Page 50 of Lies Within the Darkest Tower

The fae and the five obviously skilled humans all nodded with grim understanding, while the two heavy-set sacrifices and half of the other humans all looked green at the prospect of fighting.

“All right,” Lord Rider said. “Now who have we got? Stand when your name is called and speak up if you have a trade or skill that might be useful, combat experience, or magic.”

Lord Quill pulled a piece of thin, fae paper from a pocket in his jerkin as if it wasn’t an incredibly expensive thing that only the nobles in the capital could afford and started calling out names. Men acknowledged their names while the rest of us studied each other. Three of the nine fae said they had magic, which surprised me since I’d thought all fae had magic. But then, Payne had mentioned at the midday meal that he didn’t have magic.

The oldest of the sacrifices was a smith, and the younger of the two heavyset men had been an apprentice chef in Vestas, the largest port city in Erellod. There was a hunter — he’d come with a long dagger and a bow and quiver — a few farmers and shopkeepers and traders, a priest of the Great Father who’d just taken his vows, and a sailor who looked almost as distressed as the smith because given the landscape of the Gray, there wasn’t a significant body of water anywhere nearby.

The five humans who looked like they knew how to fight did know how to fight. Two of them were from the armies of two different noble families and the other three were essentially mercenaries. Essentially because they were from three of the families that trained their young men to take positions in the Black Guard, saving the sons of the most noble families in the Five Great Kingdoms from becoming sacrifices.

“We can fight with a variety of weapons on foot and from horseback,” Mikel Wild said, gesturing to the other two men who’d been sitting with him. They were all big with broad shoulders and muscles honed from years of weapons training, although none of them were as big as the majority of the fae. “We’ve also been trained in military tactics and formations and have experience fighting together.”

“Have you seen actual combat?” Lord Rider asked.

“Yes,” Durand said. He was the smallest of the three which still made him almost a head taller than me with a chest almost twice as broad.

“What about you two?” Lord Rider asked, turning to the two soldiers.

“I was just a grunt,” Ambrose said, his build similar to Durand’s. “So, formations but not tactics and no experience fighting from horseback.”

“Same here,” the other soldier replied.

Lord Rider grunted and glanced at Quill who turned his attention to me, his emerald eyes capturing mine for a breathtaking moment.

I tried to meet his gaze and hold it without cringing. The aching need to fall into those bottomless green eyes and never return to the surface battled with the urge to look down and look small twisted my insides. A lady wasn’t supposed to draw attention to herself, she was supposed to quietly be ready to please her lord, be graceful and proper and demure at all times. And not hold eye contact with a man, no matter how captivating he was.

“Sawyer Herstind,” Lord Quill said, and I stood as a wave of murmurs swept through the group that made my stomach twist even tighter.

“Herstind March.”

“He’s a lord.”

“Guess he couldn’t buy his way out of being a sacrifice.”

“Did you hear what he did last night?”

Swell. Somehow some of the novices already knew about my mistake. Of course, the fae were volunteers and probably had friends in the guard already, and the three from families who bred Guardsmen probably had brothers or cousins or some other family member already in the Guard. They’d all taken the midday meal in the great hall and just like I’d beenthe conversation this morning, I had no doubt I’d been the conversation this afternoon. Hell, even if I did keep my head down, I’d probably still be the conversation for the rest of this rotation.

“I have a bit of experience with a sword,” I said, making Mikel snort.

“Look at him,” Durand snickered. “He’s one of those lords that spent all his time reading. Too good to even learn how to fight.”

No, I spent it learning to fight in secret while cleaning floors and lugging water and struggling to learn the things I was supposed to learn like making lace and sewing embroidery and keeping my gaze down.

“Can you even hold a sword long enough to fight with it?” Ambrose asked.

Lord Rider shot him then Durand and Mikel dark glares and they all snapped their mouths shut.

“You’re not a lord now,” Lord Rider growled at me, “and we’ll find out soon enough how muchexperienceyou have with a sword.”

CHAPTER 32

Sage

With that LordRider left and Talon and Lord Quill took us on a tour. We headed out the great hall’s main doors and stood in the bailey while Talon pointed to the various buildings. The structure by the pasture gate that I had no idea what it was turned out to be an indoor sparring area for when the weather turned bad, and the small building made from the strange semi-opaque material was a fae greenhouse where the healers grew medicinal herbs.

We then marched down a long hall to the infirmary and were greeted by a fae who wasn’t in Guard black and looked identical to the fae with the short brown hair and medium brown skin who’d made love to Lark in my dream last night… the dream that hadn’t been a dream.

Talon introduced him, and he said something and gestured to the infirmary behind him, but I completely missed everything that was said.

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