Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (12 page)

Someone was talking to her, trying to guide her back to the table.

“It’s all right. You’re safe now. Noraya! You’re safe now.”

“No! No. Don’t touch me! I can’t stay here!”

She broke loose from the grip and knew it was a bad idea. The ground couldn’t really shift under her feet, yet it certainly felt as if it were doing so. She stumbled and instinctively held out her arms to break the fall. The pain exploded in her right shoulder again, and she saw black and white stars in front of her eyes as she clutched her arm and howled like a wounded animal.

When she came to, she was on the table once more and the baker’s wife was hunched over her. Her eyes were dark blue and her lips were pressed thin.

Nora stared at the other woman.

“You’re safe now,” Sallima repeated. “But you need more rest. I stitched your shoulder for you after pulling the arrow. It was barbed.” She held her hand out and Nora automatically lifted her head to look. The dark gray arrowhead had a dull gleam to it. The ends were curved like a fisherman’s hook. Nora shuddered and went back to staring at Sallima.

“I’m home.” Nora’s voice had a rasp. She tried clearing her throat and repeating what she had said, but the rasp stayed. She sounded like the master wight.

“Yes. The inn was burning, so I dragged you over to this place. Most of it is still intact.” Sallima knocked on the wall. “You can thank me later.”

“Thank you?”

“For saving your life.”

Sallima checked Nora’s forehead for fever. Her hand was smooth and dry on Nora’s skin. It smelled of yeast and garlic. It was a motherly gesture that came natural to the baker’s wife. She snatched her hand away before Nora slapped at it.

“For saving—” Nora propped herself up on an elbow. “I saved
your
life!
You
should be saying thank-you!”

Sallima shrugged her shoulders.

“Should I? Well, thank you. Happy now?”

There was a long pause as Nora tried to find words. Her mouth opened and shut a few times. Then Sallima turned and busied herself in the kitchen. Nora watched as the short woman lit the stove and found the kettle. She went outside to fill it with water and came back in humming a lullaby. It seemed she was going to make tea. Sallima stood ramrod straight at the stove while the water boiled, staring out into the garden. She kept pulling a woolen shawl over her tiny shoulders.

“Why are you here?” Nora’s tongue felt heavy. It was cumbersome to talk. “Why did you come back for me? You don’t even like me.”

The woman shrugged again.

“It was the right thing to do.”

“The right thing,” Nora repeated.

“Yes.”

They looked at each other. Nora started to laugh. It sounded cold and hollow and foreign to her ears. Sallima wrinkled her nose as though she smelled something distasteful.

“What’s so funny?” she wanted to know.

“You are!” Nora’s injured arm rested over her stomach. As she laughed, she clutched her ribs, grimacing at the pain. Moving her hand hurt her shoulder. “You come here from Moorfleet, laced and ribboned and all. Start making accusations that ruin my reputation. And do you know what happens when a girl’s reputation is ruined? It’s a good excuse for any guy to try and find out whether you’re really as easy as they say. The ominous ‘they.’”

“I did not—”

“I was fourteen. You shouldn’t have to ward off older men’s attention at fourteen. You should color your cheeks and wear silly dresses and tie up your hair with ribbons and think you’re a lady already. All I had was my smarts and a shovel, and it’s all your fault! You do not get to say you did the right thing, damn you!”

“Oh, warding off is what you call it? Didn’t look that way to me. I saw you and that coaler in the woods together.”

Nora blanched as Sallima crossed her arms.

“You—”

“No, you! And him. He’s a married man, you know. Or was. His wife, she’d come to the baker’s every day to bake her bread. And every day I saw her sit in that tiny cottage at the end of the road with her meal going cold, all alone. But what do you care? They’re both dead now.”

“That’s your reason? That’s it? You saw us in the woods once four years ago? We grew up together. We should have been together. He was only two years older than I was.”

“And his wife was a year younger than you. You were the other woman. He was married to her!”

“Nothing ever happened! And besides, he didn’t want to be married. His parents arranged it!”

