Five minutes later both girls were back downstairs, Karryn tying on a light cloak. It was finally spring, but the weather could be capricious—warm one day and full of chill the next. Today was sunny but cool, at least so far.
“Willa, Lindy has invited me to ride with her to a house just outside the city,” Karryn said. “How quickly can you call together a guard?”
“Give me fifteen minutes,” Wen said.
“We’re only going to Mereton,” Lindy said. “Our old housekeeper lives there, and she’s sick, and my mother promised to send her a basket of food. And then she said it would be very nice of me to take the basket to her.”
“I don’t know where Mereton is,” Wen said, preserving her calm.
“Oh! It’s on the north road, just an hour outside of town. That’s where our old house is,” Lindy answered.
What did that mean, precisely? The house the Coverroes had owned before they spent all their money on the town mansion with the preposterous gold doors? “Even if Karryn’s only gone a couple of hours, she needs an escort,” Wen said.
She didn’t miss the look Lindy gave Karryn—a roll of her eyes and a shake of her blond hair. But she didn’t miss Karryn’s expression, either. A little smug, a little pleased. Karryn was starting to like having an entourage.
Less than twenty minutes later, they were sweeping out the main gate, two guards on horseback before the carriage, two behind, and Eggles sitting on the seat with the driver. Wen had chosen to ride in the rear because she felt it gave her a greater command of the field. She could scan the roads ahead to see if trouble approached; she could bend her attention behind her to listen for calamity racing up from behind.
Navigating the crowded streets of Forten City was tricky, as always, and she kept the guards in a tight formation around the carriage. But once they won through the northern border of the city, the road opened up and the travel became enjoyable. The sun climbed higher toward noon and brought a welcome warmth to the air; the countryside lay all around them, fields and forests competing to offer the most saturated shade of green. Wen looked about her with satisfaction. A prettier land than Tilt, that was for certain, and gentler by far than the territory around Ghosenhall. However short her length of service for Karryn, Wen reflected, it would have one benefit: It would erase for her that deep, instinctive hatred of the very word Fortunalt.
They arrived without incident in Mereton, which was a tiny village clumped along the side of the northern road. The Coverroes’ former housekeeper lived in a small cottage with a sagging fence and an untended garden. Lindy and Karryn were welcomed at the door by a small, frail woman whom Wen guessed to be the old servant herself.
It seemed ridiculous to follow Karryn into the little house, though at the same time it felt like a gross dereliction of duty not to do so. Wen compromised by having all the guards dismount and prowl the limited grounds, instantly within call if a cry was raised from inside. She herself made one circuit of the building to determine where she might most easily break in, if necessary, but a quick inspection led her to believe there would be no way to keep her out. The windows were loose, the back door flapped open, and the roof itself looked so thin Wen thought she could kick it in and jump down to the floor inside.
As it happened, none of these measures were necessary. After a visit of perhaps thirty minutes, the girls emerged from the front door, waving good-bye. Lindy paused to give the old woman a polite hug, and then both girls climbed into the coach.
They were only twenty yards down the road for the return trip when Lindy stuck her head out the side window and called to the coachman. “Turn around! Let’s go by Covey Park while we’re so close!”
The driver obligingly pulled to a halt and guided the horses in a circle, and they followed the road north for perhaps another mile, all the Fortunalt guards following. Wen would have missed the turnoff that he eventually took to the left, it was so overgrown with weeds and opportunistic shrubs. The horses picked their way carefully through the vegetation, which thickened to clusters of trees on either side of the drive.
When the woods finally opened up, they were in a small clearing that contained a stark, severe house, three stories high and constructed of powdery gray stone. Masses of old ivy covered the entire southern portion of the house, so thick that Wen couldn’t imagine any light made it through some of the lower windows. A flower garden ran the length of the front of the house, haphazardly blooming under what must be its own impulses and not the care of a devoted gardener. The entire front lawn was heavy with uncut grasses bending over with the weight of their seeds.
Wen couldn’t entirely blame Demaray Coverroe for wanting to move from Covey Park into Forten City, even though she showed such lamentable taste in decorating her town home.
As soon as the coach came to a halt before the front porch, the girls were scrambling through the door. Wen was out of the saddle so fast that her gelding stamped his feet and tossed his head in surprise. She was on the porch before them, Moss and Eggles only a few paces behind the girls.
Lindy was surprised enough to address Wen directly. “What, are you going to come in with us? There’s no one here, I assure you. Two servants and maybe a few ghosts.” She laughed.
