Page 2 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

“I hope not,” she uttered.

Old Merrow snorted weakly. “That’s not much comfort.”

“No,” Seren agreed, pulling herself into the saddle with the weary efficiency of someone who had mounted horses in worse weather for worse reasons. “But honesty is rarely comforting. That does not make it useless.”

She rode north within the hour. The rain followed, soft-footed and merciless. At first, it was little more than a mist, the kind that gathered along the edge of a cloak and beaded in the stitching of gloves. Soon after, the weather thickened, turning the road to dark paste beneath her horse’s hooves and settling cold into the seams of her clothes. There were things far worse than rain to wear.

The northern road wound through rolling hills washed silver beneath a blanket of clouds. Farmhouses nestled in the valleys below with smoke rising lazily from their chimneys. Sheep were huddled beneath half-bare trees. Farther north, the land began to lift toward darker forests and the first hard shapes of the mountains.

Eastmere was a small northern settlement tucked between forest and old stone roads, hardly important enough to appear in Council conversation unless taxes were late or a bridge had collapsed. Seren had been there twice before in the years since the war ended. Once to settle a dispute between millers, and once more to escort a grain convoy after bandits had decided famine made people too polite to object to theft.

It was a small and forgettable place; the kind of village that made up most of the world. That was what people in power always forgot.

Empires rose and fell, governments renamed themselves, generals won battles, kings died, and councils wrote new laws on expensive parchment, but the world itself lived mostly in places like Eastmere. Seren had joined a revolution because of places like that. She had been younger then; angrier. Seren had been certain in the way only the young and wounded could be certain. The Empire had been eight hundred years old, and to her it had seemed ancient enough to be guilty of everything it was accused of.

In those years, oppression, hunger, and tax collectors who took seed grain in drought years festered the revolution’s cause. Noble houses spoke of sacrifice while common families buried children through winter. Courts were nothing more than a place where justice could be purchased and mercy required lineage.

Back then, the world had arranged itself cleanly.

Seren had believed that kind of certainty was a virtue. The years had not been kind to that belief. The Empire had fallen exactly as she once dreamed it would; with rulers dragged from their sanctuaries and made mortal before cheering crowds.

Then, the world refused to become better overnight.

Some provinces prospered while others starved under officials who knew how to denounce tyranny but not how to distribute grain. Old grudges resurfaced once imperial force no longer crushed them flat. New tyrants learned to speak the language of liberation. Men who once shouted for freedom discovered that power fit their hands comfortably after all. Sometimes Seren wondered whether revolutions only changed which names appeared in history books.

People did not like hearing doubt from the figures they had turned into symbols. The realm preferred her to be polished, sure and heroic. General Seren Veyr, breaker of empires, sword of the revolution, beloved defender of the new age. A ridiculous collection of titles for a woman who still sometimes woke with ash in her mouth.

The rain intensified as she reached the last ridge before Eastmere, the air chilled, and turned the mud into slush.

The village appeared below, nestled between dark forest and rising mountain. From a distance it looked almost peaceful – That was the first thing she noticed.

The second thing she noticed was the light. Lanternlight burned gold through cottage windows, shop glass, upper floors, stables, the mill, the narrow houses clustered near the square. The village shone as though someone had lit it carefully against the storm and then stepped away. Seren felt something tighten low in her chest. It was an old instinct, earned in flesh and filth. A silent alarm that had saved her life on battlefields when banners hid ambushes and stillness meant archers in trees.

She dismounted at the edge of the square, tethering her horse near a fabric shop post whose front window glowed. Through the rain-specked glass, Seren saw three gold coins scattered on the counter and a length of red silk crumpled across the wooden floor as though dropped mid-measure. She stood there for several seconds, studying the scene through the window.

The shop door yielded under the press of her boot and a string of silver bells above the entrance chimed brightly. The sound cut through the village with obscene cheer.

The shop smelled faintly of dust, oil, wool, and the lingering sweetness of dyed cloth. Amber light washed over bolts of linen and silk stacked along the walls. A ledger lay exposed behind the counter. The ink had dried beside an unfinished line. A spool of green thread sat on the floor, rolled beneath a chair.

Seren moved no farther than the center of the room before turning back out. Already the shape of the place felt wrong. There were no signs of struggle. It did not feel abandoned. It did not appear ransacked.

Outside, Roran waited near the square.

Captain Roran Vale had been many things over the years: scout, soldier, captain, nuisance, occasional voice of reason, and the only man alive who could insult Seren’s judgment in front of troops and leave the conversation with all his teeth.

Rain dripped from the edge of his hood and darkened the leather over his shoulders. He looked older than when she had seen him last. So did everyone who had survived the revolution.

“General,” he called. The word carried more relief than formality.

Seren crossed the wet stones toward him, taking in the rain-dark leather at his shoulders, the tension around his eyes, the way his hand rested too close to his sword without quite committing to drawing it.

“You look terrible,” she muttered, and reached for the man’s arm.

Roran’s mouth twitched. “You always know what to say.”

“I’ve been practicing diplomacy,” Seren replied.

His lips stretched wider over his teeth. “With whom? Wolves?”