Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1)

by Leonard Wilson

Elissa sat stunned for a moment, then sat several seconds longer quietly pounding the heels of her hands into her forehead while she cursed incoherently under her breath.

  “Fourty-three, fourty-four…”

  “Oh, you were not counting outside your head all this time,” Elissa whispered tersely as she slipped out into the gallery where Keely was waiting. The lighting through the windows was better here than in the bed chamber, but still left everything indistinctly wrapped in soft velvet shadows.

  “Eh. The point is you were pushing it, girl. I thought I told you to leave everything. Is that a book you’re carrying?”

  “Are those boots you’re wearing?” Elissa countered as she clutched the large journal protectively over her bare chest.

  “I was wearing slippers last night. No one saw my boots, so they’ll never miss them,” Keely whispered. “Tobias was kind enough to overlook that I didn’t leave anything but a dress behind back at Serylia, but if we don’t do it right this time, somebody’s going to start asking the wrong questions.”

  “Nobody saw my journal either,” Elissa insisted. “And it’s got my name in. My real name. We have to take it.”

  “Right, then,” Keely nodded. “Good keeping your head about you.”

  “I’d rather’ve kept my chemise,” Elissa muttered.

  “Gah!” Keely rapped her knuckles on her forehead. “Almost forgot the wigs. Can’t leave those, either.” She slipped quietly back into the room and quickly returned with the two wigs she’d brought on the trip, then padded down the stairs to the foyer with Elissa following cautiously behind.

  “How’re we supposed to get out past the porter?” Elissa asked. “I can’t exactly turn into a cat, you know.”

  Keely dangled a key ring in front of Elissa’s face as they slipped out the front door and into a damp courtyard that was—even with only a thin crescent of a moon to light it—all too brightly lit for Elissa’s comfort. “The lady of the house sleeps deeply, and any guards are going to be looking out, not in.”

  “But aren’t we going to be outside in a minute?”

  No guard actually stood at the wrought iron gate in the high stone wall that surrounded the estate—just a cottage a few paces away, which served as a guardhouse. Where the main house lay dark, flickering candlelight filtering out the windows of the cottage hinted that its occupants were awake, if not necessarily alert. While Elissa hung back in the shadow of the nearest convenient shrubbery, Keely slipped up to the gate and sorted through keys until one of them gave a satisfying click in the lock. She eased the gate open an inch to make sure it had been properly unlocked, then stole quietly over to Elissa.

  “I’ve got to take these keys back, and to make sure our departure looks convincing,” Keely said, shoving the wigs into Elissa’s arms. “Hide here, then when I give the signal, look for your chance to slip out and latch the gate behind you. Don’t worry about me; I can slip right through the bars.”

  “What’s the signal?” Elissa asked.

  About ten minutes later, she heard Keely’s blood-curdling scream from somewhere inside the house. Within moments, two men in the blue and white livery of Duke Jakob dashed out of the cottage, each clutching an arquebus as he looked around for the source of the commotion. Just as Elissa was certain one of them had stopped to stare in her direction, Keely screamed again—as did two other women immediately after—and both men set off for the house at a run. By the time they were halfway across the lawn, Elissa was out the gate. By the time they made it in the door, Keely came darting around the corner of the house as a little white feline streak. In the blink of an eye she’d crossed the lawn and slipped through the bars of the gate to join Elissa—pausing only long enough to make sure that Elissa was hurrying down the dark street after her, as quickly as her bare feet would allow.

  Elissa pulled the blanket more tightly around her shoulders to ward off the rain that had started falling again as she picked her way carefully up the slopes of the valley in the pre-dawn hours of the night. She didn’t know where Keely had found the blanket for her, and—for once—genuinely could not have cared less. She just huddled beneath it, along with the book that was her only other possession in the world, and alternated between gratitude for that one small comfort and miserable contemplation of how her life had come to this.

  “I still don’t get it, you know. What went so horribly wrong that we had to vanish like that, right then?” she asked Keely, who—with the wigs tucked under one arm—walked beside her in a blanket draped much more casually, paying no attention to the rain.

