The Royal Ranger: A New Beginning: 1 (Ranger’s Apprentice: The Royal Ranger)

“WHERE THE BLIND, BLUE, BLITHERING BLAZES HAVE YOU BEEN?” the calm and dignified Princess Cassandra demanded.

Maddie froze in shock as her mother’s words echoed round the living room of the royal apartment.

She had tiptoed up the tower stairs and crept silently into the room, unlatching the door carefully, then opening it quickly to prevent any long, lingering squeaks from the hinges. The interior was in darkness, with heavy drapes across the window and only a few glowing embers in the fire grate.

She had paused just inside the door, senses alert for any sound or any hint of another’s presence in the room. She had taken off her boots before climbing the stairs and now held them in her left hand. Satisfied that her parents were still asleep in their chamber, she began stepping carefully across the thick carpet toward her own suite of rooms.

Then her mother—as skilled in the art of ambush as most mothers are—

startled her with her furious, echoing roar.

Maddie froze in mid-stride, one foot poised above the carpet. She looked frantically around the room. She had been convinced that it was empty. Now she made out the dim form of her mother seated in a large, high-backed armchair.

“Mum!” she said, recovering quickly. “You startled me!”

“I startled you?” Cassandra rose from the chair and crossed the room to face her daughter. She was in her nightgown, with a heavy robe over it to protect her from the chill. An observer would have remarked on the similarity between the two women. Both were small in stature, slender and graceful in

their movements. Both had green eyes and attractive features. And both had the same determined tilt to their chins. In times past, people had mistaken them for sisters, and it was no surprise that they had. They shared the same mass of blond hair, although there were occasional gray streaks in Cassandra’s now—testament to the strain that she had been under, managing the kingdom for her invalid father these past three years.

“I startled you?” she repeated from closer range, her voice rising a few tones with incredulity.

“I thought you were asleep,” Maddie said, trying an innocent smile. In fact, she was sure her mother had been asleep when she had left the apartment, several hours before. She had peered into the royal bedchamber to make sure of it.

“I thought you were asleep,” her mother replied. “I seem to recall that at the ninth hour you made a big fuss about how tired you were.”

She feigned an enormous yawn. Maddie was uncomfortably aware that it was an excellent impersonation of her own performance the previous evening.

“‘Oh, I’m soooo tired!’” Cassandra said, still mimicking her in an exaggerated little girly voice. “‘I’m afraid I’m off to bed right away.’”

“Ah . . . yes,” Maddie said. “Well, I woke up. I was starving, so I went down to the kitchens to get something to eat.”

“Carrying your boots,” Cassandra observed. Maddie looked down at them, as if seeing them for the first time.

“Um . . . I didn’t want to get mud all over the carpet,” she said quickly.

Too quickly. Speaking quickly often results in a mistake.

“That would be mud from the kitchen,” Cassandra said evenly.

Maddie opened her mouth to reply, but could think of nothing to say. She shut it again.

“Madelyn, are you crazy?” Cassandra said, her anger finally bursting like water gushing through a fractured dam. “You’re a princess, the heir to the throne after me. You can’t go gallivanting off in the forest in the dead of night. It’s just too dangerous!”

“Mum, it’s just a forest. It’s not dangerous. I know what I’m doing. I saw a badger,” she added, as if that would excuse what she’d been doing.

“Oh well, if you saw a badger, that makes it all right!” Cassandra’s sarcasm cut like a whip. “Why didn’t you mention the badger immediately?

Now I can go back to bed and sleep peacefully because I know you weren’t

in any danger. How could you be if you saw a blasted badger?”

“Mother . . . ,” Maddie began in a tone that implied her mother was being unreasonable. Maddie only called Cassandra “mother” when she was exasperated by what she saw as obsessive, over-controlling behavior.

Cassandra was all too well aware of that fact, and her eyes flashed with anger.

“Don’t you Mother me, Madelyn!” she snapped.

Madelyn’s shoulders straightened and she stood a little taller. She was two centimeters shorter than her mother, and at times like this, she felt that deficiency put her at a disadvantage.

“Then don’t you Madelyn me!” she retorted crisply. Cassandra only called her by her full, formal name when she felt she was being irresponsible, immature and infuriating.

“I’ll Madelyn you anytime I please, young lady!”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “Oh, we’re on to young lady now, are we?” she said wearily. She made a beckoning gesture with her hands. “Let it all out.

Let’s hear the litany of my sins. I’m a terrible girl. I’m irresponsible. I’m a disgrace to the royal house of Araluen.”

She stood facing her mother, one hand on her hip in a petulant pose, as totally infuriating as only a teenage girl can be when she knows she’s in the wrong but refuses to admit it.

Cassandra’s hand twitched and she felt an overwhelming urge to slap her daughter. She shoved her hands into the pockets of the gown to prevent any such action. She took a deep breath and lowered her voice.

“There are bears in that forest, Madelyn. What would you do if you ran into one?”

“Dondy says that if you meet a bear, you crouch down, stay still and don’t make eye contact.” Dondy was the royal forester and hunt master.

“He also says that’s a last resort and it’s only successful half the time.”

“Then I’d run the other way. Or climb a tree. A small, thin tree so he couldn’t climb after me.” She added the last quickly, before Cassandra could point out that bears were able to climb trees.

