The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)

“You saw him. He was going to kill me.” The butcher pointed at Royce.

In a fair imitation of Evelyn Hemsworth, Royce said, “It’s not polite to point.”

“What’s this all about?” Wyberg asked.

“Someone tried to run us down with a slaughterhouse wagon,” Hadrian replied. “That one over there.”

The officer studied the wagons for a moment, eyes narrowed in contemplation. “Sure it wasn’t just an accident?” He focused on Hadrian with a new scrutiny. “Is there some reason why someone would want you dead? What exactly are you doing here, Blackwater? And for that matter, what made you disappear in the first place?”

Royce nodded at the crowd, which, despite the diminished chance of violence, had grown. A dozen people stood in the street, and more were arriving. “Is it possible to continue this conversation somewhere less public? The central square, perhaps? A community stage, maybe?”

Roland looked around and frowned at the audience. “There’s a guard post just up the street.” He hooked a thumb at the two other soldiers with him. “I was checking up on these two when we heard the shouts. I can offer you some coffee, not allowed to have anything stronger.”

“Aren’t you going to arrest them?” the butcher asked, still lying on the ground as if unable to get up.

“For scaring you?”

That made the butcher huff dramatically.

The officer pointed to the Meat House as they passed by. “If you’re hungry, we could grab something to eat. Doesn’t look like much, but the food is good.”

“No!” Royce and Hadrian said together.





Chapter Eight

A Tale of Two Soldiers





The kid Hadrian remembered was a lean seventeen-year-old with deep dimples that attracted women like a bowl of candy drew children. He hadn’t seen Wyberg in six years, not since Hadrian had left the service of King Reinhold. He didn’t look much different. Heavier, but Roland had always needed a few pounds. The slender boy had become a solid man, but the dimples were still there, and in his eyes, Hadrian saw a vague reflection of another young soldier whom time had also changed.

The guard post was a typical one-room shack. Nothing more than a place to check in, store shackles and weapons, and provide a little warmth when it got cold. Much of the room was given over to stacks of wood, but there was an ink-stained desk in the corner on which was laid a stack of mangled parchments held down by a horseshoe. The floor creaked when stepped on, the fire hissed, and the whole place smelled of smoke and damp wood.

“So, Blackwater, what happened to you?” Roland snapped off his chin guard and tossed the big helmet on the desk, where the weight of the horsehair brush caused it to roll halfway to the edge.

“Went to Calis.” Hadrian took a seat on a crude bench that looked to have been banged together from two unsplit logs and a wide board. Royce showed him an uncomfortable face before sitting alongside, enveloping himself in his cloak the way a proper woman might check the skirt of her dress.

Roland moved to the fire, where a blackened metal kettle sat on a wrought-iron grate, forming a bridge over glowing coals. “Why?”

“You probably don’t remember, but I came to Alburn from Warric. Had friends serving in Chadwick’s First Regiment. Didn’t want to be here to welcome them and couldn’t get a transfer, so . . .” Hadrian didn’t bother finishing.

Roland lifted the kettle’s lid. He shook his head and scowled. “No one ever puts a new one on after draining it.” He took the pot outside, filled it with water from the rain barrel, struggled to latch the door, then set the pot back on the fire. He was still fussing with the lid when he said, “You were right. They attacked. A few weeks after you vanished. Nasty battle.” Roland reached up to a shelf at the left of the desk and took down a large tin box. “Richard, Brick, and Mel were all killed. You remember Mel, don’t you?”

“Swell Mel? Sure.” Mel had been an older fellow who cut his hair short and made a habit of helping new recruits and adopting stray animals.

“The First Regiment hit us from two sides.” With difficulty, Roland popped the top of the tin off. Some of the coffee beans fell to the floor. He poured a small pile onto the desk. “Captain Stowe and most of the officers died. Warric crippled us in short order.” He took a hammer that hung from a peg and proceeded to smash the beans. “I sent Brady on a horse to Caren. Told him to ride his ass off and get help,” he said in between hammer strikes. “The rest of us fell back to the Narrows. We held them there. Lost almost everyone doing it. We were four hundred when the sun came up, forty-two when it set. Afterward, I got a promotion and my choice of station. Picked Rochelle. Had my fill of fighting.” Roland scooped up the crushed coffee and dropped handfuls into three cups, then checked the water and scowled. He looked back. “How was Calis?”

“Bloody.” Hadrian left it at that.

Roland looked over. Their eyes met, and he nodded. “Guess we both woke up with hangovers.”

Royce kept his attention on the single window that faced the street. The interior pane was covered in flies that relentlessly butted the glass. A large number of them were dead on the sill.

Roland took a pair of split logs off the stack and placed them among the coals beneath the grate. Damp stains indicated they had been left out in the rain, and the logs hissed. Smoke escaped the draft, and Roland cracked the door a couple of inches to allow it an escape.

“And who is this?” Roland nodded toward Royce.

“My partner in crime,” Hadrian said with a smile that garnered a look from Royce, who otherwise hadn’t moved. “We’ve been working out west. Taking odd jobs as we could find them.”

Roland spun the desk chair around and sat. “Is that why you’re here? An odd job?”

Hadrian glanced at Royce, who provided no help. Discussing an assignment with the city guard was as likely as a pair of mice consulting a house cat about dinner options. But Roland was a friend, a decent man, in a position to help, and Royce’s methods had failed to turn up anything except a near-death experience. Knowing he’d hear about it later, Hadrian took the gamble. “Yeah,” he said. “We were hired to find a woman named Genny.”

Royce shifted on the bench.

Roland, who was just about to peek under the lid of the kettle again, stopped. “You mean Genevieve? The duchess who married old Leopold?”

Hadrian nodded.

“Who hired you?”

Royce coughed into his hand. “Sorry. Think I’m getting a cold.”

Hadrian felt Royce looking at him, but he didn’t turn to verify. He’d already committed himself to the path. “Her father.”

Hadrian imagined Royce to be mentally screaming at him, or gasping in horror, but the reaction of Roland was anticlimactic. He turned back to the pot with a sniff.

“Her father seems to think she’s dead, although a note said she’s only missing.”

“We’ve looked for her. Tore the town apart, really. The duke had us going door-to-door, searching shops and private homes. But . . .”

“But what?”

“She’s been missing for two weeks. No one has seen or heard anything about her.” He nodded. “I think her father has cause for concern.”

Roland dipped his pinkie into the kettle and jerked it back. Then he poured steaming water into three cups. “This is one of the best perks of this post. We get great coffee shipped over from Calis. Be sure to wait until the floating bits settle before you drink.” He handed them the cups.

“Well then,” Hadrian said, cheerily, “it’s a good thing we arrived. Maybe we can help. Can you tell us what happened? How’d she disappear?”

“Not much to tell. She and the ducal cofferer, a fellow named Devon De Luda, were returning from a meeting with the city’s merchant guild. On their way back to the Estate—that’s the duke’s residence—the carriage was attacked. De Luda was killed on the spot, and the duchess was dragged off.”

“Where’d this happen?” Royce asked.