by F. E. Greene
“You weren’t at the banquet,” Paxton said. “I thought you might attend this one.”
“I had hoped to, but I needed to visit a friend. I brought you something.” Reaching into a pocket, the king withdrew a pale disc that glowed faintly in the moonlight. “Souvenir,” he announced, resting it on Paxton’s open palm.
The souvenir was lightweight and rigid. Five slits accented a snowflake-shaped imprint on its desiccated face. Flipping it over, Paxton found more symmetrical grooves.
“This looks like one of Henny’s pancakes. I’m guessing I shouldn’t eat it?”
The king laughed again. “No, although long ago some folks called it a sea biscuit. This is only a test. It was once a living creature. After it dies, the sea washes it ashore, and the sun bleaches its skeleton.” He reached into another pocket. “This is agarope. Once knotted, it won’t come undone.”
Paxton accepted the plait of coarse threading. It weighed less than the sea biscuit and looked blacker than tar. Lifting the rope to his nose, he regretted it instantly.
“This smells like Calen’s tuck after he eats too much cheese.”
“Agarope is unpleasant, but it’s also impermeable. You can’t burn it with a flame or slice it when it’s dry. Wet, it becomes even more resilient. Feel free to test those theories. I’m sure Thaddeus will be glad to help you.”
Enticed by the idea, Paxton wondered if the castle schooler was still awake. He hadn’t noticed Thadd’s distinctive southland drawl in the meeting. Like Paxton, he welcomed the chance to set anything on fire in the guise of science.
Thanking the king, Pax tucked both gifts into his pocket. Then he tripped over a different thought. “Did these come from Ungott?”
The king nodded.
“What were you doing there?”
“Running an errand. I was sorry to miss the banquet. Have you spoken with Pearl yet?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure she likes me,” Pax admitted. “I ran into her twice today.”
“So you had time to visit?”
“No, I mean – I ran into her. Like a pigeon runs into a window.” He smacked his hands together for emphasis. “It’s a miracle she wasn’t hurt. My mother would have loved that.”
“Why are you always running, Pax?”
“Because I want to go somewhere,” he said. “I think if I run fast enough, then I’ll feel like I’ve actually traveled. I’ve gone back and forth through these halls so many times, it doesn’t seem like I’m moving anymore. All I want is to have a purpose like the other lads or Varrick. Or even Owyn. Everything he does is dull, but at least he has something to do.”
“The Gloaming isn’t enough for you? That place would turn most men into puddles, but you scout there quite a bit. Sometimes you even go alone.”
Paxton winced. “You know about that?”
“Yes, and I won’t tell if you promise not to do it again.”
“Varrick goes into the Gloaming alone. Carys does, too. Even Calen snuck in once.”
“But they aren’t supposed to.”
The king placed a hand on Paxton’s arm, the injured one, as if to remind them both how close death had crept that morning.
“Know this, Pax – you bear the standard. The time approaches when you’ll leave the castle, not on a whim but in true service. I see your departure like men once saw ships adrift on the distant sea, a flickering swell of mercurial light among froth and slipping fog. Now that drift becomes a venture.”
Motionless, Paxton drank in the words. The king rarely talked like Ilis often did – in ambiguous phrases that tickled the ears. The less each said, the more they both seemed to mean.
“How will I know when to leave?” he asked.
The king smiled. “When you no longer want to.”
Paxton couldn’t believe it. Next to serving the king, leaving the castle had been his sole desire since he grasped a stife and loosed its blade.
“I’m ready now,” he reminded the king.
“I know, Pax.” Gratitude enriched his voice. “But I need you to stay here – for now, if not forever. There are things you might still learn, even in a place you know so well.” Rising, he shrugged off the traveling jacket and draped it over one arm. “Maybe tomorrow you can do something nice for Pearl. Make amends. Begin again.”
“How? By not running her down?”
“That’s a start,” the king chuckled. “Pearl hasn’t seen the garden yet. You could escort her there between breakfast and lessons.”
