Chapter 20
20
Lyra
“Up.” Heavy curtains skidded across the rod over the window.
The boil of sunlight seared against my eyes. I groaned and shoved my face into the pillow, blocking the light. Craft was tiring. Even melding Kael’s bone shard had left me desperate for bed last night.
“Get up.” Emi’s impatience was felt with every heavy step to the side of my bed. “You’re to learn the borders of the fortress today and you’re going to be late.”
“Be gone.”
“Fine. I’ll get the Sentry. He can toss you into a now-frigid bath. Naked.”
I tossed one of the down pillows off the bed. “I’ve been here mere days and already I detest you the most.”
Emi wore her crimson Stav tunic. Her pale hair was braided in a tight plait down her back. She grinned and threw back the furs guarding me from the morning chill. “Detest me if you must, but we are due to meet Ser Bjorn Stonehands so you can see the grounds by the morning bell. He’s less patient than I, and holds no care if you are the melder. And you’re in luck. With the pleasantries of the upcoming royal vow, the prince has insisted Stonehands deliver his guests to the Boarshead Tavern for a revel.
I arched a brow. “I’ve never been to a revel.”
Emi paused. “You lived in a jarl’s household.”
“As a servant.”
“Well, tonight you shall go as a guest. Wear something nice, but a gown that breathes, if you want my advice. Gets all sticky with so many drunken souls in one room.”
“The king wishes to expose his melder? Just last night he said enemies would want me dead more than him.”
Emi chuckled and plucked a small glass vial from her leg pouch. “The king desires his melder to feel at ease here, as promised. You’re not leaving the walls, and you’ll have protection.” She gestured at herself. “Besides, he’s recently learned a thing or two about thorn blossom dye.”
My lips parted.
Emi removed the cork on the vial and handed the dye over to me. Her expression sobered. “You are not the servant girl any longer. The prince especially encouraged his father to let you live freely, as best you can within a fortress.”
“I don’t understand why,” I admitted.
“You’ll find Prince Thane knows what it is like to have a duty forced upon him. He tends to try to make the best of it.”
“But…the king fears for my safety—”
“Lyra, it is a revel in the royal tavern. Take moments you can to live beyond duty. You’ll be surrounded by Stav Guard and your shadow. No harm will befall your pretty little neck.”
Unbidden, a groan slipped through my teeth. Ashwood. My assigned watchdog. The worst part wasn’t that I detested the thought of the man following me, it was more that I didn’t.
I’d done little else since I was given the guide from Emi but study the language of the Sentry. Each gesture was inked across my thoughts, unforgettable, and it had become a strange sort of obsession to know more.
I recalled Gammal teaching me to read Jorvan and even symbols from her lands across the Night Ledges as a girl. Neither came to me as simply as Roark’s words.
I didn’t understand it, but his hand speak came clearer with every passing day.
Truth be told, it was a little frightening. Almost like a spell cast had captured my mind, I was pulled into his mystery, his violence, and the way he looked at me like he might wish to slit my throat or step a little closer whenever our paths crossed.
Naturally, the hidden pull needed to die a quick death before anyone in Stonegate caught wind. Kael would be one. Gods, he could smell it if I looked twice at a man. But Emi was another. She had a strange relationship with the Sentry, one I still didn’t know.
“Was I not clear enough?” Emi’s voice cut through my wandering thoughts. She placed her hands on her hips, her pale features flushed. “We’re to leave shortly. Get washed. I’m certain it is as frosted over as the Black Fjords in the North.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. The Black Fjords hugged uninhabitable lands that snowed even in the warm months. A place where rapists and thieves and unwanted crooks went to labor until their penance was paid on jagged mountain walls between a distant Dravenmoor border and the cold edges of Jorvandal.
I closed the washroom door, stripped, and bit down on the tip of my tongue to keep from freeing a gasp from the shock of cold. No sense in giving Emi Nightlark more to gloat about.
With haste, I scrubbed my skin, ignoring the clack of my teeth and the gooseflesh dotting my limbs. By the time I emerged, the tips of my fingers were a shade of purple and numb enough I could not fasten my own bodice. A servant who said little braided my hair while Emi ducked into the tall armoire and tossed out boots and satin slippers, hunting for a pair of shoes.
“Don’t you have other duties besides interrupting my mornings?” I glanced at her in the mirror.
“I”—Emi grunted the deeper she dug—“think you are not sincere in your disdain for me.”
“I think that is your hope.”
Emi returned with black ankle boots, polished like the gloss of a raven’s wing. “Darkwin holds no ill will. You could learn something from him.”
“Kael was always the more forgiving one of us.”
Emi scoffed and placed the boots in my lap, shooing away the servant so she could finish my hair. In the mirror, she lifted her bright eyes to meet my gaze. “The Sentry trusts me to be alone with you much more than his men, so me you shall get.”
I picked at a thread of my skirt, annoyed at myself for even wondering if Roark would join the tour today. “You are close with the Sentry?”
“Very.” She spoke the word in a way that left little room for more questions. They weren’t affectionate, but not all lovers were.
From somewhere inside the fortress the bellow of a bell rattled the glass windows.
