Once they got out of the Argive, they made good time. The pass itself was sticky with mud, but as soon as they started downhill, the land quickly became dry as a bone. It had only rained over the pass. From time to time, Kelsea reached up and clutched the sapphires beneath her shirt. She could feel nothing from them today, but she wasn’t deceived; they wouldn’t stay quiet for long. She thought of the nausea she’d felt on the outward journey, the way her mind had been forced forward. The dying sensation when she tried to take one of them off.
What will they do to me?
From their vantage in the foothills, they could see the dark train of the caravan, perhaps half a day’s ride ahead, snaking its way across the grasslands. Mace had questioned the villagers well into the night while Kelsea slept, eliciting several interesting facts. Thorne had raided a total of twelve villages along the shores of the Crithe, villages where the men went off together each spring to trade goods in New London. Thorne’s men had come the very night after the men had departed, setting fires to create confusion before they broke into houses and grabbed women and children.
Kelsea felt a chill steal down her spine, remembering that bitterly cold morning in the village, the screams of the woman as she lost her sons. She had no urge to intercept the caravan, but she worried about all of those women and children, alone without guard. It seemed important to keep them within sight.
And what could you do if they were attacked, you and your fifteen guards? her mind jeered.
I could do a lot, Kelsea replied darkly, remembering the vast blue light, the voltage that had flared inside her. I could do plenty.
But deep down, she was sure there was no danger out here anymore. Coryn had had the good sense to loose Thorne’s horses; the few men who’d escaped would be stuck on foot, and it was a very long walk to anywhere. They’d found several of the horses already, grazing in the foothills, and Mace had been able to slip a rope around their necks. He’d given one of the extra horses to the Gate Guard, Javel, though Dyer had tied the man’s legs to his saddle and now remained close behind him, watching him with a hawk’s eye. Kelsea didn’t think it was necessary. In her mind, she saw Javel hacking at the burning cage, his face bathed in soot.
There’s something more to him, she thought, and Mace sees it too.
When they drew even with the caravan, still a thin shadow several miles to the north, Mace allowed the troop to slow down and keep pace. The sun had crossed a good part of the sky, and they’d covered more than half the distance back to the Crithe when Mace called a halt.
“What is it?”
“A rider,” he replied, staring toward the caravan. “Wellmer, get up here!”
It was indeed a single rider, galloping for all he was worth across the countryside from the north. He rode so fast that he left a cloud of dust behind him, despite the fact that the country was mostly grass.
Elston, Pen, and Mace drew together in a triangle around Kelsea, who felt her stomach tightening. What could have gone wrong now?
“He’s Caden,” Pen murmured. “I see the cloak.”
“But only a messenger,” Mace remarked thoughtfully. “I’m going to guess we’re in a lot of trouble for the death of Dwyne.”
“He’s dead?” Kelsea asked.
Mace’s eyes never left the rider. “Your friend killed him. But the Caden have no way of knowing that. They’ll think it was us.”
“Well, they’ve tried to kill me before. I can’t be in more trouble than I was already.”
“It’s not like the Caden to send one man for anything, Lady. Let’s err on the side of caution and just wait here.”
Kelsea scanned the country around them: wide stretches of grassland and wheat, with some patches of rock, all the way to the blue line of the Crithe. It seemed almost a different country now, but the change wasn’t in the land; it was in Kelsea.
“Sir?” Wellmer rode up from the rear with his bow already in hand. “He’s got a Caden cloak, all right, but he has a child with him.”
“What?”
“A small boy, maybe five or six years old.”
Mace frowned for a moment, thinking. Then his brow smoothed out and he smiled, that genuinely pleased smile that Kelsea saw so rarely. “Fortune, you happy bitch.”
“What is it?”
“Many of the Caden have bastards around the kingdom, Lady, but Caden aren’t particularly suited for fatherhood. The more decent ones usually just give the woman a sum of money and leave.”
“Good for them.”
“You don’t see affection very often,” Mace continued, as though Kelsea hadn’t spoken, “but I’ve heard tell of a few Caden who try to live a secret life on the side, a normal life with a woman and family concealed. They’re very careful about it, for it would be a fantastic piece of leverage. I think Thorne may have been stupid enough to snatch a Caden’s child. Who is it, Wellmer?”
“I don’t know all of them by sight yet, sir.”
“Describe him.”
“Sandy hair. A bruiser. He has a sword and short knife. And an ugly scar across his forehead.”
