Page 66 of Untempered
My feet felt heavy against the cobblestones. I refused to let them drag, though. Audrey had lived this long in this hellhole. I’d undone as much of the conditioning as I could and would continue to support her so she didn’t fall back into the poisonous locways. The big, squat castle atop the cliffs sat like a bloated king on a crumbling throne and, oh, how the black hatred pumped through me.
We could set it afire. Or, better, we could murder the leaders in their sleep, and the city could wake to streets awash with blood. The knowledge pulsed within me. We could do it.
The power locked in my limbs and the hard beat of my heart made me want to charge ahead, when I saw a knot of guardsmen on the side of the road, clearly arguing with one another. A hand cart stood nearby.
I could cut their throats and have them in the cart. I’d still be back in time for no one to miss me.
“…you should do it,” one of them was saying furiously. “You’re the strongest.”
“Yeah, which means I can beat you to a pulp, which meansyoushould do it,” a guard responded.
“Hey,” another said, hope in his words. “Why don’t we get someone else to?”
I lowered my head in the rain. The hot ball of hatred in my soul had its own pulse. I felt eyes on me and deliberately kept my steps short. “What, her?” someone scoffed. “Sure. Let’s get nana to carry half a dozen dead people out here,” he mocked. I heard a short scuffle, a few dull thuds, a muttered curse. “Go. Hurry up.”
The advice wasn’t meant for me, but nonetheless, I followed it, ducking out of sight and picking a winding path back to the castle, my heart beating quickly.
A dozen dead people that the La’Angi guardweren’tdirectly responsible for was a truly shocking turn of events.
The alleys and backstreets were known to me after so long in this godless place. I kept my head down, and my feet flew over the ground.
How many were dead?
We needed to leave tonight or we needed information, and I knew which it was going to be. How was the illness spreading, what treatments had been tried? I flexed my fingers in my gloves and felt the bite of the cold, wet leather. Bad weather for a sickness. If it snowed this year, travel would be hard. The ground would already be hard to turn. If many graves were needed, they’d be in trouble.
Thomas started when I came in, waking with a half-choked snore and blinking tired eyes in the dark hollows of his face. As I looked up from the handle of the door, I realized my wig was still partly visible in the basket on my arm. Furious with myself, I flicked my cloak back over my shoulders and exaggerated the arch of my back so that like magework, his eyes dropped to my breasts. He wouldn’t notice how wet the rest of me was. I swept past him with a toss of curls and a smirk none of them ever understood.
Some guard he was.
Audrey was stirring when I got in. I laid out my wet cloak and boots, then threw another log on the fire. We were ready to flee at a moment’s notice, but we’d been that way for years. I had three caches of weapons, clothing, and coin.
I wondered, as I drew back the curtains with a ruthless flick, what her bloodsworn guards would do if we left.
Simplest to silence them.
She half-rolled, half-fell out of bed, her grace stripped from her by the nightmares stalking her sleep. I went to my own room and swapped out my plain dress, then took a scarf to try to contain my hair, at least for a time. I met her in the training room. The space wasn’t fancy, but we weren’t fancy people.
We didn’t need to be fancy to take down the Butcher. We needed to be strong.
We sat together in silence, hands on our bellies. I breathed deeply and turned my attention inward to the feel of the coldness of the air on my nostrils, the strength in my stomach as it forced my hands up, the deflation as the air left me. I ran my mind slowly over my body as it took over the deep, healing breaths. I assessed the strength of every joint, every muscle. My feet were cold, but strong—my calves a little tight today. My knees might stick when I stand, but my thighs would carry me forever. When I was done with my assessment, when my mind was firmly on my own flesh and blood, anchored to this reality, I let myself belong, for a time, in that space of calm. And when I had to break the calm, I did so gently and respectfully. To have come so far and done so much, my body deserved no less. I stretched those trustworthy sinews and muscles out patiently, preparing them for training.
Audrey took longer than usual to do the same today. It didn’t surprise me. While waiting for her, I went on to strengthening exercises I could do myself. Once she was ready, we started with basic combat drills that we could both do in our sleep. I watched her move, the way she shifted her weight, the angle of her fist, the set of her shoulders. We broke apart silently. I held out a hand, and she tapped it gently.Fight, begin.
I leaped at her, and she caught me, gripping me hard so I couldn’t overwhelm her. We grappled together, a friendly but earnest competition. We sparred, rested, and sparred again. We fought on our feet, with quick strikes that never hit hard. We fought on the ground, using limbs as levers and joints as locks.
“Drink,” I said after we broke apart, wiping the sweat off my brow with my arm.
We rested for a time. She returned with the staffs we often practiced with, and we ran through drills for a time. The monotony of it let my brain relax even as my body hummed with strength awoken. We could’ve pushed harder, but this was a marathon, not a sprint. We took our time.
Our routine eventually carried us back out of the training room, though I’d have preferred to stay there, in that place where problems and time seemed suspended. I took a seat before the fire while we broke our fast together, listening to its happy crackle absently as I watched Audrey.
She was clearly deep in thought. There was no point waiting, but still, I held what I knew a little longer than I could have, letting her finish her meal before explaining what I’d seen.
It didn’t take her long to make the same links I made. If guardsmen began to refuse to deal with bodies, it would mean they’d sit on the street. The illness would spread. And, just as deadly, if they refused orders, they then were marked as dissident and had no cause to follow any orders.
She paced, digesting the information. We didn’t discuss it at length. I saw her glance at the window—at the length of shadows. “Passable day to visit the market.”
She hadn’t asked what I’d been doing. There was nothing to discuss. We both understood that.