“Dammit.” Emi looked me up and down once in the mirror. “You’ll do. Hurry. Stonegate is no small place, and Bjorn waits for no one.”
Bjorn Stonehands was a man who’d earned his name from the thickness of his fingers and the heavy strike of his fists.
While she tugged me through the corridors toward the great hall, Emi offered a few hurried tales of his youth as a Stav Guard. Rumors insisted Bjorn had killed no fewer than five opponents in sparring matches with his bare hands.
He was a towering man with a silver beard that struck his chest and nothing but inked runes over his scalp. A crowd of folk visiting the fortress had gathered in the square beyond the great hall to await Bjorn’s tour. Travelers passing through the vales of Jorvandal on their way to the Myrdan border. People from Myrda visiting their families who took up houses in Damir’s realm. Some were elders with silver-wrapped hair and age carved in the lines of their eyes and cheeks. Others were young, gawking at the towering walls with a look of awe.
Being buried between the rocky cliffs brought rogue gusts of wind, but the square within the palace walls always breathed of fresh basil and lavender.
Emi nudged me aside when a trio of Stav Guard stomped over the cobbled paths. I thought it more for show. They plodded their boots with unnatural force to jangle the buckles on their ankles, and more than one Stav puffed out his chest when a cluster of young ladies traveling for a wedding in the township to the north whispered and snickered and sighed when they passed.
We arrived at the square outside the great hall after the final bell, and the way Stonehands pinned me with his gaze, I feared I might fall to my knees merely to escape his attention.
“Let’s be off, then.” With a grunt Stonehands adjusted a pigskin satchel on his shoulder and stomped toward the first portcullis leading away from the palace.
“I think he likes you,” Emi muttered.
I turned to frown at her, but caught movement beneath a shadowed arcade.
Roark, dressed in a black Stav tunic with a gray wolf fur cloak over his shoulders, stepped onto the road. The Sentry kept a distance of more than fifteen paces, but moved as though weightless.
He maneuvered around the inner guards and courtiers, barely snatching the attention of others, yet my gaze found him in the crowds as if he were dressed all in red, waving his arms to steal my notice.
Annoyed as I wanted to be at the king for demanding the Sentry stand as my personal guard, I could not deny an unsettling sort of relief knowing Roark Ashwood kept watch on my back.
Melder Fadey was slaughtered just beyond these walls. Roark was swift and dangerous with a blade, a sight I’d witnessed firsthand, and he had what appeared to be unwavering loyalty to the royal house. Perhaps the Sentry despised me, but I was of value to the house of Oleg.
I’d few doubts that Roark would take countless heads in order to keep me safe.
When his sharp eyes found mine from his place in the shadows, breath caught in my throat. In haste, I turned away and blended into the back edges of the touring crowd.
“Keep close,” Stonehands called out. “Makin’ our way to the inner market, roads get a touch narrow.”
I felt a great deal like a hog being squeezed into the slaughterhouse the way folk pushed through the arched gates into the lower township.
Stonegate palace sat on the top of a rocky hillside and below were homes and the market square that bustled with hawkers trading their hogs and goats and hens. Fish and smoked meats passed hands as swiftly as florin coin, and beneath it all was the scent of damp grass, soil, and salt.
“Wars were fought over these knolls for centuries.” Stonehands led us up a sloped cobbled pathway, pointing out stones and foundations that belonged to ruins of an original palace. “It is believed the Wanderer once ruled here, making it the most coveted land across the realms of Stìgandr.”
“The Wanderer lived on Jorvan lands?” a woman asked. She was joined with two young boys and a bearded man whose belly sank low over his belt.
Stonehands gave a stiff nod. “So the sagas say. Here, his warriors bled, his children played. There is power in these lands, and lust for more of it breeds hate. It was much of the cause of the Divisive Wars that split the kingdoms in the modern three of Myrda, Dravenmoor, and Jorvandal. Now, follow me. I will show you the painted windows.”
My fingers trailed over the moss-soaked stones of the old fortress. “Stav Nightlark.”
Emi wove backward between a few other visitors. “What?”
“Is it true?” I tilted my head back, squinting through the sunlight toward the upper towers. “Did the Wanderer live here?”
The Wanderer King was no mere king. He was the father of our lands, the legendary genesis of craft across the kingdoms.
“It’s a common belief back home.”
“So, Dravenmoor accepts it.”
“Some do.” Emi placed her open palm on one of the walls. “Others believe the old Jorvan king who won his treaties was simply lucky in battle and selected the richest lands, then called them gods-blessed to become more important than was true.”
She followed the flow of the crowd. I held back a moment, looking around the towers, the roads, and onto the distant hills beyond the inner walls. Could these be the knolls where myths were born?
“Who can tell me what this signifies?” Stonehands paused beside a stone juncture where three paths convened into one.
Over the archway that covered the single lane was a bind rune made of gold, bronze, and crimson iron. Silver filigree made the edges, like the rune was nestled in a night bloom.
When no one spoke, Stonehands let out an irritated growl and pointed to each shade of the rune. “Crimson in the rune of a warrior signifies the blood of those lost in the Divisive Wars. Bronze in the rune of loyalty stands for the treaties of craft between Jorvandal and Myrda. Gold in the rune of protection, a vow from these walls to always protect those who remain loyal and steadfast against our enemies.”
