigan found out, was Melry Exiter, and she had been in the midst of checking on Karigan’s condition.
“The nitwits around here don’t have the head to take care of anything.” Melry cleaned and bandaged the whip wound Immerez had inflicted on Karigan’s shoulder. “Look in on her, says the captain. Well, what a mess I did find. You look like Condor dragged you all the way from Selium. Are you sure you were in the saddle?”
“Condor?”
“Yeah, F’ryan’s horse.”
Karigan had grown so used to calling him The Horse that she had forgotten he might answer to another name. Condor fit, though. Condors were not the most beautiful of birds, but they had the capacity for elegant flight. Karigan looked up at Melry’s face and was surprised to see tears trickling down her cheeks. “What’s wrong?”
“F’ryan’s dead, isn’t he? That’s why you came on Condor, right?”
Karigan nodded. “Yes, he asked me to carry on his mission.”
Melry wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve and sat in the chair. “They told me, but I couldn’t believe it till I saw Condor. F’ryan’s the closest thing I ever had to a brother. He played games with me, kept an eye on me, let me tag after him around the castle.”
“I’m sorry,” Karigan said. She knew it was inadequate, but it was what everyone had said when her mother died.
“Yeah. I knew it might happen sometime. I try not to get real close to the people ’round here ’cause they die. It hurts. Captain and F’ryan are the only ones I got close to.”
They sat in silence for some time.“Aren’t you a little young to be a Green Rider?” Karigan asked. Everyone seemed to think she was too young, and this girl was even younger.
Melry laughed, the tears miraculously drying. “I’m too young? You’re too young! I was raised here.”
“Here?” Karigan crooked a brow, disbelieving.
“Yeah, here. Captain found me in the stable. I was newborn, all wrapped in a blanket. Someone, my real mother, left me in the stable.” Melry shrugged at the illogic of such an act. “They think my father was a Rider who got killed months before. He had a reputation with women. . . . Captain took me in, named me after her grandmother, and she and the other Riders raised me. I’m not a proper Green Rider, I just help out at the stable, and sometimes I run messages for the Green Foot.”
“The Green Foot?”
“Yeah. We run messages around the castle. Gives me a few coppers for fair days and Master Gruntler’s Sugary. But I imagine I’ll be a Green Rider when I get older.”
What would it be like to know one’s destiny? Karigan had always thought she would be a merchant like her father, but was now certain that she had never really known. “I’m sure you know what it’s like to be a Green Rider.”
Melry gave her a sideways look. “I’m sure you do, too.”
“What?”
“Are you hungry? You’re kinda pale.”
“What do you mean I’d know what it’s like to be a Green Rider?”
“You have a brooch, don’t you? I can’t see it proper because I’m not a Rider yet, but you have a brooch. That makes you a Green Rider.”
“A brooch doesn’t make me anything.”
“Whatever you say. You want some food? After that, it’s off to the baths for you.”
Karigan perked up. “Bath?”
Melry chuckled and slipped out of the room. Shortly she returned, bearing a platter of steaming meat and potatoes, cheese, and bread. In her other hand she carried a mug of fresh milk. She watched in amazement as Karigan al
l but licked the platter.
“Your color’s coming back,” she said.
Karigan swallowed the last of the milk and wiped the milk mustache off with her sleeve. “Today drained me.”
Melry leaned forward with an expression of deadly seriousness that only near-teenagers can achieve. “There have been rumors flying around all day about you, like you did something today that no one’s done in a million years. Or was it a thousand?” Melry screwed up her face. “I’m not real good with numbers. Frustrates the captain a lot. Is it true?”
“I’ve no idea,” Karigan said. “But I did have a strange day.”
“What happened?”
How could she tell this girl that she had ridden with the ghost of her friend, F’ryan Coblebay, not to mention ghosts who were among the first to be Green Riders? “I—I don’t feel up to discussing it.”
Melry’s face crumbled in disappointment. “Well, they said you traveled fast, whatever that means. Condor is fast, but not the fastest. That would be Ereal’s Crane. Anyway, it’s off to the baths for you.”
