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  The incessant drizzle, the damp cold, the sacrifice of her people, all would be worth the fall of Eletia and Sacoridia.

  HOMECOMING

  The house strained against the onslaught of the gale, its timbers groaning and windows rattling. The wind sheared some shingles off the roof and they whirled away, vanishing into the maelstrom of blinding snow squalls. Winter was reluctant to loosen its grip on the world this year.

  The house, fortunately, was sturdily built with its coastal location in mind by one who understood the sea in all its fickle and hazardous moods. Stevic G’ladheon, the foremost merchant of Sacoridia, also possessed a fortune that ensured his house was built with the very best materials by the very best carpenters—shipwrights, mostly.

  A cold draft seeped through the room where he sat reading. He shivered and turned up the flame in his oil lamp, welcoming the extra illumination and warmth it emitted. A robust fire burned on the hearth, and he wore layers of woolens and a scarf, but he still couldn’t keep warm enough.

  He had sensed the storm building all day, saw the leaden sky fill with heavy clouds and spit fitful flurries. He smelled the damp of the sea mixed with the bite of the cold, and he knew they were in for a real blow.

  Sure enough, the storm shrieked up the coast with a banshee’s fury. If he chose to part the drapes from his window and peer through the frosted glass, he’d see only a wall of white.

  He could, he supposed, abandon his icy office for the kitchen, the warmest room in the house, but his sisters were in there, and the servants, too. All that female energy crammed into one room was more than he thought he could bear.

  He hunkered more deeply into his armchair and glared at Brandt’s Treatise of Commerce. It was impossibly dry, and Brandt such a self-absorbed egoist that Stevic considered throwing the volume on the fire more than once. But books were precious, and he’d as soon burn one as he would his own house. He could always set it aside, but he was far too obstinate to give up on it now. He’d read the entire thing even if it killed him.

  He gazed into the golden flames on the hearth and thought of the Cloud Islands, and of how easily he could have assigned himself to this winter’s trading mission there, but he’d sent Sevano instead. His old cargo master deserved the voyage to the tropics.

  Stevic sighed, thinking of the glorious sunshine rippling across azure waves, waves that rolled onto fine sand beaches; of luscious, sweet fruits always in season. He missed his good friend, Olni-olo, who welcomed him into his home—really a hut on stilts situated on a tranquil cove—as one of his family, a family that consisted of five wives and dozens of children. He remembered all those children charging across the sand toward him because they knew he brought candy, and there were the hugs and the laughter. All beneath the tropical sun.

  Aaaah, the sunshine ...

  Someone pounded on the front door, jarring Stevic from his reverie of balmy island days. What fool is out in this storm? he wondered, and he rose from his chair and left his office for the entry hall to find out. His butler, the ever efficient Artos, swept by him and yanked the door open.

  Snow rushed inward with a bitter gust and a figure of white, like a frost wraith of myth, emerged from the tempest and stepped across the threshold. Stevic helped Artos heave the heavy door closed against the wind.

  Whew, he thought when that was accomplished. He turned to their visitor who set a pair of saddlebags on the floor and commenced brushing snow off him- or herself. Quite a lot of snow, actually, but it did not take long for Stevic to discern Rider green beneath.

  “Karigan?”

  The figure turned to him and tossed back her hood. “Father!” She started toward him, pausing only to slip out of her snowy, dripping greatcoat and hand it to Artos. Even as Stevic held her in his arms, he couldn’t believe she was there.

  “What are you—” he began, but just then all four of his sisters spilled into the hall, their voices raised in astonishment, happiness, and consternation, and asking a flurry of questions Karigan had no hope of answering. Just as suddenly as she had come into his arms, she was gone, embracing her aunts and kissing their cheeks.

  “Artos!” Stace snapped. “For heavens’ sake, man, don’t just stand there gawping. Go tell Elaine to ready a bath for Karigan. She’s an icicle!”

  Artos obeyed immediately.

