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The Minder's Bond
     
    by Kary English
     
     
     
    W hen I first beheld the fabled port of Remidia, it was like something out of a tale. The city draped itself over the hills and valleys of the coastal range like a courtesan on silken cushions. White houses with bright tiled roofs adorned the hillsides like jewels at her throat.
    More beautiful still was the blue of the Southron Sea lapping at Remidia's shores. Balmy air coursed over my skin. The scent of salt air mingled with exotic spices.
    If I had the power to remake the world, it would be this image of Remidia that lingered in my mind instead of the brutal chaos that followed.
    Marrec , riding at my side, was speaking to me, but the first sight of the ocean's blue vastness drove his words from my mind. I had to look away from the white-fringed waves before I could answer.
    "Caravan duty? I thought you said this was important?"
    Marrec laughed. "For you, Finn Oxley, it is very important." Marrec slowed our pace to let the horses pass into the shade of a tree heavy with fruit. "Remidia's Publican is a man named Vicenna. His daughter Raimurri is a young Mender. I want you to guard her on our journey to Djefre."
    Marrec plucked two green globes from the tree. He kept one for himself and tossed the other to me. The fruit's leathery skin yielded under Marrec's teeth. He tore a strip away to reveal a fleshy center of indelicate pink.
    " Vicenna is highly placed in the ruling council. Do well, and you will gain his favor. Do poorly—" Here Marrec sucked the fruit's sweet pulp from its skin, then spat the bitter rind into the road where the horses trampled it into the dust. "—and you'll wish you'd never heard of Minders much less become one."
    I'm not one to miss a warning, though I admit I was needled by it. I tossed the fruit back to Marrec. "You may tell Vicenna that I am partial to the northern fruit of my upbringing." I fished an apple from my saddlebag and took a flamboyant bite. "So he needn't worry about my sampling the local delicacies."
    I crunched for a moment before I continued. "Baby-sitting. Your star protégé. My first real mission, and you want me to play nursemaid on a caravan route that's safer than my grandmother's parlor?"
    Marrec didn't rise to my banter. "Not with the drought in Cimya. We've had caravans attacked, drovers and children killed."
    Marrec's voice held a distant note, one that I recognized and didn't like. "You've seen something?"
    Marrec shook his head. "I know something. We've lost a full score of Menders and Judicars in the last six months. Someone is hunting our sister orders."
    I whistled through my teeth. "Menders, too? Who'd want to kill a Mender?"
    "Cimya, for one," said Marrec, "if they're spoiling for war. But this has the feel of something deeper, darker. The caravan attacks are a smokescreen. If there's trouble, get the girl to safety and leave the caravan to me. Understood?"
    "You have my word," I said.
    Supper at Remidia's Public House that night did homage to the sea. We dined on a covered patio, the walls open to the ocean breeze. Dark-eyed girls served us bowls of fragrant broth studded with sea creatures steamed in their shells, and a golden ale that tingled in the mouth.
    I was wiping the bowl with a chunk of bread when Vicenna joined us at the table with his daughter in tow. We stood to bow, and I remained politely silent while Marrec made our introductions.
    The girl's eyes were brown as a winter doe's, as was her hair, which hung to her waist in a cascade of loose tendrils and fine braids laced with tiny gold beads. Earlier, her voice had lilted like a stream over pebbles when she greeted patrons or laughed at their jests. Here, though, she was stiffly silent, her back straight and her lips pressed into a line.
    I bowed again when Marrec spoke my name. Raimurri's startled eyes flitted to my hair. The foxtail red was uncommon enough in my home village, but the looks I'd gotten here marked it as a spectacle.
    "My daughter,