  “Our uninvited guest, that’s what,” Keely said. “She was as crazy as I am…”

  “Close, anyway,” Elissa admitted.

  “…and at least as spooky,” Keely finished. “You can’t con crazy! Well, I mean you can, but it’s like juggling knives blindfolded. She was already putting me on the defensive, and that’s when everything falls apart. Whoever or whatever that woman is, she’s a thousand kinds of trouble. Every instinct is screaming to get as far away from her as possible.”

  “I should have instincts like that,” Elissa said with a roll of her eyes. “Scared of ghosts much?”

  “Let’s just call it a healthy case of professional respect. I don’t bother them, they don’t bother me. Not ready to call that woman a ghost, though. She didn’t do anything I couldn’t have.”

  “Yeah. She’s definitely a thousand kinds of trouble.”

  “It was a good time to cut and run, though. With everything that’s happened, we’ll soon have…Ah! That’s what we’re looking for,” Keely said, pointing off into the darkness.

  “Clothes?” Elissa asked hopefully as she squinted in the direction Keely was pointing. All she could make out was the shadow of some large compound.

  “With any luck. If you just want to wait here…?”

  “Hey, I’m good with most any plan that involves me not going near populated areas without my clothes. You go right ahead. I’m just going to go sit under that tree and try to minimize this whole getting rained on thing.” Elissa scooped up the other blanket and the wigs as Keely turned back into a cat and scampered off. “And don’t forget the shoes!” Elissa called after her.

  “You forgot the shoes?!” Elissa moaned. The rain had eased up, and the morning sun had begun to creep into the valley and bully its way through the clouds, but Elissa found it hard to appreciate that while she was contemplating setting back out on her tender feet. “How far do you think I’m going to get without shoes?”

  “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t find any. Not and hope to get out with them before the whole abbey woke up.”

  The compound Elissa hadn’t been able to make out in the night was visible now as the local abbey—much more rustic and welcoming than Belgrimm. That’d be Bolberry Abbey, she’d observed, simply judging from the fact it lay on the outskirts of Denecia; but now she’d become rather more preoccupied with footwear than with geography.

  “You couldn’t find any shoes?” Elissa hissed accusingly. “You couldn’t find any shoes?! You put your life on the line for a stupid pair of boots! I just rode for two days with a prince who couldn’t go half an hour without mentioning the crystal slippers you wore to his party! Even when you’re running for your life, you can’t go half a day without changing out for a new pair you’ve scrounged from go’ss knows where. I could turn you loose in a garbage pit, and you’d come back with three pairs of silk dancing slippers, a half dozen pairs of fashionable boots, and a set of shiny, golden sandals covered with emeralds! But you couldn’t find me one lousy…” Elissa stopped, glaring down at Keely’s feet. “You did it again.”

  “Oh, uh…These?” Keely asked, lifting up one sandaled foot to study it herself, as if noticing the worn leather straps for the first time herself.

  “I know you didn’t leave your boots behind.” Elissa fumed. “Give me the sandals, and you can wear your boots. Problem solved. That’s not hard, is it?”

  “Ummm…Well, yeah.” Keely let ou
t a long sigh. “Okay. This is a secret I’ve never shared with anybody. Ophelia knew about the cat thing, but even she didn’t know this. If you ever tell another living soul, you’ll wish the Inquisition had got hold of you. Got it?”

  Elissa nodded cautiously, curiosity and apprehension gnawing at the edges of her anger.

  “In the last five years, I’ve only ever worn one pair of shoes, and you’re looking at them.”

  “What?” Elissa asked coldly.

  “Here. Take my hands,” Keely said, holding them out palms up. “Now look me straight in the eye…right…and count to three. Now look down.”

  When Elissa looked back to Keely’s feet, she was wearing a gorgeous pair of golden sandals covered with emeralds.

  “You said you could only do the one trick!” Elissa said, shooting Keely an accusing look.

