The Orphan Queen (The Orphan Queen #1)(60)
He grinned and waved away my comment. “We all have our passions. I do my reading on these trips, once we get to West Pass Watch. There’s a lot of off-duty time coming up. The merchants need fewer guards in the Watch, so most of us spend time training with any in the Indigo Army that won’t look down on us for being hired. I split my time between training and looking through old journals and history books.”
“Old journals and history books are only as good as the people who wrote them.”
Josh laughed and patted my cap. “You’ve got a wise young mind. How old did you say you were? Fourteen? Fifteen?”
Nearly eighteen. “Old enough to work.” I added a defensive note to my words, but I didn’t mean it.
He grunted, but talked my ears off the rest of the way up to the Watch, pointing out specific bits of architecture he liked, or where a king once drunkenly lost a fistfight with one of his daughter’s suitors.
The caravan leaders guided the wagons off the tracks and—once the bigger wheels were on—directed them around the lower bailey. Soldiers on the ramparts cheered and trumpets blared. A caravan of merchandise was as good a reason as any to celebrate out here.
“When will we have time off?” I asked Josh. “I’d like to see off the western wall.”
“They don’t like us wandering around too much.” He pressed his mouth into a line. “But I know a few people who won’t care about my showing you around, if you don’t mind the company.”
“I’d appreciate it, in fact.”
The castle itself was deceptively familiar. Now that I knew it was twin to the old palace—East Pass Watch—I could see the similarities of the core structures, though centuries of upgrading had marked the ancient keeps in different ways. While the old palace was regal like an aged queen who tried to disguise unfortunate sagging by dressing in ever-more elaborate gowns, West Pass Watch had aged gracefully, with additions that complemented the original design.
After an hour, we finally made it to the west-facing ramparts, and I had my first glimpse of the wraithland.
“There it is,” said Josh. “That glow just beyond the mountains.”
“There are so many mountains.” I hadn’t expected that, though I should have. I’d seen the maps.
“The mountains are what protect the Indigo Kingdom from the worst of the wraith storms and beasts,” Josh said.
Probably so, but if the mountains we’d already crossed had seemed endless, these looked even more formidable. Though they were all dressed in their autumn best, what had been beautiful and rolling before became unbearably severe. Some of those peaks were higher than the one West Pass Watch stood upon. To get to the wraithland, I’d have to go through all of that.
“I guess the stories about glowmen—soldiers here watching them fight one another when they’re dumped in the wraithland—that’s just fiction, then?”
He nodded. “Lots of stories about the wraithland are just stories. But there are even more things out there than are conceivable—things too awful to be stories.”
“Have you ever been?”
“Once,” he said softly. “To the very edge of it. I was hired to map its progress just a few months ago. At first I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to know when I’d reached it. But I did. I knew the moment I stepped into the wraithland, and I don’t mind saying that I stepped right back out. Just placed my marker and left.”
“How long did it take to get there?”
The older guard just studied me for a moment, like he could see through to all of my plans. “About three days, walking. I suppose it’d have been much faster on horseback, but I couldn’t imagine doing that to an animal. I wished for one, though, on my way back. I don’t care how well it pays. I’ll never take that job again.”
I lowered my eyes, as though ashamed for making him talk about it. “I see.”
He patted my shoulder. “I’ll let you be for a while. Go on to the southern apartments when you’re ready. We’ll get dinner there in”—he checked a pocket watch—“two hours.”
I thanked him again, and when he and the others were gone, I slumped against the wall, already regretting my decision.
I could almost hear Melanie and Black Knife now: I didn’t have to go. I could wait the two weeks here in relative comfort, read some of Josh’s books, and head back to Skyvale.
But how could I come all this way only to turn back?
What had I told Melanie? A queen who wouldn’t take risks for her people wasn’t worthy of being a queen at all.
I would take this risk.
Before I headed down to dinner, I found the map room—just a brief wave on our earlier tour—and went to studying. There were several roads into the wraithland, many well maintained—and well guarded—which meant I had to find a less desirable route if I didn’t want to get caught.
It took an hour and a half of searching and comparing routes with maintenance and surveillance documentation, but at last I found something I could live with—hopefully—and carefully wrote out detailed directions, copying maps and lifting any papers that looked useful.
Armed with a plan, I went to dinner late and took my bunk in the spare barracks meant for visiting caravan guards. When snores resounded through the building, I gathered my backpack and map, stole as many rations from the kitchen as I could carry, and hurried through the keep to take a few other supplies I might need.