Broken Stone (5 page)

“I’m sure Blaine will see to her.”

In the distance, Torian reached the other bank. Emariya could just make out his wave, telling her it was safe to start across.

“Help Jessa if she needs it,” Emariya repeated herself, glaring. “And let Blaine bring up the rear.

That way if anyone falls into the river it will be
him.
”

“As you wish.” Garith mock bowed, his grin tinged with heavy amusement.

Trying to set aside memories of plunging into the water, Emariya stepped onto the ice.

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately depending on Emariya’s current mood—the ice held true and neither Blaine nor anyone else fell into the river. It took most of the remainder of the day for their entire contingent to cross, and they camped not far from the riverbank that night. Each of the next two mornings they left as the sun began to rise and didn’t stop until the sun retired its day-long vigil.

The third morning, they rode with a renewed vigor, as if the thought of spending their last day in the saddle gave each an additional push to go on.

“We will definitely reach Warren’s Rest tomorrow,” Emariya told Torian and Garith as they rode.

Blaine, also riding nearby, asked, “Is it wise to camp too near to Warren’s Rest? We don’t know what sort of welcome your brother intends for us.”

What matters is the type of welcome I intend for him.
“While that is true, we will be about half a day’s ride away when we stop this evening. I believe that is far enough. I’d like to ride into the Rest with the light of day.”

“Why?” Blaine asked.

“Because I want the citizens to see me for who I am. Regardless of what my brother has told them, I don’t believe any of them would willingly raise arms against me.” Her uncle’s warnings left small seeds of doubt planted, but Emariya was almost sure she could count on the tenants to support her, as long as they could identify her.

“She’s right,” Garith said. “Riding in during daylight will be best.”

“Furthermore, we will start passing outlying homesteads soon. I don’t think it will do any good to try to hide our approach. By now my brother must know my father is gone. We are probably expected.”

“I think you are right, we will be expected. The better question, is will things at the Rest be as we expect?” Garith held their shared worry out for all to see.

When the following morning arrived, Emariya couldn’t shake her somber mood. What would this day bring? One moment dread threatened to choke her, and the next the current of anticipation left her hands trembling on the reins.
I’m more nervous returning home than I was when leaving it.

Emariya wore her hair loose, flowing gently behind her in the windswept waves the people of Warren’s Rest had been accustomed to. Though, in a nod to her husband and her station, her tiara graced the top of her head. Hopefully, her people would see it as a sign that she’d accomplished what they’d sent her to do, and feel she was returning home having cemented a peace with Thalmas that would benefit them all. Otherwise, depending on what her brother had told them, they might regard the tiara as a betrayal.

The party came to the deserted and eerily quiet streets of the village. Where children should have been playing in the square, a light dusting of snow boasted a clean, unmarred surface as if no one had been there in quite some time. Looking carefully, Emariya thought she could see a few footprints, or the remnants of them at least. Someone had tried to brush them away, possibly to cover their tracks.

The lack of children playing wasn’t the only sign something was amiss. No candles stood watch in windows. No tenants waved friendly greetings from open doorways. The smoke that should have been curling lazily from each chimney was conspicuously absent. Spring would soon be upon them, but temperatures were still chilly. For residents not to keep fireplaces lit to heat their homes as well as to feed their families was unthinkable.

Emariya looked to Garith in alarm.

“Maybe Reeve moved them inside the walls. We had considered it as a possibility if Sheas advanced,” Garith said.

Emariya shook her head. “But Sheas didn’t advance.”

Torian spoke up. “No, but we did.”

Emariya closed her eyes, trying not to dwell on the fact that her return home might have struck fear into the hearts of her people, sending them scurrying for cover inside the estate walls.

“Do you honestly believe walls would keep us out?” Blaine scoffed.

Emariya’s temper began to flare, happy to have a legitimate target for her fury.

Jessa silenced him before Emariya could. “Enough. That is unimportant now.”

As quickly as it came, her anger deserted her. Jessa was right. Blaine didn’t matter.