Unconvinced, Paxton leaned against the wall. He waited for more voices to course down the weephole, but apparently the meeting had ended. Everyone other than Varrick would retire for the night. At dawn the autumn routine began.
“Tell her you like maps,” the king called back as he started down the slope.
Paxton gave a noncommittal grunt. He watched the king follow the wall’s base toward the south gate. Beyond it waited the sunken steps. Beyond those, the fosse. Beyond that, the forchard. Somewhere farther sat the castle pale. Beyond there, ever-changing, the world.
For a moment Paxton thought of joining the king. Then, like a pelting downburst of rain, he felt the renewed press of expectations and rules that weren’t really rules. Obedience made him stand and roll the canvas patch into a bundle.
As he trudged along the slanted ground, rounding the apartments, the next day’s schedule unraveled in his head. Pax would find himself doing a hundred predictable things. Join the boys for breakfast. Attend lessons with Thadd. Share lunch with the outriders and survive drills with Carys. Help his mother. Avoid Owyn. Climb. Hide.
Wait.
The king’s recent advice disrupted his litany. Accepting it, Paxton decided to change his routine. After breakfast, he would find Pearl and invite her to visit the garden. Whatever her reply, the act of asking would be different. A release from the predictable. A beginning.
Striding with new purpose across the courtyard green, the castle-born lad moved forward.
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Sneak Preview of REFUGE
Please enjoy a Sneak Preview of Refuge
Book Two in F. E. Greene’s fantasy adventure series
Available now in Paperback and eBook
Kindle Unlimited subscribers read for FREE
In Refuge, two seasons have passed since Pearl Sterling entered the castle. As she continues to adjust to her new home, Pearl finds herself enmeshed in an unseen war.
After a violent attack during a routine outing, the kingsfolk confront a distressing truth – the sanguinambit is failing, and the prince has returned.
To seal the breach and defeat the king’s archenemy, the inkeepers must amass four ancient treasures. With the unreadable book already in the castle, the outriders infiltrate the savage land of Ungott to retrieve the unlightable lamp.
How will Pearl find the courage to join the lamp campaign when Varrick Slone, the king’s formidable retriever, believes she should stay behind? And Pearl most certainly agrees…
The second book in the By Eyes Unseen saga, Refuge explores the themes of perseverance and sacrifice through the ongoing adventures of unlikely heroes who live in a hidden castle.
Keep reading to enjoy the first four chapters of Refuge.
Refuge ~ Chapter One
With new wounds bleeding atop old scars, Varrick crept along the edges of the courtyard green.
He headed for the castle infirmery, a place that should trouble most inkeepers but didn’t. Anyone living in the castle quickly learned that a session of tending always concluded with a chance to open a painted cupboard and choose a reward. The prizes changed daily. So did the patients. But every visit ended with the pr
omise of a gift.
For Varrick, the tending was enough.
He reached the infirmery in a mood as brutal as the weather. Clutching his middle, he tugged open the pinewood door and braced himself on its frame. Frosty air slunk around him. Somewhere a bell rang once.
Inside he found Derrie Kenelworth and her son Paxton putting the place in order after what Varrick guessed was another day of bruises, scrapes, and tummy aches. This would give them a bedtime challenge.
Wanting to call out, he only managed a grunt as the stair steps shifted and blurred. Heat from two hearthfires made his skin feel flushed. Sweat broke out under his clothes. He was still overwarm from the humid Gloaming where winter never cleansed its stifling air.
Both Kenelworths snapped into action. Although each could talk a darkgard to death – and with their shared natter trounce a whole ruck – neither offered more than low, guiding tones as they helped Varrick down the trio of steps.
“Straight or crooked?” Paxton asked.
Without slowing, Derrie pulled back the retriever’s shredded shirt. “Crooked chair.”
Relieved to hear it, Varrick let Paxton bear all of his weight until he was settled. Only severe wounds went to the straight chair. The crooked chair was more comfortable with its padded cushions and a footrest for boots. Both chairs could be lowered and raised by machines that Varrick didn’t understand. Hydraulics, Owyn called them. Another puzzlement from Before.
