Isobel

by Chloe Garner

  Isobel

  Chloe Garner

  Kindle eBook

  Copyright © 2016 Chloe Garner

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Lindsay McDonald of Indyscribable Designs

  Published by A Horse Called Alpha

  Other work by Chloe Garner

  Sam and Sam Series

  Rangers

  Shaman

  Psychic

  Warrior

  Dragonsword

  Portal Jumpers

  Kansas: not long from now. The portal program sends men and women across the universe to make contact with other species. Best job on the planet. Cassie's job, before she aged out: too slow, too worn, too 26. Now she's just an analyst, crunching data, writing reports, grounded. She caught Jesse, though, the foreign terrestrial that no one can predict and no one can control. He's got a gleam in his eye that says he's looking for trouble, and Cassie's going to be right in the thick of it.

  Contents

  Andromeda

  Abigail

  Aemelia

  Augusta

  Aileen

  Amanda

  Adelaide

  Aurélie

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  He came to me in darkness and fire and blood, as I lay in the arms of the dead.

  My life was gone, spent, and nothing.

  He gave me a new one.

  Andromeda

  Andromeda played in the cold water in the stream, gripping the rocks with her toes as she turned over larger stones, looking for things that wriggled and fled.

  “Andie!” her mother called. “Andromeda! Come meet our guests!”

  Andie stood, checking her dress for water that would give her away, then ran back toward the house. Her father was as yet only two weeks gone, and the unsettled sense of chaos in the house meant that Andromeda got out of her lessons during the days. She skidded to a halt in front of her mother and the strange couple standing at the door and gave them a little bow.

  “This is my daughter, Andromeda,” Elissa said, putting one hand on her swollen stomach and the other on Andie’s head. She pulled at a tangle, and Andie ducked her head away. “I assure you, she is usually better groomed.”

  The man, handsome as if cut from stone, only glanced at her, but the woman, tall and thin with thick black hair that reached her ankles, looked down at Andromeda for a moment.

  “She has spirit,” she said.

  “Sometimes too much,” Elissa said, giving Andie a push toward the house.

  “Go make sure the guest wing is arranged,” she said. Andie cast another look toward the new couple, then ran inside, looking for Korinna.

  She found the woman with an armful of linens in the guest rooms.

  “Mama wants to know if the rooms are ready,” she said.

  “Well now you can help me,” Korinna said, handing off a stack of various things to Andie and continuing to work. Andie started to help, but was quickly distracted by a bronze figurine on a dresser. Korinna sighed and picked up the rest of the cloth and finished her preparations. A few minutes later, she left, and Andie lost interest in the statuette. She wandered back into the main room, sitting on the hearth next to the retired head of her father’s hunting pack and letting the animal lick her hands.

  “It’s about fifty acres,” Elissa was saying. “The boys have the herd up in the mountains now, but they’ll bring them back down once the storms start. We have the harvest next month, and then the fallow season. We came across a skilled potter, and there’s the spinning and weaving, of course.”

  “How many men stayed?” the man asked.

  Elissa shrugged.

  “Enough.”

  The man grunted, a low, rolling noise in his chest akin to a growl. Andie looked at her mother. Elissa rested both of her hands on her stomach.

  “I would like to meet the head of the house staff,” the black-haired woman said. Elissa nodded.

  “Of course,” she said, turning in her chair. “Damian, would you bring Charis?”

  Andie’s father’s manservant had been too old to go with him to war, so he’d been wandering the house since Lykos had left, serving as butler and Charis’ second-in-command. He left and returned minutes later with Charis. Elissa levered herself out of her chair and put a hand out to Charis.

  “Charis, these are our guests, Isobel and Rafa. They are going to be helping me run the house while Lykos is away.”

  The housekeeper got a funny look on her face as she wiped her hands off on her smock.

  “What provident timing. Where are you from?”

  “Almost as far north as the world goes,” Isobel said, her voice soft and even, like a viper through grass. Charis rubbed her hands harder.

  “Yes, well. We’ll be glad to have the extra hands.”

  She eyed Rafa, settling something - when Andie saw that look, it meant that she was busted for stealing sweets - and she turned to Elissa.

  “If that’s all?”

  Elissa waved her away and sat back down. She spotted Andie when she noticed Isobel watching her. For her part, Andie had been staring back. She couldn’t take her eyes off the woman. She wore a dress of heavy fabric dyed dark green, unlike anything Andie had ever seen, and her high cheekbones and narrow face were exotic-looking to Andie’s provincial eyes.

  “Don’t sit there,” Elissa said. “You’re going to get ashes all over your dress.”

  The hunting dog leaned over to lick her face, where she would inevitably find the traces of Andie’s last meal, and Andie giggled.

  “Stand up this minute,” Elissa said. “Come sit at the table like a lady.”

  “We don’t want to burden you,” Rafa said. “There’s no need to entertain us. Our staff will be here tomorrow with our belongings. Isobel needs rest, and we both need a bath.”

  “Of course,” Elissa said, standing. “Andromeda will show you to your rooms.”

  Glad she wasn’t going to have to sit through a long evening of grown up conversation, Andie hopped to her feet, bouncing on her toes in front of Isobel.

