Rangers of Linwood (The Five Kingdoms Book 1)

by LeAnn Anderson

  “You always called me Mommy,” the woman said as she led Tesni inside. That was when her demeanor suddenly changed. “But my name is Agrona,” she growled. She grabbed Tesni by the neck and slammed her against the wall. “Are you or are you not the one that Knives calls Wits?”

  Tesni blinked. Knives. Wits. Was Wits a nickname she had once gone by? Was Knives also a nickname belonging to someone else? Yes, she realized. That was why she associated the two. She was Wits. The man she associated her nickname with was Knives. “I… I guess so…”

  “You guess?” Agrona asked.

  “I don’t know. I have amnesia. I’m still trying to remember things from before the accident I hit my head in. That was six weeks ago. I don’t remember anything from more than six weeks ago.”

  Agrona laughed. She let Tesni go, and the girl fell to the ground. “Oh, that’s beautiful. So you don’t know whether or not you are Wits, a member of the Thieves Guild? Well, we can find out very quickly.” She dragged Tesni down the stairs to the dungeons.

  From a cell, Tesni heard a male voice that sounded familiar. “Wits? Is that you, lass?”

  Tesni looked into the bars. “I don’t know. I don’t know who I am. I hit my head six weeks ago, and I don’t remember anything before that.”

  “Aye, lass, Arya was keepin’ in touch with me. She let me know how yeh was doin’. She would never ‘ave been able to, but I contacted ‘er, first, let ‘er know how she could get ‘old of me.”

  “Why are you in that cell?” Tesni asked.

  “The old witch that brought yeh ‘ere came lookin’ for us. She killed some of the lads and took me. She tortured me for information on ye, Wits, on everythin’ I know ‘bout ye.”

  Tesni squinted her eyes, looking harder. She could see that the man – Knives, she suddenly remembered – was indeed covered by many bruises. He had been beaten and whipped, and she gave a gasp. “Oh, Knives, don’t you worry. I may have forgotten a lot, but I’m still Wits, and I’ll find a way to get you out of here.”

  “He won’t be leaving, you little brat, and neither will you,” Agrona said, tossing Tesni into another cell. She leaned down, looking Tesni right in the eye. “I’m going to make myself very clear. You have been prophesized as the one who can help me to get what I want. There is a treasure that the Rangers of Linwood guard very closely, and I need the cleverest thief in the world to steal them. That clever thief is you.”

  “What makes you think I would steal from the Rangers, as good as they’ve been to me?”

  “Do you remember how you got that head injury?” Agrona asked.

  “No…”

  “Of course not, and Arya never told you, did she?”

  “I never asked,” Tesni admitted. “I’m sure she would have told me if I had.”

  “Oh, aye, she might have,” Agrona conceded, “or she might have lied. The truth is that it’s Arya’s fault. She’s the one that let you go jogging on your own so she could follow her own path because she was tired of having to watch you all the time. If she hadn’t, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

  Tesni shook her head. “No…”

  “Unfortunately, lass, she’s tellin’ ye th’ truth. Arya told me, ‘erself,” Knives said.

  “No… Arya cares about me. She’s spent the past six weeks taking care of me, helping me with everything,” Tesni whispered, still in denial.

  “She did it out of guilt,” Agrona said.

  “Don’t listen to ‘er, lass. Now she’s just tryin’ to get to ye,” Knives said. “Arya’s not like that, an’ even if it was guilt that motivated ‘er, Arya wouldn’t’ve felt it if she didn’t care.”

  Tesni sat, her arms crossed. “Knives is right. Arya cares about me. If she didn’t care about me, she wouldn’t have felt guilty.”

  “Or she was covering up to keep from looking bad in front of the other Rangers,” Agrona suggested.

  “Not Arya, lass,” Knives said. “I’ve known ‘er a long time. She’s always honest.”

  Knives was thrown backwards in his cell as Agrona began to lose her temper. “You will shut up, or you will die,” she growled.

  “Killing him won’t make me want to help you,” Tesni said.

  “I ain’t afraid to die, Wits,” Knives said, “not if it’ll help protect ye.”

