Abandoned by the Duke, I'm the Divine Seraph novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Snow Law

Riders try to finish Rowan in the snow; the Duke offers Linnet back for the fugitive mage and the stone, and Rowan takes the deal.

The riders came before the snow had covered my footprints.

I heard them first, five horses on the road from the gate, going at a canter.

They carried lanterns, and they did not call out.

I knew the sound of that kind of quiet.

Men who meant to bring you home shouted your name.

Men who meant to finish you kept their mouths shut.

I rolled into the ditch beside the road and lay flat under a thorn hedge.

My ribs screamed, and my left eye had swollen shut.

The locket on my chest had gone cool again, but it still felt like a held breath.

The lead rider drew up ten paces from me.

I saw his face in the lantern light.

He was one of Leofric's friends, a sandy young man named for a family I'd carried water for since I was nine.

"He can't have gone far," he said. "He's half dead."

"Master Leofric wants him dead all the way," said another.

"The wolves will say they did it."

I felt around in the snow with my right hand.

My fingers closed on wood.

It was a pitchfork, left against the hedge by some farmhand before the storm.

One tine was bent, and the handle was good ash.

I had pitched hay with a fork like it every morning for twelve years.

I waited until the first horse stepped past me.

Then I came up out of the ditch and drove the handle into the rider's belly.

He folded over his saddle with a grunt.

I dragged him down by the leg, and he hit the road hard.

The horse reared, and the others cursed.

"There! In the hedge!"

A sword came down.

I took it on the ash handle and felt it bite halfway through.

I twisted, and the blade stuck.

I kicked the swordsman off his horse, grabbed his wrist, and slammed his hand against a milestone until he let go.

Two of them were down.

Three were left, and one of them had a crossbow.

I ran for the horse that had bolted, caught the trailing reins and swung up.

A bolt hit the saddle beside my thigh.

I got my heels into its ribs and went down the road at a gallop, bent over its neck.

They followed for a mile.

Then the road forked at a stone cross, and I took the left branch into the trees.

The wind took the lanterns away.

When I finally stopped, I was on the bank of a frozen stream with a stolen horse blowing under me.

I slid off, shaking.

My hand had gone numb around the reins.

I looked down and saw blood on the snow.

Most of it was mine.

I did not know what I was going to do.

I had no coat, no coin, no bed and no name.

I had my sister behind a wall I could never climb alone.

I pressed my forehead against the horse's warm neck, and I stayed there a long while.

Hoofbeats again, but only one rider this time.

I drew the broken sword from my belt and turned.

A man in the Duke's grey cloak came out of the trees with his hands held open.

He was the Duke's herald, fat and cold, with a ledger tucked under his arm.

"Put it down, boy," he said. "His Grace sends a message, and he is willing to be generous."

"I'll hear it from his own mouth."

"You'll hear it from mine, or not at all."

He took a folded paper from his sleeve and read from it without looking up.

"The court mage, Ilsabet Corvane, has stolen a black glass stone from the Duke's strongroom."

"Whoever brings her and the stone to Greywall Fortress within thirty days will have the Duke's thanks."

"Your sister will be returned to you unharmed."

"And if I don't?"

"Then she remains a mage-ward for the rest of her natural life."

He folded the paper.

"His Grace also notes that you are the only man in Thornfield with nothing to lose."

I stood in the snow with the broken sword in my hand.

I thought of Linnet's face in the Rite Hall.

I thought of the court mage, who had walked past me in the corridors for seven years and never once looked at my face.

"Where would she go?" I said.

The herald let out a thin smile.

"Her wards were last seen burning on the north road, toward the mills."

"I'll bring her to Greywall," I said.

He tossed me a purse.

It was light, but it was coin.

"Thirty days," he said. "Not thirty-one."

When he rode off, I stood there a long time with the purse in one hand.

Then I put the broken sword in my belt and turned the stolen horse north.

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