The rest of the meal passed in much the same way, a mix of banter, speculation, and analysis of what they had done right and wrong. After dinner, the whole group slowly dispersed, some going to bed, some going to patrol. Davey lingered to help Ginny clear the table and ask her again if she wanted to ride out with them in the morning. Wen stood at the door for a few moments, watching him doubtfully. Ginny was too young to be drawing the attention of men, but Davey was barely eighteen himself, scarcely four years older than she was. And he made her laugh. Twice while Wen listened, Ginny giggled in response to something the young guard said. She didn’t look like she minded his attention. Wen hesitated a moment longer, then stepped outside.
Orson was a couple moments behind her. A little light spilled out from the windows but he was something of a blur in the dark of evening. “He doesn’t mean her any harm,” he said. He had obviously noticed her concern about Davey and Ginny. “And Moss won’t let him try anything if Ginny goes with them tomorrow. Moss isn’t much of one for tolerating bullies. But I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
Wen gave him a tight smile. “Never thought I was the type to fret,” she said.
She could just make out the amusement on Orson’s face. “Really? And here I thought that’s what you do best.”
Now her expression was threatening. “Make fun of me and I’ll show you what I do best,” she said. “And you’ll see it from the ground with your head bashed in.”
His grin widened. “That’s what I like about you,” he said. “You prefer extreme solutions.”
“I prefer solutions that work,” she retorted. “I don’t mind if they’re extreme.”
He nodded, instantly sobering. “You did good today,” he said softly. “Holding off the attack, organizing the guards. All your training was for something like this. You passed the test.”
“So did all of you.”
“Yeah,” he drawled, leaning back against the outer wall, “but it was your test. So now can you believe in yourself again?”
Her chin jerked up. She glared at him through the darkness. “What makes you think you can ask me a question like that?”
“Fought beside you,” he said. “I can ask what I want.”
She took a deep breath. “There aren’t enough fights on enough roadsides in all of Gillengaria to make me believe in myself again,” she said, turning away from him as she spoke. “But I’m more thankful than I can say that today’s encounter ended up the way it did.”
She was four steps away from him on her way to the house when she heard his soft voice behind her. “Then maybe what it takes is someone else believing in you.” She kept walking. She had no intention of turning back to ask him what he’d meant.
SEREPHETTE was in the library with Jasper, pacing with her usual grand elegance. She was clearly agitated over Karryn’s behavior. “And then! When I told her I thought she should spend tomorrow quietly at home, she informed me that she thought it was important that her people see that the serramarra was not frightened off by outlaws and bandits! Her people! When did Karryn begin to talk like that?”
Jasper started laughing. “Oh, but you have to give her credit!” he exclaimed. “She was very cool today. Not shrieking and shrinking back as Lindy Coverroe would have done.”
Serephette gave him a reproving look out of her hollow eyes. “At least such conduct would be more ladylike than her current behavior.”
Jasper motioned Wen deeper into the room. “I’ll wager the captain has a different opinion.”
Wen made a respectful bow in Serephette’s direction. “Marlady, I have to confess I thought Karryn’s behavior today was magnificent. She showed bravery. She showed that she cares for the men who risk their lives to keep her safe. And that means they will fight for her even harder next time.”
Serephette frowned at her. “You want to remake my daughter. You want to turn her into some kind of—mannish woman. Playing at swords and calling the guardsmen her friends! A proper serramarra doesn’t do such things.”
“I don’t think Karryn’s ever going to be a conventional serramarra—or a conventional marlady,” Wen said quietly. “She didn’t love her father overmuch. Once it occurs to her that other men might not be much better, she might choose not to marry at all. She might decide to take on all the work of running Fortunalt herself. She’s teaching herself a lot of things she’ll need to know in that case. Running a guard is one of them.”
“And it seems to me Karryn still spends plenty of her energy brooding about gowns, balls, and men,” Jasper added. “I don’t think we need to worry about Karryn losing all her superficial qualities.”
Serephette bestowed a scathing look upon him and swept toward the door. “Of course you wouldn’t understand,” she shot out. “You both want Karryn to be different. You don’t understand that being different just makes her life harder.”
“I do understand,” Jasper said soberly, as Serephette paused with one foot in the hall. “What you don’t understand is that Karryn’s life is already hard, and she’s already different because of it.”
“I see I have no allies here,” Serephette said coldly, slamming the door behind her as she left.
Wen and Jasper were left to gaze at each other in reverberating silence.
