‘Why?’
Gilan appealed to Pauline. ‘Still using his saxe knife to do his barbering, is he?’
Pauline nodded, slipping her hand inside her husband’s arm. ‘Unless I can catch him at it,’ she admitted. Halt regarded them both with a withering look. They both refused to wither, so he abandoned the expression.
‘You show a fine lack of respect for your former mentor,’ he told Gilan.
The younger man shrugged. ‘It goes with my exalted position as your commander.’
‘Not mine,’ Halt said. ‘I’ve retired.’
‘So I can expect little in the way of deference from you?’ Gilan grinned.
‘No. I’ll show proper deference . . . the day you train your horse to fly backwards around the castle’s turrets.’
Pauline knew that these good-natured insults could continue for some time. She decided to interrupt the flow.
‘What did you want to see us about, Gil? Are you planning to steal my husband away?’ she asked.
Gilan had been on the point of delivering another carefully composed insult to his former teacher. Her direct question caught him off balance.
‘What? Oh . . . no. Far from it. I wanted to talk to you. Both of you.’
Pauline indicated a low table, with four comfortable chairs set around it, arranged by the fireplace. ‘Then shall we sit and talk?’ she suggested.
But Gilan demurred. ‘Not here. I want to talk to you two, and to Cassandra and Horace. They’re expecting us in the royal apartments.’
As Commandant of the Rangers, Gilan could summon Halt and Pauline to Araluen. But he could hardly do the same to the Princess Regent and her consort, old friends or not. He led the way to the door, held it open for Halt and Pauline, then led the way to the stairs.
‘Upstairs . . . downstairs . . . upstairs again. Do you have any pity for my creaking old bones?’ Halt complained.
Gilan was walking briskly towards one of the spiralling staircases that led to the upper levels. ‘Not a bit,’ he tossed cheerfully over his shoulder.
Horace and Cassandra were waiting in the living room of the royal suite. Gilan tapped at the door and, when he heard Cassandra’s response, he opened the door and ushered his two companions inside.
As they entered, Cassandra rose from her seat and moved to embrace them both.
‘It’s so good to see you!’ she exclaimed. She could not have meant it more. The responsibility of running the Kingdom was a heavy burden and Halt and Pauline were more than friends. They were lifelong supporters. Halt, in particular, had spent many years as her adviser and protector in dangerous situations, from Skandia to the mountains of Nihon-Ja.
Horace waited until his wife had welcomed them, then he embraced them both in his turn. Halt studied him carefully.
‘How’s life in Castle Araluen?’ he asked. Horace’s honest face looked a little rueful.
‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘But I miss the old days.’
‘You mean the old days when you could skive off with this rascal to all corners of the earth and avoid responsibility?’ his wife put in.
‘Exactly,’ Horace said in a tone so heartfelt that they all laughed.
Halt turned his gaze on the princess. ‘I seem to remember you doing a certain amount of skiving off yourself.’
She waved a hand in a negative gesture. ‘Let’s not discuss that now,’ she said.
There was a light tap on the door that led to Madelyn’s rooms.
‘Come in,’ Cassandra called, and the door opened to admit the young princess.
‘Halt. Lady Pauline. How wonderful to see you.’
Madelyn hesitated for a second, then, seeming to come to a decision, crossed the room and embraced them both. While she was hugging Pauline, Halt happened to glance at her parents. As he did, he sensed the unmistakable tension in the room. Cassandra, who had never been able to hide her feelings from Halt, had a slight frown, and Horace was looking decidedly uncomfortable. Madelyn stepped back from hugging Pauline and nodded a greeting to Gilan.
Horace cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘Very well, Madelyn,’ he said. ‘You’ve said your hellos. Now off you go.’ He gestured towards the door leading to her apartment. Maddie smiled at the new arrivals, and retraced her steps.
‘We’ll talk later,’ Halt called after her. He had an easy relationship with Maddie and had served as her confidant many times in the past.
She gave him a sad little smile. ‘Of course,’ she said, and closed the door.