  “You won’t die, Knives. Arya will rescue us. I’ll make sure she gets you, too, when she comes for me.”

  “Arya will rescue us,” Agrona mimicked in a falsetto voice. “Arya will never find us,” she said. “I placed a spell on the horses so that they would pass right through the grass and bushes as if they were ghosts, keeping them from breaking or bending anything and leaving a trail.”

  Somehow, Tesni was not surprised at this revelation. Still, she remained confident because she had left the signs. “Arya is a better tracker than that. So is Ryder. I bet they’ll find even a magic trail.”

  Agrona reached through the bars of the cell, grasping Tesni’s chin, tilting the girl’s head up. “You’re an adorable child, Tesni. I’m sure that if you weren’t so stubborn, you might even be a good daughter. I could give you that, you know. I could give you a family. I could be your mother. You could have everything you ever wanted. I would spoil you rotten, and when you fetch me the orb, the thing that the Rangers so closely guard, I will be a queen, and you will be a princess.”

  Tesni swallowed hard. It was a tempting offer to the young orphan. She looked over at Knives, who was giving her a look that begged her not to accept. She looked back up at Agrona, who was making such pretty promises. Being a princess did sound fun, but was it what she wanted? In her head, she could hear Arya saying again that Tesni had a Ranger’s heart.

  But Tesni was also a very clever girl, and she knew that, as tempting as the offer was, there would be a high price for her to pay if she even thought about accepting Agrona’s offer. She also knew that Agrona could fly into a violent rage if she refused outright. She had already seen that. “Can I think about it?” she asked. “Please, just overnight?”

  “You are a smart girl,” Agrona said. “You want a chance to glimpse into the lifestyle you could have, don’t you?”

  “Yes, please,” Tesni said. Her eyes lit up, not at the prospect of a soft bed, but at the prospect of it being easier for her to escape.

  “Don’t even think about it, lass,” Knives said. “Any glimpse she shows ye is just a lie. Ye let her show ye a pretty room with a soft bed, and ye can be sure there’ll be extra guards to keep ye in a gilded cage by pretendin’ they’re there to protect ye from the likes of me.”

  Again Knives was thrown against the back of the cell. This time he slumped to the ground, unconscious, and Tesni gasped. “I always keep my promises,” Agrona said, “and I promise you this. If you are a good girl and do as I say, you will be as a daughter to me, and you will never want for anything. If you disobey me, I will make your life very unpleasant, and you will end up like him, wasting away in a prison cell.”

  “Will you show me, then? Will you show me what it’s like to have everything I could ever want or need just given to me?” Tesni asked. “It would help me know what I want.”

  The door to the cell opened, and Agrona led her up several sets of stairs into a high up tower. The tower opened up into a large room that filled the entire top floor. There was an ornate rug on the floor woven in deep jewel tones, and a huge, beautifully carved bed made of cherry wood. There were two windows, one opposite the bed and one opposite the door. Next to the bed was a wardrobe, and Tesni opened it to find it filled with silk dresses, finely crafted slippers, and drawers filled with jewels.

  “You may sleep here tonight,” Agrona said. “Look at the beautiful view I can give you. You can see all of Linwood, and you could someday help me rule all of it. You may go downstairs to the floor below to use the garderobe, but no further. I will expect your answer in the morning.”

  Agrona left, then, and Tesni ran over to the windows, looking out both of them. From the one opposite
the door, she could see nothing except for the shadowy outlines of the land in the darkness. From the one opposite the bed, she could see the city, where there were still a few lights on, and beyond that, the tell-tale column of smoke rising up through the lantern-filled trees that marked the Rangers’ camp.

  The sun had been setting by the time she and Agrona had reached this place, and Tesni realized that she had been afforded no chance to rest, Agrona making sure she was scared and beaten. The Rangers would mostly be asleep, with a few on night patrols, and Tesni wondered if Arya and Ryder were coming for her yet. Would they come for her at all? Did they even know that she was in trouble?

  Suddenly, Tesni realized how exhausted she was. With a yawn, she collapsed into the bed and fell asleep, barely noticing how soft the bed, the mattress stuffed with feathers, actually was.

