Chapter 7
Seven
The carriage creaked and groaned as the horses outside lugged it forward, each hour bringing me closer to the Hard-Won Kepen and my impending marriage.
I spent much of the journey looking out the small window, enjoying the sight of mist-coated hills, oak forests, and wild birch groves gleaming red and orange and yellow.
The air tasted of soil and decaying leaves, and it washed my cheeks and nose in a pleasant cold, urging me to tuck my fingers into my sleeves.
From time to time, I thought of my new assignment—the vault I would encounter in a fortnight or so. I had only seen the one from the Kepen at the Arched Cliffs, so imagined it much the same.
Will this one speak as well?
The vault at my childhood home whispered things.
Malicious, taunting things. But on occasion, sweet temptations.
It asked for things that I knew I mustn’t give it.
And I also knew I shouldn’t speak of its voice.
Not to anyone. Not even within the order.
Some things were too secret to be uttered, or even thought about.
I remembered the first time Elfrith had heard it.
She’d been seven when my mother took her to the vault, which would mean I’d have been thirteen.
The vault had whispered, Hello, sweet girl, and Elfrith’s mouth opened.
“What’s—” I shook my head, warning her, but it was too late.
Her hands were beaten raw with stinging nettle.
She learned quickly, much more quickly than I had.
I never heard her mention the voice again.
But it was there. I know you can hear me. Oh, yes. I know.
I also thought of my mother’s face when she’d heard that Loric had asked for no piercings. She’s going to look lowly and poor, my mother had said.
I grinned every time I thought of it.
When the rain and mist were too thick to allow a pleasant view from the window, I rested on the single, padded bench within the carriage.
There I fell asleep staring at the painting my father had gifted me upon my departure—the one I was so fond of—wondering at the story Loric’s attendant had told me about it.
I let my fingers ramble across the strings of my lyre and hummed and felt all the girlish uncertainty that came with a fast-approaching marriage to a strange man who’d been kindly enough to me that I could overlook how little I knew about him.
I thought myself grown up and travelling alone, even though there were half a dozen knighted attendants with me, sworn swords to my father, or Loric’s father.
But since these attendants would not enter the carriage, I felt alone.
They slept outside when we stopped for rest or horse exchanges.
I heard them chatting among themselves, and I did strain, trying to hear with detail and clarity, but they kept quiet enough that I couldn’t tell you what they spoke of.
There were only a few men as any more might reveal the truth of the carriage—that it was transporting a gentlewoman with a dress full of gold.
The type of cart and the attire of the attendants and the large brass padlocks on the cart door would lead anyone who saw us to believe that a prisoner was being transported.
Perhaps a murderer, a thief, or a sorcerer.
Yes, make your jests if you must. I have been called all these things. I told you, I care not.
What I’m saying is it was a pleasant trip.
Until it wasn’t.
We reached Kell’s Crossing in the early hours of the morning. Maybe I didn’t notice the commotion outside the carriage right away, maybe I did, I cannot say. I know I was half sleeping and that I must have fallen asleep with my lyre in my hands because it was on the bench with me when I woke.
There was a thump as a body slammed back against the carriage from the outside.
At first, I was confused. But then I heard the gag-sputter-choke-wail of someone with their insides quickly becoming outsides, and I was no longer confused. A part of me understood there was danger immediately, even though I’d never heard a noise like that before.
I scrambled in the purplish glow of almost-morning away from the window.
The sound of death spread, encircling the carriage as my heart raced so fast it seemed like it might burst out of my chest. And then the din was met by something even more terrifying—howls and yips and barks of the kind animals made, but coming from deep—very human—voices.
The chill it sent through me stalled my mind, and maybe I would have stayed that way for a long, empty time if there wasn’t a bang on the door.
I heard the clunky jangle of someone tugging at the padlock and tried to shift further back and away, but it wasn’t a large space.
I thought of hiding within the bench because maybe it opened, but I had my goldkeeper’s gown on.
I would have to undress if I were to fit in the space, and there wasn’t time for that, nor was this something I could allow for as a goldkeeper or a young woman.
I was meant to be guarding the gold in my dress, not abandoning it to save myself.
And all these thoughts might have been useless because I didn’t know whether the bench opened.
There was another bang, and I scrambled, lugging the chests of gold out from the edge of the cart, feeling the zippy bite of the vault’s sting course through me and reverberate through the gold in my gown.
Luckily, I still wore my goldkeeper’s slippers.
The soles were lined with lemure bark which protected me from the vault’s sting.
I’d captured a little of the sting from the vault at home and applied it to the chests—one chest was from my father, for me to keep for myself, the other was the one Loric had given me to spend.
There wasn’t a lot of sting coating the chests—if three or four thieves touched it, the final one might get away without a scalding jolt.
I had a spool of golden thread in my goldkeeper’s kit and unravelled it as fast as my trembling fingers would allow, which felt terrifyingly slow at the time.
I’d been planning on winding the thread around the handle of the carriage door—which was iron—and winding another end around one of the chests to borrow the sting. Whoever tried to pull on the handle would get a nasty surprise.
I didn’t finish my aim because whoever was on the other side of the door gave up on the padlock and thrust an axe straight through the wood panelling.
I took in a breath so sharp my throat burned, and then I rushed—as fast as someone wearing a metal-weighted dress could rush—to my goldkeeper’s kit.
