Page 89 of Untempered
I remembered the dark morning I’d been sworn into this woman’s service, and how one of the big guards had turned on Mikus, mace in hand. But Audrey had stuck her dagger in Wade’s eye. Was that because any other method would put her at risk, or because she wasn’t the monster her father was?
The stones on the wall were even and well-worn, and the crash and tumble of waves below grew louder. Wind whipped my cloak around my legs, but the stones came up to my chest, and I had nothing to fear from an accidental trip save injuring my ankle and dropping the man who may as well be dead, anyway.
I knew sticking a knife in this man’s eye would’ve left a trail of blood so wide we’d’ve been bound to be discovered. I could respect the decision Audrey had made to try to look after the woman when there had been no good options. But as we stopped in the viewing area, with the sea dark below us, and the sky blanketed with clouds, I just felt cold. Sick and cold.
To the best of my knowledge, Kadan had never once ordered anyone killed.
“Set him down on the bench,” she said.
I did, remembering the way she’d held him even after he was limp, and had given me instructions whilst choking the life from him.
The same woman who’d staggered and frozen at the sight of angry children.
I stepped back as she positioned herself near his hip, glancing along the wall from the little sheltered pocket. There was no one in sight, but there wouldn’t be. We were inset in the wall, a step down, and here it only came up to my hip. The early fog was a blessing for whatever she planned, but even with numbers as reduced as they were in the guard, I wanted to get out of here.
One of her hands took him by the belt. The other fisted firmly in his collar. Before I realized what she was doing, she lifted and swung, letting out a grunt of exertion as she threw the entire man, adead weight,off the sea wall.
I didn’t know if I even heard the splash he made as he hit the water, or if it was just a wave against rocks.
My belly churned as she untied her skirts and settled them once more around her boots with a few practiced flicks.
Had his death bled off any of the rage she carried? A moment later, the memory of when I’d fought my first skirmish against the Steppe nomads, and my first kill, flooded my mind.
It was for a purpose, but not rage.
“Isolde’ll be proud,” I said as she turned to go back to the wall.
“Isolde would’ve done it faster and neater,” she said dismissively. “I’d have a dozen things to improve on for next time.” That wasn’t accompanied by a look toward me for feedback. She led us back along the parapet, her eyes clear and steps sure. I followed her to the garden, but she paused to visit the plants she’d called lamb tongues, straightening bent stems and obscuring our prints with sprinkles of damp soil and fistfuls of scattered leaves.
Unconscious, full-grown men weren’t light. She’d lifted him with a strong stance, her core braced, and her knees bent. But still, she’d feel that when the rush of violence wore off. I followed after her down the path, sticking to the shadows, deep enough in the gardens I wasn’t too worried anymore.
She’d taken me to the ground and kept me there with ease, that day in the orchard. I’d known she was strong. But I’d seen her shrink and hesitate more often than I’d seen her roar.
I didn’t know how to comment on that, though. I didn’t know how to check in with her. I doubted she murdered men as part of her daily training exercises. Isolde would’ve bragged about it by now.
“Are you okay?”
She glanced at me, then unsettled a patch of stones with the toe of her boot and scooped them up to toss them over the path where a deep boot print had been left, presumably by me. “Well. Thanking you for checking. You?”
Was I fine? I had no idea what I was. “That was not how I expected the evening to go.” One minute, she was missing opportunities to flirt with the heir. The next, she was breaking knees and tossing men to the sea.
“Apologies,” she said. “I don’t have the reach or time for the long-term solution of attempting to show someone like that the error of their ways.” She glanced up at the sky as if concerned about the hour but didn’t comment on it, opening the door to the keep and holding it for me.
There was no sign of what had passed in the corridor except a few splatters of blood that blended with flakes of mud from someone’s boots. I glanced down at myself and realized with a start that somehow, I had a crimson stain on the hem of my cloak, a long stream of it, like from a slow nosebleed or a nicked finger. I twitched the cloth closer and ran my eyes more carefully over her as we passed through torchlit parts of the keep.
There was no blood on her. Not even her sleeves or the hands she’d fisted in his shirt.
Mayhap that was a family trait.
She finally looked toward me. “I’m not injured,” she said, and I realized she’d caught me staring and assumed I was concerned.
Considering the reasons Icouldhave been staring at her, that was probably about the best. “Of course,” I agreed, turning my eyes forward. But for once the silence between us wasn’t comfortable. “Why are you still here?” I asked.
As soon as the words were out, I wanted to snatch them back. In my mind’s eye, my mother's hands made aggressive downward motions behind her skirt, trying to shush me. The boy in my chest recoiled.
“When I could just kill people between me and the horizon?” she asked flippantly. “Oh, I don’t know. This place has a nice view.”
Something about that, the irreverence or the way she delivered it with a straight face, reminded me, achingly, of Kadan. Except I’d never bought his bullshit. And I wasn’t buying hers, either.
