Fortune and Fate (Twelve Houses) (9 page)
Read Fortune and Fate (Twelve Houses) Online
Authors: Sharon Shinn
But when she woke with the others and Orson suggested they get an early start on the return journey, she felt that awful clutch of panic in her stomach. This was too friendly; this was too familiar. She couldn’t make these men her comrades, she couldn’t train them to trust her and then fail them at some crucial juncture. She couldn’t stay, and she couldn’t explain.
She said nothing until she and Orson headed down the stairs together to order breakfast while the others finished shaving. “I won’t be riding back with you,” she told him.
He gave her a sharp look, but didn’t say anything until they’d found seats in the taproom, much changed from the night before. Now the clientele was purposeful and sober, and no one lingered long at a table.
“That’s some powerful demon chasing at your heels,” Orson said at last. “Do you ever plan to come to rest?”
“I’d guess you knew a demon or two in your lifetime,” she replied.
He nodded and forked up a bite of sausage. “I chased most of them back,” he said.
“I’m working on it,” she said.
He chewed and swallowed. “Well, if you change your mind, there’ll always be work at the freighting office for anyone as good as you. I imagine I’ll be there awhile if you were ever looking for me.” He gave her a keen look. “That is, if you ever go looking for anybody.”
“Not lately,” she replied.
Stef, Jack, and Carp joined them then and began noisily eating breakfast. Wen excused herself from the table as if she was only going to be gone a moment, but, in fact, she stepped out of the tavern and continued on down the street, leaving Orson to make her good-byes. When she was sure they’d already left the city, she’d retrieve her gelding and ride out. She’d go straight south, following the coastline for a while. Or, if the mood took her, she might try a directly eastern route. It didn’t really matter. There was nowhere she particularly wanted to go.
Chapter 5
RATHER TO HER SURPRISE, WEN SPENT THE WHOLE DAY
wandering Forten City. It wasn’t much to look at, particularly compared to Ghosenhall, but she liked its incessant energy and its continual surprises. One street would feature a collection of respectable shops, and the next one would be nothing but taverns, brothels, and gaming establishments. More than once, Wen saw a prostitute sashaying down one side of the road while a fashionable matron strolled along the other. The divisions were more distinct in Ghosenhall, where whole districts were wealthy and well-kept, and everybody knew how to avoid the unsavory streets where the dangerous elements of society gathered.
wandering Forten City. It wasn’t much to look at, particularly compared to Ghosenhall, but she liked its incessant energy and its continual surprises. One street would feature a collection of respectable shops, and the next one would be nothing but taverns, brothels, and gaming establishments. More than once, Wen saw a prostitute sashaying down one side of the road while a fashionable matron strolled along the other. The divisions were more distinct in Ghosenhall, where whole districts were wealthy and well-kept, and everybody knew how to avoid the unsavory streets where the dangerous elements of society gathered.
The streets where Justin had grown up.
More than once, Wen had found herself walking through those chancy neighborhoods in Ghosenhall, her hands resting on her weapons as she wondered what it would have been like to try to survive in such surroundings. Her own childhood had been so different, tumbling through a ramshackle farmhouse with six brothers and sisters, an assortment of cousins, dogs, kittens, and the occasional duck or lizard in the mix. She had been the middle child and easily overlooked because of her small size and her generally agreeable nature. Not until she was convinced that someone else’s privilege or her own unwarranted punishment was absolutely unfair would she pitch any kind of fit, but then her temper, at least among her siblings, was legendary. Three brothers had taught her early on that she’d better learn to fight if she wanted to hold on to what was hers; three sisters had convinced her that she didn’t want to expend the energy required to dress up in pretty outfits and flirt with scruffy boys. She certainly didn’t want to attempt to run a household the way her mother did, or worry over finances like her father.
But she loved the camaraderie of a houseful of siblings, the rough-and-tumble affection, the bickering, the solidarity. After a while it seemed inevitable that all the forces that had shaped her would turn her into a soldier, most at home in the company of other tough, casual, physical individuals who didn’t have much distinction between work and play.
And she had found her place in Ghosenhall.
And lost it.
And now she was wandering the crazy-quilt streets of Forten City and wondering what to do with herself next.
She didn’t once ask for directions; she didn’t even consciously begin hunting for it. But she was not surprised to find herself, early in the afternoon, staring at the compound holding the estate called Fortune. It was probably dead center in the city but cut off from the noise, the traffic, and the odors by a high, twining hedgerow of some hardy, unfamiliar evergreen. Through the snaky weave of branches, which rose higher than her head, she could see a reinforcing line of solid metal. The wrought-iron fence was hidden by the plaited green and offered what was probably the real first line of defense for the House.
Wen pushed her face deeper into the living border. Here at the very trailing edge of spring, the needles were sparse and a little yellow, allowing Wen a chance to peer past them to see a large, rambling home of graceful proportions and weathered gray stone. She grinned to see the lintels and archways constructed of the same glittering black marble used on the other lord’s house. But here it looked elegant and perfectly suitable.
Wen sent her gaze around what she could see of the lawns and outbuildings. The grass was starting to preen with color, and the flower beds showed spots of yellow and lavender. A kitchen servant was hurrying up from some back path with buckets in her hands, so dairy cows were probably housed in those buildings that might be barns, and the kitchen was no doubt situated at the rear left of the house. Two soldiers slouched along the walkway that led from the main gate to the wide double doors that fronted the house.
