It was comforting to be in the familiar confines of the home she grew up in, to be among people she knew and loved; a completely different world from the fast pace of Sacor City and the castle, where she was surrounded by so many strangers.
At the same time, she felt uneasy being home, even on official business, for there were other matters she needed to address with her father. Matters of a personal nature. He’d kept secrets from her, and not good ones.
She twisted her teacup in her hands, gazing at specks of tea leaves swirling in its depths. Her aunts chattered on beside her, and she only half-listened. She managed to put off coming home for months, thanks to winter storms that kept everyone cooped up in the castle, but suddenly Captain Mapstone needed the one message conveyed, and it was time, she said, that Karigan’s father receive the others, as well, and who better to bear them than his own daughter?
Her father cleared his throat and Karigan looked up. “You mentioned there were messages,” he said. “More than one?”
“Oh!” she replied, and grimaced. She withdrew from her satchel the lesser of the two that remained, and passed it to him. “From Lord Coutre.”
“Lord Coutre?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise. Her aunts ceased their chattering. He took the letter and broke the seal. He read rapidly, and exclaimed, “Order of the Cormorant? You’ve been granted lands in Coutre Province?” He read on, then gazed at her, his eyes wide and full of questions.
Aunt Stace snatched the letter right out of his hands and read it for herself. When she finished, she was the mirror image of her brother. Aunt Brini grabbed the letter next, and the others, including Cook, clustered around her to read over her shoulder.
“You rescued Lady Estora from abductors?” Stevic asked faintly.
“I, er, helped,” Karigan replied, her cheeks flooding with warmth. The other reason she didn’t want to come home was having to explain her deeds without causing them all to faint. Just remembering the dangers she faced was enough to make her shudder.
When her father and aunts recovered, they demanded details. Karigan kept her responses vague: “I was on a message errand to Mirwellton—right place at the right time.” And, “No, Lady Estora was not harmed.” She emphasized the role others played in the rescue and left herself out of much of the story.
She told them how the traitorous group, Second Empire, used the abduction as a ruse to distract the king and his Weapons so its members could infiltrate the castle for “information.” She did not bring up the book of Theanduris Silverwood, and in fact managed to avoid referring to any supernatural or magical elements of the story altogether, knowing her father’s dim view of such things.
Nor did she speak of her adventures in the royal tombs beneath the castle. The realm of the tombs, while not precisely a secret, was not something casually discussed.
Her explanations appeared to satisfy them: evil plot, abduction, infiltration—all thwarted, and Karigan helped! She was afraid, however, her third message would only provoke more questions, and with a sigh she withdrew it from her satchel. It bore the royal seal of the firebrand and crescent moon. Her father stared in disbelief.
“More? The king’s seal?”
Karigan nodded, waiting in a sort of dread while he read it.
When he finished, he looked at her with a stunned expression, and passed the letter to Aunt Stace without a word. Her aunts and Cook gasped as they read, and gazed at Karigan as if seeing her anew.
Her father then laughed. It was a mirthful laugh that filled the kitchen with warmth. It wasn’t exactly the reaction Karigan was expecting.
“I don’t think it’s funny,” Aunt Tory said, with a sniff. “It’s a great honor to Karigan and our clan.”
Stevic G’ladheon continued to laugh, wiping tears from his eyes, and Karigan could only shake her head in disbelief.
“Great honor, yes,” he said. “I’ve always been so proud of my daughter, no matter what odd course in life she chose. But never in all my existence would I ever imagine a G’ladheon being knighted. Not only that, but it’s an honor not conferred upon anyone for hundreds of years.” Karigan’s father was not overly fond of the aristocracy, and she had recognized the irony of the honor the moment she received it. Not that knighthood exactly raised her to the aristocracy, but still ...
“My daughter, Rider Sir Karigan G’ladheon!” He grinned. Then sobering, he said, “Karigan, I understand the Coutre award, but this is above and beyond. What aren’t you telling us? Did you save the entire kingdom again?”
