Page 40 of Silverbow
“Do you see it?” She asked.
“See what?”
She lifted her face back to the sliver of sky overhead, and when she blinked, he was gone.
The next morning, she was able to claw together enough strength to light a small fire and drink a cup of tea. She cracked open the jar of honey with shaking hands and stirred a spoonful into the dark liquid. She drank another, then another.
After nibbling tentatively at a stale remnant of bread, she lifted her saddle back onto Arawelo and climbed up. Stringing her bow still felt like too much, so she didn’t, and Enya slumped in the saddle as they walked on. If the brigands came for her today, she would go willingly, and she hated herself for it. Perhaps she had made a mistake. If she died out here, the wielders would take her family anyway.Bread, hard cheese, dried meat, honey, and tea.
It was two more days before she had the energy to hunt and skin a rabbit again for her cookfire. The bread and cheese were gone, and for the first time, she started to worry about food. Cracks formed in the wall she’d built, and suddenly thoughts of her family fleeing the king’s men came rushing out, trying to overwhelm her with guilt and grief.Silver and gold, a few coppers. The horse head carving. Arawelo. My bow and quiver. My wits.
eleven
Peytar
Gulls sailed on the breeze, whirling and swooping low toward the ships that bobbed out in the bay. Hands clasped behind his back, Peytar watched the birds from the suite’s balcony. He shared the top floor of the Morning Glory with Louissa, but she remained below somewhere making preparations to continue on. She would be departing soon, traveling north in a great sweep that wouldn’t see her back to Misthol until autumn. Peytar’s quarry lay somewhere to the east.
This town bored him to tears, but at least it did not reek of filth and fish guts like Misthol, or Pavia, for that matter. No, it was an idyllic little corner of the realm. Far flung, forgotten. He was a fool for not coming sooner.
He drummed his fingers on the railing and looked north. A distant knock sounded on the outer door but Peytar did not turn. He was still staring up the coastline as if he could see all the way to Maymoor when lumbering boots halted behind him.
“Tell me, Captain, that you’ve found the girl and she’s safely tucked away.”
“I’m afraid not, my lord,” Lanyran said behind him. “We hung the brigands who chased her off the road, but we lost her.”
Peytar whirled, the back of his beringed hand connecting with the man’s jaw. The blow sent him sprawling and droplets of blood that matched his red coatsplattered onto the polished wood floor. “Tell me, Lanyran,” he drawled. “How does agirlevade two dozen of the finest swords in Estryia?”
“The forest is dense, my lord, and we are outlanders here.” His captain said from hands and knees.
“I do not pay you for failure.” Peytar drove a polished boot into the man’s ribs. “She is agirl. Find her!”
Louissa
Louissa Adler clicked her tongue. Peytar always did underestimate women. She would know, it had served her well all these years.
Eavesdropping was a simple trick she’d worked out as a girl. Only a thread of air was needed to pull sound to her ear, and with it, she could hear through walls as well as if she were standing right beside someone. It had allowed her to listen in on countless conversations, buying her significant advantage in Pallas’s court.
She tapped a finger on the scroll that lay unfurled on her writing desk. Peytar was up to something. Peytar wasalwaysup to something, but this infatuation with Enya Ryerson was unusual. Gold, information, and power were all that made Peytar’s heart beat, but Ryerson House possessed little and less.
Frowning, she looked down at scroll seven and scanned the names again.Renley Ryerson, dark of hair and eye. Rhiannon Ryerson, dark of hair and eye. Unnamed baby girl, dark of hair and eye. Corrected after her first name day to Enya Ryerson, fair of hair and eye.A timid knock sounded on the door.
“Come in,” she called.
The scribemaster entered, dry washing his hands nervously. “You sent for me, Wielder Adler?”
Instinctively, she reached for her gift and spun a barrier of air around the room. Her trick was not one she shared with her pupils. Louissa would never give away such a handy advantage, but she thought some of the cleverer air wielders had worked it out for themselves. She didn’t care, as long as it remained hidden, but she was careful to seal off her own conversations.
“Yes, Lorry,” she said. “What are the criteria for a scribemaster to change an entry on a roll?”
“The criteria, ma’am?” The little bald man mopped a handkerchief across his brow.
She tapped a finger on the scroll. “Enya Ryerson was changed from a child dark of hair and eye to one fair of hair and eye between her first and second recording.”
“Yes, well, the child of course is the criteria,” he said. The man shrank back as her eyebrows rose. “We record what is there. I myself saw Miss Ryerson. She is red of hair and green of eye, if memory serves.”
“So why would Scribemaster Velolin record a babe that was dark of hair and eye?”
Lorry fidgeted nervously. Honestly, Louissa didn’t know how the man traveled with the wielders day in and day out when he looked on the point of fainting every time he was addressed. She normally got some satisfaction from the discomfort of the giftless, but the way that Lorry flinched at her every word after all these months grated on her. “I do not know, ma’am. Perhaps a simple error.”
