Sweat slithered down the sides of Karigan’s face. All she wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep.
“Get Zem and help her back to her room,” Silva ordered Rona, “and make sure she stays abed and eats this time.”
Trapped, Karigan thought. She was trapped in a brothel.
MIRWELL PROVINCE
Beryl Spencer stepped out into the corridor, the door to Lord Mirwell’s library closing soundly behind her. She stood there fuming for several moments, feeling thwarted, annoyed, and perhaps worst of all, betrayed.
More maneuvers? He was sending her out on more exercises with the troops? She had just returned from the last set this week past and barely had time to brush the dust off her boots. One field camp blurred into another.
As she stood there in the corridor, she could not erase the image of that pompous son of a goat, Colonel Birch, standing there next to Timas, handing her her new orders. Somehow he had courted favor with Timas, had insinuated himself into the role that should have been hers, of close confidant and aide, first in Timas’ affections; he had outmaneuvered her and she couldn’t figure out how. Now she had become just another military officer with no special standing in the lord-governor’s eyes.
Beryl tried everything to gain Timas’ confidence, from deference, authority, efficiency, and hard work, even to using her femininity, all of which had worked so well on his father. She drew on all the power of her brooch to enhance her special ability to assume a role and convince others she was someone whom she was not, to win him over, but to no avail.
Which naturally made her suspicious.
She struck off down the corridor. Timas didn’t appear to be hiding anything; nothing obvious at least, and he was governing the province well despite his inexperience and difficulties compounded by the failure of crops over the summer, and rather odd magical occurrences, like the fire-breathing snapping turtle they’d found in the keep’s ornamental pond. Yet he kept sending her away.
Getting me out of the way. Why?
She turned a corner of the keep’s corridor, brightly lit for the evening hours. Her stride was crisp, even, and purposeful. Anyone noting her passage would see only the officer, all her medals, buttons, and insignia gleaming on her scarlet shortcoat, her hair severely tied back, and her boot heels sharp on the floor.
Everything about her appearance and carriage was impeccable—it was an image she’d worked hard to cultivate. Most viewed her, as she intended, as a cold, calculating soldier dedicated to the province and its lord-governor. Many of the keep’s denizens and members of Mirwell’s court feared her, as well they should. During old Lord Mirwell’s reign she had been not only his most trusted aide, but his chief interrogator. In the course of her duties, she employed many methods to force confessions of anyone he deemed worthy of his suspicions.
Her boots rapped on the spiraling stone stairs as she descended to the keep’s main level. Despite her reputation, she found herself constantly having to reinforce her role. Returning to Mirwellton after the old lord-governor’s fall had been risky. There were those who suspected she had betrayed him. Otherwise, wouldn’t the king have executed her as well, or at least kept her in prison? Not that anyone would admit they approved of the old lord or his plans to dethrone King Zachary…but it did generate her share of enemies among those who remained secretly loyal to the dead man and his ambitions.
She ensured none of these suspicions led to the truth, that no one exposed her real affiliations and compromised her position as an operative of King Zachary’s. Her mission was to keep watch on Timas Mirwell, to make sure he did not follow in the footsteps of his traitorous father.
She entered the main hall. Soldiers saluted her and courtiers spared her a nervous glance before hurrying away. She allowed herself a small, grim smile. If she caught wind of anyone expressing suspicions about her, if she believed they would reveal her true affiliations, her true duty, they quietly disappeared, never to be heard from again.
She was not what one would consider a typical Green Rider.
Beryl contemplated what her next step should be. Timas persisted in assigning her duties that would keep her away, seriously hampering her overriding duty to maintain vigil over him. There were two possibilities: either Timas just didn’t like her, or something else was afoot and he couldn’t trust her. If it were the latter, it meant her mission was compromised. If the mission was compromised, it meant she’d been exposed and was likely in danger, unless they—Colonel Birch and Lord Mirwell—believed her ignorant of their activities and that she continued to give only positive reports to King Zachary.
She must get to the bottom of it while feigning ignorance, but that was bloody hard when they kept sending her away.
Crossing the main hall and starting down a corridor toward her quarters, Beryl was wondering how she might get out of her latest orders when she heard Birch speaking with someone behind her. She turned about and peered back into the main hall. A runner handed him a folded piece of paper. He opened it and glanced at it before folding it back up and dropping it into his pocket. He dismissed the runner and headed toward the keep’s entranceway. Guards hauled open the massive ironbound doors for him, and even before Beryl could feel the draft of chill air against her face, he walked out into the night.
She decided to follow him. If she needed information, this was the way to start: to see what Birch was about. If he and Timas were up to something the king did not approve of, it was her duty to find out about it. And if they were diverting her attention because they knew her real identity and wanted her out of the way, she had to correct the situation.
She paused for several moments before crossing the main hall. The guards opened the great doors once again at her approach, and she strode out onto the front steps. Torches sputtered on either side of her, so she descended the steps to stand in the deeper gloom of the night to allow her eyes time to adjust to the dark. Across the courtyard she could make out Birch receding into the night.
