Page 114 of Untempered
“The exact numbers I don’t know that I can trust,” Kaelson was saying. “Begging my lady’s pardon, but the young chap who told me was scared and didn’t see a lot. He guessed at a dozen. But I wouldn’t put money on it, myself.”
“A dozen?” she raised her brows. “Surely we can hold off a dozen? Untrained, poorly armed, yes?”
“Usually, yes, my lady,” he agreed, bowing his head. “But today?”
The bleak picture painted sat unchallenged for a time. Audrey paced over to her desk, picking up her favorite quill but not drawing with it, just running it idly between her fingers. “Even if we called Thomas back right now, he couldn’t be here before tomorrow at the earliest,” she said quietly. “If we change the route, they may well just ambush us where we don’t have advance warning. I assume the caravan is guarded well enough to dissuade a small handful, just not an organized group?”
“You assume correctly, my lady.”
She nodded and looked up, squarely at me. It was like a punch in the gut.
She wasn’t asking me to take a life. But she was asking me to save them.
I didn’t curse, but only because Kaelson was now my friend, and I didn’t want to lose him so easily. “My place is defending you, my lady.”
“So we both ride.”
She was sick. She didn’t need to be out in the cold. Even if she could handle herself—which I suspected she could, if she kept her cool—she couldn’t hold back the plague. Isolde was proof of that. “The risk to you is too great,” I said flatly.
“My lady,” Kaelson said with another bow. “It’s a kind thought, but your presence will only complicate the situation further.”
“My presence means you have the best swordsman to be tested in our kingdom,” she said, the words brisk. “Andhis warhorse.” The praise felt like false accolades. I could feel the pressure of her favor being tied around my arm, the tickle of her hair against my lips.
Simpler times.
“Pull all the guards from the castle,” she told Kaelson with a sharp nod. “All of them. Forget the walls. Get the supplies out. Once the matter is done, send the extra men home again. We need to deal with these threats right now, or they’ll nip at our heels and cost us more in the long run. I want to know where they’re from. Their people need our support.”
Uneasy, but seeing the cold sense of it, I looked to Kaelson, who’d never hesitated to tell her when she was wrong in the past. No one would expect the castle to go unguarded—but if they heard of it happening… “If we did that,” Kaelson said, pausing a moment to clasp his hands and rocking slightly on his heels before he added, “It’s a trick you cannot repeat, my lady—the next time, it could be a trap.”
“I understand.”
He nodded, his face a neutral mask. “I won’t pull every man. Two on the gates, to keep up appearances.”
“How many would we have?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.
“If I pulled those from the castle, less the two from the gate…we’d have eleven extra men.”
“Fourteen over a possible dozen.” Was she imagining herself with a bow in her hand, rescuing us all? I didn’t dislike the image myself, but the cost would be immense, even if shewasn’tsick. Knowing you drew the sharp bit of a knife over someone’s throat was one thing. Making accurate shots from horseback was an entirely different matter. She hadn’t taken shots when we’d been riding, the other day. But she’d been looking for them. “The greater our numbers, the safer. Yes?”
“Yes, my lady,” Kaelson said warily. “Depending, of course, on different factors.”
“In this situation?” she asked, pinning him with her gaze.
He hesitated. “There might be four of them, milady. There might be thirty. They might have staffs and leathers, or full plate mail. The boy overheard a meeting with voices. That’s all I know.”
She drew in a breath. “Then we’ll go, too, as well as the castle guards. Just until the rabble are diffused.”
“Do not make me beg you to stay, my lady,” Kaelson said in such a matter-of-fact way it made me look at him twice. “My old knees would weep for days at the task.”
She, too, looked taken aback. “Kaelson, I…”
“You’re all that’s holding this city together,” he said as if he were commenting on the weather. “You fall, and I’ve got chaos. So you stay safe and warm here, and let those of us who’re paid to risk our necks do our job.”
She blinked at him, still disoriented. “I…”
“You’re doing it all with more grace than I could’ve ever dreamed,” he said, the words still ruthlessly neutral. “And if I may, my lady, you’re clearly your mother’s daughter while learning many important lessons from your father, and that’s good. You’ll need both. But right now, we need you alive.”
She wrapped her hands together tightly. My chest ached. I looked away, better to give her privacy to sort out those feelings. “I’ll stay here and lock the tower,” she promised, her words equally as neutral. “Chay—sir Chay—would you go, anyway?”
