Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
AUDREY
Unless disproven, Man in the Mountain and my target appear to be the same person.
Target observed speaking with numerous people on lists you showed me.
Also, I suspect Spring Flowers and Bloodmoon are reporting to him.
Frequent interactions with unguilded mages and high interest targets, including my previous.
Cider. —coded missive from Wren to Nightingale
La’Angi Keep
The resentment I felt at the summons from the ex-High Steward gnawed at my throat. It tasted like the spiced tart I’d eaten as part of the latest Welcome to La’Angi effort with the large merchant ship who’d docked early this morning.
Reminding myself that this was the cost of progress, I breathed in deep, feeling the hot heaviness of it, then let it go.
Every step from my tower I imagined I left behind just a little of that bad mood.
Yes, my mood made sense. It was a sensible reaction to an irritating situation.
But it didn’t serve me to hold onto it. I had quite enough I needed to hold onto without adding more.
Chay jangled and chimed along behind me, and Thomas beside him. The wind carried the promise of summer’s heat, blowing away the lingering humidity. I paused for a moment by an open window to look out over the bay.
Not one, but three ships. Movement in the city made me remember the stillness of the winter we’d survived, and the lively autumns I’d witnessed in the past.
Not all energy was good. The times the city had been full to the brim, people had been pushed to the fringes. We’d been crushed, then squeezed for work or coin. The stillness had been peaceful, even companionable.
I wanted both. I wanted prosperity, divided equally. I wanted peace, and the population to share it with.
I was, in my heart, a greedy noblewoman.
It was a reality I was accepting about myself, in moments such as these when I knew no one would interrupt me.
Isolde was following up on some skullduggery Daniel was up to.
Chay and Thomas wouldn’t do more than trail along silently, even if I sat all day pretending to be a statue.
No one was going to bother us here. This area of the keep wasn’t in use.
It had been the area our castle tailors had worked in, rooms that connected to the storerooms out the back, and servants’ quarters.
Newcomers would visit the steward, then come to fetch their uniform and bedding.
I’d never attended these tailors, myself.
They were the common tailors, skilled at making heavy, coarse fabrics that lasted rather than crafting high art from expensive silks and velvets.
I suspected they’d’ve known how to fit my shoulders properly into a gown, unlike the fashionable tailors, and wouldn’t have cut dresses too narrow through the waist assuming I’d be tight-laced.
The thought reminded me of the beautiful green silk I needed to have crafted into something.
What did a kraken wear? Aside from sea foam and the blood of their enemies?
I imagined a few different dresses, more or less elaborate, with exaggerated shoulders, or sleek upper arms and long sleeves, with full skirts or simple layers. I’d never enjoyed the feel of exaggerated shapes.
What did I want?
It was a strange question to ask myself, one I usually tried to avoid when others asked it of me in any sort of situation where there was no clear answer.
What did I want?
The city before me wavered.
I wanted to feel strong. I wanted to feel strong, and comfortable, and beautiful.
Not strong like the kraken Elynta had joked about, but strong like my horse. An enduring, assumed strength, not flashy or stolen, not aiming to instill fear or feed some fantasy of power.
I could imagine the conversation with the tailor.
Good morning, master. I’ve come into this excellent fabric, and I was hoping you might have time within your schedule to craft me a new outfit.
Everyday wear, please, something I can put on for casual rides into the city to visit my pirate lover, or wear when they visit me in the keep.
Yes, day to day occurrences. I want no one to remark upon my garb for these excursions.
The style of it? Oh, please do decide that for me.
My only specification is that you make me feel like my horse.
The humor I felt in response to my own silly imaginings made me feel lighter.
I’d figure out a better way to phrase all of that.
Except the lover part. I’d just leave that out entirely.
Any way I sliced it, visiting a tailor was an endeavor for the future.
Being a greedy noblewoman meant occasionally tolerating, and even prioritizing, underlings who wanted to bury you.
So I felt the bright, warm kernel of hope and breathed in again, imagining that breath circulating around the hope, feeding it.
Just hold on. That’s all we needed to do.
