Cinda Chima - The Gray Wolf Throne

It was all Raisa could do to keep her jaw from dropping open. Questions crowded into her mind, threatening to pour out. How had he found her? What was he doing here? Who knew he could speak Ardenine so fluently? Was Amon with him?

“Well,” she managed. “Well, then.” She cleared her throat to speak, but just then Simon brought their drinks, slamming Byrne’s ale onto the table so hard that it sloshed. Byrne waited until Simon slumped away before he spoke again.

“Fetters Ford is no longer safe,” he murmured, still in Ardenine. “We’ve come to take you home.” Byrne looked beyond her, scanning the room. He smelled of sweat and leather, and his face was stubbled from days on the road. Though he slouched back in his chair, Raisa noticed that he’d raked his cloak back to expose the hilt of his sword.

“Let’s talk,” Raisa said, hope blossoming in her heart. “Meet me in the stables behind the inn in ten minutes.”

She rose abruptly. “If you won’t leave, I will. Go and bother someone else.” She turned toward the stairs. The Ardenine ladies fluttered and clucked sympathetically, likely thinking Raisa should have accepted their offer to join them.

“Miss! You forgot your cider,” Byrne called after her, drawing some catcalls and snickering.

Raisa strode past the stairs and through the kitchen, where Simon was kneading bread for the overnight rising. “My lady?” he said, looking up at her.

“I need some fresh air,” Raisa said. Simon stared after her as she walked out the back door and into the rain. Shivering, she drew Fiona Bayar’s wrap more closely around her shoulders. It had come with the horse she’d stolen from the High Wizard’s daughter—one of the few things of Fiona’s that fit.

The stable was warm and dry and smelled of sweet hay and horses. Ghost poked his head out of his stall, snorting and blowing bits of oats at her. She stroked his nose. Two stalls down, she recognized Ransom, Byrne’s large bay gelding, a mountain pony cross.

The stable doors creaked open and Byrne entered, followed by a handful of bluejackets. Though they could hardly be called bluejackets, since they wore a mixture of nondescript cold weather clothing in browns and greens.

Raisa scanned them quickly, but to her disappointment, Amon wasn’t there, nor were any of the other Gray Wolves. These soldiers looked more seasoned than Amon’s cadets, their still-young faces inscribed by sun and wind.

Byrne carefully latched the stable doors and set one of his company to keep watch. The others went immediately to work, leading out their horses and saddling them up.

“You mean to leave tonight?” Raisa asked, nodding toward the others.

“The sooner the better,” Byrne said. He stood gazing down at her, chewing his lower lip, examining her for damage. “It is a relief to find you still alive.”

As if he wouldn’t have known if she’d been killed. As if he wouldn’t have sensed the blow to the all-important Gray Wolf line.

“What’s happened?” Raisa said. “How did you know I was here? Where is Amon? Why is Fetters Ford no longer safe?”

Byrne took a step back, retreating from the onslaught of questions. He nodded toward the tack room. “Let’s talk in there.”

Raisa remembered the Ardenine ladies. “Oh—there’s one thing. Those two ladies I was talking to in the taproom—I agreed to travel on with them tomorrow. Could you send someone to let them know my plans have changed?” It was cowardly, she knew, but she was too weary to deal with Lady Esmerell’s disappointment.

“Corliss.” Byrne motioned to one of his men and sent him back to the inn to give Esmerell and Tatina the bad news.

Unlatching Ghost’s stall door, Raisa led the stallion into the tack room and cross tied him, then fetched his saddle and bridle from the rack against the wall.

Byrne followed her in and closed the door. He watched Raisa work for a moment. “Isn’t that the flatland stallion Fiona Bayar was riding last time she was home?”

Raisa nodded. Fiona went through horses like her brother Micah went through lovers. “I borrowed him.” Dragging over a step stool, she climbed up so she could fling her horse blanket across Ghost’s broad back.

“I’d like to hear that story,” Byrne said.

“You were about to tell me the story of how you came to be here, Captain Byrne.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” Byrne inclined his head, giving in. “Your father intercepted a message that suggests Lord Bayar knows where you are and has dispatched assassins to murder you.”

“Oh,” Raisa said, looking up from her work. “Right. I know about that. He sent four of them to Oden’s Ford.”

Byrne raised an eyebrow, which so reminded Raisa of Amon that her heart stuttered. “And?” he said dryly.

“I killed one, and Micah Bayar killed the other three,” Raisa said.

“Micah?” Byrne said sharply. “Why would he—”

“He’d rather marry me than bury me, apparently,” Raisa said. “He kidnapped me from school and was hauling me back home for a wedding when we were overrun by Gerard Montaigne’s army on its way into Tamron. That was just north of Oden’s Ford. If Micah survived, I think he’d assume I’d go back to school rather than on to the Fells. So it’s unlikely Lord Bayar knows where I am now.”

“This was a recent message,” Byrne said, frowning. “I’m not sure it refers to the earlier attempt.”

It’s unfortunate, Raisa thought, shivering, when so many people are trying to kill you that you can’t sort them out.

Byrne lifted Ghost’s saddle and positioned it atop the tall horse. “If you would like to go fetch your belongings, I’ll finish him up.”

Raisa was familiar enough with Byrne avoidance tactics to know when she was being played. “Corporal Byrne taught me to take care of my own horse,” she said, ducking underneath to buckle the cinch strap. “Who else knows that you were coming after me?”

Byrne thought a moment. “Your father,” he said. “And Amon.” He bit down on the last word as if he regretted saying it.

Raisa stood on tiptoes so she could look over Ghost’s back. “Did Amon contact you? Is that how you knew to come here?”

Byrne cleared his throat. “When you disappeared from Oden’s Ford, Corporal Byrne thought perhaps you had gone home, willingly or not. He guessed you might take the western route, since you’d come that way last fall. He sent a bird, suggesting I try to intercept you here in order to avoid a possible ambush at West Gate.” Raisa could tell he had been shining up this story for some time.

“Really?” she said. “How did he know I survived? We left a bloody mess behind at Oden’s Ford.” She buckled Ghost’s bridle while the stallion lipped at the bit, trying to spit it out.

“He … ah … had a feeling,” Byrne said. Raisa snorted. He was no better a liar than Amon.

“If he thought I was here, then why didn’t he come here himself?” Raisa tugged at the cinch strap, unconvinced that it was as tight as it could be.

“He thought I could get here sooner,” Byrne said, shifting his weight.

“Why? Where is he now?” Raisa demanded.

Byrne looked away. “I don’t know where he is right now,” he said.

“Well, where was he when he messaged you?” she persisted. “We had no birds at Oden’s Ford that would carry a message to Fellsmarch.”

“He was in Tamron Court, Your Highness,” Byrne said, like an oyster finally yielding up the meat within.

“Tamron Court!” Raisa straightened, swiveling around. “What was he doing there?”

“Looking for you,” Byrne said. “He’d received word that you’d been entangled in a skirmish between Montaigne’s army and a scouting party from Tamron. He thought you might’ve taken sanctuary in the capital. So he and his triple went there to find you.”