Flamecaster (Shattered Realms, #1)(19)

Ash had been fighting his private war on Arden every summer since his father’s murder. Every marching season he traveled the south, working as an itinerant farrier. Farriers were welcome everywhere they went—in army camps, in cities, at every farm along the way, in the stables of the highest-ranking thanes—everywhere there were horses.

Farriers didn’t excite suspicion like other strangers did. Most had to travel from place to place in order to find work. It was a natural fit for Adam Freeman, a native of Tamron. Young as he was, his work was top of the line, and so his services were in great demand. He was good with horses, after all.

He was also good with poisons, garrotes, and the small daggers known as shivs. Poisons were his weapons of choice. Courtesy of Taliesin, he used compounds no one had ever heard of, that no southern healer would ever detect. It helped that green magic was considered witchery in Arden, and so was forbidden.

Even if his poisons were identified, it was always too late, anyway. Once he got to someone, they were already dead. By then, young Adam Freeman would be on his way somewhere else, trailing death and misery in his wake.

Often it was one of the nobility—perhaps a thane who supported the king. It might be a commander or a general, or a blackbird who was known to be especially cruel. Sometimes an entire column of mercenaries took sick and were unable to march north for weeks. The Summer Sickness, they called it, guessing that it might be caused by mosquitoes.

An encampment of recruits would break out with pustules that drove them absolutely mad with itching. Or a severe dysentery that had them in the privy for days. That was attributed to bad water. When all else failed, Adrian resorted to his array of blades. He preferred to avoid bloodshed, because that left no doubt that there’d been an enemy in their midst.

He rarely took the life of a line soldier if it could be avoided, since many were unwilling recruits from the captive realms. It wouldn’t make much of a difference strategically, anyway. The king of Arden viewed them as expendable.

He never targeted the horses, either. For one thing, it would draw attention to his work as a farrier. For another, he preferred horses to most people.

“This is not your usual hunting season,” Taliesin said.

“I thought I’d try something new. In the summertime, the southerners I want to kill are all in the Fells, killing northerners. In autumn, I might find them at home.”

She finally turned to face him, shading her eyes against the declining sun. The sun was at his back, and his long shadow slanted across the rows. “You’ve grown so tall, Mageling, in these four years,” she said, as if she hadn’t really looked at him for a while. “And handsome. Are you taller than your father was?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard for me to remember now.” That was a lie. He remembered—exactly—the measure of his father’s arm around his shoulders, the distance between them when he leaned down to speak at Ash’s level, even the scent of him—leather and sweat and fresh mountain air.

“Other young men your age come to me seeking love potions.” She looked him up and down again. “I suppose you’re not in need of those.”

“No,” he said, shifting from foot to foot. Taliesin still had the power to put him off balance. She was the closest he’d had to a mother since coming south. A mother who was nobody’s fool.

“Quit fondling that jinxpiece,” Taliesin snapped. “It makes me edgy.” Witches had no use for amulets. She wiped sweat from her brow with her forearm, leaving a smear of dirt, then tossed a digging stick at him and pointed with her fork. “Here. Finish that row.”

Idle hands made her edgy, too. Ash squatted next to her. He was in a hurry, but he knew better than to rush his longtime teacher. There was a price to be paid for access to Taliesin’s vast inventory of plants and expertise in poisons.

“Where are you off to this time?” Taliesin said. She seemed to have a talent for breaking into his black moods.

“Me? I’ll be in the Southern Islands, studying in the library of the arcane and collecting herbs for the healing halls.”

“Where will you be, really?”

“It’s better if you don’t know,” Ash said. Though she’d never admit it, he knew that she worried whenever he was away.

“They killed your father, and now you’re killing them. What makes you different from them?”

It was part of their bargain that he would listen to these lectures now and then.

“They fired the first bolt,” Ash said. “If they’d stayed in the south and left us alone, I’d have no quarrel with them.”

“Poison is such a scattershot technique,” Taliesin said. “You never know where your bolt will land.”

“I know that, but I’m careful. And I’m good at what I do. I had the best teacher.”

If he’d thought he was offering an olive branch, she slapped it away. “I did not teach you to travel about, leaving death in your wake,” she snapped. “I thought you intended to heal yourself by healing others.”

“I do heal others—three seasons of the year. As for the rest, that’s a public health measure. Consider how many premature deaths I’m preventing. The lives I take are balanced by those I save.”

“You should stay here and work with me,” Taliesin said. “You may not think it, but you still have much to learn.” She paused for a response, but he said nothing. “The time will come when you will wish that you were a better healer.”