This cart was rolling. It was on the right track. We just had to—
A door opened ahead of us. Then two more, behind us. The sound hadn’t travelled from my ears to my mind when the door directly before me opened in a rush. I was grabbed around the shoulders and dragged.
Battle energy shot through my limbs. The sound of hurried steps came from ahead, and from behind. Many of them, too many, rushing toward us. The smell of salt and dust hit my nose.
I dropped to the ground.
“To the lady!” The call was thunderous, the force behind it enough to make my teeth ache.
The sound sent claws deep into my limbs, white-hot and tipped with poison.
My attacker’s hands were scrabbling at me.
I kicked out against them, using my momentum to make space, aiming to get away more than to do damage.
My back scraped against the stone floor.
They made a noise of pain. It melded with Thomas’ cry: “To the lady!”
The bird-call Isolde had taught me to signal enemies lodged in my brain.
Words were gone. Time slowed curiously for a moment.
I heard shouts, words, the scuffing of boots.
Close-by, the familiar sound of a sword being unsheathed sent those claws deeper into my limbs.
Someone grunted in pain. I stayed on my back while my attacker collapsed against the wall.
There were more ahead. More to the side, coming from the doorway.
I kicked at hands that came close, hip-escaped backward to where Thomas and Chay would be.
Skirts tore. I put my hand down for purchase in a pool of blood, snatched it back.
Used that same blood-stained hand to grab a wrist grabbing at me, jerking my attacker down and into my knee, then kicking them in the face as they reeled back.
“To the lady!”
I drove down with my heel to scoot back from the door and the wave of faces. The bloody tip of a spear swiped across my vision. I took the reprieve Thomas had bought me to get to my feet, deliberately standing on the torn fabric of my skirt to rip it out of the way.
A cut rope tangled on the ground, an attempt to keep my guards from me. Chay and Thomas stood, back-to-back, holding at bay what felt like a sea of enemies.
But it wasn’t. More than three. Less than ten. Plain clothes, all of them.
Movement came from nearby rooms, running steps from ahead. More were coming.
Thomas shoved me ungently behind him with his shield arm, the spear slashing through the air again. Chay impaled a man coming at him with a knife, grabbing his hand as the man’s eyes widened. He lifted a foot and kicked, sending the man toppling into his fellows.
“Just get her!” someone shouted. “Fast!”
Chay tossed me the knife. It was bloody.
I caught it before my mind realized what my body was doing, the weight settling into my palm, too top-heavy, the handle too short.
I was still sifting through those sensations as I slashed at a grabbing hand, shocked when I felt the blade bite into flesh.
Longer. It’s longer. The thought was slow.
My limbs weren’t as I ducked from seeking grips.
“To the lady!”
The call came from the other side of the sea of ravenous faces, just as thunderous as Thomas’ shout, and just as chilling.
“Grab the fucking ropes!”
Something ran into me. I bounced off the wall, swinging, but my target was already clutching at the geyser of blood coming from their groin in rapid spurts that hit my skirts.
The pressure from those spurts was shocking.
Somehow, over the chaos, or under it, I heard the sound of it against the fabric of my skirts.
Like a horse pissing, or buckets of water being hurled at close-range.
But simultaneously not like either of those.
It hit me so hard I didn’t even know if it’d soaked into the fabric or bounced off, as if my skirts were made of steel.
Watch your footing. Isolde’s voice was clear and steadying in my mind. Blood’s slippery. And it’ll leave tracks a child could follow.
Except I wasn’t hiding.
A La’Angi shield appeared in front of me. Not beside me. It wasn’t attached to Thomas or Chay. It was in the fray, propelled like a ship through the one safe channel in and out of the bay. It swung wide.
“To the lady!” Thomas bellowed. From behind the shield another voice raised in perfect unison, their voices echoing off the stone halls. If there had been glass in the windows, surely it would’ve blown out. The claws of urgency had me by the throat.
The man behind the shield was Kaelson. Blood had splattered across his lined face and flecked his grey hair.
He fell in beside Thomas as if they were born in step.
The spurter clung to his wound with his hand at my feet while the butt of Thomas’s spear sent his weapon skittering away.
A shove came from the back, the group of them pressing forward in a crush.
Kaelson and Thomas’ shields locked together, holding back a human wave. Their feet set at the same angle.
