The thing was, she loved her father—loved him powerfully and had always admired him as the dashing, strong, and successful man he was; the man who loved her mother so much he never remarried. She wanted to be like him when she grew up, planned to follow in his footsteps. Until the Rider call changed everything. Still, she’d considered him a paradigm of what a father and merchant ought to be without question. Until she heard about the pirate ship. Until the brothel.
She gathered from Elaine he hadn’t attended supper, either, and ate alone in his office. Karigan sighed. They were too much alike for their own good.
Finally, when she couldn’t take the twisting and turning anymore, she braced herself against the cold, threw off her blankets, and dressed by the fire.
Karigan trudged through drifts that were as high as her thighs, from the house toward the stable, her lantern providing a meager glow against the night, large snowflakes beating against it like moths. The wind sucked her breath away.
When she reached the stable and stepped inside, she found stillness, and her restless mind calmed a notch. The glow of her lantern enlarged, providing golden warmth, and she released a breath she did not know she’d been holding.
Her father’s horses occupied almost every stall; sleek hacks he rode for business and pleasure: his favorite, a fine-limbed white stallion named Southern Star; matching pairs of handsome carriage horses; and several drays who hauled cargo-laden wagons during the trading season. Standing among them was one that did not quite fit in, an ungainly chestnut messenger horse. All were blanketed and bedded with fresh straw and snoozed in contentment, some snoring, hooves shuffling, all apparently oblivious to the storm raging outside.
And why shouldn’t they be when the stable was as sturdily built as the main house? There was nary a draft in the place.
Often Karigan sought out the company of her horse, Condor, when troubled. Somehow being in his presence calmed her, soothed whatever agitated her. She moved down the central aisle, leaving clumps of snow behind her, until she came to his stall.
Sensing her approach, the gelding poked his head over the stall door and gazed at her with sleepy eyes, his whicker of greeting half-hearted.
“Woke you up, did I?” she asked, stroking his nose.
He whiffled her hand, his breath smelling of sweet grain.
Karigan chuckled and hung the lantern on a bracket beside his stall. She pulled a freshly baked oat muffin from her pocket. She’d found a pile of them on the sideboard where Cook left them overnight to cool. Condor grew decidedly more alert.
Now she laughed and fed him half. It vanished almost instantly and he nudged her for more.
“Greedy beast,” she said and gave him the rest.
She checked his water bucket—it was full and hadn’t frozen over. His blanket was straight and secure across his back. When she rode in, he’d been one tired horse after pushing through all those snow drifts. Ice had clung to his muzzle, making him look a hoary old man. The stablemaster had helped rub him down, wound his legs with quilted wrappings, and prepared him a warm bran mash. When Karigan left him, she had no fear he was in any discomfort and knew he was as happy and snug as a horse could be.
She yawned, patted his neck, and sat on a nearby pile of hay bales. She found a discarded horse blanket and pulled it over herself, and before she knew it, with the soothing sounds of slumbering horses all around her, she, too, fell asleep.
“Karigan?”
She’d been dreaming. Something about sunny, gold-green grasslands, where wild horses roamed ...
“Karigan?”
Her eyes fluttered open and she lifted her head with a grimace. She had a crick in her neck from sleeping at an odd angle, and lantern light glared into her eyes. Her own, hanging by Condor’s stall, had sputtered out.
“Father?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“That’s what I meant to ask you.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she replied.
“Me either, so I decided to check on things. When I stepped out, I saw your tracks in the snow and followed them here.” He hung his lantern on a bracket and sat next to her on a hay bale. The light reached Condor’s eyes as he gazed at them.
“I’m sorry—” both father and daughter began at the same time.
When Karigan opened her mouth to speak again, her father forestalled her with a gesture. “I admit I should have told you about the Gold Hunter long ago,” he said. “I never wanted this ill feeling to arise between us, but it has, and all because of my silence. If I tell you more about it now, will you hear me out?”
Karigan nodded, vowing to keep quiet and not interrupt him this time with accusations.
“Good, good. Perhaps you will come to understand, then, why I chose to remain with the Gold Hunter even after she became a pirate. I will warn you now, however, that there will always be some details I will never speak of. Even your mother did not know everything. Just as I expect you’ve secrets you will never tell me.”
Karigan scowled, but he was right, and so she held her tongue.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded emphatically, more ready than he could ever imagine.
He inclined his head in formal acknowledgment. “Very well, then,” and he inhaled deeply to begin.
“The captain of the Gold Hunter,” he said in a voice that took on the tone and cadence of a storyteller, “was not an evil man, but deeply motivated by profit. And so, yes, when the embargo was lifted from the Under Kingdoms, he continued to seize ships. He was as good a naval tactician as he was a businessman, and the Gold Hunter, well, she was a beauty in her day, with swift, trim lines. In barely a puff of wind she’d skim the water, overtaking any other vessel in sight, especially those heavily laden with cargo.”