From this vantage, she also had an excellent view of the Old City in the distance. In the past, she used to look back and see the castle rising high and proud over Sacor City. Now it looked like no more than a rocky mount. Only a good spyglass would allow her to see the details of the ruins, and perhaps that was for the best. Smoky plumes rose from beneath the mount, from Mill City, spreading a grayish-brown haze across the view. A dirty sky—she could never have imagined it. All was quiet here, except for crows that squawked and flew-hopped from brush and scrub.
Luke reined Gallant up beside her. “Grand view, isn’t it? Sometimes I try to picture what it looked like in the past when there was a castle up there. A shame everything was destroyed. It must have been amazing.”
“It was,” Karigan murmured. Then hastily added, “I mean, yes, it must have been.”
Luke raised an eyebrow and gave her a sidelong glance. “It leaves a strong impression, those ruins. Growing up beneath them, I had nightmares. Thought the ghosts of the old ones, the people who lived up there, were going to come down and do terrible things to me. But I was just a boy then. Some will swear there are still ghosts, but I’ve never seen ’em.” They sat in silence for a while, then Luke stood in his stirrups and shielded his eyes from the sun as he gazed into the distance. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Mr. Harlowe coming along. Professor said he might join us out here.”
Cade? She looked where Luke pointed and saw a man driving a mule cart along a dirt track that bypassed the mounds. It could certainly be Cade, but she wasn’t sure. He turned off the track and guided the mule toward the mounds.
“Shall we go down to meet him?” Luke asked. Without waiting for an answer, he reined Gallant down the slope of the outcrop. Karigan shrugged and followed.
It turned out to be Cade Harlowe after all, and he took the cart into the mounds as far as was possible without losing a wheel. He hopped off the cart and greeted them, giving Karigan an odd look.
“Afternoon, Miss Goodgrave,” he said, “or is it Tam?”
“Kari—” She almost gave her full name, but recalling that Luke did not seem to know everything about her secrets, she stopped just in time. “Just call me Kari for now.”
Cade gazed hard at her, and she guessed at what he was thinking—that it was not appropriate to call her by her first name and that her dressing like a boy was extremely improper. He shook his head.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked, thinking this could not be a coincidence.
“Officially? I have an imperial permit to do some test digs. Not that the mounds have not been entirely sifted through by other archeologists.”
“Unofficially?”
“Unofficially I am here to show you how to use a gun.”
This time it was Luke who frowned and shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “The professor is allowing this?”
“Yes,” Cade replied. “We come out here for target practice sometimes. Civilians aren’t supposed to own guns,” he told Karigan, “though Inspectors are more lenient with the Preferred families. In any case, we shouldn’t be heard out here.”
“Heard?”
“Yes. Guns are loud.”
Karigan thought it silly that a weapon should be noisy. There was no stealth in noise as there was with an arrow or a dagger.
“I’ll go graze the horses and keep watch then,” Luke said warily. “No point in inviting trouble.”
Karigan dismounted Raven, who was behaving admirably, and handed the reins over to Luke. He rode away, Raven trotting alongside him.
“How much does Luke know? About me?” she asked Cade.
“He knows that the professor is a member of the opposition and holds you in high regard. Luke may have his own suspicions about whether or not you are really the niece of Bryce Lowell Josston. Though he is loyal, he has not been informed of your true background, that you were a Green Rider from long ago.”
“Am.”
Cade looked at her quizzically. “Am?”
“I am a Green Rider. Not was.”
Cade dismissed her words with a curt nod and began unloading some bales of hay from the mule cart, as well as a target printed on cloth, much like archers used for practice.
She helped him place the bales in front of one of the mounds and drape the target over them. His deference from last night was replaced by his usual stoic and efficient self. They returned to his cart, where he lifted a wooden box out from a false bottom in the cart’s floor. Inside the box, nestled in red velvet, lay a gun and a variety of small tools. Karigan blinked hard trying to see it. The metal glared in her eyes, making them water and blur. It was just like when she tried to look at the professor’s gun last night. She turned her head so she could see it on the edge of her vision. This was better but not by much. The metal was blued steel, inscribed with some intricate image she could not make out. The wooden handle was stained in deep blue.
“This is a Cobalt-Masters revolver,” Cade said, sounding very instructorial. “It’s the firearm of choice for mounted units and Inspectors, only theirs aren’t so fancy. This one was acquired from an Adherent.”
Karigan wondered who “acquired” it and how, but Cade didn’t say and went on to describe, instead, the parts of the weapon. Trying to see it all was bringing on a headache, or maybe it was her lack of sleep getting to her. She tried to listen closely knowing this was important information to take back to her own time, but there was a buzzing, like a whole hive of hornets in her ears, that competed with Cade’s words. She could not concentrate, and only heard bits and pieces about caliber and percussion and powder.