The baron looks at the artist's rendition of the hero and his companion, almost caressing the paper with gleaming brown eyes. The page waits silently, trying not to show just how terrified he is.

Poor boy. He shouldn't have had to deal with something like this, at such a young age. The page can't quite hide a shiver as the man slowly looks up from the drawing and focuses on him, smiling slightly.

"Good work," the baron says quietly, and his voice is that of a sated predator. He hands a small gold coin to the page and dismisses him, noting with pleasure that the boy seems loathe to keep a grip on the coin, no matter the value. Children often see much more clearly than adults, don't they?

He looks down at the picture again and he dismisses one of the boys- young men, really- portrayed there. There's only one who holds any interest at all for him.

"Younger than I expected, but that can't be helped," the baron muses, almost laughing at the sound of his own voice echoing in the large room. He sounds so confident, so amused... And he should certainly know better by now than to be overconfident. He'd had his share of setbacks. He is still merely a baron, after all.

Life would be so much easier if he could attain the status of duke. He really needs to work on the king, and find out who in this rapidly sinking ship of a kingdom would dare to keep protecting the ruler. There is also the problem of the queen, who has proven to be more stubborn than expected, but she is secondary.

This is not chess. The queen has no more power than a pawn.

And he has his own pawn, slowly but surely making its way towards the far end of the board, all unnoticed by his enemies. This pawn that would bring down an entire kingdom by merely following the destiny he'd dared to choose.

This is not chess. A pawn, once tapped, has all the power that the queen has never possessed.

………

For once, Fortune is smiling upon us. The sun shines bright and a gentle breeze moves through the branches as we depart the inn and village, followed out by a joyous group of revelers who either missed half of last night’s celebration or are exceptionally quick to recover. I hang onto Samuel, perched uncomfortably behind him on Alistair, who proves his demonic ancestry by prancing until his audience is left far behind, and all feeling in my backside with them.

“Stop the horse,” I order around a now-permanent grimace. “I want to cut a switch.”

“You aren’t enjoying yourself?” Samuel asks, so innocently that I might have believed he was so had I not witnessed the grin stretching across his face. Alistair, sensing my shift in weight, comes to a dead stop as I prepare to jump.

I, of course, was not expecting that, and fall flat onto the road. What grace, what poise I do possess, lying on the ground with the wind knocked out of me…

Samuel calls my name and clutches at Alistair’s reins—any other horse and I am quite certain I would have been tramped. “Merrin! Merrin, are you hurt?”

I cough, sweet air suddenly flooding into my chest. “Jerk Alistair around a bit more; he hasn’t stepped on me yet.”

Another cloud of dust rises from the road. Samuel swings down from Alistair and lets the horse wander off to the side of the road, kneeling next to me. “Is anything broken?” he asks, laying a hand on my back. The contact brings a swift glare from me, and Samuel backs off.

“I promise, if anything were broken, I would still be cursing your godsdamned beast.” Samuel’s eyes are still resting on me like a warm weight as I stretch, testing my body and finding it fit. When I stand up to clear the dust from my clothes, he scrambles to his feet, my brighter shadow.

“Samuel,” I say, something alike to a warning or even threat in my voice, though I cannot say which it is or why. But his eyes dart away and I find it easier to move.

“Can we talk, Merrin?” Samuel asks. I almost laugh at him: from his words, one would think he was asking me a favor. From his tone, I can only imagine he feels as if he is going to war.

Perhaps he is. But I am more than a worthy opponent for this—this boy.

“We have been talking.” The ice is lacking from my voice, because I want to show him how this is not an issue at all; there is no need to talk, because the future has been decided. Whatever he thinks he feels for me is unimportant. It will pass.

His gaze is on me again, more of a piercing blow than a weight. “Then will you kindly allow me to speak—“

“I—“

“And listen when I do?” Samuel finishes, lifting his hand to forestall my interruption. His lips are tight. “Would you listen to my concerns and actually consider them, even if they do not fit into your conception of an ideal world?”

Of all the— “Sit here and listen to you insult me, then?” I ask, keeping my voice as tightly controlled as possible. It would be very easy to scream at him. All of the tension I hadn’t realized was coalescing in my bones is breaking for the surface. “Or try to force me into compliance with your sudden infatuation?”

“I am not—It isn’t—“ Samuel is spluttering in his fury, both hands twitching as if he’d like to grab and shake me. Oh, gods, let him try. A good fistfight might do us both some good.

But he calms himself so suddenly I can only think of the sun breaking through a thunderstorm. A wry but gentle smile crosses his face, and he glances up as if praying for patience. “Shall we move on, then? We can make it to the mountains before dark.”

And he goes to collect Alistair as I stare after him, my own blood unceremoniously cooled.

How dare he turn me off just like that? Now I am the one with twitching hands and a spluttering brain. I do hope it doesn’t bother him that I will now walk; better we should move slowly than I should strangle him and dump his body.

Even if the latter is more tempting.

………

The town we’re approaching—slowly, as Samuel refuses to ride if I am walking—is nestled in the foot of a small mountain range. This particular range separates the capital of the kingdom, and much of its civilization, from the outlying farming regions. I remember crossing it once before, in a carriage. It’s much more pleasant that way.

And the carriage horses were much easier to handle than Alistair is at the moment.

“What in the hells is wrong with your horse?” I demand of Samuel, grabs Alistair’s reins as the horse rears, giving a loud bray of distress. Alistair dances back, kicking high in the air, and barely misses thumping Samuel’s skull. I cry out, unable to help it, when those hooves lash only inches from Samuel’s unflinching face.

Alistair twists to land securely on four hooves and drags Samuel off the path, into a scraggly bit of bush. Samuel loses his grip on the reins and the horse rears again, dancing closer to where I am standing. I back off the path and trip over a small sign, posted so low as to be eclipsed by a few bushes and rocks.

“Samuel,” I say, in a voice no louder than a whisper, yet he hears me and struggles out of the bush, calling back to me.

“Merrin? What is it? Alistair, stop! Hold!”

“Forget the horse,” I order, and stumble back onto the path as well. I back into Alistair, who stops lurching about as he senses my distress and somehow equates it to a realization of danger on the part of his human companions. “Samuel, there’s a godsbedamned dragon in these mountains.”