Merchant and Rider
K arigan knew, of course, exactly why “people” were always trying to marry her off.
She was heir to the chiefdom of Clan G’ladheon, the daughter of a wealthy merchant.
Marry her, and the G’ladheon wealth was theirs.
Edwin Turval had practically salivated as he gazed at her. If only he knew the truth, she thought.
She rubbed her temples again and closed her eyes.
An uneasiness had settled over her that had nothing to do with the Turvals or clan business, like an icy breath on the back of her neck and darkness falling across her vision.
She felt more than heard a whisper laden with murk and rot calling, calling out to that which should remain entombed.
There was a distinct pinching of her Rider brooch and she shivered.
“Are you all right, madam?” Robert asked.
She opened her eye surprised to find herself in the daylit world.
After a moment’s disorientation, she replied, “Yes, yes, I am fine.” She shook off the darkness that was already dissipating like a dream.
“I am just thinking that we have a week to close down this office. You will have to begin without me.”
“I will handle it,” he replied. “Anything else?”
Her relief was immense that she had so capable a helper.
Before she’d become a Green Rider, he’d been her secretary.
But he was much more, a member of the clan who had reliably served her father for years.
When she’d started overseeing clan business in her father’s absence, he’d stepped back into the role.
Loyalty, trustworthiness, and reliability, she had discovered, were not so common traits outside of the messenger service, which made Robert all the more valuable an asset.
She passed him a key across the desk, then took a sip of the tea he’d brought her. The headache still plagued her, but the soothing herbal blend helped.
“That’s the key to the place on Ripley Street,” she told him.
The new office was a considerable downgrade, but they could no longer afford this one as large as it was, and located in a prestigious section of the middle city.
She would have closed down the Sacor City office entirely, leaving only those in Corsa, but she needed someplace to conduct clan business in Sacor City.
Her aunts—her father’s four sisters—would do what they could in Corsa, but they needed her help.
“If I may be so bold,” Robert said, “you are doing very well under the circumstances. In fact, I would say you are a natural, just like your father. I have never understood why you gave up your position to be a messenger.”
She smiled ruefully. “It’s a long story, and perhaps one day I’ll return to the merchanting business full time, but for now, my work as sub-chief is temporary as I must serve the king.”
“I understand.”
But it was clear he did not. Many involved in business could not understand why she’d give up a successful and profitable position to serve as a lowly messenger.
For them, it was more important to achieve personal reward rather than work for a greater purpose.
Joining the Green Riders had been a calling, not a personal choice.
In fact, it had not been a choice at all, but as she had accepted her role as king’s messenger over the years, it had opened her mind to the idea of serving not only her king, but the realm as a whole.
She gazed at the office with all its fine furnishings and decor. It was impressive, but impersonal, and all for show, her father’s way of reinforcing his image as a successful merchant. Then she glanced at the gold-rimmed teacup in her hand and sighed.
“There is one more thing you can do,” she told Robert.
“Yes?”
“See if you can get rid of all the bric-a-brac, including this tea service. Might be able to get a decent price for it.”
“Won’t it displease your father?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think it’s anything that has senti mental value to him.” Her teacup settled onto its saucer with a clink. “Besides, he’s the one who got us into this mess in the first place. We need to bring in any capital we can, any way we can.”
Robert nodded. “I will see what I can do, then.”
It was a faint hope that they’d profit from the sale of the office’s contents.
People were still recovering from the effects of the Darrow Raiders and the war with Second Empire, and times were hard for many.
Maybe some up-and-coming aristocrat would need to furnish his new estate.
In any case, any income at all would benefit the clan’s situation.
“I will just remind you that you are due to go before the guild next week,” Robert said.
Oh, joy, she thought. As if her first audience with the guild’s puffed-up triumvirate had gone so well. She was definitely going to have a few words with her father when he returned.
· · ·
The stallion’s name was Aspen. He was a fine-bred, gaited horse that had testicles for brains.
It did not help he hadn’t been ridden much since her father left for Varos.
She’d sell Aspen, too, but she knew how attached her father was to his horses.
She could, after all, relate, and she couldn’t do that to him.
Besides, for the time being, riding Aspen to manage clan affairs rather than her messenger horse, Condor, helped maintain separation between clan business and the realm’s business.
She was acutely aware of how the intersection of her two lives—merchant and king’s messenger—could arouse suspicion over conflict of interest.
Clan G’ladheon, of course, did business with the realm, primarily supplying the Green Riders with their uniforms and gear.
Her father had done this at no expense to the royal coffers, though more recently Zachary had relaxed taxes on the clan in appreciation of its generosity.
That alone could be construed as favoritism by those wanting to make trouble for Zachary or her father.
It was a relief when the stable came into view, for Aspen had put himself into quite a prancing huff as they worked their way through the late day traffic.
One of the grooms stepped out into the stable yard to take command of the stallion. Fortunately, her father had paid a full year ahead for boarding, and she would not have to come up with the funds to cover it, especially since it was one of the better stables in the city.
“Would you like me to tack up Condor?” the groom asked.
“Yes, please,” she replied, and she hurried across the street to the Wayward Inn where her father had also paid ahead for surprisingly modest, but comfortable, rooms. He might pretend to ostentation to impress those with whom he did business, but his tastes, in truth, tended to be more low key.
The innkeeper gave her a cheery greeting as she dashed up the stairs, and once through the door to her father’s suite of rooms, she headed to the bed chamber.
In the wardrobe hung her change of clothes, a soft linen shirt and loose trousers, and a bulky sweater knitted by her Aunt Stace.