I tripped as the cart shook with another chop from an axe.
My kit rolled off the bench onto the floor, and I crawled after it, looking for my sting stones.
I grasped them and turned, just in time to see giant hands prying apart the door which had cracked clean down the middle.
A man took one step onto the cart, and I struck stone against stone.
My first strike was poor, but my second gave life to the bright flash of the vault’s sting; it leapt into the gold thread which I’d left unspooled on the floor and travelled to what I could only imagine was a thief.
He stood on the end of my gold thread. The jolt hit him, tensing all his muscles for a moment before he fell back against the wall of the cart.
He looked up at me in astonishment, and that was the first proper glance I had of him.
He was tall and broad, tunic-less and covered in tattoos, with a beard that was…
well, on other days it was almost white, not from old age, but rather from the fairness of his hair.
But on this day, it was splattered in so much blood that some parts were deep red, but most was pink from the combination of the paleness and the blood.
He laughed at me, and it wasn’t a laugh you would expect from an attacker. It was a laugh of awe, a giddy childish huzzah! And then he lowered his shield, which drew my mind away from the pinkness of his beard to the shield itself.
It was round and smaller than those used by my father’s knights, but I’d seen depictions of shields like this before.
Sea dog.
It was a sea dog shield.
He looked nothing like a sea creature and nothing like a dog.
He appeared to be a man with sharp cheekbones and bright blue eyes so pale they almost glowed in the dimness of morning.
The hair on the sides of his head was shorn short, but the top and back were longer than I’d ever seen on anyone, braided into a single strand.
He spoke to me.
He waved at me with his axe hand, nodded at the destroyed door behind him, and said something in deep words that came from the back of his throat.
I understood none of them, and my momentary shock that came from a pink-bearded sea dog that looked nothing like a sea dog breaking down the door of my marriage cart, laughing at the pain of the vault’s sting, and then speaking to me, faded.
I lifted my sting stones to strike them again.
“Tssk!” he said, laughing with wide eyes. And then he said more in his strange, throaty language, waving me to him with urgency.
I was horrified, but I was also deeply confused.
He was attacking, almost certainly looking to steal gold, but he wasn’t acting like a thief—there was no hiding or sneaking.
He wasn’t swinging his bloody axe; it hung limp in his hand.
But by nature of the blood coating it, and splattered on his face, I knew it was a thing he could use.
He’d spoken to me twice. And he’d laughed several times.
My brow ached from how intensely I was furrowing it, and my chest burned with how hard my heart was pounding. I struck my sting stones, and he leapt forward, grabbing one of my wrists with his axe hand, the slick handle pressed against my forearm.
“Tssk!” he said again, sticking his tongue out and back in quickly.
I’d never seen someone do that and decided he was some sort of animal even if he looked man enough.
I struck the stones again—though with not nearly as much force because he held one of my wrists.
The jolt caught on some of the gold in my dress, and I felt the buzz of it travelling through me without the bite.
He dropped his axe, pulling his hand back and shaking the dead feeling from it.
It was a sensation I knew well as I’d studied it for years.
He slapped my hand, and I wish I could say I held onto the stone, but I didn’t. It bounced onto the floor and rolled toward the door as the cart was on somewhat of an angle.
We looked at each other for a moment that felt like ages, my chest rising and falling with the labour of fearful breaths, my mind whirling in empty terror.
I became aware of how close he was to me, how focused his eyes were and how confused.
I’d never been stared at like that, like I was chaotic and fervent. Like I might do anything.
“Please,” I said with almost no sound in my voice, like in a terrible dream, the horror of the moment was draining me.
My body was trying to shake, but the weight of my dress was too great, and I hadn’t taken it off for the past several evenings as I did when I slept at home, so I was particularly exhausted by it.
My stomach churned from the smell of blood coating him.
He spoke to me again, his voice low and serious in tone.
Tears pressed into the back of my eyes as I shook my head.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I said, overcome by the torture of the confusion.
Here was a blood-soaked, attacking thief, and he didn’t seem to be taking the attacking part or the thieving part seriously, and my mind couldn’t contain that.
I’d always been told thieves were tricky, but this felt like non-sense to me, like madness itself.
Someone else entered the cart. Another sea dog judging by his shield and the gurgle of words I couldn’t understand that came out of his mouth. He saw me and smiled, revealing sharp teeth that had been filed to spear points.
Panic ripped through me as the pink-bearded one whispered, “Koffe. Koffe.” He retrieved his axe and pointed the weapon at what was left of the door. He nodded, holding my gaze. Was he trying to soothe me? Before they ate me?
My eyes fluttered, and I thought for a moment I would faint—I was trained to defend a vault from thieves. I had no training for the agonizing pain that would come from being eaten alive by sea dogs. That was grainkeeper work, not mine.
“Koffe!” The spear-toothed one took two strides forward, grabbed my upper arm and pulled.
I think I was far heavier than he was expecting.
This added to my fear because it became clear very quickly that he didn’t know my gown was full of gold, which probably meant he wasn’t a thief. Or at least, not a very good one.
His brow furrowed as he tugged, and I pulled back without thinking. “Koffe!” he said again, followed by a stream of words I couldn’t begin to sound out.
When I resisted his pull a third time, he took a rag from his belt and pressed it against my face. I gripped his wrist in a pathetic attempt to slow him, took in one sharp breath, and then the world dissolved.