  “How far does the earth go?” she asked as they left the room.

  “What?” the woman asked.

  “You said you live on the edge of the world,” Andie said. “How far is it?”

  There was a soft laugh from the man, but Isobel frowned at Andie.

  “Do you ride?”

  “I have a pony. Her name is Lily.”

  “Have you been on a real horse?”

  Andie thought, then nodded.

  “My father’s horse, to go to market,” she said. “When Lily was sick.”

  Isobel gave her a flicker of a smile.

  “If you got on your father’s horse and rode him in a straight line every day for as long as you can every day, for four weeks, you would reach my home,” she said.

  “Do you live on a cliff?”

  “No, we live in woods.”

  “Where is the edge?”

  “What edge?”

  “Of the world.”

  Isobel stared at her with piercing eyes. Dark black eyes.

  “There isn’t an edge.”

  “Then what’s after that?”

  “Ice and great white bears,” Rafa said. Andie opened the door to their room. She’d seen a bear once.

  “What do they eat?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The bears. Do they eat the ice?”

  “That and little girls who ask too many questions,” Rafa said, looking over the room. He said it like her father would say it. It made her smile.

  “Do you need anything?” a serving girl asked as she finished arranging things on the lady’s dresser and slipped past Rafa and Isobel.

  “This will be fine, thank you,” Rafa said. Isobel took another long look at
Andie before she turned and closed the door. Andie waited a moment, then put her ear to the door. There was no noise. They must have gone to sleep.

  She wandered into the kitchen, sitting in a corner next to the cat’s basket. The hefty feline emerged from under something and waddled into Andie’s lap. She was supposed to keep the mice at bay, but the cook spoiled her with table scraps.

  “What I want to know is how they knew to come. The king only announced the war six weeks ago,” Charis said.

  “Leaving them plenty of time to prepare for the journey and come,” Helene, the cook, said.

  “But not for them to find out about it,” Charis said. “And to risk a trip of that distance, with no soldiers for guard? They’re demons.”

  Andie frowned at the cat, tugging at its ears in a friendly way.

  “I don’t think they’re demons,” she whispered.

  “Maybe they’re gods,” Helene said, “come to test our hospitality and civility.”

  Andie nodded at this. Helene was much more willing to give Andie the benefit of the doubt than Charis. Even though she might not have deserved it very often.

  “If they’re here to help the lady keep the house, I expect both of them to work.”

  “They both looked very capable to me,” Helene said. “Used to work.”

  “They look like they eat a mountain of food,” Charis said. “No one has justification to be that tall.”

  “Leon said their horses are fit for giants,” Helene said. “Says he’ll have to knock out a wall of the barn to get them in.”

  “Leon says a lot of things,” Charis said. Helene laughed. “I just hope they don’t expect us to put up with a hundred servants, lazing around, expecting to be fed.”

  “They’re friends of the lord,” Helene said. “Don’t speak ill of them.”

  “Rafa is a friend from the wars,” Charis said. “No one said anything about this woman.”

  “Isobel,” Andie whispered, feeling the strange sounds out pleasingly. “Isobel and Rafa.”

  “And why would a northerner like that be fighting with Lykos?”

  “They say he’s a master soldier,” Helene said.

  “Soldiers are all the same,” Charis said. “All bravery and daring on the battlefield, but then when they get home, nothing can put them out.”

  “Charis,” Helene scolded. The cat got out of Andie’s lap, ears pointed at some noise only it had heard, and Andie crept to the cook’s table, looking for treats. It occurred to her that when she got home, she liked to sit and suck on a nectarine or a peach. She found a bowl of nectarines and stole two, then snuck back out of the kitchen. Her first thought was that one was for Isobel and the other for Rafa, but as she walked around the house, she decided that Rafa probably didn’t need one.

  The rooms that Charis had picked for Isobel and Rafa had sea-facing windows that were only closed during storms. Andie clambered up into the window and sat, watching as Isobel brushed her hair. She had to do it section by section, foot by foot, and Andie thought that it looked like someone should have done it for her. The lengths of hair on the floor behind her as she sat should have been curled around her. It would have been pretty.

  “They are good people,” Isobel was saying. “I just wish there was less sun.”

  “You probably can’t appreciate it, but the sun is something I’ve missed,” Rafa answered. “We have such short days.”

  “That’s the ocean I smell?” Isobel asked.

  “It shouldn’t be more than a few miles away,” Rafa said. “They do have odd birds here, though.”

  “Odd…?” Isobel asked, turning. Andie stiffened as she realized Rafa had spotted her. “What are you doing there?”

  Andie extended her arm, offering the fruit. Isobel rose and took it.

  “Run along now,” she said. “If you come tell us when our people get here in the morning, I’ll brush your hair.”

  Andie wasn’t a fan of having her hair brushed, but the brush Isobel held in her hand was intriguing. Everything about her was intriguing. Andie nodded mutely, then, catching the stern look from Rafa, hopped out of the window and ran to the barn. She’d just realized she hadn’t seen the horses yet.

