Page 75 of Untempered
But whospokelike that?
And how did they behave?
I rolled my shoulders in another attempt to dismiss the tightness, glancing across the bailey below in time to see Steward Daniel ride out. Surely not. He’d have time to clear the city, but not to return. In his wake, a handful of others rode, some with horses on a lead.
“Isolde,” I said, ignoring the way my heart had begun to hammer.
She was there in an instant, wide awake, but only witnessed the last rider and his train of two horses. “What?” she asked me, the question holding no accusation.
I had to swallow the knot in my throat. Words crowded my head, and when she looked at me, I forced myself to say, “I think Steward Daniel is fleeing.”
“What?” she repeated, this time incredulously. “He wouldn’t dare. What did you see?”
But the words were all stuck, now, filling my brain so much that my mouth couldn’t empty them. Because if the Master Steward left, who was in charge? What steps had hereallyput in place to help people? Was the Captain actually dying, and if he did, and the Master Steward was gone, who would remain?
Had he planned this? To lock me in, and then run away?
“That’d explain it,” Chay drawled from where he sat near the chessboard.
“Explain what?” Isolde demanded.
I watched as, along the walls, guards began to light torches. “The cart loads of stuff I saw earlier. I said it was strange.”
He had.
Below us, a glow came from behind some shutters left ajar. Were they being lit too, or was it just more obvious as the light bled from the sky? And would everyone bleed from the city, too, in the wake of Steward Daniel? Would they go like cider from a cracked jug, rushing anywhere they could? Or was the jug not yet so badly cracked that it was inevitable? Could I still right that jug?
A lethal smile was creeping over Isolde’s face. “There’s no one he could’ve possibly named,” she said, the words low and full of threat, “who could hold the keep together.”
The Captain was dying. The Master Steward had put forth a young man, loyal to my father, to take his place. He would’ve left his assistant in charge. He’d tucked me away, safe. He was tucking himself away, too.
The harvest wasn’t coming in fast enough, or the plague was spreading too quickly.
He was going to let them all die.
Isolde stepped in front of me, but she was still smiling. My eyes fell on the bow of her lips as she spoke to me, but the words were too much, and I felt the tears spilling over.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. It wasn’t supposed to get this bad.
I needed to be present. I needed to stand behind whoever was managing the field hospital and the relief efforts.
We have to stay.The words wouldn’t come out. They filled my head like caltrops, cutting me up no matter what I tried to think or do. This was my place. This had to be my place. I couldn’t give voice to the words to explain that I couldn’t leave like this, like a rat off a sinking ship. Icoulddo something here.
“Audrey,” Isolde said, and pre-empting her heartache, I held the weight of her disappointment. I was being crushed.
But I couldn’t afford to break.
“We should leave, too, but we can’t,” Chay said mockingly. “First, we must attempt to rescue the poor, lowly people. Our intentions are good, so what does the impact matter?”
“Go cry into your bunk,” Isolde snapped. “And hope that mayhap one day you’ll have the courage to try.”
He made a noise of disgust. “Howpragmaticof you,” he said, and the barb stung. “You don’t know me, Matri’sion, and you never will.” His eyes raked over me, though, not Isolde, disappointment in the tight line of his downturned lips.
I reeled, wishing he’d simply struck me instead.
“Promises, promises,” Isolde muttered, pressing a handkerchief into my hand.
He was right. I was as likely to lead them all to ruin as they were to make their way there by themselves. I thought of those children, of their rage-filled cries that reverberated in my bones, and the way their black blood had oozed.