Without the anger masking her fear, Emariya’s lip trembled. “What if Reeve has brought them inside the walls, not for their protection, but for his?” She had not given much thought to how she would handle confronting her brother. What if he had control over his gifts as well? Would she be able to stand up to him?

Garith gaped. “You don’t mean you think he’d use our own people to shield himself?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Emariya said, looking around anxiously at the empty village.

“There isn’t anything in the world that will be able to shield him if he doesn’t release my sister,”

Torian said.

Turning in the saddle, she addressed the men of Eltar who’d followed from the fjord. “Check your homes. See who or what you can find and then reconvene at Warren’s Rest.”

“No sense delaying it, Riya, come on.” Garith commanded the Royal Forces to follow, then heeled his horse and took the lead with Emariya and Torian close behind him.

As they raced up the dirt road heading for the gates of Warren’s Rest, a vague memory of riding down this same road, heading to hear the long-awaited news of her father floated to the surface of Emariya’s mind. When she’d returned up the road that day, everything in her world had changed.

Would this trip down the road yield the same cataclysmic effect?

Surprisingly, the gates sat open, though nothing about them seemed especially inviting as they passed through. Just as the village sat deserted, so did the stable yard. Looking around, it seemed nearly impossible to believe that when she’d left it a few months before, the yard had been bustling with energy.

The first agonizing sign of life Emariya spotted was more of a sign of death. Bile rose in her throat as she spotted Roel hanging from the doorway of the stables, swaying unnaturally in the harsh wind.

Gagging, Emariya wanted to look away, but the thought of doing so felt like a betrayal.

He helped me escape.
Her father’s voice was hard and angry, expressing her own dismay at the stable master’s death.

A high-pitched shriek sliced through the still quiet air. It sounded feral and foreign to her ears and belatedly she realized the shriek had been her own. “Cut him down,” she managed to choke out.

No one moved other than to glance around, looking toward the main house of the estate.

Hysteria overtook all rationale and reason. “Cut him down, cut him down, cut him down!” she began screaming as she slid down Raina’s side, her legs nearly buckling beneath her.

Torian gave a slight nod and one of his soldiers dismounted, drawing his knife to do as the princess demanded.

Roel’s body hit the ground with a sickening
thud
, and then Torian’s arms were around her. “I’m sorry Riya, you can’t fall apart right now. Do you want to stay out here while I check inside?”

Memories flashed cruelly through her head. Roel teaching her to ride. Naming Drea and Raina.

Not telling her father when she stayed later in the meadows than she should have. Trembling, she shook her head. With a sad, lingering glance toward Roel, she followed Torian toward the columns near the doorway. Once, she’d considered them cheerful. Now, she could only think of them as bars on a prison, that once held the innocent child she’d been. She couldn’t do anything for Roel now, but perhaps there was still time to rescue Terin.

“If the residents aren’t here inside the walls—and I don’t see any sign of them—where are they?”

Garith asked.

“I-I don’t know,” Emariya stammered. “Maybe Reeve called a meeting? Perhaps they are in the hall?”

Jessa raced past and flung the door open. “Mama?” she called, looking for Mairi. “Mama where are you?”

“Jessa, wait.” Blaine drew his sword as he hurried to catch up to her.

The overwhelming sense of fear and foreboding grew as Emariya stepped into the foyer. To be in the estate and not have Mairi hurrying to the door to greet her left Emariya disoriented. She expected to see the stern but always kind woman who’d raised her step into the corridor at any moment.

Garith strode past. “I’ll check the hall.”

Clutching Torian’s hand, Emariya leaned against him.

“Where would he keep my sister?” Torian asked.

“I’m not sure.” She bit her lip, contemplating. “Maybe in the hole under the kitchens, where we hid when...” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the statement.

Jessa, standing bewildered in the hallway, shook her head. “Reeve never goes down there. He remembers...we remember. He wouldn’t keep anyone in that hole.”

Torian frowned. “We have to check.”

