Guardian of Honor (21 page)

"For the use of the back room and the Marshall's
refreshment," Masif said.

On their way back to the Castle, Alexa heard a commotion and
detoured down a narrow alley that opened onto a small cobblestone square. In
one corner cowered a couple, surrounded by an angry crowd tightening a circle
around them. Alexa tugged away from Masif and started forward.

Sinafin jumped in front of her and barked.
They are no longer
human. Look at them closely!

Alexa did. The man and the woman had pasty faces, unusual amongst
the golden-skinned Lladranans. Their bodies looked puffy and their bellies hung
over their belts. The man's hair and beard were scruffy and the woman had long,
lank hair. Hair had started to grow between her eyebrows. Their mouths hung
open in complete idiocy. They were revolting.

Alexa took an instinctive step back.

Mockers,
Sinafin said, and Alexa knew she was
looking at more monsters.

Tainted humans with small brains and big mouths. Too stupid to
come out of the rain. Frinks got them. They can cause great damage if not
identified and killed.
Sinafin jumped into Alexa's arms.
Watch.

More people had gathered behind Alexa, and she was caught in a
crowd and unable to leave without calling attention to herself. She'd had
enough excitement in her life that day and was sure she wasn't going to like
what was coming.

"What are frinks?" she asked Sinafin.

The dog didn't answer.

"Does anyone have clean rainwater?" Stonemaster Masif
asked.

"There hasn't been a
clean
rain for months," said
a guy near Alexa.

She didn't like that news either. Bad piling on bad, and Sinafin
and the Marshalls expecting her to fix it.

"Here!" A woman standing in the doorway of a shop said,
holding a bucket. With her other hand she tossed in a clot of white stuff.

Salt,
said Sinafin.

"I knew there were Mockers around, just didn't know
who." The shopkeeper fixed her eyes on the repulsive couple. "Should
have guessed it was those two. Always were mean and selfish."

Masif took the bucket from the woman with a nod and thanks.

"Make way for Citymaster Masif!" someone called. The man
beside Alexa made an approving noise. "Good to see one of the Citymasters
here. Not afraid to do a dirty job."

Oh yeah. Alexa was
sure
she wouldn't like what happened
next.

The crowd opened for Masif. He stood in front of the cowering man
and woman. Incoherent whines came from their open mouths.

Impassively he threw the salt rainwater on them and stepped back.
The water hit them and they shrieked as if being burned. Their bodies swelled,
then burst open. A multitude of white slugs
wriggled from
the carcasses, along the cobblestones. People stamped and spit—both actions
shriveling the slugs.

Alexa's mouth had dried in horror, so she had no spit and could
only watch the white worms slither by her. Sinafin jumped down and howled.
Hundreds of the slugs died instantly.

Everyone turned to stare at the dog. Then at Alexa.

"Exotique." The word rippled through the crowd. People
withdrew from her.

"Um..." Alexa said. Warmth bathed her thigh—the baton!
She pulled it from the belt loop.

People "aahhed." The baton flashed an eerie green that
flowed onto the cobblestones. When it was done, no slugs moved, and the bodies
had turned into unrecognizable husks. Murmurs of satisfaction rose from the
crowd.

She slipped the Jade Baton into her sheath with trembling fingers.
Sinafin leaned against Alexa's legs.

Bootheels rang on the stone as Masif joined her. A soldier from
the Castle—the teenage girl's, Marwey's, lover—pushed forward. He bowed
smoothly to her, then to Masif, then to Sinafin. "I would be honored to
escort the Marshall of the Jade Baton of Honor to the Castle." His tone
was stiff, resolution flashing in his eyes. Alexa was sure he wanted something.

Masif cocked an eyebrow at her. He'd evidently seen the same thing
in the young man, a need. Alexa suppressed a sigh. Masif was already an ally,
and the soldier could be one more. She needed all the friends she could get. So
she held out her hand to the Castle guard. Gingerly he linked her arm with his.
His muscles were solid but shivered with nerves.

"My thanks for seeing the lady to the Castle," Masif
said. Smiling briefly and showing white, even teeth, he bowed to them, then
spun away and strode off at a pace that would have been too fast for Alexa. Off
on Town business, no doubt.

Sinafin barked and the young man started, dropping Alexa's hand.
The little dog jumped into his arms. She must have said something to the man,
because he tucked her under his left arm and held out his right elbow to Alexa
again. She took hold of his biceps. The soldier started walking slowly, then
quickened his pace until he and Alexa matched steps. She realized that he'd
walked the same way with Marwey, who was about her height. That relaxed her a
little.

He cleared his throat. "I am Pascal, a Castle guard of the
second rank. I have ambitions."

Well, who didn't?

Pascal looked down at her. "I want to Pair with Marwey, but I
have little to offer. I am the third son of a farmer. I am a good guard and
want to be a good Chevalier."

"How can I help?"

His face set into determined lines. "You will soon have lands
of your own, but no Chevaliers. Marwey said—" He stopped and flushed. His
posture stiffened. "I have trained with the Chevaliers and am close to winning
my volaran reins."

What had olden guys won when they became knights? Spurs? Better
reins around a halter than cruel spurs digging into horseflesh.

Pascal bit his lip, looking as if he were drowning in
interview-mode. She'd been there. She patted his arm. He jumped.

"I want to be your Chevalier," he blurted.

She missed a step, and he steadied her without even noticing.
Nice. No way was she going to be able to answer in Lladranan. She was glad he
was holding Sinafin. "You would be my..." What on earth was the right
word to use? She cleared her throat. "Employee?"

He flushed again. "Yes," he said. "I would vow my
loyalty to fight for you."

