The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) Read online

  Stumbling to his feet that had fallen asleep, Ian hurried after her.

  “Good morning, Private Kanters,” she acknowledged, trying to smile a little.

  “Good morning, milady,” he said. “Did you enjoy the captain’s service?”

  “It was fine.”

  “Ah,” he said, “did you come to any particular ideas from it?”

  “No,” Elizabeth looked at him. “Will you be bent on following me, private?”

  “Escorting I think is the better word,” Ian tried smiling, but let it fade when there was a lack of encouraging expression from her. “It is yours to decide, milady. I will go or remain, whichever serves your pleasure best.”

  “I am only going to be reading,” Elizabeth said, “I wouldn’t wish to bore you.”

  Ian nodded, taking the hint. “We should know though where you and your family are. Have you seen your sister?”

  Her face changed. “Who would care?”

  Ian stopped and let her continue on. He watched her go distractedly for a moment, vaguely noting which direction she was headed, vaguely noting her. It was difficult to say what she might be so angry at—an argument?

  Making a gradual loop back to where he had started, he found Rory much as he left him. Though it seemed like Rory’s gun was in an even worse state of disassembly every time Ian looked. Ian watched him for a few minutes, deciding that his second looked as though he knew his Allen rifle better than Ian, at least for the time being. Rory’s hands moved with an unhurried surety, his eyes carefully turning each piece he handled over and over with rapt attention.

  Corporal Hanley walked toward them.

  “We need to get the company back together here,” Ellis said, distractedly. “Corporal Wesshire left a bit ago down that way, would one of you fetch him?”

  Ian didn’t even need to glance down at Rory and the present deconstruction of his second man’s best friend. “I’ll go.”

  Ellis nodded his thanks, and Ian started off the way that Wesshire had gone. It was mostly parallel to the Mombosso, arcing just a little to the south so that the river and its rocks gradually fell away from him. There were more sharply contained hills, and upon climbing the third or so and having a good view of the vicinity, Ian was a bit surprised to find that he couldn’t see signs of anyone. Going by his lack of anything besides a general direction, he might have had cause for concern, but he reasoned that the terrain was plenty open enough. He would find sight of Wesshire.

  With his hands in his pockets, Ian kept to an easy walk. Ellis had seemed harried, and the captain no doubt wanted them all back together—probably to get ready to break camp and leave in a few hours, but Ian thought they had plenty of time. And so he thought a great deal as he went along, about the week they would have beyond the river, about the captain’s church service, and how exactly he would have wanted Christians like Kieran and Brodie to respond to it. None of the starts of conclusions he came to were happy ones, but his mood remained mostly apathetic. He was tired of being upset over it and just tired of it in general.

  His eyes continued to scan the grassland and nearby river area as he thought, something he thought he was rather good at, even when entrenched in other thoughts. He watched just as much for Corporal Wesshire as he did for any potential wildlife. Thoughts of red lions, and whether they would actually get to see any of them on this excursion, were just going through his mind when he came over a smaller hill that gave way to a slight valley beneath, which in turn rose back up to meet the Mombosso to the north. Almost immediately after noticing this, he caught sight of Bevish red. Adjusting his course slightly, he looked a little closer and saw that Corporal Wesshire seemed to be at a small stream that ran off from the Mombosso river. And after that he noticed the bits of mixed blue of a noble daughter’s dress, topped with red.

  This was made him pause for a moment, watching the moderately distant colors and wondering if he was seeing things. By the time he remembered that he could use yeoman to verify it, he realized that there was no reason why he should be seeing things. It was far more plausible that it was merely Corporal Wesshire along with Madeline Wester, as unfathomable as that had previously been to Ian.

  “What is he doing?” Ian asked himself as he started down the rise toward them.