Jessa led the way to the kitchen, and Torian slid the stone aside, revealing the unoccupied hole below.

Emariya breathed an audible sigh of relief, and glanced at Torian’s face. He, too, looked almost relieved to not find his sister in a dark, dank hole under the floor.

Garith’s form filled the doorway. “The hall is deserted. I don’t think anyone is here.”

Her legs felt as if they would give out at any moment. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

“What now?” She glanced between Torian and Garith. She was supposed to be leading, but her people weren’t here to be led, and all she wanted to do was cry.

“Check every room,” Torian commanded.

Almost as if in a trance, Emariya drifted down the corridor. She paused outside the smaller hall, the one where her family had taken their meals under her ancestors’ watchful eyes.
What atrocities
have those paintings seen?
Emariya wondered.
If only they could talk.

Belatedly, Emariya realized they sort of could, and decided that if their search didn’t turn up something soon she’d try and see what the spirits might be able to tell her.

Father? Do they know anything?

They aren’t actually in the paintings, Emariya. I doubt they witnessed anything, and your brother
has blocked me from his mind.

Her father’s voice sounded distorted, mirroring her erratic thoughts.
Pull yourself together,
she reprimanded herself.

Pausing outside a familiar wooden door, Emariya reached for the latch. Out of years of habit, she lifted the latch slightly off balance, jerking it toward the hinges. It liked to stick if not handled just so, and she’d never gotten around to asking anyone to fix it. She pushed the door inward and glanced around the chambers that had been hers for her entire life.

There was the stain on the fine rug where she and Jessa had played with the laundry soap, pretending that they were tending homes of their own. On the other side of the room, her dressing table with the tiny drawer where she’d kept her trinkets of her mother’s still held watch against the aged stone wall.

Surrounded by the hopes and dreams of her childhood self, as tangibly as if they were standing in the room next to her, Emariya stepped into the room and pulled back the plush drapes from her window. The view had not changed, except now no horses romped in the paddock. A lump swelled in her throat again at the thought of why, and she said a brief prayer to whoever was listening that Roel hadn’t suffered.

“I think I found blood,” Garith called from down the hall, sending Torian and Emariya hurrying in his direction.

“Those are Reeve’s chambers,” Emariya whispered as she took in the faint red stain outside her brother’s door. Someone had mopped up the majority of the blood, but the dirt on the stone retained the telltale color.

Torian’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. He jerked his head in the direction of the door. “Is his chamber empty?” Garith confirmed that it was and then the group continued their explorations.

Jessa joined them with tears in her eyes. “I can’t find Mama anywhere.”

“I don’t know where everyone could have gone.” Emariya tried to keep calm as they continued their search.

They all knew without saying a word the moment they found the chambers Terin had occupied.

Jessa gestured to the key ring still dangling in the lock. “We never kept doors locked...” The room was sparse, but nice. More importantly, it was devoid of blood or any other signs of foul play.

Emariya took the keys from the lock. “We should check the dungeon out back. I think that is where Reeve kept my father.” Trying to be brave, she led the way, not wanting to think about what she might find.

“Is that a pyre?” Torian asked, his voice wavering as they passed through the courtyard between the manor house and the dungeon.

“Sometimes we burned the household trash,” Jessa offered helpfully, though she didn’t sound very sure of herself.

“You don’t think...” Torian’s words trailed off.

“No!” Emariya said vehemently. “No matter how angry he was after he discovered my father had been released, harming Terin would keep him from meeting his goals. When Reeve sets his sights on a goal, that’s all that matters. He wouldn’t have killed her.”

“Would you have thought he’d kill Roel?” Garith asked quietly.

Instead of answering, Emariya struggled to place the key in the dungeon lock. She’d never been in the dungeon before; her father had forbid it. Still, she recognized the key.

“Let me.” Garith took the key from her trembling hands and quickly sprang open the lock. “I’ll get a lantern from the stables,” he said, heading the other direction. He was back a few moments later, and cautiously they all stepped inside.