Page 58 of Untempered
She was right. I hated that she was right. “Who will help you, then?”
“I think sending me away is a poor choice,” she said primly. “We do better together, Tom. You know that. You’ve told me every day since you got back.”
The wind screamed, and I forced myself to cross to her, picking my way carefully over the rug that crunched like snow beneath the leather of my boots. “Rose,” I said, sitting opposite her, willing her to understand.
But I couldn’t find the words. Or the reasons. I just sat there, staring at her, chilled to the bone.
And mayhap that’s all I needed to do, because that haughty expression thawed, and she looked on me with compassion. “We’re just useless links, alone,” she told me, reaching out to cup my face in the palm of her hand. “But together, we’ve made a strong chain.”
I closed my eyes and searched my heart for any way to explain it to her. But all I could find was, “They’re marching on Wolfswail, Rosie.”
“I know, Tom.” She stroked my cheek, and her touch was so warm on my chilled skin, but I didn’t dare turn into it. “I know. Those blueberries, they’ll grow without me being near them. Our children won’t grow without you.”
They would, though. I’d seen so many other men’s children grow just fine, though their pa’s bones remained in piles in the South, sitting atop ground too frozen to dig. The scavengers had been well fed. They only took the sweetmeats by the end. Not like us. We’d cracked open every bone we’d ever found.
“Please, Rose.” She looked at me, so sweetly compassionate, so kind. So ready to tell meno.“You don’t understand. Bad things happen near the Duke when he goes South,” I managed to say, and somehow, my teeth didn’t chatter.
Seeing thatnothawing and the tears springing into her eyes brought me no pleasure. But we both knew what I said was true.
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
AUDREY
“Only the rich can afford to be kind.” ~ La’Angi saying
Isolde stood in the doorway to the steward’s archives, angled to catch a beam of sunshine as if she needed it for the panel she was embroidering. From the corner of my eye, I saw her hold the hoop up in her hand, turning it slightly. She paused, lifting my attention from the columns of numbers that hadn’t revealed any secrets to me yet.
Chay shifted, too. I couldn’t see him, but I heard the clinking chains on his belt and scabbard. I knew what I’d see if I did glance over. His hand wouldn’t be on his sword hilt. That was part of why it made such a racket. One of his thumbs would instead be looped in his belt. His fingers were long and strong. They’d hang, half-coiled as if in anticipation, from his belt.
Swordsmen always had strong forearms. I stared at the columns on the parchment before me and wondered if his hands might be equally as strong. They were wide, that much, I’d seen. But when he moved things between his fingers absently, or when he whittled, he did it with the care of someone who knew his size.
I shifted in my chair. Last night, he’d been whittling. He’d held up a piece of wood and traced the dips and curves with his fingers, his eyes mostly closed, an expression of intense concentration on his face.
I was jarred from my thoughts by another distracting jangle of his belt, so close yet so far from those hands, and I shifted, easing my cloak away from my suddenly too-warm body. Beyond his distracting clamor I heard quickly approaching steps of hard-soled boots against the rug that offered little buffer between feet and stone.
It had been almost a moon since my father left, but I doubted I’d ever hear steel-shod boots on stone without that small spurt of fear.
One of the steward’s assistants hurried past me, and out of habit, I put out a second hand to stop the pages beside me from fluttering to the ground as his cloak caught the stack. I kept my eyes on the columns before me rather than risk anyone seeing the disapproval stamped across my face.
“Steward Daniel is busy, guardsman,” the assistant was saying. “Tell me the problem, and I’ll see it’s dealt with.”
“No, I need to talk to himmyself,” the impatient guard demanded, and I risked a glance up at the unusual force in the words. His face was semi-familiar, but I had no name for him. “He’s been ignoring us for a week, Billy. You know he has.”
Whatever the assistant said was too quiet for me to hear because Chay shifted again, and his belt made thejangle.
I blew out a slow, calming breath and turned back to the numbers. Before I’d even found my place on the page again, I heard, “People are dying!”
Isolde’s body was somehow more central in the doorway than it had been a moment ago, though she barely moved. I wondered when I’d learn that trick. I’d asked her a few years ago, and she’d just looked at me like she had no idea what I meant.
“Sicknesses are normal,” the assistant said, his tone soothing. “I know they’re distressing, but they’re also to be expected as the weather turns.”
The sound of a door opening preceded Steward Daniel’s predictable, “What’s this?”
“There’s more sick, Master Steward.” Impatient Guard bobbed a bow from the glimpses between Isolde and where Thomas stood to one side of the wood-framed doorway. “Five more. I’ve got them in the small west hall, but?—”
“There’s a mother,” the assistant cut in. “And a few little ones. We know children always get sick, don’t we?”
My head spun at their casual dismissal, and I stood.