“And your foster father never arranged your marriage.”

“That doesn’t mean I fucked him, you stupid cow!” Nora screamed.

“How dare you!” Sallima stepped away from Nora’s burst of rage.

“No, how dare you?” Nora slammed her fist against the table. “How dare you sow that lie in the minds of the people here, in my home, not yours! People here have known me from infancy. You turned them against me. You turned everyone against me.”

“You did that yourself,” Sallima hissed. “You think I chose to come here? To live here in this poor excuse for a village as the third wife of an old, lecherous baker? I did not! But I accepted my duty. The duty of a daughter. I accepted my fate. Every woman’s fate. You, though, Noraya Smith, you think you’re special. You think just because you’re a twin, that makes you free to do as you like. Lara’s daughter, I call you. Bringer of death. You wonder why your foster mother died? You and your brother cursed every child to ever enter her womb until it drove her mad. Everyone knew it but her and your foster father. The poor besotted man. And now, they all are dead. You think the mess in your life is my fault? Think again.”

Nora swallowed hard. The flood of rage choked her. Her vision blurred treacherously. There was no way she was going to cry now. Not in front of that woman! She clenched her teeth together and ripped her eyes wide open. They stung in the corners. The kettle whistled and Sallima turned around deftly, pouring the boiling water into two chipped cups from Nora’s cupboard. Nora cuffed the tears away with her good hand. It was shaking. Sallima was wrong. Twins weren’t cursed. The miscarriages weren’t their fault, nor was Mother Sara’s death. It wasn’t Nora’s fault.

“He was my father in all but blood. Have you seen the body in the forge?” she asked when she had her voice mostly under control again. There was a tremble of emotion, but she couldn’t help it. Didn’t want to.

Sallima kept her back turned to Nora, staring out the window as the steam rose from the two cups before her.

“I saw.” The woman nodded. “I saw everything.”

She turned her head to the side and Nora saw the tears spilling down her cheeks, but Sallima’s voice was calm and steady. “Those men did bad things. Really bad things. They were very bad people.”

After taking a few minutes to compose herself, Sallima came over with the tea, humming the lullaby once more. She probably wasn’t even aware of it. Nora tried to imagine the pain of losing your child to Lara’s cold embrace but couldn’t. If it felt anything like losing your brother and parents, it fucking hurt. She gasped and grunted with the effort but managed to prop herself up against the wall on her own. She took the proffered cup, hand slightly trembling, and the two women drank together in silence.

“You have to change the bandage daily at first.” Sallima cleared her throat. “I found some sheets to use. They are not as clean as I could wish for, but…they will do until your betrothed gets here.”

Nora nodded. “What?” she said.

“Wolfe, your betrothed.” Sallima narrowed her eyes at Nora. “I thought you said you sent Becca to the Vale to get help. You did, didn’t you?”

“Oh, that. Yes. I did.”

Sallima blew on her tea.

“Of course,” she started again, “you’ll probably find it more…tasteful to postpone your wedding until the spring equinox. After your loss, I mean. Bury the dead and mourn them.”

“My wedding?”

Sallima tutted impatiently.

“You were supposed to be married on Solstice, weren’t you? That’s in a few weeks. Highly inappropriate considering what happened here. But at least now you can finally do the right thing and marry him.”

“What?”

“Did you knock your head?” The baker’s wife raised her eyebrows.

“I can’t marry Wolfe,” Nora blurted. “I mean, I live
here
.” She rapped a knuckle against the stone wall. “This is my home. This was my home. No,
is
. I don’t know. This is my kitchen. This is my cup. That’s my shawl.”

Sallima clutched it tighter around her shoulders.

“Yes, that’s why I said you should consider postponing the wedding.”