  “What on Earth were you doing out in this storm, girl?” Gretta demanded.

  “I thought I could outride it.” Karigan’s reply was met by tsking from all her aunts.

  “You’re as daft as your father,” Tory said.

  “Now wait a—” Stevic began.

  “I shall have Cook stuff a goose,” Brini announced, and she bustled back toward the kitchen.

  Stevic watched helplessly as Stace, Gretta, and Tory commandeered Karigan and urged her toward the stairs.

  “You need dry clothes, girl,” Gretta said.

  “And slippers,” Tory added.

  Stevic scratched his head in bemusement as his daughter and sisters disappeared up the stairs. “Breyan’s gold,” he muttered.

  He stood there alone in the hall for some moments, still overcome by the unexpected appearance of his daughter. Only puddles of melted snow and the saddlebags remained as evidence that Karigan had really come through the door. He thought to pinch himself to make sure it was not some dream. She’d felt real enough in his arms ... Usually she sent word ahead if she planned a visit. Either advance word had not arrived for some reason, or she was here on business.

  It was hard enough to know what his daughter was up to all the way in Sacor City, and she hardly ever wrote, and when she did, it was often a reassurance that all was well and that the king kept her busy.

  He did not doubt her duties were demanding, but vague reassurances about all being well only served to rouse his suspicions.

  He decided to make himself useful and grabbed Karigan’s saddlebags. He carried them upstairs and left them outside her bedchamber. From within came the voices of his sisters rising and falling in good-natured scolding. Stevic smiled. His sisters were a force to be reckoned with, and it was no surprise that under their supervision Karigan had grown up to be the spirited and rather hardheaded young woman she was.

  Stevic headed back downstairs to his office. He’d pass the time there until Karigan sought him out, as she always did, as soon as she was able to escape her aunts.

  Stevic tried to engross himself in the Treatise of Commerce while he awaited Karigan, but he repeatedly set it aside to pace, the wind howling without. He was anxious to see her and discover what, precisely, brought her home.

  And, as he often did, he wondered why she had to be a Green Rider when a relatively safe and prosperous life as a merchant was ready and waiting for her here at home with her clan. She’d explained the calling to him, the magical compulsion that made her a Green Rider, but it only further appalled Stevic to know his daughter was snared in some spell that forced her to serve the king. Well, maybe force was not the right word, but one could not trust magic. He’d thought all remnants vanquished long ago and was content in that belief, but oh, no, there was just enough to take his daughter away from him.

  He hated worrying about her, that she might fall prey to brigands along the road, or tumble from her horse, or foolishly freeze to death in a blizzard. He ground his teeth, then paused his pacing to gaze upon the portrait of his wife behind his desk. Kariny was gone so many years now. The light was dim in his office, but even so, she looked out from the canvas luminous and breathtaking, almost as if she were about to step through the gilded frame and be there with him alive and laughing, chiding him for worrying so much.

  To a casual viewer, her countenance appeared as serious as that of any portrait subject, but he saw the hidden smile, the glint of humor in blue eyes. Eyes the artist captured so well. She’d been amused when he commissioned the portrait, and during the sitting, she teased him it was too much of an indulgence to hire such an artist of renown to paint a wife as “unworthy”
as she.

  Never unworthy, he thought.

  She died within a year of the portrait’s completion, and Stevic was grateful he’d commissioned it. Otherwise, he feared losing the details of her features in his memory. Whenever he wished, he had but to look at the painting and Kariny came back to life for him in some small measure, the living, breathing woman, her touch and mannerisms, her chiming laugh, the feel of her hair flowing between his fingers.

  And there was his daughter, who so strongly resembled her mother. Karigan was now about the age her mother had been when this portrait was painted. So young.

  Stevic would never see Kariny grow old. He knew she would have done so with grace, her beauty only refining, not fading, as the years passed. Instead, she was stopped in time, captured forever in youthful potential.

