Page 17 of Untempered
“What do you think is best?” I asked her, hoping she’d take the query for pragmatism rather than avoiding choice. “Should we hide in the tourney crowd as they leave?” That would give me three days to brace myself.
She paused for just a moment, and this time her eyes didn’t cut up to me. “Are you sure you want this?” she asked, quietly. “Once you go…”
I didn’t want to let go. I knew what La’Angi was like. I knew my father, the long moons of being completely ignored, the flurry of attention I had to try to manage, then the violence when I inevitably failed, then the long moons of being ignored. I knew how to get through all of that.
“I know.”
She nodded and continued with my laces. “Then I’ll make preparations. With the outflux of traffic we ought to have luck, if we leave ahead of the crowd. The celebrations on the last night are rowdy. We won’t be missed.”
Of course she could make it work.
I looked at myself in the mirror, seeing my tired, puffy eyes and the sad curve of my mouth, and wondered why I’d thought it could ever be different.
* * *
Eventually we madeit to our seats at the tourney ground, nestled deep in the canopied and cushioned nobles’ area. Above us, my father shared his box with Phillip von Rhea, the old King’s advisor and the young King’s representative this tourney. He already had Luca perched on a chair, too, as if he were a student to the finest tutors.
“Don’t you dare feel bad for him,” Isolde said so quietly I could barely hear the words. “He could’ve dissolved the betrothal entirely.” She swept her skirts around her feet with the precision of a razor against a throat. “He opted to postpone it.”
But I just felt sick. He’d been young, barely sixteen to my eleven, when we were supposed to wed. I hadn’t understood, then, why I was supposed to marry Luca.
There was a lot you could get a sixteen-year-old boy to believe in before he formed his own opinions. And my father liked things just so.
“He did what he could,” I said, but I didn’t know if the protest made it to her ears. The cowardly part of me hoped it didn’t. I was tired of defending him.
I was tired of him needing to be defended.
My dress flexed as I drew in a deep breath, making my ribs expand. The back of my neck itched where I felt my father’s eyes on me as competitors filled the grounds, then the sensation lifted as I heard Luca’s voice rise and fall.
My eyes wandered over the competitors and the shields they bore. The man I’d knocked over just yesterday in the orchard was down there, his hair black as night. I couldn’t see from here the dark blue of his eyes or whether he’d removed the stubble from his chin, and I didn’t care. The relevant things were his colors and his name. He was Chay Shieldbreaker of West Grenvele, but, unusually, he boasted the Raider’s Ban field. That, paired with the Barloc-given combat surname, suggested his family had been important when Barloc crafted our nation. Raider’s Ban colors indicated he wasstillimportant in ’Ban.
I sat there, a lump in my throat, watching the big, black-haired knight who had hit the ground like a felled tree. What did one have to do to earn the approval of the Count of Raider’s Ban?
The stands far to my right was where the ’Ban family and entourage sat, down near the rail. They’d been positioned in the worst seats, but there was a crowd around them, and the area felt…jovial.
Beneath me, Chay had his hands on his hips as he guided them in big, lazy circles while he listened to whatever was being said in the group before him. There weren’t any other ’Ban bannermen I could see—at least, none with Darrius’ colors. The knight hadn’t been wearing those colors when I’d pinned him under me. The gold of the ’Ban wheat wouldn’t do justice to the blue of his eyes.
“’Tis an interesting array of competitors,” Isolde said from beside me, and I ripped my gaze away from those rolling hips, feeling nauseous.
I’d been staring. Of course I had. I’d done the exact same gentle exercise this morning while I woke up, before drilling with Isolde. The trickle of awareness was a normal response to seeing someone engaging in the same activity I enjoyed. It must be.
“I wonder how Mikus is doing today,” Isolde said, her expression pleasant, her tone friendly, but the words a reminder of how deadly this tourney could be. “Mayhap this year he’ll win your favor?” she asked me, arching her brows, but she didn’t wait for my response. She knew how I felt about him.
The first round eventually began as spectators were still settling in. The grounds were full of competitors and stewards shouting for fighters, directing them to arenas marked on the ground with chalk. Yasmine, a longtime companion who I swapped seeds and letters with, arrived with a big smile and a quick curtsey.
I did a double-take when I saw her dress. “Excellent color choice,” I said, trying to identify what it was about the outfit that made her glow. Yasmine’s skin was deeper brown than most. It seemed like there were all types and shades of skin, and all textures of hair, found at all levels of our society, but deep brown or very pale were unusual everywhere.
“Thanking you.” She resettled her overdress, clearly pleased. “We’ve a new tailor. And I’ve had success with a new strain of lupin. You’re going to love me, Audrey.”
“More than I do now?” I asked her, wondering if it might be joy, not her clothing, that lit her face.
She made a noise of agreement, and I listened with half an ear whilst watching the comings and goings on the field beneath us.
Our conversation paused whilst Mikus took apart a knight from the west of the Aza Ranges.
An unfamiliar chap with a crest declaring he was a borderlands knight came up to the edge of the stands and looked up at me. I avoided his gaze, and he was wise enough to take the rejection for what it was and turned away graciously. He was heckled on his return.
Once, I’d dreamed of having a knight jump the rail, charge up to me, draw his sword, and challenge my father to combat. Public combat would, of course, gain him enough respect that we’d live on in La’Angi in peace.
