Fortune and Fate (Twelve Houses) by Sharon Shinn Read Free Book Online Page A

to get comfortable, if she started to find comrades. You don’t deserve peace and security, some voice in her head would nag. You deserve hard work and a lonely path and constant penance .
     
     
    So she would move on. She hadn’t spent more than a month in any one place since the war had ended. It was hard to imagine a time she would ever be able to come to rest.
     
     
     
 
ORSON expected it to take them two days to travel to Forten City, and the trip started auspiciously enough. There were six guards and a driver, decent rations, and clear skies, and by mid-afternoon of the first day, Wen was as relaxed and happy as she’d been in weeks. She and Orson were riding at the front of the small caravan, the slow wagon behind them, and they passed the time trading insults and anecdotes. He still reminded her of Justin—if Justin had aged by ten years and gained a somewhat mellow outlook—but that just helped put her at ease with him. He was the kind of man she understood instinctively, uncomplicated and forthright, ready to brawl at a moment’s notice, not particularly interested in emotional displays, but thoroughly honest. She knew how hard she could push, she knew what skills he would appreciate, and she knew that, once she’d nicked him on the arm, he’d stopped thinking of her as a woman.
     
     
    All of this was fine with Wen.
     
     
    For the midday meal, they pulled the wagon to the side of the road, broke out the dried food, and diced for the honor of riding in the lead for the second half of the day. Wen had always had horrible luck at games of chance; she’d learned early never to bet anything she cared about.
     
     
    “Willa loses again,” crowed one of the other guards, a burly kid named Stef who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. “You’re riding in the rear.”
     
     
    “Glad to do it as long as you’re up front,” she replied. “Far away from me.”
     
     
    The driver was glancing around nervously. They were on the main road to Forten City, but this swath of Fortunalt was sparsely settled, and they hadn’t passed any other traffic for an hour. “I don’t like this place,” he said. “Feels too lonely.”
     
     
    Orson was on his feet and on his horse in a few economical moves. “And we’ve wasted enough time already. Let’s head on out.”
     
     
    In a few minutes, they were on their way again. Wen and a silent fellow named Carp were riding at the rear. She didn’t mind the lack of conversation, since it allowed her to pay more attention to the road. Winter hadn’t hit here very hard, she noted, for most of the trees and bushes were already starting to show green this early in the season. Or maybe this was just the right time for spring to make its appearance in the southern lands. She had only wandered down to Fortunalt in the past few weeks after months spent in Helven and Nocklyn. The land was unfamiliar to her, and so were its seasons. But if it was always so mild near the southern Houses, maybe she should consider spending more time here.
     
     
    It would be as good a reason as any to determine where to go when.
     
     
    The driver was still uneasy, she noted idly, twisting on his seat every now and then to look behind them as if expecting pursuit. She supposed he was the one who had been holding the reins when this same shipment had been attacked a few days ago, which would explain his jumpiness. If I had a job driving pricey cargo around the country, she thought, I’d make sure I knew how to handle a sword. But if he was armed, she hadn’t noticed—and Wen noticed weaponry almost as a matter of course.
     
     
    If you didn’t know what you were guarding, she thought, the wagon would look pretty ordinary. It was just a weathered wooden cart drawn by two horses. Bits of straw stuck out through the joints; heavy canvas was spread almost flat over the bed of the wagon. But between the straw and the canvas lay the brightly polished gold doors with their intricate