Page 80 of Untempered
“Me?” He paused, as if the concept was entirely foreign. “I—One, my lady.”
He had no idea. But Audrey smiled at him. “I’ll see I return it, then, every time I borrow it.”
“Oh.” He turned back to the wall, facing again an area he’d scanned. “Of course. If that’s your preference.”
It was an excellent excuse to speak to the guard generally, and keep an eye out for Kaelson, which is what I suspected was her plan. There’d be no diffusing suspicion if we vanished the same time the prisoner did, unless we pretended to return to the tower. But I suspected that ship had sailed. The way she’d made people jump to attention today would have consequences.
Eventually, she took pity on him and said, “Is that it, there? Near your left hip? A bit further. There are just so many keys. I’m glad I don’t need to keep track of them.”
Panic flickered over the man’s handsome face. “This room is secure. It’s in the center of the barracks.”
Which meant it was as secure as the guard wanted it to be. I knew Audrey made that connection, too, when she glanced at me quickly, her smile glued on.
I took a moment to run my eyes over the oft-absent Mortemon, noting the depth of his pallor and the size of his pupils. He was, quite clearly, unwell. It would be a small thing to ask him to stay away whilst he “recovered”. The trick would be doing itbeforehe infected the rest of us.
He shrugged his cloak to better cover his folded forearms, hunching into the cloth as I watched.
The opportunity to meet Kaelson didn’t present itself on the way out. The bleary-eyed guard stood smartly as she left, eyes ahead and shields up.
That was going to make it hard to have conversations.
The trip over the bailey was brief, and the clouds hung heavily in the sky. I folded my cloak tighter against the chill that crept into my bones, missing the warmth of summer—or better, the warmth of my tribal forest, where the summers were long and dry, but the rivers deep and cold.
It felt so far away as we made our way through twisting passageways into the bowels of the castle’s dungeons.
Every time we lit a Bloodfire, we knew it could be our last. We celebrated our lives and mourned the dead on the bones of the fallen who’d been fortunate enough to be carried home. I had a feeling when I’d walked away from my tribe that I’d danced at my last Bloodfire. I’d thought I was at peace with that. But I wanted to be back there with a ferocity that took me off guard after all these years. I wanted the sweet bite of mead and the drum that spoke to my soul. I wanted to dance and mourn and celebrate.
Thomas stepped in front of Audrey, shield up and spear left by the door in deference to the close quarters.
Audrey followed him, torch in her hand. The writhing shadows mocked my treasured memories of Bloodfires back home, casting cold, grimy stone into relief and then plunging it into darkness as it flickered.
“Quite a crowd.” The would-be assassin was sitting in the far corner, one knee up, head tipped back. “Smells like death up there. Does this mean I won’t be left to starve behind bars as you all succumb?”
From where I stood behind Audrey’s shoulder I could see the knife Thomas held behind his shield, his grip white-knuckled.
“What’s your name?” Audrey asked.
“Ylva. You can call me honey, if you’d prefer.”
I sighed. “She doesn’t want to fuck you, and if she does, she won’t admit it in front of us. But she does want to be your friend. Can we shelve the bad flirting? Just for now?”
The woman stood as I spoke, her eyes on me. “Stay back,” she told me, positioned defensively.
I felt mildly insulted. “That was my intention.”
“Why?” Audrey asked, at the same time.
“She’s got it,” Ylva said, the words hard. “Get her out.”
A chill went up my spine. Audrey was demanding explanations, but my eyes fell on the dirty silver bands at her wrists.
My mouth dry, I eased out of the small room, past Chay, and to the top of the stairs leading down to the dungeons.
Audrey hadn’t shared the information on the plague the Master Steward—Steward Daniel the Deserter, as he ought to be known—had left her before he’d fled. I hadn’t asked.
I didn’t need to hear the explanation the woman spun, and I doubted Audrey would believe any truth she was told. That prisoner was part of an inconvenient reality that Barloc hadn’t managed to weaponize and the majority didn’t know of. And it didn’t matter most of the time, because they’d been brought to heel so hard so often that when they did snap their chain, they weren’t the fearsome force they could be.
But I had no doubt she could smell that plague.