“An abandoned house like this could attract any number of thieves and squatters,” Wen said. “You can go in alone if you like, but Karryn doesn’t set foot inside unless some of us are with her.”
“By the Pale Lady’s silver eye,” Lindy breathed, and gave Karryn a sideways look. “She’s worse than another mother.”
Karryn’s face showed both embarrassment and a touch of pleasure. “Oh, I don’t mind,” she said breezily. “It makes me feel important to be so looked after.”
“It would make me feel suffocated,” Lindy said.
Their arrival must have been noticed by someone because just at that moment, the front door swung open to reveal a woman who wasn’t much older than Wen herself. Small, too, a l ittles latternly,w earinga much-mended dress that would have benefited from being much-cleaned as well. Her hair was dark and piled rather haphazardly on her head, and her expression was suspicious. But she recognized Lindy, for her face cleared immediately, and she dropped a slight curtsey.
“My lady didn’t let me know she was coming to the house today,” she said, sounding a little aggrieved. “There’s nothing to serve you, if you were thinking of staying for a meal. Just some stewed rabbit and some dried apples.”
“No, no, we’re just here to look around,” Lindy said. “I wanted to show the serramarra the old house. She says she’s never seen it.”
“It’s a bit dusty,” the housekeeper said, standing back from the door so they could file in. Wen allowed Lindy and Karryn to go first, but she was right behind them, and Moss and Eggles were on her heels. The servant looked even more doubtful.
“All of you? Tramping through? I hope you don’t have mud on your shoes.”
“I’m sure we don’t. Not very much, anyway,” Lindy said. She spread her arms to indicate the lower level. “This is the house,” she said.
The first story was smallish, with a somewhat narrow stairway taking up the entire right wall. On the left, a paneled hallway opened to a series of rooms, and the girls peered through the doors one by one. Wen had been right; very little light penetrated the curtain of ivy on the southern side of the building. These rooms—a parlor, she guessed, a study, and a cramped library—were dark enough to seem spooky. None of them boasted much furniture, and the library offered no books at all, just a wall full of empty shelves and one lonely wingback chair.
“That was my father’s favorite room,” Lindy said. “He didn’t like anyone else to go in there, so of course that’s always where I wanted to be. I would wait till he was away on a trip, and then I would sneak in and creep around, looking for mysterious letters or treasure maps hidden behind the books. I was sure he must be hiding something exciting.”
“Did you ever find anything?” Karryn asked.
; “No, never! I suppose he just wanted to keep the place to himself because he got tired of dealing with my mother and me.”
“Maybe something’s been left behind,” Karryn said, and stepped through the door.
Wen stepped right in after her.
The girls trailed their hands through the dust on the shelves and knocked experimentally on the wood that lined the wall. They tugged at the andirons to see if they might be connected to some secret spring, and Karryn tried to budge various stones that lined the grate. Nothing yielded up a secret.
“Well, if my father had any hidden treasure, it’s still hidden,” Lindy said, straightening up and brushing her hands together. “Come on upstairs. I’ll show you my old room.”
The sloppy housekeeper said, “Call out for me if you need me,” and disappeared back toward what Wen assumed were the kitchens. Unescorted except by the guards, the girls flitted up the stairs, which took a sharp turn at the landing and delivered the whole party to the middle of the second story. Wen looked around with interest, automatically assessing the building. Rows of narrow windows at the front and back of this story allowed in bars of shaded light, but weren’t wide enough for even someone as small as she was to force her way through. Good for defense; bad if there was a reason you needed to escape quickly.
“That was my parents’ room, those two were guest rooms, that was the schoolroom, and here was my bedroom,” Lindy said. She twisted the handle on the last door and stepped into the room. Karryn followed, the three guards right behind her.
It was the first place they’d seen at Covey Park that had some character and appeal, Wen thought. The room was high-ceilinged and painted white, so that it had a lighter and airier feel than the dreary spaces downstairs. What furnishings were left were also in very light hues—a spindly divan with white wood and soft blue cushions; a vanity table in white wood, set off by a tall rectangular mirror swathed in blue silk. Gauzy blue-and-white curtains fluttered at the windows, which were just as tall but not much wider than the ones in the hallway. There were more of them, though, so the light was better.
Lindy plopped down on the divan with a little puff of dust. More cautiously, Karryn sat beside her. The guards stayed motionless by the door, and both girls utterly ignored them.
“I was very sad when we left Covey Park two years ago,” Lindy said. “I loved visiting the city, but I had lived here all my life and I didn’t want to move.”
“Why did your mother want to leave Covey Park?” Karryn asked.