It was obvious that she wasn’t going to surrender this point. Cassandra changed tack. “There are criminals too. Brigands and bandits and outlaws.

They hide out in the forest.”

“They’re pretty few and far between these days. Dad has seen to that,”

Maddie replied. Horace had recently conducted a series of armed sweeps to

drive the outlaws from their lairs in the forest.

“It’d only take one. You’re well-known. You could be kidnapped and held for ransom.”

“He’d have to catch me first,” Maddie said stubbornly.

Cassandra turned away, throwing her hands in the air in resignation.

“Mind you, we’d have to be willing to pay to get you back,” she muttered.

Her tone indicated that this would be no certainty.

The door to the bedroom opened, emitting a shaft of light into the dark room. Horace entered. His hair was tousled and his nightshirt was tucked into his trousers. His feet were bare. So was the blade of the sword in his right hand. It glinted in the light of the lantern he held in his left hand, sending random reflections darting around the walls.

“What’s going on?” he said. Seeing only his wife and daughter in the room, he set the sword to one side, leaning it against the wall. He held the lantern higher, studying his daughter in its light.

“You’ve been hunting again,” he said. His tone was a mix of anger and resignation.

“Dad, I’ve just been out for an hour . . . ,” Maddie began, sensing that her father might be more reasonable than Cassandra. She knew she could usually bring him round to her way of thinking.

“I’ve been waiting over two hours,” Cassandra snapped. “I found your bed empty and I’ve been sitting here ever since.”

Horace shook his head. Any hopes that he would be more forgiving than her mother were dashed by his next words.

“Are you stupid, Maddie? Or are you just determined to defy your mother and me? It’s got to be one or the other, so tell me. Which is it?”

It wasn’t fair, Maddie thought, the way adults gave you two equally damning alternatives and insisted you pick one. She folded her arms and dropped her eyes from her father’s angry gaze.

“I’m waiting,” Horace said.

Maddie set her jaw. She glared at her angry parents and they glared back.

At last, Cassandra couldn’t endure the silence.

“Maddie, you’re the heir to the throne. You’ll rule Araluen one day—”

she began, and Maddie seized on the opening she’d created.

“And how can I do that if you keep me locked up in a protective cocoon?

If I know nothing about facing danger and making decisions and thinking quickly?”

“What?” her mother said, frowning. But Maddie kept going.

“If I were a boy, Dad would be teaching me how to fight and ride and lead men in battle—”

“I taught you to ride,” Horace said, but she shook her head impatiently.

“If I do become queen, how can I order men to go out and fight for me if I don’t know the first thing about it myself?”

“You’ll have advisers,” Cassandra said. “People who do know these things.”

“Not the same! I’ll be expected to make decisions.” She pointed a finger at her mother. “Of all people, you should understand that! When you were my age, you fought the Wargals, were abducted by Skandians and commanded archers against the Temujai. You fought alongside Dad!”

“That was by accident. I didn’t set out to do those things!”

“But you did choose to go to Arrida and fight the Tualaghi. And you chose to go to Nihon-Ja and rescue Dad. You killed the snow tiger—”

“Alyss killed it,” Cassandra put in, but Maddie ignored the interruption.

“And you used to sneak out into the forest and practice with your sling . . .”

Cassandra’s head snapped up. “Who told you that?”

“Grandpa. He said he used to be worried sick about you.”

“Your grandfather talks too much,” Cassandra said, thin-lipped. “In any event, even if I did do those things, that doesn’t say you should do them too.”

“But people respect you! They know you’ve faced danger! That’s all I’m asking for: some of that same respect! And I’m bored! I want some excitement in my life!”

“Well, this is not the way to get it!” Cassandra said.

“Then how? Tell me that! I don’t want to spend my days learning needlework and geography and Gallican grammar and irregular verbs! I want to learn more important things.”

“Maybe we can work something out . . . ,” Horace said doubtfully. He could see a grain of sense in what his daughter was saying.

But she rounded on him immediately. “Like what? What can we work out?”

He made a helpless gesture in the air. “I don’t know . . . something . . .

We’ll see.”

Maddie finally erupted in anger. “Oh, great! We’ll see. The great parental excuse for doing nothing! That’s terrific, Dad! We’ll see. ”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Horace told her, although he was conscious of the fact that the phrase we’ll see was a tried and true parental tactic for postponing difficult decisions.

“Why not? Will we see what happens to me if I do? What will we see?”

She leaned toward him, challenging him, her hands on her hips. Her entire body seemed to quiver with indignation and frustration.

“All right. That’s it,” Horace snapped. “You’re confined to your rooms for a week! I’ll put a sentry on the door and you will not leave!”

Maddie’s cheeks were flaming with self-righteous anger now. “That is so stupid and petty! I suppose we’ll see how it works out!” she yelled.

“Make it two weeks,” Horace said, every bit as angry as she was. She took a breath to reply and he tilted his head to one side. “Planning on trying for three weeks?”

She hesitated, then saw the look in his eyes. She turned away and stamped angrily to the door to her own rooms.

“This is so unfair!” she shouted, and slammed the door behind her.

Horace and Cassandra exchanged a long look. Horace shook his head, defeated, and put his arm around his wife’s shoulders.

“That went well,” he said.