Firebrand

“Those are mine!” the man protested from the doorway, but he seemed afraid to cross the threshold of his own room.

Karigan ignored him and broke the arrows over her knee. There was a release, an easing, and all else seemed to vanish from existence, the noise from downstairs, the yelling man, the unkempt room. The filmy figure of a Green Rider appeared before her. It was Joy Overway. Karigan had never known her in life.

You have freed me, Joy said. Her hair floated about her shoulders in the downdraft of the great wings. Thank you, Avatar. She faded away and then all was normal once again.

Karigan shook herself as though awakening from a dream. She stared at the broken arrows in her hand, not clear on how she’d ended up in this room with them. The only thing she did know was that she wanted to be rid of them, but the inn’s enforcer blocked the doorway.

“I paid lots for those,” he said, holding his knife in a threatening manner. Yet, his eyes flicked nervously. He almost looked scared.

There were any number of actions Karigan might have taken. She could have impressed him with her status as a swordmaster and honorary Weapon by drawing her saber to reveal the knotted silk on the blade, or she might have allowed him to attack. The first might have only served as provocation, and the second would certainly end in spilled blood. Both would have drawn Enver into a situation that would unmask him and cause even more trouble. As a representative of the king, starting a fight if it could be avoided would reflect poorly on the Green Riders and King Zachary, especially in a town such as this. Instead of drawing her sword, she reached into her pocket and tossed four silvers, an exorbitant amount, at the man’s feet.

“Sorry,” she said, and slipped past.

He’d pressed against the door frame so as not to touch her. “You will be sorry,” he said, “if I see you around here again. Unnatural bitch.”

Enver shadowed her back down the stairs. She eased her way between patrons to the hearth and threw the broken arrows into the fire. It flared and she fancied she could see a demonic face form in the flames, which was gone as quickly as it had appeared. She glanced at her hands. They were unscathed, but a sense of uncleanliness lingered. The people warming themselves at the fire regarded her curiously and with some suspicion.

She hurried to where Estral still sat talking with Barris. A glance over her shoulder revealed the enforcer stomping down the stairs, still unhappy, but his confidence back and looking ready for a fight. She dropped more coins on the table, grabbed her longsword, and said to Estral, “We are leaving. Now.”

“What? Barris and I were—”

Karigan grabbed Estral’s arm. “Now.”

Estral uttered farewells as Karigan dragged her out of the common room and into the wet courtyard, Enver close behind. The rain made the dusk even darker and the day feel even later than it was.

Estral wrenched her arm out of Karigan’s grasp. “What was that for? Barris and I were catching up.”

“We’ve overstayed our welcome.” She and Enver hastened to help the stable boys tack the horses and reload Bane with their gear. When all were ready, Karigan did not pause, but rode out of the courtyard. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed the enforcer watching them from the doorway of the inn. To her credit, she kept Condor at a walk and did not run, but it was a fast walk.

Estral nosed Coda alongside Condor. The cat poked his face from beneath Estral’s coat into the rain, and quickly hid himself again. “What was that all about?”

“Avoiding trouble,” Karigan replied.

“Trouble? What did you do this time?”

Karigan looked at her askance. She supposed it was her fault, though she did not know exactly how she’d sensed the arrows and been drawn right to them. She shuddered, recalling how they had felt in her hands, how they’d wanted to feed on her soul. She had done that enforcer a favor, really, by destroying them. Not that the arrows would have impaled themselves in him of their own volition, but their mere presence in his room, with the malevolence they emanated, might have affected him in some way. How he obtained the arrows in the first place she did not wish to know. She had last seen them impaled in Joy’s body, and he’d displayed them as prized possessions. He said he’d paid for them and she could only guess at what sort of person would sell arrows removed from a corpse. She tried to not let dark thoughts cloud what she had accomplished, the release of the spirit of Joy at long last.

“The Galadheon,” Enver told Estral, “diffused a difficult situation.”

Karigan glanced at him wondering how much he had witnessed. A good deal of it was unclear to her. She could not see his face for he still wore his hood.

“What difficult situation?” Estral demanded.

“I was taking care of unfinished business,” Karigan replied. “It angered the inn’s enforcer.”

“What are you talking about? What unfinished business?”

Apparently Estral was not going to be satisfied until she explained. They were now outside the town and no one appeared to be following, so she told her about the arrows.

“Oh, gods,” Estral murmured. “I remember the arrows. Captain Mapstone came looking for my father with the pair that had killed F’ryan Coblebay. They were . . . dark. As I recall, you broke the ones you found after the Battle of the Lost Lake.”

“Yes, and later, the ones that killed F’ryan.” The battle had not been long after Karigan’s first passage through North. Shawdell had set up an ambush to kill King Zachary, and many nobles with him. When they fought Shawdell off, she had broken all the soul-stealing arrows she could find to release the spirits he’d enthralled.