Page 16 of Silverbow
“And what do the shadows whisper?”
“Bounty hunters.”
Enya thought her eyes might pop out of her head. Bounty hunters had come to Ryerson House, and one of them knew she had Sana’s gift.Oh, light.She wondered if it was too late to start praying to Mosphaera and Sakaala, the goddesses responsible for the godsung gifts to men.
“Seems they had business with a ship captain. They went east and haven’t been spotted since. Seems only happenstance they stopped here.”
“And their offer?”
Marwar’s guffaw was answer enough.
“Do you think they’ll turn her over?”
Enya held her breath.
“I suspect they value their own gifts more than a single bounty,” Marwar growled. “If the rod doesn’t pick up the gift, they’ve no way to prove it.”
“And the rod?”
“She was striking true years before she ever held the blasted thing.”
“Yes, I was thinking as much.”
Enya let out a shaky breath. That at least was true, even if her father’s account of the family tree wasn’t.
Another long silence stretched before she heard the creak of the floorboards and the clunk of the staff signaling Marwar had gotten to his feet. She darted to the deep shadow of the staircase. The Master of Arms crossed the hall and strode out into the night without looking back at where she stood.
four
Liam
Arunner arrived at the gate with a scrap of parchment bearing a royal seal before Liam had finished his oatmeal. It suddenly tasted like sawdust in his mouth. With a last hard gulp past the lump in his throat, he pushed the bowl away.
He did not need to read or be told what it said. Those scraps of parchment only ever carried one message:by order of His Majesty the King, Pallas of House Davolier, High King of Estryia and Defender of the Dragon’s Dream, the occupants of the house are to remain in place to await inspection and the Testing.
The wielders would sweep door-to-door from manor houses to hovels, Testing those of age and checking papers against the house’s roll. Liam’s name was inked onto the roll for Ryerson House when his father took up the stable apartment. The following year, the scribes added Enya’s below it and Lady Ryerson’s was struck with the flick of a quill. No names had come or gone in the intervening years, though the collaring of Elling Coblegh still made the stable boys hop from one foot to another whenever someone was foolish enough to mention the Testing.
At twenty-one, this would be his last. He almost dared to hope, despite the ominous quiet that rang too loudly in his ears. Without the hands and stable boys scuttling about, the old stone stable felt eerily abandoned.
But without the help, the occupants of Ryerson House had no time to sulk. They would work from sunup to sundown to see to the herd, and even then, they wouldn’t meet his father’s usual standards. Not even on feast days did Del Marsh let his stalls go unmucked, but on Testing days, he sometimes had to make exceptions.
No one felt much like talking and the only sounds in the stable were the dull scrape of pitchforks against hard packed floors and the thud of manure hitting the carts. It had a rhythm to it, Liam realized, and the jingling of the carriage harness in Enya’s hands made him snort a laugh.
She shot him a dark look from where she sat on an upturned bucket, oiling the rarely used leather with a rag. It was an odd task to choose, he thought, casting a glance around. There were stalls that needed cleaning, water to be hauled from the well, and hay to be thrown down from the loft, but there she sat, scrubbing as if the Testing depended on it.
Liam understood horses far better than women, but even he knew not to open his mouth and ask what she was doing. On any normal day, the wrong words could earn him the rough side of her tongue, but today, she wore a scowl like a thundercloud, and he had no doubt lightning was looking for something to strike.
He had no intention of being her lightning rod. Not today. Not with his insides in knots and his hands trembling whenever they stopped moving.
One moment, she was polishing a buckle like feast day silver, and the next, she was throwing the harness aside and rising from the bucket like it was a throne. By the squaring of her shoulders and the set of her jaw, she’d decided something, and Liam wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what. Without a word, she stalked toward the gates.
Liam was on the next stall when she returned leading the colt they’d started calling Igg after the fabled God of Fire. He said nothing as she saddled. He still said nothing as he trailed after her to the training pen, watching the horse toss his head and frisk, threatening to lift Enya out of her boots.
He wondered what Lord Ryerson would think if he learned the hands were betting coppers on who would win this battle of wills. Most favored the horse, but Liam doubted the colt had as much mule in him as Enya Ryerson.
“You should lunge him first,” he warned.
He’d known before he offered the advice that it would be ignored, so when she shot him a look that almost seemed to crackle, it was himself he sighed at. Enya barely got a leg over before the colt tucked his head and launched himself into abuck that would have sent Liam sprawling. But not Enya. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d been unseated.
