Fortune and Fate (Twelve Houses) (68 page)

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Authors: Sharon Shinn

BOOK: Fortune and Fate (Twelve Houses)
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“Do you want us to patrol or work out?” Moss said.
 
 
“Might as well work out,” Wen said. “Their training yard is small, but it’s adequate for a day.”
 
 
An hour later, winded and covered in light sweat, Eggles and Moss checked back with Wen. Malton had returned to the kitchen door to beg for more bread. He was a big man and it took a lot to abate his hunger.
 
 
“I don’t suppose Karryn’s made an appearance,” Eggles said.
 
 
Wen sighed. “Maybe she plans to move in with Lindy.”
 
 
Moss was trying not to yawn. “If that’s so, I’ll have to quit. I don’t like the Coverroe house. I don’t like the barracks, I don’t like the lax attitude of the guards, I don’t think the food is very good, and—well, I don’t like it.”
 
 
“Same here,” Eggles agreed.
 
 
Wen was distracted by the sight of the front door opening again. Not a footman this time—but not Karryn, either. It was Demaray Coverroe, followed closely by Lindy, and both of them looked upset. Lindy, in fact, looked terrified.
 
 
“Something’s wrong,” Wen said shortly, and strode across the lawn. Eggles followed her, and Moss ran to get Malton.
 
 
Demaray Coverroe spotted them when they were twenty yards away. She clutched a shawl more tightly around her shoulders and actually ran across the yard in their direction. Wen felt her stomach harden and all her muscles burn with readiness.
 
 
“Captain—she’s gone,” Demaray panted, almost tripping over the hem of her gown in her haste to get close enough to speak.
 
 
Wen had expected something else—
Karryn has fallen ill
,
Karryn has slipped and injured herself
, even
Karryn has been attacked by a mad servant in the middle of the night
—so at first the words made no sense. “Gone? Where did she go?”
 
 
Demaray shook her head so vigorously her fair curls bounced. She looked like she had been up a couple of hours and had dressed with her usual care, but Lindy, who stumbled up beside her mother at that moment, appeared to have just now risen from her bed. She was wearing a long, heavily embroidered robe over a gauzy nightshirt, and her hair was wildly disordered from sleep.
 
 
“I don’t know!” Demaray exclaimed. “I don’t know where she would have gone or why she would have crept from the house!”
 
 
Wen instantly turned a hard gaze on Lindy. “Tell me,” she said in a fierce voice. “What have you and Karryn been plotting?”
 
 
Lindy had obviously been crying for some time, for her pale skin was blotched and her nose was red. “Nothing! I told my mother! I have no idea why she would have run away in the middle of the night!”
 
 
Wen fastened on that phrase. “That’s when she left? You’re sure of it?”
 
 
Lindy stared at her. “No, I—I just said—it was after two before we got to bed.”
 
 
“Were you sleeping in the same room?”
 
 
“No, she was down the hall. We talked in my room after the party, and then she went out the door and I thought she went to her own room to sleep, but she’s not there—something happened to her—” She dissolved into tears again.
 
 
Wen turned back to Demaray, who was at least calm enough to talk rationally. “Was her bed slept in?”
 
 
Demaray nodded. “Yes. So she spent at least part of the night there.”
 
 
By this time Moss and Malton had come jogging up, and Wen heard Eggles give them a quick account of the current situation. Moss gasped and Malton swore.
 
 
Wen said in a cold voice, “Was there any sign of blood in her room?”
 
 
Now Demaray and Lindy were both staring at her. “What?” Demaray breathed. “What are you suggesting?”
 
 
“Did someone take her from the house by force?”
 
 
Demaray fired up. “How dare you, Captain! I’ll have you know that I trust my servants—and my soldiers—implicitly!
No one
in this house would have hurt Karryn, no one, do you understand me? And I’m sure you and your compatriots were loose on the grounds all night. Surely
you
would have noticed if someone had stolen in to abduct the serramarra?”
 
 
Wen would have liked to think so, but she had failed dreadfully at a key task before. Who knew what she might have overlooked in last night’s casual patrol? And the other guards—still untested, really, still not nearly as reliable, as skilled, as true Riders—
 
 
Oh, gods and goddesses, if Karryn had been kidnapped while Wen lay sleeping—
 
 
“I’ll need to see her room,” she said in a brusque voice.
 
 
They all followed Demaray back to the house, a hurrying, weeping, grim, desperate band. Karryn’s room was on the second story, its door standing wide open as Lindy must have left it when she tripped in and found it empty.
 
 
“Look around,” Wen ordered her guards. “See if anything seems unusual. Signs of a struggle. Furniture overturned. Blood. See if her clothes are still here.”
 
 
But a quick search turned up nothing alarming. Nothing disturbed more than it might have been by a young girl’s careless occupancy. The bedcovers rumpled, the pillow still bearing the indentation of her head. A glass set on the nightstand, half full of water. The fancy gown Karryn had worn to the party was still hanging in the armoire, but her other clothes were gone, and so was her little valise. As if she had bundled them up and brought them with her when she stole from the house, late that night or very early this morning . . .
 
 
Why? Where would she have gone? What possible reason could she have had to run?
 
 
“I don’t see anything obvious,” Eggles said, shaking out the bedcovers one last time, then lifting the pillow as if to check for secret notes beneath the case.
 
