The Frost Fervor Concordance Box Set

by Tom Hansen

  She knew exactly why these men were here. They were searching for her and for the lost children. Someone probably noticed life in a dead town and reported it to the soldiers.

  They would need to be more careful until the activity settled down in the area.

  “So you mean to tell me that you came back here, all by yourself, found that your village was burned down to the ground, and just decided to stay?”

  Miss-Miss nodded. “Of course, good Sir. Now I have to wonder if you’re the one hard of hearing. That’s what I said.” She stuck the pitchfork into the compost bin and turned.

  She needed a plan, and she needed it fast.

  “Can I get you men some tea?”

  TL man coughed. “One question first, Ma’am, if you don’t mind.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where is your horse?”

  “Horse?”

  “Yes, how did you get here? You said you got back, and I know quite well from patrolling these areas myself that it’s at least a one day ride between towns on a good day, but twice that if you’re on foot. Now, if you don’t mind me saying so, Ma’am, but you’re not a spring chicken anymore and I just wanted to know how you managed to get between towns without some help.”

  Miss-Miss smiled, buying herself some time.

  “Well, Sir, I was given a ride here from a nice fellow who took pity on an old woman like me. I don’t rightly remember his name though, so I can’t tell you that, but he’s from Lyraville.”

  “Lyraville, eh? Well, I’ll be checking on that for sure. But Ma’am, I do have something that is bothering me quite a bit here.”

  The tone of his voice told Miss-Miss that any plans she might have were destined to fail.

  Chapter Four

  “What is bothering you?” Miss-Miss took another step over to where the small fire crackled, making sure to keep her skirts well away from the fire. She sat down on her usual log but missed the center due to the soldiers presence. She clenched her muscles to remain stationary, then leaned forward on her feet to reach out for the kettle, grabbing up her skirt hem in the process.

  “We are looking for a blind woman who is hiding a number of kids who belong to Her Majesty.”

  Miss-Miss stopped, hovering just above the kettle with her cloth-covered hand.

  “You don’t say?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. And I have to say that you have some interesting scarring around your eyes. Where did you get that?”

  Miss-Miss pursed her lips. “How a woman came to obtain scarring on her face is no business of yours, but given that you are a soldier in the employ of our Lady Queen, I assume you ask because you are concerned that I’m this woman of which you speak.”

  She grabbed the hot handle and placed the pot on a wire rack to the side. She then grabbed ten teacups from the normal stack. A small tap from behind her told her to put one back. She grinned at the help from Toby.

  “I can assure you, Sir, I’m not the woman you are looking for. I can see just fine, in spite of my scars.”

  Miss-Miss then laid out every cup in order along a small plank and poured the hot water into them one at a time. Of course she’d done this dozens of times, so her pour was accurate each time. But she still felt the hot gaze from the captain on her with each pour.

  Miss-Miss stood. “Would you be a dear and toss me my herb pouch over there? I left it on the stool outside the garden.”

  She knew she hadn’t left it there, it was actually on the other side of the garden. But Martha and the two little ones were huddled behind the raised beds for the lettuce, and her long arms should be enough to move it over there for her.

  The gentle scrape of leather came from two locations. One, from the man dismounting his horse, the other was Martha doing exactly what she was supposed to do, and moving the bag over to where it should be on the small stool directly in front of the man’s horse.

  “This bag?”

  Miss-Miss’s heart skipped a beat. She knew the bag had made it at the last second, but she couldn’t tell if Martha got her hand away in time.

  “Yes, please. Could you toss that over here?”

  He did.

  The whistle of the pouch through the air told her where it was going to land, but the only problem was she was a terrible catch, and she knew it.

  Still, she listened for the bag as it sailed to her right.

  With a little prayer to the Gods Above, she swapped the hot kettle to her left hand and plucked the bag from the air just before it hit the ground.

  Chapter Five

  “That was, quite honestly, and I don’t mean this with any disrespect, Sir, the worst throw I’ve ever seen.”

  The man grunted. “So you say, but I threw that exactly where I wanted to throw it.”

  Miss-Miss rooted through the bag, making sure to make it look like she was studying the contents. She pulled some herbs from the bag and sprinkled just enough in each teacup to begin the brewing process. She then closed up the bag, and set it down beside her, tapping the side to ensure the small knife she usually kept in the back pocket was still there.

  It was.

  “Well, I hope that proved that I can see just fine, Sir. I would hate for anyone to think that I was hiding any children in a place like this.” She raised her arms to indicate the burned-out village around her.

  Miss-Miss grabbed the tray and stood. “I hope you don’t think that I would ever take some children. What has this woman done to deserve such a large band of soldiers to go out and look for her?”

  “It’s the children that she’s hiding. They are wanted by the Queen for high treason.”

  Miss-Miss nodded, swinging her hips to the side to ensure her dress didn’t catch in the fire, then took a few steps forward to stand just in front of the man.

  “Well, Sir, as you can see, I get around this place just fine. I’ll admit that my advanced age has made me a bit clumsy at times, but everything else has held up rather well.”