“Well, I’m sorry she thinks I’m interfering in her daughter’s education,” Wen said. “But I have to say Karryn’s behavior made me proud today. Reckless but splendid. She deserved every drop of blood shed for her.”
“What about Garth? And Malton?”
“Malton’s going to be fine, I think. We won’t know about Garth for a while yet, but I’m hopeful that the tavernkeeper’s mystic daughter-in-law will be able to save him.”
“Magic again,” Jasper said. He waved Wen over, and they sank into their customary chairs on either side of the small game table. “I thought Rayson had managed to banish it from Fortunalt, but since you’ve arrived, it rears its shy head everywhere.”
She grinned. “Magic was always here, it was just in hiding. If Karryn shows that she’s not afraid of it, it will flourish throughout Fortunalt. And I think you’ll find that to be a good thing, on balance.”
He leaned back in his chair and regarded her with a small smile. “I still think the credit goes to you. Are you sure you’re not a mystic yourself?”
She laughed. “Pretty sure. I think I’d know by now.” She shrugged. “Although—some people believe that magic is a gift from the gods, and one of the gods might watch over warriors. I wouldn’t mind having sorcery like that.”
His smile had vanished. “I think you must. I watched you from the coach, you know—feeling a mix of terror and exultation the whole time. You could have been killed a dozen times over. I was sure my heart would stop when you disappeared into that tree, and all we could see were these wildly waving branches. And yet you emerged victorious. You! Tiny thing that you are! And the men who attacked you fell dead. I was so afraid—and I was so amazed. If that’s not a kind of magic, I don’t know what is.”
She was pleased and embarrassed. It occurred to her, suddenly and sharply, that she had not had a solitary conversation with this man since he had kissed his fingers and laid them against her lips. The memory made her suddenly hot and awkward. She tried to cover her discomfort with a solemn expression.
“I was glad my skill was equal to the task,” she said. “But what I want to know is, why were we fighting? And who? Do you have any idea?”
Now his face was as sober as hers. “You don’t think these were just outlaws stopping random carriages as they passed?”
She shook her head, regaining her composure now that they were talking about serious matters. “They were too well-fed, too well-organized, and too well-supplied,” she said bluntly. “They were trying to kill us. More specifically, they were trying to kill Karryn.”
He uttered a curse—shocking words from such a polished man—and came to his feet to stalk the room. Wen stood uncertainly but stayed where she w
as, watching him. “I was afraid you would say that,” he said over his shoulder. “I had the same impression, but I hoped I was wrong.”
“Do you have any theories about who would plan such a thing?”
He shook his head. “Tover Banlish comes most instantly to mind, but what would he have to gain?”
“She humiliated him and because of her, he’s been disinherited,” Wen suggested. “Those are pretty powerful motives.”
“And yet, if his goal is to improve his lot—particularly through marriage—murder hardly helps his cause,” Jasper pointed out. “He can scarcely marry Karryn if she’s dead, and no one else would have him if they knew he’d killed her!”
“But if no one knew—”
He nodded, continuing to pace. “Yes, of course, and it certainly has to remain as a possibility. I will send an urgent letter to his father in the morning. But to me this doesn’t seem like the work of a man as clumsy as Tover.”
She had been strongly leaning toward the devvaser as a villain, but those words made her stop and consider. Tover was stupid and he was arrogant, and he had been the lead kidnapper in Karryn’s abduction. Was he intelligent enough to locate and strike a deal with professional soldiers? Would he have been able to resist the thrill of working alongside them?
And was he really evil enough to sign Karryn’s death warrant? A woman he had wanted to marry only a few months back?
“But if not Tover,” she said slowly, “then who?”
“The question has haunted me all night,” Jasper admitted. He had come to a halt across the room, and now he stared at her, his face grim. “What’s the point of killing Karryn? Who benefits?”
She had said much the same thing to the guards at the site of the ambush. “If Karryn dies,” she asked, “who becomes marlord of Fortunalt?”
Jasper looked thoughtful. “I don’t actually know the answer to that. Rayson had no siblings—no cousins, either. The joke among the Thirteenth House was that no woman could endure the touch of any of the Fortunalt marlords for the last five generations. So they gave their husbands one heir apiece and then never allowed the men to touch them again. Rayson’s own mother—Karryn’s grandmother—ran off with the steward. It was a scandal, of course, but everyone who heard the story said, ‘Good for her!’ or words to that effect. You had cause to hate Rayson, but Reynold was even worse.”
Wen smiled a little. “That’s amusing, but that doesn’t help us right now.”