“Rooms compromised,” Thomas said, the words carrying over the noise.
“North corridor a trap,” Kaelson shot back. “Defend! To the lady!”
I was grabbed from the side. All I needed to see was the scraggly beard to know they weren’t my ally.
The stolen knife cut through the joint of their padded vest beneath the arm, sinking into the pit.
They staggered back when the butt of a spear hit them in the face, clutching their arm in the crush.
“Get the cursed bitch and get the fuck out!”
The order came from somewhere nearby.
They were dying to get to me. They were dying to seize me.
The idea was abstract. Beside me Chay was a whirlwind, his shield cracked and useless. To the other side, Thomas and Kaelson moved in unison.
Over both of their heads I saw an armored man, mace in hand, come to the front. His chainmail shirt had no tabard over it.
“Hand her over,” he demanded. “There’s only three of you.”
With the spurt of fury that rushed through my veins I might’ve attempted to throw the knife in my hand, if only it was my own.
I didn’t count.
Even when I was their target, I didn’t count.
“Until my blood no longer beats.”
I couldn’t have heard the words correctly.
They were too soft, the chaos too absolute.
I could feel the heat of the blood against my skin.
It had soaked through my skirt, finally.
My eyes didn’t dip down to the man who’d been trying to hold the blood inside his body, but the force of that effort made the scene before me whir.
As if propelled by magic, time seemed to condense.
Chay stepped in front of the armored warrior, ducking under a lethal swing, his sword grating against mail.
Thomas and Kaelson pivoted so they covered his flanks.
The knife in my hand was useless. Had I a bow—
Time ebbed and flowed. Shots I could take came into focus.
The mace-wielder lifting his arm, chin raised.
Shoot through the throat into the brain.
To the left, a man hurling a rock overarm toward Chay, standing there and watching its progress halted by the broad side of Thomas’s shield.
Shoot through the eye into the brain. Shoot through the mouth.
My hands ached for my bow. A man rushed into the gap Thomas’ body had left beside me, a big bag in his hands, unarmored, his saber tangled up in burlap.
Shoot between the rib bones into his heart.
Shoot into his partially open mouth. Thomas’ spear cut across his body, opening a bloody line over his chest, nonlethal but enough to make him falter.
A man grabbed his friend while they clutched at their bloody throat.
The man stared down at Kaelson’s victim, eyes wide, cheeks pale.
Arrow through the eye. Arrow through the throat.
Arrow through the chest. I had so many targets and could take none of them.
There was no way for me to enter that ebb and flow. There was no way I could help them.
“Call it,” Thomas said.
In unison, a moment later, the cry came from the two of them. “To the lady!”
Someone came up behind Chay, knife in hand, slashing low, aiming to hamstring him.
Arrow to the hand. Eye. Chest. Thigh. Under the arm.
Thomas’ spear darted forward and skewered the man.
He fell away, taking Thomas’ spear. Chay continued to whirl, engaged in deadly combat with the man in mail, never knowing.
Thomas fought on, sword in hand, never missing a beat.
I swallowed hard, trying to see everything.
Trying to take it all in, the stink and noise and rush of movement, leaving the fear and fury for later.
My brain got stuck on the wet patch against my leg and the weight of a section of my skirt, the jarring balance of the knife in my hand and the way Kaelson and Thomas made it look… effortless.
The sound of boots rising and falling as one made the hair rise on the back of my neck.
The group faltered, falling back or hesitating, looking to one another.
I saw Chay step into a mighty swing, ducking up and under it, driving his sword through the man’s armpit with the screech of steel against steel.
He jerked the blade free and kicked the man off as the guard arrived.
They moved together. Just like Thomas and Kaelson.
Resistance melted like it always did before my father’s men. Except they weren’t my father’s.
The hand at my elbow made me strike out. I caught myself before I sank the knife into Kaelson’s chest, the air gone from my lungs.
“You’re safe now, m’lady,” he said, as calm as if I’d simply tripped on uneven cobbles. That was what this whole thing was, to him, a little bump in the road.
I retracted the knife as the guard fell on those who hadn’t fled. I didn’t have the words to demand mercy for the survivors.