  It made Ian angry to think of how prone the corporal evidently was to taking the margrave’s daughters off alone. In another setting, he might have worried about kidnapping when a lady was escorted by herself, but there was nowhere to go out here that the rest of the company wouldn’t be able to run them down. And of course, Maddy was as safe with Corporal Wesshire from external threats as she would be with any other person, but it was still bad form. He would never let any of his daughters go off alone in the wilderness with any soldier.

  It took a few minutes for Ian to near them, and as he approached he saw that Maddy was wading in the shallow stream, Corporal Wesshire sitting on the ground beside it. He had turned more than once since Ian had first seen him, probably having previously spotted Ian some ways off.

  “They’re so slippery—” Maddy was saying, her face roving over the water. “But I suppose they wouldn’t be able to stay away from the birds if they weren’t.”

  Corporal Wesshire said something that Ian didn’t catch.

  “That’s all right,” Maddy said, “I think I can get this one—it’s really long looking. I do this sort of thing all the time on Gower, though we don’t have any valuable animals like this. There isn’t much interesting water life at our home, mostly just boring algae and latch plants. Here I go—are you ready?”

  “Of course,” Ian heard Arran say. “And it will be just in time for Private Kanters to witness.”

  “Wait—” Maddy said, her eyes up in the air as she moved her hands beneath the water that Ian could now see came maybe halfway up her calves.

  “Just in time for what?” Ian asked politely as he came alongside Corporal Wesshire, who only smiled a little.

  Maddy made a sudden surprised noise, and half-fell, half-lunged forward through the water, even into the bottom of her dress. As Ian watched though, she recovered herself, pulling back from the water something that didn’t easily want to be pulled. Gradually, after a couple seconds of that, more and more of the thing was eased from the water, until it suddenly gave with a small plopping sound beneath the water.

  “Ha!” Maddy said, holding it up with an expression that was full of glowing. “That’s the biggest one yet.”

  “It is indeed,” Corporal Wesshire said, “but that can be deceptive. It is only the contents that matter.”

  Splashing out of the water, Maddy brought the animal—or at least Ian assumed it was an animal—to the shore and laid it out on the grass, where it weakly lay twitching and moving. Getting a little closer and squatting down, he saw that it didn’t appear that much different up close. It was a smooth, dark brown color, with no definite shape but a length of maybe two feet divided haphazardly into several pod-like appendages.

  As he watched, the daughter of the nobleman reached into an apparent opening on one of its thicker limbs, moving her hands around before grasping something. Her eyes were focused hard on the thing, and her mouth open a little as she worked, but another second and she pulled back hard. To Ian’s surprise she nearly pulled the creature inside out. Its inside skin was a much lighter tan than the outside. Having pulled most of it outside of itself, the small, hand-sized item she had it by became visible.

  “Will it die?” Ian asked.

  “Of course not,” Maddy calmly said as she took a small metal worker and applied it at the tight crevice of the object, “all this skin and material isn’t alive. The muscle just grows it. We’ll put it back. There,” she whispered, “I have it.”

  The worker she turned made a slight snapping sound as the membrane lining the muscle came apart. Gingerly working it the rest of the way, she turned the enclosure over. Ian saw the sunlight catch something small that rolled in her hand.

  Letti
ng the muscle go, she stood up as it collapsed and slowly began to pull back inside itself. Maddy had a smug look as she surveyed them and walked over to Wesshire.

  “Well?” she asked, opening her hand in front of him.

  Ian stepped closer and saw a small pearl on her palm. Only it wasn’t white or creamy like the pearls he’d seen in Wilome, but bright orange, in a way that caught and held the sunlight. Upon a more careful look, he saw that the orange coloring ran through just one small bit of a side and through the middle, the rest being covered by a duller blue.

  “What is it?” Ian asked.

  “Um,” Maddy paused, thinking, “a Sheyl-nah—tas?”

  “Tos,” Arran corrected.

