Slight and Shadow Page 2

  When he was finished, D’Mere nodded stiffly. She sat down at the desk, running her hand across its polished top. She traced the ink spatters and the little scrapes left behind by Garron’s dagger — from the times when he’d opened a letter too zealously. She seemed to be thinking very intensely about something, and Horatio had begun to wonder if his next breath might be his last.

  He was quite shocked when she suddenly burst into tears.

  The sobs shook her shoulders. D’Mere clutched a hand over her face; the skin went white where her fingernails dug in. Her breath came out thickly and in sputters — like a man choking on his own blood.

  Horatio didn’t know what to do. He glanced at the forest girl, who narrowed her eyes dangerously at him. So he kept his stare trained on the rug while the Countess collected herself.

  It took her a moment to stop crying. But by the time she spoke again, all trace of sorrow was gone from her voice. “He died in battle,” D’Mere said matter-of-factly. Then she smirked. “I always thought it would be the tarts that finally did him in.”

  Horatio returned her look with a cautious smile. “He was fond of a good pastry, My Countess. Especially the apple ones.”

  “Yes, with the sugar glaze on top.” D’Mere’s smile vanished as quickly as it’d come. “There are monsters roaming the Valley, you say? Beasts more wolf than man?”

  Horatio nodded.

  “Any idea where they might have come from?”

  She was watching him, her eyes searching through the stubble and over every red blotch on his cheeks. But Horatio was no fool. He knew better than to tell the Countess that the wolves bore the mark of Midlan on their collars. To accuse the King of murder would earn him nothing but a trip to the hangman’s noose.

  He cleared his throat and said carefully: “None, Countess.”

  She watched him a moment more, her face completely smooth. Then she stood. “I just came to tell Gar … well, I’ve finally secured the purchase of Randall’s bridge. Once my men have it widened, it should cut a considerable few hours from your journey.”

  Horatio was surprised. “Randall’s bridge? I didn’t think he’d ever sell it.”

  D’Mere smirked. “I didn’t buy it from Randall — I bought it from his widow.”

  “I see.” Horatio bowed as she swept by, but mostly it was to hide the worry on his face. “Much appreciated, My Countess. I’ll be sure to tell the men.”

  “Very good.”

  As she turned to leave, Horatio glanced out the window at the falling sun. “It’ll be dark in another hour or so. Will you not break your journey here for the night, My Countess?”

  D’Mere tugged her gloves back on, glaring at her hands. “No — thank you. I’m impatient to get back to my journey. I’m afraid there’s much to do.”

  Horatio stood uncomfortably as she smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt. A heavy silence hung between them. It was the same air that might’ve hung between two thieves on the morning after a heist — now that they were forced to walk the streets in the daylight, and step over the shattered glass they’d left behind.

  Horatio wondered if he ought to say something … but in the end, he figured it was probably best to leave the buried things be.

  He made to follow her to the door when the forest girl cut swiftly in front of him, shooting a warning look over her shoulder. Then D’Mere stopped abruptly in the doorway — and she had to come up on her tiptoes to keep from colliding with her back.

  “What’s become of the girl?” D’Mere said without turning.

  Horatio tried to keep things simple. “I sent Aerilyn on a journey with some friends to the High Seas, My Countess. She’s alive and well — and also quite taken with adventuring.”

  D’Mere spun, her eyebrows raised. “Oh? And which friends are these? Not that horrible fiddler, I hope.”

  “Eh, he’s among them. But the whole lot’s being watched over by a couple of fighters from the mountains.”

  Her brows climbed higher. “The Unforgivable Mountains?”

  “Yes,” Horatio said, wondering to himself what other mountains were worth talking about. “But she’s in excellent hands, I can promise you that. The redheaded fellow is a sure shot, and the young woman can wield a blade better than a warlord. Between the two of them, I don’t think there’ll be — Countess? Are you feeling all right?”