It was much less formal than what she’d worn as a “merchant,” and far more comfortable, the type of attire she ordinarily wore on her rest day.
In her role as merchant, she must look the part of a sub-chief with the finest materials, modern cut, and finely tailored fit.
She carefully hung her neck scarf over a peg in the wardrobe, her fingers slipping along the length of soft silk.
There was a part of her, a darker self, that she drew on to do all she must as she fulfilled her role as sub-chief of a merchant clan.
She could not present herself as the privileged daughter to whom all had been given, and anyone who expected some callow schoolgirl pretending at being the sub-chief must be made to regret their misperception.
She must prove herself the leader of the clan in her father’s absence, pressuring debtors and pushing back collectors of debt.
She must cajole suppliers and seek buyers.
Perhaps most intimidating of all, she had to confront rough longshoremen, caravan guards and drovers, and sailors.
And finally, she must oversee her father’s varied investments in shipping, which were in the hands of shifty brokers who wouldn’t think twice about cheating an innocent.
She disrobed and carefully hung her formal merchant garb in the wardrobe.
The state of affairs in which her father had left the business had proved challenging, to say the least. Their warehouses stood nearly empty with little to trade since he had taken most goods with him to Varos, and an underhanded accountant who, while her aunts were distracted by the illness of their eldest sister, emptied the clan’s coffers and ran off, leaving them nearly in ruin.
As she changed into her comfortable rest day clothes, she thought that if she ever caught up with that accountant, she’d show him no mercy.
She had, in fact, hired a pair of those rough longshoremen to hunt him down.
It was her job to keep the business alive in a time of decrease, when commerce in the realm had been damaged by war and it would take time to recover. Her father would come back soon. He had to. She just had to keep it all going until then.
A shadow stood just outside her peripheral vision.
It was her other self who sometimes appeared to her, the result of a spell cast by an unnatural child named Lala, the granddaughter of Second Empire’s former leader.
Karigan’s other self often encouraged her to embrace her darker inclinations.
It was the side of her that would not show that accountant any mercy.
With all that she contended with, running the business, facing all the obstacles and difficult people, she could see how it could change a person, how one could permanently assume the persona of that other self.
It deepened her appreciation for her father who, despite it all, retained his generous and good nature when the demands of the business could have hardened his heart.
Nor had he succumbed to greed. Many, in fact, benefitted from his generosity, and she hadn’t realized just how much until she closely examined the books.
She closed the wardrobe doors and sighed, ready to make her transition from merchant back to Green Rider.
It was impossible to leave her other self behind, but there was separation.
Attired in ordinary clothes, she felt more herself, could feel the complications of her day and the stress easing.
Being a king’s messenger was, in many ways, less complicated than being the sub-chief of Clan G’ladheon.
Except, she thought, as she skipped down the stairs, her work as a messenger was likely to become more complicated. She believed there was going to be a reckoning where Mornhavon the Black was concerned. She felt it like an ache in her bones.
· · ·
When she returned to Rider stables on the castle grounds, she led Condor into his stall and patted his neck.
She’d put a lot of her frustration into grooming him, giving him a good deep curry and stiff brushing, throwing her muscles into it, until his chestnut hide gleamed.
It was balm for any stress that remained, and he had groaned in contentment as she worked.
He nudged at her coat pocket until she produced half an oatcake that had been the remains of her breakfast. She laughed as he daintily lipped it off her palm and made a show of munching it down. Afterward he nudged her for more.
“Silly horse, that’s all I had.”
He lifted his head just then, ears pricked forward, and gave a full-throated whinny as horses trotted into the stables.
Hep, the stablemaster, whistled and called the horses in, for it was feeding time.
The horses milled in the aisles between stalls and she helped sort them all out.
Then she assisted with feeding, scooping grain into buckets while Hep threw flakes of hay into stalls.
She moved warily around Anna’s mare, Maddie, who watched her with her equally wary single eye, and she took some extra time with Colonel Mapstone’s two geldings, Bluebird and Loon.
The pair ate well enough and were responsive to her words and caresses.
Messengers and their horses formed special bonds, and the horses were able to sense when something was wrong with their Riders.
Loon and Bluebird’s good attitude told Karigan that the colonel must be all right.
After supplying each horse with fresh water, she found Hep staring out into the deepening dusk toward the pasture, a pensive look on his face. Snow whirled in through the open doors around him.
She stood beside him and followed his gaze. Snow alighted on her hair and cheeks. “I don’t think it’ll amount to anything. Ground’s still too warm.”
He grunted but continued to stare outward as if searching for something.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Dunno. Thought...” He shook his head. “Nothing, I guess.”
She pulled her coat closed as a gust of wind sent a cloud of flurries inward. Hep didn’t move.
“Are you sure it’s nothing?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Could’ve sworn there was another horse out there. A youngster, maybe, running and kicking up its heels. I couldn’t quite see it, thought maybe I heard the hooves, but...then nothing.”
“All the horses are accounted for,” Karigan replied, “unless another Rider has arrived.”
“No Riders have come in. Gah, I’m just having a fancy, I guess, with all this snow blowing around.”
He thanked her for her help, then withdrew into the stables to close up. She wondered about his “fancy” as she set off into the flurries. Hep was about as sensible and grounded as anyone she knew, and it was unusual for him to be seeing things.
As she walked along the pasture fence, she thought she heard the plod of hooves. She paused and stared into the pasture, but saw only the snow descending in waves in the quickly diminishing light, and heard only the wind whistling across castle grounds.
Hep’s “fancy,” it would seem, was infectious.