Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AUDREY
Forgive yourself for what you did to survive.
—Matri’sion lesson
18th Day of Winter’s Wife Moon,
Age of the Locways, Year 271
La’Angi Keep
“I believe this deserves a celebration, my lady,” Brian said, setting a bottle down before him.
“Those contracts to send out the cider?” He laughed, shaking his head.
“Nasty pieces of work, they were. I say that in admiration, you understand.” He poured cider into a cup he’d brought me.
“Between the two of us, we’ll get this lame horse back to its stable before sundown. ”
The lame horse in question was my city. I didn’t want to know what sundown was a metaphor for.
I took the cider but didn’t stir my aching cheeks to smile, instead rubbing the ache in my forehead.
“I fear I’m too tired to celebrate overlong,” I warned him, then spotted Bernadette entering with the bearing of a thundercloud.
I held in a sigh, skimming my gaze back toward the cider and over Chay.
He didn’t meet my eyes.
If it’d been the first or even the third time I’d been unable to catch his attention, it wouldn’t have worried me.
But there was something about the way he stared into the middle distance that was…
wrong. News must have come from ’Ban, or Kaelson was in his ear to help with some new threat that may or may not be a trap to lure out the archer we were now suspected of harboring.
“Henry just shouted at me,” Bernadette said, the words level despite the vein pulsing in her temple and the taut muscles in her shoulder that threatened to rip her apron asunder. “I’ve sent Jilly to get Kael, but I thought you’d want to know he’s upset and speaking against you.”
The words were addressed to me, as the resident figurehead of La’Angi, but she pointed them toward Thomas and Chay.
Henry was a dab hand with a spear, but he wasn’t a threat.
Chay gave the flustered cook his chair and excused himself to get her some food.
I slid my cider across to her. He wasn’t so distracted that he hadn’t seen the real danger here; not Henry getting his testicles tangled over generous, if repetitive, rations, but division amongst our ranks.
The celebration Brian had declared became an opportunity for Bernadette to put down some of the worries she was carrying. I smoothed her rightfully ruffled feathers and listened to her woes. When she left, there was no vein pulsing in her head, and she looked tired rather than furious.
“You’ll look after her,” she told Chay, putting a hand on his shoulder in a manner that felt motherly. “Won’t you, young man? She’s a good one, our Audrey is.”
He nodded. We parted ways outside of the hall. He said nothing. His eyes were off in the distance, or on the smooth stones beneath our feet.
I shrugged off the unease as I moved toward my tower. Isolde hadn’t returned from her latest visit to Inker Allison. I walked a step ahead of Chay and Thomas who shadowed me rather than flanking me.
It felt like I was walking alone. But I wasn’t.
At my tower, Thomas unlocked the door. The tower was cool, though not cold. I fed the fire, listening to the brief rise and fall of voices out in the entry chamber. I’d left the door open. Chay always came into the common room with me.
The steps were wrong, though. It wasn’t Chay who came in, but Thomas. He didn’t fidget. “It occurred to me listening to Brian talk, my lady, we don’t celebrate what you do enough.”
My heart sank. Surely I was simply reading into his tone? That wasn’t pity in his eyes—it was simply misplaced admiration. “There will be time to celebrate,” I assured him.
“There is,” he agreed. “Can be hard to spot it, though, ’til you’re on the other side of it.” He gave a precise bow. “You’ve done a lot, m’lady.”
“There’s a lot left to do,” I said, because it was true and it also made me feel less disoriented to think of those clear-cut tasks that lay before me.
“Just…remember what you have done,” he offered. “You’ve much to be proud of. May your rest be deep, m’lady. I’ll see you on the morrow.”
I watched him go from my knees beside the hearth, going back over the way his brows had pitched upwards to the middle, how his head had tilted just a little, how his words had been offered up like soft reassurances.
As soon as the door shut behind him, I was on my feet, holding back the buzzing in my head through an act of sheer willpower.
Chay was entering, though, and he finally looked at me.
My nerves must have been fraying, because he was the same as ever. When he looked at me, I still felt that curl of warmth in my belly. He came around to his chair before the fire.
“I think I need time away from this,” I said, waving my hand in the direction of the keep at large.
He propped his elbows on his knees, leaning forwards as if he, too, was exhausted.