Elston, Pen, and Mace turned to stare at each other, and an entire conversation passed between them in the space of a few seconds.
“What?” Kelsea asked.
“Let’s see what he does,” Mace told Elston, then turned to Pen. “You watch only the Queen’s safety, understand? Nothing else.”
The Caden pulled his horse to a halt perhaps fifty yards away. Kelsea saw that he did indeed have a small child tucked in one arm; he lowered the boy carefully toward the ground before climbing down himself. “Who is he?”
“Merritt, Lady,” Mace replied. “The Caden don’t have a single leader; they’re too factional. But Merritt wields considerable power among them, even more than Dwyne.”
“If the child was a secret, there’s probably a woman in one of those villages as well,” Elston cautioned. “We need to handle this carefully.”
“Agreed.”
Now Merritt took his horse’s bridle in one hand, his son’s hand in the other, and began to walk toward Kelsea, his movements slow and cautious. He was indeed blond and heavily built, towering over the child beside him. But there was clear affection between them; it was obvious in the way the man shrank his strides to match the boy’s, the way the boy looked up at him every few moments, as though to be sure he was still there.
“Extraordinary,” Mace remarked quietly, then raised his voice. “Come no closer!”
Merritt stopped short. His son stared at him in confusion, and Merritt picked him up and set him in the crook of his arm. Kelsea could see the scar on Merritt’s forehead now, a truly nasty gash that had apparently seen no stitches. It wasn’t the distended wound that a childhood injury would leave; rather, it looked fairly recent, an ugly red line against his pale forehead.
“Is the Queen with you?”
“I am!”
“Pen,” Mace growled, “stay sharp.”
Merritt murmured to his son for a moment and then set him down. He raised his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender and ventured a few steps closer. Kelsea expected Mace to object, but he merely drew his sword and moved to stand in front of her as Merritt approached.
“I’m Merritt of the Caden, Majesty.”
“Well met. Did you come to kill me?”
“We no longer seek your death, Majesty. There’s no profit in it.”
The small boy had crept up behind his father to wrap an arm around his leg, and now Merritt reached down without thinking and picked him up again. “According to Sean, it’s you I have to thank for his life.”
“Many lives were saved last night. I’m glad your boy is one of them.”
“Will the Mace allow me to come a bit closer?”
Mace nodded. “You may come within five feet, if you keep your arms around your son at all times.”
“That’s a lot of care for someone traveling openly across flat country in daylight.”
Mace bristled, but said nothing. As Merritt came closer, Kelsea saw that the boy was falling asleep, his dark head tucked into the curve of his father’s neck. Merritt halted perhaps seven feet away, and Kelsea’s gaze was drawn automatically to the scar on his forehead, but when he looked her in the eye, she found that she couldn’t look away. Despite his bruiser’s build, his eyes were a bright and perceptive grey.
“I’ll be gone from New London for a time, Majesty, perhaps a month, to hide my family. But I’m an honorable man, and you’ve given me my son’s life. So you have my word: I will never raise a hand against you, and if it’s within my power to do you a similar favor, I will.”
He gestured toward the caravan on the northern horizon. “I apologize also for those of my brothers you found in this business. They were working on their own. I doubt we’d have approved this action if it had come to a vote.”
Kelsea raised her eyebrows, surprised. She wouldn’t have thought of the Caden as a democratic body.
“Should you need my assistance, find a baker’s boy named Nick down in the Wells,” Merritt continued, speaking to Mace now. “He’ll know how to get a message to me, and he’ll do it quietly.”
He bowed to Kelsea and turned to walk back to his horse, his gait slow so as not to wake the child. He remounted with the boy still in the crook of one arm (how strong he must be! Kelsea thought; she could barely haul herself and her own armor into a saddle) and began to trot west.
“Well, that was something,” Kelsea remarked.
“More than something, Lady,” Mace replied. “The Caden bow to no one. I think he meant every word.”
They watched Merritt until he was no more than a speck against the tan of the grasslands, and only then did Mace seem to relax. He snapped his fingers, particularly at Kibb, who showed signs of climbing down from his horse. “Back at it!”
They rode west. The shining cerulean line of the Crithe grew closer as they traveled, until it resolved itself into a bright ribbon of water running alongside them. The caravan would need to ford the Crithe, and that would take some effort, yet Kelsea found that she wasn’t worried about anything at the moment. She’d checked her sapphires often, but they simply hung there, heavy and cold. For today, at least, they were only jewels.