Page 110 of Untempered
But there was pushback, too, from a small faction who wanted what they wanted. If things continued as they were, we’d all have much bigger problems than who’d ransacked which house on Big Wig Hill.
“I might be executing the Captain, come morning. If he continues to interfere with Kaelson trying to do his job for him.”
She said it without inflection. And I didn’t even wonder if that was the royal “I.”
“What do you need from me?” I asked, and it might’ve been the first time I’d aired that question.
“Nothing,” she said, the word a tired statement of fact. “I thought I ought to warn you what tomorrow might hold, since this time I can.”
It took me a moment to untangle the meaning of her words. Usually, she couldn’t warn me, but this time she could. It was a courtesy message, no more or less.
“Have you considered how it’ll look if you execute him yourself?” I asked.
“No,” she told me, her eyes going wide and innocent as she tugged her shawl tight around wide shoulders. “’Twas just a spur-of-the-moment decision. Why, do you think it might have consequences?”
She couldn’t do that, be thoughtful one moment and a raging harpy the next. “Pardon me, my lady, merely attempting to do my job and keep you whole.”
At least she didn’t tell me I wasn’t needed. Not aloud.
I took my useless rage and went back out to do a poor job of splitting wood. Along the path, I saw no one. I knew there were pockets of people secreted away, with stashes of supplies and makeshift cures that eased their hearts more than their symptoms. Sometimes, it felt like the keep was awash with people, like they all were drawn to one another and came out just to remember the worldwasunchanged.
And sometimes, I felt like I could be the last living soul in the whole city.
The job was physical enough that it bled off some of my frustration and was monotonous enough to be soothing. The sawn-up pieces of wood that had been piled in the shelter nearby were dwindling faster than the population might suggest. I wasn’t surprised. I’d seen, over a pale woman’s shoulder as she came out of a suite of rooms in the lower levels, a chair burning in a fireplace. There was probably good coin in selling wood to the desperate.
With that in mind, I loaded our stockpiles higher throughout the day.
The cook Audrey liked wasn’t there when I went to the kitchens to find food for us, but I was assured she was just taking her day off. “She’ll be back tomorrow,” said her replacement, a sunny-looking older woman with flour on her forehead.
I nodded, noticing a lack of guards today, but was unsure if that was good or not. The platter of food filled both my hands, and I didn’t complain about that because I knew, one day soon, there wasn’t going to be food.
“I can’t go,” Audrey had told Thomas and I when we’d urged her to flee. “People need us.”
People needed a miracle, not us. But at least she came out and said it. She wanted to save the world, one piece of parchment at a time.
The bitterness carried along with me as I let myself in and set the food down on the low table before the fire. I had to move some of her piles to do it, which always made her huff impatiently, but she wouldn’t need to huff if she was less disorganized.
My eye fell on a letter that looked less formal than others. I hadn’t meant to pry. It was addressed to a Yasmine, and seemed to be continuing a conversation about casualties, remedies, and their worries.
I helped myself to the stew while it was warm, assuming she was just up caring for Isolde. I didn’t know what caring for Isolde involved, because I’d been told not to worry about it. I didn’t know how aware Isolde was, either. I was confident she wouldn’t want Audrey near her.
My bowl was only partway done when Audrey came down the stairs, handkerchief pressed to her face like it might hold in the tears streaming down her cheeks.
The air sat in my lungs like it had become rocks. “What happened?”
She shook her head, unsuccessfully trying to muffle the sobs.
Isolde was dead. It was the only explanation.
I set down my food, suddenly wondering how I was going to dispose of that particular body in a way that didn’t traumatize this poor woman. “Audrey,” I began, and then wanted to wince at the impatience in my voice.
“I know—” she sucked in a breath. “I know you’ve lost everything. I know you probably don’t care. But she’s my only friend, and she’s very sick, and I’m scared, and I’m going to cry but Ican’tdo it up there and disturb her, so just—” she sucked in a breath and, on a sob that twisted the knife in my heart, said, “Just leave me alone, please.”
Not dead, then. The air filled my lungs again as she collapsed, picking up the pillow she’d slept on and burying her face in it.
Not dead, yet.
For a moment, I watched Audrey sobbing into the pillow, muffling the noise as best she could, her fingers turned to claws in the fabric, and her body shaking with the force of her grief. And I wanted to cry, too. I wanted to smooth my hand over her back and let her tears soak my shirt, and we could both cry for how fucked our lives had become.