  D’Mere’s face was suddenly the color of new-fallen snow. She gripped her middle and took an involuntary step backwards. “Yes, I’m fine,” she said after a moment, though her eyes seemed distant. “I suppose I’m just a little sore from traveling. The boy had red hair, you say? And what about the girl — what did she look like?”

  Horatio sputtered a bit as he tried to find the words to describe her. “Ah, well, she wasn’t really like anyone I’ve ever seen, Countess. She had dark hair, green eyes — and the men spent more time staring at her than they did actually working.” When the color left her face completely, Horatio’s worry gave him the courage to speak. “What is it, My Countess? What’s gone wrong?”

  But D’Mere didn’t reply. She turned and swept out of the room, the forest girl following close behind her.

  Horatio listened to her footsteps as they went down the hall. The moment he heard the front door close, he stumbled over to the desk and collapsed in the chair, gripping his chest. It would be several long moments before his breathing steadied, and several moments more before the sick feeling in his gut stopped the bile from climbing up his throat.

  But it would be many months before he found peace again. He didn’t know what that look on the Countess’s face had meant, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d somehow put Aerilyn in danger.

  It would haunt him day and night.

  *******

  The carriage rolled for three miles down the road before D’Mere found her voice. “It’s her,” she said, more to herself than anybody. “Aerilyn travels with the Dragongirl.” The carriage bounced beneath her, jolting the end of her sentence.

  “What does this mean, My Countess?”

  Of course, Elena had heard her. She’d sat so quietly for miles that D’Mere had actually forgotten she was there. But when she looked up, she saw that the forest girl watched her calmly. The movement of the carriage didn’t seem to bother her — she sat as neatly under the motion as she might’ve sat at a dining room table.

  “It means we have to move quickly,” D’Mere said. She mulled the problem over, watching as the trees whipped by her window. “I wish Reginald would answer my letter. I can’t imagine what that fool has gotten himself into.”

  “I could find out, Countess.”

  “You might have to,” D’Mere admitted. “But there’s a task I need you to do first. The cook was reading something when we came in —”

  “The letters were from Miss Aerilyn, Countess. I saw her name written on the envelope,” Elena supplied.

  “Good, I hoped they might be. I need you to retrieve them,” D’Mere leaned forward, “tonight.”

  “Yes, Countess,” Elena said, as if it was no more difficult a chore than running down to market. And perhaps for her, it wasn’t.

  Elena wore her pretty face like a mask, to hide the predator behind it. D’Mere watched as she stood and unbuttoned her skirt from her tunic, thinking how appropriate it was for a dress to be a cover for what lay beneath: boots, black leggings, and the two slender, deadly-looking knives strapped to the bands on her thighs.

  Elena opened the carriage door and leaned out. D’Mere grabbed her before she could leap. “Return to the castle as quickly as possible. Time is not our ally.”

  Elena nodded. Then she sprang from the carriage like a cat out of a box, rolling gracefully, catching herself on her feet.

  When D’Mere turned to watch her, she’d already vanished.

  Chapter 2

  The Endless Plains

  Sweet mercy, it was hot — so horribly, insufferably hot. A drop of sweat raced from the top of Kael’s head and down his
nose. He tried to brush it away before it fell, but he didn’t move fast enough.

  When it splattered onto the pages of his open book, he swore aloud.

  “You’re right about that, lad,” Morris said. The heat had settled in his throat, making his voice much croakier than usual. He fumbled with his canteen for a moment before he managed to get it wedged between his arms. Then he brought it carefully to his lips. “Sit up straight when you read, and you won’t have to worry about the words getting all smeared,” he advised, as he watched Kael dab gingerly at the wet spot with the hem of his shirt.

  “I’ve tried that,” Kael grumbled back.

  By that point, he’d tried everything. He’d leaned against the wall for a while — until the cart rocked so violently that he smacked the back of his head. Then he’d sat with his knees pulled up to his chest until his legs cramped, and hunched over until his back hurt. He would’ve tried spreading out on the floor, had it not been packed full of tarp, tent poles, and supplies.

  No, the only safe place to sit was along the cart benches — and there was hardly any room on those, either.

