Fortune and Fate (Twelve Houses) Read online

  For a moment, the driver stared back at him, white-faced and slack-jawed. Then he grabbed the reins and slapped the horses into motion. The wagon lurched forward hard enough to cause Fibbons to yelp, and within seconds it was careening down the road. Orson swore and ran for his horse, for all of them had dismounted to try to make Fibbons more comfortable. Wen was the first one back in the saddle and racing after the jouncing wagon, but Orson came pounding up after her quickly enough. Orson went flying by Wen to crowd against the team, tangling their traces and forcing them to slow. Wen kept pace alongside the wagon, gauging the distance and the rate of travel. When she judged it safe enough, she swung from the gelding’s back and dropped beside the driver on the bench.

  He turned on her frantically, dropping the reins to try to pummel her head and shoulders. Just as she’d thought; he wasn’t armed. She gave him a hard shove merely to keep his fists away from her face, then brought up her knife hand and pressed a blade to his throat. Orson had the team under control, but they were still moving at an uncomfortably fast pace, and the rocking motion threatened to drive the tip of her knife through the driver’s skin.

  “Don’t make me kill you,” she said calmly, and he sagged on the seat. Keeping the knife in one hand, she caught up the reins in the other, and slowly pulled the horses to a halt. Behind her, she was aware of Fibbons moaning and the sound of more hooves coming closer. She glanced over her shoulder to see Stef and Carp galloping alongside, Jack far behind them, leading Fibbons’s horse. Her own gelding had shied away from the chaos of the runaway team and nervously paced the side of the road about ten yards back.

  Orson was off his own horse and up onto the wagon on the other side of the driver. “You son of a bitch,” he said roughly, and began shaking the man as if hoping to snap his head off.

  “Stop it,” Wen said sharply. “Either let him go, or tie him up and dump him in the back so we can take him to Forten City.”

  Orson shook the man once more and then cuffed him hard across the face before allowing him to collapse, gasping, on the bench. “I’m not letting him go,” Orson said angrily. “We could have lost two men back there because of him! I’ll take him to the magistrate in Forten City, unless I decide to kill him right here.”

  Wen wasn’t worried. Orson wasn’t the type to murder a man in a fit of fury. If the driver had attacked him, well, Orson would have cut him down, but the soldier wouldn’t offer any serious harm to an unarmed captive.

  “Tie his hands and put him in the back of the wagon,” Wen said again. “And then let’s keep moving. Anyone here know how to handle a team?”

  Wen was actually rather relieved when Stef answered in the affirmative. If they were going to lose another guard to driving duties, she’d rather it be the one who’d showed the least skill in fighting. It took a little more time to truss up the driver, reposition Fibbons, and tie the two extra horses to the back of the wagon, but they were finally on their way again. This time Orson rode alone in the lead, Carp and the injured Jack stayed close behind the wagon, and Wen dropped back about fifty yards to cover their trail.

  She should have taken that rear position earlier today. It was something Justin always did on any expedition, riding some distance behind the main party so he could give advance warning of any hostile riders coming from that direction. She would have heard the outlaws heading their way, she could have sounded the warning sooner. Justin would never have been so lax.

  Although, she had to admit, Fibbons and Jack probably would have been injured anyway. Neither of them was more than a passable swordsman, and Stef was almost hopeless. She hadn’t had much chance to see Carp in action, but the fact that he had emerged unscathed made her think he could handle himself pretty well. But Orson was really good—better than he’d allowed her to see when they were fencing back in the freighting guard. Not as good as Wen, but someone she would trust to battle beside her no matter how fierce the fight.

  It felt good to have a comrade in arms, however briefly.

  They had traveled another couple of hours before they came to a small village huddled on one side of the road. There was no inn, but the tavernkeeper’s wife agreed to let the injured Fibbons stay in their spare room for a few days in return for a little extra gold. The rest of them continued on till nightfall, when they pulled the wagon off into the underbrush and made a hasty camp. Orson even served rations to the driver, who hadn’t spoken a word since the afternoon stop. They divided the watches and tried to find the least rocky patches of ground on which to spread out their blankets.

  Under the stars, outside in the brisk spring air, in the company of a thief and four near-strangers, Wen slept like a lost child who had finally found her way safely back home.

  THEY made Forten City a little before dusk the following day. Wen looked around her with interest. It was a busy and crowded town, one of the major seaports of the south, and within ten minutes she noticed the whole range of humanity striding by—sailors, soldiers, merchants, noblewomen, beggars, and a pickpocket or two. The smells of salt air, wet wood, fish, and horse were particularly strong, though overlaid now at dinnertime with the more appetizing scents of meat and onion.

  “I hope our pay covers a real room for the night and enough money to buy a meal,” Wen said as she trotted along next to Orson. No need to keep a rear guard here in the city. There was hardly enough room to maneuver the wagon down the narrow roads, let alone defend it with any kind of grace.