Eyes closed, the retriever listened to Derrie, the king’s tender, bark commands at her tractable son. The woman wore her purple sash like an Orldic vestment, and Varrick admired her for it. The castle infirmery was the only place he surrendered all control to a woman. And only if that woman was Derrie Kenelworth.
With a soldier’s focus, Paxton helped his mother until their efficient dance of fetching and prepping had finished. Then Derrie began her examination. The injury went deep, Varrick could feel, and the tender’s grim expression confirmed it.
Paxton, however, was impressed. “Where did this happen?”
“Gloaming. Darkgard.” While the room spun, Varrick worked to breathe between words. “Tried to hitch a lift into the cenacle. Took a bit of me when it couldn’t.”
“Took its dinner by the look of it.” Ordering her son to go find Pearl Sterling, Derrie staunched the bleeding cuts with yarrow patches and something named tape. Her arsenal of metal tools – none smelted in Orld – looked as foreign to Varrick as stives might to a tender. Derrie used them all with a warrior’s grace.
Had they met under less dire circumstances, Varrick would have avoided Derrie at every turn. Outside the infirmery she was silly and shrill. She confused enthusiasm with volume, and only two things dulled her gusto – true injury and Paxton’s future.
But when summoned to her purpose, the king’s tender transformed. Her soft face lost all hint of merriment, and its laugh lines hardened to flint. Even her son behaved, mostly, in those moments.
Wiping her hands, Derrie shared her diagnosis. “Five lacerations, all long, three deep. You’ll be resting several days and healing until spring. Gulp.” She held a pestle to his lips.
“I’ve had worse,” he reminded her before drinking. Then he grimaced. While the taste of a gulp never improved, he preferred it to Derrie’s other concoctions. A sip tasted better, but it worked too slowly. A nap brought unnatural and prolonged sleep – something Varrick strove to avoid.
Derrie offered him a cup of water. “Just tell me it was worth the trouble.”
Draining it, he matched her sober gaze. “I got the book.”
She faltered. When tears welled, her eyes shut to contain them. “Then it’s open.”
“It’s open.” Glancing away, Varrick wished he hadn’t succeeded.
The book he’d retrieved wasn’t just some Beforish treasure. It raised more questions than it answered, and those questions put everyone in jeopardy, especially Derrie’s son.
Irrationally Varrick felt compelled to reassure her. He blamed the gulp. “This will end well, tender. For all of us. The king will see to that.”
Nodding, Derrie jerked around when the hidden doorbell jingled again. Her flintiness restored, she glared at her son who had returned with Pearl Sterling and an outrider to spare. Calen trailed Pax somewhat reluctantly, and Derrie affirmed his doubts with a glower.
“I didn’t ask for a parade!” she fussed.
Paxton beamed like she praised him. “Cale wanted to make sure Varrick was A.O.K.”
Derrie threw up her hands. As she moved to Varrick’s left side, both lads crowded his right. Meekly Pearl joined the tender but maintained her distance while the outriders leaned in to gawk.
“Where did it get you?” Calen asked.
Varrick tried not to flinch when Derrie began cleaning his wounds. “In the Swale.”
Calen’s swarthy face crinkled. “I hate that place.”
“Why didn’t you take us with you?” Paxton asked.
“Wasn’t in the mood to play nursemaid.”
Neither was Derrie. Ordering the lads to back up, she made Pearl move closer. Her voice was calm and her instructions clear as she described the process to her second. When the Sterling girl took over, Varrick tried to keep still, but he winced when her fingers – less practiced than Derrie’s – swabbed one of the deeper tears.
Pearl apologized with all the confidence of a dove.
“Stay focused,” Derrie told her. “I’ll do the next one.”
To distract himself, Varrick watched Paxton watch Pearl watch Derrie. In his ten years of knowing the Kenelworth lad, he’d seen Pax wrestle with a single beast – freedom.
