“Not you, specifically,” Reome said, and Lia could tell she was trying to draw out information from her. “Only that one of the Aldermaston’s girls would do it. You are still the Aldermaston’s girl, Lia. Are you not?” Her smile was sickeningly close to a leer.
Lia’s cheeks went hot, but she controlled her emotions. Reome was eighteen now. After Whitsunday, she would leave Muirwood and either marry the local blacksmith or have to find work in one of the bigger towns. She was a beautiful girl – would no doubt find little difficulty convincing a boy to marry her. But in Muirwood, and for most of her life, she had been seen as the most beautiful, the most desirable – until the last Whitsunday when Sowe had emerged and taken Reome’s place, without ever trying and without saying a mean-spirited word to anyone. The sudden attention had bolstered Sowe’s lacking confidence and her timidity shrank when she realized that boys would stumble over their tongues just to bid her hello. But unlike Reome, she had not used the situation to belittle others or set the lads fetching things for her or making other girls do her work for her. It was a festering sore to Reome, and Lia could see it pock-marking her soul.
“Move aside,” Lia warned.
“I asked you a question.”
Lia’s patience with Reome’s taunting ended. Gritting her teeth, she shoved her basket into Reome’s – not hard, but enough to throw her a little off balance. “I am the Aldermaston’s girl,” she said firmly, confidently. In her mind, she pushed the thought at Reome: stand aside, or you will regret it. Move aside, Reome, or I will humiliate you in front of these girls. I am a hunter. The tingle of the Medium coursed through her.
Reome stared at her, shocked. She hesitated. For a moment, Lia thought she would have to fulfill her threat. But then Reome took a step backward and moved out of the way. The wall of lavenders crumpled. Holding her basket with one hand, Lia reached into the basket of another girl and took a bunch of purple mint to hang with her leathers while she dried them. “Thank you,” she said stiffly as she walked past them, heading back to the kitchen invisible in the mist ahead.
“I hate her,” came the low-throated voice behind her, but Lia kept walking.
As she went, she realized she was scowling, her heart pounding, and the wicked temptation arose to go back and shove Reome into the trough. She pictured it for a moment, savoring the image of dunking her head into the water. What would the other girls do if she did?
She caught herself, realizing the danger of her thoughts. Martin had trained her to fight – how to grab a man by the wrist, twist him around, and trip him. How to disarm someone with a dagger. How to hobble someone by breaking their foot. She even knew a dozen ways to injure or kill a man quickly, though she never had the cause to use her knowledge that way. It was locked up tight in her mind, coins she hoped she would never have to spend. But thinking ill of Reome and the lavenders was dangerous. Those thoughts could emerge as actions later, in a moment of weakness when her self-control faltered.
The grass was soft beneath her feet. Smells from the flowers and grass surrounded her, as well as snippets of sounds as the learners rose to begin their studies. Geese flew overhead, splitting the stillness with honking. Lia approached the kitchen to ask Sowe or Bryn to hang her leathers by the fires to dry so she could make it to the Aldermaston quickly. Another sound caught her ears, coming from the opposite side of the kitchen. Curious, she followed it and went around the corner to the rear of the kitchen, the side most hidden from view. Her approach was quiet as doves roosting. She peered around the corner and there he was.
Colvin.
She paused, watching him, for his back was to her. His sword was out and he was practicing with it. He moved through a series of intricate maneuvers, as if he fought off ten different men at once. Each thrust and parry was controlled – precise. Memories flooded her. They were so long ago, but she remembered the details precisely. For months she had fallen asleep each night forcing herself to remember everything she could about the days when he had been abandoned during a storm on the floor of the kitchen, bloody and unconscious. One night, he had practiced with a broom and had misjudged the distance of a table and clacked the handle hard. It made her stifle a giggle.
He heard the laughter and turned sharply. The expression on his face was pure annoyance and hostility – she had seen that look a hundred times in her mind. Impatient. Demanding. Wary. Petulant. The look melted when he recognized her. He sheathed his knight-maston sword in the scabbard and approached her.