Karigan squirmed in her chair. “Well, Lady Estora is the king’s betrothed ...” When she saw this wasn’t going to mollify him, she added, “I helped stop the Second Empire thugs in the castle. The king was very pleased.”
Her father sat back in his chair. Wind gusted down the chimney, scattering ashes on the hearth and causing the fire to flare. The juices of the roasting goose hissed.
“That’s it? You’re not going to tell us how? Is it a secret?”
She almost said, Well, after I helped rescue Lady Estora, the death god’s steed came to me and led me through the “white world,” where we bypassed time and distance to reach the castle. I was then made an honorary Weapon and got to wear black, so I’d be permitted to enter the tombs without being forced to become a caretaker and live out my life dusting the dead. I chased the thugs through the royal tombs while pretending to be a ghost. I fought them and rescued a magical book that may or may not help us repair the breach in the D’Yer Wall. If it does, then we’re all saved!
I then took a nap in the future sarcophagus of our future queen because I was very tired and bleeding all over the place—oh, did I mention almost having my hand chopped off earlier? But that’s a whole different story! Anyway, I dreamed about the dead rising. That’s what I remember, and is it surprising considering where I was? When I woke up, the magic book gave us quite an eyeful.
And that, she reflected, was not the half of it. However, rather than reveal her true thoughts, she asked, almost pleading, “Can’t you just be happy for me?”
“I am, I am!” he replied. “I just worry, and you never say much about your work.”
“She’s got another land grant with the knighting,” Aunt Brini broke in, as she scoured the king’s letter. “Anywhere in the realm.”
Karigan saw the light flicker in her father’s eyes, the slight smile, as if he calculated to what advantage he could use her land grants for the clan business. It was a wonder he wasn’t rubbing his hands together. The diversion, however, proved short-lived.
“Will you not tell us how you inspired such notice from the king?” he asked.
If only her father knew how loaded a question that was, and how much she wanted to pound her head on the table. “There’s not much to say about it.” The lie rang hollow even to herself.
“I don’t believe it for a minute,” her father said. “You are keeping things from us.”
Karigan squirmed in her chair. Why couldn’t he leave off? He certainly kept his own share of secrets, so how dare he demand that she reveal her own?
“Like how you never bothered to tell me you crewed a pirate ship?” she blurted.
Ominous silence followed.
Oops, she thought. She hadn’t meant to broach the subject so abruptly, but there it was now, right out in the open. No preamble, no gentle prodding, no hiding.
Cook hastened to the cutting board and her parsnips, and her aunts scattered, making themselves busy elsewhere in the kitchen, but all within earshot even as they pretended not to be listening.
“I planned to tell you about that,” her father said after a few moments.
“When?”
“Well, I ... Soon. I wanted to wait till you were old enough.”
“How old? Like when I’m eighty?”
“No, of course not. I—How did you find out?” He glanced at his sisters in accusation, and they filled the kitchen with loud denials, waving spoons and knives in emphasis.
&nbs
p; Before someone got hurt by an errant utensil, Karigan said, “You don’t realize how close this information came to damaging the clan. The king knows.”
That quieted everyone down.
“What? How?”
“The Mirwells dug it up, a crew list for a known pirate ship, the Gold Hunter. Timas—Lord Mirwell—sent it to the king.”
“But why? Why would he?”
“I’m not sure,” Karigan said. “Except Timas Mirwell hates me. He has since school, and he probably decided to get back at me by trying to disgrace the clan.” He’d given her the message to deliver to the king. She, of course, had no idea of what she carried at the time. It was only after the knighting ceremony that she learned of it from one of the king’s advisors.
“Damnation,” her father muttered. “Aristocrats. Aristocrats and their games of intrigue.”
