Pixilated

A Garrison Love Story Book One

Copyright 2009 Jane Peterman Atchley

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First Published July 2010 The Wild
Rose Press Faery Rose Imprint as
Warring
Heart

All Rights Returned to the
author

Chapter One

Lightening illuminated the cave-in. The
storm howled. Rain pounded in blinding torrents carving tiny
rivulets in the hillside, making footing treacherous. Kree Fawr
shouldered two men out of the way, and shoved a granite boulder
aside.

The mine manager shouted over crashing
thunder. "Twenty-six men trapped in there, My Captain. May the Gods
help them."

The gods didn't care. Hefting another
three-foot chunk of rain-slick granite out of the pile, Kree's foot
slipped. Muddy runoff sluiced into his custom-made cavalry boots. A
mere half-hour ago, he was warm and dry, gambling with his fellows.
Now, he was soaked to the skin, boot-deep in ooze, and wondering if
the mine manager smelled liquor on his breath. He waited for the
next rumble of thunder to fade. His soft voice did not carry. "Do
they have enough air?"

The manager raked away a layer of muck
uncovering more boulders for the muscular cavalry captain to toss
aside. "Depends on where they are. Half the shafts are buried!"

Kree turned his head toward the trooper on
his right and forced volume into his voice. "Bird, take some men
up-slope. Dig out those air shafts."

"We could blast our way through this
blockage, sir." First Lieutenant Duncan offered at Kree's side. The
manager looked panicked, but the first lieutenant ignored the man.
"It is simple mathematics, sir. Calculate the correct size and
placement for the charges and kaboom. No more debris."

Simple? Kree glanced at the mine manager
again.

"Spark off a gas pocket and it will bring
down the whole mountain."

"The danger is negligible, sir, and it will
save hours of digging."

His first lieutenant sounded confident, but
then he always did when talking of mathematics or black powder, and
the trapped men did not have hours.

"Do it," Kree ordered.

Black smoke and timber-laced mud and rock
shot several feet into the air. The mountainside held, and the
captain congratulated himself. He possessed the finest black-powder
man in the Kingdoms, and he had the balls to use him.

***

The captain sat in the mud, resting his head
and arms on his knees. The last man had been carried from the mine.
The rain had stopped and the dawn painted the sky with colors
promising a fine day. His officers and troopers sprawled in a
semicircle around him while town folk bustled in and out of the
makeshift hospital tent, and women moved among exhausted rescuers
offering wine or water.

"Kree!" Lathan Bruin took in the group of
weary mud-slathered men with a glance. "Is everyone well here?"

He glanced up at his best friend and nodded.
"Tired but unhurt. When did you arrive?"

"Not soon enough."

Kree expelled a long breath. The gods truly
didn't care. These were his people. He had sworn to protect them.
Then something like this happened and he was damn near useless.
"How many died?"

Lathan shrugged.

"How many?"

"Three."

"Namar’s bloody tears." Kree laid his head
down on his knees. In a town the size of Qets, three counted as a
bona fide disaster. Families of dead miners became immediately
destitute. The gods may not care, but Kree Fawr did. He would visit
the families and arrange relief. Miners always carried heavy debt,
although he did not understand why, since they earned almost as
much as his troopers did.

Lathan moved off toward the next muddy group
of rescuers, stopped, and turned back. "Kayseri arrives on the noon
post. Do you still plan to be there?"

Kree lay back on the muddy slope and
massaged his temples with the heels of his hands. "I wouldn’t miss
it."

"She'd understand."

"I'll be there. I’m looking forward to
seeing her."

***

Kree dried his face on a clean white towel.
He caught his friend, Lathan's, reflection in the mirror and gave a
lopsided smile. Together they had prevailed against a powerful
Star-wizard back when he'd been nothing but an oversized boy with a
sword, and Lathan a young man who'd come to the garrison seeking
glory. Glory, fickle mistress that she was, had gone to Kree. His
had been the killing stroke. No one had cared that Lathan's
sacrifice made that stroke possible. But Kree remembered. He cared.
The bond between them, forged by their shared experience, was
stronger than blood.

Lathan’s restless pacing took him past
Kree’s desk. On his second pass, he picked up an unfinished letter
lying on top reading aloud, "Honored Ladies of Elhar, regarding
your inquiry concerning renegade sorcery... This is terrible."

Kree snatched the letter from his friend’s
grasp and quickly scanned it. His brow puckered. "Don't see any
mistakes." He passed it back to Lathan, and returned to the mirror
where he worked a single tight braid into his hair. By tradition,
Goddess-born men like him left their hair unshorn and worn it in
complicated blessing-braids, but he had hacked his hair off in a
fit of temper some years back. It scarcely reached his shoulder
blades. Goddess-born. What religious hogwash. Kree knew his
parentage. He was the creation of selective breeding, no divine
intervention required.

"You should let your secretary handle
correspondence with Elhar. That’s why the Ladies sent him to
you."

"Thank you, Lathan. I needed you to tell me
that."

"You know, you used to have a better sense
of humor."

"I used to be soaring on Goddess nectar
every day. Hell's teeth, Lath, everything was funny when I was high
as a kite." How Kree missed nectar's exhilarating high and the
buoyant illusion of indestructibility that accompanied it. He
chafed his hand up and down one arm. Why did his fucking skin
always feel too tight?"

Lathan crumpled the letter into a ball,
tossed it into the trash, and glanced at his friend. "I told you I
can stop the pain."

