Page 15 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

At the sound of that name, the mood in the crowd shifted, becoming cold, sharp, fragile as broken glass.

“We can only give you some of that today. The citadel is a safe place. These walls will protect you. These people,” he nodded to the men and women he obviously employed ringing the courtyard now, “they will do their best to keep you from harm, as will we. Now, rather than bore you all with promises you have no idea we can keep, let’s get everyone settled. Single men will come with me and my brothers and we’ll find a place for you to bed down in the left hand wing of the citadel and single women and families will follow my mate, Lady Darcy, into the right hand side.”

Right. We all had our orders, and now we just had to follow them. I blinked, then straightened my spine, plastering on the social smile Linnea had forced me to practise and then moved, hoping that would help.

At the least the first part was easy. Women and families peeled away from the main group, following on my heels as I walked over to the entrance on the right hand side. Out in the courtyard, it hadn’t seemed so oppressive, but as soon as we began to file in, the hallways filled. It felt like there were so very many of them.

People displaced, people in pain, and I found myself pausing, then taking a shuddering breath. It felt almost palpable, that pain, like I could reach out and touch it. But I didn’t want to, that was the problem.

It was different at Wildeford. I’d run in, swords drawn, ready to fight any and all who’d torn that poor little dolly from a child’s grip, but my blades were useless here. I turned around then, seeing wary eyes and calm ones, some that looked creased with exhaustion. All I could do was try and help another way.

“There are rooms all along here with lockable doors,” I said, gesturing to the nearest ones. “Some are larger suites, probably better suited to families, so they can stay together. Others are single rooms for those on their own. There are clean bed linens in each one, and pillows and blankets. Once we’ve gotten everyone situated, I’ll take you to meet the chamberlain, Fenster. He’ll find you clothing and shoes and whatever else you might need.”

“And what if there’s ‘singletons’ who need to stay together?”

The older woman’s voice cut through the silence and I blinked as she shouldered forward. She stared me down, her back ramrod straight, her hands clasping a worn shawl around her shoulders.

“I lost my man, my babies, but I’ve been looking after these young lasses.” Her eyes slid sideways to a pair of drawn faced young women who nestled into the older women’s sides. “You want them to go into an empty room alone, left to cry their eyes out each night with no one to hear them?”

“Well, no—” I started to say.

“And how long will we be here for?” a man said, his wife and children looking up at him. “It’s all very nice of His Highness to give us a place to stay, but this is no life, living off the charity of others. We’ve got crops to replant, land to clear, houses to rebuild.”

“Only for the bloody Reavers to raze to the ground again,” another woman said with a censorious shake of her head. “That’s the solution we need, not this. What’s being done about that, I want to know. We went and spoke to all those people on the night of the festival and for what?” Her eyes slid to me and when they did, they sparked with anger. “You lock us up here, nice and safe, but what of others? There’s no rhyme or reason to those bastards. What’s to stop them from doing the same to other towns?”

My heart raced then and my breath sounded noisy in my ears. Their words hit me hard, but these were not tangible things I could fight off and part of me knew I shouldn’t, couldn’t. So I had to stand there and take the hits, something that felt implicitly wrong. I frowned slightly, then smoothed that away. What right did I have to be cranky, I thought, as I frantically tried to formulate a response.

Something that would soothe people, I felt that hard. Children were growing fractious or worse, closing down altogether, their haunted little eyes just staring at all the adults. Then there were the women who had a dead, empty look about them which made me stiffen. That only came when you were beaten down so many times you stopped wanting to get up.

You stopped wanting anything at all.

Others began to grumble, talking amongst themselves, their voices rising, rising, swallowing me up with their discontent and I was powerless to do anything about it.

I was such a bloody child. I’d blundered into this situation with a bunch of good intentions and not much else. What did I know about helping people twice my age? How could I help any of them? My heartbeat slowed then, the heavy, heavy beats drowning out everything else until finally my lips moved.

“Nothing,” I said, in just a normal conversational tone, sure my belated response to the question would be drowned out, but oddly silence fell over the crowd again.

“What?” the older woman said.

“You wanted to know what’s stopping the Reavers from attacking other towns?” I replied. “The answer is nothing. We went to Wildeford and saw the devastation there. We helped those people come back to Snowmere and saw them housed in the barracks. We went to the king and…”

My voice faltered then, my eyes dropping down to the flagstone floor, not able to look them in the eyes when I said what came next.

“And he didn’t see it as an issue.” A shocked sucking in of breaths was the only response. “There was no attack on Snowmere, so he didn’t seem at all worried about it.” I jerked my eyes up, forcing myself to face these people down. They deserved that. “We expected he’d mobilise the army. We assumed he’d at least be sending people out there to protect those on the lands of the nobles, but…”

I wasn’t helping. I was doing the very opposite. I was forcing traumatised people to confront yet another terrible reality and that hurt me inside. But I didn’t know what else to do, because I was woefully unprepared for this. I’d assumed they’d be grateful for a warm bed, but of course, people needed more than that. They weren’t animals to be kept clean and well fed. These were people with lives they wanted to get back to, who were used to being in charge of what they did and how they lived and that had been taken from them.

“We need to find a way to make the king understand,” I said, trying to swallow the lump forming in my throat and failing. “But how we do that? I think that’s something we will all need to work on together.”

The older woman nodded then, a brisk, sharp thing and she left her girls behind, stepping into the gap between me and them and holding out her hand.

“I’m Annis, milady,” she said.

“Gods, just call me Darcy,” I replied, taking her hand and shaking it. “My father was a duke, but he was a brutal bastard with it. I’ve renounced my title, my family, everything…”

My words came tumbling out in a big mess, but Annis smiled then.

“Darcy then. Let's organise people according to the village they’re from. People need to be near familiar faces, know that if they cry out, there’s someone they know close who’ll come to their aid. But something needs to be done for those that have no one. These poor lasses were all that was left of their village and they’ve had no one at all to care for them.”

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