  Andie spent the entire next morning watching the road into the house for signs of activity. When she came in at lunchtime, her tutor was waiting for her.

  “Nelius, I’m watching today,” she said when he tapped the back of one hand against the other palm.

  “You have letters to practice,” he said. Isobel looked up.

  “She reads?” the woman asked.

  “She will make a fine wife someday,” Elissa answered.

  “Lykos must be very rich, to educate his daughter,” Isobel said.

  “Nelius will teach sons, someday,” Elissa said, stroking her belly.

  “Then can I quit?” Andie asked. In truth, she didn’t mind the lessons. She saw the dispatches to her father, and they felt like telling secrets. There was magic in the letters Nelius made her etch in sand over and over again. Put them together in the right order, and they could do anything.

  “Now, miss,” Nelius said. Andie pouted at him, but followed back to the special room where she practiced her letters and recited the seasons and the things that happened in them, and other silly things, when she could have been out looking under rocks. The lessons weren’t the chore. It was the loss of her time. She had so many things to see, and they might not be there tomorrow.

  Nelius managed to keep her still for several hours before she bolted while his back was turned, but she had missed the arrival of the servants. The barn was abuzz with foreign animals, mostly horses, but also a cow, a pair of ornery donkeys that kept kicking at the stableboys, and a crate of the strangest ducks Andie had ever seen.

  The horses were tall enough that Andie could nearly walk underneath them without ducking. She thought they were glorious. Her mother’s horse, bought from a trader at the docks, was prettier, and her pony Lily was smarter and obviously Andie’s favorite, but she hung out around the great beasts in the yard until one of the stablemen told her that if she kept it up, one of the horses was going to put a foot through her head.

  She went back into the house to find it in an uproar as Isobel’s servants worked with the house staff to get things put away and people matched to beds. Elissa sat in a chair by the fireplace, watching, but mostly letting Charis do the directing. Andie found a corner to sit in behind a lounge, and watched with wide eyes. The servants were as exotic as Isobel and Rafa. Tall, short, fat, thin, pale, olive-skinned, or African. She’d seen an African man at the docks, once. Not the time that they bought her mother’s horse. A different time. She’d thought he was beautiful. Lykos had told her not to stare.

  Isobel breezed through the room, watching but not interfering with the work. Andie had found her version of Charis: a stout woman with speckled skin and red hair like dry leaves. The two women clucked like roosting hens settling on a pecking order, nitpicking at each other, but never leaving any room for doubt that one of them was first, and the other one was second in charge; no one else was getting a chance to move up. The northern woman spoke with a strange accent, and after a time, Andie realized that a number of Isobel’s staff didn’t speak Greek.

  She’d thought everyone spoke Greek.

  Sure, some of them had other languages they used, but they all spoke Greek.

  She found Isobel watching her. The woman said something to a pretty girl with straw-blond hair, then left. The girl spotted Andie and came over, taking her hand.

  “Come,” she said, thickly accented. “Come.”

  Andie let herself be led out of the room and down the hallway to Isobel’s room. Rafa was sitting at a desk working, looking very much like Lykos for reasons Andie couldn’t figure out before the blond set Andie down on a stool. Isobel handed her a copper mirror, polished to a high shine, and Andie watched as the two women stood over her and first brushed and then braided her hair. The blond girl took out pots of dye and d
abbed red on Andie’s lips and cheeks, then stood back, smiling. She and Isobel spoke in the strange language again, and Isobel tilted Andie’s face up to look at her. She did not smile, but there was a hint of something akin to pleasure in her eyes.

  “Run and show your mother,” she said, then turned away, speaking to the blond woman some more. Andie hopped off of the stool and looked at Rafa again, frightened this time by his sharp features and stern eyes, then ran out of the room, looking for Elissa.

  Looking back, she wouldn’t remember which happened first, the raid or her mother going into labor. It became a muddled mess of confusion and grown-up things.

  One night, as she was staring out her window up at the stars, she saw torches through the trees. She sat up and climbed into the window ledge to watch men come up the road and through the woods. At first, it was quiet, just the sound of the stars and the fires, and then one of the stableboys shouted. His yell was cut off with a sharp, high-pitched scream that made Andie shiver. Dogs barked, and men started shouting. The house behind her rose into an uproar and men poured out into the yard. Horses screamed and cows mooed. Andie watched as a man tried to drag a fear-crazed horse away from the barn and into the woods. It kicked loose and ran, kicking up gravel as it passed Andie. It was her mother’s Arabian.

  A voice squealed behind her and Andie turned to find a servant in the doorway.

  “Get out of the window,” she said, rushing across the room and snatching Andie down. She stuck her head out quickly, then darted her head and shoulders out to unhook the shutters and pull them closed.

  “Fool child,” she muttered, picking Andie up and carrying her to the main room.

  “Andie,” Elissa said, putting her hands out from where she lay on a lounge. The girl put Andie down and Andie went to her mother.

  “Your horse got away,” she said.

  “What?”

  Andie nodded, comforting her mother.

  “She got away.”

  Elissa shook her head, but was quickly distracted by one of the teenage boys coming in to tell her what was going on. Andie slipped away.