“We’re fortunate the king thinks highly enough of your service to the realm that he’s dropping the matter,” Karigan said. “But if Mirwell, or someone else, decides to make public accusations, it could be embarrassing. I destroyed the crew list, but it could still look bad even without the proof.”
“I see.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry you learned about it this way. I should have told you.”
“I wish you had,” Karigan murmured.
“At least you know now,” he said.
“Yes, but none of the details.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Then you should have no trouble telling me all about it now.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I see knighthood has done little to gentle your tenacious curiosity.”
“Father.”
“Tell me, in court do they address you as Sir Karigan? Shouldn’t it be Madam Karigan, or some such? Maybe Madam Sir Karigan?”
“Father.” She might be tenacious in her curiosity, but he was exasperating. “This is serious.”
“Yes, yes, of course it is. Very well. I suppose there is no avoiding it.” He paused, turning more reflective, his hands loosely clasped on the tabletop. “As I said, the Gold Hunter was long ago, and I was an ignorant young boy fresh off the island when Captain Ifior’s men snatched me from a tavern and forced me into service.”
“A press gang,” Karigan murmured, a little mollified her father had been taken against his will.
“I didn’t fight it, I will admit.”
“What? Why not?”
“I saw it as an opportunity.”
“Opportunity? A pirate ship?” Ignorant boy, indeed.
“Now, now,” her father said. “The Gold Hunter wasn’t a pirate to begin with, but a privateer with letters of marque to seize ships violating the blockade of the Under Kingdoms.”
“How’d it become a pirate?”
“The embargo was lifted,” he replied, “and Captain Ifior decided to keep taking ships. It was profitable.”
“No doubt.” Karigan’s head throbbed, and she rubbed her temples. She was weary from her long journey through the storm, and it was no easy thing hearing from her father’s own mouth he’d been crew on a pirate ship. All she knew of pirates was that they were unruly, bloodthirsty cutthroats, and she did not want to believe he was of that ilk, no matter how far distant in his past it may have been.
“Kari—”
“So you stayed on even after the captain turned to piracy,” she said.
“Yes. Captain Ifior had a good head for business, and I learned much from him.”
“Like how to steal? And kill?” Karigan winced as soon as the words left her mouth. She hadn’t meant to speak so brashly, but she needed to know. Needed to know who her father really was.
He did not answer, but sat there absolutely still, his expression stony and white-edged. Karigan held her breath, bracing herself for the storm that was certain to come, but he abruptly stood and left the kitchen without a word.
His silence, Karigan thought, was more terrible than any mere eruption of anger could be.
One by one her aunts turned to face her. Cook studiously ignored the scene, keeping busy at the sideboard. Well, she’d done it this time—turned a reunion with her family into a disaster.
“What?” she demanded of her silent and forbidding aunts. “I have a right to know.”
Aunt Stace’s mouth turned to a grim line before she spoke. “Your father talks little of the past, even to us, but we do know he was caught in circumstances not of his devising.”
Karigan could relate to that, but surely her father had more choice than she ever did with the Rider call. “He could have run away when their ship made port.”
“True,” Aunt Brini said, “but he had his reasons for staying. You see, Captain Ifior was more a father to him than our own was. His mentor and guide.”
“Who taught him to kill and steal.”
“Oh, child, you can’t know—”
“I am not a child,” Karigan said. No, not after all she’d experienced in her own life since becoming a Green Rider, but they’d never understand, even if she told them every detail of her exploits. No matter what she did with her life, they’d always see her as their little niece, not mature enough to deal with more adult matters, like her father’s past.
“I suppose you are not,” said Aunt Stace, “but you are acting like one.”
Karigan’s mouth dropped open.
“Only a child would utter whatever came to her mind without thinking first. I should have thought you learned better in the king’s service.”
Karigan sat there stunned that her aunts would take her father’s side in this. It wasn’t her fault he’d been a pirate.
She pushed her chair back and stood. She grabbed her message satchel and left the kitchen, heading for the stairs. She took the steps two at a time, and when she reached her bedchamber, she slammed the door shut behind her.
