A JOYOUS AND FRAUGHT TIME

“Look,” Anna said, pointing across the pasture.

Condor sidled a few more steps toward Angry-Mad even as he grazed. The mare flicked her ears back but continued grazing. She did not squeal and move away in a huff as she had when any of the other horses neared her.

“She’s more accepting of him than the others,” Mason said. He was a new Rider who had arrived shortly after Colonel Mapstone and King Zachary left for the mountains. He had just begun an apprenticeship with an animal mender in Hillander when he heard the call. Horse Master Riggs was so pleased to have an animal mender among them, even with only nascent skills, that she intended to ask Colonel Mapstone to allow him to continue his apprenticeship with a local animal mender as his Green Rider duties allowed. “And do you notice that he stays on her sighted side?”

Anna had not, but she nodded.

The two leaned against the pasture fence, enjoying the peaceful scene of horses grazing, insects droning over the top of the grasses, and small birds darting after them. Tails swished at flies, and the horses made contented sighs as they tore and munched on grass and the sun warmed their backs. To Anna, thoughts of war were far off, except for the fact that there were too few horses in the pasture.

“You say she was found at the knacker’s?” Mason asked.

Anna nodded. “She was so skinny you could see her ribs.”

“Looks like she still has a ways to go,” he replied, “but she’s probably much improved from where she was.”

Angry-Mad had not made quite the progress they had been hoping for, despite the good, regular feedings she received at Rider stables, but yes, she’d come along miles from the sorry, abused creature she had been. Her coat now gleamed and her mane and tail lacked snarls due to Anna’s diligence. Anna might risk life and limb grooming the tempestuous mare, but she got the job done. Angry-Mad put on a good show of fighting the rigorous grooming, but Anna thought she actually liked it. Riding was another matter, however, and Anna had the bruises to prove it.

“I was thinking,” Mason said, “maybe you ought to start calling her something else other than Angry-Mad.”

“Like what?” Anna called her a lot of things when she was acting up, most of them not very nice.

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s like when you call a thing a thing, it becomes that thing.”

“You mean that by calling her Angry-Mad, it makes her angry? And mad?”

“There are certainly other reasons for the way she is, but what I’m saying is that by calling her Angry-Mad, you are predisposing yourself to expect that behavior, and horses are sensitive. She can pick up on how you feel, and she is only too willing to accommodate you. It’s like a—a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“Huh.” Anna had never thought about it that way. Angry-Mad had come with the name, and she hadn’t changed it because she thought it was appropriate.

“Names have power,” Mason said.

She thought he might be right. She’d changed her surname to Ash when she signed on to the messenger service. Her family had abandoned her at the castle when she was little, so she abandoned her family name. The Riders were her new family, the one she had chosen for herself, and “Ash” represented who she had been and her pride in that person, as humble as being an ash girl had been. It also represented that she was rising out of the ashes, so to speak, as she entered her new life as a Green Rider.

“You are very wise,” she told Mason.

He laughed. “Oh, I don’t know about that. My grandsire was always saying stuff like that, and I guess I picked up on it.”

However he had gotten it, he’d sure given her something to chew over.

“I’d better go,” he said. “I’m due to clean stalls and I don’t want Hep to think I’m shirking my duties.”

Anna watched him saunter off toward the stables. She was done for the day with her classes and chores, but when she returned to the castle, she got a pot of tea and a couple scones from the kitchen and carried them on a tray all the way to the Rider wing where she knew Lieutenant Mara would be hard at work on accounts, or scheduling, or whatever needed doing since she was in charge of the Riders still at the castle and all the administrative details that went along with managing them.

As expected, she found the lieutenant in her room at her desk poring over a ledger, old burn scars on her face puckered as she frowned at the figures on the page before her. The room was a dreary contrast to the sunshine in the pasture and Anna knew she’d made the right decision.

The lieutenant looked up when she noticed Anna. “What’s this?”

“I used to look after the colonel like you always asked me to,” Anna replied, “but since she’s away, I can look after you.”

“It’s very kind of you, but not necessary.” The grateful expression on Lieutenant Mara’s face said otherwise.

Anna poured her a cup of the tea. “No honey or sugar, I’m afraid. Nor cream. The cooks are hoarding what they’ve got.”

Lieutenant Mara accepted the teacup and sighed. “Shortages. I hear there are ships in port from the Cloud Islands filled with sugar and fruit, but they’re just sitting there because no one is willing to transport goods overland with the Raiders at large. They’re dumping the rotting fruit into the harbor.”

