Blackveil (5 page)

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Authors: Kristen Britain

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #fantasy, #Epic

BOOK: Blackveil
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Ominous silence followed.
Oops,
she thought. She hadn’t meant to broach the subject so abruptly, but there it was now, right out in the open. No preamble, no gentle prodding, no hiding.
Cook hastened to the cutting board and her parsnips, and her aunts scattered, making themselves busy elsewhere in the kitchen, but all within earshot even as they pretended not to be listening.
“I planned to tell you about that,” her father said after a few moments.
“When?”
“Well, I ... Soon. I wanted to wait till you were old enough.”
“How old? Like when I’m eighty?”
“No, of course not. I—How did you find out?” He glanced at his sisters in accusation, and they filled the kitchen with loud denials, waving spoons and knives in emphasis.
Before someone got hurt by an errant utensil, Karigan said, “You don’t realize how close this information came to damaging the clan. The king knows.”
That quieted everyone down.
“What? How?”
“The Mirwells dug it up, a crew list for a known pirate ship, the
Gold Hunter.
Timas—Lord Mirwell—sent it to the king.”
“But
why?
Why would he?”
“I’m not sure,” Karigan said. “Except Timas Mirwell hates me. He has since school, and he probably decided to get back at me by trying to disgrace the clan.” He’d given her the message to deliver to the king. She, of course, had no idea of what she carried at the time. It was only after the knighting ceremony that she learned of it from one of the king’s advisors.
“Damnation,” her father muttered. “
Aristocrats.
Aristocrats and their games of intrigue.”
“We’re fortunate the king thinks highly enough of your service to the realm that he’s dropping the matter,” Karigan said. “But if Mirwell, or someone else, decides to make public accusations, it could be embarrassing. I destroyed the crew list, but it could still look bad even without the proof.”
“I see.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry you learned about it this way. I should have told you.”
“I wish you had,” Karigan murmured.
“At least you know now,” he said.
“Yes, but none of the details.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Then you should have no trouble telling me all about it now.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I see knighthood has done little to gentle your tenacious curiosity.”
“Father.”
“Tell me, in court do they address you as
Sir
Karigan? Shouldn’t it be Madam Karigan, or some such? Maybe Madam Sir Karigan?”
“Father.”
She might be tenacious in her curiosity, but he was exasperating. “This is
serious.
”
“Yes, yes, of course it is. Very well. I suppose there is no avoiding it.” He paused, turning more reflective, his hands loosely clasped on the tabletop. “As I said, the
Gold Hunter
was long ago, and I was an ignorant young boy fresh off the island when Captain Ifior’s men snatched me from a tavern and forced me into service.”
“A press gang,” Karigan murmured, a little mollified her father had been taken against his will.
“I didn’t fight it, I will admit.”
“What? Why not?”
“I saw it as an opportunity.”
“Opportunity? A
pirate
ship?” Ignorant boy, indeed.
“Now, now,” her father said. “The
Gold Hunter
wasn’t a pirate to begin with, but a privateer with letters of marque to seize ships violating the blockade of the Under Kingdoms.”
“How’d it become a pirate?”
“The embargo was lifted,” he replied, “and Captain Ifior decided to keep taking ships. It was profitable.”
“No doubt.” Karigan’s head throbbed, and she rubbed her temples. She was weary from her long journey through the storm, and it was no easy thing hearing from her father’s own mouth he’d been crew on a pirate ship. All she knew of pirates was that they were unruly, bloodthirsty cutthroats, and she did not want to believe he was of that ilk, no matter how far distant in his past it may have been.
“Kari—”
“So you stayed on even after the captain turned to piracy,” she said.
“Yes. Captain Ifior had a good head for business, and I learned much from him.”
“Like how to steal? And kill?” Karigan winced as soon as the words left her mouth. She hadn’t meant to speak so brashly, but she needed to know. Needed to know who her father really was.
He did not answer, but sat there absolutely still, his expression stony and white-edged. Karigan held her breath, bracing herself for the storm that was certain to come, but he abruptly stood and left the kitchen without a word.
His silence, Karigan thought, was more terrible than any mere eruption of anger could be.
One by one her aunts turned to face her. Cook studiously ignored the scene, keeping busy at the sideboard. Well, she’d done it this time—turned a reunion with her family into a disaster.
“What?” she demanded of her silent and forbidding aunts. “I have a right to know.”
Aunt Stace’s mouth turned to a grim line before she spoke. “Your father talks little of the past, even to us, but we do know he was caught in circumstances not of his devising.”
Karigan could relate to that, but surely her father had more choice than she ever did with the Rider call. “He could have run away when their ship made port.”
“True,” Aunt Brini said, “but he had his reasons for staying. You see, Captain Ifior was more a father to him than our own was. His mentor and guide.”
“Who taught him to kill and steal.”
“Oh, child, you can’t know—”
“I am
not
a child,” Karigan said. No, not after all she’d experienced in her own life since becoming a Green Rider, but they’d never understand, even if she told them every detail of her exploits. No matter what she did with her life, they’d always see her as their little niece, not mature enough to deal with more adult matters, like her father’s past.
“I suppose you are not,” said Aunt Stace, “but you are acting like one.”
Karigan’s mouth dropped open.
“Only a child would utter whatever came to her mind without thinking first. I should have thought you learned better in the king’s service.”
Karigan sat there stunned that her aunts would take her father’s side in this. It wasn’t her fault he’d been a pirate.
She pushed her chair back and stood. She grabbed her message satchel and left the kitchen, heading for the stairs. She took the steps two at a time, and when she reached her bedchamber, she slammed the door shut behind her.
If her aunts couldn’t handle her asking about the pirate ship, just wait till she brought up the brothel.
ABOUT THE
GOLD HUNTER
K
arigan couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned beneath her pile of blankets, listening to the wind slam into her window. She’d risen a time or two to stoke the fire, but the cold drove her back beneath the covers, despite the woolens she wore over her nightgown and her heavy stockings.
It wasn’t so much the storm that kept her awake, but thoughts of her father and how the evening ended so badly before it had even begun. She chose to close herself in her room, with Elaine bringing up her supper. Her aunts did not even stop by to wish her a good night.
They’re mad at me,
she thought, even though it wasn’t her fault her father had served on that pirate ship. And still, as justified as she felt in her own judgments, she was assailed by a sense of guilt, as if she were the one in the wrong simply because she needed to know the truth of the matter.
Her aunts were right on one point, she admitted after some reflection: her tendency to open her mouth without thinking. She could have approached the whole mess in a more circumspect manner that would have alleviated some of the hurt feelings. But her father had pushed her just a little too hard about her own life, and she had pushed right back.
The thing was, she loved her father—loved him powerfully and had always admired him as the dashing, strong, and successful man he was; the man who loved her mother so much he never remarried. She wanted to be like him when she grew up, planned to follow in his footsteps. Until the Rider call changed everything. Still, she’d considered him a paradigm of what a father and merchant ought to be without question. Until she heard about the pirate ship. Until the brothel.
She gathered from Elaine he hadn’t attended supper, either, and ate alone in his office. Karigan sighed. They were too much alike for their own good.
Finally, when she couldn’t take the twisting and turning anymore, she braced herself against the cold, threw off her blankets, and dressed by the fire.
 
