Shadow's master

fetching.

“Or you could,” Iola said. “I didn't mean I had to. I mean, you're perfectly capable of-”

“Iola.” Josey couldn't resist smiling. “Is there something I should know?”

“I'm sure I don't know what you're referring to, milady,” Iola replied, and left the tent before Josey could comment.

Captain Drathan was summoned and preparations made, and a short time later Josey was riding over flat, brown plains. Islands of snow decorated the ground in some places, but mostly what she saw in every direction was mud. Heavens, I've seen enough mud to last the rest of my life.

The sun was almost at its zenith, burning away the cloud cover that had lent such a wintry pall to the past couple weeks. Lightning picked his way along, his hooves sinking deep into the saturated earth and coming out with sucking pops.

Iola rode beside her on a beautiful sorrel mare with a flaxen mane. The girl was lively, looking all around, everywhere except the front of her escorting company of bodyguards where Captain Drathan rode. Josey spotted several peaked shapes to the west. Rooftops.

“Is that it, do you think?” she asked.

Iola stood up in her stirrups. “I think so, Majesty. My father said it wasn't far from camp.”

Her bodyguard had seen it, too. At Captain Drathan's direction, a dozen soldiers cantered ahead. The rest formed up around her. But rather than safe, Josey felt cloistered. The whole point of this jaunt was to get away from the stuffy routines of the camp.

It wasn't long before they reached the village. Josey was dismayed at its ramshackle appearance. She was used to seeing the small homes that the commons of her country lived in, but these buildings were nothing more than shacks. Hovels, really. There were more at the middle of the village, huddled close together, but they were in even worse repair, their walls streaked with ash and soot. A shanty of tents and dilapidated shelters extended out into the surrounding fields.

As they entered the village center, people emerged from the buildings and tents. Josey expected a few dozen, but apprehension stirred in her belly as more and more arrived. Soon the square was surrounded. There must more than three hundred people here. Where did they all come from?

Josey stopped inside her cordon of bodyguards, feeling all the eyes suddenly fixed upon her. When Captain Drathan shouted her name and title, a few of the people bowed or curtsied. Others looked away, which made Josey feel even worse. But a number of the villagers simply stared.

Three men exited the largest of the standing structures. They were older, all white-haired and thin. Everyone here was painfully thin, Josey noticed. As the men approached, she dismounted. Captain Drathan likewise got down from his warhorse and came over to stand with her, one hand on the pommel of his sword.

The shortest of the three old men walked before the others. His face was lined and craggy with a large nose, but he smiled as he stopped before her and bowed his head. “I'm Elser,” he said. “What brings you out to us, Your Grace?”

Josey found herself smiling back at the old man. There was something comforting about him. Her throat became dry as she remembered this was how her foster father had made her feel. “We were traveling north, but the bridge is down. While we wait for another route to be found, I thought we would see…”

The old man seemed to understand. “Not what you expected to find, Your Grace?”

“No.” Josey fought the knot forming in her throat. Looking at these people, some of them with hardly anything warm to wear, women holding their rag-swaddled children, was heartbreaking. “What happened here?”

“War, Your Grace. The oldest story there is.”

Josey pursed her lips. She'd heard the reports of nobles fighting in the heartlands. She never thought it was so devastating. These people are suffering, and I have failed them.

“It's been going on for as long as any of us can remember, Your Grace,” the old man said. “But these past few years it's gotten worse. Spring raids turned into summer campaigns that lasted through the autumn. And now the fighting goes on all winter, too. We haven't been able to bring in a good harvest in years. All the young men were taken away. They've only left those of us too old to fight. Our women have no husbands, our children no fathers. We've been holding on as best we can, waiting for things to get better. Now people from other villages have come here, but we can hardly provide for ourselves. In another season or two, we'll be gone.”

Josey wanted to turn away as pricks of moisture gathered in her eyes, but she forced herself to face the old man. “How can I help?”

The smile he gave her was like a warm ray of sunshine. “Our stores are gone. We could use something to eat, Your Grace.”

Josey looked to Drathan. “Captain, send someone back to the camp. I want wagons here with food, warm clothing, and blankets. Anything these people need. And send for Doctor Krav, too.”

With a salute, Captain Drathan went about following her orders. Some of her bodyguards gave up their cloaks to the people in the crowd and broke out packages of rations from their saddlebags. Like water over a dam, the villagers surged forward, accepting these gifts and thanking the soldiers. Children laughed as they bit into rolls of hard tack and drank from waterskins. Watching Iola hold a small girl of three or four, Josey trembled at the rush of emotions running through her.

She turned back to Elser. “Who is your liege lord, Elser?”

Josey watched with a child balanced on her hip as the frame of a new barn went up. Ropes creaked and men grunted as the wooden lattice rose to meet the three sides already in place. Villagers with hammers climbed across the framework, pounding in nails to secure it in place.

“What do you think?” Josey asked the child. “Isn't it big?”

Marian, who was only three, smiled shyly around the candy stick in her mouth and buried her face in Josey's shoulder.

“Marian!” her mother cried as peppermint goo smeared across Josey's gown. “I'm sorry, Your Majesty.”

Josey laughed. “It's all right, Tara. Nothing that won't wash out.” She kissed the child's head. “And who could be cross with such a little angel?”

Her mother shook her head. “Angel, is she? Tell me that when she's up before the sun.”

They watched as the men, her soldiers and the villagers together, worked on the barn. In two days, they had rebuilt most of the homes in the village. Without any thatch for the roofs, a squad of her army was carving tiles from excess timber. When they were done, this would be the best-looking village in the empire. A line of people waited in a queue outside the tent Doctor Krav had set up in the square. Josey had been appalled to learn they had no medicine except what they could find for themselves in the wild.

“We can't thank you enough, Majesty,” Tara said as she teased the candy from between Marian's teeth. “If you hadn't come by…” A shadow passed over her face, which was far too worn and tired for a woman barely past twenty. “You've saved us.”

Josey buried her nose in Marian's hair and swallowed the lump in her throat. How many more villages like this one were out there, just weeks or days from starvation? How could she save them all?

A rider maneuvered around the piles of fresh-hewn lumber, coming in her direction. Josey handed the child back to Tara. She'd been expecting word from Lord General Argentus, but she wasn't sure what she wanted to hear anymore. Two days ago she'd been hell-bent for racing north. Now, things looked different. No. I need to find Caim. He needs to know about his child. And… What? Couldn't she admit her selfish motives for this trip? She missed him. Was that a sin?

The rider was one of her officer corps. As he got closer, she recognized his distinctive sleek, blond mustache that flowed down into his goatee.

“Lieutenant Butus. Good afternoon. What news?”

The lieutenant slid down and took off his helmet. Making a quick bow, he said, “Majesty, I've just come from the outer patrols. The fourth squad has spotted a party of armed men to the south, riding hard.”

Armed men on horseback. That sounded exactly like the kind of trouble that had caused the people of this village so much misery. Not again, if she had anything to say about it. “Were they flying a banner?”

“None that the squad could see.”

Josey started to turn. “Cap-!”

Captain Drathan was right behind her. Sweat matted his hair, which actually made him look more attractive.