Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
AUDREY
They seemed impervious to the plague, unfortunately.
I’ve reports from La’Angi that we were hit hard but the city is still functional.
I have every faith that upon my return, it will be as it was.
War is good for business. —in a letter from General Victor, Duke of La'Angi to General Dieudonné, Count of Black Borough
La’Angi Keep
“So, your money comes from cider?” Chay repeated, frowning. “But mostly from knappchs?”
I shook my head, short of air to respond this far through our training session. My legs burned. My shoulders burned. The tiny muscles around my knees burned. Most of all, my blood burned with the anxiety of trying to figure out this latest problem.
“That’s the orchard profit,” I clarified. “Eighty percent of the fruit…” I paused to draw a breath and continued with the lunges. “Gets turned into cider. Fifty percent of the profit comes from knappchs.”
Moving to the same rhythm as I was, he looked at me as if unsure whether I was teasing. His chest rose and fell quickly, too, but the sword in his hand didn’t waver. “Isn’t that what I said?”
It wasn’t, but if it was what he meant, I’d focus on that.
“But I don’t have enough wheat,” I added, which had been the point of our conversation.
My foot fell improperly. I focused on my body, ensuring my feet were positioned right and my knee tracked correctly.
“Without the wheat, what profits I have will be even worse than predicted.”
Working with Bernadette and Ettie’s recommended people, I’d spent that morning looking over the larder and cellars. They could make the wheat we had stretch until the end of spring, hoping once travel got easier that we could buy enough to make up the difference.
We needed to get the knappchs fermenting.
The profits lost from this harvest would have potential impacts for years, including damaging relationships with the big names in trade that might be impossible for me to repair without access to their social circle.
With the small amount of apples we had, if I could only source some grains, we could take most of the sting out of that cost.
I was fine with taking money from the families who had more than their share and giving it to those without, but I still needed to be able to pay wages, repair roads, and uphold trade agreements. And there was a limit to the assets people had lying around in my city.
“How do we get more wheat?” he asked, modelling a three-step sequence now. I mimicked his movements, double-checking the angle of my elbow and blade against his. “You don’t have much growing nearby. How does it usually come in?”
“There’s fields between us and Ange’s Pass,” I said, absently. “It’s mostly barley out toward Triple Peak. We should’ve got it in during the harvest. And we did get some.”
“But?”
“But it looks like the Head Steward took some with him,” I said, more focused on the slide of my muscles and the burn in my legs than the conversation. “When he fled. Or sent some ahead, more like.”
“For safe-keeping, I’m sure,” Chay said, and I enjoyed the note of disgust in his tone as we both judged the previous steward.
We probably would have escaped La’Angi and the plague too if we’d been able. From this side of the walls, it was nice to consider him a coward.
“That, combined with the harvest that was interrupted, means we’ve got it either in silos in the surrounding area, or…
” The thought of all those resources rotting in the sleet and the finite stocks in my cellar made me feel like I was on Storm’s back, except the headlong gallop was toward a cliff and no one else seemed to see it.
“Or we’ve got some fat wildlife to hunt,” he finished, raising his brows. “I do need to get my old bow out, give it some oil and some love. Mayhap we could fetch game again, freshen up the cookpots. We could get by with less bread.”
Gratitude swelled in me because he was right. I was looking at our standard diet when I looked at past numbers. We didn’t need to eat baked goods. And getting out into the air, out of the walls? Marvelous.
“Ettie suggested we could send groups out to gather what apples might have survived within easy reach of the city,” I admitted.
I hadn’t thought too much on it because we needed everyone we had just to keep the fires burning.
It could be I wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees.
Some of the uncomfortable humming in my limbs eased as the thought unfurled in my mind.
Maybe there were solutions. I just hadn’t looked at the right angles yet.
The weight of the sword in my hand and the power in my limbs was reassuring.
So was Chay’s quiet. I imagined teaching him hunting the way I’d been teaching him grappling, and some more of the worry uncoiled in my belly.
“You really aren’t good with a bow?” I asked. “Though you’re from Raider’s Ban?”
“I spent more time with the heavy infantry,” he said, as if that was all the explanation that was needed. And mayhap for him it was.
We moved in time as I copied the three-step pattern, keeping pace with his movements, mimicking his stance and pacing, our breath coming in unison. I didn’t know what it would’ve looked like to spend time with the heavy infantry. Travel? Training? Did he share a barracks with them?
I remembered how I’d asked him to be my champion and how he’d initially refused. “Next tourney,” I said, and I felt his gaze on me, though my eyes were ahead of me, on my imaginary foe as I swung my practice sword, “I won’t ask you to be my champion. You deserve to claim your own victory.”
