The Paladin Caper (32 page)

Fifteen

A
FEW DAYS
later, the treeship reached the barony of Lochenville.

Loch stood by Ululenia at the railing as her family’s land flew by far below them. There was the river that marked the border of the barony, cutting through the forest where Ululenia had periodically appeared to do business with her father. From this high, the trees looked like a rough green carpet, and the river was a silver wire catching the late-afternoon light.

“I thought we had another day,” she said. “Still not used to how fast the treeships move.”

“The elves would be a formidable force if they wished,” Ululenia said, holding the railing with both hands as though drawing strength from it. “Their druids have magic far stronger than mine.”

Loch looked down at the tiny bridge where she had once practiced diving into the river. “Always thought you had the nature magic because you were something like a nature spirit.”

Ululenia smiled. “We are as the chameleon in the grass, Little One. The ancient device that failed and weakened was in the middle of a forest, and so I came into being there, and saw what was around me, and thought in my innocence that it was what I should be.” She put a hand on Loch’s shoulder. “You, I believe, are the reverse.”

“Maybe.” Loch looked at the long grassy field where she had learned to ride. The farmers had taken a few more acres for crops. Her father wouldn’t have allowed that.

The estate itself came into view as the treeship came over a final hill that was really a small mountain, tall enough that the treeship had to divert course to go around it. Lochenville was a great castle once ringed by an old moat that Loch’s father had drained and filled in, leaving only different-colored stone to mark where water had once been. Around the castle, a town had sprung up, called Lochenville as well for simplicity.

Loch looked down at the sturdy town houses and simple shops, thickest around the road that led to the main gates. When Loch had fled to join the army, the buildings had ended in a huge open-air market that served as a fairground when traveling performers came to play. The circular market was still there, but it was ringed entirely by buildings now, and stones had been laid down over the dirt she remembered. She remembered digging rocks out from where she’d scraped her knees falling on that dirt, and wondered where the kids played these days.

“It has grown,” Ululenia observed.

“Things do that.”

“You have not been back since you left to join the war?”

“No.” She remembered the cold predawn air and the unfamiliar weight of the pack on her back. It was filled with several days’ worth of food, pen and paper, all the money she had saved, and a letter from Cevirt that she was supposed to deliver to the recruiter. It had seemed so heavy, the straps tight around her arms as she quietly made her way to the stables for the ride her father had ordered her not to make. “No, I was stationed too far away to visit on leave, and then Silestin framed me, and he owned the land.”

“You still would have had friends,” Ululenia pointed out.

“Friends who would have gotten in trouble for helping me.” Loch grinned and looked over at her. “As we’ve seen.”

“And because you left to prove yourself,” Ululenia added, “you could hardly return home with an enemy who had beaten you.”

“Were you always this shrewd,” Loch asked, “or is this a new part of you being evil?”

Ululenia smiled back and put a finger to the railing again, and a tiny flower sprouted and bloomed under her touch. “How will you approach your sister, Little One?”

In a way, Loch was glad someone had finally asked. “I will appeal to our sisterhood and hope that she will help.”

Ululenia blinked. “I see.”

“It’s either that or open with, ‘Hi, remember how you tried to kill me while working for the guy who killed our parents, but then I took you down and had the chance to kill you, and I didn’t take it?’” Loch consciously stood straighter, aware that she’d begun to tense up. “I don’t know what I’m going to say. I have to play it by how she reacts.” And she’d thought they’d had another day, or at least had been telling herself that.

An airship landing field was set up outside the town. It was empty, and the treeship settled down smoothly into the field, coming to rest with a nearly imperceptible little bump.

Loch met Captain Thelenea at the gangplank. “Captain.”

“Captain.” Thelenea smiled. “Would it help you if I had us remain here until you were certain that you had another means of transportation?”

“I would appreciate that greatly.” Loch offered her hand, and Thelenea took it. “I will send someone back to report our progress, one way or another. If I don’t see you again, thank you.”

“May you hunt well,” Thelenea said in reply, and Loch nodded and headed into town.

