Fortune and Fate

by Sharon Shinn

  Orson took another deep shuddering breath and then lay still. For a moment, Wen knew, he had been considering how he could throw her off and continue the fight, but the reality of a knife to the throat had made him reconsider. “I’m dead,” he agreed.

  Wen heard Karryn clapping and cheering behind her. “Good for Willa! Does she always win?”

  “Near enough,” Davey said. “If Eggles and Orson take her on at the same time, she’ll lose, but other than that, she’s pretty much impossible to beat.”

  “How did she get to be so good?” Karryn asked.

  Jasper spoke up. “I was wondering that myself.”

  Wen came easily to her feet and glanced over at Jasper; he was waiting for an answer. She had never seen his face look so severe.

  “Told you,” she said. “It’s the only thing I ever wanted to be good at. So I am.”

  Orson laughed, coming to his feet and brushing at the dirt on his trousers. “Still doesn’t really answer the question, does it?” he said. “It’s the only thing I’m good at, too, and—” He shook his head.

  “Well, I think Willa is marvelous,” Karryn said warmly. “When should I come back? I want to be as good as she is.”

  That made all the guards laugh. “Come back any day you like,” Wen said.

  Jasper put an arm around Karryn’s shoulders. “But for now I think you’d best go back to the house and clean up,” Jasper said. “With any luck, before your mother sees you.”

  “My mother!” Karryn groaned, and allowed herself to be turned toward the house. She glanced back over her shoulder once to call out her thanks and promise to return as often as she could.

  Jasper Paladar, on the other hand, did not look back once. Wen knew, because she watched him until he was out of sight.

  Chapter 19

  THAT NIGHT, WHEN SHE WENT TO MAKE HER REPORT, Jasper was not in the library, though the Antonin book lay open on the table where they had left it the night before. Wen stepped back into the hall, considered, and then headed to the study where Jasper could often be found going over estate business. The door was closed, but a knock elicited a response, and she stepped inside.

  Jasper was behind his desk, frowning over a paper. He looked up reluctantly to see who was standing at the door. His expression didn’t change when he recognized his visitor. “Yes?”

  His voice was cool, that of master to servant, and Wen took her cue from that. “Nothing special to report today, my lord,” she said. “Davey’s arm is better, no one got seriously injured in skirmishes. Amie has finally learned that maneuver from horseback that I’ve been trying to teach, but no one else has got it yet.”

  “Perhaps it’s too difficult for ordinary soldiers to learn,” he said.

  As if Wen herself was not ordinary and that was the only reason she’d been able to accomplish it. “No, it’s a good trick. It just takes patience.”

  “Well, then,” he said. “Thanks for checking in.”

  It was clearly a dismissal. Wen nodded and stepped back outside without another word. Her face was perfectly expressionless, but her mind was in chaos, and she stood outside the door a good five minutes, thinking.

  Why could Jasper Paladar possibly be angry at her? She had offered no insult, been derelict in no duty, behaved in not the slightest detail differently than she had since the day she arrived. All that had changed was that she had helped Karryn learn to fight. Had he disapproved of the lessons? Had he thought it unladylike, inappropriate, for Karryn to be wrestling in the dirt, learning to strike and kick and bite members of her own guard? If so, he had had ample opportunity to say so. But Wen didn’t think that was it. He had hugged Karryn after the practice, at any rate, treated her with the same casual affection he always showed her. It wasn’t Karryn he thought shouldn’t understand how to fight.

  It was Wen.

  She began slowly strolling through the corridors, head bent down, still trying to puzzle this out. Jasper Paladar had never seen Wen handle a weapon before—except in his library when she knocked Zellin Banlish to the ground. But that had hardly been a real struggle. It was mystifying. Jasper Paladar had hired Wen because of her ability to fight. The very first thing he’d ever learned of her was that she’d disabled two large men who were trying to kill her. He’d offered her money to impart her knowledge and abilities to others. So why would he be disconcerted—even distressed—even angry—to learn that Wen could destroy an opponent in fair and open combat?

  Maybe he wasn’t bothered by the knowledge itself. Maybe it was seeing her engage in full-out warfare, with no restraints, going for the kill—maybe that’s what had bothered him. Maybe he had thought she was a more pristine creature; maybe he had thought battle itself was more dainty.

  Maybe he thought that he could not waste his time talking about literature and philosophy with someone who scrabbled about in the mud and tried to cut out a fellow’s intestines.