Guilt gnawed at my belly. I’d been worried he was upset with me, but now I thought about it, hadn’t I seen a messenger carrying a clockwork scroll earlier?
I’d dismissed it as my own eyes fooling me, but they would hide unofficial correspondence.
His silence reinforced my concern. I perched on the arm of the chair and gently rubbed circles on his back. The muscles here were tight—concerningly so. I kept my worries to myself. I wasn’t the only one who needed to step away for a day or two.
Eventually, he blew out a long breath and straightened. I let my hand fall back, giving him space.
There were tears in his eyes.
My heart twisted. I slid down into his lap and felt a shudder go through him. His face turned to mine as his hands bit into me with urgency. Chay’s lips were ravenous more than they were sweet, and I held him as close as I could.
When he came up for air I nuzzled at his ear. The ends of his hair tickled my brow. “I’m here,” I promised.
He turned his head away, breath coming quick. I didn’t pursue him, giving him time. Where my chest pressed against his I could feel the drumming of his heart.
Something was wrong.
I reached for calm, rocking him slowly the way Isolde once rocked me. His breathing became more ragged, rather than less. Keeping myself separate from his distress was hard, but I needed to help, and I wouldn’t be much help if I was a wreck, too.
“We’ll figure it out,” I told him, confident in that knowledge, at least. “We figured out a magical plague, Chay. We can figure out whatever is wrong.”
“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” he said, the question entirely devoid of joy. “You make it all work.” The way he said it, I may as well have been cursed. From his belt he withdrew a small scroll.
It wasn’t the size for a clockwork note, but a larger, sturdier scroll that still smelled of the richly oiled leather it’d been transported in. My heart sank. I fumbled it open.
It was Luca’s handwriting. I’d got enough letters from him over the years to be confident of that. Without Chay’s reaction, mayhap I wouldn’t have even had the possibility in my mind.
It was nothing, really. Just news the Head Steward Daniel was alive and making plans to return. It wasn’t signed, but it was addressed to Chay.
“Why is Luca sending you messages?” I asked him.
“You aren’t the only one with a long history with him.” Chay’s words had an edge of blame I couldn’t recall ever hearing from him. Not like this.
I withdrew, sliding from his lap. “We’ll deal with the Steward if he returns.” Options spun through my mind, but at the fore I was struggling to identify why he sounded so…unkind. “Have I done something wrong?” The question sounded awkward to my ears.
“No. No, you’ve done nothing wrong.” But his eyes went to the scroll in my hand.
Luca.
I returned to the conversation we’d had beside the stream a few days ago, about the pirate Captain. Anyone but Luca. It had been a small part of the larger conversation. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time.
“I didn’t ask Luca to keep an eye on the Head Steward,” I told Chay. It was certainly useful he’d done so, but I kept that to myself.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, standing. But it did. He didn’t believe me. He didn’t trust me. “You can do—Audrey.” He shook his head and I stood, my hands folded, my heart skittering in my chest. “We can’t do this.”
I nodded as my heart leapt against my chest. He thought I was asking Luca for aid, and he was right; we couldn’t be doing that. Luca’s aid came with strings.
Chay’s words had a ring of finality and more force than I’d heard from him. The words didn’t make sense yet, but I’d figure it out later. A horrible, slow sucking sensation had started in the bottom of my guts. I walked to where the tisane was positioned.
“I’ll support you in your decisions, of course,” I agreed, the words coming unbidden.
The stream of tisane I poured was stable.
The delicately painted pattern on the bottom of the cup jumped out at me, the curls of the flower, the faded edges around the rim where it’d been cleaned by rough hands.
He said nothing. From far away watched as he stood before his chair. No, loomed.
There was a part of me that knew I was responding not to him, but to another man. It was a quiet, small part that held truths for later.
“I’m sorry this is so difficult for you,” I said.
The words bounced around the room, warm and honest with just the right amount of worry.
“I have to apologize, Chay, as well, as I’m not following.
Please, if you’ve a moment, could you explain?
” I set the tisane before him and sat in the chair opposite with a flick of skirts, perching lightly on the edge.
“There’s nothing to explain,” he said, but it wasn’t in his voice, and it wasn’t his words I heard, either. How is it you still don’t understand? His hand slashed the air between us. Nothing. That’s what that movement shouted. Nothing you can do. You’ve already done too much.