  She turned in the direction of the tombs. “Sir, I would have to ask that your soldier about to disinter those tombs would do well to please leave the dead where they lie. They aren’t harming anyone. Besides, the tea is just about ready and I get particularly cranky if my tea isn’t drunk at the perfect temperature and steeped just right. If your man is going to have some tea, he might do well to come back.”

  TL man grunted, whistled, and waved his arm to tell the soldier to return.

  Miss-Miss nodded her head in the opposite direction. “Same with your man at the boats. Those are ghost boats, you see. I never touched the water myself, I left that to the others here in town. Those boats are filled with the departed souls of the fishermen and I would advise him to leave them be. I would hate for Her Majesty’s elite soldiers to be haunted by the ghosts below for the sacrilege of disturbing their rest.”

  Miss-Miss hoped he bought her story. She had no idea if any of the things she said were true. But she also knew that Darla and Jim had gone down to the water to wash off their clothes after she’d gotten after them, and she was pretty sure they were down there with William, who had spent the morning fishing. All three would be huddled in one of the boats right now, and she couldn’t have them discovered.

  TL man called back the soldier at the wharf and she gave him a comfortable smile. She still didn’t have a big plan, by maybe all her little plans together would work after all.

  So long as her luck held out and her orphans stayed brave and alert.

  Chapter Six

  As the two soldiers came back in, Miss-Miss tapped out a rhythm with her foot. It was an old tune she remembered from when she was a child.

  Finally, TL man spoke up. “Ma’am. I have to ask you a couple of things.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why did you make one extra cup of tea?”

  She froze. Nine, right? I thought I counted eight men? Miss-Miss had been a little confused by the sound of the man in the back, but now she knew why Toby had told her to take one down
.

  “Well, Sir, as you can see,” she pointed with her chin in the direction of the back of their caravan, “You have someone tied up there on the horse, but when you rode in, I didn’t realize he was dead and you were just transporting a corpse. Still, I wouldn’t want to be a bad hostess, so I made sure to brew up one more just in case I was wrong. It would have been incredibly rude of me to ask about the tied down man on the horse, you see. Almost as rude as bringing a dead human into a woman’s domicile.” She smiled. “Good thing none of those lines had to be crossed.”

  The man gritted his teeth, and she responded with a larger smile.

  “Oh look, the tea is perfectly brewed!”

  She handed out the cups, leaving one left. As she did, the various soldiers in the retinue reported back to their leader. One man told TL there was a bunch of chopped wood, and another said there was a fishing line out by the wharf. She took note of these details in case she needed to use them for later. With any luck, though, I won’t.

  “I do have one more for you lot if any of you would prefer to have two.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, Ma’am. You should definitely join us for a drink.” He paused. “Just a moment.”

  Miss-Miss heard TL’s footsteps retreat toward the stool back by the raised beds. Her heart stopped for a beat. Did Martha and the little ones give themselves away?

  TL’s footsteps then grew closer to her. She heard a soft thump as he set the stool down in the dirt.

  “Please, sit, it wouldn’t do for a lady to be standing with a bunch of ruffian soldiers.”

  Miss-Miss looked to where the stool was. She thought about kicking dirt at it to ascertain where it was, but that would be too noticeable. Instead, she tried the distraction method.

  She turned, flaring her skirt just wide enough that it bounced off the stool. Now she knew where and how far away it was without her normal handholds to get her there.

  “Sir, while your men were down at the wharf, did you happen to bring in my line? I realized I forgot it down there and I would hate to have missed a fish on it.”

  She heard the quick creak of leather as TL man turned to glare at his soldier.

  She stepped closer and spun again, this time facing north.

  “And can you tell me if I left my axe up there where I was chopping wood? This old mind isn’t quite what it used to be.”

  Her leg brushed up against the stool. “In fact,” she said as she gracefully sat down on the stool and crossed her legs, “if any of you strapping young men would like to chop me some more so I can make it through the winter, there will be a nice hot meal for you in it.”

  She raised her cup. “Shall we?”

  Chapter Seven

  They all drank her tea, and Miss-Miss upended hers, relishing the warm liquid going down her throat. She felt energized from the liquid, like a shot of courage straight to her heart. She felt alive.

  “Oh dear, I didn’t fill this one completely.”

  She stood to go back to the pot, but TL man grabbed her wrist.

  He turned her hand upward and placed a steaming teacup in her outstretched hand.

  “What do you think you’re trying to do here?”

  Miss-Miss furrowed her brow, hoping the sweat on her forehead wasn’t visible yet.

  “What do you mean, Sir? Did you not like my tea?”

  To the side, one man gurgled, grabbed his throat, then fell to the ground.

  Another followed.

  Miss-Miss heard a splash as TL dumped the tea on the ground. “I can smell what type of leaves are in here, and now I want to know why you knocked out my men and tried to knock me out.”

  Two more men hit the ground, followed by a third.

  TL man threw her back onto the stool. “My only solace is that you will now fall asleep along with them, and while you’re asleep, I’ll find those children and gut you.”

