Firebrand

“If I ever thought . . .” She shook her head. “If I’d considered your marriage in the way I am doing so now, perhaps we could have found another way. I am sorry for not seeing another way when it counted.”

“I don’t think any of us saw another way, and even now I certainly don’t know what could have been done differently. We can’t change the past, so there is no use in agonizing over possibilities that never existed.”

The wings of a crow swept overhead. Flurries spiraled along the trailing edges of ebon feathers.

“Still,” Laren murmured, “I am guilty of trying to keep you and Karigan apart.”

“For good reason.”

“You knew?”

“Not at first, but eventually I caught on.”

“You aren’t angry with me?”

“Not at the moment.” He halted, and she stopped and gazed up at him. He placed his hand on her shoulder with its gold captain’s knot. “Laren Mapstone, you must have no regrets. You were serving the realm. And look, we have what we wanted—the fidelity of the eastern provinces and heirs on the way. These things please me.”

“But your heart is empty.”

“Not with you here, my friend.”

She looked at him askance. “My ability, remember? Look, I know a king must make sacrifices in service to his realm. A good king will, at any rate, and you are one of the best, but perhaps you are too good in some ways.”

“Do you wish for me to become a despot?”

She gave him another look. “Of course not. I just wish there was a way for you to find happiness.” The bells in the city rang out two hour. She stiffened. “Damnation.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“Time for one of those infernal sword training sessions you are forcing on me. If I’m very late, Gresia will make me run extra laps.”

“You had better go then.”

“But—”

“It’s an order. Dismissed, Captain.”

“This conversation isn’t over.” She bowed and hurried away down the path.

He wondered, as he watched after her, what more there was to say. His life was what it was. Perhaps as the days continued on, they’d be less gray, but as he looked skyward, he was not so sure.

ELETIAN WAYS

“What do you mean we’re leaving the road?” Karigan demanded. They’d stopped alongside a field that went off into the woods.

The flurries alighted gently on Enver’s shoulders and hair. The pony, Bane, had gone gray with the snow clinging to his shaggy coat.

“There are other ways,” Enver said simply, his expression betraying nothing as he looked up at her.

She shifted in her saddle. “I studied the maps. We’re going to follow the Kingway to—”

Enver raised his hand in a placating gesture. “There are ways. Eletian paths where the land knows my kind. They require no map.”

She pursed her lips. It was not what she planned, and she was leery of trusting to an unmarked, unmapped path, no matter how fine the guide. Estral glanced between the two of them but said nothing.

“You propose going across country? Don’t you think that would be rather impossible for the horses?”

“These Eletian ways are perhaps more accommodating to horses than your roads. Your captain has traveled such.”

“Hmm.”

“We may travel more efficiently if we leave the roads,” Enver said.

This from a member of the race that had designed the crazy spiraling roads of Argenthyne. She snorted.

“Perhaps Lady Estral, with her Eletian blood, can see,” Enver said.

Estral looked at him in surprise. “See what?”

He held his hand out to her. “Come, and I will show you.”

She dismounted and led her horse over to where Enver stood at the edge of the road.

“It is how the light falls.” He pointed across the field to the fringe of the woods. “Do not look directly, but with your side vision. See how the light falls upon the land?”

Karigan crossed her arms, watching skeptically as Estral tilted her head and gazed into the distance. Condor stomped a hoof. Enver murmured instructions to Estral while Karigan’s toes grew numb as she waited. The minutes passed by, snow mounding on her shoulders. She was about to tell Enver to give up when Estral’s sharp intake of breath forestalled her.

“I see it,” Estral said. She turned to Karigan, her face alight with wonder. “I see the path he speaks of.”

Karigan had to concede that Eletians accessed sources from beyond human ken. They were magical beings, after all, but she was still wary.

“Perhaps,” Enver said, “I could show you, too, Galadheon. After all, you are Mirare. If you remove the patch covering your eye—”

“No! I am not Mirare, and never ask me to uncover my eye again.” She remembered all too painfully the last time her eyepatch had been removed in the presence of an Eletian.

Enver bowed. “My pardon. I meant no offense, only to show you the path.”

“It’s beautiful,” Estral said.

“I would not lead you astray.” Enver handed Bane’s lead rope to Estral and stepped up to Karigan’s stirrup. “I will not ask you to bare your special eye, but if you give me your hand and you use your ability, perhaps you will see.”

Still skeptical, she glanced around to ensure no one else was on the road with them who would witness her using her ability. They were alone. She held her hand out and Enver clasped it between both of his. The heat of his touch was startling even through her mitten. She almost forgot to fade. When she did so, the already white and gray world turned even grayer, and it was almost as if time slowed the fall of each individual snowflake that flashed white as they tumbled down around her.