The soft light that streamed in through the windows gave silver highlights to her hair and revealed cuts to her garments that only could have been made by a sword.
“You’re a Knight,” Shiv stated, trying to draw her out into conversation. “A Solamnic.” She didn’t answer. “That charm a pokin’ out from your shirt,” he continued, gesturing with a finger. “That says you’re a Knight of the Rose.”
Risana fingers fluttered to her neck, finding a gold chain and charm that had worked itself free. She was quick to stuff it under her shirt and tabard.
“A wilted rose,” he said wryly, noting that the sisters were upset at his prying. “And one without any armor. Where’s the rest of your unit?” Any information about other Solamnic Knights in Neraka would be worth something to his employers.
“Dead.”
He raised an eyebrow and clamped his teeth together to stifle a yawn. Shiv desperately needed some sleep.
“All of them dead. Dead and buried.”
Shiv cocked his head to the side, a gesture that encouraged her to continue.
“We were directed to Neraka about a year and a half ago, twenty of us ordered to the foothills just north of the Lords of Doom. We were to meet a Dark Knight commander there, escort him safely out of the country.”
“But…?”
“But we learned too late that the commander didn’t intend to defect. He meant merely to lure Solamnic Knights into Neraka. He must have been disappointed that the council sent only twenty. I guess he expected a small army. Still, he had some measure of triumph, as two of our number were from the council itself.”
“What happened?” This came from the child Jamie. “Were you ambushed?”
A nod.
“But you escaped,” Shiv said. “Obviously.”
“I was the only survivor.” She let out a deep breath, the sound like sand being blown by a hot breeze.
One sister came forward and poured her more broth. “Then don’t mind my asking, and don’t believe we’re not grateful-we are-but why are you here?”
She didn’t answer, and so Shiv pressed, “Why didn’t you join another Solamnic outfit? Why aren’t you…?”
Her doe eyes regarded the disguised assassin, cutting off his words. She ran her thumbs around the lip of the bowl and finally replied. “Elsewhere? I’m not needed elsewhere. I’m needed here.”
Shiv really saw her then-selfless, driven, filled with a determination he had never seen before, and perhaps touched by madness. He finished his broth, his eyes never leaving hers.
“You’re tired.” This came from Wilcher, who hovered at Risana’s shoulder.
“A bit” She smiled slightly. It was die first time Shiv had seen her smile-a smile that melted the coldness in her face.
“Rest here, in my home. As long as you like. Please.”
“I will stay with your wife until…”
“I thank you for helping my grandchildren. I know you can’t help her.” There was a deep sadness in the old man’s eyes. “Ill tend to her alone. You don’t have to sit with her.”
“Yes, I do.”
Two hours later, their vigil was over, and Risana allowed herself an all-too-brief rest before getting up. “I am sorry for you loss, Erl Wilcher,” she said, as she reached for her cloak.
The old man nodded, his eyes filled with tears. “Stay for a while,” he said. “Have dinner. Spend the night.”
She shook her head. “I must be on my way. As you said, there are ill folks in Graespeck, and I’d like to get there before nightfall.”
Wilcher clasped her hands and gestured with his head toward the assassin. “This fella here-”
“Safford,” Shiv stated. “He said he’s going to Graespeck, too.”
“Then I shall have company.”
“Her name is Risana,” the Dark Knight commander told Shiv several weeks earlier. The commander and a half-dozen of his esteemed fellows met with the assassin in a closed banquet hall in Telvan.
“She is concentrating her efforts in the Broken Chain Mountains, and has been for much of the past year from what we’ve gleaned. She heals the sick, traveling from village to village, and she touts the glory of the Solamnic Knighthood. She relies on the witless and the grateful to keep her hidden and to feed her. The villagers will not give her up and will not reveal her contacts. Locating her could be difficult.”
“Not for me.”
The commander’s lips edged upward in a sly grin. “That’s why we sought your services.”
Shiv steepled his fingers. “I am, as you’ve acknowledged, your most expert spy and assassin. And the most expensive. But why send me all this way for just one woman?”
The commander let out a laugh, then instantly sobered. “At first we thought her inconsequential,” he said, eyes flitting to Shiv’s, then finding the assassin’s gaze uncomfortable and looking away. “We have done nothing about her for several months-considering her, as you said, just one woman.”
“At first,” Shiv mused.
“At first. But singlehandedly, she appears to be turning the villagers against us.”
“One woman?”
The commander growled. “We’ve had reports of youths in some of the mountain towns leaving Neraka under her direction to join our enemy. Others are talking against us. She is a blight that must be stopped. Her allies and contacts must be found and eliminated.”
“Why not send an army of Dark Knights to deal with this blight?”
“There can be no hint of Dark Knight involvement. The mountain villages embrace this Solamnic, and we cannot afford to make a martyr of her. That would only make matters worse. No clues can point to us.”
Shiv agreed to the job. They offered him more than enough money-despite the weather.
The assassin followed Risana, glancing over his shoulder to see the people of Keth’s Cradle smiling and waving good-bye. In the space of less than twenty-four hours the “blight” had been thoroughly embraced by the village.
“Graespeck isn’t all that far,” he told her after Keth’s Cradle was out of sight, “but all of this snow makes it seem leagues away.”
Shiv had straightened his back and was no longer pretending to have a clubfoot. Walking behind Risana, he didn’t need to keep up the ruse. However, an hour past sunset they neared her new destination, and he adopted his crippled guise again. They plodded into Graespeck, a place only marginally larger than the previous village. Once again, he watched her go to work.
There was a group of young men in this village who were keenly curious about the woman, tales of whom had obviously preceded her arrival. As she moved from home to home, ministering to those who were stricken with the fever and offering kind words to the elderly, the young men followed her, plying her with questions about the Order of the Rose and about life outside of Neraka. A few made it clear they wanted to be Solamnic Knights.
The blight spreads, Shiv mused, noting, however, that she encouraged no one to join her Order. At least not here. Furthermore, it was clear she had no contacts in this village and that she hadn’t known a single soul here before she arrived.
They spent the night in a log home with one family. Following dinner, they helped shore up a shed that was threatening to collapse, then they slept for a few hours and headed out at first light.
For weeks Shiv accompanied Risana, and not once in that time-despite his many questions-did he hear her mention other Solamnic Knights in Neraka or name villagers who might be in league with her. In that time she never asked why, upon reaching Graespeck, he kept going along with her on her healing missions. In truth, he wasn’t quite sure himself.
She simply seemed to accept his company, enjoying it at times between places where they stopped to rest.