Alexa didn't like that idea. She couldn't see herself sending this
young man out to face monsters and die. Maybe she could keep him on her land,
when and if she got it. He and Marwey, safe. She glanced at him and didn't know
whether safety would appeal to him. At least she could give him options.

"You would vow loyalty to me, and I would pay you...how?"
She squashed irritation at her own ignorance.

But he'd brightened. "With payment for my further training as
a Chevalier, with advancement in your ranks—"

What ranks?

"Perhaps even with a little land—or a volaran," he said
in the same tone of reverence with which she'd once said "diploma in
law."

She liked his energy, his directness, his politeness. "Very
well, if I receive an estate and funds, you're hired."

His bearing took on a little swagger of male pride, but his voice
sounded choked. "My thanks."

He took her back to the safety—and restrictions—of the Castle.

I
n Castleton, the square once swarming with frinks was silent and
shadowed. It started to rain. Hours passed.

As the husks of the Mockers crumbled, a black fog rose from them
and mixed with frinks. A shadow coalesced, made of mist and frink and Mocker
and powered by the ancient, deadly will that lusted after Lladrana and what it
held. The shadow formed into a cobweb of almost-substance.

No one in the land would recognize this new threat, know it
existed. The tool had not been used for centuries. But it had been successful
before and had been called into being once more. It could be web or more solid,
manlike, but nothing else. Still, that would do. That would do very well.

It raised a shadow like a protrusion the size of a head,
featureless except for the glowing red orbs where there should be eyes. It
looked up the hill to the Castle. Its prey was there—rich, exotic dreams to
succor it.

Its awful, gnawing hunger must be fed with simpler fare first. A
rip opened, mouthlike, and the cobweb billowed in and out though there was no
wind. It would feed on energy and magic and dreams and souls. Beads of gray-dew
dripped from the mouth.

Pure malicious glee ran through it at the thought of a kill and
the luscious draining of the prey as it fed. It drifted, then tumbled faster
into the narrowest pathway between the first two buildings it could find.
Stretching, it attached to each of the walls, a dark net lost in even darker
shadows. It was weak now.

When it was strong and gorged and powerful, it would feast on
otherworld flesh.

11

A
lexa slept that night in luxurious comfort with no nightmares of
the render that had attacked her between worlds or Sinafin dream-movies. Slowly
she woke, and as her senses filtered information—the deep softness of the
feather mattress, the hue of light from the sun illuminating stone walls, the
scent of magic—she knew she was still in Lladrana.

She stretched and rolled onto her back, then looked at the canopy
over her bed, past the bed curtains and around the room. She liked the bedroom,
and her Tower suite with the large sitting room and a small office.

Sinafin, as a pink butterfly about a foot wide, fluttered to
settle on Alexa's stomach.
You slept late. It is midmorning.

"It felt good to catch up on my sleep. That jerir of yours
takes a lot out of a person."

It is good you dipped three times.

Alexa grunted.

The Marshalls are having their morning meeting.

With a groan, Alexa rolled to the edge of the bed and slithered
until her feet hit the rug. "Better get at it, then." She needed to
make sure they accepted her as one of them, if she was going to fight for them.

Thealia will tell you true what happens at the meeting.

Alexa considered that. It would mean she'd only have to deal with
one person she knew instead of face the ten of them, most of whom she hadn't
sorted out, and the jerk Reynardus, to boot. "I think Thealia might leave
out things I need to know." It would be like reading notes of a lecture,
or a trial, and not being there herself. She'd miss nuances.

From the wardrobe she took underwear that resembled the long
underwear she wore for hiking in the Colorado cold, except the pants were
footed. They fit. She pulled on the long, thin under-robe of purple. It fell to
midcalf. Then she donned a lavender tabard—more like a serape—a long rectangle
of cloth with a hole in the middle that draped over her front and back. She
fingered the white fur trim along the surcoat and sent a glance to Sinafin,
who'd landed on one of the top corners of the bed.

"You explain to whoever made these, that I never want fur on
my clothes again." Alexa shuddered, remembering the Assayer's Office.

We eat them. You wear and sleep on things you eat.

"You eat ermine?" Weren't they little minklike
creatures? Ferrets or weasels or something?

Not me, but some nobles think they are a delicacy.

"Huh. Well, I'd bet some monsters would think
me
a
delicacy." Gruesome thought. She cinched her leather baton-belt around her
waist. The stick lay heavy against her hip.

An exotic-looking flower was embroidered over her left breast
in purple on the tabard. Glancing into the closet, she saw
her wardrobe was lavender and purple, with one gold gown. She grimaced, shut
the door, and hurried from the bedroom into the narrow semicircular hallway.

New shoes are outside the door,
Sinafin teased.

Alexa had forgotten about shoes, but none of the Castle corridors
was carpeted. She opened the door with a yank that set the harpstrings singing.
In front of her were several pairs of exquisitely made shoes. One pair of
black, one brown, one jade green, one purple. No one was in the half-circle
anteroom of her tower, so she sat down and pulled on the shoes. The leather was
soft and molded to her feet when she laced them up.

When she stood and shifted back and forth, she nearly moaned in
delight. They were the most comfortable shoes she'd ever worn. Finding size
fours outside of the children's section had always been difficult, though
sometimes the Velcro fastenings made up for it.

It was a fact of life: she was small. Small there and even smaller
here. And she was supposed to be a warrior?

Sinafin fluttered to her shoulder, folded her wings.
The Song
would not have called you if you were not the right person to save Lladrana.

Alexa supposed she'd hear a lot of that stuff in the future, but
she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin and took the stairs down at a
quick pace. She was pretty sure of the way to the Marshalls' chamber.