“Where is Lady Iva?” I ask.
“Isn’t she with you?” Gragor pales as he asks the question. “Lady Fliad said she was riding on ahead.”
I give him a level look. Gragor doesn’t lie. It’s not in his nature.
“We’ll stay at the inn. Make haste,” I tell him, but I’m already moving to intercept Lady Fliad.
She’s riding with her hood pulled high and I don’t get her attention until we’re almost at the inn, a well-kept building with a clean front and shoveled paths. It does the heart good to see a sturdy building and diligent workers, but I’ve no time to relish in the wholesome effort.
“Lady,” I call to Lady Fliad, leaping off my horse to catch up as she dismounts and hands her reigns to Rhurc. Beside me, Hessa yips uncomfortably. “Lady Fliad.”
She turns to me with a placid smile. “Sir Knight. Will we sleep in an inn after all?”
I duck my head in confirmation, an abbreviated nod, and then force my question out. “Where is the king’s daughter.”
“Is she not with you?” she looks so innocent that I wonder if I’m leaping at shadows. “No, perhaps she was with the rear group. We were separated.”
I nod, turning to go. I’ll look in the last group. Someone would have noticed if she tried to wander off. Just because I feel ill at ease with Fliad, doesn’t mean she’s done anything that warrants distrust.
To my surprise, Hessa is licking her fingers. Fliad turns her placid smile to me again.
“If we are staying here, may I bring the dog in with me? She seems to want to warm up, too.”
Hessa looks at me with huge, hopeful doggy eyes. She probably smells something tasty inside.
I wave a hand permissively and they’re already opening the door to the bright lamp-lit inn and bringing in a flurry of sparkling snow with them before I’ve finished mounting.
After these years, you’d expect me to be more suspicious, but I wasn’t. I just let them go while I rode back to the rearguard with certainty that the king’s daughter would be with the last group.
They straggle in one by one, red-nosed, eyelashes and hair thick with snow. Rangen is the last by my count. The last except for Iva.
“The girl?” I ask him but he only looks at me with confusion.
I shake my head, biting my lip.
“Something untoward, Sir Oakensen?” he asks me, trying to look in every direction at once. “Were there signs of the enemy?”
I shake my head. “The girl is missing.”
His face goes ashen.
“We didn’t see the main group after we split from them. By the time we rode back to where we’d left them, there were hardly even tracks. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in this.”
I grunt, turning my horse. Hard-pressed or not, we must find her. She holds peace in her small rough hands.
A whiny sounds, and then a white body emerges from the snow. A white body running full tilt, mouth lathered and eyes rolling. I spin my horse and race to catch up, snatching up a rein flapping in the wind, and riding with the mare through the snow until she slows. Rangen is there a moment later, his own mount puffing. I hold the mare’s rein out to him.
“Go back to the inn and report to the others that I’m riding out to look for Iva. See to this horse. Protect the Lady Fliad. Make sure everyone is fed and rested,” I order grimly and before he can object, I kick my horse into a trot toward the whirling fury of the storm.
Snow thick as frosting on a Turnsyear day treat. No horse. No experience living rough. If I don’t find Iva tonight, she won’t be here tomorrow.
I would like to say that as I ride into the mind-mazing storm, I have peace on my mind. That I ride for the sake of us all, but what I ride for is the girl who sews torn coats and sits in the straw with fresh born puppies and doesn’t complain even once about the cold. I ride for a person. And I wonder if that will make a difference when the time comes to offer her up.
10
IVA FITZROY
She couldn’t have forgotten me. I know that much. Although, it’s possible that by the time she decided it was worth worrying about me, the snow was already too thick for anyone to find my tracks. Between the sound of the river and the blowing wind, I can’t hear anything else. They could be within easy sight if it were a sunny day, and I wouldn’t know they were searching for me.
