Page 7 of Unrivaled
“No,” I said, and the word was soft.I couldn’t see past Sandy’s crestfallen expression.I know you like Julius.“No, you can’t teach what you don’t know, boy.Draw.”
His eyes had narrowed a little, his chin angled upright.Oh, I’d got him in the pride, all right.The young idiot didn’t know the Duke owned that, too.
He was speaking again, shaking his head.But he took the steel from the lady’s hand and swung it to acclimatize to the difference.
He wasreassuring her.
I didn’t even lower my shield.
A step back and the butt of my spear swung up, hitting him in the sword-hand without the noise of breaking bones I craved.He didn’t drop it, and he didn’t stagger back.
Damn him for that, too.I wasn’t giving him a moment of credit.One more move.One more move.And his shield was knocked aside.The butt of my spear hit him, hard, in the thigh.
He’d be down, if I wanted him down.
The pounding in my head increased, because I did want him to go down.So help me, I wanted him down and bleeding.
Better him than her.
He just stood there, wide-open, shield hanging off one arm and sword tip on the ground.“Point proven,” he said, as if I wasn’t moments away from gutting him.“So, you teach her shield work.”
It wasn’t about the shield.I clawed for words to express the well of dread I did my best to ignore, as did we all who’d managed to survive this long in La’Angi.“D’you know what happens to weak links?”I demanded.The words sounded far away, half-lost beneath the scream of the storm.
“I will not be a weak link,” the lady said, indignation in her words.
“You will,” I disagreed, the fury draining from me like a bucket being upended.She looked at me with big brown eyes, full of the impotent rage of youth.“My lady…you will,” I repeated gently, hating that it had to be me who brought to them this news, hating that I knew beneath that rage was mountains of hurt that’d never, ever crumble.I didn’t bother looking at Chay.Useless with a shield, but good with a sword.His link wasn’t the sturdiest, but to dothisto her?To give her false hope and curse her, all at once?“I’m sorry, my lady.”I bowed, aching with grief.
Eventually I’d mourn them.I was always mourning the truth they were trying to escape.
You couldn’t survive in La’Angi if you held on to fantasies.
CHAPTERFOUR
AUDREY
That the plague was created by one of our own was so obvious I’d intended to let it go without wasting the ink to declare it.All I care about is who sent it.Are you able to supply me with this information, or must I look elsewhere?—High Magelord, Bearer of All, Gautier the First, in a letter to the First Guidelord, Luis
13thDay of Winter’s Wife Moon,
Age of the Locways, Year 271
La’Angi Keep
The buzzing in my head hadn’t abated and neither had the questions.
“What if we run out of rooms before I can get my old mum to the castle?”a haggard man asked me.“Is there a list we can go on?”
My toes pressed hard into the ground.“There’s no list, master, no.I believe, with the current population of the city, we could houseeveryone.If that fails, then you come to me.I won’t forget you.”
“What about when we leave?”a young woman asked.“We have us a good, honest, ground-level place.We only got it ’cause it was my husband’s papa’s before him, and our landlord took pity on us.”The child against her shoulder rested peacefully, but she rocked them as if they were squalling.“What if it’s claimed by someone else, and then we have to move out of here ’cause the Duke comes back?”
“Until the Spring, I’ll freeze all sales and leases of property,” I said, and, the Wife bless her, the Inker apprentice mage scrawled out what I’d said.Not for the first time, I found myself painfully grateful she’d survived the plague…even if the list of promises on that page in front of her made me feel physically sick.
“Enough!”Ettie said, her walking stick hitting the floor.The noise was muffled by the thick layer of straw, but everyone around her jolted all the same.“We’re all worried, and they’re new worries, so we don’t have a place for them yet.You!”She pointed toward a group of women opposite her.Her finger was so twisted with age I wasn’t sure who it was directed at, and, from the looks they exchanged, they weren’t either.“Go get the lady a bite to eat.You can try to talkmyear off for a minute.I’ve got as much power as she does, unless all you want is a pretty face!”
Since I’d met her the day after the plague was lifted, I’d thanked every deity I could name for Ettie’s existence.I’d been able to focus on the big-picture issues and leave day-to-day running of the castle and kitchens in the capable hands of Bernadette and Ettie.
The steel in my spine was brittle, so I couldn’t relax.Movement beside me made me glance over.A young woman was passing Chay and me a bowl, her smile directed at both of us.I took it out of habit, looking down at the hunk of bread on one side and the thick soup held within, topped with melting cheddar from the deceased Master Jacques’ stores.
