Firebrand

Eletians, she thought in exasperation. She pushed her half-finished mug of kauv away and interrupted whatever Enver was about to say next. “Do you know where I might find Lhean?”

“He is meeting with your king.”

Damnation. When would she get to see him? She tapped her fingers on the table in annoyance. Maybe it was the kauv, maybe it was Enver, but she was feeling twitchy. She suddenly needed to move, to get up and go, but without Enver underfoot. She stood abruptly and cast Mara a pleading look, hoping her friend would understand and help. After all, Enver had come looking for “the Galadheon.”

Mara raised an eyebrow and seemed to grasp what she wanted all right if her expression of disapproval was any indication, but she did not argue. Karigan mouthed a “thank you” and Mara pursed her lips. She wondered what favor she would owe Mara as a result of this.

“It was very nice seeing you,” she told Enver, “but I must . . . I must attend to my duties.” Technically, the king had given her leave to spend time with her family, but wasn’t seeing family a sort of duty?

“I will talk to you later,” Mara said.

Karigan did not doubt she would. Enver looked a little confused, and when Karigan started to walk away, she heard the bench creak as he rose from his seat to follow.

“I wouldn’t,” Mara warned him, loud enough for her voice to carry. “She’s a bit crotchety this morning.”

Karigan winced. She deserved that.

A quick glance over her shoulder revealed Enver sitting back down and asking, “This crotchety—is it a malady? A disease?”

This morning, Karigan thought, it surely felt like it, and she hastened her steps to leave the dining hall behind, hoping Mara didn’t mind too much being saddled with the curious Eletian.

“Er, not a disease,” Mara told Enver, “but a matter of temperament.” She watched Karigan disappear through the doorway. She would indeed speak to her later, but more out of concern than reproach. She rarely saw her friend so out of sorts, and even after all her experiences in Blackveil and the future, her loss of Cade and the oddity of her eye, she’d done a good job of maintaining outward equilibrium, but Mara could see through it, how a heaviness weighed on her, how she threw herself into her work, how she sought to be alone more often than not. She was not as quick to smile or laugh.

A patch covered Karigan’s mirror eye, but in her other eye, Mara caught flashes of sorrow, and something else, a fathomless dark, like a well of the heavens. Thinking of it made her shudder.

Enver had watched after Karigan, as well, his gaze thoughtful. “I do not think she remembers me.”

“From when she returned on Night of Aeryc? Of course she does.”

He shook his head, his eyes growing distant. “It was nearly five of your years ago. Our tiendan was traveling the great wood that your people call the Green Cloak, and in the night we saw the light of a muna’riel. We sensed no others of our own kind nearby, and investigated.”

“It was Karigan?”

“Yes. She had just slain a creature of Kanmorhan Vane and was fevered with its poison in her blood.”

Mara realized he was speaking of when Karigan, a runaway schoolgirl and not yet officially a Green Rider, had carried a life-or-death message given her by the dying F’ryan Coblebay to King Zachary. One of her amazing feats along the way was slaying the monstrous creature and its numerous young.

“You were there?”

Enver nodded solemnly. “There were twelve of us. We danced and sang the healing while my father treated her wounds.”

“Your father? Your father is—?”

“Somial, yes.”

“Huh,” was the only thing Mara could think to say. She wondered what Karigan would make of it.

“I ask that you do not speak to her of it for I do not think she is one who would wish to be reminded of a time when she was weakened and helpless, and at the mercy of strangers.”

Mara reassessed Enver, his earnest demeanor, his desire for her to honor his request. His hands were folded on the table, and he waited for her response with a stillness she believed no mortal could attain. His artless conduct might lead to misunderstandings between his culture and hers, but his shrewd observation showed he had no trouble when it came to understanding Karigan G’ladheon.

A POET AND MEMORY

Thanks in no small part to Mara, Karigan was free of the dining hall, but not of other obligations. She went to the mending wing to check on Estral, but peeking through the cracked door revealed that her friend was still sound asleep. Truth be told, she was rather envious.

She meandered out of the mending wing, a little at a loss. Estral was asleep and Lhean unavailable. She’d been given leave to spend time with her family, but in the flurry of the previous night’s events, she hadn’t even thought to ask her father where he was staying, so she’d have to wait for him to find her, however long that would take.

As she stepped into the main hall of the castle, she was accosted by a Green Foot runner.

“There you are, Rider,” the boy said, huffing and puffing. “Been all over looking for you.”

“Is there some emergency?”

“No, ma’am. The queen requests that you attend her.”

Karigan wanted to tell the boy she was not a “ma’am,” but she just watched him trot off to his next task. Estora wanted her to visit? What a morning. It wasn’t that she disliked Estora; on the contrary, they had been friends, but as to their relationship now? “Complicated” didn’t even begin to describe it. Since her return, she’d made no effort to see the queen, which was rather easily accomplished since Estora was sequestered due to her pregnancy, a pregnancy made more perilous by the fact she was carrying twins. Master Mender Vanlynn was being adamant about her remaining confined for her safety and that of the babies. It was essential for the realm that she produce healthy offspring.