  Chapter 5

  Arya was not happy with the current situation. Almost immediately after Tesni and her “mother” left, Arya went to consult with Ryder. “Tesni still doesn’t trust her,” she said. “I gave her some things to use to leave a trail for us to follow, just in case.”

  “I don’t like the situation, either,” Ryder admitted, “but I still can’t come up with a viable explanation for how she knew so much about her.”

  “I can,” Arya said. “I’ve been keeping in touch with Knives about Tesni’s progress. If she ran into him, she could have pumped him for information on Tesni.”

  “Knives doesn’t seem like the type to just hand over information about someone else, especially a child, to a random stranger though,” Ryder said.

  “He’s not, and that’s what concerns me.”

  “So what do you want to do about it?”

  Arya shrugged. “I figured we’d do what we always do. Wait a little bit, give them enough time to move so that woman doesn’t realize they’re being followed, and then track them.”

  They waited for half an hour, and they used that time to pack full packs, knowing and understanding the high probability that they would have to make camp at some point that night. Arya packed an extra quiver of arrows, and Ryder packed extra daggers along with his sword.

  When they set out, they went in the direction that they were sure Tesni and the woman had gone. “Odd, I don’t see any extra horse tracks,” Ryder said.

  “I don’t see any grass beaten down by hooves, either,” Arya said, looking around. Then her eyes settled on something on a nearby green briar vine. It was a bright red ribbon, one of the ones she had given Tesni. “They definitely went this way, though,” she said, pointing it out.

  “I didn’t even know you were teaching Tesni how to leave a trail,” Ryder said. “Impressive.”

  “I wasn’t teaching her until today,” Arya admitted. “I gave her the briefest lesson possible while I helped her pack. I knew she would remember what I said.”

  “You sound like a proud mama,” Ryder said, chuckling.

  “Just a proud mentor,” Arya said, “and yes, I do intend to take her as my protégé when she’s old enough to start formal training.”

  Ryder placed a hand on his chest and gasped in shock. “Arya Summerbreeze is taking a protégé? I don’t believe my ears!”

  “She reminds me of myself,” Arya admitted, “of my own time with Knives and his group. If you hadn’t caught me with my hand in your purse…”

  “That was over a hundred years ago,” Ryder said. He drew up beside her, a longing in his heart that he worked so hard to keep hidden. “Quite honestly, I think taking you back to camp instead of turning you in was the best decision I ever made. I got one hell of a second-in-command out of the deal.”

  Arya felt her mouth run dry. Damn it all, why did she have to be such a coward? Now was not the time, she reminded herself, and she turned her attention back to tracking Tesni.

  A broken branch was her next clue. This was followed by a series of beads and ribbons, all of which Arya picked up as they rode. As night began to fall, they could see a set of ruins in the distance, approximately a half-hour’s ride further.

  “Do you think they might have made camp there?” Ryder asked.

  “It’s a possibility,” Arya admitted. “It would provide ready shelter.”

  “You know, they say that when Agrona fled Linwood after killing the royal family, she took up residence in a set of ruins,” Ryder said.

  “That was four years ago. I think she would have moved on by now,” Arya said.

  “I think she’d stay close,” Ryder countered. “After all, she needs the orb if she wants to succeed her brother and become Queen, and it would have to acknowledge her as the only possibility.”

  Arya snorted. “Next you’re going to tell me you believe the rumors that there was an unknown princess who survived Agrona’s attack.”

  Ryder shrugged. “Well, look at all of the problems Queen Rhiannon and King Ithel had conceiving during their marriage, not to mention the misscarriages, the children who were stillborn, and the children who didn’t make it past their first week of life. Everyone assumed that there was a curse. It stands to reason that they might have hidden away the first healthy child they had in order to make sure that the curse didn’t affect that child.”

  “Well, I think Agrona killed each and every one of her nieces and nephews to ensure her brother had no heir but her,” Arya said. “I also think that Ithel suspected his sister and, if there really was some unknown princess who was never presented to the people, he was hiding the kid from her. That had to be hard on them, though, a pregnancy every year for over two-hundred years, each one ending in tragedy.”

