Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
ISOLDE
“Different locales will have different healing herbs available. When traveling, enquire at the Wife's shrines. Local women will be able to suggest to you options that grow locally and supplement your existing stores.”
~ Growing Greatness: Common Garden Plants in Arcanloc
I stretched my legs to keep pace with her longer gait. The bite of the wind and the hum of my own power took me back to another world, where we’d traveled through trees and clearings, over mountains and rivers, bringing aid to our sisters.
I drew in a deep breath, reveling in the hum of tension and conflict faced head-on. Inside my gloves, my hands flexed. I didn’t bear my bow or knives, not today. But I may as well have.
Audrey’s hand on the mess room door was big and sure. She opened it with more force than she’d intended, but I doubted anyone else would’ve picked up the flicker of surprise on her face the moment before it crashed against the wall thunderously. The men within all scrambled to attention as she swept through. Beside her, Mortemon’s sunken eyes narrowed.
She didn’t pause to acknowledge them as they bowed. I knew it was because she’d struggle to restart once she stopped to consider her actions. I also knew it looked like confidence from the outside. And in a way, it was.
The confidence of hurling yourself into a situation and trusting you’d be able to manage it. That’s what she had. The confidence of knowing that there was no better alternative.
The office door of the Captain’s rooms was opened. A young, fresh-faced, golden-haired man with a square jaw and dimples stood there, his brows drawn and lips pursed.
“Smythesson,” Audrey said, and his eyes widened. She didn’t pause in her forward momentum, and he didn’t give way. She was as tall as he, and he was unprepared. “Apologies,” she said as he staggered, and she let herself in.
He looked at her as if she’d been summoned by forbidden blood magic.
“I require a key to the prisoner in the dungeons,” she said, sitting uninvited, with little grace but great aplomb. “I wish to ensure her well-being, as she was a valuable captive of my father’s.”
“I—my lady.” He bowed. “I—of course. If that’s your wish, it should do no harm.” It was about to do a lot of harm, but he didn’t need to know that. “How fare you?” he asked, as he turned to the wall of keys behind him, all carefully labeled.
“Well, thanking you.”
I stood behind her chair, Mortemon and Thomas by the door, as Smythesson searched the wall of keys. I knew the moment Audrey had spotted her quarry from the way her breathing leveled out, and her eyes stopped their scanning.
“How many of this key do you have?” she asked, as he kept searching.
“Uh—there ought to be at least three, my lady.”
“How many do you have access to?”
“Me?” He paused, as if the concept was entirely foreign. “I—One, my lady.”
He had no idea. But Audrey smiled at him. “I’ll see I return it, then, every time I borrow it.”
“Oh.” He turned back to the wall, facing again an area he’d scanned. “Of course. If that’s your preference.”
It was an excellent excuse to speak to the guard generally, and keep an eye out for Kaelson, which is what I suspected was her plan. There’d be no diffusing suspicion if we vanished the same time the prisoner did, unless we pretended to return to the tower. But I suspected that ship had sailed. The way she’d made people jump to attention today would have consequences.
Eventually, she took pity on him and said, “Is that it, there? Near your left hip? A bit further. There are just so many keys. I’m glad I don’t need to keep track of them.”
Panic flickered over the man’s handsome face. “This room is secure. It’s in the center of the barracks.”
Which meant it was as secure as the guard wanted it to be. I knew Audrey made that connection, too, when she glanced at me quickly, her smile glued on.
I took a moment to run my eyes over the oft-absent Mortemon, noting the depth of his pallor and the size of his pupils. He was, quite clearly, unwell. It would be a small thing to ask him to stay away whilst he “recovered”. The trick would be doing it before he infected the rest of us.
He shrugged his cloak to better cover his folded forearms, hunching into the cloth as I watched.
The opportunity to meet Kaelson didn’t present itself on the way out. The bleary-eyed guard stood smartly as she left, eyes ahead and shields up.
That was going to make it hard to have conversations.
The trip over the bailey was brief, and the clouds hung heavily in the sky. I folded my cloak tighter against the chill that crept into my bones, missing the warmth of summer—or better, the warmth of my tribal forest, where the summers were long and dry, but the rivers deep and cold.
It felt so far away as we made our way through twisting passageways into the bowels of the castle’s dungeons.
Every time we lit a Bloodfire, we knew it could be our last. We celebrated our lives and mourned the dead on the bones of the fallen who’d been fortunate enough to be carried home. I had a feeling when I’d walked away from my tribe that I’d danced at my last Bloodfire. I’d thought I was at peace with that. But I wanted to be back there with a ferocity that took me off guard after all these years. I wanted the sweet bite of mead and the drum that spoke to my soul. I wanted to dance and mourn and celebrate.
Thomas stepped in front of Audrey, shield up and spear left by the door in deference to the close quarters.
Audrey followed him, torch in her hand. The writhing shadows mocked my treasured memories of Bloodfires back home, casting cold, grimy stone into relief and then plunging it into darkness as it flickered.
“Quite a crowd.” The would-be assassin was sitting in the far corner, one knee up, head tipped back. “Smells like death up there. Does this mean I won’t be left to starve behind bars as you all succumb?”
From where I stood behind Audrey’s shoulder I could see the knife Thomas held behind his shield, his grip white-knuckled.
“What’s your name?” Audrey asked.
“Ylva. You can call me honey, if you’d prefer.”
I sighed. “She doesn’t want to fuck you, and if she does, she won’t admit it in front of us. But she does want to be your friend. Can we shelve the bad flirting? Just for now?”
The woman stood as I spoke, her eyes on me. “Stay back,” she told me, positioned defensively.
I felt mildly insulted. “That was my intention.”
“Why?” Audrey asked, at the same time.
“She’s got it,” Ylva said, the words hard. “Get her out.”
A chill went up my spine. Audrey was demanding explanations, but my eyes fell on the dirty silver bands at her wrists.
My mouth dry, I eased out of the small room, past Chay, and to the top of the stairs leading down to the dungeons.
Audrey hadn’t shared the information on the plague the Master Steward—Steward Daniel the Deserter, as he ought to be known—had left her before he’d fled. I hadn’t asked.
I didn’t need to hear the explanation the woman spun, and I doubted Audrey would believe any truth she was told. That prisoner was part of an inconvenient reality that Barloc hadn’t managed to weaponize and the majority didn’t know of. And it didn’t matter most of the time, because they’d been brought to heel so hard so often that when they did snap their chain, they weren’t the fearsome force they could be.
But I had no doubt she could smell that plague.
She knew Audrey could take her in single combat. But mayhap she thought it had been luck and had seen her opportunity to attempt to drive me away.
But I couldn’t put all my hopes on that.
The future stretched out before me, bleak and brief. Everything I needed to do crowded my head, and my heart sat heavily in my chest.
When Audrey appeared, her skirts were bundled in her hands, and her cheeks were pale. “We need to get you inside.”
I shook my head. I could hold the line for her. “Say you’re sealing yourself in the tower again,” I said, and she looked at me, stricken. “If you’d had it, she would’ve told us,” I explained. “You need to go before you do. I can buy you time.”
But she shook her head, her mouth a thin line. “No.” And there was a note of finality in her tone, like the cracking of a whip, that reminded me of another time, and another order.
Hope stirred deep inside of me. “Well,” I said. “What’s your plan?”