His hand on my waist stilled me. Sweat dampened his throat and made the dark hair that framed his face stay together in locks.
But it was the intensity in his dark blue eyes that drew me in.
“Embers,” he said, the nickname a low rumble that made awareness dance up my spine and the blood pool low in my belly.
“You haven’t taken anything from me. All I’ve given you, I’ve given freely. ”
The twist of guilt at his words wasn’t as vicious as it’d been in the past. He was going into reassure your lover sequence and I didn’t want to engage with that right now.
I was tired. I just wanted to be good enough today.
So, I lifted my chin in a way that made his eyes flicker down to my lips and injected challenge into my voice when I said, “You going to give me the next tourney, sir?”
“Name your event, m’lady,” he told me like it was an oath, but there was the hint of a smile at the corner of his lips and his posture had softened. The hand on my waist splayed out, easing around to settle in the small of my back. “I’ll give them all to you.”
Anticipation skimmed up my spine. My sword dipped down to the side, and I closed the distance between us. His lips parted for mine, then closed on my bottom lip. “I’ll take any you’ll give me,” I promised.
He made a noise of pleasure low in his throat. “Best you give me your favor then,” he murmured against my ear. The rush of air made ripples of awareness wash over my skin as his hand slid up my back, encouraging me to arch into him as it travelled up toward my hair.
“My lady.”
The words were so crisp they could’ve been starched for my father himself. I froze as Chay’s hand hardened on my back. The sword I’d forgotten he held had lifted, and though it was a practice weapon only, fear speared through me.
“When you’ve a moment, my lady.”
Thomas. My head was spinning. I had to pry myself away from Chay, not because he held me forcefully but because my own limbs wanted to lock in place. “Thomas,” I said aloud, somehow, though there was no air in my lungs. “Yes?”
He stood at the top of the stairs, his expression fixed in lines of painful neutrality, circles under his eyes and a small tube in his hand. “A pigeon came in, my lady.”
For a moment his words were just a meaningless collection of noises, and then they coalesced in my brain. “From where?” The tube was a clocknote, and the realization it hadn’t been opened suddenly struck me.
I was the highest-ranking person in this whole city.
Terror blew through my veins. I tried to hide the shaking of my hand as I sheathed the sword and quickly crossed to him.
My feet tangled up in each other in my haste to remedy the delays in my responses.
“Who’s it from?” I asked, but the words, too, got tangled, so my message sounded like bread gone soggy.
He presented it with a bow. “If that’s all, my lady?” he asked me, not looking at Chay.
Heat burned in my cheeks, but I didn’t have time for Thomas’ sensitive feelings. If he’d entered ten minutes later, he really would have been horrified.
The lingering desire in my veins warred with the worry that flared as I turned the tube over.
Inker Allison—only apprentice, but she’d been doing the work of a full-fledged mage—must’ve already lifted the spells because all that held it closed was a mundane clasp rather than the light clockwork sleeve spelled to resist all weather effects and access from anyone bar the intended recipient.
“I’ll return to my post, my lady, unless there’s anything else,” he said.
I was already unravelling the scroll from the tube. “Of course,” I agreed. “Thanking you.” The crest caught my eye immediately. I froze, my eyes on that crest.
It was mine.
It was his.
It was all his.
It’s all yours. But the idea was a whisper, not a roar.
I was stuck, my fingers locked in place.
Not totally stuck, of course. If I’d needed to move I could, surely.
If only I tried harder. The staccato sound of his bootheels on stone sounded in my head.
My heart raced and my attention tried to narrow, but I breathed deeply.
He’s not here. But his words were. They were in my hand.
The clockwork tube trembled.
“Let’s go get Isolde,” Chay suggested.
It was such a jarringly normal idea that I was able to pull my eyes from my father’s sigil stamped on the spelled paper. “Yes,” I breathed. Isolde would know what to do.
But it was already mostly open in my hands. I let my gaze dip back down to the words.
It had been written by him. Not just his words, but his words in his hand.
My heart was racing. The letters had been printed neatly. They were cut a little too firmly into the parchment, the way he always did. Surely, he had a scribe to do the work. Why had he sent me a message?
“Before the snows,” Chay breathed. “We’ve a year, Audrey.”
I looked up, the world swimming around me. “What?”
The blue of his eyes was all I could see. I felt like I was falling.
My father was returning.
One year.
Only a year.
“Let’s go get Isolde,” he repeated. This time, he curled his hand protectively around mine, helping me carry the threat of the future.