Stormcaster (Shattered Realms #3)(10)

“Scummer!” Evan retreated a few hundred yards down the shore, where a rocky promontory extended nearly all the way to the water. He walked the stallion around to the other side and hid him out of sight. Then he walked back on foot, his knife in his hand, while possibilities slid through his mind. Had the owners returned? Or were the intruders squatters like him? Was it an ambush? Had the empress’s bloodsworn somehow found him? If so, why would they advertise their presence by building a fire? Then again, he’d been gone for months. It would be easy to lower your guard after so long a time.

What if Kadar had found out about the farm? What if he had confiscated it in Evan’s absence, meaning to force him into renting a room in town? Kadar was accustomed to taking whatever he wanted in and around the port of Tarvos. Was this just one more lesson he had to teach him?

In this situation, the gift of weathermaking seemed a poor weapon unless the newcomers were afraid of a little rain pouring in through the many holes in the roof. Though, given his limited skills, he might just blow the whole place down.

Blessedly, by now the dog had quit barking. Evan circled around the rear of the house, heading for the barn. As he got closer, he stopped in his tracks, gaping. In the months that he’d been gone, the holes in the cottage roof had been repaired, the broken roof tiles replaced, and the mud-brick walls had been replastered. The tumbledown fencing around the paddock had been straightened and lashed to new posts. The ground inside the fence had been beaten down by hooves and was now littered with the leavings of horses. So whoever was living there had been there for a while.

Someone had even diverted part of the river into an ingenious millrace that drove a waterwheel before it drained into a stock pond. It was hard to imagine Kadar going to all this trouble for a tenant. Unless the tenant had done it on his own.

At the barn door, Evan stood, listening, hearing nothing but the sounds sleepy animals make. After one more look back at the house, he slipped inside, to be met by the scents of hay, manure, and fresh-sawn wood. The newcomers had been busy in here, as well. To the left, there were three stalls now, instead of two, and he could see that the tack room wall had been repaired. Djillaba’s stall was occupied by a sturdy pony, and another stall by a dun-colored wetland gelding. To the right of the door, the squatters had built a large pen and two smaller ones. From the larger pen, he heard a bleating sound. Goats?

It appeared that he was dealing with an infestation of farmers. Or engineers.

Moving was a job he didn’t need, but he’d have to find another bolt-hole. He had no legal claim to the cottage, after all, and spent little time there. These tenants had done more work on the place in a matter of months than he’d done in a year.

He couldn’t simply walk away, not yet. His savings, including his shares from his last voyage with Strangward, were hidden in a niche behind the fireplace in the cottage. He’d left his growing collection of books on the shelves to either side.

If Kadar was responsible for this, Evan would find a way to make him pay. Anger and frustration rose in him like a full-moon tide, and lightning flickered around his fingertips. Not a good thing inside a barn filled with hay.

“If you set this place on fire, I’ll kill you,” someone behind him said in a cold, flat voice that raised gooseflesh on the back of Evan’s neck.

He spun around. The boy was tall—taller than Evan—and, though he was slender, he looked to be all muscle. His sun-streaked brown hair was mussed, like he’d just climbed out of bed. He still wore his linen sleep shirt, but he’d pulled on breeches underneath, and fastened a sword belt over top.

Though he couldn’t have been much older than Evan, he carried himself like someone who’d been shaped by a lifetime of discipline—chin up, shoulders back. His left hand gripped a pendant that hung from a chain around his neck, his right rested on the hilt of a wicked-looking sword. Light leaked from between his fingers as the pendant reacted to his touch.

He looked like neither a farmer nor an engineer, nor anyone from Kadar’s crew. He was a soldier, and he was gilded with magic—not the purple bruise worn by the empress’s crew, but a clear blue-white blaze much like Evan’s own. Like the empress’s.

“Drop the knife,” the glowing soldier said, his voice low and full of the promise of violence.

Evan looked down. He’d all but forgotten the blade still clutched in his hand. He allowed it to slip through his fingers so that it thudded into the sawdust by his feet. He had a smaller knife in a sheath in his boot, but it was no match for a sword.

Was it possible that this soldier mage had been sent down from the north by the empress? Mages were rare this far south. Evan had seen none in the backwater of Endru, and only a few of the empress’s ruddy minions since he’d arrived in Tarvos. But why would Celestine’s hired henchman settle down and start up a farm while he waited for his quarry to return?

No. It had to be Kadar. Kadar’s tenant, rather.

“And your amulet,” the soldier said. “Toss it over here.”

“Amulet?” Evan shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The boy’s jaw tightened. “That pendant around your neck.”

“That’s not an amulet,” Evan said. “It’s . . . a family heirloom.”

“Right,” the soldier said, drawing the word out like steel against stone. “Whatever it is, toss it here.”