Firebrand

She accepted Mara’s leg up. “Any final orders?” she asked the captain.

“The usual. Stay out of trouble and come home safely.”

Mara laughed. “As if that ever happens.”

Karigan made a face at her.

The captain remained serious. “You are a capable Rider, Karigan; otherwise, the king would not be sending you out on this mission as his voice to make contact with the p’ehdrose for the first time in a thousand years.”

“I understand.”

“Good. And I’d prefer to not have to report bad news to your father again.”

Karigan gave her a sly smile. “When you see him next, tell him I send my love.”

The captain squinted suspiciously at her in return but did not reply.

Flurries started to drift down in lazy spirals as they bade their final farewells, and departed. Karigan and Estral rode side by side, and Enver followed with Bane. Just before they crossed through the castle gates, Karigan turned in her saddle to wave good-bye to the captain and Mara, but they’d already reentered the castle. Enver, she noticed, was gazing at the castle heights. When she followed his gaze, she saw only the pennants fluttering listlessly in the breeze, a raven soaring overhead, and soldiers at guard on the battlements.

She turned her attention to the way ahead.

Zachary stood upon the battlements, a breeze playing through his hair as he observed the three prepare to depart for the north. It was not the first time he had watched Karigan ride away from him. Would it be the last? It wasn’t the first time he’d entertained that thought, either. She had returned all those previous times, sometimes miraculously. He hoped this errand would prove less perilous than those others, but of course, one could never tell how things would turn out. His messengers often rode into danger; it was the nature of their job, but he was the one who made the decision that they must go. And Karigan was more than a messenger to him.

He could not hear what words were exchanged down below, nor see their expressions, but he watched Karigan mount, so easy in the saddle. He wished he could ride out with her, leave the problems of the realm in someone else’s hands. A light flurry descended from the sky, and he imagined the snow alighting softly upon her hair and shoulders.

The horses started forward, with the Eletian on foot leading the pony. As they approached the gates, he noticed the Eletian looking his way. He met the Eletian’s gaze, then stepped back from the battlements. A raven wheeled overhead, and he turned on his heel. He strode for the doorway that led back into the castle, Fastion following close behind.

He’d almost felt the intensity of the Eletian’s gaze, almost as if Enver could see into him, beneath his skin. Although Zachary had been unable to see Enver’s face clearly at such a distance, he knew Eletians possessed exceptional sight. As a guard tugged open the heavy iron door for him, he wondered just how exceptional Eletian sight was.

Did Enver see Zachary’s desire for the freedom to do as he wished? The desire to be other than king? His longing for the one who must always ride away, even in his dreams?

As he trotted down the stairwell into the comparative warmth of the castle, cold currents stalked him until the door above clanged shut. A prison door it was, for all that he was king.

GRAY ON GRAY

Zachary moved through a day that was gray on gray, stone walls against cloudy skies. He met with his generals and examined maps and plans, his vision filled with lines and shading, black ink delineating borders and territories. Outside his window, the dance of flurries continued, turned into a squall, a shower of arrows. He shook his head, tried to pay attention but did not hear the words. Laren, he saw, watched him carefully, but silently.

He took his mid-morning tea with his wife. Their relationship had turned awkward since Estora revealed she had looked into Karigan’s mirror eye. They avoided one another’s gaze, and what little conversation passed between them came in stilted bursts.

In the gloom of the day, he strode the corridors; his retinue of officers, counselors, Weapons, courtiers, secretaries, and attendants hastened to keep pace. The clamor as they spoke to him—no, not to him, but at him—rolled off behind him into dust. How often had he made this walk day after day? It was the same motions over and over.

Petitioners, common folk and nobles alike, awaited him in the throne room. They bowed at his entrance. They’d all want something of him, some advantage, perhaps, justice or absolution. He paused a moment gazing at them bent to him in supplication, some peeking at him with hopeful expressions on their faces.

He climbed the steps of the dais and seated himself on his throne, the queen’s chair vacant. Castellan Javien called out the petitioners one at a time, who came before him humbly, or jauntily, or filled with their own smug self-assurance to express what it was they wished of their king.

They do not see me. He might as well be a statue. Even those closest to him did not see. To them, he was a symbol, not a simple man of flesh and blood.

The petitions took on a familiar pattern, and he gazed out the tall windows at snow streaking down, the hail of arrows, as his counselors discussed each case among themselves. He rendered judgment as if a sleeper. The throne room could have been frozen in time for all it never changed, the same old walls, the same old pleas and arguments.

After the last petitioner was dismissed, his counselors talked at him until he dismissed them, as well. Silence fell like a pall, and he sat there feeling as if his flesh were turning to marble. He closed his eyes and exhaled.

“Zachary?” Laren’s voice came to him through the haze. He looked down to see that she had stayed behind. “You are very pensive today, distant.”