Wen frowned. Only two guards in attendance? Hadn’t Jasper Paladar learned anything from the serramarra’s mishap?
She turned to the left and strolled along the perimeter, hoping to come across barracks and perhaps a training yard in the rear of the house. But the hedgerow grew thicker and more tangled the farther she progressed, and eventually the iron spikes were replaced by slats of hammered metal. She could no longer catch any glimpses of the yards surrounding Fortune.
Not that Wen cared anyway. The serramarra was no longer her concern, and the decisions of her guardian were of supreme uninterest. Wen would be on her way in the morning and have no cause to wonder about Karryn Fortunalt or Jasper Paladar again.
DAWN
brought rain, gentle and steady, and Wen was tempted to stay in Forten City another day just to avoid the misery of traveling in wet weather. But choices like that would turn her soft, and she couldn’t afford to be soft. She made sure her saddlebags were tightly buckled, she buttoned her coat all the way to her throat, and she gamely set out into the unpleasant weather, just to prove she would.
She picked a southeasterly direction more or less at random and plodded along without any concerns about speed or efficiency. The rain eased off to a drizzle by noon and had actually stopped when she finally broke for a meal, though the road was heavy with mud. She was far from the only one stubborn enough to travel in bad weather, for she overtook three or four wagons on the way, and pulled aside for a handful of oncoming vehicles. Not too many other solitary riders were out this day, though, at least not that she’d encountered by the time the afternoon sun began tilting over toward evening.
She was on a lonely stretch of road where all the vegetation was low but tangled; even the trees were twisted and scrubby as if too tired to stand up against the constant wind. No doubt storms blew off the ocean fiercely enough at times to keep the trees small and the shrubbery bent close to the ground.
She rounded a curve and almost rode over a small, sobbing form sprawled in the middle of the road.
Cursing, she sawed back on the reins, causing the horse to rear and whinny, but at least the figure on the ground had time to roll out of the way of the thrashing hooves. It took Wen a moment to calm the gelding, but when she was free to look around, the person who had caused all the trouble was standing at the side of the road, watching her.
He was a child, maybe ten years old, terribly thin and ragged looking, with tousled red hair and enormous dark eyes. His filthy clothes appeared to have been hacked off with a knife to suit his frame, and even in this cool weather, he was barefoot. Not even Karryn had looked so desolate or desperate.
Wen slid off her horse and approached him cautiously, not wanting to alarm him. “Hello there,” she said in the voice she might have used to one of her younger sisters. “Are you lost? What are you doing out here all alone?”
He tried and failed to swallow a sob. “My sister and I were on our way to Forten City, but she got hurt,” he said in a pitiful voice. “I think her leg is broken. I tried to make a camp—” He waved behind him to some vague place off the road. “But I couldn’t start a fire and there’s no water and I think she’s passed out. I thought I could get somebody to help me, but no one will stop—” His tears welled up again, though he tried manfully to suppress them. He wiped a dirty sleeve across his eyes and whispered, “Please, could you help us? Do you know how to set a bone?”
Wen glanced around once more at the empty countryside. If ever a place was a perfect setting for a trap, this was it, and many an unwary traveler had been seduced to his doom by the appeal of a plausible waif. But the boy looked so small and frail, and there was the slim possibility he was telling the truth. “Indeed, I
can
set a bone,” Wen said, “and I can make a fire, too. Show me where she is and I’ll have everything sorted out in no time.”
can
set a bone,” Wen said, “and I can make a fire, too. Show me where she is and I’ll have everything sorted out in no time.”
A smile broke through his grimy, tear-streaked face. “You
will
? Oh, this way, this way!” He scampered off the left edge of the road, through a maze of bushes, toward what looked like a stand of squat trees. Wen followed warily, one hand on her sword.
will
? Oh, this way, this way!” He scampered off the left edge of the road, through a maze of bushes, toward what looked like a stand of squat trees. Wen followed warily, one hand on her sword.
The boy’s sister was lying on the hard ground without even a blanket to protect her from the dirt. She looked like she might be thirteen or fourteen. Her hair, a darker auburn than the boy’s, spread out in a tangle all around her face, which was pinched and pale. She lay on her side, one leg curled up under her, one stretched out stiffly, as if it hurt. Wen didn’t immediately see any sign of blood, which made the boy’s story even more questionable.
She knelt anyway and put a hand to the girl’s forehead to check for fever. At that instant, the girl’s eyes flicked open, though she didn’t move a muscle of her body. She looked straight at Wen and whispered a single word. “Trick.”
Wen leapt to her feet, pulling blades with both hands, and whirled around seconds before she caught the crunch of feet in the undergrowth. Three bodies came barreling around the scant cover of the short trees. All men, all armed, only one of them big enough to cause her problems. Wen jumped high, kicked the closest one hard in the groin, and used the momentum of that maneuver to launch herself toward his nearest companion. The first man went down grunting, but he’d be on his feet again soon enough. She had to work fast. Midair, she raked her knife across the second man’s throat, deep enough to kill him outright. Landing on her feet, she raised her sword to counter the third man’s assault.
He was the biggest of the three, and he looked slow and stupid. Certainly he hadn’t been prepared for his victim to turn into his attacker. “Back away,” she snarled. “I’d just as soon not cut you down.”
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