  “I lie. But technically it’s not my trick. It’s the boots. They’re…magic. They’ll change into whatever shoes I want. Sometimes they kind of even change without permission when I’m not looking, but always into whatever I’d have asked for if I’d thought to ask. And, no, I will never, ever, ever let you or anyone else try them on. If I ever catch you trying to get hold of them, I will push you off the nearest cliff. Then I’ll push a very large rock off after you. After that, I’ll get nasty. Okay?”

  Elissa nodded, biting her lip.

  “Right, then. We’ll find you some shoes as soon as we can. In the meantime, here…”

  “Clothes!” Elissa almost jumped out of her blanket as she grabbed up the silvery robes and clutched them to her chest with a squeal of delight. “Wait. I should have the blue postulant robes there,” she said, pointing to the set Keely had kept for herself. “These are priestess’ robes.”

  “And?” Keely asked quizzically.

  “I’m a postulant.”

  “You’re a fugitive.”

  “Oh. Right.” Elissa blushed.

  “I’ve spent years learning how to blend with the nobility—they’re my favorite marks—but that mostly just takes attitude and mannerisms. Priestesses are expected to know things. Specific thing. Things like, you know…how to read? No one’s going to buy two postulants wandering the countryside on their own, and I’d never pass as a trained priestess for long, but you…I admit you’re a bit naive, but you’re no dummy, and you’ve got enough book learning for three ordinary priestesses. So congratulations on your initiation, Sister.”

  Elissa blushed a little deeper at the assessment of her scholarship; and she blushed a little deeper still at dropping the blanket to pull on the priestess garb, but with no one else around and Keely already changing unselfconsciously in front of her, she would have felt even more awkward going to change behind the tree.

  “You know, I never figured you for a tattoo girl.” Keely grinned.

  “What? Oh…yeah. It wasn’t exactly planned,” Elissa said, hastening to pull the chemise on over her intricately inked back.

  “Girl, that’s not the sort of design you wake up with after a night of drinking. I got a really good look at it last night.” Keely tapped her temple meaningfully with one finger. “Cat eyes? And that’s got to be the fanciest design I’ve ever seen. Some real artistry there. How many days did it take? And what’s it a map to?”

  “It’s not a map to anything,” Elissa sighed. “It’s just…a map.” She shrugged.

  “A map of what, then?”

  “The known world, pretty much. And yeah, it’s good work…”

  “It’s amazing work!” Keely said.

  “…but I wish I had got it when I was drunk. At least then I’d have an excuse. The truth is even more stupid and frivolous and embarrassing, and I’ll tell you the whole story…the day you let me wear your boots.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Hardened Clay

  Down in the lowlands of the Verdmere river valley, summer had not been kind to Dydford, nor to anyplace remotely close to the little crossroads town. Even now, with the air cooling for a long, lethargic slide into winter, the ground lay baked and barren beneath a sparse layer of withered grasses. Here and there, large patches of ground even lay black where carelessness or bad luck had lit the tinder-dry grasses on fire.

  On one particularly forlorn little hill on the outskirts of town, which offered a particularly depressing view of the sun-scorched countryside, there came a loud clang, followed by the loud report of cracking wood, followed in turn by the loud cursing of a man greatly dissatisfied with his current lot in life. At last, Clay Ambleforth—a wiry man, built into solid muscle by a lifetime of laboring, and presently coated in a muddy mixture of sweat and dirt—pitched aside the broken shovel handle and sank down to sit in the shady corner of the deep hole he’d been digging, where he fell into silence. He hadn’t run out of epithets; his mouth was just too dry to continue.

  Spying the head of the broken shovel lying just out of reach, he somehow found the will to scoot over a few inches and reach for it. With an enraged grunt, he hurled it out of the hole in a high arc, to be rewarded a couple of seconds later with the loud clang of the shovel head bouncing off a grave marker somewhere. Then Clay sat back in his corner once again and fished out a flask. He was still nursing it when a lovely young lady in pink appeared above him, peering curiously down into the hole as she held her skirts up to keep them out of the dirt.

  “Ah, here we go,” Sabina remarked with a satisfied smile. “Could you help us find, uh…” She paused, clearly dredging her memory for a name. “…Emery Ambleforth?” she finished at last.

  On another day, under other circumstances, Clay would likely have fallen over himself to help such an attractive and clearly wealthy young woman. Here and now, all he could offer her was a bit of a suspicious glare and a terse growl as he pointed vaguely. “Under the ash tree, third grave out from the corner.”

  “Oh. Hmmm…He’s, uh, dead then, is he?” Sabina asked, a frown crossing her pretty face.

  “Just the three years now,” Clay muttered, only half to Sabina.

  “I…I guess I’m looking for his family, then. Someone who knew him, at least.”

  “I’ve got a lot of digging to do, your ladyship,” Clay said tersely, taking another slug from his flask. “Way too much digging, and a shovel to go fetch.”

  “My friends and I are a bit pressed for time, too,” Sabina sighed, scattering a handful of silver coins down into the hole with a casual wave of her hand, “so I guess none of us are in the mood for niceties, are we? The Ambleforth family used to be known as the Amberfords, and the name used to command a lot of respect. I’m in a position to prove that mad Lord Amberford wasn’t so mad after all, and perhaps restore the family to its proper position. It’ll be worth a lot to me to do so, so I’ll make sure it’s worth a lot to whoever helps me do it. I need to find out everything I can about the last years of the man’s life. Where would you start looking?”

  In a dark corner of the Thorny Tankard, Clay sat alone, nursing yet another ale and joylessly flipping a small silver coin through his fingers. He’d honestly tried to be excited to find himself carrying around enough wealth to buy half the town, but it was a town abandoned by Seriena. The brutal summer had been preceded by a nasty winter, which had been preceded by another summer that—if not so cruel as this one—had at least been stingy and downright rude.

  For two or three years before that, the seasons had just been a bit callous and vaguely disappointing, but anti-social enough that they’d offered the locals no chance to hedge against the harder times now arrived.

  Death didn’t merely stalk the land anymore; it had moved into a pleasant little cottage on the edge of town and taken up a regular seat at the local pub where it knew everyone on a first-name basis. All of that kept Clay in steady work digging graves, of course, but far from death leaving its relationship with him crisp and professional, it had shoved its way into his personal affairs as brazenly as it had anyone else’s.

  Clay didn’t really know anything about his great-great-great grandfath
er that any church archivist couldn’t have said—but he’d discovered two things inside himself that morning when the lady in pink had come calling: a profound loathing for people who thought they could buy the world, and a ready supply of tall tales.

  What he hadn’t found in himself was enough faith in the future to care that a group of very rich, very angry young nobles would almost certainly come back looking for him. By his reckoning, he’d have plenty of time for a week of getting blind-drunk, then—since he had no family left himself—he’d stuff half of whatever wealth remained into the offering box for the other families the drought had devastated, and disappear in search of someplace, well…not here.

  He was still contemplating that plan, and not yet entirely drunk, when for the second time that day—and, incidentally, the second time in his life—a very high-class sort of shadow loomed over him.

  Back already? Clay groaned inwardly. Well, it had been a good…No, it had been a life. Just a life. Whatever good fate might have intended for him had clearly been misdirected to someone else along the way.

  “Ambleforth, is it?” the man asked.

  “I told you those were all just stories my grandfather used to tell,” he muttered, not looking up. “Not like I was there myself.”

  “What stories?” Tobias asked, pulling out a chair and sitting down across from Clay, studying the man’s face in an attempt to ascertain how much he’d had to drink.

  “The…stories,” Clay stammered. “The ones my grandfather used to tell. Look, sorry,” he said, beginning to relax at the sight of the puzzlement on Tobias’s face. “Thought you were with that pretty lady who came by earlier, asking about…”

  “Your family?” Tobias asked excitedly.

  Clay nodded cautiously.

  “Yes! I was afraid the witch would be farther ahead of me by now.” Tobias grinned coldly. “Your family wasn’t easy to track down.”

  “She was a…witch?”