A Song for Orphans. Морган Райс

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      “What woman?” Sebastian said.

      The other man wasn’t looking at him now though. If anything, it looked as though he was half drifting back to sleep. Sebastian caught hold of him, half holding him up, half shaking him awake.

      “What woman?” he repeated.

      “There was something… a red-haired woman, on a cart.”

      “That’s her!” Sebastian said, his excitement getting the better of him in that moment. “Was this a few days ago?”

      The drunk took his time considering it. “I don’t know. Could be. What day is it?”

      Sebastian ignored that. It was enough that he’d found the clue Sophia had left for him. “The woman… that’s Sophia. Where did she go? What was her message?”

      He gave the drunk another shake as he started to drift off again, and Sebastian had to admit that it was at least partly from frustration. He needed to know what message Sophia had left with this man.

      Why him? Had there been no one else Sophia could leave her message with? Looking at the man he was all but holding up, Sebastian knew the answer to that: she’d been sure that Sebastian would run into him, because she’d guessed that he wouldn’t be going anywhere. He’d been the best way to get a message to Sebastian if he followed.

      Which meant that she wanted him to follow. She wanted him to be able to find her. Just the thought of it was enough to lift Sebastian’s heart, because it meant that Sophia might be prepared to forgive all that he’d done to her. She wouldn’t provide him with a way to follow her if she didn’t see a way for them to be together again, would she?

      “What was the message?” Sebastian repeated.

      “She gave me money,” the man said. “Said to say that… damn, I know I remembered it…”

      “Think,” Sebastian said. “It’s important.”

      “She said to tell you that she’d gone off to Barriston!” the drunk said with a note of triumph. “Said to say that I’d seen it with my own eyes.”

      “Barriston?” Sebastian asked, eyeing the sign at the crossroads. “You’re certain?”

      The town didn’t seem like a place that Sophia had any reason to go to, but maybe that was the point, given that she had been running. It was a provincial kind of town, without the size or the population of Ashton, but it had some wealth thanks to its glove industry. Perhaps it was as good a place as any for Sophia to go.

      The other man nodded, and that was enough for Sebastian. If Sophia had left him a message, then it didn’t matter who she had chosen to deliver it for her. What mattered was that he’d gotten her message, and he knew which way to go to follow her. As thanks, Sebastian tossed the man by the crossroads a coin from his belt pouch, then rushed to mount his horse.

      He steered the creature west, heeling it forward as he set off in the direction of Barriston. It would take time to get there, but he would push as hard as he dared on the way. He would catch up to her there, or maybe he would even overtake her on the road. Either way, he would find her, and they would be together.

      “I’m coming, Sophia,” he promised, while around him, the landscape of the Ridings sped by. Now that he knew she wanted to be found, he would do anything he had to do to catch up to her.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Dowager Queen Mary of the House of Flamberg stood in the middle of her gardens, lifting a white rose to her nose and taking in the delicate scent. She had become good at masking her impatience over the years, and where her eldest son was concerned, impatience was an emotion that came to her far too readily.

      “What is this rose?” she asked one of the gardeners.

      “A variety created by one of our indentured gardeners,” the man said. “She calls it the Bright Star.”

      “Congratulate her on it and inform her that from now on it will be known as the Dowager’s Star,” the queen said. It was both a compliment and a reminder to the gardener that those who owned the indentured’s debt could do as they wished with her creations. It was the kind of double-sided move the Dowager enjoyed for its efficiency.

      She’d become good at making them too. After the civil wars, it would have been so easy to slide into powerlessness. Instead, she’d found the balancing points between the Assembly of Nobles and the Masked Goddess’s church, the unwashed masses and the merchants. She’d done it with intelligence, ruthlessness, and patience.

      Even patience had its limits, though.

      “Before you do that,” the Dowager said, “kindly drag my son out of whatever brothel he is ensconced in and remind him that his queen is waiting for him.”

      The Dowager stood by a sundial, watching the shift of the shadow as she waited for the wastrel who stood as heir to the kingdom. It had moved a full finger’s breadth by the time she heard Rupert’s footsteps approaching.

      “I must be going senile in my old age,” the Dowager said, “because I’m obviously misremembering things. The part where I summoned you to me half an hour ago, for example.”

      “Hello to you too, Mother,” Rupert said, not looking contrite in the least.

      It would have been better if there were any sense that he had been using his time wisely. Instead, the disheveled state of his clothes said that she’d been right in her earlier guess about where he would be. That, or he’d been hunting. There were so few activities her elder son seemed to actually care about.

      “I see that your bruises are finally starting to fade,” the Dowager said. “Or have you finally started to get better at covering them with powder?”

      She saw her son flush with anger at that, but she didn’t care. If he’d thought himself able to lash out at her, he would have done it years ago, but Rupert was good at knowing who he could and couldn’t direct his temper at.

      “I was caught by surprise,” Rupert said.

      “By a serving girl,” the Dowager replied calmly. “From what I hear, while you were in the middle of attempting to force yourself on your brother’s former fiancée.”

      Rupert stood there open-mouthed for several seconds. Hadn’t he learned by now that his mother heard what went on in her kingdom, and in her home? Did he think that one remained the ruler of an island as divided as this one without spies? The Dowager sighed. He really did have too much to learn, and showed no signs of being willing to learn those lessons.

      “Sebastian had put her aside by then,” he insisted. “She was fair game, and nothing but an indentured whore anyway.”

      “All those poets who write about you as a golden prince have really never met you, have they?” the Dowager said, although the truth was that she’d paid more than a few to make sure the poems turned out right. A prince should have the reputation he desired, not the one he’d earned. With the right reputation, Rupert might even have the Assembly of Nobles’ acclamation when the time came for him to rule. “Did it not occur to you that Sebastian might be angry if he heard what you tried to do?”

      Rupert frowned at that, and the Dowager could see that her son didn’t understand it.

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