  “A Sheyl-nah-tos,” Maddy said more confidently. “That’s what the Chax call them. But the Dervish traders call them fire pearls. See?” She reached for a cloth beside Corporal Wesshire. Unfolding it revealed maybe a half dozen other small pearls. “The muscles eat tiny plants in the river water, but when pieces of rock get stuck in them, they get coated and slowly turn into pearls. Most of them don’t form right, like these.” She pointed to four of the pearls, which were a dull gray color and pebble sized. “How much are these worth?’

  “Ten shillings,” Corporal Wesshire said, “if sold correctly.”

  “Right, not very much,” Madeline said.

  Who is she talking to? Ian wondered.

  “But these ones are real pearls,” Maddy indicated the other two pearls on the cloth, “they’re just not all the way done yet. See? The orange has barely started inside, but these are still valuable. You didn’t say how much for these.”

  “That is because it is very difficult to say,” Wesshire said, picking one up and rolling it between his fingers. “It would all be determined on the various factors of each specimen’s quality. And that can only be determined with special equipment.”

  “But at least thirty sovereigns, right?” Maddy asked.

  “Very likely,” Arran said.

  “That’s a lot of money,” Ian said, crouching down for a closer look. “But what about this one?”

  Maddy grinned, holding the pearl she had just retrieved, her other hand tightly holding the back of her palm. “This is a real fire pearl. It didn’t look like I was going to be able to find a real one, but look at it! I’ve never seen one this bright, it must be worth at least a hundred sovereigns.”

  “Possibly,” Arran said, “possibly more.”

  Maddy laughed, standing up with it tightly clenched in her fist. “Just wait until Elizabeth sees it. I told her she should have come.”

  Ian frowned, looking over at Corporal Wesshire, who was watching Maddy without expression.

  “We need to get back to camp though,” Ian said.

  “Aw,” Maddy whined as she slid the sluggish muscle back into the river, “already? But we’ve barely been here an hour.”

  “I think we might be breaking camp soon,” Ian said.

  “I don’t see why we can’t just stay by the river,” Maddy said, “there’s plenty of animals around here, and it’s the best place to stay.”

  “The decision is your father’s,” Ian said as he clasped his hands behind his back.

  Corporal Wesshire also stood, although not all that hurriedly.

  “You’re no fun,” Maddy said, looking at her pearl in her hand again.

  Ian blinked. That was awfully unfair, he—

  “So will you divide the pearls up?” Ian said instead.

  “What?” Maddy asked, looking at him again.

  “Will both of you divide them up between yourselves?” Ian asked. “That would only be fair since you didn’t know about them before Corporal Wesshire told you, did you?”

  “No,” Maddy said, putting her hands on her hips. “Don’t be so rude, that’s none of your concern.”

  “Such things are of little consequence,” Corporal Wesshire said, smiling easily, “it would be an honor if you would keep whatever you wish. It was your skill that provided them.”

  “Well,” Maddy said, her expression pacified, “I only really want this one. And not to sell either. Just to keep.”

  “You may have all of them to keep,” Corporal Wesshire said.

  “No,” Maddy said, glancing at Ian, “you can have all the rest. You brought me here to them. I really do appreciate it, this was so much fun. Keep them. I want you to.”

  Corporal Wesshire hesitated, and then carefully folded the other pearls into the cloth. “Very well. But only for the moment. They are yours whenever you would ask.”

  “Right,” Ian said, trying not to feel like he had any right to any of them. Because he didn’t, but he couldn’t help but imagine how much even fifty sovereigns would buy for his mother. But they didn’t know about that, and couldn’t. “We better head back then.”

  Maddy looked at him and then the ground, as though remembering that they did actually have to go back. “All right,” she said quietly, an unhappy look passing over her eyes. But then she saw that Ian was looking at her and re-brightened. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

  Ian nodded as she started back the way they’d come. Corporal Wesshire started past him as well, but Ian motioned for him to stop for a moment.

  “What is it, private?” Corporal Wesshire asked, with all the coldness that Ian thought had seemed largely absent.

  “May I ask you something?” Ian asked, more to stall a second more as he turned his back to Maddy and kept his voice low.