She glanced about to make sure no one was watching and set off across the courtyard with a determined stride, leaving the torchlit entrance behind. Birch was angling toward the stables. Would she have to follow him somewhere on horseback?
The heavy, cool air subdued the world around her. No breeze stirred the treetops, there was no sound of owls hooting or dogs baying in the distance; only her feet crunching on the gravel walkway.
She slowed as she approached the stable, not wishing to give away her presence. There were no lanterns lit within, just the blackened windows gaping at her. At this hour, the horses were quiet inside, dozing or munching on hay. She hoped her own mare, Luna Moth, would not catch wind of her and call out with a whinny as she sometimes did.
Unsure of where Birch had gotten to, Beryl paused and listened. The damp air carried the nearby sound of voices to her. She judged that Birch and whomever he met with were located just on the other side of the stables.
She stepped off the gravel walkway and onto the grass to conceal the sound of her footsteps. Cautiously she inched forward, closer to the building, sticking to the shadows, hardly daring to breathe, all her senses taut.
As she edged toward a corner of the building, the voices grew louder.
“—taking a chance by coming here,” Birch said.
“Don’t think so,” said a man. “I wanted to deliver this myself.”
Beryl peered around the corner. Her eyesight wasn’t the best, and though her specs were tucked in an inner pocket of her shortcoat, she didn’t dare risk the movement to take them out. So she was left squinting in the dark, discerning a figure that must be Birch standing before a horseman in plain leathers and a cloak. He sat his horse like a trained soldier, but if he was someone she knew, the dark and her nearsightedness confounded her ability to identify him.
“You got it then,” Birch said in a pleased murmur.
“Aye, and our thief has agreed to the other assignment as well. He believed our cover story that our ‘employer’ was a nobl
eman desiring to settle a matter of honor.” The horseman leaned over his horse’s withers to hand Birch a document case.
“Grandmother will be most pleased to see this,” Birch said.
Grandmother? Beryl wondered. Birch was working with a thief on behalf of his grandmother?
“Thought she would be,” the horseman said. “The thief is good, though he met with some resistance at the museum.” He laughed. “A lady in a dress of all things! She didn’t give him much trouble.”
“I should hope not,” Birch muttered, gazing at the object in his hands. “When does he think he can deliver on his next task?”
“He said it requires some cultivation and planning. He doesn’t want to move too quickly, considering the delicacy of the task. I’ll return to ensure everything is carried out.”
Birch grunted. “Good. Anything else?”
Beryl never heard the horseman’s reply. Her nerves jangled when she sensed someone standing behind her. She whirled, her hand on her saber, just in time to see a looming figure swinging at her head with a large rock in its hand. The rock struck her temple and she crashed backward into the stable wall.
Flurries of crackling snow speckled Beryl’s vision while hammers banged on the inside of her skull. At any moment, she thought she might disgorge her guts she felt so ill. Through the blizzard in her vision, she made out three figures gazing down at her.
“This one is no Mirwellian officer,” said a distantly familiar, abrasive voice, “but a Greenie. She betrayed her old lord.”
“I know,” Birch said matter-of-factly. “We’ve been keeping her out of the way till now. She’s had nothing to tell the king.”
“Should we kill her?” asked the horseman.
When Beryl shifted her gaze to look on him, her stomach lurched. She closed her eyes, but the snow still crackled and popped behind her eyelids. If they killed her, at least it would end her misery.
A silence followed as they decided what to do.
“No,” said the rough voice. “We’ll let Grandmother decide.”
Oh, good, Beryl thought. Grandmother would be kind and gentle. Understanding.
She cracked her eyes open. Starlight gleamed on a sharp hook the gruff-voiced man rubbed against his chin like a finger. She blinked. Yes, it was, in a way, his finger, for he had no hand. Just the hook.
They made her stand. The world reeled and finally she lost the contents of her stomach before passing into unconsciousness.
Grandmother stared at the Mirwellian officer, whom the captain’s men dropped like a sack of sand onto the tent platform before they marched back out into the night. The woman had a frightful lump on her head and was, fortunately for her, quite unconscious. Captain Immerez appeared pleased with himself, even more so than a cat who has caught a very fat mouse.
“So this is the spy you told me about,” Grandmother said.
“Yes,” he replied. “She was Lord Mirwell’s closest aide. Her name’s Beryl Spencer.”
She heard the resentment in his voice. “The old Lord Mirwell, you mean.”
He bristled. “The only Lord Mirwell. His son is useless. His father did what he could with the whelp, but all for nothing.”
Grandmother gave Captain Immerez a sidelong glance, hearing much more in his words than he spoke aloud, as she always did whenever they discussed the current Lord Mirwell. He was not only aggrieved that the “whelp” sat in the governor’s chair in Mirwellton, but he represented to Immerez all he had failed to attain. He’d expected to realize a powerful position in the province through his good standing with the old lord-governor, but Tomas Mirwell was dead, and Captain Immerez’s ambitions with him. His bitterness only festered during his two years of hiding. It was, at least in part, what made him malleable to her will. She provided him with a new outlet for his ambition.
