Page 13 of Silverbow
Enya clasped her hand over her mouth to physically hold in her glee. Crissa Blakwell could be no more than a year her senior, if not her junior, but it seemed if Lady Blakwell could not have Lord Ryerson for her own, she had no qualms about offering up her daughter. The absurdity of it nearly had Enya in stitches.
“Well, I wish you much luck this season,Miss Crissa.”
“Might we see you at Lord Thornson’s ball?” Lady Blakwell pressed.
“Perhaps.”
Enya seized her opportunity. “Oh Father! We must go. It’s the first of the season.”
Liam was gaping at her like a fish, but the steel in her father’s gaze said he knew exactly what she was up to.
“It will be a grand affair. That is, if any provisions can be found.” Lady Blakwell sniffed disdainfully, casting a look around the street. “We don’t normally frequent this part of town, but it seems Master Copinger has cleaned the upper town out. Preparing for a great host at the Morning Glory, it seems.”
Her father blinked in surprise. “A great host?”
“I can’t say for certain, my lord, I’ve heard only rumors.” Lady Blakwell stepped closer, lowering her voice. “It seems the Testing comes early this year.”
Any trace of amusement vanished. Beside her, Liam shuddered. Crissa gulped audibly.
Aside from merchants and peddlers, the only other reliable visitors to Westforks were the king’s wielders. Every year, they made a sweep of the realm to collect any who had developed one of the elven gifts for His Majesty’s service.
The spark was inborn, but the gifts did not emerge until a wielder reached adulthood. Even then, their appearance remained unpredictable. Sometimes, the gifts could skip generations or entire branches of family trees. Sometimes, the same blood that gave one branch one gift would give another something different entirely. Still, in other families, they ran true from parent to child.
They claimed it was dangerous to have wielders running about untrained and Pallas Davolier didn’t care where the wielding gifts came from - he took them all. It was perhaps the single greatest equalizer in all of Estryia. Lowborn or high, it didn’t matter when the Testing came.
The Testing itself was simple enough. One only had to hold the Testing rod and await the wielder’s judgment. Enya had held it thrice before, and thrice the black coated party had gone on their way. But it was what would happen if they found a gift and named her Recruit that left her mouth too dry to speak.
The only thing more feared in Estryia than the bone white Testing rod was the silver Recruit’s collar. Not much was known about how the artifacts imbued by the wielders worked, but everyone shuddered at the tales of those wretched things being clasped around throats.
They were said to forge some kind of link between the Wielder and the Recruit, yielding control of their gift. But the forging... The king’s wielders needed no chains or irons on Testing day, not when they came armed with silver. And even if the sycophants called it training, in the twenty or so years since Pallas Davolier had been pressing wielders into his service, not one had ever returned home.
Knowing a demi-elf hadheardher gift, even if it was not a wielding gift, made icy rivulets of sweat run down her spine.
“Terrible isn’t it, to have children of Testing age? A mother worries so. But there has never been a wielder in my line. House Blakwell, well. I can’t say my late husband’s family was always so scrupulous.” She sniffed again. “And your own house, my lord? Has Ryerson House ever been cursed?”
“Not that the records show, my lady.”
She patted the girl’s hand. “See here, Crissa. A good, decent man from good, pure stock. Good riddance, I say, to the leashed ones. Let them stamp out the mixed blood. We’re all better for it.”
Lady Blakwell’s sentiment was not uncommon in Estryia, but it still made Enya flinch. She’d only ever known one boy to be collared, and the Coblegh familywaswhat Enya would consider good stock.
The Cobleghs scratched out a living on a hard patch of dirt north of Ryerson House in the shadow of Greenridge. Rocky land that was, and it grew little besides humble, hard working people. Stubborn as his folk might be to not give up that ground, Elling had been her friend, growing close to her and Liam in the years he mucked stalls for extra coppers in Ryerson Stable. He had perhaps been more than a friend. A Harvest Festival kiss on Wil Sheahan’s dare had turned into something more by spring. But then, the Testing came.
Three years Elling had been gone, and if Oslee Amcot told it true, Mistress Coblegh still kept a candle burning in the front window every night in case he found his way back home. A candle the Cobleghs would be hard pressed to afford without Elling’s extra work at Ryerson House. The thought always knotted Enya’s insides.
“Well, Lady Blakwell, this was as pleasurable as always, but if you’ll excuse us, we do need to be on our way.”
“Do say that we will see you at Lord Thornson’s next week.”
“Perhaps,” he said, bowing his farewell.
He mounted before the lady got in another word, and Enya followed, suddenly finding the walls around Westforks too confining.
Whispers of the Testing were enough to cast her and Liam into a broody silence as they rode. She had two left before she would receive her papers declaring her giftless. Two more Testings, and then she would never have to hold that cursed rod again. She could manage twice more. Ryerson House had no wielders on record, though how far back those records went for a newly raised house, Enya didn’t dare to ask.
Lost as she was in her own spiraling thoughts, she hadn’t realized they’d passed the gate or the guards until they stepped off the road into the sand. With frigid waves curling and breaking on the shore, the beach was deserted except for a cluster of raggedy children poking around in the rocks.
“Race to the south point?” Her father asked over his shoulder.