  She started to feel resentful—enough so that she came to a dead halt and considered striding back down the hallway to confront him. What right do you have to judge me? I am exactly what I said I was, a soldier; I do exactly what I said I always wanted to do. How can you turn against me now? I didn’t ask you to try to make me a friend. I didn’t ask you to offer me books or read me poetry. How can you be angry that I am not the person you tried to turn me into? I am the person that I always was.

  Such a tirade would surely get her fired. Well, maybe it was time to be moving on. Time to change her fortune, as it were.

  She was not ready to go, but maybe it was time anyway.

  A voice inside her head then said the strangest thing. I can’t leave before I’ve heard the end of the Antonin story! But who knew if Jasper Paladar would ever be willing to read her another chapter of that book? He might never recover from his unease—his disgust—with seeing Wen in her natural element. He might never invite her back into the library again.

  She thought about it a moment, then she squared her shoulders and took up her customary stride again. Through the foyer, down the side hallway, back to the library. She picked up the book, marked the page, and carried it with her out of the room, into the hall, and out the front door. She nodded casually at Eggles, who was standing guard, and headed back to the barracks with the treasure in her arms.

  Jasper Paladar didn’t need her and she didn’t need him. She could finish the story on her own.

  THE unaccustomed coolness between Wen and Jasper continued for the next three days. Quickly enough, Wen got tired of the comments down at the barracks—“Oh, so suddenly we’re good enough for you to sit with a while after dinner? What’s the matter, the lord’s company grown dull?”—so she engaged in a little subterfuge. She made her brief report to the lord, then she lurked in the back areas of the house for an hour or so before returning to the building she shared with the rest of the guard.

  The very first night she tried this, she ended up in Fortune’s formal kitchen. The cook, a large and forbidding woman, looked suspicious when Wen strolled in, though the rest of the assistants and serving girls ignored her. Wen produced an airy voice.

  “I was looking for Bryce,” she said.

  The cook’s face softened. “That little scamp,” she said affectionately. “He’s here—I just sent him outside to throw out the scraps.”

  A minute later, Bryce skipped back inside, an empty bucket in his hand. “Hey, Willa,” he said. “Were you looking for me?”

  “Just thought I’d check up on you. See if you were staying out of trouble.”

  “He is trouble, just as any young boy is, but he’s a good one,” the cook said. “Here, did you want the last of the bread and jam? I saved it for you.”

  “Oh, thank you! Do you have any more chores for me?”

  “No, you can go off with the captain if she needs you.”

  Wen and Bryce stepped out through the back door, she grinning, he cramming the entire piece of bread in his mouth. Night was starting to fall, lush with the perfume of the flowered
hedge and warm enough to be comfortable. “Ginny said the cook liked you,” Wen remarked. “But I didn’t know you were such a favorite.”

  “Women always like me,” he said so matter-of-factly that Wen had to laugh.

  “Not me. I think you’re a brat.”

  He grinned. “Then why did you come looking for me?”

  “Just checking to make sure that you’re all right. But I see that you are.”

  He produced a deck of grubby cards from a back pocket. “Because you’re bored,” he said. Wen sucked in her breath. Damn the child for being able to read her mind! “Do you want to play cards with me? Orson and Davey say I cheat.”

  They settled on a wooden bench near the vegetable garden. The air was pungent with the green scent of growing things mixed with the overpowering aroma of the hedge blossoms. “Do you?”

  “No, but sometimes—I can’t help it!—I can tell what cards they’re looking for, and if I have those cards in my hand, I don’t play them.”

  Wen was grinning. “Well, this will be a challenge,” she remarked. “Sure, I’m good for a few hands with you. But I don’t think I’ll play for money.”

  She enjoyed the time with Bryce—and, the next night, the hour that Ginny joined them—but she couldn’t escape a sense of things being askew. She could hardly confront Jasper Paladar, but she could fume at his unfair treatment. She didn’t let herself think too long about why his coolness bothered her so much, when it would have been no more than she would have expected from any other employer.

  There was no telling how long things might have stayed in this unsatisfying state if Demaray Coverroe hadn’t arrived unannounced at Fortune on the fourth day. Wen was taking her turn patrolling the grounds when she saw the big coach turn in through the gate. She signaled Davey to send for her replacement, and she followed the noblewoman inside.

  Probably nothing to fear from Demaray Coverroe. But Wen had made it a strict policy to allow no guests into the house without an armed guard within call, and she was not about to change her standards now.

  The footman showed Demaray into the inviting parlor nearest the front door and dashed off to fetch refreshments. Wen wouldn’t have liked to say she was trying to conceal herself, but she did take up a position that kept her somewhat in the shadow of the great staircase. It was entirely possible that Jasper didn’t see her when he strode up the hallway and turned into the room. At any rate, he didn’t close the door behind him. Wen edged close enough to overhear their conversation.