 
“What’s that?” Demaray said sharply, and all of them stared at the small dark bauble lying on the white sheets under the pillow.
 
 
Faster than the rest of them, Wen snatched it up. A flat oblong disk of some smooth blue stone, inlaid with a star-shaped pattern of white. It meant nothing to her, but as she turned it over in her hands, Lindy gasped.
 
 
“What?” Wen demanded. “What is it?”
 
 
“The seal of Coravann,” Demaray said flatly.
 
 
Wen froze, her hand involuntarily clenching on the token.
Ryne Coravann was here last night.
The last time Wen had seen Ryne, she had all but dared him to try any mischief with Karryn—stupid words, for she had been sure he would complain of her to Jasper, but he had done much worse. He had set out to prove to Wen that he could do with Karryn whatever he wanted. . . .
 
 
Demaray whirled on her daughter. “Lindarose Coverroe!” she said in a wrathful voice. “Have Karryn and Ryne been planning to elope?”
 
 
“No!”
Lindy sobbed. “At least—I didn’t think so! They were always flirting—and he would say, ‘Oh, won’t you run away with me.’ And she would pretend to think about it—but she—but he—I mean, they were only joking—”
 
 
“Did they joke about it last night?” Wen asked urgently. She didn’t know how much longer she would be able to resist the urge to grab Lindy Coverroe and shake her till her head fell off. “Think, my lady! Did you hear them scheming? Even if you thought they were only pretending?”
 
 
Lindy shook her head. “No—not really—I mean, they were sitting together, and they were laughing, but—”
 
 
Demaray spoke up, her voice troubled. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time,” she said. “But last night Ryne and Karryn were sitting together, as Lindy says, and having what appeared to be a very intense conversation. As I approached them, they fell silent, and I thought they looked—guilty, almost. I just assumed they had been saying unkind things about me and they hoped I hadn’t overheard.”
 
 
“How would she have gotten out of the house?” Eggles said practically. “We were on patrol all night. I’m willing to swear that no one went out the gate. Are there back ways off of the property?”
 
 
“There’s a gate in the north wall, but it’s kept locked,” Demaray said. “She could have climbed it, I suppose—but it’s quite high and she would have needed help—” She gave her daughter another narrow look.
 
 
“I didn’t help her!” Lindy wailed. “I didn’t know anything about it!”
 
 
“Let’s go check that gate,” Eggles said.
 
 
“She didn’t sneak out at night,” Wen said, her voice flat and dreary. They all turned to stare at her. “She left this morning. With the maids. A whole group of them departed together just about dawn.”
 
 
Seven. Wen had counted the numbers, but she hadn’t studied the faces. She’d noticed the two maids flirting with the footman, but all the others? A blur of caps and baskets. She hadn’t been looking for Karryn in their number, and thus she had completely failed to recognize her. She had failed to protect Karryn from Ryne Coravann’s blandishments, and she had failed to protect Karryn from herself.
 
 
She had failed.
 
 
Again.
 
 
“That’s good then, isn’t it?” Moss said. “If she left at dawn—she’s only been gone about four hours. We can catch up with her.”
 
 
Wen shook off her bleak thoughts. She was feeling numb with disbelief and self-loathing, but a slow fire of pure rage was igniting in her belly and starting to spread upward. Rage—white-hot and unadulterated—at Ryne Coravann, for plotting this disastrous seduction, probably for a lark, probably just to see how far he could entice Karryn into dangerous pursuits, or maybe to taunt Wen to repay her for her scalding words. But an even more complicated anger at Karryn herself—who
knew
how much this trick would appall and worry Wen, who
knew
how many resources had been expended to keep her safe. How could the serramarra who had insisted that a wounded Garth ride in her carriage so blithely leave behind her devoted guardians? Wen had thought better of Karryn, she truly had. So the bitterness of Karryn’s betrayal added a toxic edge to Wen’s smothering sense of failure.
 
 
But fury was beginning, for a short time at least, to burn away anything but a desire to kill Ryne Coravann with her bare hands.
 
 
“We most certainly can catch up with her,” Wen said, her voice calm but holding a note that made all of them look at her in wonder. “Lady Demaray, do you know where ser Ryne has been staying?”
 
 
“Yes,” Demaray said. “The Stilton House. It’s a few blocks over from the harbor.”
 
 
Wen nodded. It was a tall and gracious building, clearly catering to a wealthy clientele; she had never been inside it, but it was a landmark in Forten City. “Then we shall go there immediately and see if we can learn how recently he has left the city—and whether or not he had a companion with him.”
 
 
She wheeled for the door. “Captain!” Demaray called, and Wen reluctantly turned back. “How will we find out if you locate her?”
 
 
“I’m sure Lord Jasper or the marlady will send you word.”
 
 
“Can we go with you?” Lindy begged.
 
 
Wen just gave her a cold look. “No.”
 
 
Lindy started crying even more violently. “But I have to know if Karryn is all right!”
 
 
“We’ll go to Fortune,” Demaray said. She seemed to have forgiven her daughter for any part Lindy might have played in this fiasco, for she put her arms around Lindy in a comforting way. “We’ll go wait with Jasper until the captain comes back with news. Now go. Get dressed.”
 
 
If Demaray had more instructions for Lindy, Wen didn’t wait to hear them. She bounded down the steps, the other three close at her heels, and ran for the stables to throw a saddle on her horse.

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