  The benches were packed to both ends with pirates, and Kael saw his own misery reflected back on their salty, sea-hardened faces. It was hard to believe that they’d actually volunteered for this — fought for it, even. In fact, on the morning they’d left Gravy Bay, there had been so many volunteers that Captain Lysander had to draw the men’s names by lot.

  The pirates had whooped when their names were called. They’d kissed their families goodbye and marched proudly aboard Anchorgloam, rucksacks tossed over their shoulders.

  “And what do you expect the rest of us to do, eh?” Uncle Martin had called as Lysander gave the order to set sail. He leaned on his cane and had seemed small from the dock, but his voice carried magnificently through the cool morning air. “I’m quite peeved about being left behind, I’ll have you know.”

  “Just carry on pillaging,” Lysander said distractedly, combing his wavy hair from his face as he ordered the sails into position.

  “Just carry on —? How do you expect me to just carry on?” Uncle Martin bellowed, shaking his cane at them. “These are my countrymen — I have a duty to see them set free!”

  “You aren’t fooling anyone, father,” Thelred bellowed back. “We all know what you’re hoping to find in the plains, and it has nothing to do with your countrymen.”

  “Don’t patronize me, boy! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to see a giantess before I go blind.” And his wide, swindler’s grin had broken out from under his mustache as he added: “I hear they’re every bit as enchanting as the average woman — only bigger! You wouldn’t let your dear old papa perish without getting to see that, now would you?”

  Despite Uncle Martin’s numerous melodramatic complaints, Lysander forbade the pirates to follow them — warning that if he saw one of their sails on the horizon, he’d put a hole through it. And although they’d responded with a grumbled chorus of ayes, Kael had a strange feeling as they sailed out of the Bay … like that most certainly wasn’t going to be the end of it.

  He wouldn’t have been surprised if every one of those seadogs had his fingers crossed behind his back.

  Now Gravy Bay was far behind them. They’d left Anchorgloam and the vast majority of the men in the docks of a small village, disguised as merchants. Then after two days of hard travel on foot, they’d crossed the border of the High Seas and wound up in the plains. From that point on, they’d had no choice but to pack themselves into the cart and try to stay quiet.

  Gilderick’s army patrolled the full breadth of the plains — and a crowd of travelers would certainly attract their attention.

  Kael sat up and blinked, trying to give his eyes a break from all the reading. Captain Lysander sat across from him: the wave in his hair had gone limp with sweat, and his characteristic grin had been replaced by a determined frown. He sat rigidly on the bench, keeping his eyes closed tight and his arm clamped firmly around the woman by his side.

  Aerilyn had the rings of her golden-brown hair piled on the top of her head in a skillful knot. She wore a man’s tunic and breeches, but didn’t complain about them as she once had. No doubt they were much cooler than a dress.

  Even though the heat was enough to melt them together, Aerilyn leaned heavily into Lysander. She was fiddling with the buttons on her sleeves when she glanced up and saw Kael watching her.

  She smiled — but it wasn’t the same smile she gave everybody else. No, this smile was meant especially for him: it was a sad smile, a pitying smile. It was the same condoling look that every woman in Gravy Bay had been giving him all blasted winter. And he was growing rather tired of it.

  He raised his book up and pretended to go back to his reading, blocking her face from view.

  “How much further?”

  The growl came from Thelred — the surly, clench-fisted pirate on Kael’s left. The further from the seas they went, the more disagreeable he became. After a few hours of being trapped inside a stuffy, rocking cart, his temper had taken on a thickness of its own. Now it rose with the heat and added to the misery.

  Kael flipped through his book until he came to the map of the Endless Plains. He’d scoured the mansion’s library twice over, but hadn’t found a more detailed map than the one in his favorite book: the Atlas of the Adventurer.

  Because the land was so flat, the highway through the Endless Plains cut straight down the middle of it. They could go from one end of the region to the other without ever having to make a turn. He traced his finger up the road until he came to a small clump of trees — the only cluster large enough to be marked on the map.