Karigan followed Melry out of the room. A Weapon whom she hadn’t seen before fell in step behind them. Melry rolled her eyes. The few Riders they encountered in the corridor goggled at Karigan as if she were some unknown creature from another land, but said nothing. One young man, with sandy hair, actually smiled at her and said, “Welcome, Rider.”
“That was Alton,” Melry said after he passed by. “He’s always full of himself—aristocratic blood, y’know, but not a bad sort.”
A steaming hip bath awaited Karigan in the bathing room. Several other baths were partitioned off by curtains, but the room was empty of other people. She stepped toward the bath, then hesitated, glancing at the Weapon.
Melry followed her eyes, and put her hands on her hips. “You mind watching things from outside, Fastion? Give Karigan a little privacy, will you? If you want to see a naked woman, go downtown.”
Karigan’s eyes widened that Melry would speak to a Weapon so, but Fastion’s expression did not alter as he stepped outside of the room.
“I haven’t decided whether or not Weapons are a natural phenomenon,” Melry said, pronouncing the last word with special care. “The captain says that a lot.”
Karigan smiled, something her facial muscles were no longer used to. “Thanks, Melry.”
“Only the captain calls me Melry. You can call me Mel, if you like.” She left the bathing chamber, whistling.
Karigan sank into the tub, her battered and bruised body easing in the heat. She nodded off, and woke up with a snort to discover she had dozed long enough for the water to become tepid. With a shiver, she stepped out of the bath, toweled herself dry and dressed. Tentatively she opened the door and found Fastion waiting patiently for her outside.
“I’m done.”
He nodded, and they headed down the corridor. They arrived at the room simultaneously with Mel who could hardly see over an armload of green clothes.
“Thought you might need a change of clothes,” she said, “so I stopped at the quartermaster’s. He wasn’t happy about being woke up so late, nor about giving up good uniforms.”
Fastion took up his post outside, and Melry dumped the load on Karigan’s bed. “Hope it fits, and I hope you don’t mind green.”
Karigan sighed, lamenting her wardrobe left in Selium so long ago. “I’m getting used to it.” She held a familiar linen shirt to her shoulders for size. “I think this will work. I borrowed some things from the waystation near North.”
Mel’s eyes grew large. “You were there? That’s wild territory.”
Karigan nodded. “I read a notice that the quartermaster was to be informed when things are taken.”
Mel listened attentively while Karigan listed the uniform pieces she had removed from the waystation. When Karigan finished, Mel yawned. “I’ll take care of it in the morning. Quartermaster’ll skin me if I wake him up again. I’m about done in myself, anyway. Have to get up early to feed the horses.”
Karigan’s eyes fell on the message satchel still lying on her table. “One more thing,” she said. “F’ryan Coblebay wrote a letter to a Lady Estora. Would you mind delivering it to her?”
Mel’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “Oh, no! Estora—she doesn’t know about F’ryan yet.”
“Then best she hears it from you and not a total stranger like me.” Karigan took the letter from the satchel and passed it to Mel, feeling a great deal of self-satisfaction: she had achieved her mission, had delivered the king his message, and even the love letter. And she was still alive.
“I’ll take it.” Tears threatened to spill down Mel’s cheeks again. “You’re right. Best she hears it from me.”
Mel left, and Karigan sagged in exhaustion to the bed. She kicked off her boots and wrapped a blanket around herself, and fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
STEVIC G’LADHEON
“Like old times, isn’t it?” Stevic G’ladheon poked a stick at the crackling campfire. “Just the two of us on the road without an inn in sight.”
Sevano grunted from where he lay on his bedroll with his hands folded across his belly. “Aye, well, you ought to be home looking over accounts, or at the very least, leading one of your caravans.”
The night was thick in this unpopulated countryside, and the piercing glimmer of stars above cold and distant. To the gods watching from above, would their little campfire appear as a point of light like a star? Not even a farmer’s cot could be found for miles along this forsaken stretch of road, denying them even the homey glow of a candle in a window. They were alone, he and Sevano, with the night and the gods.
Stevic rested his arms on his knees. “Do you suppose she has spent many nights like this?”
