First Rider's Call
Page 7

“This is different,” Karigan said.
Bard shrugged. “I’m not surprised. Likely the magic is different, but if it sets you at ease, look at it this way: that tomb has lain quietly for several hundreds of years at least. I doubt anything will change by the time the encampment has picked up and moved north by tomorrow morning.”
Bard was right, Karigan thought. She was letting it all get to her far too much. It still did not explain, however, why she was more sensitive to it than the others.
“Ouch!” Bard sucked on his index finger. “I am far too clumsy to be using such a sharp object.”
“That’s what Arms Master Gresia keeps trying to tell you about your swordplay.”
“Hah! A point for you, my dear, and no pun intended. Are you any good at this?” He thrust his sewing at her, and she saw his stitches were rather haphazard.
“Sorry,” Karigan said. “My aunts tried to teach me to sew, but I’m afraid I was hopeless.”
“What? You the daughter of a textile merchant and surrounded by all that cloth—and you can’t sew?”
“I was much too busy getting under the cargo master’s feet or playing down by the wharves in Corsa Harbor. My friends and I liked to look for crabs under rocks or sea stars on the pilings.”
Bard snorted. “That’s a good place for a child. Corsa Harbor is as rough as any waterfront I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, my father’s people kept me out of trouble, but my unladylike behavior scandalized my aunts.” Karigan sat tall and prim to take on the demeanor of one of her aunts. “ ‘Child, you are the heir of the premier merchant of Sacoridia, not some urchin to be running barefoot about the docks among sailors and other riffraff.’ That’s what my Aunt Brini would say.”
“And what did Aunt Brini think of you becoming a Rider?”
“Not much.” It was as though someone had lit a fire beneath a hornet’s nest when all four aunts heard of her decision. “My aunts and father grew up dirt poor on Black Island, helping my grandfather haul fish. It was a rough life, so I’ve been reminded time and again. Now that they’re living very well under my father’s roof, they see me only as childish and ungrateful, spoiling their expectations that I should create a respectable marriage alliance with another powerful merchant clan.”
She closed her eyes against the memory of the bitter arguments. For all her aunts’ upset, facing her father had been the hardest.
“Your mother?” Bard asked.
“She died when I was very little.”
He nodded. “Mine, too. In childbirth, actually. I think she would have been rather proud of me working in the king’s service.”
Karigan brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen into her face. She had so little recollection of her mother, Kariny, that she had no idea of what Kariny would think of her being a Green Rider. Karigan only knew that it was not at all what she had intended to do with her life, and for all her aunts’ angst, their vision of her future had been more like her own from a very young age: to follow in her father’s footsteps and carry on the name and work of Clan G’ladheon. She wasn’t, however, too sure about the marriage alliance part of it.
“The calling to be a Rider can force upon you a path in life not of your own choosing,” Bard mused, as if an echo of her thoughts. “After years of hard work as a cooper, I had finally hoarded away enough currency for a term’s tuition for minstrel training at Selium . . . and then I heard the call.” He chuckled and shook his head at the irony. “Even though the king has since promised me a place in Selium when my time with the Riders ends, it still has been a delay to achieving my dreams.” He paused, falling into deep thought. Then quietly he added, “Despite it all, I do not regret this life.”
Karigan had struggled against the call for a very long time so she might continue in the life she had chosen for herself, but the call had chipped away at her will, almost torturously, the hoofbeats always like a rhythm in the deep regions of her mind and heralding visions of the freedom of the ride. She would awaken some nights sweating and feeling as if she must saddle Condor immediately and heed the call to ride, as if her life depended upon it.
To fight the call, she had tried ridding herself of her brooch, knowing it somehow bound her to the messenger service, but whether she hid it deep in a drawer or tried burying it in the woods, she inevitably found herself wearing it by day’s end without memory of having pinned it on. Magical objects, she had once been told, often had minds of their own.
As time wore on, her behavior grew more eccentric. The color green came to dominate her wardrobe by no intention of her own, and it led her father to the conclusion that she was inordinately fond of the color. The struggle also left her irritable. “What’s eating at you?” her father had asked in exasperation after she lost patience with a servant one day. She never yelled at servants. Normally.
How could she explain to a man who, like so many other Sacoridians, held a deep aversion to magic, that magic was trying to rule her life?
Instead, she had said, “You never let me accompany the barges or wagon trains.” She believed that getting out of Corsa and being on the road or a river beneath the open sky might ease the call gnawing at her soul. “It’s always, ‘Karigan, inventory storehouse five,’ or ‘Karigan, schedule next month’s routes and deliveries.’ ” She had breathed hard with the unexpected fury that had built up in her chest. “You always leave the dullest chores for me.”