Firebrand Page 5

  She continued into the royal section of the castle in the west wing, wondering why she had to face so many challenges.

  The west wing was quiet, though guards and Weapons were present, and a couple of servants hurried along the main corridor, their footfalls silent on deep carpet. The Weapon Rory stood at the door of the queen’s rooms.

  “Ah, Sir Karigan,” he said.

  “Hello, Rory, I was told the queen wished to see me.”

  “She does. Are you, or have you been ill?”

  “What?”

  “Master Vanlynn does not want anyone who is sick to pass through this door.”

  Karigan understood. Winter, with everyone cooped up together, could be a time when illness spread readily. A few waves of colds and fever had already passed through both the castle and city populations. Karigan was one of the few who’d made it through relatively unscathed.

  “I am not sick,” she said, though she realized it would be an excellent excuse to avoid Estora. No running away, she reminded herself. “Just crotchety, apparently.”

  “Very well,” Rory said, and he opened the door. “Come with me.”

  Karigan followed behind him into the queen’s domain. She had never been in the royal apartments before, and found Estora’s, as she walked through the entry, was as well appointed as one would expect, with hangings and coastal landscape paintings from Coutre Province on the walls.

  Rory led her to a spacious sitting room, where Estora rested, propped on a sofa before the fire. She was absorbed in a book, lamplight glinting on her golden hair. Bundled beneath a blanket as she was, it was not obvious she was with child. Or, rather, children.

  Being in Estora’s presence often aroused a sense of inadequacy in Karigan, for Estora embodied graceful femininity and perfection. She wore no uniform nor had she acquired calloused hands from rough work. Her porcelain complexion was unmarred by scars, and a leather patch did not cover one of her long-lashed eyes. Not that Karigan would trade places with her, and not that she wasn’t proud of her uniform and work, but Estora’s simple existence had the power to show Karigan, in stark contrast, what she was not and never would be.

  “My lady,” Rory said, “Sir Karigan.”

  Estora looked up from her book. “Karigan!”

  Karigan bowed. “You wished to see me, my lady?”

  “Yes, yes. Please come sit with me, and don’t be so terribly formal. This is not an official visit. I simply have seen so little of you since your return, and it is not as if I’ve been allowed to come to you. Master Vanlynn insists I repose in my rooms for the duration.”

  Karigan took an armchair beside the fire.

  “Have you need of anything before I return to my post, my lady?” Rory asked.

  “No, thank you, Rory.” He nodded and retreated from the room. “I have been so terribly bored,” Estora continued. “My ladies come to provide me with companionship, to do needlework and gossip, but it is so inane. I rarely get a chance for intelligent conversation, and Zachary is always so busy. But he did bring me this volume of poetry.” She lifted the book so Karigan could see the blue-dyed leather cover. “Have you read the work of Lady Amalya Whitewren?”

  “Lady Amalya Whitewren?” Karigan asked. “No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of her.” But there was a niggling something about the name. Might she have heard of her and just forgotten?

  “Oh, well, she is creating quite a sensation on Gryphon Street, as I hear it, and no wonder for she is a divine poet.” Estora was so enthusiastic about Lady Amalya Whitewren that she began reading some passages from the book. It was romantic poetry in the form of sonnets.

  Karigan tried to conceal a yawn. Besides being short of sleep, she did not share Estora’s enthusiasm for poetry. She liked a good yarn instead, a story she could follow with colorful characters and adventures, although possibly, after so many adventures of her own, she’d become less inclined to seek out such tales. As Estora read on, the warmth of the fire and the crackle of flames lulled her. Her surroundings grew hazy and she drifted.

  “Who was Lady Amalya Whitewren?” Cade asked. His voice was suspicious, demanding. He was testing her, and she must prove she was who she said she was, a Green Rider from the past. His expression remained stern as he awaited her answer, his posture stiff. She saw him clearly, his dark hair and the open collar of his shirt. His eyes bored into her.

  “I have no idea,” Karigan replied.

  Cade’s brows narrowed, and there was a quirk to his lips. He’d poked a hole in her story. “She was only one of the most popular poets of your time.”

  Karigan could only shrug, but then another voice entered her dream, or was it memory?

  “Cade,” the professor said, “if I am not mistaken, Lady Amalya came into prominence after Karigan G’ladheon left for Blackveil.”

  Cade conceded this could be true, but he was eager to continue his questioning of her, his expression no longer stern, but curious, his eyes lively.

  Background voices irritated her like the whine of flies around her ears. Her vision of Cade began to slip away.

  “No,” she mumbled, “don’t go away.”

  “Karigan?”

  She looked up to find Estora gazing at her, her book closed on her lap.

  “Lady Amalya,” Karigan said, trying to force herself to alertness. “She . . . she came to prominence after I left for Blackveil. Wait, I . . . when . . .” She shook her head trying to clear it. “It happened while I was gone. Her rise to prominence.” Her dream, or memory, or whatever, was fast dissipating. She actually reached out as if to grasp Cade, to pull him back, to pull him to her as she had failed to do when she returned to her own time. “Cade . . .” It took a moment, and seeing her pain reflected in Estora’s face, to realize she had spoken her anguish aloud.

