They ate cut salted pork on biscuits with melted lard. They were, as Garon had promised, soft. Kiri insisted they clean up the cabin after dinner. It was clearly an unwritten rule for travelers in these waystations to keep them in order, and she wasn’t going to violate it. It was a good rule, and one she wished people followed in more aspects of their life. How much better things would be if everyone just cleaned up their own messes!
Their bedrolls were set up on the far side of the staircase because Garon pointed out that if they set them up nearer the east wall the morning sun would be right in their eyes and end their sleep early. This being summer, that would be quite early. He was right again; it was a good idea to listen to him on this journey. Maybe, Kiri thought, she should get out of the way and let him run things, which she still wasn’t used to doing after having taken charge of her life as the Firebrand. He seemed to know what he was doing. He certainly knew his way around the waystation.
“Ah, excuse me.” She tapped her foot at Garon, who had just come back in from outside and was now settling into his bedroll.
“Aren’t you going to sleep?” Garon said. “I don’t think we need to set watch.”
“It’s not that. I, uh…” Kiri looked over at the door and licked her lips. “I, um..”
Garon watched her silently. He raised his eyebrows.
Kiri leaned toward him and lowered her voice, though there was no one else to hear. “Where did you...go?”
“Ha!” Garon said. “There’s an outhouse out back. There’s a little bit of a path. It’s not dark yet enough for it to be hard to make out, so, yeah, you should go now.”
The outhouse was not as clean as the stables. Apparently, no one was cleaning that place. Kiri couldn’t blame them. She wouldn’t be going back in there unless she had to, which of course she would. It wasn’t too dark to see the path, but it was dark enough that she didn’t notice a rock in the way as she was heading back to the cabin. She pitched forward into the darkness, hard, onto her elbows, crying out as much from being startled as pain. Garon came barrelling around the corner as she picked herself up and started dusting off the bits of plants and dirt which had embedded in her sleeves. Garon grabbed her arm as he came up to her.
“What happened?” he demanded. “Are you alright?”
“I just fell down,” Kiri said. “I think I’m just a little scraped up.”
“Let me see,” Garon said.
“It’s too dark out here,” