by Sharon Shinn
She stared at him. Never much subtlety to Justin—even his philosophy was blunt as a hammer blow. “I don’t think I can,” she whispered.
“Wen,” he said, “you already have.”
At just that moment, the pretty waitress returned, bringing a pitcher and two glasses, simpering at Justin as she poured. Justin, of course, was oblivious to her charms. The only woman in the whole kingdom that Justin had ever noticed was the Lirren girl he had married.
No, that wasn’t right. Justin had formed close bonds with Janni and Wen—with Senneth and the mystic Kirra—he was attached to the young queen. Wen had always despaired of catching Justin’s attention, but, in fact, she had always had it. It just had not been a lover’s attention. It had been a friend’s.
And, apparently, it was not the sort of attention that she would be able to turn aside easily now.
Justin nodded his thanks to the blond girl, who departed as slowly as she could. “I’ve thought about it, over and over,” he said, taking a long pull at the drink. “Oh, this is good stuff. Try it. I don’t think your death would have changed anything. The assassin who killed Baryn came through Tir. The best Rider any of us will ever see. Once Tir was down, Baryn was vulnerable on that side. A blow to the chest, and Baryn was dead. Even if you had died, too, you wouldn’t have died defending him. You just would have died.” He took another big swallow. “It’s better that you survived.”
She used both hands to lift her own glass to her mouth, scarcely tasting the bitter brew. “Is that how you would have convinced yourself if you’d been standing on the other side of Baryn?” she asked at last.
He grinned. “Maybe. If I’d have been able to think again after it had happened.”
She tried the words out in her mind before she said them, but they didn’t hold any residue of pain. “If you’d been mad with grief, your wife could have helped you, couldn’t she? She’s a healer.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “Though she’s better with bones and bleeding. Cammon might have helped me through, though. He’s got a strange way of dealing with despair.” He hitched his chair closer. “Hey! Come back to Fortune and petition Cammon to fix your heartache. I know he’d be delighted to learn you’re here.”
This almost made her laugh. “Justin, I can’t do that! Ask Cammon to make me feel better that I let his wife’s father die?”
He grinned. “Well, he’d do it. You know Cammon.”
She shook her head again, but she was smiling. She felt as if an iron vise had started to loosen from around her heart, or perhaps her lungs, making it easy to breathe for the first time in years. She wasn’t sure how far the clamp would unwind, though; she still inhaled with a certain caution. “So tell me,” she said. “All the gossip. What’s happening? How is everyone? What are the new Riders like?”
“Well, Tayse is just the same, of course, except even more serious now that Tir is gone. Janni is—No, wait, you don’t know! I’ve got a daughter.”
Impossible. “You’re a father? Justin, no, I can’t picture it. Tell me about her!”
He nodded vigorously. “Little over a year old. Ceribel. Looks more like Ellynor than she does like me, but you’d know she was mine if you spent five minutes with her. The most willful child ever born.”
“Can she hold a sword yet?”
He grinned. “You know she can. She’ll be as good as you are before she’s fifteen. Better than me by the time she’s twenty.”
“I can’t believe this. This is wonderful. Tell me more, tell me everything.”
They sat there for the next two hours, talking. Once Justin had rattled off the major events in the lives of their mutual friends, he demanded to know the details of her own recent story. He listened closely, interjected comments when he was impressed or disapproving, and finally brought the conversation around to the present day.
“Interesting job you have here,” he said. “I would have said I’d never give aid to any relative of Rayson Fortunalt, but I can’t help but like the serramarra. I wouldn’t want Ceribel to be judged by anything I did, but, Bright Mother burn me, it’s hard to forget that Karryn’s father is one of the reasons Baryn is dead.”
“She can’t forget it, either,” Wen said. “It makes it easier to forgive her.”
“So what’s your plan?” he said. “How long are you going to stay in Forten City? When can you come back to Ghosenhall?”
She smiled at him. Every time he said it, it was a little less painful. But it never seemed more possible. “Justin. I can’t leave her yet. Surely you’ve heard that she was attacked on the road about ten days ago—”
He nodded. “Heard it from every single person who was with you that day, including serra Karryn herself. Sounds like you were partly lucky, and partly good.”
“Exactly. And I need us to get better than good, in case our luck runs out next time.”
“You’re sure someone will try again?”
“Someone’s always waiting to try,” she said quietly. “You know that.”
He nodded. “But you’ve assembled a strong group here, and that one fellow—Orson—he’s pretty tough. He can slip into your place the minute you’re gone.”
“I’m not ready to leave yet,” she said.
He watched her a long time, his hands motionless around his glass. “Even if you’re never going to be a Rider again,” he said at last. “Even if you decide to stay in Forten City the rest of your life. You have to stop hiding from us. Come back to us, even if it’s just for a visit. Everybody misses you. Everybody worries about you. We need to know how you are. We need you to remember that you’re one of us.”
She felt shivery again, washed with a familiar panic. “Justin—I’m not sure I can do that. Ghosenhall—” She shook her head.
He leaned forward, intense again. “But you’ll come back to Fortune, won’t you? Tonight? With me? You’ll let Tayse and everybody see you?”
That was almost as frightening—and yet an insistent yearning was pulling her toward Fortune with a force that was almost irresistible. Only part of that was a desire to see Jasper again. Part of it—Oh, Justin was right. Part of it was a longing to surround herself again with Riders, comrades, the friends who helped her shape the very structure of her bones.
“What if they’re angry with me?” she whispered. “What if they can’t forgive me?”
He put his big hand over hers in a comforting, brotherly clasp. “You’re the only one who can’t figure out how to forgive,” he said. “Everyone else just wants you home.”
IN the end, he persuaded her, but only because he vowed not to leave unless she returned with him, and Justin, she knew, was capable of carrying out that threat. So she packed her clothes, paid her bill, and followed him through the crowded streets of Forten City. Now the screws of the vise had tightened again on her heart; now her breathing was shallow and labored. What would Rett say, what would Tayse say? How long would it take them to recognize her when she first stepped through the gate? Would they hold off, would they approach only warily and with some restraint, or would they rush to greet her, endanger her ribs with their fervent embraces?
Perhaps if she slipped inside the barracks first, before anyone noticed her. Perhaps if she had a moment to gentle her wild pulse, a chance to explain to her own soldiers exactly what was about to transpire. Yes, that would be best—she would take control of the situation, she would drop her bags on her bunk and stride confidently toward the training yard, smiling at her old friends—
She would do no such thing. Cammon awaited her just inside the hedge, ringed by Riders, his arms outstretched and his eyes alight. “Wen!” he exclaimed, grabbing her in a most satisfactory, thoroughly unregal hug. She could feel the others jostling closer, heard every timbre of voice calling out her name. “I told everybody you were on your way!”
TWO hours of laughing and weeping and talking. Of warm affection and mock recriminations. Don’t you ever run off from us again! Promise me! Two hours of trying to cram years�
� worth of history into a few short sentences. And then Kelti joined—you’ll like Kelti, he never gives up. Wen felt as if she had sat at the most sumptuous feast, gorging herself without restraint. She came to her feet, finding herself dizzy and overfull, satiated down to the last hungry corner of her soul.
“When are you going to come visit Ghosenhall?” Larson asked.
Not, she noticed, When are you coming back to us? She had made it clear, during these two hours, that she was not rejoining the Riders anytime soon. She was pretty sure some of them did not believe her—and, after tonight, she could almost persuade herself that a return to the Riders was something she might someday contemplate—but for now they were willing to accept that she was not yet ready to take up her old life.
“I don’t know,” she said. “There’s still a lot to do here.”
“If you don’t come back, we’ll start coming here,” Janni said. “ ‘Look, Wen, we’ve come to visit!’ Serra Karryn will start charging us room and board.”
“She’ll make you earn your keep by working out with her guards,” Wen replied. “She’ll even have you teaching her some Rider tricks. She’ll be glad to see you.”
Tayse bestowed upon her his rare warm smile. “As long as you are glad to see us, Wen,” he said. “We will be here.”
He wasn’t the sort of man you gave a casual hug to, so she merely rested her hand on his arm as she headed out the door. This had been the most joyful of glad reunions, but now that she was back at Fortune, she had responsibilities to assume. Her own soldiers to reassure.
Another man to face.
THE Fortunalt guard was loitering outside the barracks, which had simply been taken over by the Riders for this clamorous interlude. Not all of the guards, she was glad to see; by her quick count, six were missing. She assumed four were patrolling the grounds, as they should be just after dusk, and two were in the house, where a few nobles had gathered for an intimate dinner. But Orson and Eggles were there, and Moss and Davey—the ones she thought of as her closest friends among this group—and many of the others. All of them were waiting to hear her explanation. All of them wanted to know what she planned to do next.
They clustered around her, silent and a little stunned. She scanned the circle of their faces, made eye contact with each one. She was surprised to find that the emotions stirred up by the reunion with the Riders were still dangerously close to the surface. Or maybe this particular group of people had carved their own places in her heart, and what she was feeling was the strength of her affection for them.
“I guess some of you aren’t too surprised,” she said. “And maybe a few of you figured it out before Riders rode through the gate. Most of us have a secret or two, and that was mine.”
“Now I don’t feel so bad about never being able to beat you,” Davey said, and a light laugh ran around the group.
“If it makes you feel better, I don’t think I’ve ever beaten Tayse,” she responded with a smile.
“What do we call you now?” Moss said. “They said your name is Wen.”
“You can still call me Willa, if you like. Or Wen. I’m used to both names.”
Eggles was the one who asked the question she could tell they were all thinking. “When are you going back to Ghosenhall?”
“I’m not,” she said. “I’ll never be a Rider again.”
Davey began, “But Justin said—”
Wen interrupted him. “I guess they’ve left a place for me. But I don’t feel like that’s the place I belong anymore. Maybe I’ll change my mind. But it’s been two years, and I haven’t changed it yet.”
“So you’re staying?” Orson asked.
She met his eyes. He could have a number of reasons for posing that question, one of them being that he wanted the position she would vacate when she rode out. But ambition wasn’t what she read in his face or heard in his voice. He looked at her now the way Justin had looked at her in the tavern—like a friend who was worried about the reasons she might make a bad choice.
“Staying for a while,” she said softly. “I don’t know how long.”
SHE waited until dinner was over, waited until Demaray Coverroe’s carriage followed Edwin Seiles’s coach out past the hedge, until Jasper had had time to discuss anything important with Cammon or Serephette or Karryn. Waited until lights had appeared in the bedroom windows of the upper stories and a few had been extinguished. Waited until at least some of the inhabitants of the house were asleep.
Then she approached the front door on silent feet, nodded at Malton, who stood guard there, and glided soundlessly through the shadowed hallways and stairwells. To find herself just outside Jasper Paladar’s door, with her heart pounding and her cheeks hot. A faint light seeped out across the threshold—he was probably reading by candlelight, unless he had fallen asleep with a book open in his hands—
She knocked softly, heard an immediate stirring inside, and the door was quickly opened. Not asleep then. Still wearing the formal clothes he must have donned for dinner. He looked severe and handsome, aristocratic and scholarly. He was so far outside of her own world that at times she was amazed they spoke a common language.
Before he spoke, she almost turned to go.
Then his face lit with a smile of such welcome that she felt treacherous tears rising again. He pulled her inside quickly and shut the door, but he did not instantly take her in his arms. He merely stood there, his hands upon her shoulders, his gaze intent upon her face, studying her as if her skin was printed with a rare and beloved text.
He was not surprised to see her, she realized. So perhaps Cammon had told him of her return—or more likely Karryn, who would have heard it from one of the guards.
“So did you learn what you wanted to learn?” he asked.
“They would take me back,” she said.
He placed one of his hands, just so, between her breasts. “And is the stone that has lodged here for two years finally melted away?”
Not And will you go back to them? Not And are you planning to leave me? He asked first after her own heart. Later, perhaps, he might get around to looking out for his own. “It is smaller,” she acknowledged. “I don’t know that it will ever go away.”
“That’s the way of regret,” he said. “It tends to be permanent, even when it is manageable.”
“I’m so shaky,” she said. “I’m trying to think what this emotion is. Maybe it’s happiness—I’m not sure I remember what that feels like.”
Now he did draw her toward him, very gently, and when she was cradled in his arms, he kissed her sweetly on the mouth. “Strange,” he said. “I am trembling as well. I suppose I must have caught this dread disease called happiness. Is it contagious? Could it be you brought it with you when you stepped into my room?”
Which made her laugh, and kiss him back much harder. “Perhaps I did,” she said. “Quick, do you know a cure for it?”
Smiling, he began to tug her toward the bed. “One or two, but they’re quite radical. Are you brave enough to take drastic measures?”
She tumbled onto the coverlet and he stretched himself beside her. “I am,” she said, “but only if you try the antidote, too.”
“Well, then,” he said, his fingers in the lacing on her vest. “Let us look for remedies.”
Chapter 34
SENNETH WAS SURE SHE WAS AS GLAD AS THE NEXT person that the Rider Wen had been discovered, but that didn’t mean she wanted to spend the rest of her life lingering at Fortune, listening to the Riders tell Wen yet another story that she might have missed during her sojourn away.
“Isn’t it time to go home?” she asked Tayse plaintively after they had been in Fortunalt nearly a week.
Tayse grinned. “I believe there is some event tomorrow at the house of that woman who has been here so much—small and elegant, rather exhaustingly vivacious—”
