“Give Lady Morane my best,” she called after him.
All she heard in return was unintelligible grumbling.
She took her package into her own room, turning up the flame on her lamp. There was a covering letter from Estral with it.
Dear Karigan,
I had hoped you would receive this sooner, but the minstrel I asked to convey it perished unexpectedly on the road. It was brought back to me by an honest traveler who found it.
This is a copy of the manuscript we discovered in the archives. As I mentioned to you in my last letter, I think you and your father should find it of great interest. It has immense historical value, providing insight into the Long War and the occupation of our lands by the Arcosian Empire. The chief archivist is beside himself with excitement, and he and my father consider it authentic.
Very fondly,
Estral Andovian, in my own hand
Karigan looked under the letter and read the manuscript’s title page: Journal of Hadriax el Fex. It was the last thing she expected to see. She just stared at the manuscript on her lap, not daring to look beyond the title page. Why, she wondered, should it be of such interest to her and her father?
She was about to read on when someone tapped on her door.
“Come,” she called.
The door creaked open to reveal a Weapon standing there. “Fastion? Is there something I can do for you?”
“Not precisely,” he said with a small smile. “I thought perhaps there was something you might like to see.”
“Such as?”
“Rider things,” he said.
“Rider things?” As much as Karigan hated to set the manuscript aside, he had piqued her interest.
“Some artifacts I’ve long meant to show Captain Mapstone, but she always puts me off, and something else I had forgotten about that pertains to you Riders.”
Now thoroughly intrigued, she joined him at the doorway. “Lead on.”
He took her through rambling abandoned corridors. Each of them bore a lamp to help chase away the dark.
“While we were rooting out the Second Empire,” Fastion said, “I came upon a certain room I had not visited in some time.”
As Karigan recalled, Fastion prided himself on knowing all the abandoned corridors, and he led her with sure steps. There was also an eagerness about him a Weapon would rarely deign to exhibit. She supposed that beneath the black cloth and leather of their uniforms, that Weapons were human, too. She smiled to herself.
The room Fastion took her to was full of rotted and jumbled pieces of discarded furniture that cast jagged shadows against the walls.
“Old Rider furniture?” Karigan queried, disappointed if this is what he had brought her to see. She raised her lamp and found an impressive spiderweb strung between the legs of some oddment of furniture, inhabited by an even more impressive spider. She frowned in revulsion and sidestepped to put a little distance between herself and the fat arachnid.
To her question, Fastion scratched his head. “I don’t know.”
She swallowed back laughter at his perplexed expression, as if he thought he ought to know to whom the furniture belonged. At least the rotted tables, chairs, and whatnot weren’t the artifacts he had brought her to see.
“Over here,” he said.
Nestled against a wall was a chest. It was not ornate, but its brass hinges and clasp shone in the lamplight as if newly made. Karigan was surprised it wasn’t in the same condition as the furniture. There weren’t even chew marks or droppings on it from rodents. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a rat’s nest inside, or some really gruesome spider . . .
Fastion clearly expected her to lift the lid, and not wanting to reveal her trepidation to the Weapon, she set aside her lamp and did so. To her vast relief, no rats jumped out at her, nor was there any sign of big spiders.
“Are you sure these are artifacts?” Karigan asked, gazing into the chest. It smelled of pine wood freshly planed, and its contents looked almost new.
“Look closely.”
Karigan lowered herself to her knees. She removed two mugs from the chest. Simply fashioned, they bore the sigil of the gray eagle.
“King Jonaeus’ clan crest,” Fastion said. “He was our first high king.”
“Yes,” Karigan said absently. “I know.”
Next she lifted out the pieces of a mold, such as a smith would use to make buckles and other small articles. This mold had been used to make brooches. Winged horse brooches. She explored its depressions and edges with her finger, knowing them intimately in relief, just as she knew the details of her own brooch. Her hands trembled, and Fastion helped her set it aside.
There were some everyday articles also in the chest, like eating utensils and a comb made of bone. There was a length of folded cloth. It was soft and slippery cloth, not unlike silk, but stronger and more vibrant. Her merchant’s instincts wondered what kind of cloth it was, and where it had come from. It was more finely woven than anything she had ever seen, even among the textiles her father traded in.
She unfurled the cloth—a banner—and caught her breath. A golden horse shimmered to life on a field of green, its great wings sweeping up and down by some trick of light and fabric, as if to fly away. In the golden border were stitched runes. Though she could not read them, they looked Eletian in character.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Fastion said. “I believe it to have been a gift from the Eletian people to the Green Riders, but a scholar would have to translate the runes.”