"And I told you no."

"Then at least take some willow–"

"No, means no. No magic. No different
potions."

Lathan shook his head. "I don’t see the
benefit of constant pain."

Kree fastened the frogs down the front of
his bright dragon’s eye blue jacket. "That is because you didn't
live the first thirty years of your life without feeling a single
honest physical sensation." He shrugged. "Besides, it's not too bad
today."

From the way Lathan stared at him, his
friend understood not bad meant bearable. To his credit, he
returned to the subject of his daughter's imminent arrival.

"Tell me why are you taking such trouble for
a youngster who’d be just as happy to see you if you were still
nose-to-toes mud?"

"I live to serve." Kree touched his chest
above his heart, gave a slight mocking bow. "One: I ordered an
honor guard for our little Katie. Pretty horsies always delighted
her, and I must match their magnificence. Two: I am visiting the
dead miners' families this afternoon. Three: I am meeting a lady
later and will not have time to change."

"The first lieutenant’s widowed
sister-in-law again?"

"Why not? The lady is beautiful. She knows
what she likes, and she’s leaving town soon. These are three traits
I find very attractive in women."

"Everyone’s talking about her."

"Everyone or just you?"

Lathan flopped down on the captain's bed.
"What does Duncan say?"

Kree made a weighing motion with one hand.
"My first lieutenant keeps his own counsel regarding my love life.
You should try it." The gleam in Lathan’s eyes told him just how
much hope there was of that.

"I can't. I am the voice of your
conscience."

Kree tugged his jacket straight. "You are
the pain in my arse."

"People are saying you’re ready to take a
new wife."

Pausing in the act of buckling the shoulder
harness that supported his long gryphon knives, Kree fixed his
closest friend with the stone-cold stare that made his enemies
tremble. Lathan was immune. "I’d sooner take hemlock. I've heard
that
painless."

***

Kayseri Burin smoothed her fine elfin gown's
narrow skirt, settled more comfortably in the coach and waited. It
seemed all she had ever done. Wait. She'd waited to grow up, Waited
for the only man she’d ever loved through his dreadful marriage,
and then after his wife died and he cared for nothing, she waited
for her chance to make him care. She had finally reached her first
stasis, frozen in the full bloom of womanhood for the next two
hundred years or so until her next aging cycle began. She was
through waiting.

She caught her bottom lip with her teeth. It
had been five years since she’d last seen him, and he would have
changed in that time. Humans changed. Still, she could not imagine
sharing her mate bond, the mystical Wilderkin union of soul and
mind, with any other male. Furthermore, Kayseri was so sure of her
choice and had been for so long, she never tried to imagine such a
silly thing.

Her coach rocked and churned along the
rain-rutted road. Kayseri leaned out of the window letting the wind
tangled her long black hair. Like all pixies, all Wilderkin
actually, she loved sun on her face and wind in her hair. How she
longed to sit up in the box with the driver, but that would not be
grown-up and her goal was to appear grown-up because she would see
him. But it went against nature because pixies were mischievous and
exuberant from cradle to grave.

Humans were different. Kayseri understood
this. They thought when one reached a certain age one had to act
and dress in certain ways, so she endured the stuffy coach while
sunlight and color beckoned to her from the window. Ah, the things
one did for love. She smoothed her skirt down again. The
provocative way her gown hugged her curves helped her appear very
grown up indeed, but this was not the reason she'd chosen it. The
green silk, the exact color of old jade, perfectly matched her
beloved’s eyes.

Outside the curtained window, the familiar
landscape moved slowly past, far too slowly for Kayseri's avid
pixie spirit. Mud dragging at the wheels slowed the horses’
progress, the green hills dotted with sheep crawled by. But summer
was in the air, and Kayseri smelled the fruit orchards heavy with
peaches and apricots. She was so close to home it was hard to sit
still. There was the big tree she had climbed as a little girl even
though her father had forbidden it. She lost her nerve halfway to
the top and had sat frozen afraid to move until he came to her
rescue. He'd reached up and plucked her out of the branches with no
more effort than he would spare a ripe fruit. She felt safe in his
arms. Best of all, he had not teased her, and he had not told her
father. Kayseri had fallen irrevocably in love with him that
day.

At last, the coach rounded a bend and began
the assent into town. High on the hillside the blue tiled roofs
from which the garrison and the surrounding town took their name
sparkled in the afternoon sun. Qets Garrison meant Blue Garrison in
the old language. Her fellow travelers stirred. A blade-sister,
newly posted to the garrison, pelted Kayseri with a barrage of last
minute questions about garrison life in general and about Captain
Fawr in particular, whom the sister heard had a fearsome and
uncertain temper.

Her five brothers, her pixie mother, whom
she noticed was days away from delivering another child, and her
wonderful human father waited on the platform. Kayseri loved her
family fiercely, but her gaze fixed on the big trooper standing
beside her father. The sun sparked copper highlights in his garnet
colored hair, and he looked dashingly handsome in his dragon’s eye
blue and black uniform. The little scar on his cheek he called
proud flesh lent just the right touch of danger to his face. The
sight of him made her stomach to do a funny little flip-flop.

The honor guard in attendance surprised her,
the cadets’ corps by the look of them, a group of handsome young
men in brilliant light-armor mounted on gorgeous horses. Had he
assembled them for her? Oh, he must have. He wouldn't have done it
for the Sister. Another little thrill zipped through her.