Karigan trudged through drifts that were as high as her thighs, from the house toward the stable, her lantern providing a meager glow against the night, large snowflakes beating against it like moths. The wind sucked her breath away.
When she reached the stable and stepped inside, she found stillness, and her restless mind calmed a notch. The glow of her lantern enlarged, providing golden warmth, and she released a breath she did not know she’d been holding.
Her father’s horses occupied almost every stall; sleek hacks he rode for business and pleasure: his favorite, a fine-limbed white stallion named Southern Star; matching pairs of handsome carriage horses; and several drays who hauled cargo-laden wagons during the trading season. Standing among them was one that did not quite fit in, an ungainly chestnut messenger horse. All were blanketed and bedded with fresh straw and snoozed in contentment, some snoring, hooves shuffling, all apparently oblivious to the storm raging outside.
And why shouldn’t they be when the stable was as sturdily built as the main house? There was nary a draft in the place.
Often Karigan sought out the company of her horse, Condor, when troubled. Somehow being in his presence calmed her, soothed whatever agitated her. She moved down the central aisle, leaving clumps of snow behind her, until she came to his stall.
Sensing her approach, the gelding poked his head over the stall door and gazed at her with sleepy eyes, his whicker of greeting half-hearted.
“Woke you up, did I?” she asked, stroking his nose.
He whiffled her hand, his breath smelling of sweet grain.
Karigan chuckled and hung the lantern on a bracket beside his stall. She pulled a freshly baked oat muffin from her pocket. She’d found a pile of them on the sideboard where Cook left them overnight to cool. Condor grew decidedly more alert.
Now she laughed and fed him half. It vanished almost instantly and he nudged her for more.
“Greedy beast,” she said and gave him the rest.
She checked his water bucket—it was full and hadn’t frozen over. His blanket was straight and secure across his back. When she rode in, he’d been one tired horse after pushing through all those snow drifts. Ice had clung to his muzzle, making him look a hoary old man. The stablemaster had helped rub him down, wound his legs with quilted wrappings, and prepared him a warm bran mash. When Karigan left him, she had no fear he was in any discomfort and knew he was as happy and snug as a horse could be.
She yawned, patted his neck, and sat on a nearby pile of hay bales. She found a discarded horse blanket and pulled it over herself, and before she knew it, with the soothing sounds of slumbering horses all around her, she, too, fell asleep.
 
“Karigan?”
She’d been dreaming. Something about sunny, gold-green grasslands, where wild horses roamed ...
“Karigan?”
Her eyes fluttered open and she lifted her head with a grimace. She had a crick in her neck from sleeping at an odd angle, and lantern light glared into her eyes. Her own, hanging by Condor’s stall, had sputtered out.
“Father?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

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