Firebrand

Karigan blushed and did an about-face, and rushed from the stables, hoping the cold air would jolt her back to reality, maybe help her unsee the scene. Her father? And Captain Mapstone? She scrubbed her face and hurried back the way she had come.

She had sensed there was something going on between the two of them, but it still took her by surprise. She slipped on a patch of ice in her haste but saved herself from a fall. Her father, she knew, still mourned her mother, and there had never really been anyone else, at least that she knew of, unless one counted the madam of a brothel in Rivertown, and Karigan did not. Now that she thought about it, she wondered how many fellow merchants had tried to marry off their daughters to her widowed and very rich father for a beneficial alliance. He had gone his own way, however, successful enough he did not require a marriage alliance. At least not for himself. He could get one, he believed, through his daughter and had tried.

She wanted to be happy for him, but the captain? Not that there was anything wrong with the captain, except that she was her captain.

“Ugh.” She was having a hard time trying to dislodge the image from her mind of their rather passionate kiss. It was fine for them to be intimate. She just didn’t want to see it!

What in the hells did they even have in common? A few strides more and she thought, Oh, gods, ME. If not for her, it was unlikely they would have even met. Wind blew her hair into her face and lifted a fine powder of snow off the castle heights, which descended in a glittery cascade. Her father and the captain were at once an unlikely pair and at the same time eminently suited to one another. Both were strong-minded, which, she reflected, might make for an interesting spectacle. Her father would have to use all his charm to draw the captain out. She was not exactly an open book.

Obviously, her father had been using his charm already.

Ugh. Karigan continued on and stomped up the steps into the main castle entrance. The notion of her father and Captain Mapstone being together would take some getting used to.

• • •

She went in search of Estral. She needed someone to talk to about this latest wrinkle in her life. She found the mending wing full of wounded from the previous day’s incursion, and a mender told her Estral had been moved to the diplomatic wing to make space. Karigan looked for her there, but she was not to be found. So, Karigan gave up and headed down to the Rider wing and, to her surprise, found Estral sitting in the common room with Mara in front of a crackling fire. Estral was writing in a journal with pen and ink, and Mara was saying, “—and the change is noticeable.”

“What change?” Karigan asked.

They both looked up in surprise at her approach.

She sat on a bench beside Mara’s rocking chair. To Estral, she said, “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Estral smiled in reply.

“What are you two up to?” Karigan asked.

“Estral here is taking notes,” Mara replied.

“About what?”

Estral grabbed her slate and chalk and wrote out her response. All the Rider things YOU never tell me about.

“Oh.” Karigan did have that problem with details, and she’d never been a good letter writer. She wondered what “all the Rider things” encompassed.

“Estral says she might write a book about more recent Rider history and how the Riders fit into the scheme of the realm.”

Estral erased her slate with a rag and wrote, Can’t sing, but can write.

Karigan knew she could. She had written numerous songs even before she’d been an apprentice minstrel. When they were in school together at Selium, she used to show Karigan all the songs she was working on. A history was a different matter altogether, but Estral was a good writer in general.

“Can I see?” Karigan asked, pointing at the journal.

Estral shook her head and hugged the journal to her chest. Then she jotted on her slate, Not book yet. Just notes.

“You’ll let me read it when it’s done?”

Estral nodded and mouthed, Of course. For some reason, there was a mischievous glint in her eye.

Hmm, Karigan thought. However, she had something else on her mind and glanced over her shoulder to make sure the three of them were alone in the common room. There were some voices out in the corridor, but no one who would overhear.

“Do you know,” she asked Mara quietly, “if the captain is, er, seeing someone? Like . . . seriously?”

Mara stared blankly at her for a moment before recovering. “You mean, like a man?”

Karigan gave her an exasperated look. “What do you think I mean?”

“Well, you never know. I mean, the captain is pretty private about her personal life. Not that she has much of a life beyond the Green Riders. Why, do you know something?”

“N-no, not really,” Karigan lied.

As Chief Rider, Mara spent the most time in the captain’s company of any Rider. Karigan thought that if anyone had inside information, Mara would.

“Elgin,” Mara mused, “has hinted there was someone many years ago and that there was some tragedy. When I tried to draw him out, he shut right up, told me it wasn’t his place to talk about it if ‘Red’ wouldn’t do so herself.”

That was certainly interesting. Elgin, a retired Rider who’d served with the captain years ago, had returned to the castle to help with all the new Riders. Karigan was under the impression that he, too, was haunted by his own experiences. Both had fought against the notorious Darrow Raiders, in addition to surviving the usual perils of Rider life. She was certainly not the only one to suffer loss.