  “That’s where we’ll set up camp,” he said, pointing to it even though he knew Thelred wasn’t looking. He had his fists crammed so tightly against his eyes that he likely couldn’t even roll them. “And that’s just after we cross through the village of Galeherd. So we should get there a little before sunset, if our pace holds.”

  “Sunset?” Aerilyn looked shocked. “Oh, it’s all happening so soon!”

  At the sound of tears in her voice, Lysander’s stormy eyes snapped open. He pulled her closer and planted his lips against one worried arch of her brow. “It’ll be over before you know it, my dear. Kael has it all planned out.”

  “But what if something goes wrong?” she went on, twisting her hands into his shirt. “What if it takes ages? And what if I never — never —?”

  “Do shut up.” Thelred’s eyes snapped open. They were bloodshot from having been pressed against his fists, and it made his glare burn. “Your constant moaning isn’t helping anything —”

  “You have no idea what it’s like!” Aerilyn’s tears turned hot and angry as they finally spilled over. “You have no idea what it’s like to have your heart ripped out. So don’t you dare —”

  “All I’m asking for is one blasted moment of silence! Is that so much to —? What are you doing?”

  Thelred tried to jerk his arm free, but Kael held on tightly. He pressed the tips of his fingers against the vein beneath Thelred’s wrist and took a deep, relaxing breath. He let his memories of how sleep felt slide into Thelred, imagining that they flowed into his blood and made their way up to his head.

  Sleep, he thought. It’s time to sleep.

  He let go as Thelred toppled forward. The pirate landed hard among their tent gear, and soon he was snoring peacefully. Morris kicked a bit of tarp over his shoulders before he turned his gap-toothed grin on Kael.

  “Well done, lad. You’re really coming along.”

  Kael had to admit that his powers of healing were getting stronger — and that probably had to do with all of his extra reading. In fact, when he wasn’t lost in some book about the Endless Plains, he’d busied himself by reading every anatomy tome he could find. He was still nowhere near as accomplished as his grandfather, Amos, had been, but he was growing.

  And the next time an innocent man was dying before him, Kael would be
able to save him.

  With Thelred asleep on the floor, there was a little extra room on their bench. Kael sat on his knees and tried to get a good look outside. A cage of rusty iron bars blocked the window, and he held onto them for balance. After a few uneventful minutes, he began to feel as if he was back aboard Anchorgloam, like he’d traded one ocean for another — only here the waves were made of grass.

  “It’ll look much nicer in a few weeks, once the green’s come back to it,” Morris said. They shared small halves of the window, and were stuck so close together that Morris’s wiry beard tickled him. When Kael scratched at his cheek, he chuckled. “It wouldn’t itch so bad if you’d grow your own.”

  “I can’t,” Kael muttered. “The hair doesn’t cover everything.”

  “Well, that’s just ‘cause you’re a young lad. You’ll grow into your beard one day — and a lot sooner than you think.”

  Kael seriously doubted that. But it was far too hot to argue.

  They rode along in companionable silence for a while — well, it was silent on Kael’s end. Morris chattered on, but most of what he said was just to have something to fill the air.

  It wasn’t until he heard a strange, high-pitched noise that Kael made the effort to speak: “What’s that?” he said, cutting over the top of Morris’s rant about how Uncle Martin could make a fortune selling his grogs as rat poisons.

  The noise was a rhythmic squeaking sound, like someone was opening and closing the hinges of a rusted door. Kael pressed his face against the bars and craned his head around to try and see what they were driving up on.

  A large stone structure rose out of the earth in front of them, and Kael recognized it as a windmill. Two of its blades were broken clean off, and a third had lost its canvas. The fourth blade was broken in half and held on only by its sinew. The tattered canvas caught the slight breeze and rocked back and fourth, squeaking loudly through the still air.

  Kael craned his neck over Lysander and Aerilyn — who were napping and using each other for pillows — to watch out of the opposite window. There was a windmill on that side, too, though it was in much worse shape: its whole top had been blown off, making it look like a busted clay pot.