NEWS FROM SELIUM

“These came in while you were out,” Elgin said as Laren entered her quarters. He handed her a letter and a parcel, and then continued clearing old teacups off her desk and onto a tray, careful not to disturb the disarray of papers in the process. If only she could work in a more organized way, she thought. Connly’s desk was always so neat and tidy.

With a sigh, she sat heavily in her chair.

“I heard about Condor coming back without his Rider,” Elgin said. “That’s never a good sign.” He should know for he had been Chief Rider when she had come into the messenger service, when she was just a youngster, really. After years of retirement, he’d returned to the castle at her request to help train new Riders. He assisted with other tasks as well, such as combing through old documents for references to the Green Riders during wartime, and he’d taken it upon himself to serve as her orderly.

“No, not a good sign,” Laren echoed.

“How did the king take it?”

There were few secrets between her and Elgin, which meant he was aware of the romantic bond between Zachary and Karigan, but they did not engage in idle gossip, and anything they discussed certainly did not leave her quarters. The lack of secrets between them ensured that someone she trusted knew what she knew should the worst ever happen to her. Mara and Connly were aware, as well, but perhaps not with as much detail as she shared with Elgin.

“He is often hard to read, even for me,” Laren replied, “but for all that, he did not take it well. What folly for him to fall in love with a Green Rider.”

“A folly for any,” Elgin said. “Happens, though.”

For all her words, Laren was distressed for Zachary. He was a deep thinker, and he felt deeply as well. Perhaps a little too much for a king who must make all kinds of difficult decisions that affected tens of thousands of his people. It would eat a lesser man alive. It wasn’t that Zachary allowed his feelings to interfere with his duty, but Karigan was a different matter, and if she had fallen into the hands of the Darrow Raiders? Laren tried not to entertain that possibility and what it would mean for both of them.

She turned in her chair to find Elgin setting aside the tray of dirty cups and preparing to polish her dress boots. “Elgin, there is something you should know.”

“Eh?” he asked as he sat on a stool and inspected one of her boots.

There was no easy way to say it, so she decided to be direct. “The Darrow Raiders are back.”

He looked straight at her, froze, then slowly nodded. “I’ve heard about all the attacks. Does sound like the Darrow Raiders, but we finished them off.”

Like Laren, Elgin was a veteran of those terrible days, when the Riders were deeply involved in trying to stem the anarchy the Darrow Raiders sowed across the countryside.

“I am afraid we didn’t.”

“How can that be?” His voice was full of denial.

“Karigan had evidence in her message satchel.” She explained about the knife.

“Maybe this current crop are pretenders,” Elgin said. “Just using the name.”

“I wish it were so.” She understood his need for the return of the Darrow Raiders to be untrue. They’d seen their fellow Riders butchered and tortured in gruesome ways. “It’s my fault,” she said. “I let Torq get away.”

“But he was killed.”

“We never knew that for sure. It was hearsay.”

“But—” Elgin began.

She knew he wanted to say how after that one last battle, after they’d killed or rounded up most of the Raiders, cleared them from the countryside, they’d had peace all these years.

“All I can figure,” she said, “is that the survivors went to ground and bided their time. My guess is that our upheaval with Second Empire has brought them out of hiding, that they have decided they can attack while we are otherwise occupied.”

“What are we gonna do, Red?”

“I don’t know. The fact it is the Darrow Raiders is new, so there has not been time to strategize.” They would have to strategize, and carefully. The Raiders would remember and have learned from what was done in the past. She’d also have to sit with her Riders and explain exactly what they were up against. She could only guess that after all these years, the Raiders held a great deal of animus for the Green Riders who had defeated them. “I do think Zachary is keen to reinforce the Eagle’s Pass Keep and then make some major move on Second Empire.” Unfortunately, after the fall of Grandmother, another stepped into the breach as leader—General Birch, formerly of Mirwell Province’s militia. Whether it was Second Empire or the Darrow Raiders, you cleared out one nest of snakes and another erupted. Her own priorities were about to shift, she knew, especially if Zachary decided to use his Riders to eradicate the Darrow Raiders as Queen Isen once had.

Both she and Elgin fell into silence to ponder the gravity of it all, or relive nightmarish memories. Laren tried to shake off the spell, and remembering that Elgin had brought her a letter, she picked it up from her desk. It was from her daughter, Melry. Soon Melry would come home as her studies at Selium concluded at spring’s end. They’d have to find her some position in the castle. Despite Melry’s greatest wish and expectations, she had not heard the Rider call.

Laren broke the seal, unfolded the letter, and started reading. After a few minutes, Elgin paused the brushing of her boot and asked, “How is Mel?”

“Doing well, it would seem.” Laren was pleased. Melry had blossomed at Selium, making many new friends, seeing new sights, and being exposed to a wide range of experiences she would not have been had she remained at the castle. An education at Selium ensured plenty of challenges in all its lines of study. “Says her masters are happy with her work.” Melry wasn’t being disingenuous, Laren knew. Her marks had been above average all along. It gave Laren hope that Melry would find some occupation after school that would interest her that had nothing to do with the messenger service.

Melry then described the somber atmosphere in Selium, with black bunting draped everywhere, and mourners arriving from across the realm and beyond to pay tribute to the Golden Guardian. Zachary had sent a special delegation consisting of officials, nobles, and admirers of Lord Fiori.

