Which would be worse, she thought, because that meant Cade’s rebellion hadn’t gone off at all.
“Look,” Luke said, “we have no way of knowing what’s going on. You know how the Inspectors can suppress the spread of news. I’ve been keeping my ears and eyes open at our stops, but I haven’t picked up anything of interest yet.”
“I can’t help but worry,” Cade replied.
“Yes, that is the lot of those who would lead,” Luke said, “and while it is commendable, a good leader must also move forward. There is nothing we can do for our friends in Mill City, except fulfill our end of the plan. Or at least try.”
Cade’s shoulders sagged. “You are right.”
Luke smiled and clapped him on the back. “Good man.” Turning to Karigan, he asked, “How was your meat pie, young Tam?”
With some surprise, Karigan realized she had devoured the whole thing, even the burned pie crust edges. “Er, good.” She’d eaten so fast she couldn’t even remember tasting it.
“I’m glad to see your appetite improving. Harley, you best eat, too. We’ve a long haul ahead of us this afternoon.”
Karigan’s full belly and the warm afternoon left her drowsy, and she nodded off as the wagon gently swayed. As she drifted, she heard hoofbeats. Hoofbeats thrumming through her, making her heart hammer in rhythm. It was not the slow plod of the mules she heard but the rhythm of a messenger horse cantering. Raven whinnied, and she came to herself with a start, glancing about with bleary eyes. Oddly, she still heard the hooves. She had not been dreaming or imagining them.
In fact, they grew louder.
She sat up in time to see horse and rider pass by. The rider did not wear messenger green, but Inspector red. Still, she knew that intent look on the man’s face as he cantered by, and his sure, competent seat, and she knew a horse in good enough form to run long and hard. Even in this time and place, with all she knew turned upside down, she could pick out a fellow messenger. She reached beneath her jacket and caressed her brooch, feeling more homesick than ever.
The hoofbeats ebbed as the messenger put distance between them, but she remained so stirred by his passing that by the time they reached their inn for the night, she practically jumped out of the wagon and nearly fell into a pile of manure. She saved herself by grabbing the tailgate.
Cade came around back. “Here now, what are you doing?”
Luke had already gone to the inn to secure their rooms for the night. She clamped her hands on Cade’s arm.
“I need my things,” she said.
“Your things?”
“The hidden things,” she whispered.
He looked uneasy. “You mean your, um, walking cane?”
“No, not that. The satchel.”
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea to—”
“Please,” she said. “It’s important.” She did not explain it was probably only important to her.
He gazed hard at her, then nodded. “All right, after supper, when it’s a little darker. Now remember, you’re supposed to be sick, so no more leaping out of wagons.”
She nodded, and when she realized she was still hanging onto his arm, she reluctantly let go. Luke returned with their bunk assignment and wished them a good night. Karigan wondered how much extra Luke was paying out to ensure their privacy and if they’d have enough to reach Gossham, but neither he nor Cade seemed concerned. The professor’s stash in the stable must have been considerable. She shrugged and decided that since they were not worried, she wouldn’t be.
“I should probably pretend to be holding you up, like the other nights,” Cade told her.
She raised her eyebrows. Pretend? Despite her leap from the wagon, she still felt weak enough that she would not have to pretend. Yet this time, when he wrapped his arm around her to support her, and hers settled around his waist, it felt different. She was more conscious of their bodies touching, their hips bumping as they walked. She bowed her head so none could read her face, see her blush.
When they reached the bunkhouse, they stood inside, arm in arm for a lingering moment until Cade cleared his throat and pulled away from her. As though there had been no closeness, they began what had become a routine of settling in and sitting down to supper, this time with a platter of pork roast and potatoes.
Karigan was pleased once again to have solid food and made admirable inroads on her meal. She was quickly full, however.
“So, what happens when we reach Gossham?” she asked Cade. She’d been too deep in the fog of the morphia to worry about it before now.
“Luke has a letter of introduction from the city master of Mill City to be presented to Webster Silk. Forged, of course.”
“Dr. Silk’s father,” Karigan said.
Cade nodded. “It should get us into the palace, and that is, invariably, where they are taking the Eletian. Of Arhys, I’m less certain. It depends how much Silk suspects, if anything. Perhaps he is simply amused by her.”
“Amused?” Karigan couldn’t imagine anyone being amused by that girl, but she made no joke of it for the lines of concern were deeply graven on Cade’s face.
“Just like the professor, Silk is a collector, and he will be intrigued by anything that was once the professor’s. He will want to know why the professor found her interesting enough to shelter her.”
“Lorine, too,” Karigan said.
“Perhaps. And you. Especially you.”
“All of us. We were all collected by the professor.”
“I’ll be of less interest,” Cade replied. “Silk already knows my story.”
“That you were a button thief?”
Cade nodded and smiled. “Yes.”
An uneasy silence fell between them. The very air felt charged. Did he feel it, too? She wished to shatter that silence, say something—anything at all—but she couldn’t seem to put two thoughts together, and she had never been like some girls to whom inane chatter came easily. When Cade cleared his throat, she jumped.
“I was wondering,” he began.