  “Maybe it’s Tesni.”

  Arya snorted at that as she began setting out food from their packs. It was a warm night, with no need for a fire that would only give them away, anyway. “Will you listen to yourself?” she asked. “Tesni Redleaf is the last child in all the five kingdoms that I would ever suspect of being some secret princess.”

  “Didn’t Knives say he found her wandering the streets at age four, with no clue who her parents were?” Ryder asked.

  “Orphaned at four does not a secret princess make,” Arya said. “At any rate, I’m sure someone would have noticed if Rhiannon was pregnant, and someone would have been needed to help care for the child, someone would have been needed to help cover up the pregnancy, and servants to help her give birth and prepare a safe place for the child to be hidden away. With that many people entrusted to a secret, some of them would have talked.”

  “You’re probably right,” Ryder said. “There’s no secret prince or princess, but that just begs the question. Why hasn’t Agrona come to simply claim the orb?”

  “Because she killed her brother and sister-in-law,” Arya said. “Why else would she have fled after they were found murdered?” She bit her lower lip in thought. “Unless she believes the rumors, as well? She could be waiting to see if this kid shows up to see who the orb lights up for.”

  “But you don’t believe.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “I believe there’s something keeping her from showing up. Maybe she knows that being a murderer makes her unable to claim the throne, and she’s hoping to make it glow through sorcery? Who knows?”

  

  The next morning, bright and early, Arya and Ryder broke camp. They ate a quick breakfast of some nuts and berries and got back to tracking Tesni. The girl had left an easy trail for them, which pleased Arya. She was beginning to think that, when they got back to camp, she would need to change her bet. And maybe Ryder is right, she thought. I am starting to feel like a mother to her.

  The trail led right to the ruins, and there it seemed to stop. “Maybe they’re just not awake yet?” Ryder suggested, hope in his voice.

  “Perhaps,” Arya murmured. “Tesni does like to sleep late when she can.”

  Suddenly, Arya and Ryder found themselves surrounded by six nasty looking guards. “Six against two,” Ryder said. “I like those odds.”

  “It really isn’t fair to them, t
hough,” Arya agreed.

  Both Rangers drew out their dual battle blades and started hacking away at opponents armed only with spears. When only one was left, Arya jumped off her horse, knocked his spear from his hand with one blade and held the other to his neck. “So, where did the lot of you come from?”

  “We’re…we’re guards…for Her Majesty…”

  “Her Majesty?” Arya asked.

  “Queen Agrona… Or at least…she will be queen…when she gets the orb,” the guard said, eyeing Arya’s blade carefully.

  So that was why Arya and Ryder had such an uneasy feeling about the woman. It was Agrona. That didn’t explain why Tesni felt so uneasy. Perhaps Agrona just put out a general aura. Perhaps Tesni was just picking up on Arya and Ryder’s tenseness. The girl was good at that, a regular empath if ever there was one.

  “We have reason to believe she has someone very dear to us held captive,” Arya said. “A girl with blond hair and blue eyes is who we’re looking for. She might also have a man with black hair and green eyes.”

  “The thieves. You speak of the thieves,” the guard said. “Yes, the man is in the dungeon. He’s been tortured. But the girl was smart. She agreed to join Agrona and spent last night in a soft bed, surrounded by luxury.”

  Arya felt her heart break. Could Tesni really have abandoned everything she had taught her so quickly? Even Knives, she knew, had tried to teach the girl some honor. Angrily, she slit the guard’s throat.

  Ryder arched an eyebrow. “Arya…”

  ”What?” she snapped.

  He winced. “I know you’re upset, Arya, but think about things from Tesni’s point of view. Imagined, for a moment, that you are a scared eight-year-old who has just figured out that you were absolutely right to distrust this woman claiming to be your mother, a woman you probably haven’t seen in four years, and you have no memory of what your mother looks like because you have no memories of your past at all. You have been offered the choice between a cold dungeon and regular beatings until you either submit or die, and submitting immediately and living in luxury, guaranteeing to keep you alive long enough to be rescued. Which do you choose?”