Page 105 of Untempered
“No,” Chay said.
I’d been watching the road. “They’ve probably got search parties out.”
“They’ve probably not set the Watch properly,” Audrey said, her tone icy. “It’s too cold for her to be out overnight. If she was healthy, and they hadn’t had a mage?—”
“Raise the gate!” Chay bellowed, and the lady winced.
“They had a mage?” I asked hesitantly. “Are you sure, my lady?” Mages weren’t found in brigand groups.
“Not like I’ve seen them,” she told me grimly. “I didn’t get a good look at them, but they blasted us with air and looked to be gliding.”
A chill went through me. I held my torch up, studying the arrows on Chay’s shield again. The wind around me screamed, and it smelled like snow. My heart worked like a smith’s hammer against my chest. “We need to get in.” There was no way to get her in those walls, though. They were impenetrable. But we had to find some way.
“Do you know that sort of mage?” Audrey asked me.
I focused on keeping my tone even. “Mayhap, my lady. We should ride to another gate.”
Chay lifted his torch to the side. The land was clear, the grass trampled from the tent city that had sprung up during the tourney. Now, it was a field of muddy pits and furrows.
“Sorry,” he said, sounding anything but. “I’m not taking Bliksem through that in this light.”
But urgency was clawing at me. “We can walk them.” We wouldn’t be expected to move alongside the walls, would we? And we might stumble across someone on duty who could raise the gates, too.
“Someone is just as likely going to patrol past,” Chay disagreed.
Terror drummed. “We need to get inside the walls.”
“He’s right,” Audrey said in a monotone. “The longer we’re out here, the longer Isolde is outthere.Do we wait, or do we go get her ourselves?”
The thought of headingtowardthat mage…
“She bought you time so you could flee,” Chay said bluntly. “That was her wish. She gave us instructions on how to do it.”
“Soyougo back!” she told him furiously. “I’m safe, now!”
He was so unmoved that I suspected it wasn’t the first time he’d heard that demand since they’d fled.
My skin crawled. “I’ll go,” I told her, ashamed to hear my own voice crack. I cleared it, hoping she just thought I was sick. “I’ll go at sunup, with others. We’ll find her.” We’d need the dogs. I didn’t tell the lady that, though. “I’m sorry, my lady.”
When she turned to me, there were tears on her cheeks, but her expression was fixed in a compassionate smile. There was something deeply unsettling about that. “I understand,” she said, but I didn’t know what she understood, or why she looked like an effigy of a demon attempting to disguise itself as the Wife.
She climbed nimbly from her saddle, not slowed by the injury to her arm. I followed her lead, my knees clicking and grinding, bracing myself to walk. The big knight and his proud pony could sit here and be too fancy for the fields. The lady and I knew how to make things happen.
She was pulling a length of rope from the saddlebags, though, sniffling quietly, dashing tears away. “How many knives do we have?” she asked in that monotone voice.
Puzzled, I watched as Chay shook his head. But she wasn’t looking at us. Two big, wicked-looking hunting knives appeared from those saddlebags. “Whose bags are those?” I asked them. Chay looked at me for a moment, his expression unreadable, then shrugged.
“Mine until Isolde gets back,” Audrey said, working with the rope.
“If you’re trying to make a grappling hook, no you aren’t,” Chay told her. “That’ll never hold you.”
“I’m used to that,” she told him with another unladylike sniff, then she tested the strength of her knot with a hard tug.
My heart ached for the child. “I know you’re scared,” I told her, like I would’ve if she were one of my girls. “But look on the bright side. We’re here and healthy. As soon as someone comes by, we’ll rouse a search party.”
She didn’t respond but set to work on the second knife, knotting it a little further along from the first.
Chay blew out a long breath. “Pretty sure this place’s whole claim to fame, aside from your father, is that it’s impossible to get into,” he said, frustration in the words. “This is ridiculous, Audrey, even you know that.”
