Jonathan looked at Rowen and shrugged, his eyes wide. “Sir, I must ask…”
“Speak your mind, Jonathan.”
“Where are the regular grooms and attendants today? Usually there are at least two young men here standing guard…”
“Oh. That. Yes. It was quite unfortunate. Some sudden confusion with the schedule occurred. Quite suddenly, in fact. It would seem they all have the belief they have the day off.”
“Ah,” Jonathan said, giving Rowen a glance just before he stepped inside the stall himself. “Yes. How unfortunate.”
With both Ransom and Silver saddled, they made their way from the barn and out into the widening light of day. “At a trot?” Rowen asked over his shoulder to Jonathan.
“I do believe we must at least go at a trot, young sir. Unless you intend us to only be taken in for horse theft and not for the additional charge of attempted murder…”
“I think it is time to indulge in Father’s advice. What was it he said?” Rowen asked, tipping his head up. Sunlight streaked across his rough cheek and made the stubble glow like molten gold. “Why go halfways about something?” He grinned at Jonathan.
“He also has been known to say that a day spent reading indoors is the finest way to pass one’s time. Are you certain you wouldn’t yet choose that over the other?”
Rowen winked and pushed his heels into Ransom’s sides, sending him shooting forward with a snort.
Chapter Twelve
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around.
—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
The boy waved the newspaper like someone swatting flies. “Frost Giant strikes again!” he shouted. “House Vanmoer’s roses die just outside their estate gates! When will the madness end? Read more in today’s
The dark-haired man shuffled over to the boy and looked down his nose at him. “Here,” he said, pulling out some coins. “I’ll take a copy.”
The boy snatched his money and thrust a folded paper into his chest, shouting his sales pitch all the while.
“Do they know what this Frost Giant fellow looks like?” Marion asked, unfolding the paper and giving it a shake to straighten it out better.
The kid shrugged. “No idea. I think he’s a myth, meself,” he confided. “The government trying to stir things up and distract us from the real issues—it being an election year and all. Get your copy here! Know the news before your friends! Be the one with all the answers!”
“Ah. I had forgotten. An election year…”
The kid scrunched up his face. “Yeah … what rock have you been living under?”
“No rock. Why would the government do that? Make trouble that makes news?”
“So they can pin it on some poor Ninth Classer, clear the books of yet another crime, and better prove the incumbents deserve reelection.”
Marion nodded sagely. “An intriguing idea.”
“It’s not just an idea—it happens all the time. Just open your eyes.”
Marion grumbled assent. “Pity about the roses.”
“Really?” The boy blinked at him. “Lady Vanmoer’s one hard-nosed bitch, you ask me. Never tips for delivery, never has a polite word for anyone. I wish they’d gotten her prize roses, too. The ones inside the gate.”
Marion straightened a little.
“The Festival of Flowers is coming up shortly. It would be a bitter pill to swallow if the repeat grand champion can’t even enter…”
“Ironic, yes,” Marion agreed, refolding his paper to tuck beneath his arm. “Here,” he said, withdrawing another coin to give to the boy. “A tip from someone completely unlike Lady Vanmoer.”
The boy grinned and pocketed the tip gladly. “See, you’re the type who should be leading this country of ours—you’re a right good chap, you are!”
Marion just ducked his head and, lengthening his stride, sought out the quiet of a public seat in the park to be alone with his newspaper. And his thoughts.
A leader of the country? He very nearly laughed at the idea.
Very nearly.
There was a thickness to the atmosphere—a particular way the air clung to a body in Holgate. Moisture rested like dew, sparkling on the worn and rounded stones of the compound’s outer wall and dripping in wandering streaks into moss and spongy grasses growing along the wall’s base.
A black slime had begun to film over the stonework of the main bridge and water hissed along the wagon’s wheels as they made their way over the narrowest part of the lake by which Holgate sat.
The Tester sat atop the carriage with the driver, his head moving from side to side as he examined the compound he had ventured out from only a few days before. Even the Wraiths clinging to the carriage’s corners straightened as the horses whisked them underneath the arching entranceway.
Within the walled sanctuary of Holgate they removed their hats and Jordan jumped, seeing the way the light gleamed along their ragged-looking heads and made the remaining wisps of silver hair glimmer. They never bothered to tug their hats back into place. In Holgate there was no flinch, no fear.
The Wraiths were home.
The carriage came to a stop in a courtyard of sorts, modest storefronts and houses running parallel to the wall’s interior and then hopping narrow streets and alleyways to form blocks of businesses and residences. It was far smaller a space than Philadelphia’s Hill, Jordan noted, and cramped, but it was also an area someone could easily get lost in.
Ahead of them the Wraiths leaped from their perches on the carriage’s corners and pulled wide the carriage doors for the Councilman. A step slid out from the carriage’s belly and the Councilman, Lord Stevenson, descended onto the cobblestone street. He tugged out a handkerchief and held it to his nose as the Tester climbed down from beside the driver.
“Do you smell it?” he asked the taller man.
The Tester nodded. “Someone is Drawing Down without repercussions and making the walls weep.”
“I can very nearly wring water from my handkerchief just by exposing it to the air,” Stevenson complained. “And the lake. The lake is low.”
The Tester nodded slowly, turning to look at the imposing building in the compound’s center with its broad walls and sweeping height.
Jordan counted a miraculous sixteen stories, including a tower that threatened to punch a hole in the sky pulling up high above even those.
“I’d rather the lake be low,” the Tester said with a wary look back the way they had come, “than overflow and mingle with a high storm surge. We would be at their mercy…” He signaled to the gatekeeper and he signaled to another man who released a large handle on a spinning mechanism. There was an awful grating of metal skimming stone as a portcullis was lowered to lock them all inside Holgate.
Stevenson smiled. “The Merrow would never make it this far up. And the other Wildkin are so disorganized