  “Karigan?”

  This time it was not Estora who spoke. The voice was male, familiar. Not Cade, and here in the room with her. She looked around, and there beside her stood King Zachary gazing down at her.

  “I am afraid we awoke you from some dream,” he said.

  Karigan scrambled to her feet to give a clumsy bow. “Excellency, my pardon. I—I don’t know what came over me.”

  “It was the poetry,” Estora said, her face lighting with amusement. “I’d say my reading of Lady Amalya’s poetry put you to sleep.”

  “Forgive me. I—” Karigan looked about, as if a magic door of escape would suddenly materialize.

  “The captain isn’t working you too hard, is she?” the king asked.

  “What? I mean, no, Your Majesty.”

  “Hmm. Well, you are supposed to be on leave so you may spend time with your family.”

  “Is she?” Estora asked. “I did not know they were here. Perhaps they should join us for tea.”

  The very idea horrified Karigan, but it was the king who spoke. “I don’t think Vanlynn would approve. The G’ladheon contingent is quite . . .” He searched for the right word.

  “Overwhelming,” Karigan provided.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of formidable, but overwhelming is apt,” he said. “Very passionate people, are G’ladheons. I am afraid they would exhaust even the most vigorous and determined of people.”

  “Perhaps I could tame them with readings of Lady Amalya’s poetry,” Estora replied.

  “I do not think we would want our G’ladheons tamed.”

  Karigan glanced between the two of them, king and queen, observing the humor in their eyes and the ease they seemed to feel with one another. This should be a good thing. She wanted to be pleased for them, and one part of her was. The other part of her was ineffably sad. Sad for all she could not attain herself.

  “With your leave, Your Majesties,” she said almost too hastily, “I should probably go see about that family of mine. I don’t know when to expect them, and they’d
probably rouse the whole castle looking for me.”

  “So soon?” Estora said. “We haven’t even had a chance to catch up—you must come see me again.”

  “Yes,” Zachary said, “the queen could use the company. It would please us both.”

  Karigan tried not to read anything into his words and avoided looking at him. Would this tension between them always exist? She mumbled something polite, gave a cursory bow, and began to walk away. Suddenly she paused and turned around. “Your Majesty?”

  “Yes, Karigan?”

  She noticed he did not use her title. “With your leave, I would like to speak with the Eletian, Lhean.”

  “I am sorry,” he said, his gaze softening. “I would gladly grant you, of all people, leave to see him, but the Eletians have already departed.”

  Karigan clenched her hands, willing herself not to scream or cry or break something. How could Lhean leave without seeing her first? Eletian, she thought, and that was all the answer she needed.

  With constricted control, she bowed once more. “Thank you, Your Majesty.” She turned on her heel and strode out, not wishing to see the pity on King Zachary’s face.

  Estora watched her husband as he gazed after Karigan. She knew his was not just the concern of a sovereign for his servant. He loved Karigan, and had for years. Had fate been different, had he not been a king, or Karigan not a commoner, Estora would not be his wife, but fate was what it was, and his wife she was. She had never expected to love anyone again after F’ryan Coblebay, and had resigned herself to her lot in life, a loveless marriage for a noble alliance and to produce children of royal lineage. But something happened during her betrothal to Zachary. She found herself enjoying his company, admired his acumen, and looked forward to discussing the realm’s issues with him over tea. By the time they married, some ten months ago, she had come to love him. When she discovered his heart lay elsewhere, she wished, though she had been ashamed of it, that Karigan would not return from Blackveil.

  He slowly turned back toward her, his expression troubled. Absently he sat in the chair so recently vacated by Karigan. When his schedule permitted, he took his mid-morning tea with Estora, and they discussed the business of the realm. He made an effort to collect anecdotes about what was happening around the castle to entertain her in her confinement. They’d grown easier with one another and she knew he was fond of her, but he did not love her, not in the fashion she desired, and not in the way he loved Karigan.

  “Do you know who this Cade is that she speaks of?” Estora asked.

  He looked up, startled out of his own thoughts. “Someone she met in the future time. She has revealed little about him, except that he helped her there. Helped her return home, and for that I owe him my gratitude. We all do.”

  Estora knew there was more to this Cade, whether or not Karigan chose to say anything aloud. It was in the pain she carried silently and the story told by a sadness in her face. The yearning when she said his name. She was markedly different from the Karigan who had left for Blackveil last spring, no longer the youth innocent of life’s wounds. The gods had used her harshly, and it displeased Estora to see such a bright spirit now clouded by sorrow and shadows.

  How did her husband feel about the mysterious Cade? Truly grateful, she did not doubt, for helping Karigan return to her rightful time, to him. But was he also, perhaps, a little envious of whatever Cade might have had with her?

  “Is Karigan ready to resume her duties? She seems . . . fragile.” Estora did not think it was too severe a description for what she had just seen.

  “She has been working very hard, but as you know, there have been few message errands to assign due to the weather. When spring comes, it will be Laren who will ultimately decide if she’s ready.”

