I indicated my clothing from head to toe. Everything?
“Yeah. All of it. Boots, breeches, shirt, and cloak, to be sure. I don’t think Mertin bothers with underthings.”
I winced, not liking the thought of Mertin’s underthings. He was a big man with a surly attitude and enough hair on his body to weave a small hearth rug. But he was good with the horses and not a man to mess with. I wondered that someone had stolen his things without waking him.
“Mertin thought he’d been pranked until he noticed the horse was gone. He’s not laughing now. He’ll be getting a handful of lashes fer drinking on his watch. He claims he wasn’t drinking—at least not enough to pass out. He has a huge knot on his head, so I’m inclined to think someone clocked him.”
That made more sense, and I nodded.
“Your father isn’t happy. He’s already on edge with the battle on the borders. We won’t mention that ye slept in the woods last night with thieves about.”
We hurried in silence, skirting the road and cutting through the trees, though it wasn’t the most direct route. Boojohni seemed to understand that I would like to avoid the eyes of the early risers, already about their business. I had no reason to be out and about at this hour, rumpled and hooded, looking like I’d spent a night rolling in the hay with Mertin.
My father’s keep sat on a rise with several small villages making a half-circle around it in the south, fields and forest ringing it from the north. The only road to the keep was steep with stiff drops off the craggy mountains that rimmed the upper valley of Corvyn. It was fertile land, beautiful and breathtaking, and well-fortified by the natural landscape. But the Volgar were winged men. Cliffs and climbs would do little to deter them if the army at the border failed to hold them off. We were a mere twenty miles from the front in the valley of Kilmorda, and my father, though worried and constantly in talks with his advisors, had not sent a single warrior from Corvyn to help King Tiras defeat the Volgar.
The keep itself was like a small city—two forges, a butcher, a mill, an apothecary, a printer, a clothier, bakers and weavers and makers and healers—all of the very un-magical sort. Skills were acceptable. Mystical gifts were not. Everyone was quick to show how staid and useful they were, and as a result, my only desire as I grew was to be valuable too.
I was never taught to read or write. My father wouldn’t allow it. He was afraid to give me words, in any form, and because I couldn’t speak, people often forgot that I still understood, and they talked freely in front of me. I learned a great deal that way, listening and watching. I had spent time with the old women of our keep, women who’d never been to school but who were educated in hundreds of other ways. From them I learned to heal with herbs and soothe with my touch. I learned wisdom and wariness, and I learned to patiently accept and quietly wait. For what, I wasn’t sure, but in my heart I was always waiting, as if the hour my mother spoke of would someday arrive.
“We thought you’d been carried away by a birdman!” Bethe shrieked as Boojohni and I entered the kitchens from the rear of the keep, my hood still high, my eyes averted. I sighed. I had hoped I would make it up the back stairs without anyone seeing me, but Madame Pattersley, the housekeeper, and my maid had clearly been watching for us.
“What would one of the Volgar want with little Lark, eh?” Boojohni huffed. “She’s on the scrawny side. He’d need to carry you off too, Bethe. But that would be a bit difficult.” Boojohni winked and slapped Bethe on her very ample behind. She swatted back at him and forgot about me completely, which was what Boojohni intended, but I didn’t get by my father’s housekeeper quite as easily. She swooped in and jerked the hood from my head. She gasped at the sight of my hair.
“Milady! Where have you been?”
Not being able to answer was a relief, and I shrugged and began unwrapping my hair from around my head, releasing the twigs and leaves caught in the coils.
“You’ve been with a man!” Bethe squealed. “You’ve spent the night in the woods with a man.”
“She did no such thing,” Boojohni growled, offended. I patted his head, gratefully.
“Your father will have to be told, Lark. You know how he worries. I can’t keep this from him,” Madame Pattersley said righteously. Madame Pattersley had spent the fifteen years since my mother’s death trying to win my father’s affections. We were alike in that regard, though I’d given up years ago. She told him everything. Maybe that made up for the fact that I could tell him nothing.
“Keep what from me?” My father stood in the doorway.
“Lark was out all night, milord,” Madame Pattersley declared, her proclamation bouncing off the pots and pans hanging overhead, her glee echoing the din.
I raised my eyes to my father, willing him to look back at me, but he looked at Boojohni instead. I could see myself in the grey of his eyes and the fine bones of his face. He was elegant without being feminine, tall without being gangly, thin without being gaunt. But he was also shrewd instead of wise, mannerly instead of kind, and ambitious instead of strong.
“I hold you all responsible,” my father said quietly. “She must be watched at all times. You know this.”
The women dropped deep curtsies and Boojohni bowed, but I could feel his empathy. It permeated the space between us. My father turned and left the kitchen without another word.
The chattering squirrels didn’t like our presence. They wanted us to leave. A snake coiled in the bush to my left, and I felt him taste the air. His life force pulsed, emitting the word enemy and then wait. It wouldn’t strike, but it was poised and watching. A toad belched to my right, completely unconcerned with the company. He hardly noticed us at all, and he felt no fear. He belched again, reminding me of my father slumped against the dinner table, the dogs at his feet, waiting for him to leave the table so they could fight over what he left behind. Whispers and clicks and buzzes and hums, slithering across the forest floor and sliding up my skin and into my head. Sound everywhere, yet my companion didn’t seem to notice it.
I dismissed the babbling creatures the way they dismissed me and began filling my apron with the sweet berries hidden by the brambles. A bee fled with one goal in mind. Home. Home. Then he was gone. It had been three days since I’d discovered the wounded eagle in the woods. I’d come back every day, as if I would find him again, or he would find me. Or maybe I thought I would find the archer who brought him down and break his arrows one by one. It was not against the law to hunt, and I did not judge a man for feeding his family from the forest, but I was filled with helpless fury when I thought of the eagle. My agitation must have shown.
“You’ll prick your fingers, Milady.” I raised my eyes and met Lohdi’s gaze. Boojohni had been needed elsewhere, and young Lohdi—a clumsy youth of sixteen who couldn’t hold his tongue for five seconds—had been assigned to shadow me. I preferred my own company but was rarely given that option, and it was beyond infuriating. I lifted a shoulder, dismissing his concern.
“Your father said I can’t let you harm yourself.”
I ignored him with clenched teeth and kept picking. I had almost twenty-one summers. Most women my age had several children of their own, and I did not need a nursemaid, especially one younger and decidedly less capable than I.
Lohdi shifted nervously and looked at the skies, as if the patches of blue we could make out above the trees would soon turn to stormy grey.
“We need to go. They will be here soon.”
I raised my gaze from the berry bush once more, questioning him.
“Your father didn’t tell you?” Lohdi asked in surprise.
I shook my head. No. My father didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t talk to me because I couldn’t answer him.