Chapter 34 #2
They each stared at me with varying signs of disbelief.
“What?” I asked them, feeling self-conscious.
“Who said you were a maid at twenty-three summers?” Larana asked me.
“My father said I was an old maid at nineteen. That’s why he wasn’t sad when I packed up and left.”
“You’re a trailfinder because you are unmarried?” Baxley asked me.
I nodded as I reached for a roll. “I turned down my third proposal. I had no interest in marriage, and my father said I was of no use to him, so he kept my dowry, for what it was worth, and told me to go find my own way.” I took a bite of the roll.
“My brothers had taught me some skills. Tracking, fighting, hunting. I taught the rest myself.”
Larana looked at Nicco before speaking again. “In Darysia, the women of the court aren’t presented for marriage until their eighteenth summer.”
I gaped at her. “Eighteen! That is not the way we do it. Most women at eighteen have had their first child and a second on the way.” I took another bite. “At least we have the right of refusal. I heard not every kingdom gives that right to the daughter.”
“The right to refuse.” His jaw clenched. “Isn’t that something.” Nicco stood and took another roll. “We leave soon.”
Baxley followed him not long after, and Larana went to our room to get her pack. I already had mine, so when I was finished with my breakfast, I headed to the stables to meet the others.
“It’s fucking killing me.”
Nicco’s voice drew me closer, and instinct made me slow my steps.
“I think she’s delightful,” Baxley said, and even without seeing him, I could hear his laughter.
“She has to ride with you.” Nicco’s voice was firm, and then I heard his groan. “C’mon, Bax, you have to. Did you see her? All that hair? And whose idea was it for her to be clean? Her skin, it’s so… so soft. Like fragile. And she smells…”
“I’m enjoying you suffering.”
“I hate you.” I heard one of the horses neigh. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t you start,” Nicco grumbled. “It’s bad enough she’s in front of me all fucking day.”
I almost marched right in there to tell him I told him I would rather walk when Baxley’s next words made my temper cool.
“How about we get her her own horse? Then you’re not suffering, and she has a little more independence.”
Silence.
“She’d probably prefer it,” Nicco said with a grunt.
“Okay. I’ll go find a—”
“I’ll do it,” Nicco cut him off. “It needs to be an animal that won’t scare her… Fuck off, Bax, don’t look at me like that. I’m going to get a horse.”
I ducked behind the wall as he marched past me, but he never noticed me there.
“Amarya?” Larana came out of the inn. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” I lied. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She gave me a quizzical look and then went to meet them, not knowing Nicco was gone, and I had no choice but to follow.
Baxley smiled widely when he saw me. “Nicco’s gone to get you a horse.”
Larana looked up from her own mount’s saddle. “Why? She can’t ride by herself.
“I can learn,” I said before Baxley could tell Larana Nicco’s complaints. “I should learn.”
Larana stood back, her hands on her hips. “You can’t even get on and off without help.”
Stating the obvious wouldn’t help anything. “Then show me how.”
I was on my ass in the snow when Nicco returned with a brown horse with a steady gait and an indifferent gaze.
“I got you a horse.” He looked between us. “Why are you on your ass?”
“Because I don’t know how to mount a horse, and Baxley said you’d gone to get me one, and Larana very helpfully pointed out that I can’t mount and demount without—”
“Dismount.”
I stared at him. “What?”
His eyes flicked to someone behind me who snickered. The silence that followed was all-encompassing. “You said demount. It’s dismount.”
“I can’t get on and off the fucking horse without help, and you went and got me a horse!”
His lips twitched. He saw my eyes narrow and coughed into his hand. I was pretty sure the bastard was laughing at me.
“Okay. Well, we’ll teach you, but not here and not now. Let’s get you up on this horse, and we’ll practice later.”
“What’s its name?”
He looked at me, then at the horse. “It doesn’t need a name.”
He saw my puzzled look and rolled his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, bunny, call it whatever the fuck you want, just come over here and get on the fucking horse.”
I didn’t move. “How much was it?”
“Why?”
“So I can pay for it. It’s apparently my horse.”