Halt looked curiously at his two old friends. ‘Trouble in paradise?’ he said gently.
Cassandra gave an annoyed shrug. ‘Oh, she’s just so exasperating, Halt!’ she said. ‘She’s headstrong and irresponsible, and so infuriating. And if you try to speak to her about it, she huffs and sighs and rolls her eyes so that you simply want to strangle her!’
Halt rubbed his beard thoughtfully. ‘Sounds serious,’ he said. ‘Huffing and sighing and eye rolling, you say? I’ve never heard of a teenage girl behaving like that.’
‘You can joke about it, Halt,’ Horace put in. ‘You don’t have to put up with it. She’s had Cassandra worried sick. She sneaks off into the forest at the dead of night, alone. We’ve restricted her to her quarters for two weeks. Maybe that will teach her a lesson.’
Halt’s expression told his old friend that he doubted it. A headstrong girl like Maddie would only become more stubborn with that sort of restriction.
Horace saw the sceptical expression and felt he had to add more. ‘She’s taking risks and she just assumes she can take care of herself. That forest can be dangerous!’
‘But basically, she’s a sensible girl, isn’t she?’ Halt asked. ‘And I imagine she could look after herself. She’s good with a saxe. I taught her, after all. And I hear she’s pretty good with that sling of hers.’
‘Who told you that?’ Cassandra said sharply. Halt spread his hands in a defensive gesture.
‘Your father might have mentioned it. I was chatting with him an hour ago.’
‘Father talks too much,’ Cassandra said, a scowl crossing her face.
Halt smiled tolerantly at her. Over the years, he’d learned that parents tended to be the toughest critics of their own children. Grandparents and uncles – and he classed himself as an honorary uncle to Maddie – tended to see the fuller picture, and be able to discount any minor aberrations in behaviour, gauging them against the child’s overall reasonable nature.
Pauline knew it too. But she also knew that nothing could be more annoying to parents than an outsider telling them that an errant child wasn’t anywhere near as bad as they were making out.
‘Perhaps it’s none of our business, Halt . . .’ she began.
‘No. It’s all right,’ Cassandra said.
‘What does she do in the forest?’ Halt asked her.
‘She tracks animals. And she hunts.’
‘Is she any good?’
Cassandra shrugged uncertainly. Horace answered before he could stop to think.
‘Apparently yes. She never comes back empty-handed. But she gives the game to the castle guards.’
Cassandra looked at him. ‘How do you know that?’ she demanded.
Horace looked confused. He dropped his gaze from hers. ‘I . . . err . . . I may have heard some of the guards discussing it.’
‘And you didn’t choose to share this with me?’
‘I didn’t think there was any point. I knew you’d just get angry about it.’
‘And you were right! If you’d seen your way to –’
Pauline clapped her hands sharply. It was a measure of her personality and self-confidence that she would call the Princess Regent to order in such a peremptory fashion. And a measure of Cassandra’s regard for the tall, blonde Courier that she would accept such brusqueness.
‘Horace! Cassandra! That’s enough!’ They both stopped and looked at Pauline and she continued in a milder tone. ‘You’re not the first parents to be driven crazy by a teenag
e daughter. And you won’t be the last. It’s difficult, I know. But don’t let it become too big a thing. Keep it in perspective. You need to maintain a united front, not bicker among yourselves.’
The two looked meekly down at their shoes. Halt smiled to himself again. They looked like naughty children rebuked by a stern parent.
‘And it seems to me,’ he said, ‘she’s not the first princess to go off in the woods at night looking for adventure.’
Cassandra screwed up her lip. ‘Oh, don’t you start.’
‘Basically Maddie’s a good kid,’ he continued. ‘She’s smart and brave and resourceful. Because that’s the way you’ve raised her.’
‘Well,’ said Gilan, a little impatiently, ‘if that’s settled for the moment, perhaps we could discuss the reason I asked to see you all.’
They turned to face him, wondering what he was going to say. They didn’t have long to wait.
‘It’s Will,’ he said. ‘I’m very worried about him.’