  “Demaray. A pleasant surprise.”

  A slight laugh. “I’m afraid you might not think it so pleasant once I tell you my news.”

  “Please. Sit.” There was the rustle of clothing, interrupted immediately by the return of the footman and the elaborate ritual of pouring drinks and selecting sweets. Finally Jasper spoke again.

  “What’s happened? You look upset.”

  “Lindy and I have been out of the city for a few days,” Demaray said. Wen wondered if they had just returned from their visit to the so-boring Deloden and his loutish sons. “And we ran into trouble on the way home along the northwest road.”

  “What kind of trouble?” he asked sharply.

  Demaray’s voice trembled. “Our coach was stopped and bandits stole all of our valuables.”

  “No! Demaray, that’s dreadful! What did you lose?”

  “Some rings—some gold—everything in Lindy’s trunk. She was terrified.”

  “But you weren’t harmed?” he asked in an urgent voice.

  “No—we were untouched, which I suppose was a mercy. But Jasper, I had to warn you. Take extra care when anyone from your household goes a step outside the city limits.”

  “I’m sure our new guard can keep Karryn truly safe. But this is disheartening news, to say the least.”

  “I knew you would feel that way,” she said very warmly. “And for that reason I hesitated to tell you at all. Jasper, this cannot be considered your fault!”

  “Can it not?” he said wearily. “If Rayson Fortunalt were still alive, every citizen in the region would be shouting at the doorway, demanding that he do something to better patrol his roads.”

  “If Rayson Fortunalt were still alive, half the county would have been conscripted into his own personal army.”

  “My point is that the individual who sits in this House bears responsibility for the well-being of this corner of the realm. All this will fall to Karryn soon enough, and the gods know she is hardly equipped to grapple with problems of civil defense and troop deployment.”

  Give her a few more weeks of practice in the training yard, and she might do better than you think, Wen thought. Karryn was proving to have an aptitude for self-defense. She might well become a tactician if given enough instruction.

  “In five years, many things will have changed,” Demaray said. “The restrictions on the rebel Houses will have been lifted—the marlady will be able to command something of an army again. Then she’ll be able to put enough soldiers on the roads to enforce order.”

  “There are days those five years stretch before me like an eternity,” Jasper admitted.

  Wen heard what sounded like furniture sliding across the floor. Had Demaray moved closer to Jasper Paladar? “You have been given an impossible task. I do not know how you manage it with such austere grace,” she said. Her voice was even warmer than before, cozy and sympathetic.

  He gave a slight laugh. “Most times I feel like I manage tolerably well, but then there are days . . . And I feel there is much Karryn needs to know that I have no idea how to teach.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” Demaray said. “You know I am always happy to have Karryn at my house. And I think she enjoys the chance to act like just an ordinary girl when she and Lindy are together.”

  “Yes, and we all appreciate how much you and Lindy both mean to Karryn.”

  “But is there something else I can do?” Demaray said, and her voice had dropped to a somewhat caressing tone. “For you, Jasper? I hate to see you so anxious and worried. If it will give you any pleasure or distraction, we would be happy to have you over just as often as Karryn comes. We’ll send the girls to their rooms, and you and I could talk like rational adults. That might soothe your mind a little.”

  By the tone of his voice, Jasper was genuinely touched by this offer. “Why, thank you, Demaray. I might take you up on that someday soon. I often feel like I must lock myself in my office, going over accounts, answering petitions, making my reports to the queen. But I suppose I could slip away every now and then and spend my time on more frivolous pursuits.”

  “Exactly,” she responded with a throaty laugh. “I can be entirely frivolous, if that’s your mood, or entirely serious, if that serves you better.”

  There were footsteps down the hall; Wen quickly identified one of the footmen, who knocked respectfully on the open door. “My lady, your coachman wishes to know if you will be staying much longer, in which case he will have the horses stabled.”

  If Demaray was annoyed at the interruption, her voice did not show it. “Goodness, no, I meant to linger only a moment! I’m on my way. Jasper, don’t forget anything I said.”

  “Bandits on the roads,” he repeated.

  “Yes. And a welcome at my house anytime.”

  “I’ll remember,” he said.

  He escorted her to the door and gave her a shallow bow as she departed in the wake of the footman. Wen held her breath and pressed back into the shadows, observing him as he watched Demaray walk out of sight.

  As soon as she was gone, he said, “I hope you found that edifying.”