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CHAPTER ONE
KARIS
“Are you even listening, Karis?”
Karis blinks out of his daze and looks over at his friend. “Absolutely not,” he answers, breaking into a laugh. The slight smile lights up his youthful, freckled face, but doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s still distracted by the echoes of another voice inside his head. “Could you repeat it, if it was interesting?”
Stazie rolls her eyes, long accustomed to his attitude. “Everything I say is interesting.” A fellow squire of the Radiant Order, she wears the same sky-blue tunic and undyed trousers he does. Her black hair is pulled back in a tail behind her head. “Especially that I’m going out with Sir Annett to pick up supplies, and you’re stuck here with Sir Bernard on prison watch.”
“Again?” Karis sighs and slumps back against the garden wall. “This is the worst vacation ever.”
All right, so it’s not a vacation. The two of them are currently in the garden courtyard of the Harvest Lord church in Marrick, halfway back to their home in Ostaris. The Radiant Order worships Vara, not Maiza, but the two faiths are friendly with each other. The rest of the paladins in the party are currently talking to the Harvest priests, arranging rooms for themselves.
And for their prisoner.
Karis’s eyes flick towards the enclosed carriage in the center of the churchyard. When he concentrates, he can see gold shimmering around the doors and shuttered windows. Even with the locking magic, two paladins stand constantly at the door.
Ronan Vizia, thief and murderer and heretic, wasn’t easy to find in the first place. The Radiant Order doesn’t intend to let him slip again.
They might not have captured him at all this time if it weren’t for Karis’s scrying magic. But his glorious contributions to the cause haven’t resulted in any benefits. He and Stazie are two of the lucky squires riding along with the party to capture Ronan and bring him to justice for crimes against the order. Karis hadn’t expected a lot of leisure time, but this trip has been his first chance to leave the Bright Cathedral since he joined the Radiant Order nearly a year ago. Especially after catching Ronan, he thought he would have chances to explore the towns they passed through. Maybe even talk to people who aren’t also in the order. Instead, every bit of downtime has tied him down with dinner shifts, horse duty, and guard duty.
He never gets sent out to pick up supplies like Stazie and Annett. It’s getting to the point where the different treatment seems intentional, and he doesn’t want to ask why.
“Aw, I’ll bring you back something nice, kiddo.” Stazie pats his arm faux-reassuringly. “Candy? A toy?”
“Ribbons for my hair?” Karis says shamelessly, looping an arm around her shoulders.
She laughs and pushes him away to go meet up with Annett. Karis leans back against the churchyard wall, out of sight and out of mind for the moment, and lets his mind drift again.
Late afternoon sunlight paints the chapel garden in gold, lighting up the fragrant pink blossoms and perfectly pruned citrus trees. At the head of the courtyard stands the church; to the right is a stable, and to the left a row of barracks for the Harvest priests and guests. A statue of the Harvest Lord stands enclosed in a small pond nearby. Though there’s no room for a sprawling orchard in the middle of the city, there’s enough fruit and flowers for worship. But it’s not Lord Maiza’s voice that whispers in his heart.
Karis—tonight—
“Karis!”
His eyes snap open, and he runs a hand through his hair. Interrupted again. He peels off the wall and joins Bernard near the center of the churchyard. The man is stocky, with an unnecessarily billowing cloak and his hair pulled back in a fairly silly bun.
“There you are,” he says when Karis reaches him. “Don’t run off.”
Karis doesn’t point out that he was thirty feet away at most. The constant supervision is really starting to grate, but he doesn’t think it’ll get any better if he complains. “Did you need me for something, sir?”
“Scry out Captain Tanner and see how close she is. They’ve been moving faster than us, and it might be better to wait here for her before we press on to Ostaris.”
“Yes, sir,” Karis answers lazily, touching the gold and lapis stud in his left earlobe. He closes his eyes, so nobody will see anything strange, and searches for the captain’s presence.
Show me Captain Tanner,he thinks. And in an easy blink, he sees her, with the small group she took on another task, riding through familiar terrain. He recognizes a fork in the road, a feeling in the trees, from two days ago. A few seconds after the vision clears, he opens his eyes and drops his hand from his earring.
He doesn’t actually need a focus object to work magic, but he can’t let anyone else know that.
Most paladins of the Radiant Order are ordinary people who only gain magic when they complete their training and form a contract with Vara, the god of sunlight, sight, and truth. Their golden pendants are the catalyst for their borrowed powers.
Then there are people who were born with an affinity for magic. They might stay minor hedgewitches forever, or they might bind themselves to a god or demon to access higher powers. Either way, they still need symbols, herbs, gems, or other catalysts to channel raw power into controllable spells.
Karis has never met anyone else who didn’t need a catalyst, and he learned long ago to keep his differences a secret.
“They’re two days north of here,” he tells Bernard. “Probably one day, actually, at their pace.”