‘IT’S BEEN EIGHTEEN months since Alyss’s death,’ Gilan said. ‘In that time, can any of you remember seeing Will laugh, or even smile?’
Sadly the others shook their heads. They exchanged uncomfortable looks. Then Pauline spoke.
‘It’s heart-breaking. He was always such a cheerful, happy person. Always grinning, always joking. These days, it’s as if a light has been extinguished inside him.’
‘Of course, we can’t expect him to just shake off the effects of losing Alyss in a few months,’ Halt put in. ‘She was his soul mate, after all, and losing her was a terrible shock to him.’
Alyss’s death had been the result of a terrible, tragic mischance. She had been returning, with a small escort, from the Celtic court, where she had been overseeing the renewal of the defence agreement between Araluen and Celtica. It was a routine trip and a routine mission. But on the way home, she had chanced upon a situation in Anselm, one of the southern fiefs.
For some months, a gang of criminals, led by a former mercenary named Jory Ruhl, had been preying on villages in Anselm and its neighbouring fiefs. They would capture children then demand ransom payments from their parents. Since villagers weren’t usually wealthy people, often the entire village would be forced to contribute to the ransom.
A local constable had received word that Ruhl and his gang were meeting one night at an inn called the Wyvern. Coincidentally, this was where Alyss had chosen to stay. The constable had organised a posse of volunteers and marched on the Wyvern with them.
Unfortunately, the attempted arrest was badly bungled. Ruhl received warning of the approaching posse and he and his men were making their escape when the constable and his force arrived on the scene. A fight broke out and one of the posse was killed. Seeking to create a diversion while they escaped, Ruhl and one of his men set fire to the inn. The dry thatching of the roof was soon ablaze and smoke filled the small saddling yard. Guests in the inn began streaming out, seeking safety, and soon, in the swirling smoke and the mass of shouting, frightened people, the constable had no way of knowing who was who. In the confusion, Ruhl and his four henchmen escaped into the forest.
Alyss and her three armed guards were among the guests who had escaped from the burning building. But as she stood in the saddling yard outside, the blonde Courier had looked up and saw a face at an upper window.
It was a five-year-old girl, struggling desperately to unfasten the latch on the window, which was jammed. As her panic grew, smoke filled the room and she began to cough, her eyes streaming. Blinded by the smoke and disoriented, she staggered away from the window and was lost to sight.
Without hesitation, Alyss plunged back into the burning inn, ignoring the warning cries from her guards. She fought her way up the staircase, which was already aflame, and headed for the front of the inn, her eyes closed and her face shielded from the raging heat by her forearm. She moved instinctively, feeling her way along the wall with her other hand.
She found the door latch and forced it open, lurching into the room where the girl had been. She dropped to her hands and knees, where there was a small pocket of clearer air, and crawled towards the window. It was visible only as a vague square of light against the black, roiling smoke.
On the floor below the window, she could just make out the crumpled form of the young girl. Alyss crawled rapidly towards her and rolled her over, seeing with relief that her chest was still rising and falling as she breathed, striving hopelessly for a lungful of clean air. Alyss stood and drew her heavy dagger. She jammed it into the narrow gap between the window and its frame and jerked on it with all her strength. With a splintering crack, the window flew open, banging back against the outside wall. Alyss stooped and gathered the girl in her arms, heaving her up onto the sill. In the yard below, her guards were watching, horror written on their faces. They could see how badly the inn was aflame. The section where Alyss now stood was one of the few places untouched so far.
‘Catch her!’ Alyss yelled, and shoved the unconscious girl out the window, sending her sliding down the slope of the thatch. As the girl tumbled over the edge, the three guards moved forward to catch her. The weight of the falling body sent one of them sprawling in the dust and the other two staggered. But they managed to break the girl’s fall successfully. Then they looked back up to the window, where Alyss was beginning to clamber out.