Without thinking, Nora swung her legs off the table and onto the floor. It was still a bad idea. She stumbled and steadied herself against the wall, cursing. Sallima stepped toward her to fuss, but Nora held up her hand. The room spun before her eyes, but she was walking—stumbling—toward the garden. She leaned against the doorpost and looked outside. The sky hung gray and overcast. A slight drizzle had set in. It was already past midday. Crap! Wolfe and the riders from the Vale could be here in two, maybe three hours. What was she going to do? She rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes. When she opened her eyes again, her gaze rested on the coaler’s shovel leaning against the opposite wall. She pointed with her good hand.

“I thought that was just my imagination. Did you really hit that bowman over the head with a shovel?”

Sallima looked between Nora’s face and the shovel. She nodded.

“I hit him over the head. He was out cold, but alive. Then I tied him up and left him there. Inn’s burned down now.” The woman’s drawn face hinted at a smile. “I watched the fire. I didn’t see him crawl out.”

Nora shuddered at the odd gleam in Sallima’s eyes. You could judge others by their actions, and rightly so, but you couldn’t see into the darkness of their hearts. And in Nora’s opinion, Sallima was just a step behind the bowman if she enjoyed watching others die. Would the baker’s wife be able to carry on now? Live a normal life? Would Nora? How many men had she killed last night? Then she frowned.

“Where did you get the shovel?”

Sallima shook her head. “Strange thing, really. Like in the old tales.”

“What? It magically walked out of the woods?”

“Kind of.” She gave Nora a sharp look and took a deep breath. “We ran into the night, past the stable. I had to put Laena down. She was so heavy. Suddenly there was this guy, one of the men from inside. He grabbed Malla around the waist and dragged her toward the forest. The girls were screaming. Malla was screaming. And then this wight walks out from under the trees and kills the guy with one sword stroke.”

Sallima mimed the stroke. The hairs on Nora’s arm rose as the woman smiled at her.

“A wight?”

“Just like the old tales: a wight at night.” Sallima smiled with that odd gleam in her eyes again. “Only then he gave me this coalman’s shovel. He said it’s yours.”

“Black eyes? Bronze skin? Dark brown hair?”

Sallima cocked her head to the side. “You twins run with a strange crowd, Noraya. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Lara herself show up at your door.”

Nora groaned and slid down the doorframe to sit on the cold, wet floor. Sallima took the shovel and gazed at it as though she’d never seen one before.

“He gave me the shovel as a message for you.”

“Yeah?”

“He said you’d know what it meant. Do you?”

“Yeah,” Nora said with a lump in her throat. “It means I really hate that wight.”

Sallima shrugged and put the shovel back. She busied herself getting clean water to wash the cups and scrub the bloodstain off the table. Nora’s bloodstain.

For a long time Nora sat on the threshold, one side of her body inside the house, the other getting wet in the drizzle of rain. Burned ruins on the one hand, on the other…what? The unknown future. The ever-changing future. Possibility, Owen would say. Owen. She didn’t even know where he was. They had been heading for the Temple of the Wind. Could she find it on her own? Would she find him?

Diaz had come here. Her annoying bodyguard. He had come after her when he should have been looking after Owen. Oh, he had saved Sallima and the other girls from the one guard who had never shown up again—and now she knew why—but only after she had killed to free them first. Why not before? Why not rescue Nora? And then taunting her with his message? And then leaving in the night so she couldn’t take that damned shovel and answer him right to his face?

Well, it was either sit here and wait for Wolfe and his father to come pick her up and live that arranged life, or…or buckle up and find Owen. Flight or fight? Fight or flight?

She touched her aching right shoulder.

And stood up.

Ain’t No Mountain High

O
wen watched his sister’s face
freeze into a guarded expression. Nora turned and started to walk away, across the Plains, holding on to the straps of her backpack as though her life depended on it. His feet started to follow her, but he stopped himself. It was better this way. She’d be safe. She’d go home, get married, and live a good life. And hate him forever. But she’d be safe. And that was the main thing, the right thing. Duty first, emotions after—that was the way of the pilgrims, the way he aspired to. He swallowed, but his throat was choked up, too constricted to call out and stop her from leaving. He coughed, then hawked the bitter taste from his mouth.