“Maybe we can have honey soon,” Anna replied. “They’re setting up hives in the gardens.” The central courtyard gardens, once flourishing with decorative plantings, had been transformed into orderly rows of sprouting vegetables.

“I actually prefer honey.” Mara sighed. “But I guess it will be a while before the likes of us get any.” She sipped her tea.

“Anything I can help you with?” Anna inquired, eyeing the piles on Mara’s desk.

“How is your arithmetic?”

Now Anna frowned. “It is not my best class.”

“It was never mine, either.” Mara thumped the ledger in front of her. “Daro and Karigan are the ones who are good at this. I just mess it up.”

Daro Cooper was off with Colonel Mapstone and the other Riders, and Karigan was . . . Well, it was hard to say where Karigan was. She’d been a captive of the Raiders, but just the other night, Lieutenant Mara had received a message from her that she’d arrived outside the city and that she was going to set out for Oxbridge and try to catch up with the king and colonel. The note was terse, but she’d said the Eagle’s Pass Keep was now occupied by Second Empire, and that the Raiders still held Fergal, Megan, and Melry. There’d been no details about how she escaped the Raiders, how she had ended up at Sacor City with such suddenness, nor how she expected to catch up with the king and colonel. Lieutenant Mara and Castellan Javien, Anna had heard, had not been best pleased that she had not come up to the castle to report in person.

“Anything else?” Anna asked.

“It’s good of you to ask,” Mara replied, “but if I’m not mistaken, you are off duty for the rest of the day.”

“Yes’m, but I thought—”

“None of that, Rider. Take it from me, when you’ve got free time, enjoy it because there will be too many times when it won’t be possible.”

“Yes’m.”

“You are dismissed now. I thank you for the tea.”

Anna started to leave, but paused in the doorway. “Lieutenant?”

“Yes, Anna?”

“Do you think Fergal and the others are going to be all right?”

Mara turned in her chair to gaze at her. “Well, if Karigan managed to escape—and that’s a story I’d very much like to hear, by the way—it gives me hope for the others. But I don’t know, and it will be a while before we get any other news.”

Anna nodded and headed down the corridor. It was quiet with so many Riders away, and those who remained were mostly at class or training. When she reached the common room, she peered inside. One Rider sat sprawled in the armchair in front of the hearth. The weather was warm enough that no fire had been lit.

“Merla?” she asked.

The Rider made a noise and Anna strode across the room to where she sat. Merla’s face was so swollen with hives that she could barely open her eyes.

Anna placed her hands on her hips. “You’ve been working too hard again by the looks of it.”

“Finally finished placing wards in the royal apartments and corridor.” She waved her hand in the air, and it, too, was swollen, her fingers stubby sausages.

One benefit of not having a magical ability, Anna reflected, was not having to “pay” for its use in some unpleasant way, like Merla and her hives. “Don’t you think you should go to the menders?”

“It’ll go ’way in a few minutes. Now the job is done like they wanted. No magical attacks or trespass on the queen or babies.”

That was why she’d been pushing so hard, Anna thought, to be sure she completed the warding before the babies came. She sat in a rocking chair next to Merla. It creaked as she slowly rocked. She’d stick around to make sure Merla’s swelling went down as she claimed it would.

“What next?” she asked.

Merla sighed. “The castle, from top to bottom. The Eletians said there are already some wards around, old ones that need refreshing. I haven’t come across them yet, but the Eletians said I’d sense them as I worked.”

In the winter, visiting Eletians had shown Merla how to go about setting wards to protect the queen after an attack by the aureas slee. The slee had slipped in anyway after disguising itself as King Zachary. Merla had then worked on strengthening the wards to prevent something like that from happening again.

“How long will it take?” Anna asked.

Merla laughed. “Years. But at least the babies will be protected for now, and probably just in time. Queen looks ready to burst.”

“Burst?”

“Any day now.”

It was both a joyous and fraught time, the birthing of heirs that would ensure the continuity and stability of the throne. The happiness of new life was tempered by the threat of all that could go wrong. Anna’s mother had suffered no hardship in pregnancy and birthed many healthy children—it was why Anna had been abandoned—too many mouths to feed. But it was different for everyone, and this being the queen of Sacoridia and a time of war, any loss of queen or heirs would be a loss for the entire realm, and a victory for the enemy.