“If I am not needed,” Ululenia said, “I will visit the forest.” She walked off, a pale woman in a pale dress, and shimmered into her natural form at the edge of the woods. The others followed behind Loch. She knew they were there, but kept her eyes on the town as she walked in and then through.

The roads were indeed paved now, and in good shape. A wagon rolled in from the main highway, and Loch heard the horses’ hooves clopping on good-quality stones. The townsfolk, many Urujar but some white as well, nodded as she approached. Lochenville was big enough to have merchants’ wagons ringing the market, but small enough for the people to notice them coming.

An old Urujar man was playing a jaunty tune on a six-stringed vihuela on the main stage of the market square while a puppeteers’ wagon set up the stage behind him. He had played in the predinner hours ever since Loch could remember, his old fingers plucking and strumming songs that the townsfolk likely did not even consciously hear anymore.

“I have some ideas for how to deal with the ambient magic at Sunrise Canyon, now that I’ve seen it,” Hessler said. “I’ll need to pick up a few things.” Loch nodded, and he went off toward the stalls with Dairy in tow.

“You going to be okay?” Tern asked.

Loch smiled. “I’ll be fine.”

“You’ve saved the Republic twice,” she said with a little more intensity than was really called for, “and you have
nothing
to be ashamed of.”

“Thanks,” Loch said. “I appre—and we’re hugging? We’re hugging.” She patted Tern on the back. “Thanks, Tern.”

“All right, I’ve got stuff to get too,” Tern said, and disentangled herself from Loch. She walked off toward where Hessler was at the market stalls.

“She means well,” Icy said, and Loch nodded and smiled as he followed Tern.

Loch reached the estate’s gates soon after. The late-afternoon shadows stretched from the town buildings almost to the walls, making it seem quieter than it really was. The gates were open, and the guards chatted with townsfolk who walked by.

They stopped as she approached, and one of them, a young white woman, called, “Good afternoon. You have business inside?”

As Loch opened her mouth to respond, the other guard, an Urujar woman whose tight curls had gone completely white and whose face was lined with both wrinkles and scars, cut in. “Isafesira?
Aitha
, is that you? They said some crazy military man had killed you at a peace conference with the Empire.”

“They say a lot of things,
Yeshki
.” Loch turned to Kail and Desidora. “Tahla, this is Kail, who served with me in the war, and Desidora, who’s working with us now. Kail and Desidora, this is Tahla. She taught me how to use a sword.”

“A few lessons, when your father wasn’t looking,” Tahla said, grinning, “since his little girl was going to cut her own foot off on the downswing if someone didn’t help her.” It had been more than a few lessons, and Loch clasped hands with her gladly. “Look at you, all grown up. Your mother and father would be so proud.”

“How is Naria?” Loch asked, and Tahla’s smile softened around the edges.

“Your parents would be proud of her too,” she said. “Lochenville has done well under her.” Tahla gestured for Loch to come inside. “She is busy with some nobles who arrived today. Perhaps if you waited in the water garden?”

“The reports all said she was dead,” the young guard said. “We should at least use an illusion-ward charm to . . .” She withered under Tahla’s steady stare.

“
Yeshki
, I don’t mind,” said Loch.

Tahla sighed. Then her hand went to the hilt of the blade at her hip. “Strike.”

Her blade hissed from its sheath with a crosscut that would have taken Loch across the gut had she not gotten her walking stick up. Moving to the side, Tahla stabbed low, then high, stepping in as Loch parried. She stomped at Loch’s foot, then shouldered in as Loch lifted her foot to avoid the stomp.

Loch had ended up on the ground countless times as Tahla had taught her that dirty little trick. This time, she stepped aside, letting Tahla move past her, and tapped the older woman on the back with her walking stick. “Dead,” she said as the wooden stick plinked off Tahla’s armor.

“Dead?” Tahla snorted as she sheathed her blade, ignoring the young guard’s confused protestations. “Not with this armor,
Aitha
. I taught you to go for the head.”

“My father taught me to respect my elders,
Yeshki
,” Loch shot back. “Besides, if I knocked you senseless, nobody would be awake to remember me.” She brought her stick back to the ground, leaning on it casually, and turned to the young guard. “If you would like to use your illusion-ward charm, I have no objections.”

