Michael Stackpole: At the Queen_s command

Owen nodded. "I will prepare a list of the things I need. I would appreciate your supplementing it with supplies that would facilitate my mission."

Langford nodded and took his quill up again. "Gladly, sir."

The sooner I am out of here, the sooner you imagine the wilderness will kill me. "There is also the matter, Colonel, of a packet I have for the Prince."

Langford looked up. "You will wish to deliver this to him directly, I assume."

"Those were my orders."

"Very well." Langford scribbled a note on a piece of paper, handed it to Owen. "Sergeant Major Hilliard will send you on your way. I will have your things sent around to your billet."

"Very good, sir, thank you." Owen came to attention and saluted.

Langford slowly rose and returned the salute. "Your mission is futile. Your determination will get you killed."

Owen smiled. "I've no intention to make my wife a widow, sir, but I will fulfill my orders."

The Guards' stable master gave him a bay gelding and directions. Owen followed Blessedness Road around to Justice and out through Westgate, heading west on the Bounty Trail. The route roughly paralleled the Benjamin River for several miles, then diverged as the river dipped toward the south.

The trail deserved the name, since it was little more than a set of wagon ruts flanked by grasses trampled beneath foot and hoof. Most commercial traffic, Owen guessed, came down the river. He passed a number of estates with their own docks; very few of them had a drive connecting to the trail. The river, clearly, served as the primary transportation route.

Owen did not ride as swiftly as he might, despite his urgency to deliver the sealed packet to the Prince. The land's breadth and lack of development surprised him. Back in Norisle there might be great expanses of fields, but walls divided them. All of them lay under cultivation. Forests dotted the land but more as private hunting preserves for nobility than places where no man had yet set ax to tree. Cresting hills and riding down into valleys, he expected to see small villages astride the trail, but none existed. A mile or two outside Temperance and he could have been the last man alive.

Were I slain here, no one would ever know. That thought sent a shiver down his spine and a brief glimpse of his wife in mourning. The black clothes would suit her, her brown eyes glistening with tears. She would dab at them with delicate hands, her brown hair gathered back, her flesh pale, beautiful in her grief.

Owen felt no overt threat, but Langford's comment came back to him. He checked the horse pistol holstered on the saddle. Its presence reassured him, but the realization that he really didn't know Mystria nibbled away at him.

Langford had described infernal beasts and hostile natives. In the capital, Owen had visited displays of stuffed creatures from Mystria, and of drawings revealing the Twilight People in all their savage glory. Many early colonists had perished on these shores because of poor harvests and brutal winters.

His horse pistol would do little to save him from either, or many of the monsters. But if he did his work quickly and well, he'd be back in Norisle before the first snow fell, safe again with Catherine, beginning his new life.

He half-smiled. Most people seeking to begin a new life did so by moving to the colonies. He wanted only to explore, then return home. With enough money, he and Catherine could escape his family and know true happiness.

Owen allowed the bright sun and play of butterflies amid fields of red and gold wildflowers to distract him from darker thoughts. His mission would provide enough information that wiser heads could craft a campaign for the coming year. He would complete his survey, carry his report back to Launston, and the Tower Ministers would issue orders that would win glory for some and kill many more.

And I shall be far away with my wife, happy at last.

By mid-afternoon Owen rounded a hill covered in tall oaks and looked down upon the Prince's estate. A small trail broke off to the south between two lines of trees onto the forested grounds. The main house-a massive brick building-had been fashioned after a summer hunting palace, complete with two wings at right angles to the center. Other outbuildings lay half-hidden in the woods nearest the river. Surprisingly little of the forest had been cleared, and in a few places it had made inroads into flat lawns.

Aside from a thin trickle of smoke from a chimney, the only sign of life about the place was a peasant stringing pea-vines up in a small plot near the front door. Owen rode up and dismounted, making enough noise to attract the man's attention. When the peasant continued puttering away, Owen assumed he was old and deaf, so moved to where the man could see him.

Unless he's blind as well.

The man continued working.

"Excuse me." Owen prepared to hand the man his horse's reins, but hesitated.

The gardener wiped his hands off on his thighs, then tipped his broad hat back. He rocked to his feet fluidly-proving he was not particularly old, nor in any way deaf or blind. He smiled. "You would be Strake."

Owen dropped the reins. "Forgive me, Your Highness. I…"

"I admire your restraint, Captain. The last man they sent was a Major who hit me with a crop."

Owen's mouth gaped.

Prince Vladimir laughed. Able to look Owen in the eye, he had a more willowy build. His brown eyes were a shade lighter than his mahogany hair, and a few wisps of white dotted his goatee. Leanness hollowed his face, and sun had weathered his flesh. He looked the very antithesis of nobles at his aunt's court.

Closing his mouth, Owen pointed at the peas. "You were tending peas when I arrived as a test?"

"Come now, Captain, you are smarter than that."

Owen thought for a moment. There had been no way that the Prince could have anticipated the day or time of his arrival. "But, Highness, your refusal to acknowledge me…"

"Yes, that was a test. Love to know a man's temperament." The Prince gathered up the bay's reins. "Come along. You'll have a packet for me and I'll need my spectacles."

The Prince led him past the eastern wing and handed the reins to a stable boy. The Prince washed his hands in a drinking trough, then they entered the manor through a door facing the trail. They passed through an interior door into a massive room that occupied most of that wing's ground floor.

The Prince crossed to a large desk set against the interior wall. Owen waited in the doorway. Countless shelves filled the space, lining the walls and segmenting the room. Books filled some shelves, but others held jars in which dead specimens drifted in viscous suspensions. Frogs and fish he could easily recognize, but other things were beyond his ken. A live raven cawed from a cage opposite the desk. Posted on the top shelves, or hung from the ceiling, preserved and mounted alien animals stared at Owen with glassy eyes. The largest of them occupied displays in the corners, save for a huge bear reared up-claws and fangs clearly visible-beside the Prince's desk.

Vladimir removed his hat and hung it over the bear's muzzle. He waved Owen into the room. "The packet, Captain?"

Owen started, then removed the orders from inside his jacket and handed them over.

The Prince smiled as he unlaced the leather wrapping. "Feel free to explore. You may find, here in my little museum, that some of your work has already been done."

April 27, 1763

Prince Haven

Temperance Bay, Mystria

O wen cautiously approached the work table at the room's heart. Several bound volumes lay open. Pressed and dried flowers had been affixed to the pages of one, with notes penned in an even, feminine hand. They described the flower in every detail, including its preferred habitat and range, as well as its known and suspected uses.