Page 3 of Unrivaled
Mayhap, if they’d listened to Audrey, they wouldn’t all be about to die.
The wind at my back was cold.I didn’t bother cleaning my knives.
CHAPTERTWO
CHAY
The breeding program has shown little use so far, but it is early yet.The worgs do not appear to maintain any semblance of their humanity once they have made the shift, but they are reactive peoples.I will continue looking for a malleable combination.—in a letter from General Victor, Duke of La’Angi to General Dieudonné, Count of Black Borough
13thDay of Winter’s Wife Moon,
Age of the Locways, Year 271
La’Angi Keep
The council gathered in the kitchens, as it often had since Audrey had begun to assemble it during the plague.Thomas stood stiffly beside the door, his back straight, the spear in his hand butt-down on the edge of the path worn into the stone floor over centuries of use.The lines left by decades of worry were carved deep into his face as he stood staring straight ahead, as if he’d paused his ability to comprehend the world around him.
That was how the Blackguard weresupposedto act, here in La’Angi, when we weren’t gutting the enemies of our bloodsworn lieges.
My lady could gut people herself, though, so I took one of the spiced sweet rolls a smiling kitchenhand offered me and went over to claim some space beside Audrey.No one else was brave enough, or foolish enough, to have tried.Kaelson, makeshift Captain of the Guard, was sitting on a wobbly stool across from Bernadette.His brown face was just as careworn as Thomas’, but wearier, though he, too, had impeccable posture.
“What’s the weather like out there?”Bernadette asked, passing all of us knives and putting down a bucket of potatoes.
I nudged Audrey before she could reach for it, offering her the sweet roll.She was quite specific about her breads, but this one must’ve met her approval because I saw the spark of hunger in her eyes.Before my body could react to that familiar look, I handed it over, avoiding her polite objections.
“Not you,” Bernadette told Kaelson when he went to reach for the potatoes.“Youneed to eat, Captain.”The honorific held such reproach I had to fight not to grin.“Ettie tells me you haven’t made it to the mess in days.”
I waved to Kaelson to save himself the effort of getting up again and left them to their important council business, going to fetch him a bowl big enough for Bernadette’s standards.I did the same for Thomas, ignoring his disapproving look.“We’re not going to stop ’til dusk,” I reminded him, pressing it firmly into his hand.“She needs us.”
He took it, but not without the obligatory disapproving look at my boots that hadn’t been polished in a shockingtwo days.
He’d be even more shocked to learn Audrey had done it last, her brow furrowed, the brushstrokes of wax against leather interspersed by aggressive hand movements as she told me the millions of thoughts that formed a maelstrom in her mind.I’d been rubbing the knots out of her calves.It had been an excellent trade, really.
“Ah!”I heard from somewhere in the vicinity of my hip.Glancing down, I saw Ettie, the wizened, shrunken woman who’d come to Audrey in the immediate aftermath of the plague with an extensive list of requests and people she’d gathered on her trip from the lower levels of the city.“Get me a chair, there’s a good boy,” she told me, latching onto my arm to save putting pressure on her walking stick.
“There’s pumpkin soup, or stew,” I told her, guiding her to the chair she probably hadn’t seen.
She sniffed.“Does the stew have meat?”Then she turned her rheumy eyes on me, slowing her pace from the shuffle it’d been to a snail’s crawl until she’d asked me.“You lot need that.Give me the pumpkin.”
I didn’t try to argue.I was smarter than that.I left the five of them; Kaelson, the Captain, Bernadette, the cook, and Ettie, the community advisor, who’d left a gap for Thomas that he refused to fill.Bringing them all together was my lady, who had the legal standing as the heir of the Duke, but the barrier of being a woman and therefore unable to claim that power herself.She’d organized this group to help her hold back the darkness.Isolde, usually at Audrey’s side, we’d only glimpsed briefly this morning.She’d been scouting a bandit group last night, and was yet to report back her findings.It was quite in character of Isolde to not reappear for hours, but knowing she was in the keep helped me settle.If there was anything happening urgently, she’d be here.These meetings happened every day or so, and Isolde’s sharp eyes were better used elsewhere.I stayed, but only because I liked Audrey’s company.
The sweet roll I’d given Audrey was almost entirely gone by the time I’d made sure everyone else had food, so I fetched her a second.
“…and there’s the matter of those cursed looters,” Kaelson said as I settled into my place in the group.Beside me, Audrey leant her weight on the old, scarred table.I wondered idly if she was tired from the training session this morning, or just comfortable.
“Canweloot ahead of them?”Audrey asked.
“Retrieval,” Kaelson said, with a pointed look, “of deceased peoples’ goods is a…complicated process, m’lady, as I’ve told you.”
She arched her brows, and I looked down at the stew to avoid smiling.Kaelson should’ve known better than to tell her something was too hard.“Well,notretrieving those items is leaving us wide open,” she said, “and I’m going to need to the money to feed us all if I’m keeping the kitchens open until we can get back to something close to normal.”
“Are we?”Bernadette asked.“Keeping the kitchens open, that is.”
They all looked at Audrey as if she hadn’t repeated her reassurances dozens of times already.Get people into the Keep.Feed them.Clothe them.Keep them warm.There’s no worrying about later if we don’t live to see it.
Her jaw tightened a little.“Yes,” Audrey repeated, no frustration making its way into her tone.We’d provided some game for the cookpots after our last trip to the orchard, but La’Angi larders were well stocked with salted meat.
I’d heard about this, too.About how people judged her by the standard her father had set.About how she’d never live down the fear he created, nor live up to the threat he was.