A wall of flame shot up out of the thatch, between Alyss and the edge of the roof. The timbers and rafters below that point of the roof had been burning, unseen, for some minutes, and the fire suddenly broke through. Alyss was lost to sight. Then, with a terrible rumbling crash, the entire section of roof above and around where she was standing gave way and collapsed in a mass of flames and sparks. In a fraction of a second, there was nothing left but a gaping, smoking hole in the front of the inn. Then more timbers burned through and the entire front wall of the inn collapsed in on itself.
Alyss never had a chance.
‘I know,’ Gilan said now, breaking the long silence that had followed Halt’s statement. ‘It’s not an easy thing to get over.’
They had all cast their minds back to the terrible day when they had heard about Alyss’s death, seeing it in their minds as it had been described by Alyss’s distraught guards.
‘It was so typical of Alyss,’ Cassandra said quietly, ‘to give up her own life like that. Her guards said she never hesitated – just ran into the fire to save that girl.’
‘Maybe it wouldn’t have been so hard on Will if we’d been able to bury her,’ Pauline said. The fire had been so intense that Alyss’s body had never been recovered. ‘Funerals may be terribly sad affairs, but at least they give some sense of finality to the people left behind. I know I feel as if there’s a gap that hasn’t been filled. It must be so much worse for Will.’
Gilan waited a few seconds before he spoke again. ‘I can understand his grief and his sense of loss over this whole matter,’ he said. ‘That’s something he’ll have to come to terms with eventually. And I’m sure he will. But there’s something else.’
The others all looked at him curiously. But Halt sensed he knew what the young Commandant was talking about.
‘Jory Ruhl and his gang,’ Halt said quietly.
Gilan nodded. ‘He’s become embittered about the fact that they escaped. He’s set himself the task of catching them. He’s on a personal quest for revenge and the obsession is feeding the blackness in his mind and soul until he thinks about nothing else.’
Cassandra gave a sad little cry and put her hand to her throat. The thought of Will, her long-time companion – almost a surrogate brother – being driven and dominated by such a black passion brought tears to her eyes. She remembered their days together on the island of Skorghijl long ago, when he had protected her and cared for her and kept her spirits up through the darkest of times. Remembered him in Arrida, coming to their rescue at the last moment, just as Halt had known he would.
You couldn’t think of Will without seeing his unruly mop
of brown hair and that cheerful grin on his face. Will had always been filled with an inner energy. He was enthusiastic and inquisitive, forever seeking something new and interesting in life. It was this trait that had led the Nihon-Jan people to christen him chocho, or butterfly. He seemed to flit cheerfully from one idea to another, from one event to the next.
Cassandra had seen Will several times since Alyss’s death, although he tended to avoid his old friends. He was a grim-faced, grey-bearded figure these days. There was no sign of the old Will. Pauline was right. It was as if a light inside him had been extinguished.
‘He needs something to take his mind off this idea of revenge,’ Halt said. ‘Can’t you assign him to a mission – give him something to occupy his thoughts?’
‘I’ve tried that,’ Gilan said with a frown. He paused before continuing. ‘He’s refused on two occasions.’
Halt was shocked by the words. ‘Refused? He can’t do that!’
Gilan made a helpless gesture. ‘I know, Halt. And so does Will. If it happens again, I’ll have to suspend him from the Corps.’
‘That would kill him,’ Horace said.
Gilan looked at him. ‘And he’s well aware of it. But he doesn’t care. And that means I can’t afford to assign him another task. He’ll refuse and I’ll have to take action. At the same time, I can’t afford to have my most effective Ranger sitting on his hands brooding about Jory Ruhl and his gang and planning how to catch them. All that aside, he’s my friend and I hate seeing him this way.’
‘I thought he’d already caught some of them?’ Horace asked.
‘Three of the five. He caught one only two weeks ago. Henry Wheeler was his name. Will confronted him and Wheeler tried to escape.’
‘What happened?’ Halt asked, although he dreaded to hear the answer. People didn’t just ‘escape’ from someone as skilled and deadly as his old apprentice, and he didn’t want to hear that Will had blood on his hands.
Gilan seemed to sense his thoughts. He shook his head abruptly.
‘Wheeler is dead. But it wasn’t Will’s doing. He tried to attack Will and fell on his own knife.’