  Corporal Wesshire shifted his head to the other side in an annoyed manner.

  “You had—have all of Elizabeth Wester’s attention,” Ian said, frowning as he tried to gauge the reaction—any reaction in the other’s face, “what are you doing here with this one?”

  “Your concern for such things is questionable,” Corporal Wesshire said, and Ian thought he was going to leave it at that.

  Arran’s face coalesced into a hard line. “But I know a cold one when I see her.”

  And with that, Wesshire stepped smoothly around Ian and back toward camp.

  Turning, Ian saw the margrave’s daughter well ahead and Corporal Wesshire lingering after her. Ian watched them go for several long moments, frowning hard before he followed.

  * * * *

  They broke camp just after noon and crossed the Mombosso soon after at a series of shallows a couple miles east of their camp, not far past the lake. The brisa were plenty tall to manage it once the Chax had secured all of the packs above the water, and the margrave and his daughters simply rode atop them without mishap. That left Ian’s company to wade through the river, just up to their chests, holding their rifles above their heads. It was an odd sensation, the top half of him being well exposed to Orinoco’s sun without a regulator, and his bottom half in the river. It only took a couple hours before he was as dry again as if it had never happened, and they left their camp in much the same way.

  Chapter 16

  “Don’t you know, Your Excellency? The greatest legacies are established in three generations of success. The first man begins. The next generation solidifies greatness, and in the third it becomes a light forever. In Drosica, music; in Kees, philosophy; and always in ruling dynasties. Therefore, a sovereign must have his eyes always on the future, as you well know, My Excellency.”

  —Addison Neals

  He had never really stopped watching Corporal Wesshire, but now there was something more personal in it. While Ian didn’t necessarily know any of the details of the corporal’s motivations, Ian had never had any problem understanding him, in harmonizing his actions with his character.

  The corporal did speak twice more with Madeline Wester that Ian saw and none further with Elizabeth. The conversation, however, seemed very casual, and the corporal did not seem to pursue being alone with either daughter any further.

  Be that as it may, it was still very much a problem of some considerable vexation to Ian, as it very clearly had happened, even if nothing further was to come of it. It di
dn’t make sense, had no apparent reasonable answer. Why would Corporal Wesshire show any interest in the younger daughter when the older one was eager for his attentions and seemingly superior in every way?

  So he began to compare them whenever they were together. It was an easy task, one that Ian didn’t mind taking on for the sake of purely academic interests. On the one hand, Madeline Wester wasn’t visually off-putting, but Elizabeth was very easily the very exact opposite of off-putting. It was easy to forget the effects of a beautiful woman when one wasn’t around one. However, when such a woman was readily at hand for observation, the effect was tangible, constant, and very pleasing. Affecting in a way that moved all the senses, the layers in a person. Perhaps it was more the way she moved, held herself than the blunter elements, but it was a pitched match between both.

  Maddy was of course more lively in disposition than Elizabeth, but that also came with the caveat that she was far more vocal with her feelings, which were usually displeased, in all of its many varieties that she was adept at manifesting.

  They both were very intelligent, and while Maddy would certainly seem to always be talking about her various aptitudes, Elizabeth was far more modest with them. And for that, Ian thought she was far more the prudent and wiser in many more respects.

  Perhaps—Ian thought, trying to be fair, as it seemed somewhat down-putting to disqualify Maddy in every category—Maddy is on the whole friendlier. Perhaps. Instinctively, Ian felt like Elizabeth was far more reserved, but she had generally been very friendly with them. Generous even, given the large gap between their classes. At least she had been before Maddy had come. Even at the meals now, when she had the most chance at being friendly, she had taken to being coldly drug along by Maddy, eating off alone whenever she could manage it.

  They had all been warmer before Maddy had come, Ian thought.

  “They are incredible though,” Ian said to Rory, at the next evening’s dinner, after another sharp, pealing whine came from the distant edge of their camp from the youngest daughter’s pets—wyverns.