  He nodded. “Would have covered a room last night, too, but it didn’t seem worth explaining our captive,” he said, indicating the driver with a jerk of his head. “And for the same reason, I’d like to get rid of him first before we deliver our shipment.”

  A few questions to passersby elicited the address of the magistrate, and their erstwhile driver was turned over to some rather rough-looking authorities. Wen found herself wondering if serramarra Karryn was involved in handling legal matters in Forten City. It seemed unlikely in the extreme. Perhaps that was one of the duties that Jasper Paladar was administering until Karryn attained her majority.

  It was true night by the time they made their way to a large house on the western edge of town, far from the stink and bustle of the wharves. It was hard to be sure in the dark, but the house appeared to be built of glittering black stone, roofed with gleaming copper.

  “Now you have to admit a pair of gold doors would be a pretty impressive sight at a place like this,” Orson said to Wen, grinning.

  “It would—if this was the queen’s palace,” she retorted. “But for a Thirteenth House lord? So grand it’s foolish.”

  It took longer than she would have expected to unload the cargo, though there was a certain entertainment value in watching the servants struggle to lift the heavy doors and carry them into the house. Stef, in fact, couldn’t restrain his laughter the second time one of the footmen stumbled and brought the whole line of bearers to their knees.

  “Well, I’m glad those are off our hands and someplace they can cause trouble for someone besides me,” Orson observed. “Come on. Let’s look for food and beds.”

  They found both in a well-appointed tavern situated comfortably close to both the harbor and the main road. Dinner was convivial, as the five of them ordered big meals and several pitchers of beer, and spent the whole meal swapping progressively less believable stories of brawls and battles they had single-handedly won. Stef did little of the talking but most of the drinking, so naturally he was sick before they’d even gotten up from the table. For some reason, that made Wen and Orson laugh even harder. They practically carried him up the stairs to the one big room they’d rented for all of them to share. Wen stripped off her outer garments and fell onto the narrow bed allotted to her, falling asleep within minutes, even happier than she’d been the night before.

  But when she woke with the others and Orson suggested they get an early start on the return journey, she felt that awful clutch of panic in her stomach. This was too friendly; this was too familiar. Sh
e couldn’t make these men her comrades, she couldn’t train them to trust her and then fail them at some crucial juncture. She couldn’t stay, and she couldn’t explain.

  She said nothing until she and Orson headed down the stairs together to order breakfast while the others finished shaving. “I won’t be riding back with you,” she told him.

  He gave her a sharp look, but didn’t say anything until they’d found seats in the taproom, much changed from the night before. Now the clientele was purposeful and sober, and no one lingered long at a table.

  “That’s some powerful demon chasing at your heels,” Orson said at last. “Do you ever plan to come to rest?”

  “I’d guess you knew a demon or two in your lifetime,” she replied.

  He nodded and forked up a bite of sausage. “I chased most of them back,” he said.

  “I’m working on it,” she said.

  He chewed and swallowed. “Well, if you change your mind, there’ll always be work at the freighting office for anyone as good as you. I imagine I’ll be there awhile if you were ever looking for me.” He gave her a keen look. “That is, if you ever go looking for anybody.”

  “Not lately,” she replied.

  Stef, Jack, and Carp joined them then and began noisily eating breakfast. Wen excused herself from the table as if she was only going to be gone a moment, but, in fact, she stepped out of the tavern and continued on down the street, leaving Orson to make her good-byes. When she was sure they’d already left the city, she’d retrieve her gelding and ride out. She’d go straight south, following the coastline for a while. Or, if the mood took her, she might try a directly eastern route. It didn’t really matter. There was nowhere she particularly wanted to go.

  Chapter 5

  RATHER TO HER SURPRISE, WEN SPENT THE WHOLE DAY wandering Forten City. It wasn’t much to look at, particularly compared to Ghosenhall, but she liked its incessant energy and its continual surprises. One street would feature a collection of respectable shops, and the next one would be nothing but taverns, brothels, and gaming establishments. More than once, Wen saw a prostitute sashaying down one side of the road while a fashionable matron strolled along the other. The divisions were more distinct in Ghosenhall, where whole districts were wealthy and well-kept, and everybody knew how to avoid the unsavory streets where the dangerous elements of society gathered.

  The streets where Justin had grown up.

  More than once, Wen had found herself walking through those chancy neighborhoods in Ghosenhall, her hands resting on her weapons as she wondered what it would have been like to try to survive in such surroundings. Her own childhood had been so different, tumbling through a ramshackle farmhouse with six brothers and sisters, an assortment of cousins, dogs, kittens, and the occasional duck or lizard in the mix. She had been the middle child and easily overlooked because of her small size and her generally agreeable nature. Not until she was convinced that someone else’s privilege or her own unwarranted punishment was absolutely unfair would she pitch any kind of fit, but then her temper, at least among her siblings, was legendary. Three brothers had taught her early on that she’d better learn to fight if she wanted to hold on to what was hers; three sisters had convinced her that she didn’t want to expend the energy required to dress up in pretty outfits and flirt with scruffy boys. She certainly didn’t want to attempt to run a household the way her mother did, or worry over finances like her father.

