Firebrand

When she entered, she almost tripped over one of her old traveling chests. It had simply been deposited in the middle of the floor. The rest of the scene was not unexpected. Aunt Stace examined the gaudy gilt headboard of her bed, with unicorns and a young girl carved on it, that Garth had dug up gods-knew-where. Aunts Tory and Gretta were inspecting the contents of her wardrobe, which consisted of uniforms and not much more, and Aunt Brini sat at her massive desk, going through the drawers. Privacy had never been one of her aunts’ strong points.

Her father, meanwhile, unaware of her arrival, waved his arms at his sisters and said, “I don’t think she’d appreciate you going through her things. Brini, put that back! Stace, tell them.”

Karigan cleared her throat and they all turned immediately and started asking questions, but it was Aunt Brini, at her desk holding a piece of paper, who claimed her full attention.

“Kari, who are the people in this picture? They are dressed very strangely.”

Karigan stormed right up to Aunt Brini and snatched the paper out of her hand. It was the drawings the ghost of Yates had made of Cade and other people she had met in the future. It was her strongest connection to people that her memory and the contradictions of time tried very hard to erase.

“This,” she said in so angry a voice she surprised even herself, “is none of your business.” She gently settled the paper into its proper drawer and slammed it shut, making Aunt Brini flinch. “None of this,” she told her aunts, gesturing at her chamber and unable to stop herself, “is any of your business. I am not a child anymore that you can just go searching through my things.”

Her aunts raised their voices in protest.

The throb in Karigan’s head intensified so much her vision rippled. “No. I won’t have it. You intrude on me, on my life, without warning, and then start looking through my things? I would not do it to you, but you can’t seem to show me the same respect. It never seems to matter what I’ve done here in the king’s service. You just keep treating me like a child.” She had never raised her voice to them like this before, and they stared at her in shock.

“Kari,” Aunt Stace began.

“No! I don’t want to hear it. I didn’t invite you here. I just want to be left alone.” She sagged against one of the stone pillars that supported the ceiling in her room, her headache now full blown. Between the pain and the venting of her anger, she thought she might throw up.

Aunt Stace opened her mouth again as if to speak, but Karigan’s father placed his hand on his sister’s arm. “She’s right. We are remiss. We have presumed much.”

Aunt Tory sniffled and dabbed at her eyes. Aunt Gretta looked like she was about to cry. Aunt Brini was so upset she rose and brushed past Karigan on her way out the door, sobbing.

Karigan was exhausted, her fury only partially spent, but now she was also engulfed by guilt. She hadn’t wanted to make them cry. Her aunts and father were there because they loved her and needed to see her after she had seemingly come back from the dead.

Beyond the pain in her head and the emotion that suffused her chamber, she sensed a building pressure in the air. Her father was saying something, but it felt as if the very walls were crushing her. Her vision swam and she thought she might pass out, but a shriek from somewhere outside her room brought her back to herself.

What in five hells? Was it her imagination, or had the temperature cooled considerably?

“Karigan!” Daro Cooper appeared at her door, her face pale. “Something—something strange is going on!”

She could tell just by the tone of Daro’s voice it had to be bad.

“Grab your sword,” Daro said, and disappeared from the doorway.

She didn’t have a sword. She had yet to replace the saber she’d lost in Blackveil, but she did have her bonewood staff. She bounded across her room to where it leaned against the wall next to her bed. The black lacquered fighting staff felt natural and good in her hands. Touching it seemed to knock her headache down a notch.

“You will close the door behind me,” Karigan instructed her father and aunts, “and lock it. Do not let anyone in till I return.”

“Brini,” Aunt Stace said.

“I’ll find her.” Karigan was astonished to see her breath fog the air as she spoke. “And stoke up the fire, try to keep warm.” A tingle on the back of her neck told her the rapidly cooling temperature was not natural, that magic was at play. As she passed through the door, she turned once more and looked in. “Remember, lock the door!” Not, she reflected, that a locked door would necessarily be a defense against a magical attack, or any other.

She sprinted around the corner into the main Rider corridor, and was faced with a rush of frigid wind and a scene of which she could not quite make sense. A rime of frost coated the walls. Her fellow Riders spilled out of their rooms to hack and slash at what appeared to be . . . small whirlwinds? They were about as tall as her knees.

Another shriek caught her attention—Aunt Brini! She dashed down the corridor. Daro and Brandall shielded Aunt Brini from the whirlwinds, Daro stabbing into one, which burst in a poof of crystalline fragments, revealing its inner skeleton, child-sized with translucent bones of ice that were vaguely human in shape, but disturbingly other. It clenched an icicle dagger ready to puncture Daro’s foot. Her sword swept down and cleaved through the creature’s skull. Ice splintered and cracked, and scattered across the floor.

“Kari!” Aunt Brini cried.