In a measured breath, she said, “His name was Torne.”
The Weapon’s brows knit together and his eyes flashed angrily. “Torne! A traitor of Saverill’s ilk. A deserter. Keep your ring, then. These other objects will be returned to you if it is found you are not lying.” With that, he turned crisply on his heel and glided out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Karigan supported herself against the table, her knees ready to buckle. What possessed her to challenge a Weapon? When she had killed Torne, F’ryan was in control of her body. She staggered across the small room to the bed and collapsed. Straw poked through the mattress ticking, but it felt, for all the world, like a feather bed to her overtaxed body.
A noise awakened Karigan. Someone was in the room bending over her bed, and it was too dark to see who. She reached out into the gloom and grabbed a handful of hair. Her assailant squeaked.
Karigan tugged harder.
“Ow! Stop it!” a girl cried out. “I’d like to keep my hair if you don’t mind.”
Karigan shook her head. The room was dimly lit by an oil lamp at lowest glow. Orange flickered around the edges of the stove door, and the room, she noticed, was quite cozy. She had slept well into the night. Her “assailant” was a girl of about twelve years old, dressed in messenger green. Her hands were on her hips, and her feet were spread apart, and to Karigan, it was like facing one of her own strong-willed aunts. You won’t finish dinner, eh? she remembered. Aunt Stace wouldn’t let her eat dinner for the next two nights.
“Uh, sorry,” Karigan said. She let a handful of brown hair drift to the floor.
The girl’s stance relaxed. “I’ll accept your apology. Most Riders are jumpy anyway.”
The girl’s name, Karigan found out, was Melry Exiter, and she had been in the midst of checking on Karigan’s condition.
“The nitwits around here don’t have the head to take care of anything.” Melry cleaned and bandaged the whip wound Immerez had inflicted on Karigan’s shoulder. “Look in on her, says the captain. Well, what a mess I did find. You look like Condor dragged you all the way from Selium. Are you sure you were in the saddle?”
“Condor?”
“Yeah, F’ryan’s horse.”
Karigan had grown so used to calling him The Horse that she had forgotten he might answer to another name. Condor fit, though. Condors were not the most beautiful of birds, but they had the capacity for elegant flight. Karigan looked up at Melry’s face and was surprised to see tears trickling down her cheeks. “What’s wrong?”
“F’ryan’s dead, isn’t he? That’s why you came on Condor, right?”
Karigan nodded. “Yes, he asked me to carry on his mission.”
Melry wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve and sat in the chair. “They told me, but I couldn’t believe it till I saw Condor. F’ryan’s the closest thing I ever had to a brother. He played games with me, kept an eye on me, let me tag after him around the castle.”
“I’m sorry,” Karigan said. She knew it was inadequate, but it was what everyone had said when her mother died.
“Yeah. I knew it might happen sometime. I try not to get real close to the people ’round here ’cause they die. It hurts. Captain and F’ryan are the only ones I got close to.”
They sat in silence for some time.“Aren’t you a little young to be a Green Rider?” Karigan asked. Everyone seemed to think she was too young, and this girl was even younger.
Melry laughed, the tears miraculously drying. “I’m too young? You’re too young! I was raised here.”
“Here?” Karigan crooked a brow, disbelieving.
“Yeah, here. Captain found me in the stable. I was newborn, all wrapped in a blanket. Someone, my real mother, left me in the stable.” Melry shrugged at the illogic of such an act. “They think my father was a Rider who got killed months before. He had a reputation with women. . . . Captain took me in, named me after her grandmother, and she and the other Riders raised me. I’m not a proper Green Rider, I just help out at the stable, and sometimes I run messages for the Green Foot.”
“The Green Foot?”
“Yeah. We run messages around the castle. Gives me a few coppers for fair days and Master Gruntler’s Sugary. But I imagine I’ll be a Green Rider when I get older.”
What would it be like to know one’s destiny? Karigan had always thought she would be a merchant like her father, but was now certain that she had never really known. “I’m sure you know what it’s like to be a Green Rider.”
Melry gave her a sideways look. “I’m sure you do, too.”
“What?”
“Are you hungry? You’re kinda pale.”
“What do you mean I’d know what it’s like to be a Green Rider?”
“You have a brooch, don’t you? I can’t see it proper because I’m not a Rider yet, but you have a brooch. That makes you a Green Rider.”
“A brooch doesn’t make me anything.”
“Whatever you say. You want some food? After that, it’s off to the baths for you.”
Karigan perked up. “Bath?”
Melry chuckled and slipped out of the room. Shortly she returned, bearing a platter of steaming meat and potatoes, cheese, and bread. In her other hand she carried a mug of fresh milk. She watched in amazement as Karigan all but licked the platter.