Among Captain Immerez’s complaints was that the current lord-governor had not seen fit to follow in the footsteps of his scheming father, had not gone against the will of the king and engaged in bloody little wars so the province could wrap itself in the glory of battle. Instead, he attempted to make his province prosper by emphasizing farming and industry rather than the military. She could not fault the young man for serving his province rather than himself, but it made him untrustworthy to the cause of Second Empire.
“We need these hills to hide in,” Grandmother said, “and young Lord Mirwell’s cooperation has allowed us to do so.”
An ugly sneer crossed the captain’s face. “Without Birch there, he’d go squealing to the king. And I’m sure your little demonstration has helped keep him quiet.”
Colonel Birch was one of her own, born of the true blood of Second Empire, and one who commanded his own following of soldiers within the militia. Not so long ago he’d brought Timas Mirwell to Hawk Hill to meet her and witness a demonstration of her power on some unfortunate beggar the captain’s men dragged off the streets in Mirwellton.
“Whelp couldn’t keep his dinner down.” Captain Immerez’s laughter rasped like rusted iron.
The demonstration had proven effective, but she did not wish to persuade Timas Mirwell entirely with threats. She’d reminded him of the historical alliance between his clan and Mornhavon the Great during the Long War. If he cooperated, she would reward him. She would gift him with King Zachary’s intended, whom all men seemed to desire, if he wished it, or even better, an important role in Second Empire when it conquered Sacoridia.
In any case, Birch kept Timas Mirwell bent to her will, and she did not interfere with the day-to-day management of the province. Travelers were kept out of the hills with rumors of outlaws preying on the unwary, which was not exactly untrue. The captain had to provide for his men somehow. To Grandmother’s mind, it all worked out satisfactorily.
“And you caught this woman eavesdropping?” Grandmother asked. She nudged the slack body with her toe.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you kill her?”
“The king expects occasional contact with her. If she totally vanished, he’d grow suspicious.”
“But she has vanished,” Grandmother countered. “She’s vanished to here.”
The captain scratched around his eye socket beneath the patch. “We could force her to write a message or something, so it appeared all was well.”
Grandmother sighed in exasperation. The spy would be too clever, manipulating any message they coerced her to write into revealing her predicament and Second Empire. It was clear to Grandmother that the captain had another agenda when it came to the spy, a personal agenda of retribution that overrode common sense. If she judged the situation right, the spy’s first affront had been becoming the former Lord Mirwell’s closest aide, dearer to him than Captain Immerez. Her second affront had been betraying the old schemer.
“Birch has been sending her out on maneuvers to keep her out of the way,” the captain said. “I suppose he can use that excuse if anyone comes looking for her.”
“Very well,” Grandmother said. The woman stirred with a little cry, then fell unconscious again. The captain had told her that the spy was actually a Green Rider, and it was known to Grandmother that Green Riders, at least historically speaking, had minor abilities with the art. “You know, since we do have this one, there is something I believe I’d like to try.”
“Try?” Captain Immerez asked in surprise.
“I’d like to see what I can learn about the Green Riders and their abilities.”
The captain rubbed the curve of his hook against his chin. “An interrogation would be challenging. She’s a master interrogator herself, and would know how to resist any questioning.”
Grandmother smiled. “It’s not really an interrogation I have in mind, more of a notion of an experiment I’d like to try. Gold chains…” Before she could lose herself in envisioning the procedure, the captain cleared his throat. “Yes?”
“I have something for you, carried all the way from Sacor City.” He withdrew a document case from beneath his cloak a
nd proffered it to her with a low bow.
Grandmother clapped in delight. “Wonderful. You and your men have served me well.” She eagerly opened the case. Within lay a fragile, parchment document, scrawled with faint ink. She held it up, the lantern that hung from the center pole of the tent illuminating it with a deep golden glow. She frowned.
“What is it?” the captain asked. “What’s wrong?”
Grandmother sighed and closed the parchment in the case, and handed it back to him. “I can’t read it,” she said.
“You can’t read it?” He opened the case and looked at the parchment.
“Can you?” she asked him.
“N–no. It’s in a different language.”
“That would be ancient Sacoridian,” she told him. “I cannot read it, nor could any of my people here. If Weldon Spurlock were still alive, he might be able to, but he’s very much gone. I need a translation.”
“I–I see.”
“Do you? The parchment is worthless without it. How will you rectify the situation, Captain?”
“I’ll—I’ll find a way.”
“I would not wish for you to fail,” Grandmother said. “I am nearly done with the pouch, but I dare not use it until I have this parchment translated.” She pointed to the pouch, about the size of a finger, lying atop the skeins of yarn in her basket. She had knit all her different colors into it, the red, brown, indigo, and sky blue.
Immerez hooked his thumb into his swordbelt. “I do not understand why—”
“This parchment contains instructions for reading the book of Theanduris Silverwood. Books of magic sometimes require very specific instructions for their handling and reading. I would hate the book to destroy itself before it can be read because it was improperly handled.”
“I see,” the captain said. “I think I know where to find you that translation. It may take a while, though.” Without another word, he turned on his heel and left the tent.