He landed outside the door and let his screen fade. Getting ready shouldn’t take long. He could pack everything he owned in five minutes. Two minutes later he had a change of clothes, a spare set of boots and his curved dagger tucked away in his rucksack. His sword he strapped to his back then covered it with a heavy fur cloak. He wore both for appearances rather than need. Damien glanced in the mirror and nodded. He looked like a proper bodyguard.
“Where are you going?”
Damien spun to face the door and found Karrie standing there, arms crossed and frowning. He’d been visible for two minutes. How had she found him? “I’ve got a mission, guard duty for the archmage’s daughter. Your father knows about it.”
Her frown deepened. “He didn’t say anything to me. I know Lane Thorn. She’s very pretty. I suppose you prefer spending time with older girls.”
Damien would have preferred spending time with Lizzy, who had existed since the dawn of time, so he supposed that made her an older girl. Lane, on the other hand, appeared to hate him on principle. He doubted it would be an especially pleasant trip. “Guarding Lane is a job, and I assure you she hasn’t the slightest interest in me, nor do I have any in her, beyond keeping her safe. We have a task to complete. When it’s finished we’ll come back, so relax.”
Her frown softened. “I don’t like you hanging around with another girl, but I suppose it is your job. See that you keep it professional. We’ll continue our conversation when you return.”
Karrie turned in a swirl of silk skirts and sauntered down the hall back toward the royal residence. Damien wanted badly to shout at her back that she wasn’t his girlfriend and it was none of her business who he spent time with, but she might come back if he did, so he held his peace.
Damien retraced his steps back to the stable and found Lane sitting in her saddle, reins held in one hand, the lead of an overloaded mule in the other. “Ready?”
Damien nodded and started to conjure a mount.
“What are you doing?” Lane’s disagreeable voice stopped him halfway through the process. “You’re posing as a regular bodyguard, remember? No sorcery; you ride the same as me.”
He grimaced, both at her patronizing tone and the idea of having to ride a bouncing, jostling, uncomfortable horse for ten weeks. A stable boy led a saddled roan mare out of the long building. Damien accepted the reins, nodded his thanks, and checked the saddle straps. Everything looked good and tight.
He hung his rucksack from the pommel and swung up into the saddle. “Satisfied?”
“Hardly.” She clucked her tongue and led the way toward the outer gate.
Damien tapped his mount’s ribs and followed her. This was going to be a long trip.
Chapter 6
Damien figured they managed fifteen miles before the sun dropped so low in the sky that they had to stop and make camp. The roads this close to the capital had little snow to bother them, the tread of hundreds of horses and wagons having stomped it down to nothing. Damien appreciated that almost as much as he appreciated the invisible soul force pad he’d conjured between him and his mare. Lane couldn’t see it and what she didn’t know about she couldn’t yell at him for.
She led them off the road into a caravan cutout, a little open patch where travelers could make camp. The clearing could accommodate ten wagons and fifty people, so the two of them and their three animals made little impression.
Six inches of fresh snow covered the ground. No one had used this cutout for a week or two at least. The ring of stone surrounding the fire pit looked like a circle of miniature snowmen.
“Do you want to tend the horses or clear off a spot for us to sleep and start a fire?” Lane asked.
“I’m good with either.” It surprised him that she’d bothered to ask what he wanted instead of just giving him his marching orders.
“I’ll take the horses.”
Lane dismounted and he joined her, passing his reins over. She led the animals to a small clump of pasture pine at the edge of the cutout. Damien kicked around through the snow like he was using his feet to clear it off. Beside him an invisible broom ten times the size of a normal one brushed the ground clear in a couple of minutes.
Damien left the now-clear campsite and went to join Lane by the trees. Maybe he could find some dry branches to get a fire going. When he arrived she had the horses unsaddled and was busy rubbing his mare down. She looked up as he approached; she must have heard him tromping through the snow.
“What?” She sounded mad. The woman sure carried a lot of anger.
Damien held his hands up in surrender. “I’m just looking for firewood. Unless you’d rather eat a cold dinner and freeze tonight.”
She mumbled something and went back to rubbing his mare.
“What?”
Lane looked back up. “I said, I’m sorry. I’m not really mad at you, I’m mad at Mom for assigning a sorcerer as my bodyguard. She knows I don’t like being around people like you.”
Damien chuckled and kicked through the snow, looking for fallen branches. He picked up a few and when he straightened Lane stood three feet away, hands on hips. “What’s so damn funny?”
“You. You and everyone else. They all want to define me by my soul force. Dad’s disappointed because I’m a sorcerer and not a warlord. Most of the other sorcerers don’t want anything to do with me because of how dense my soul force is. And it’s the only reason your mother took me on as an apprentice, despite knowing nothing else about me. There’s more to me than my power, you know.”
Now it
