Chapter 8

Rhea’s POV

The mark the boot had left on the plaster was still there in the morning, and I looked at it while I pulled my clothes on.

I had slept badly, waking to prop myself on one elbow every time footsteps passed in the corridor and lying back down angrier than before.

By noon the wet boot had dried hard as a board. I worked the leather soft again with the heel of my hand and a rag, then told Tessa I was going up to the kitchen for bread.

She said that there was bread in the room already, and I said I wanted the other kind.

The guard was waiting where the corridor turned. He fell in behind me, three paces back and a little to the left, and said nothing at all.

I went along the passage.

The longer route ran along the inside of the training-yard wall, and the gate stood open.

I had my hand on the gatepost and one foot already over the threshold when I heard a voice on the far side of it.

"—and I'm telling you, she asked for three horses." A pause for the laugh, and the laugh came. "One kid, one knife, and she wants three horses."

I stayed where I was with my hand on the post.

Afternoon light warmed the yard beyond. Barrels stood in two rows, with seven or eight men gathered nearby.

"The little one couldn't sit a horse to save her life," somebody said.

"That's what the captain told her. So then she says a cart," he said. "A cart. Like we were a ferry."

"Was she scared?"

"Scared?" The man waved a hand. "She had the point of it up against Hollis, and her whole arm was shaking. Blood down her sleeve, this much, and she's standing there telling the captain what she wants."

"So why didn't somebody take it off her?"

"Wasn't but one word needed." He shrugged, easy as anything. "I'd have had that knife off her inside two steps. She'd have dropped it before I got there. They always do."

I let go of the post and walked over to the weapons rack.

The wooden blade was lighter than I expected.

I turned it once to feel the balance and walked out to the open ground between the rows of barrels, where the light came down flat and even, and the mud from the last rain had dried to a pale crust.

The talking stopped as I reached the open ground.

"You said two steps," I said.

He turned, glanced at the guard behind me, then back at me, with what looked like an indulgent smile.

I held the blade loose at my side. "Do it now, or say right now that you're going easy on me."

One of the three by the wall said, not unkindly, "Go easy, Owen."

Owen, then. He picked up his own blade from where it leaned against the nearest barrel and rolled his shoulders once.

I watched his feet and waited.

He came in slowly and glanced right toward the others. That was when I moved inside his reach, my foot behind his ankle, my shoulder into his chest.

He fell backward and knocked over a barrel. Water spilled across the packed earth, and he sat in it with his blade in the wrong hand.

The yard went quiet and stayed quiet. He got up without the smile.

The second round was different.

He closed the distance quickly, wasting no movement, and drove me back toward the water still spreading over the ground.

My heel went into the wet mud and slid, and he caught my forearm before I finished the step, bringing his blade across to press against the inside of my wrist.

He forced me back against the old post at the yard's edge, not hard enough to knock the air out, just enough to hold me there.

I was already reaching across with my other hand when my injured arm gave way.

The wound hadn't fully healed yet, and when the pressure hit it, my fingers opened before I could stop them.

"Two steps," somebody said, and there was laughter in it, and then the yard went quiet.

Owen stepped back and put his blade down.

I turned. Adrian was standing just inside the gate.

I straightened up, and the wound pulled beneath the blood-soaked bandage, and I put my other hand over it.

He looked at me, then at the stone trough in the corner of the yard, and walked toward it.

After a moment, I followed him.

He stopped beside it and waited until I stood across from him, and then he said, "Let me see it."

I held out my arm.

He turned it to the light, worked the knot loose with his thumbnail, and the bandage came away stiff where it had dried. He asked the guard to fetch clean dressings from the healer.

"You wrapped it wet, and you wrapped it tight. Tight is worse than wet." He set the old bandage aside. When the guard returned, he placed a fresh dressing over the cut and began wrapping it with a clean strip of cloth.

Each turn lay flat against the last. The wrapping felt firm without digging into my arm.

He crouched and picked up a short stick from the ground at the trough's base, and used it to draw a line, then another. "Why didn't you go left?"

I looked at the lines. "Left of what?"

"Second round. There was room."

"His elbow was there," I replied.

"His elbow was coming back. You had half a second before it closed."

He marked where Owen had stood, and where I had stood, and a short curved line for the blade's path. "When he swings to the right, his whole left side opens up. You're already inside his reach. You don't need that arm."

I studied the dirt.

"Walk it," he said.

I followed.

The first time I was thinking about my feet, and I was a half step late.

The second time I stopped thinking and simply moved, and my foot was in the right place before I understood why.

When I looked up, there was a moment of quiet that neither of us filled.

"Again."

"I've got it."

"You've got luck. Do it until you don't need it."

I did it twice more, and on the fourth try, the movement felt right. I looked up at him.

"Do you want to try it?" I said.

"When that arm's healed."

"I could try it now."

"You could try it now and tear it open and be useless another week."

"Tomorrow it's the same arm."

He did not answer at once. "Tomorrow you bring no blade. Footwork, both hands free. That doesn't pull on it."

He pushed the stick upright in the dirt. "Come before first light. I'll be here."

Adrian went out without looking back, and the yard settled into its ordinary sounds, water and wood and the distant noise of the house.

I crouched and began smoothing the lines away, dragging my boot across them in long strokes.

I smoothed away most of it. Then I stopped and left one small patch in the corner, the foot position and the arc, and straightened up and walked out with the guard behind me.

Tessa was mending Maisie's sock when I came in, holding one end of the thread in her teeth.

"You went for bread," she said. "That was a while ago."

"There wasn't any."

I sat down and started taking off my boots. My sleeve had slipped down over my hand, and I shoved it up my arm without thinking. Her needle stopped.

"Hold still." She leaned over, took my wrist, and turned it toward the lamp. For a while she said nothing, only looked.

"That's not my wrapping."

"It came loose."

"It came loose and wrapped itself again, starting at the elbow?" She set the needle in the wool and took my wrist again before I could pull away, turning my arm toward the light. "Feel that. Every turn sits flat. It never once occurred to me to start at the elbow."

"It holds better."

"It does hold better." She let go and sat back, and looked at me. "Who in this camp has hands like that?"

"Adrian was in the yard." I picked at the edge of my blanket. "The cut had opened. He saw it."

"Mm," Tessa said, taking her needle out of the wool and turning the sock over. "I'll do it from the elbow from now on. No sense us both getting it wrong."