Firebrand

“Think about it,” Estral said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

When she was gone, Karigan tried to summon her voice of command. “Sleep,” she ordered Nyssa.

Nyssa simply watched her with an air of amusement.

“Sleep,” Karigan tried again, but she heard only her own weak voice. And she tried yet again, putting her will into it, but still nothing.

Nyssa laughed. “I told you you were broken. You are not nearly as strong as everyone thinks you are. Give up, Greenie. What is the point of fighting?”

“Won’t let you win,” Karigan muttered.

“You’ve already lost,” Nyssa said.

“Let who win?” Estral asked as she entered the tent.

“No one.”

“How about the hot spring? Enver is scouting and the king is still sleeping, so it’s all ours.”

Karigan scowled at Nyssa. “Yes.”

Nyssa remained silent, but Karigan didn’t think it was because she’d “won.”

“It’ll probably be too much to submerge your wounds,” Estral said as she helped Karigan rise, “but you can wade and wash up.”

Karigan shivered as she stepped outside into the chill morning air, where Nyssa stood waiting, the everpresent smirk on her face.

When Zachary awakened, he felt the need to cleanse himself again, for something of his recent captivity clung to him still. Their camp was quiet in the dusky light, but for the morning chatter of birds. Thinking himself the first one to rise, he walked to the hot spring, only to find it occupied.

He backed silently into the trees and observed Karigan, facing away from him, shadowed and hip deep in the morning-gray pool where twists of steam rose around her in an ephemeral fairy dance. His joy at seeing her up and about was tempered by how stiffly and slowly she moved, as though in great pain, when he was accustomed to seeing only her strength and grace. Estral sat on a rock, knees drawn to her chest, keeping watch.

Not wishing to be a voyeur, he started to turn away to retreat to their camp, but Karigan stepped into a shaft of sunlight that slanted down through the trees, and he could not look away. He saw, in full brilliance, her back, its slender contours ravaged, her flesh in tatters. All that was not blood-crusted scabs was still-angry welts and bruises.

Dear gods.

He reeled away and stumbled down the path, only to pause and lean against the trunk of a tall pine to catch his breath. Nari had told him what had been done to her and hearing about it had been bad enough, but seeing it was all that much worse.

I am so sorry, Karigan.

If he hadn’t already slain Nyssa, he’d do it again, but more slowly this time. He’d make her suffer as she’d made Karigan suffer. Alas, that retribution was denied him, and he could only hope that her soul, if she had one, was delivered to the deepest, darkest, and cruelest of hells.

Back at the campsite, he sat by the fire and stared into the flickering flames. He tried to still himself, but he could not get the image of Karigan’s back out of his mind. He stood once more and paced. He thought back to when she had first arrived in Sacor City. Had she been sixteen? Seventeen? Young, at any rate, and already she had faced villains and monsters, and, against the odds, survived the journey to bring him a message for which another Rider had been killed. He’d known she was an extraordinary person then, but even so, he never suspected all she would do and accomplish in the following years.

I never wished this for you, Karigan, he thought. You would have been much better off staying a merchant, perhaps marrying someone to help carry on the work of your clan. Having a family. However, he knew the call to be a Green Rider could not be ignored, but oh, how she had tried. He shook his head at the memory. She had held out far longer than he and Laren had expected.

He was grateful when she’d finally answered the call, not just because of what she had done for his realm, but for his own selfish reasons. If only rank and status did not matter . . . He sighed. There was no use in stewing over what could not be.

A cry for help came faintly, but urgently, from the direction of the hot spring. He sprinted down the path. About halfway, he found Estral trying to support a sagging Karigan.

“We overdid,” Estral said.

“I’m fine,” Karigan said in a slightly slurred voice. She was in Enver’s oversized shirt and wrapped in a blanket.

“You keep saying that,” Estral said, “and yet here I am holding you up.”

Zachary helped lift her to her feet, careful not to hurt her back; then he took her into his arms and carried her back toward camp. She did not protest, which he thought of as a bad sign.

Once they were back in Enver’s tent, he helped her down onto her bedding. She lay on her stomach, and he nested the blankets around her. Estral tugged slippers from her feet that looked distinctly Eletian. Enver had been tending her in his tent, she was wearing his shirt and slippers . . . Zachary let go an irrational swell of jealousy before it could overcome him. Enver had also rescued her, and was mending her. For those two things, Zachary was most grateful.

Karigan looked tiredly up at him. “You lost your beard.”

It took a moment for her words to make sense. He scraped his stubbled chin with his hand. “Yes, do you like it?”

“It is better than the beard you had when we found you,” she replied, “but I miss your old beard.”

“Very well. Then I will grow it back as it was before.”

She plucked at a length of her own wet hair. “It grows back. Hair. A good thing.”