Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAY
“A horse cannot be forced to trust.”
~ How to Tame Your Brumby: A Collection of Raider’s Ban Wisdom
I woke to my first morning as a La’Angi knight feeling like I’d just ridden halfway across the Steppes and been dragged the other half—gritty, aching, and tired. I dragged myself up and straightened the covers on the bed. It wasn’t as narrow as some I’d seen. I couldn’t remember if it was comfortable.
A quiet knock made me rise to admit one of the servants whose name I couldn’t remember. Her eyes stuck on my bare chest and color rose in her cheeks.
As I stepped back, I wondered what joy she found in this keep, run by the Butcher. I remembered my sister picking flowers, wishing upon them, and tossing them into the wind that carried the reek of the failing sewage system. She’d laughed like it was the most fun she’d ever had. The flowers hadn’t even flown well.
I couldn’t recall if I was supposed to follow the servant. I stood inside the inner door, and she didn’t seem to notice me as she readied a large, cold breakfast on a low table, laying out cutlery carefully. While I watched, she checked the water beneath a posy of flowers and moved to open the shutters, her movements slow and cautious.
I withdrew to the long, narrow room that made the bunkhouse for this tomb. There was a huge single door that was more solid than the main gate of plenty of fiefs I’d seen. A small entryway made a bottleneck, with my bunkhouse on one side and our repurposed sitting room on the other side. A large, solid stone wall between the entryway and the start of Audrey’s chambers made the whole thing feel very secure.
I lived in a tiny little space between the Butcher and his captive.
I was the air between Audrey and the mud.
The bunk wasn’t comfortable for me to lie in and wait for time to pass, but I didn’t have a lot of options, so it was where I went. But it wasn’t the wood above me that I saw. It was Kadan’s face as Darrius outlined their plan with merciful precision, including the coup they’d been prepared to stage if the Butcher had merely been injured by the assassins. That hadn’t happened, so we were regrouping for another charge.
That happened to be where Raider’s Ban cavalry shone. Anyone with a pony and a stick could charge. Few could regroup well. Fewer still could do it time and again, with ruthless precision, the way we could. And while he wasn’t talking cavalry charges, Darrius brought that competency into everything he did. According to him, there were four courses of action from here that their Council would choose from.
Have someone else marry Audrey, take La’Angi, swear it to Luca.
Have Luca marry Audrey against the Duke’s orders, and hope it was viewed as binding in the eyes of the One…and the Council.
Have me hide Audrey away while they razed La’Angi to the ground.
Ignore La’Angi and the west, and instead, try the same strategy they’d attempted with La’Angi’s mirror province in the east. Marry into the family at Black Borough, kill the Duke, and take the eastern arm of the military stationed at Black Borough.
None of the options included forcing Kadan to step into a role he was so sure would crush him. It was the best I could say of their plans.
Mayhap we hadn’t given the Butcher enough credit. He’d known how to shut down Luca’s plans and had already done so, neatly severing any chance of our rebellion rallying behind him. And he’d known Kadan wouldn’t be so easily thwarted.
He’d gone for Kadan’s throat, and I hadn’t been there to defend it. I’d been carrying chests and smashing unwanted furniture.
I wasn’t arrogant enough to think I could have single-handedly saved Kadan. But I’d’ve damned well tried.
I got up and let myself into Audrey’s chambers. Whitehoof take their rules. I didn’t care for Victor’s dictatorship or living in two tiny rooms on either side of a chokepoint for the rest of my life.
In the gray of dawn, I spent time looking over the tapestries on the walls, but they were the same styles and settings I’d seen all over the castle. I suspected most had been repurposed from elsewhere—they didn’t feel like her. The long, low chairs, the rugs on the ground, all felt like they’d been pulled from elsewhere, too.
Why hadn’t she been in this area before? Too expensive to staff? Were there no guards he trusted?
Old Gods and the One, how I hated that I was more trusted than his own men.
Why had she wanted me to teach her the sword?
I looked up the curling staircase to the next level, where the servant hadn’t gone and dawn hadn’t intruded yet. The staircase was empty, of course, and the tower silent bar the cheerful crackle of the fire in the grate chasing away the worst of the autumn chill.
But Isolde was right there, motionless, on those stairs.
She was totally still—but somehow, she looked like she was coming out of the stone all the same. My feet were like hunks of granite as she started to move, and my brain tried to make me move in response. Every part of me screamed get out of her way.
That level of stealth was inhuman.
Her feet were bare and silent as she moved down the stairs. Her eyes didn’t leave mine, and the air was caught behind my ribs. I was put in the mind of one of the big lions I’d seen stalking prey in the Steppes. Except Isolde didn’t bother trying to disguise herself.
Wordlessly, she walked past me. I stood frozen, my feet like blocks of stone. She moved with the sinuous grace of a predator, and I was the unsuspecting prey, separated from my herd. Staring at me, her blue eyes looked utterly soulless. She curled her fingers around the tray’s edges the way I’d grasp a hilt, with purpose and some expectation of violence or force. Clammy sweat prickled under my arms as she straightened and stalked away, moving past me so closely I held my breath rather than draw her ire. Her skirts brushed against the tops of my boots.
She hadn’t made a single sound. Not a one.
I didn’t breathe properly until I was back in my little airlock, the door barred behind me.
It was one thing to know the woman was Matri’sion. It was another to see it.
I rested my forehead against the wood and wished, with everything inside of me, I could go and tell Kadan about the horror I’d just seen.
Instead, I took the coward’s way out and hid.
Thomas eventually arrived. He talked through the necessary information that Mortemon didn’t want to give me. Apparently, knowing where the bathhouse was located sat lower on the list of importance than having my hair cut. We agreed I’d do nights, at least for the next few weeks, and he’d come by after training in the morning to take the shift during the day.
Leaving the tower, even armed with thorough instructions, made anxiety claw at my throat in a way it hadn’t for years. I skimmed my hand over the hilt of my sword and found comfort in the weight of my shield as I moved through the unfamiliar corridors.
I kept half-turning to check on Kadan out of habit. Finding nothing but gray La’Angi stonework, unfriendly faces, and shadows alive with my own demons, kept my hand close to my sword.
Everything was wrong.
Even back in the tower I had to endure the silence with Thomas as we both stood around, doing nothing, saying nothing. It gave me far too long to compare my current living situation with the one I’d endured as a child.
Later in the afternoon I went to train. In the courts I was pointed silently away from the group of guardsmen who looked to be the equivalent of infantry in the Butcher’s standing army. They met my eyes, sized me up, and then directly me wordlessly toward a much smaller group of men who looked to be finishing up. This area was attended by a woman holding a bucket and scoop. The tide was low in the bucket, her eyes flat and tired as she looked at me.
I saw those tired eyes, not the men in front of me, though they greeted me with big grins and open arms, though they swiped away sweat and jostled for position. I barely even saw the dulled blade I was given.
I’d done it. I’d come full circle. But this time, I wouldn’t let that cycle repeat again.