“Please,” Tatina said, putting her hand on Raisa’s arm. “Sit down. Maybe, if you get to know us, you will—”
“No.” Raisa shook her head. She didn’t want to be remembered sitting with the ladies in the tavern if anyone came asking questions. “We had better be early to bed if we’re going to make an early start tomorrow.”
“Then you’ll do it?” Esmerell said, clapping her hands with delight.
“Hush,” Raisa said, glancing around, but nobody seemed to be paying attention. “Be at the stables at daybreak, packed and ready to ride all day.”
Raisa left the two ladies and returned to her table, hoping she’d made the right decision. Hoping this would get her home sooner rather than later. Her mind churned with plans. She would ask Simon to pack up bread, cheese, and sausage to carry with them. Once in the Fens, she could make contact with the Waterwalkers, and they might …
“You look like you could use cheering up, young miss,” a rough male voice said in Ardenine. A bulky stranger dropped heavily into the chair opposite Raisa. It was one of the newly arrived patrons, his face shadowed within his hood. He hadn’t even bothered to remove his cloak, though it dripped puddles on the floor.
“You, there!” he called to Simon. “Bring the lady another of whatever she’s having and a jacket of ale for me. And step lively, now! It’s almost closing time.”
Raisa’s temper flared. One of the hazards of dining alone in a tavern was being seen as fair game by any male who wandered in. Well, she would disabuse him of that notion right away.
“Perhaps you were under the mistaken impression that I wanted company,” Raisa said icily. “I prefer to dine alone. I’ll thank you not to intrude on me again.”
“Don’t be like that,” the stranger complained, loudly enough to be heard across the taproom. “It’s not fitting for a girl like you to be sitting all by herself.”
The soldier leaned forward, and his voice changed, became low and soft, though he still spoke Ardenine like a native. “Are you sure you can’t spare a moment for a soldier long on the road?”
He tugged back his hood, and Raisa looked into the weathered gray eyes of Edon Byrne, Captain of the Queen’s Guard of the Fells. Eyes uncannily similar to his son Amon’s.
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