  He shook his head. In a sense, he too, was stopped in time. Stopped in time when Kariny, along with their unborn child, died from fever. It made him determined that their first child would go on to live the long, fruitful life denied Kariny. But now that Karigan had grown up, it was impossible to protect her. It did not help that she worked in the king’s service, in a profession that was dangerous.

  Stevic tore his gaze from the portrait of his wife, and his restlessness led him out into the main hall. He was met with the aroma of roasting goose. His stomach rumbled and he decided to brave the kitchen. There he discovered not only his sisters, but Karigan, gossiping over tarts and tea. Cook stood at the hearth turning a goose on its spit. As one they looked up at his entrance.

  Why hadn’t Karigan come to see him first? He found himself a little hurt that she had not.

  “It’s about time you decided to join us, Stevic,” Stace said.

  “I was awaiting Karigan.”

  “What? And you expected us to allow her into that ice shed you call an office with her hair still wet? She’d catch her death of cold. She’s been drying her hair in here, where it’s warm.”

  Stevic glanced at Karigan, bundled in civilian clothes and woolens, and saw that her hair was indeed still damp. And he let out a sigh of relief. He’d had a fleeting notion that maybe she was avoiding him for some reason, but that was preposterous. What cause had she? Still, he wondered why no one bothered to at least inform him she was done with her bath. “Well, I didn’t know I was invited.”

  “Oh, for heavens’ sake,” Brini said. “As if this weren’t your house.”

  “Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

  Brini made a sound of disgust and fetched him a teacup, but did not pour for him. He half-smiled and pulled a chair up to the table. All his sisters were older than he, Stace being the eldest; all unmarried and showing little inclination for it. And why should they when he supported them in relative luxury?

  When they came to Corsa to live under his roof, their backward island ways had vanished in due time, but not their pragmatism; nor did they stand on ceremony with their little brother. Often, just as when they were children, it was four against one when some argument came up. At least they no longer sat on him to force him to submit to their wishes.

  Henpecked though he might feel from time to time, he was grateful for how they stepped in when Kariny died. Karigan had been so little, and he so lost. They provided that maternal core for Karigan, took over when his own grief made him incapable of minding his affairs. They raised Karigan while he traveled on merchanting ventures. While he traveled to escape the pain.

  Yes, he owed his sisters much. He grabbed the teapot and filled his cup.

  “Karigan is too thin,” Gretta said. “I do not think much of that Rider captain if she cannot keep her people properly fed. Now don’t you roll your eyes at me, young lady.”

  Stevic assessed his daughter and he did not think she looked as starved as Gretta suggested. Karigan’s hair hung long and loose, and had acquired a funny cowlick, but essentially, she looked unchanged. The same, but now that he thought about it, different. Something in her eyes. He could not put a finger on it and frowned.

  “So, what brings you home?” Stevic asked Karigan. “If we’d known you were coming, we could’ve readied your room.”

  “Sorry,” Karigan replied. “I’m actually here with messages.”

  Business, then, Stevic thought in disappointment.

  Karigan smiled. “Though I may not be able to leave for a couple days with this weather.”

  As if to accentuate her words, the house shuddered with another blast of wind. Stevic sent a prayer to the heavens that the storm would not abate too soon, stranding Karigan for an extra day or two. Not that he had any faith in the gods, but it couldn’t hurt to ask, could it? He missed her!

  “Have you been well?” he asked.

  “Yep,” she replied, and she reached behind herself for the message satchel hanging over the back of her chair.

  “How are things?” he pressed. “They aren’t working you too hard, are they?”

  “Weapons training is not fun,” she replied with a grimace, “but otherwise things slow down in the winter. I’ve been helping to train new Riders.”

  The chair creaked as Stevic sat back and folded his arms. It wasn’t a very satisfactory answer to his thinking—he wanted details. What might she be holding back?