  Estora did not think he was aware that she knew how he felt about Karigan. After they’d married, when they’d made love for the first time, albeit under especially difficult circumstances—he still battling the poison of an arrow wound—he’d called out a name that had not been hers. She never enlightened him, and though it had never happened again, she knew, intimately, his true feelings.

  “It must be very difficult for her with the injury to her eye,” she said.

  “I am to understand it is painful at times.”

  “Poor thing.”

  Upon Karigan’s return, shards of the looking mask she had shattered in Blackveil had followed her across time, whether propelled by magic, the gods, or some force of nature, no one really knew. One shard impaled her eye and transformed it into a mirror and, like the looking mask, it contained the power to reveal visions of past and future, and who-knew-what.

  The nature of her eye was not widely known, but a secret maintained by Zachary, Captain Mapstone, and a handful of others. Zachary had been reluctant to tell even Estora about it. He feared that common knowledge of Karigan’s strange eye would place her in jeopardy from both those who hated magic, and those who might covet its power.

  “Have you gazed into it?” Estora asked.

  “Only Somial the Eletian has, and some menders by necessity. I would never ask that of her without good reason.”

  She understood why he was protective of Karigan, and understood well. She was joyful her friend had returned seemingly from the dead, and yet?

  And yet.

  She craved to be the recipient of her husband’s most ardent regard.

  She studied him as he gazed into the hearth, firelight playing across his features, shadows highlighting lines of care and a scar that scored his eyebrow. He’d received it in battle with Second Empire, and she shook a little just thinking of it. Someone else might hold his heart, but he was hers. They were bound by marriage, and she carried his heirs. As a man of honor and duty, she did not think he’d stray, but love was potent and one never knew.

  There were other threats, as well. She had almost lost him to the assassin’s arrow. Though his Weapons guarded him well, next time an assassin might prove successful, and there would be, she knew, a next time. It was the nature of his position. Then there was the conflict with Second Empire and his desire to lead his troops. Just as it had been her lot to marry a nobleman for alliance and not love, it was also her lot to see her husband ride off to war, never knowing if he would return, never knowing if her children would get to meet their father.

  She caressed her belly and was a little startled to feel a flutter. “Oh!” she exclaimed.

  “What is it?” Zachary asked.

  She stretched her hand out to him. “Come sit with me. One of your children is kicking.”

  He sat beside her a little shyly, and she guided his hand to her belly. When the flutter came again, his expression turned to one of awe and delight.

  She could not lose this man she had come to love. Perhaps she could not protect him on the field of battle or repel an assassin, but she could, and she would, make sure no one ever came between them. No matter what, no matter who.

  ICE AND FIRE

  Karigan’s head started throbbing about the time she rushed out the door of Estora’s rooms and past Rory. Her lack of sleep and breakfast was catching up with her, along with everything else. She still wanted to break something, or maybe even several somethings, but first she would bury her head in a pillow and rest.

  How could Lhean leave without speaking to her? Her frustration only caused her headache to build. As she strode through castle corridors, anxious to reach that pillow, she heard others around her muttering about the weather, that a storm was brewing. Just what they needed during a winter that had already proven harsh.

  She swung into the Rider wing and briefly greeted those she encountered. Daro Cooper caught her arm. “Karigan, wait.”

  “What is it?”

  “Thought you might want to know that your family is waiting for you.”

  So much for her pillow. She thanked Daro for the warning and pushe
d on down the corridor, her head pounding ever more insistently. When she reached the far end, she paused to collect herself. No reason to burden her father and aunts with her sour mood. She took a deep breath and turned the corner into the ancient corridor she alone inhabited. Light filtered out the doorway of her chamber, clearly indicating they had let themselves in.

  When she entered, she almost tripped over one of her old traveling chests. It had simply been deposited in the middle of the floor. The rest of the scene was not unexpected. Aunt Stace examined the gaudy gilt headboard of her bed, with unicorns and a young girl carved on it, that Garth had dug up gods-knew-where. Aunts Tory and Gretta were inspecting the contents of her wardrobe, which consisted of uniforms and not much more, and Aunt Brini sat at her massive desk, going through the drawers. Privacy had never been one of her aunts’ strong points.

  Her father, meanwhile, unaware of her arrival, waved his arms at his sisters and said, “I don’t think she’d appreciate you going through her things. Brini, put that back! Stace, tell them.”

  Karigan cleared her throat and they all turned immediately and started asking questions, but it was Aunt Brini, at her desk holding a piece of paper, who claimed her full attention.

  “Kari, who are the people in this picture? They are dressed very strangely.”

  Karigan stormed right up to Aunt Brini and snatched the paper out of her hand. It was the drawings the ghost of Yates had made of Cade and other people she had met in the future. It was her strongest connection to people that her memory and the contradictions of time tried very hard to erase.

  “This,” she said in so angry a voice she surprised even herself, “is none of your business.” She gently settled the paper into its proper drawer and slammed it shut, making Aunt Brini flinch. “None of this,” she told her aunts, gesturing at her chamber and unable to stop herself, “is any of your business. I am not a child anymore that you can just go searching through my things.”