Estral, or should I say the Lady Fiori, hasn’t arrived home yet, Melry wrote, but a soldier with the honor guard rode ahead to inform the dean she was getting close. Considering how long it would have taken Melry’s letter to reach Sacor City, she assumed Lady Fiori had reached Selium some time ago and that funeral ceremonies were well under way.

Yesterday, I ran into Karigan’s father and he treated me to supper, Melry continued. It pleased Laren that Stevic would take Melry to supper. It was very good. At some point, she and Stevic would have to tell their daughters about their relationship. That was, of course, if Karigan returned home safely. The last thought darkened the lightness she felt at reading Melry’s mostly cheerful letter.

She turned to the next page, but grew increasingly dismayed as she read Melry’s plans for after school. By the time she finished, she was brimming with displeasure.

“You look like you swallowed a hornet,” Elgin said from where he sat on his stool.

Laren turned to him. “She says if I won’t let her be a Green Rider like that ‘Anna girl’ she’s heard about, she wants . . .” Words failed her.

“Wants what?” Elgin said, working oil into one of her boots with a soft cloth.

“She says,” Laren tried again, “that she wants to be a Weapon.”

Elgin made a low whistle.

“This is not exactly what I was hoping for when I sent her to Selium. Who would put such an idea in her head?” For all that Selium should have opened up the world to her, this was what she wanted? It was almost as bad as becoming a Rider. Laren loved her Riders, but she wouldn’t wish the call upon anyone, especially not her own daughter. A Weapon was the shield of royalty and must put the life of her monarch before her own. Hells, their motto was, Death is honor. It was also an ascetic life. Weapons did not marry or have families. Laren wanted Melry to have the widest range of options possible available to her.

“Maybe the lass will change her mind,” Elgin said. “Maybe it’s a—what is the word?—a phase that she’s going through.”

“I certainly hope so. I bet that Rendle, who is arms master at the school, has put notions in her head. Can you imagine Melry as a tomb Weapon, working down in those cold and dark catacombs every day?” Laren sure couldn’t. Her daughter was too lively, too sociable for such work.

“Can’t say as I know Mel terribly well.” Elgin set the boot down beside him and dipped his cloth in oil to begin working on the other. “Last time I saw her she was just a bitty mite.”

Laren stood and paced. She had the urge to throttle someone. If only she knew who to hold responsible.

“Before you go about strangling someone,” Elgin said, guessing at her thoughts, “maybe you should look at that parcel I brought you.”

So occupied by Melry’s letter had she been that she had forgotten about it. She took it off her desk and saw her name and address written in Stevic’s broad strokes. Hastily she tugged loose the strings that bound it. Whatever it was, it was wrapped in an outer layer of oilskin to keep it dry. She then tore apart a few layers of protective paper, and then a length of muslin, to find silk, deep indigo silk. She caught her breath as she lifted it from its wrappings. It was a scarf of high quality silk shot through with filament-fine silver threads like tiny stars.

Elgin cleared his throat. She’d forgotten he was there. “Something you wanna tell me, Red?”

Her relationship with Stevic, still very new, was one secret she had not shared with Elgin. Not with anyone. She feared others would think she showed Stevic’s daughter favoritism because of it. And certain personal things she liked to keep to herself.

She turned toward Elgin, the gossamer scarf flowing across her hands. It was lighter than a cloud. “Uh . . .”

“At a loss for words, are you?”

Laren found that, indeed, she was.

“Then I will tell you,” he said. “That merchant is keen on you, isn’t he? Karigan’s father? And you are keen on him, too.”

Laren looked down at the silk, then back at Elgin. “Yes?”

“That’s a question?” He laughed. “Thought so, with all the time you two spent together while he was here, supposedly working out supplies and shipments, and you with a light in your eyes like I haven’t seen since you were a new Rider with the wonder of it all filling you.”

“Is it that obvious?”

Elgin nodded. “I figured it out some while ago, I did. Now you’re blushing.”

Laren put her hand to her cheek. It was hot. “Elgin—”

“No need to explain, Red. I get you don’t want your Riders to think you’re treating Karigan special because you are being courted by her father, though I think you are underestimating them.”

“Well—”

“I’m just happy you’re happy. I worry that you’ve been too alone all these years.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“Not me, I’ve got my girls.”

His “girls” were chickens and a milk cow.

“Elgin . . .”

He set aside the newly oiled and buffed boot and stood. “I am an old bachelor and won’t be changing my ways anytime soon. I like things the way they are. I got the Riders and you, and that’s all I need. Speaking of which, I’m due to meet Merla down in the records room.”

“Merla?”

Elgin nodded. “The latest translations of those old Rider documents are done and some are about warding. Could be helpful to Merla so she doesn’t get hives every time she tries to cast one.”

“That would be good,” Laren agreed, trying to regain her composure. Poor Merla had been setting wards around the royal apartments and elsewhere, and it was painstaking work that left her swollen and itching with hives. She watched Elgin leave, then pressed the silk against her face. So . . . soft. The indigo was so deep. What would she wear with it? Did she own anything that wasn’t green and part of a uniform?

Hidden among the wrappings she found a note: To my dearest Laren, till we see one another again. He was as brief as his daughter when it came to notes, but the scarf itself said volumes.

Then she remembered his daughter was missing. She’d already had to tell him once that Karigan had gone missing and was presumed dead when they thought she’d been lost in Blackveil. Would she have to do so again?