“Yes?” she asked too eagerly.
He couldn’t quite look at her. “I mean, I know little of your life back . . . Well, back at your home. I know it’s the circumstances. It was not appropriate for me to ask when you were Miss Goodgrave, and so much has happened since.”
“What do you want to know?” She wondered if he were about to quiz her about her time like the professor once had. Did he want to know about society and customs, or religion and law? All those ordinary details that had brought life to the objects in the professor’s collection.
“What I’m asking . . .” There was a slight tremble to his voice. “I mean . . .”
Now she was worried. He shouldn’t have such trouble asking about what was, to him, history. Something in particular was on his mind. He looked at everything in the bunkhouse but her.
“What is it? I won’t bite your head off whatever it is—I swear.”
Quite suddenly he grinned. “You do? You swear?”
“I do.”
He nodded. “It is not the easiest thing to ask, but here it is. Back in your home, do you have a suitor?”
“A what?” she asked faintly.
“You know, is someone waiting for you? A man who is special?”
Karigan’s fork clattered on her on her plate and she sat back in her chair, gazing at him in astonishment.
“I—I want to go back with you,” he said, “and I need to know the lay of the land, so to speak.”
A suitor? A wave of warmth rolled over her. Yes, once before he had expressed a desire to accompany her back in time. She had not known if he’d spoken in whimsy, until now. And now he watched her intently, waiting for an answer.
“What about Arhys?”
“I will attempt to help her as I can, but if you—we—make it back to your time, we can chan
ge the present, and she will not need me. All will be as it should, and there will be plenty of Weapons to protect her.
“So, do you have a suitor?”
“Um . . .” She swallowed hard. It was plain he had given this some thought. “My father tried to marry me off.”
Cade dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “But is there anyone special? A man in your life, one whose arms you will return to?”
She bit her bottom lip and looked away. “There is no guarantee I’ll find a way home, even if we free Lhean and don’t get killed in the process.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
There was a man back in her Sacor City. Did he wait for her, or had he forgotten her already? He’d have married Estora by now if their timelines were running parallel. Day of Aeryon had come and gone—not that they called the Longest Day that here.
“Karigan,” Cade said softly. He reached across the table, placed his fingers under her chin, and gently steered her gaze back toward him. “I need to know.”
King Zachary might await her as a king awaits a missing messenger, but he was not hers to claim. He had his queen, and Karigan was no more than his servant. She would not return to be held in his arms. She pulled up the barriers inside because it was a loss to accept it, to know it. She allowed nothing to show outwardly. There was just the scalding pain of emptiness inside.
“No, there is no one,” she told Cade.
He searched her eyes with an intense gaze, then nodded and stood a little too abruptly. “Good. I will go now.”
“Go?” she asked, perplexed by his sudden change in course. “Where are you going?”
“The wagon. You wanted your things, didn’t you?”
She nodded and sagged in her chair, exhausted. She’d been feeling better, but now the day was catching up with her. That’s what she told herself at least. She pushed her plate aside and pillowed her head on her arms on the table. She’d known there was that something between them, but when he’d declared his intent to be a celibate Weapon, she’d set aside—or tried to, at least—any expectation that their attraction would progress. She was well practiced in this setting-aside thing, first with Alton, then with King Zachary.
Did Cade expect to forego being a Weapon, if they made it to her time? Otherwise, why ask her the “suitor” question. He didn’t want to go to the past, give up all he knew, just for her, did he? Surely not. She must pose the question to him, make sure that she wouldn’t have to carry that added responsibility on her shoulders, as well. It was comforting, however, to think she would not be going home alone.
The next thing she knew, Cade was shaking her awake again. She’d dozed off.
“Careful,” he told her when she went to rub her eyes. He grabbed her wrist.
“What?” Upon examination, she saw that her hand was covered in mushed up potatoes and butter. Not only had she fallen asleep at the table, but her hand had ended up on her plate.
Cade set the satchel on one of the bunks, and after Karigan cleaned her hands, she wasted no time in digging into it.
“One of the guards saw me shifting the casks around and asked me what I was up to.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Told him I was redistributing the weight to make it easier on the mules. I then had to listen to him complain about all his aching joints and bodily functions before he finally moved on and left me alone. Thankfully he did not offer to help.”
Karigan set aside uniform pieces while Cade watched on in interest. While she sought the shard of the looking mask rolled up somewhere in her greatcoat, he examined her uniform trousers with its rent pant leg and dark, crusted stains. When she found the shard, she held it up in triumph, then perceived Cade’s gaze on her as his hand hovered over the tattered trousers.
“You really are . . .” He faltered.
“What?” Karigan asked.
“A Green Rider.”
Karigan raised an eyebrow. “I thought we’d already been over this.”
“I know, I know.” He raked his hand through his hair. “I’ve seen your uniform before . . . even on you, though I didn’t know what it was at the time. But . . . seeing it here, now, with you, it’s more real.” The awe in his voice was the same as she’d heard when she’d shown him her ability with the staff, back in the old mill. He took the sleeve of her greatcoat, touching the winged horse in gold thread as if he’d never seen embroidery before.
