Chapter 23
Sage
After assuring Payne I was fine, I returned to the infirmary.
Thankfully, both Lord Rider and Slate were gone, and Reef made no indication that the Lord Commander of the Black Guard wanted to discipline me.
There was still time remaining before the fourth bell and I hadn’t had a chance to start any of my assigned cleaning, so I headed toward the hall with the patient rooms and the cleaning closet.
“Not that way,” Reef said. “I think you’ve moved on from basic cleaning.”
He jerked his chin, indicating I should follow him, and led me to the hall at the back of the infirmary, the one Garridan had been taken to, but not me.
This hall was a little narrower than the patient hall with only three doors in it.
The first door was open and led to a room filled with shelves packed with thick leather-bound books and a lone desk sitting in the middle.
The next door was to a suite with a small sitting room and another open door inside leading to a bedroom.
I couldn’t see it, but given how the other rooms in the infirmary and the elite wing of the Tower were set up, the suite most likely had a private bathing room as well.
The last door in the hall led to a large supply room that was packed with bandages, medicines, tinctures, salves, and medical tools.
He gave me the tour of the supply room, then told me to gather a replacement stitching kit and bandages to restock the main room.
After that, he gave a lecture about basic healing in the field, almost, but not quite praising my quick thinking for tying off the merchant’s leg before he bled to death and getting Garridan to apply pressure.
Garridan never returned to the infirmary, and I couldn’t help wondering if his inability to react during the fight had made Lord Rider reassign him to a different morning chore or if the man was still too shocked to do anything other than follow basic instructions.
Which made me wonder how I, a woman, had kept fighting when Garridan, a man, had completely frozen up? Everything I’d been taught— everything Edred had beaten into me was that women were weak. We weren’t capable of taking care of ourselves, we weren’t responsible enough to manage property.
And yet when it came down to it, I acted. I always acted.
I’d saved Sawyer by taking his place, I’d saved Payne by revealing my fae-touched ability, and I’d kept Garridan and the merchant alive.
When my morning duties ended, I checked in with Kit and Payne. Kit looked up from where he sat propped up in bed beside Payne as I stepped into the doorway to his room.
“Heard about the shadow hounds,” Kit said.
Given how fast rumors flew through the Tower, it wouldn’t have surprised me if everyone had heard about the hounds by now.
Of course, it also wouldn’t have surprised me if what actually happened shifted to put me in a negative light or if no one believed I’d actually fought off the hounds.
Payne’s expression darkened. “At least you kept your head. Slate couldn’t believe you thought to use a barrel lid like a shield.”
I shrugged, uncertain what to say to that. I hadn’t had much choice and just done what I’d needed to survive.
“You know,” Kit said. “When Rider opens up the competition for an elite position, I think you should compete.”
I what—?
“Why would you say that?”
No one liked or trusted me. There was no way Lord Rider would let someone like me take an elite position in the Black Guard when there were so many other stronger, more experienced guardsmen around.
“Lord Rider would never—” I began.
“Of course he would,” Kit said. “Right now, you have more experience fighting shadows than any other novice.”
“That doesn’t mean I’d make a good hunter.”
“There are more than just hunter positions available.” Kit offered a soft smile. “You were a lord so I’m assuming you can read, which puts you ahead of many guardsmen for a position at the White or Gold Towers.”
“And you stayed calm during that fight. You knew enough to get Iztal and Garridan into the wagon and you improvised a shield when you realized your sword was going to be useless in that tight space.” Payne leveled a hard look at me and raised his eyebrows in question.
“That’s why you dropped your sword isn’t it? ”
“I wasn’t going to get close enough to stab it and my grip had been slipping on the lid.” I’d had to make a choice and while I’d known it was foolish to drop my weapon, I’d had to do it.
“And that’s why any hunter team should be happy to have you,” Payne said, flashing me a brilliant smile.
Except hunter teams hunted shadow monsters and I’d barely managed to injure one. There was no way I’d be good enough to do what Payne and Reef had done today.
“The competition is at least a few rotations away. You’ll have more novice training and then there’s special training for the competition,” Kit said as if he could read my mind and knew how ridiculous I thought their suggestion was.
“Being a powerful warrior is a benefit for a hunter but so is being observant and staying calm.”
I doubted any of the hunter teams would like observant, calm me, over someone with skill like Mikel, Durand, Hamelin, Bramwell, or Ambrose.
They were all more experienced than me with fighting and were probably just as observant and calm in a battle.
Probably more so since while I might have seemed calm, I’d been terrified.
“Just think about it,” Kit said with a soft smile. “Go on now. I doubt you’ve been excused from this afternoon’s training so you should probably get something to eat.”
“Right.”
With my gaze focused forward and ignoring everyone around me because I didn’t want to know if they were gossiping about me or not, I grabbed a sandwich from the kitchen and hurried to my room.
Inside, I dropped to the edge of my bed and raised my sandwich to take a bite, but my hands shook. In fact, all of me shook.
Father, how had I survived that?
It had been terrifying. It didn’t matter that I’d foreseen my death and it hadn’t looked anything like what had happened this morning. I’d already proven I could change what I’d seen by saving Payne’s life, and there was nothing that said other events couldn’t also change my future.
Shadows! And Kit and Payne thought I should compete for a position on a hunter team and do that every night?
I could have died or been horribly maimed or even injured enough that Lord Rider would have insisted Reef heal me and then everyone would know I wasn’t really Sawyer.
My pulse roared in my ears. I hadn’t been in the Gray anywhere long enough to ensure his safety, and I had no idea how I was going to keep hiding the truth.
At some point, the novices were going to go shadow hunting, and I feared that was going to happen sooner rather than later, and I couldn’t trust the other novices to protect me like Payne and Reef had.
I squeezed my eyes shut and fought to draw in long, slow breaths.
I could do this. I had to do this. It didn’t have to be forever. It just had to be long enough for Sawyer to get out of the Five Great Kingdoms.
And hey, as much as I expected it, Rider hadn’t yelled at me.
He’d been furious but hadn’t stuck around to lay the blame on me. Which fit with what I’d learned about him during the few awkward evenings we’d spent together. He might be brusque and hard, but he was fair.
I still couldn’t completely believe he wouldn’t punish me later, but a traitorous part of me, the part who saw the awkward, gruff man in the Garden wanted to believe I could trust him.
And really, I shouldn’t be worrying about that. I’d drawn more attention to myself, and the guardsmen were back to gossiping about me, the exact opposite of what I’d wanted to have happened.
I didn’t care that Reef made me clean the infirmary every day or that the other guardsmen pretended I didn’t exist. My goal had always been to be just another guardsman, someone who faded into the background, and it seemed like every other day something happened that made everyone notice me all over again.
Competing for an elite position would only make everyone notice me more. Scrawny Sawyer thinking he was good enough to be a Black Guard elite?
I huffed a bitter laugh.
Even if the idea didn’t terrify me, no one would accept me. Kit and Payne were crazy if they thought me competing was a good idea.
Although…
Something soft and bittersweet twisted in my chest.
They had suggested it. Two experienced guardsmen thought that maybe I, a woman, could be an elite. Sure, they didn’t know I was a woman, they thought I was a boy, almost a man, but still— It seemed incredible, impossible, my wildest dream.
Maybe in another life.
Maybe once I knew Sawyer was safe.
Would it be even worth the risk to try?
No.
Stop it.
I was being foolish. I shouldn’t even daydream of it because it was never going to happen.