  The final two soldiers, the two largest and farthest away, finally hit the ground.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about, Sir. I can assure you that I would never try to poison someone as illustrious and as well-known as Torken Lysford. You are quite legendary in these parts. We all know how you have abducted children for the Queen and sent them off to be tortured and tested in her concentration camps. I know all about you, but you don’t know anything about me.”

  He got dangerously close to her, and she wanted to throw up from his strong tobacco and rotted-teeth smell.

  “You are correct that you smelled the sleeping root, but that’s not because it was in the tea. I would never make that mistake. The mistake you made was not realizing that I’m magic.”

  Lysford pulled back, reaching for his sword, but Miss-Miss grabbed him with her magic before he got to her.

  “You see, Sir, I’m a heart mage, and I use that power to know where everyone is in relation to me. That’s how I knew your man on the horse back there was dead. I couldn’t feel his heartbeat.

  “It’s also how I knew where your men were. Sure, my hearing has improved quite a bit since your Queen blinded me, but that’s just a bonus.”

  Lysford clutched at his chest. Then his hands worked up to his neck.

  “You see, the thing most people don’t understand is that I can’t just hear heartbeats, I can steal them, and right now, I don’t think you will be needing yours.”

  Author’s Notes

  May 2019

  Thank You Dear Readers!

  I’m so grateful for all my fans who read my stories and enjoy my worlds. I appreciate the reviews, the comments, and the emails telling me how my stories have touched your lives.

  This series has been a labor of love for a while now, and I’m still writing in it! I have lots of plans for the four Oblique sisters, and I’m currently hard at work on the next arc in this series. I can’t wait to show it to you! The next chapter contains an excerpt of book four: Sparking Vengeance.

  One of the best ways to support me as an author is to leave a review on Amazon. Even if you already left a review on the individual books, I need reviews on the bundle! Reviews help others find my books, which means I can continue to provide more stories to my fans!

  Even a simple review stating that you enjoyed it goes a long to letting others know that this series is worth checking out. It helps me provide for my family and continue doing what I love, which is telling fantastically real stories.

  Sharing the book with others on social media helps get the word out as well, so hop on the Twitters and the Instagrams. Shout from the top of the Facebooks and the Reddits that you love my story!

  While you’re out there on the cold internets, come say hello! I love to hear how my stories have entertained or touched you. Hit me up on Twitter with the #frostfervorconcordance tag!

  Finally, I have so many other stories to tell in this universe, and I’ve already written one that I want to share with you. Anyone who signs up to my newsletter will receive a prequel novella that leads into what you just read. If you ever wanted to know how Imryll became the Frost Queen, you can’t miss it! The novella is only available to fans on my mailing list, so check it out!

  Thank you so much for reading, and I’ll see you next time!

  - Tom Hansen

  May 2019

  Excerpt from Sparking Vengeance

  Book Four of the Frost Fervor Concordance

  Unedited Draft Chapter

  Ynya Oblique coughed for the third time since she had woken up. Minute blood droplets splattered the frozen ground with each excruciating hack of her lungs.

  Meki frowned. “Are you okay?”

  Ynya sat back down, her wracking chest finally subsiding. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me.”

  Meki handed her a warm mug of water, then pursed her lips, mirroring a similar action from Synol.

  Ynya chanced a look at their slumbering sister, frozen in time by her own magic. The black lines of the Frost Queen’s poison ran up Synol’s neck, stopping just at her hairline. Each one hungered to co
ntinue north, to consume and eradicate Synol from the world.

  Ynya would not allow it.

  But something was wrong with Ynya, and it didn’t seem physical. Ever since they had made it away from the Frost Queen’s castle, something had been off.

  Three days later, they were out of food, out of energy, and Ynya had been spitting up blood for most of a day.

  Meki finally noticed this morning when she woke up and found frozen blood on Ynya’s cheek.

  “We need to find someone to take care of you.”

  Ynya glanced over to Finny, who had taken her human form once again. “I smell a small settlement not far from here, about nine miles to the west.”

  Behind Finny, Pain, her twisted wolf-like companion whined. Finny turned and laid a hand on his neck. He quieted and nuzzled his head into her stomach.

  Ynya had to admit, despite their horrifying mottled skin and spines instead of fur, they both had a mortifying charm about them. Their bestial forms were conjured in the worst circumstances imaginable, and yet through their torture, had found each other.

  Ynya shook her head at the ida. “We can’t risk it, it’s right along the main road leading away from Fangorn Castle, the Queen will know where we are.”

  Meki folded her arms. “She already knows where we are. Just because we’re further away from her doesn’t mean the bond disappeared. If can feel where she is, then she can do the same.”

  Finny nodded. “I, too, in beast form, can feel her. She knows where we are at any moment. Pain doesn’t have that problem, possibly an oversight when they made him, but they corrected it with me.”

  Ynya didn’t like where any of this conversation was headed, and as the oldest one here, she had a responsibility to get them somewhere safe. “We need to keep moving, it’s our only chance to stay ahead of her and eventually find out way back home.”