Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (22 page)

Nora nodded and touched her shoulder.

They heard a timid knock on the door.

“Come in!” Master Cumi called out.

A young woman opened the door, balancing a tray on her arm. She was dressed in the same billowing robes Master Cumi wore, girded with silver, though her sleeves were tied up, exposing her bare forearms. Her pale golden hair was similarly fashioned in two long braids. She cast her eyes down as she entered.

“Dinner?” The young woman’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“Noraya, I want you to meet Calla. She’s been keeping an eye on you, too. She’s a capable midwife and a pilgrim here at the temple. And the cook I was talking about earlier.” Cumi pointed at Calla behind her back.

“Pleased to meet you,” Nora said as Calla set the tray with a steaming bowl of soup down next to the bed.

Calla smiled and rose. Or tried to. A silver chain dangling from her hair had caught in a silver chain dangling from her belt, making her bend over in an awkward position. She turned a violent shade of red.

“Um. Help?”

Nora sprang to action, fiddling with the chains.

“Here, let me just—there you go.”

She unhooked a chain and her hand brushed against Calla’s.

Nora’s vision dimmed as though she had been hit over the head. Her hands filled with blood. The incessant wailing of an infant strained her ears. Images flashed before her eyes. Some she recognized as her own memories. The flabby flesh closing around her hand. Blue gleaming fingertips piercing her flesh. The scrape of her knife on the inside of the young man’s skull. But then a silhouetted man, unknown, belt in hand raised high above his head.

Nora blinked. The room was back to normal. Except Calla knelt on the floor, arm raised before her face as though Nora was about to slap her. They stared at each other in shock.

“Oh yes. I forgot.” Master Cumi’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Calla is also an empath.”

“A what?”

“I can…know you,” Calla whispered, slowly lowering her arm. “Through touch. I’m sorry.”

Nora shook her head.

“Is it just me?” she said slowly. “Or is no one else fucking normal around here?”

N
ora slept long the next
morning. She woke and stretched and got dressed, making her way down the stairs to where she supposed the kitchen area was. The yeasty scent of freshly baked bread led her feet. As Nora opened the door, Calla looked over her shoulder, her blonde hair in a knot, arms elbow-deep in a huge kneading trough.

“Good morning,” she said. “You missed breakfast. Grab a bite, if you want. It’s still fresh.”

Nora didn’t need to be asked twice. Her stomach was rumbling. She stepped up to the tabletop Calla was working at and saw a large platter with a few slices of soft flat bread and ham. She dug in.

“Can I help?” Nora asked between mouthfuls. “You need something done?”

“Look in the pantry, will you? Tell me how many sides of mutton are still there.”

Under Calla’s direction, Nora walked over to a small larder and opened a heavy wooden door to see carcasses hanging from the ceiling. She counted and told Calla: “Forty-three.” Calla smacked the flour from her hands and scratched under her eye, leaving a smudge of white on her pale face. She came over to Nora, cleaning her hands on her apron, and sighed.

“Well, we have a few racks of pork and beef left that we were saving for Solstice, but it won’t last that long with all these men and their constant cry for meat, meat, meat.”

“The prince’s Hunted Company?” Nora asked. Calla nodded. “Well, they probably want copious amounts of beer and free sex, too. Doesn’t mean you have to give it them.”

Calla’s eyes widened and she blushed deep red.

“Why don’t they hunt game?” Nora quickly suggested. “The weather’s still holding. There’s only light snow. They could find deer or boar in the forest around the temple. Replenish the larder. Or do they have anything else to do here?”

“Er…no. Not really. But…”

“But?”

Calla wrung her apron. “Frankly, the prince’s captain scares me. And the prince himself is even worse. I feel sick when I’m around him too long. I feel just a thin coating of control over a bubbling turmoil, even when we’re only in the same room together. And the way he looks at me…” Calla shuddered.

“He needs food, just like everyone else. The worst he can do is say no.”

“You’d just ask him? Prince Bashan?” Calla laughed nervously. “Are you sure you’re normal?”

“Most of the time, I’d like to be.” Nora shrugged. “Anything else I can do? You need help in here?”

“No.” Calla took a look around the kitchen, as though taking a mental tally. “The dough can rise, and we’ll have enough bread for lunch. Eggs are hard-boiled, ham’s still there. Dinner’s all set and slowly cooking.” She pointed to a large cauldron. “Vegetable stew. I’ll grill the fish later. But you can accompany me on my rounds, if you like.”

“Sure.”

Before the unrest, as Calla explained on their way, her rounds had usually meant doing chores and jobs around the nearly empty temple palace, along with making a regular circuit around the lonely homesteads and hamlets in the surrounding lands. Master Cumi and Calla went around, mostly healing and helping in the houses, changing bandages, distributing ointments, talking, and listening. Mostly listening. Master Cumi was also the local justice and priest in one person, marrying young people, burying dead people, and settling legal issues for those in between. The only difference after the unrest was that now they made their rounds below in the courtyards of the temple, much closer. But they also saw many more people. And a lot more pregnancies. Nora frowned at Calla.

“I’m a midwife,” Calla explained.

“Animal or human midwifery?” Nora asked, eyeing a group of young girls carrying baskets of washing. She and Calla were going down the long stairs and were between platforms. They would have to walk uncomfortably close to the edge to let the girls pass by. Uncomfortable for Nora, at least.