If her aunts couldn’t handle her asking about the pirate ship, just wait till she brought up the brothel.
ABOUT THE GOLD HUNTER
Karigan couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned beneath her pile of blankets, listening to the wind slam into her window. She’d risen a time or two to stoke the fire, but the cold drove her back beneath the covers, despite the woolens she wore over her nightgown and her heavy stockings.
It wasn’t so much the storm that kept her awake, but thoughts of her father and how the evening ended so badly before it had even begun. She chose to close herself in her room, with Elaine bringing up her supper. Her aunts did not even stop by to wish her a good night.
They’re mad at me, she thought, even though it wasn’t her fault her father had served on that pirate ship. And still, as justified as she felt in her own judgments, she was assailed by a sense of guilt, as if she were the one in the wrong simply because she needed to know the truth of the matter.
Her aunts were right on one point, she admitted after some reflection: her tendency to open her mouth without thinking. She could have approached the whole mess in a more circumspect manner that would have alleviated some of the hurt feelings. But her father had pushed her just a little too hard about her own life, and she had pushed right back.
The thing was, she loved her father—loved him powerfully and had always admired him as the dashing, strong, and successful man he was; the man who loved her mother so much he never remarried. She wanted to be like him when she grew up, planned to follow in his footsteps. Until the Rider call changed everything. Still, she’d considered him a paradigm of what a father and merchant ought to be without question. Until she heard about the pirate ship. Until the brothel.
She gathered from Elaine he hadn’t attended supper, either, and ate alone in his office. Karigan sighed. They were too much alike for their own good.
Finally, when she couldn’t take the twisting and turning anymore, she braced herself against the cold, threw off her blankets, and dressed by the fire.
Karigan trudged through drifts that were as high as her thighs, from the house toward the stable, her lantern providing a meager glow agains
t the night, large snowflakes beating against it like moths. The wind sucked her breath away.
When she reached the stable and stepped inside, she found stillness, and her restless mind calmed a notch. The glow of her lantern enlarged, providing golden warmth, and she released a breath she did not know she’d been holding.
Her father’s horses occupied almost every stall; sleek hacks he rode for business and pleasure: his favorite, a fine-limbed white stallion named Southern Star; matching pairs of handsome carriage horses; and several drays who hauled cargo-laden wagons during the trading season. Standing among them was one that did not quite fit in, an ungainly chestnut messenger horse. All were blanketed and bedded with fresh straw and snoozed in contentment, some snoring, hooves shuffling, all apparently oblivious to the storm raging outside.
And why shouldn’t they be when the stable was as sturdily built as the main house? There was nary a draft in the place.
Often Karigan sought out the company of her horse, Condor, when troubled. Somehow being in his presence calmed her, soothed whatever agitated her. She moved down the central aisle, leaving clumps of snow behind her, until she came to his stall.
Sensing her approach, the gelding poked his head over the stall door and gazed at her with sleepy eyes, his whicker of greeting half-hearted.
“Woke you up, did I?” she asked, stroking his nose.
He whiffled her hand, his breath smelling of sweet grain.
Karigan chuckled and hung the lantern on a bracket beside his stall. She pulled a freshly baked oat muffin from her pocket. She’d found a pile of them on the sideboard where Cook left them overnight to cool. Condor grew decidedly more alert.
Now she laughed and fed him half. It vanished almost instantly and he nudged her for more.
“Greedy beast,” she said and gave him the rest.
She checked his water bucket—it was full and hadn’t frozen over. His blanket was straight and secure across his back. When she rode in, he’d been one tired horse after pushing through all those snow drifts. Ice had clung to his muzzle, making him look a hoary old man. The stablemaster had helped rub him down, wound his legs with quilted wrappings, and prepared him a warm bran mash. When Karigan left him, she had no fear he was in any discomfort and knew he was as happy and snug as a horse could be.