I watched his jaw clench and unclench. “You don’t need to pay. I got it cheap.”
“How cheap is cheap?” I looked the horse over. “Why was it cheap? Is it going to die? Did you buy me a dead horse?”
The flat look he gave me rivaled the coldness of the tundra. “Does it look dead?”
I lifted my chin. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about horses.”
Baxley decided to step in before punches were swung. “Amarya, let’s get you and the mare acquainted with each other. I’ll lift you like always, and then you swing your leg, and you’ll be on. Okay? You just don’t have Nicco to grab you when you get up there this time, but everything is the same.”
I held Nicco’s stare for a moment longer before I turned to Baxley. “Of course, thank you, Baxley.”
I pretended I couldn’t hear that the other one muttered something under his breath.
Baxley's instructions were clear and simple, and my body refused to cooperate with a single one of them.
“She won't bite,” Baxley said.
“You don't know that.”
“She hasn't bitten anyone yet.”
“Yet,” I said.
The mare snorted. I took a step back.
“She's just breathing,” Baxley said patiently.
“She's expressing an opinion.”
From somewhere behind me, I heard a sound that was definitely not a laugh because Nicco did not laugh at things like this. It was probably a cough. It was absolutely not a laugh.
“Put your hand out,” Baxley said. “Let her smell you.”
“She can smell me from here.”
“Amarya. You were so good with the horses on the journey north, what is wrong? Tell me.”
I put my hand out. The mare lowered her head and breathed on it — warm, damp, smelling of straw — and I held very still and tried not to think about how large her teeth were.
“I walked alongside that one, I didn’t try to force it to carry me.”
“That’s…”
I glanced at him, and he was too late to hide his confusion. “Amarya, that makes no sense,” Baxley said with a sigh.
“It does, you just haven’t thought of it before.” I held my hand out to the horse again. She didn't bite me.
“There,” Baxley said. “Friends.”
“We're not friends,” I told the horse. “We have a professional arrangement.”
The mare shook her head. I chose to interpret that as agreement rather than dismissal.
“Now,” Baxley said, “foot in the stirrup, hands on the—”
“I know the parts,” I said. “I watched you all do it before.”
“Watching and doing are different things.”
“I'm aware of that,” I said. “That's why I'm standing here instead of already on the horse.”
The not-laugh from behind me came again — definitely a cough.
“Okay, no stirrups,” Baxley said, and cupped his hands. “Up.”
I put my foot in his hands. He lifted. I grabbed the pommel, swung my leg — mostly correctly, Baxley made a small sound of encouragement — and I landed in the saddle with considerably less grace than I would have liked but considerably more than I'd feared.
But I was used to a hard body ready to steady me.
There was no one, and I swayed dangerously, struggling to sit upright.
The ground was a long way down.
“Good,” Baxley said.
“Don't patronize me,” I said, gripping the pommel with both hands.
“I mean it. That was better than many people’s first time.”
“Was it?” Nicco asked flatly.
“No one’s asking you,” Baxley said, swinging onto his own horse with the ease of someone who had been doing this since before he could walk. He caught my eye and winked. “Sit back. You have more room now. Let her carry you. You don't have to do anything yet.”
I sat back. The mare shifted beneath me, adjusting to my weight, and I gripped the pommel harder and reminded myself that I had navigated the Cryarek Pass in a blizzard. I had walked north of Iskaeld. I had pressed my hand against a column in the dark and let it show me the size of what I carried.
I could sit on a horse.
“Ready?” Nicco asked, pulling alongside me.
I looked at him. At the entirely neutral expression he was maintaining with what I was beginning to suspect was significant effort.
“Not a word,” I told him.
“I haven't said anything.”
“Keep it that way.”
His mouth moved. Just slightly. Just enough.
I looked forward, and nothing happened.
With a sigh, he reached over and took the reins. “I’ve got you,” he murmured.
He urged the mare forward, and she moved, and I moved with her, and it was nothing like being carried in front of Nicco and everything like something I was going to have to learn from the beginning.
“You're doing well,” Baxley said, from my other side.
“I hate you all,” I said, through gritted teeth.
They had the decency to smother their laughter.