“Both, but mainly human. I prefer animals, though.”

“Why?”

“You did not hear this from me, but if all goes right, women don’t really need a midwife. Babies are born, even if we don’t make it in time. On the other hand, when things don’t go well, or go very wrong, well…there’s only so much you can do. The unspoken rule is, if you can save both, then save both. If you can’t save both, save the mother. Dealing with cattle and sheep is easier in that situation.”

“How is it with the…how do you cope with…you know. Do you wear gloves or something?”

“Mostly it helps when I can feel the women under my hands.”

“Mostly?”

The young girls stopped, and Nora shuffled nervously even closer to the edge as they talked to Calla, swinging their baskets enthusiastically. They were on their way to the laundry in the depths of the temple. Hot water from the springs made the backbreaking, dull work slightly more endurable. One girl had a wobbly tooth and showed it off. The other had skinned her knee. The third told Calla that her mother hadn’t yet returned from mushroom gathering. Calla promised to come by later. She looked up and took a step back, knocking into Nora. Nora rowed with her arms, cold sweat pouring off her face at the closeness of a long plunge to her death. She found her balance again, heart pounding in her throat.

“It’s him,” one of the girls screeched. Suddenly, all three were shrieking and jumping up and down around a handsome young man on his way up the stairs. Owen was following him.

“Oh dear,” Calla breathed. She straightened and put on a smile. It stayed on while she talked, making her look slightly mad. “Noraya, you’ve met Shade Padarn?”

Nora looked Padarn up and down. She remembered his sword at her throat. He grinned at her over the girls’ heads. Yeah, he remembered too.

“Briefly,” Nora said.

“Well met, ladies.” Shade bowed low.

“Shade! Look at my tooth! It bleeds when I do this!”

He obediently looked and then pulled a face.

“That,” he said slowly, “is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my whole life.”

The girls giggled.

“Are you going up or down?” Owen asked Calla.

“Um…” Calla blushed.

“Down, if you lot get out of the way,” Nora said.

“Better do what she says,” Shade told the girls in a stage whisper. “She’s a twin, and so evil that even the wight master brought her back.”

He winked. The girls ran up, jostling with their baskets, wary of Nora’s scowl.

“Thank you very much, asshole.”

“Shocking! There are children present. And I only spoke the truth, Briar.”

He grinned. She wanted to punch him in the face.

“My name is Noraya.”

“I know.”

“You’re not in the library?” Nora asked Owen, gritting her teeth.

“No, not today. Master Cumi is in the lower courtyards, laying down law.” Owen clutched a thick notebook to his side. The spine had been broken and the book fixed to accommodate more sheets of paper in the back. Those last sheets stuck out more and were filled with Owen’s careful handwriting. “I was volunteered as her scribe by Prince Bashan.”

“What Prince Bashan says is what gets done,” Shade said, stretching, both hands at the small of his back. There was an audible
crick
as something snapped into place and Shade exhaled. “Gods, I took a beating yesterday. Every single bone knocked out of place, I swear.”

“Who cares?” Nora said, stepping around Calla to walk down the middle of the stairs again.

“Not Master Diaz, I can tell you that. I have to train with him again this afternoon.”

Nora froze.

“I thought Garreth was a mean swords teacher,” Shade continued. “Sent me flying every time we knocked shields together. And whenever I’d mess up, he’d send me out to get a beer. From the lower courtyards. Master Diaz, though. A battering ram is nothing compared to that half-wight. But what am I saying? You know that, eh, Briar?”

She straightened next to Owen and met Shade’s gray eyes, muscles tensing.

“You’re training with Diaz?”

“Yep.”

“You?”

“Uh-huh.”

“With him?”

Her jaw ached. For a moment, she imagined shoving Shade over the edge and listening to his scream on the long way down. But pushing Diaz over would feel so much better. She scraped a hand over her face to feel if she was grinning.
No discipline, my ass.

“Nora?” Owen spoke to her, but she hardly heard him. “Are you all right?”

“Excuse me, lots of things,” she managed.

Calla followed closely as Nora stormed down the long stairs, and she didn’t have to be an empath to know how Nora felt.

S
o Calla made her rounds,
checking in on new mothers with their screaming, pink bundles; little old ladies with runny eyes; and snotty, lice-ridden children. Nora stood by her side, lending a helping hand where necessary, silent except for the most basic conversation. Her jaw was still clenched tight. There was a lot of medicine and bandaging, scolding and explaining, but also a lot of gossip and listening happening. Whenever Nora and Calla reached a house, the neighbors would come by, too, exchanging news and remedies.

Calla explained between visits that most of the refugees had settled in the tiers of the courtyards depending on where they came from. Neighbors fleeing from one village would naturally look for empty houses next to each other. So the courtyards had their own little order, depending on the origin of the people. There were a few open areas for everyone, like the square before the red gates at the bottom of the stairs. This was where most merchants had put up their stalls, and where farmers sold their last fresh produce. One street was dedicated to all sorts of crafts, carpenters, and smiths with their portable forges and anvil stumps. The men greeted them courteously, and occasionally one of them would strike up a short, monosyllabic conversation with Calla about the weather or something else, and it turned out to be a code for an ointment against joint ache or pain in the knees or an arranged political meeting with Master Cumi. Nora couldn’t quite work out the code, though.