  She did have a knack for finding trouble. He’d heard all about that swordfight she got into with some brigand at the Sacor City War Museum. The story was all over the merchants guild, and of course he’d received a detailed letter of the event from his Rhovan colleague, Bernardo Coyle, who, as a result, did not consider Karigan a proper match for his son. Stevic had crushed the letter and cast it into the fire, thinking Karigan deserved far better than some ignorant Rhovan for a husband anyway.

  In contrast to what he heard from his fellow merchants about the museum incident, he found Karigan’s own accounting rather lacking. All she ever said about it was that the outing with Bernardo’s son hadn’t gone well. Nothing about any brigand, nothing about a swordfight.

  “You are scowling,” Brini told him. “Careful, or your face will freeze that way.”

  “I am not scowling.”

  “Hah.”

  By now Karigan had undone the flap of the message satchel and drawn out a letter sealed with the familiar gold imprint of the winged horse. She passed it across the table to him. He assumed it was the usual request from Captain Mapstone for supplies. Almost three years ago, Stevic pledged to outfit the Riders if Captain Mapstone helped find Karigan, who, at the time, had gone missing from school. She had managed to get mixed up in Rider affairs and had played a part in preventing a coup attempt against King Zachary. When Karigan had turned up alive after all her adventures, the captain had made sure Stevic followed through on his pledge.

  He cracked open the seal and found Captain Mapstone’s neat, precise writing within. Dear Clan Chief G’ladheon, she began. He wished she’d be more informal with him by now, but he supposed familiarity was inappropriate in official correspondence.

  The letter was, as he thought, a request for additional supplies, but the quantities she asked for took him aback. Over the last year, she wrote, our complement of Riders has grown significantly, to which Karigan can attest. We’ve been grateful for your generous donations of supplies in the past, but the king and I understand this sudden increase in demand may pose a difficulty for you. Therefore the king proposes to compensate you at tax collection time with relief on your annual burden, or to provide a direct payment.

  Then, to his delight, she chose to address him personally and in his mind’s eye, he imagined her leaning closer and lowering her voice as if to take him into her confidence, but his pleasure proved short-lived as he read on: Stevic, the king is preparing for future conflict. Opposing forces are on the move—old enemies of the realm. I cannot say more about it here, but I wish to impress upon you the deep need for these supplies. We look forward to the earliest delivery as weather and your schedule permit.

  Stevic rubbed his chin and read the last line of the letter to the sound of Cook ch
opping parsnips at the sideboard: Whatever may come, you can be sure my Riders will be in the thick of it. Their readiness to face all enemies depends on you furnishing the supplies they need.

  He glanced up at Karigan, who was laughing at something Gretta said.

  Captain Mapstone’s Riders—his daughter—would be in the middle of this conflict, this threat, facing these enemies the king was preparing for.

  Despite the warmth of the kitchen, his insides turned as cold as the storm that raged outside.

  MESSAGES

  Karigan watched as her father folded the letter from Captain Mapstone, running his fingers over the crease again and again, his expression grave. It seemed more lines were scribed into his forehead and around the edges of his mouth than she remembered; that more gray swept from his temples.

  She didn’t know what the captain wrote in that letter, besides the request for more supplies. Obviously something that disturbed him, and she wondered what it could possibly be, but protocol required she not ask—not even her father. It was up to the recipient to decide whether or not to speak of a message’s contents.

  It had been quite a while since Karigan last visited home. Except for her father looking a little older, the rest seemed unchanged, including her aunts. Well, maybe Aunt Tory had grayed a little more, too, but everything in the kitchen was in its place, pots and pans hanging where they’d always hung, the same old farm table of amber wood beneath her hands, Cook at the sideboard. Nothing in her bedchamber had been touched either, her old clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe, a couple years removed from the latest fashions. If anything, the house seemed just a little smaller, as if it had shrunk the tiniest bit. Or she had grown.

  Maybe I’m just used to the castle, she thought. Her father’s house was large; the castle was rather larger.