Stonehands barreled on about the grandness of King Damir’s distant grandfather in battles that divided the folk and kingdoms. Divisive Wars made Dravenmoor the enemy and signed treaties that demanded Myrda deliver the craft of melding to the service of Stonegate if ever it was found in their borders.
While he rambled with pride over the feats of Jorvandal and the depravity of Dravens, I rolled the end of my braid around one finger, casting a glance at Emi. She was focused ahead, her face unreadable.
I looked back at Ashwood.
He kept a steady distance, back to the wall, his attention wholly placed on a knife he spun in his hands.
Could he hear Stonehands and the mutters of hatred toward his people? Did Roark even consider Dravens his people anymore?
My fists curled at my sides. My pulse quickened; unbidden words to remind Bjorn Stonehands to watch his words in front of two prominent Draven Stav danced over my tongue.
“Moving on.” Stonehands frowned at the lot of us and ushered the crowd forward.
I blew out a breath as the moment to be bold faded, the way it always did.
We were led to the upper bridges that looked down over the lower roads of the township at the base of the hillside. Vendors and tradesmen crowded the bridges and upper roads. It gave Stonehands a bit of respite to set his gaggle of visitors free to spend florin coin on a few pearl combs, exotic pastes for skin spots, or sugared strips of vibrant fruits from mountain orchards.
A woman in front of me clung to a man’s arm. She handled a new satin coin purse with delight while the man gave up two large silver florin.
I stepped across her path to be free of the crowd, but she waved me over. “Here alone?”
“In a sense.”
“Bold of you.” She looked at the man by her side. “We were recently wed, and took to traveling for a fortnight.”
Her new husband kissed the corner of her mouth, eyes alight with sickening affection. “How dull it must be to travel by oneself.”
“I’ve grown rather fond of it.” I offered a narrow look at Roark and Emi, both standing at the end of the bridge.
The woman lowered her voice, as though sharing a bawdy secret. “Ligstaad, the township in the easternmost hills, is the territory of Jarl Hendrikson and has a great many young men. You might go there next and find a husband of your own to join you.”
“Then I would be forced to share all the food.” I plucked a small sample of seasoned fish a vendor passed around.
“Jarl Hendrikson is my father,” she went on with a touch of pompous propriety. “Travel back with us. It’s dangerous for a lady to be on her own.”
“How wonderous it sounds, but alas I’m doomed to die in these walls. See that man?”
Roark’s face shadowed when I pointed his way.
The jarl’s daughter blanched. “The Sentry?”
“Yes. He is my captor. Or guardian, if you ask him. I prefer captor. I am told I must attend the prince’s revel with him at my side. His sour disposition frightens away all the suitable…well, suitors.”
“Gods.” The woman pressed a hand to her heart. “Poor girl. Whatever did you do to be taken?”
“I fear I had the gall to exist.”
From the corner of my gaze, I watched Emi draw her bottom lip between her teeth, the way someone might if they were fighting back a laugh. By her side, her fingers ticked off to a count of three. In the next moment, heavy steps approached and Roark curled his hand around my arm, tearing me away from the crowd.
“Pardon me,” I said over my shoulder to the stunned woman. “My captor has need of me, it seems.”
What are you doing? Roark’s gestures were harried and angry.
“Making new acquaintances. Is that not what I should do since this place is doomed to be my fate?”
You want her to report you to her father? A tale of a captured woman?
My skin heated. Perhaps my moment of what I thought was cleverness was not so cunning after all.
He took a moment to write on the parchment.
It seemed Roark did not wish for me to miss a single word.
The Sentry leaned in, our noses nearly touching, and the grin he wore was colder than mine.
He did not pull back, not even when I read the scrap of parchment.
Let me tell you of Jarl Hendrikson. He would send a summons to King Damir. If you were not the melder, and the king gave you leave, Hendrikson would take you as a wife. When he tired of you, he would give you to his horrid sons to bed as they pleased .
I swallowed through a new thickness. “You are making assumptions, Sentry Ashwood. And they are wrong. I was not trying to leave.”
His cold grin grew colder as he spoke with one hand. I doubt that.
This close, I could make out the bits of black in the gold of his eyes. I hated him— tried to hate him—but was undeniably pulled into the fury and violence of the Sentry.
“You also assume I would allow such a man to touch me,” I said, voice low and rough. “I learned long ago to sleep with a blade beneath my head.”
The corner of Roark’s mouth curved. That I believe, though I doubt you know how to use it.
“Pray you never find out.”
Roark’s eyes darkened. You are understanding hand speak well .
I took a step back. “Another of my talents. I have a knack for studying the movements of bones.”
The lie would serve me well, for the last thing I ever wanted was Roark Ashwood discovering how tirelessly I’d studied the written guide of his words. That would bring the man too much satisfaction.
He gestured to Emi, who informed Bjorn Stonehands I would meet the rest at the Boarshead when the revel began.
I did not miss the parted lips of the woman as Roark dragged me deeper into the market.