“That, ah, won’t be necessary,” the guard said, and waved Loch, Kail, and Desidora in.

Tahla walked alongside them as they came into the small but nicely maintained Lochenville estate. Some of the sculptures on the front lawn could have sat in any noble’s garden, comprised of bronze goddesses and old heroes. Other figures had been commissioned in bronze and marble, but were done in the old Urujar style, simplified forms with long, smooth limbs and gentle curves.

As a girl, Loch had argued with her mother about them. The old statues had been made from wood or clay, and Loch had said it was disrespectful to use the materials of the people who had enslaved the Urujar to make Urujar art.

She remembered her mother’s wry smile and sighed.

“You all right, Captain?” Kail asked.

“Just thinking back to when I was young and stupid, Kail.”

Desidora smiled at Loch with eyes that looked older than her years—not in a death-priestess way, but in a way that all good priests eventually learn to cultivate. “Tern sees you and her as similar, escaping your home and having to come back. But you didn’t want to leave, did you?”

“I wanted to serve my country,” Loch said.

Tahla laughed. “You wanted adventure,
Aitha.
”

“And that.” Loch grinned at her, then turned back to Desidora. “But had Silestin not framed me, killed my family, stolen the land . . . I would’ve come back.”

“You’re back now,” Tahla said, and Desidora nodded.

Loch was back. She would wait in the garden, as a guest.

The water garden was a great pool of waist-deep water where brightly colored fish swam in slow, peaceful circles. Water lilies covered much of its surface, their white-and-purple petals glowing in the slanting light of the late afternoon, and little wooden bridges arched between marble platforms set with benches and chairs for quiet reflection. Columns shaped like tumbled stone rose from each platform to block the sight lines. Some piped water out in artful streams or bubbling cascades, and all were wreathed in flowering vines, as were the ropes that connected the columns to create a gentle bower that kept the worst of the hot summer sun off the garden.

Tahla led them across several little bridges and stopped at one platform with a long bench and a small chair. “If you will wait here, Isafesira, I will tell Naria you are here. It will not be long.”

“Thank you.” Loch nodded, and Tahla made her way across the bridges to the white steps that led inside the manor.

“Your home is lovely,” Desidora said, settling down on one of the benches. Kail sat beside her.

Loch sat as well. “It was a good place to grow up.” The falling water had left the air misty, a pleasant change in the hot weather, and she closed her eyes for a moment to let the cool breeze kiss her face.

“Yeah,
my
water garden was a mudhole at the edge of town,” Kail said, and then started as a great splash sounded behind him.

Loch smiled and pointed, without opening her eyes, at a long wooden tube that was dumping a huge sheet of water down behind them. “Water clock,” she said. “It’s set at an angle, and when it gets full enough, precisely at every half hour, it will tip over and pour the water out.”

“. . . kind of stupid garden has sudden noises,” Kail muttered, settling back down.

“You are all right?” Desidora asked Loch.

Loch nodded, forced a smile. “It’ll be a better reunion than the last time I saw her. Ideally, we won’t be trying to kill each other.”

“That why are your knuckles white on your stick, Captain?” Kail asked.

Loch put the walking stick down in the unoccupied chair. “Thank you, Kail.”

They waited in silence for a time. The water clock emptied again, prompting Kail to swear. Loch stood up, eyes shut, smelling the flowers on the vines, remembering.

Finally, she opened her eyes at the sound of booted feet coming down the stairs. Tahla waved for her to come in, and Loch turned to Kail and Desidora. “I shouldn’t be long.”

“Good luck, Captain.” Kail tossed her a lazy salute.

Loch left her walking stick in the chair and crossed the bridges to get to the stairs. She met Tahla’s smile with her own as they walked up and into the manor.

Naria had left the interior furnishings the same as when Loch’s parents had been alive. Classic paintings and tapestries sat in the hallways, and sitting rooms were furnished with Urujar rope art and statues—these in the authentic clay and wood that young Isafesira de Lochenville had approved of. While the rooms were richly carpeted, the hallway floors were bare. It had been a compromise between her mother, who loved to dig her toes into the soft rugs, and her father, who had liked the sound of his heels clicking on the stone.