Paxton longed for everything Varrick left behind, which was mostly the chance to cut down trouble in the name of a greater cause. He’d done some damage to darkgard in the Gloaming but never alone and never to the degree he desired. Pax was made to fight a battle that the trium still deciphered. Until then, he was theirs to protect.
The night of Pearl’s retrieval, Varrick thought he might have to strap Paxton to a tree, but he’d seen a mighty change in the lad since the Sterling girl arrived. Paxton’s fervor to be useful remained. His allegiance to the king could not waver. And while Pax seemed content with his castle-bound life, Varrick monitored more than his whereabouts. This was hardly a time for moonish brooding. Love was a weakness, and it never ended well.
The infirmery’s doorbell jangled once more as frigid air whisked into the room. Dressed for a midwinter ramble, Carys Mooreland held open the door. The lid of her quiver peeked over one shoulder. The loops on its strap held her stife, its sharp blade masked by a cylindrical casing. From the elevated steps, Carys scanned the room until her gaze landed on the lads.
“Why aren’t you prepping the small hall for bedtime?” she asked. “It’s half past 20 bells.”
“We’re the king’s outriders,” Calen replied. “Not wayfairers coddling orphans in a southland archhouse.”
It was a gutsy response, and Varrick wasn’t impressed. In Orld men died for their insolence – and women died for giving orders. But Carys was no common female since, as Varrick’s second, she controlled the lads’ daily fates. There is a time to comply, he often heard her say, and a time to confront. Know the difference. Choose prudently.
Calen had not.
Her left eyebrow rising, Carys lowered her chin. Her delving glare made Cale swallow audibly. Then Paxton gave his best friend a shove, and both of them scrambled through the door.
Varrick bit his lip to hide a smile. His second was no man’s dam. With that look, she could humble a horde of Ungers.
“Now why don’t they behave like that for me?” Derrie asked.
“Because you don’t make them haul rocks up the mound.” Shutting the door, Carys transferred her censure to Varrick as she approached the crooked chair. “How bad is it?”
He didn’t answer. He’d make light of his injuries, and Carys knew as much. So did Derrie who repeated her diagnosis while Pearl dressed the wounds.
“Why didn’t someone go with you?” Carys demanded.
“No need to risk another skin,” he replied. “It was an easy visit.”
“Oh yes,” Derrie said. “Easy peasy, looks to me. Except for the side of you that’s missing!”
“I’ll take patrol tonight,” Carys announced. “Where were you headed?”
“West,” he said. “Toward Silvern.”
When the critical eyebrow lifted again, Varrick held his ground. The king hadn’t sent any orders through Ilis, so it wasn’t entirely a lie, and he matched his second’s gold stare until she relented. Carys never lowered her eyes, but Varrick had learned over time to recognize when she meant to yield. It occurred less often than he liked.
Derrie wasn’t going to be so agreeable. “He’s off patrol for half a fourt,” she told Carys.
Varrick struggled to stand up. “I can hear you, woman.”
“But are you listening?” Derrie asked. “One careless choice, and those wounds will reopen. So no all-night patrols. No returns to the Gloaming. And no sparring with the lads for the next seven days. Get plenty of rest, and sit more than you stand.” Crossing her arms, she glared up at him. “Or are my orders too tall for you?”
After pretending to consider, he conceded with a nod. “Not when you give them.”
That made Derrie smile. “Pearl, you help him to the apartments.”
“I’ll take him,” Carys said. “I’m headed there anyway.”
Varrick frowned at the backhanded offer. He didn’t need an escort, and Carys, of all inkeepers, would know it. But she wasn’t done raking him over the helstones, no matter how obliging she sounded, and for a moment Varrick was tempted to dismiss her. He could silence Carys as neatly as she had Calen.
Instead, he accepted his second’s help and all the trouble that came with it. Again he blamed the gulp.
The instant they entered the courtyard, her interrogation resumed. “Varrick, why did you go alone?”