Sevano grunted again. He knew to whom his chief referred without asking. “Kari is a bold lass. A little dark is nothing to her.”
Stevic pulled his cloak over his shoulders and remained silent for a while, listening to the hiss and pop of the fire. He allowed the dancing tongues of flame to draw his gaze inward. He said, “I can’t just sit at home reviewing accounts, you know. Nor can I lead a caravan. How do you expect me to do that?”
Sevano sighed. “I don’t, but this delay will cost you profit.”
“What is a loss of profit compared to my daughter?”
“Nothing,” Sevano said. “If it were, you would not be you, and I would not follow you.”
Stevic chuckled. “Old fool, old friend. More than a cargo master you are to me.”
“If anyone can find Kari, it will be you.”
When they had reached Corsa after their trip to Selium, Stevic learned the disquieting news that no one had seen Karigan and that she hadn’t come home before them. He commenced to spread the word among his people that Karigan was missing, and he bade them keep watch for her on the road while they set out on trading missions. The word was spread among other merchants and their staffs as well. It was not long before all of Corsa had heard that the heir to the great G’ladheon fortune was missing. Rumors spoke of kidnappers, and some mean-spirted persons had even sent letters demanding ransom for her return. Stevic had followed up on each, but discovered them all to be lies. All lies that delayed him from finding his daughter.
Eventually Stevic and Sevano discarded the rumors as speculation, and left Corsa abuzz. They set out for Sacor City and would look for Karigan along the way. When they reached the city, they would look up Captain Mapstone and see if she had any news of Karigan.
Stevic left the fire and stretched out on his own bedroll. “We’ve a few more days on the road,” he said. Oddly, he looked forward to reaching Sacor City, and dreaded it at the same time. He looked forward to sparring with that fiery Captain Mapstone. Quick she was. Quick to anger, quick of wit. She had a bright burning intelligence he found intriguing.
He dreaded reaching Sacor City because of the news he might find there, the news he most feared. He feared he might find that Karigan was stil
l missing, or worse, if found, was dead.
Sevano snored softly on the other side of the campfire. Stevic could not sleep. Instead, he gazed long and hard at the distant stars and wondered about the capricious gods who inhabited them. If the gods existed, why was his daughter missing?
VISITOR TO THE REALM
Laren Mapstone sat at the base of the king’s dais with his advisors, the Honorable Counselors Sperren and Devon, and Castellan Crowe. The crusty Sperren jabbered aimlessly about supposed civilians who disguised themselves as Green Riders and foolishly risked their lives to deliver unimportant messages to the king.
The discussions had been grinding round in circles for hours now, and night coated the tall windows like black enamel. Pages had come by an hour ago to light wall lamps and candles ensconced in wooden chandeliers. In the flickering light, the figures painted on the ceiling appeared alive, their expressions severely disapproving of those down below them. They were like ghosts who watched.
Finder, fast asleep at his master’s feet, yipped and pedaled his paws in some doggie dream of chasing hares. At least he’d had some dinner and a good stiff walk. The kennel master had seen to that. Laren’s stomach growled—even Finder’s raw horse meat began to sound appetizing, and she would pay with a rotten backache for sitting in this Second Age-stiff chair probably created specifically to torture advisors.
“We can’t just have civilians dressing up,” Sperren droned on, “as servants of the realm.”
Blah, blah, blah, Laren thought.
The king sat preoccupied in his chair, his brown eyes distant, one leg across the other, his chin on his hand. He was crowned by a delicate silver fillet which he regarded, she knew, as more of a collar than a symbol of his kingship. His beard made him appear older, wiser, but Laren knew a tired young man was behind the beard. Crumpled in his lap lay the all-important message. At least, it should have been important.
Laren wondered what world the king’s mind traveled in, for he seemed disinclined to participate in the discussion—rather, the bickering—of his advisors. He was probably walking the hills of his ancestral land with his dogs capering about him, where he could hear the rumble of the sea and the cries of gulls, and feel the free wind on his face. That was where he would be now if his father had not astounded all by naming him heir to the realm.