“She says it’s too far away from everything. Although I think the city is even farther! We have tenant farms another couple miles north of here, and my father would ride out to visit them every week. Now my mother sends someone to inspect them for her and come into the city every month to report.”
“When did your father die?”
“Five years ago.”
“Do you miss him?”
Lindy shook her fair head. “Not at all. We were never close. We scarcely even spoke. Sometimes I wondered if he would recognize me if he came across me somewhere outside of this house—if we met at a party in Gissel Plain, for instance. Would he have to be introduced to me? It’s hard to miss someone you didn’t even know.”
“Well, I knew my father,” Karryn said in a very dry voice. “And it’s much better now that he’s gone.”
“But now that we live in the town house, I like it very much,” Lindy said. “There’s so much more to do in the city! So many more people to see! I never want to come back to Covey Park.”
“Why would you?”
“My mother says the town house is very expensive, so if the farms ever have a bad year, we might not be able to afford it. And then we’d move back.” Lindy sighed.
She could sell those gold doors and fund another couple years in town, Wen thought. Naturally, she did not allow the thought to bring even a small smile to her face.
“You could come stay at my house,” Karryn said. “We’d go to all the parties together. It wouldn’t be so bad.”
“And maybe Coren would invite both of us to come out on his boat,” Lindy said with a giggle.
That quickly, their conversation devolved from something that was almost interesting to a discussion of the more eligible young lords to be found in Forten City. Wen stopped listening until Lindy groaned and tossed a pillow in the air.
“And then next week my mother is making me travel with her to visit Deloden,” Lindy said. “I can’t bear it.”
“Who’s Deloden?” Karryn asked.
“My—oh, I can never get it right—my father’s brother’s first wife’s brother?” Lindy said. “Somehow he and his family are related to us. They live on the southern coast, practically in Rappengrass. No one else there for miles around, nothing to do, and the most excruciating conversations imaginable! Deloden and his wife are bad enough, but they have two sons and they’re just awful.”
Karryn laughed. “What’s so terrible about them?”
“Well, first, they’re boring. They live at the edge of the world and they don’t know anyone and they aren’t interested in any of the things I have to say. One of them took me hunting one day, and then he killed things and swung them in my face—like I would want to see them! Birds and squirrels, all covered with blood, and it was horrible! I told my mother I never wanted to go back there again, but she insists that we visit once every year or two. She keeps saying she’s going to invite them to come visit us, but so far she hasn’t. Or if she has, they haven’t accepted.”
“There’s no hunting in Forten City, so I don’t know what they’d do here.”
“They’d come visit you because I would bring them over every day!”
Karryn laced her hands in her lap. “My mother says the summer social season is starting and we should think about sending me to some of the balls,” she said, her voice low and troubled. Wen’s attention really picked up then; Jasper hadn’t mentioned this before. If Karryn was going to be attending events at some of the other Houses, Wen was going to have an interesting time of it, trying to keep her safe.
Or more likely Orson. Wen wouldn’t be staying long enough to trail behind the serramarra as she made the circuit of the Twelve Houses.
“Ohhhhh,” Lindy breathed. “I’m so jealous. I would do anything to be invited to Rappengrass or Nocklyn! Or Brassenthwaite! It must be the wealthiest House in Gillengaria.”
“I don’t think my mother would send me so far,” Karryn said. “But maybe to Nocklyn or Helven. Even Coravann, I suppose. But—”
“What?”
“But I don’t know anyone at any of the other great Houses, and they would all hate me anyway,” Karryn said in a rush. “I know I would be perfectly miserable. No one would dance with me, and I would just stay in my room all day and cry.”
“Why do you think everyone would hate you?” Lindy exclaimed. “Everybody in Forten City likes you!”
Karryn pressed her lips together. “Because of my father. Because of the war. Because I’m Rayson Fortunalt’s daughter.”
“Ohhhhh,” Lindy said again, this time on a long sigh. “It would be cruel and stupid for people to think the war was your fault—but people are cruel and stupid, much of the time.”
“So I don’t want to go.”
“You could take me with you,” Lindy suggested. “Then if no one asked you to dance I could sit next to you and watch everyone else and make spiteful comments.”
Karryn giggled. “But people would ask you to dance!”
“I would tell them I would only dance with them if they asked you first,” Lindy said firmly.
That was actually a much kinder promise than Wen would have expected from the shallow Lindy Coverroe. Karryn was moved, too, Wen could see, though she tried to act nonchalant.
“Well, that would be very sweet of you,” she said. “It wouldn’t be so bad to visit the other Houses if you could come along.”