He’d been to the tombs, had even seen her brooch, and now he was impressed by her simple uniform?
“It has truly sunk in,” he said to himself, shaking his head. “Tell me, what was it like? Going into Blackveil?”
“I already told you and the professor about it.”
“You gave us the story but not the details. What was it really like?”
Karigan sat on the bunk. “Very unpleasant.” A bit of white caught her eye among the folds of her greatcoat, and she pulled out the feather of the winter owl. She twirled it before her eyes and shuddered with memory.
When Cade gave her a plaintive look, she told him about the wet and chill, the depressing murk, and how everything in the forest possessed an awareness, a hidden intelligence that seemed to watch them at all times. She told him how they lost their first companion to a flock of murderous hummingbirds like the ones Dr. Silk had exhibited at his dinner party, and how they lost their second companion to a tree root come to life like a massive tentacle. She described ruins, poisonous vegetation, and strange creatures, explaining in more detail this time much of what had passed at Castle Argenthyne, including the death of their Eletian leader, Graelalea. She stroked the feather. It had proven resilient, remained uncrushed and unbroken despite all it had been through, including being rolled up in her greatcoat and stashed in a satchel.
“And then I came here,” she concluded. “Well, to Mill City.” She yawned. She had told him more, but not everything, by far. How could she convey the desperation she had felt when she and a blind Yates had become separated from the rest of the group? She did not tell him of Estora’s betrayal, of how the king’s betrothed had sent a Coutre forester with the expedition to murder her.
No, Karigan could not believe it of Estora, but those were his instructions, why he’d been sent, and he claimed to be doing it at Estora’s behest, so what was Karigan to think?
Cade, who now sat opposite her on an adjacent bunk, looked overwhelmed. “I did not know the depth of your travails. I’m sorry I asked you to relive it all.”
Karigan nodded, actually relieved to have spoken of it. She had not realized how the memories had eaten at her like acid. Normally she would have reported to the captain right away upon her return to Sacor City, and that would have helped, but she’d never made it back to Sacor City. At least, not her Sacor City. She set the feather aside. Enmorial, Graelalea had called it, memory.
“And those shards of mirror were pieces of the looking mask?” Cade asked.
Karigan nodded, the piece glinting in the lamplight.
“Gossham will be nothing to you after all that,” Cade said.
She thought he meant it as humor, but she hoped he was right. Not for the first time, however, she felt she’d rather face Blackveil than this empire.
A MOTE OF SILVER IN HER EYE
“So why did you hold onto that one piece of broken mirror?” Cade asked.
Karigan explained to him how she’d seen images of her own time, of her friends and the king, by gazing into it.
“May I see it?” Cade asked. She passed it to him, and he looked closely at it and into it, turning it over on his hand. “I did look at these shards after your arrival, but aside from their being double-sided and curved, neither the professor nor I observed anything extraordinary about them.” He handed it back to her.
“Most of the time I see nothing in it,” she said, “but my own reflection.”
&n
bsp; She sat cross-legged on her bunk, and even now saw a fragment of that reflection, her own tired eyes with dark rings beneath them. Cade moved so he could gaze over her shoulder. He was near enough that she could feel the warmth of his body.
“Why did you want it tonight?” He asked. “What do you expect to see?”
His question made her feel a little guilty. She’d heard hoofbeats—the hoofbeats of an imperial messenger riding by, but nevertheless, hoofbeats. It had stirred her up inside and left her yearning for home and, well, to once more hear the Rider call and answer it. Otherwise, there was no other practical reason to seek a vision in the shard. Previous visions had done little more than connect her with home, but provided no hints about how to return or how to contend with Amberhill and his empire.
Belatedly she realized how much she had endangered Cade and their mission by sending him out to rifle through the secret compartment of their wagon. What if that guard had been more cautious? What if Cade had been caught? She gazed at her uniform spread out on the bed. What if someone barged in right now and saw it?
She closed her eyes, flooded with guilt, and berated herself for her selfishness. She could not even blame the morphia. “I don’t know if I’ll see anything,” she said. “It doesn’t work on demand, but I just felt a need to look.”
Cade’s reflection in the shard nodded gravely and he did not question her reasoning. He trusted her, she realized, now feeling doubly guilty.
She gazed into the shard, all too conscious of Cade’s closeness. If a vision was revealed to her, would they both see it? A long stretch of time passed—she did not know how much—when Cade finally gave up. She felt him draw away, heard the floorboards creak as he moved about, his yawn and the cracking of joints as he stretched. A bunkbed groaned as he lay down, and the groan was soon followed by deep, regular breaths and light snoring.
Perhaps because Karigan no longer felt under the scrutiny of another, she relaxed, and the mirror shard’s surface rippled like the surface of a lake. The vision came, at first in muted tones and indiscernible shapes, but then focused to reveal King Zachary astride a heavy warhorse she had not seen before, a tabard of black and silver over his armor. His helm was tucked beneath one arm, and he raised his sword high with the other. The banners of Sacoridia snapped behind him in a strong breeze. She had an impression of many soldiers before him, her perspective as if she were among them, and by the way he rode up and down the line, he appeared to be rallying his troops.
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