“Serephette is sure to know. We’ll ask her in the morning,” Jasper said. “I suppose Karryn’s heir becomes the person most likely to want her dead.”
Wen felt suddenly tired. “Or perhaps not. Perhaps there are feuds among the Houses that we know nothing about. Perhaps Ariane Rappengrass wants to see Fortunalt weak enough that she can invade the lands and take over some of the property.”
“I’ve met Ariane, and I seriously doubt that,” he murmured.
“Or perhaps a lesser lord with a great deal of money hated Rayson so much that he doesn’t want to see anyone with Rayson’s blood ascend to power in Fortunalt.”
Jasper stared at her in dismay. “In that case, the possible suspects are virtually limitless.”
“I know. It would have been better if we had kept one of our assailants alive to learn what we could in interrogation.” She shrugged. “But at the time, I was more interested in keeping Karryn safe. So now she is alive but we are ignorant. I can’t regret the bargain, but it does leave us with nothing but questions.”
He came slowly toward her across the room. “And here’s another question,” he said. “Will there be another attack on Karryn’s life? Should we no longer allow her outside of these protected walls?”
Wen felt her mouth tighten with dissent. “Lock her up to keep her safe,” she said. “That’s what King Baryn did with Amalie when she was young. I had been a Rider for years before I ever saw her to speak to her. I don’t think that’s much of a life.”
“Still, she survived to become queen,” Jasper pointed out.
“And for the rest of her life there will be enemies who would like to see her dead,” Wen replied. “What kind of queen will she be if she never leaves Ghosenhall? What kind of marlady will Karryn be if she never leaves these grounds?”
“Then what’s the answer?”
“I’m the answer. You know that already. I am, and Orson, and Moss, and all the other guards we’ve assembled. We never let her out of our sight.”
“But your contract is up,” he said softly. “You’ll be leaving soon.”
The words hit her like a hard slap. She stiffened, caught unprepared. “Yes,” she said at last, “but she will be safe with the others.”
He had come to a halt only a couple feet away from her. “I don’t believe Karryn will trust anyone as she trusts you.”
“I wasn’t the only one who fought today,” Wen said. “And no one let her down.”
“It would be better if you stayed,” he said.
The words hung between them during a long silence. Then he added, “I believe you want to. Don’t you? You just haven’t allowed yourself to think you can.”
Now she was the one agitated enough to pace, but he stood too close to her, hemming her against the chair. She clasped her hands together, hard, to keep them from clenching and unclenching with stress. “Sometimes it’s not a matter of what I want or what I choose,” she said in a low voice. “I feel a sense of—of—it might almost be panic, and the only way to make it fade is to get on my horse and ride out.”
“And do you feel that sense of panic now?” he asked.
She gave a shaky laugh. “I didn’t until you came to stand over me like that.”
He smiled slightly. “So would you like me to back away?”
It was a long time before she answered. “No.”
He reached out a hand and gently, gently touched his fingertips to her cheek. “You have accused me before of being obscure, so let me be forthright now,” he said. “I want you to stay. For Karryn’s sake, yes. Because I trust you to watch over her. For your sake. Because I think, in Fortunalt, you might find a place you can come to rest, if you can only convince yourself that you deserve to.” His hand traveled upward, took a lock of her short hair between his fingers, tested it as if it was purest silk. “For my sake,” he added. “Because I will miss you dreadfully if you go.”
She was astonished at how much her skull tingled under his touch as his hand moved farther back, cupped itself around her ear, splayed at the back of her head. “Those are all reasons for me to linger,” she said, focusing on her words as much as she would have if she were drunk. “But I don’t know how long I could promise to stay even so.”
“Another month?” he said, a whisper of a laugh in his voice. “Haven’t we advanced our contract in such increments almost from the beginning?”
She met his eyes squarely. “A month might seem like a long time,” she said, “if you seduced your captain and began to find her tiresome in a week.”
That made him laugh out loud. “Oh, you are the most refreshingly direct woman!” he exclaimed. “Surely I would not find you tiresome for a year at least.”
So he didn’t deny that seduction was his intent. The news made her feel even more cheerful, and she had already thought she might be exhibiting a certain sparkle. “Well, I won’t ask you for promises,” she said. “So I don’t think I have to make you promises in return.”
“One or two promises I think I can make you,” he said. He had lifted his other hand and placed it at her waist, and now he drew her closer to him, almost into an embrace. She could feel the heat of his body through his fine embroidered clothes. “I will never treat you with disrespect and never speak to you unkindly.”