  But she loved the camaraderie of a houseful of siblings, the rough-and-tumble affection, the bickering, the solidarity. After a while it seemed inevitable that all the forces that had shaped her would turn her into a soldier, most at home in the company of other tough, casual, physical individuals who didn’t have much distinction between work and play.

  And she had found her place in Ghosenhall.

  And lost it.

  And now she was wandering the crazy-quilt streets of Forten City and wondering what to do with herself next.

  She didn’t once ask for directions; she didn’t even consciously begin hunting for it. But she was not surprised to find herself, early in the afternoon, staring at the compound holding the estate called Fortune. It was probably dead center in the city but cut off from the noise, the traffic, and the odors by a high, twining hedgerow of some hardy, unfamiliar evergreen. Through the snaky weave of branches, which rose higher than her head, she could see a reinforcing line of solid metal. The wrought-iron fence was hidden by the plaited green and offered what was probably the real first line of defense for the House.

  Wen pushed her face deeper into the living border. Here at the very trailing edge of spring, the needles were sparse and a little yellow, allowing Wen a chance to peer past them to see a large, rambling home of graceful proportions and weathered gray stone. She grinned to see the lintels and archways constructed of the same glittering black marble used on the other lord’s house. But here it looked elegant and perfectly suitable.

  Wen sent her gaze around what she could see of the lawns and outbuildings. The grass was starting to preen with color, and the flower beds showed spots of yellow and lavender. A kitchen servant was hurrying up from some back path with buckets in her hands, so dairy cows were probably housed in those buildings that might be barns, and the kitchen was no doubt situated at the rear left of the house. Two soldiers slouched along the walkway that led from the main gate to the wide double doors that fronted the house.

  Wen frowned. Only two guards in attendance? Hadn’t Jasper Paladar learned anything from the serramarra’s mishap?

  She turned to the left and strolled along the perimeter, hoping to come across barracks and perhaps a training yard in the rear of the house. But the hedgerow grew thicker and more tangled the farther she progressed, and eventually the iron spikes were replaced by slats of hammered metal. She could no longer catch any glimpses of the yards surrounding Fortune.

  Not that Wen cared anyway. The serramarra was no longer her concern, and the decisions of her guardian were of supreme uninterest. Wen would be on her way in the morning and have no cause to wonder about Karryn Fortunalt or Jasper Paladar again.

  DAWN brought rain, gentle and steady, and Wen was tempted to stay in Forten City another day just to avoid the misery of traveling in wet weather. But choices like that would turn her soft, and she couldn’t afford to be soft. She made sure her saddlebags were tightly buckled, she buttoned her coat all the way to her throat, and she gamely set out into the unpleasant weather, just to prove she would.

  She picked a southeasterly direction more or less at random and plodded along without any concerns about speed or efficiency. The rain eased off to a drizzle by noon and had actually stopped when she finally broke for a meal, though the road was heavy with mud. She was far from the only one stubborn enough to travel in bad weather, for she overtook three or four wagons on the way, and pulled aside for a handful of oncoming vehicles. Not too many other solitary riders were out this day, though, at least not that she’d encountered by the time the afternoon sun began tilting over toward evening.

  She was on a lonely stretch of road where all the vegetation was low but tangled; even the trees were twisted and scrubby as if too tired to stand up against the constant wind. No doubt storms blew off the ocean fiercely enough at times to keep the trees small and the shrubbery bent close to the ground.

  She rounded a curve and almost rode over a small, sobbing form sprawled in the middle of the road.

  Cursing, she sawed back on the reins, causing the horse to rear and whinny, but at least the figure on the ground had time to roll out of the way of the thrashing hooves. It took Wen a moment to calm the gelding, but when she was free to look around, the person who had caused all the trouble was standing at the side of the road, watching her.

  He was a child, maybe ten years old, terribly thin and ragged looking, with tousled red hair and enormous dark eyes. His filthy clothes appeared to have been hacked off with a knife to suit his frame, and even in this cool weather, he was barefoot. Not even Ka
rryn had looked so desolate or desperate.

  Wen slid off her horse and approached him cautiously, not wanting to alarm him. “Hello there,” she said in the voice she might have used to one of her younger sisters. “Are you lost? What are you doing out here all alone?”

  He tried and failed to swallow a sob. “My sister and I were on our way to Forten City, but she got hurt,” he said in a pitiful voice. “I think her leg is broken. I tried to make a camp—” He waved behind him to some vague place off the road. “But I couldn’t start a fire and there’s no water and I think she’s passed out. I thought I could get somebody to help me, but no one will stop—” His tears welled up again, though he tried manfully to suppress them. He wiped a dirty sleeve across his eyes and whispered, “Please, could you help us? Do you know how to set a bone?”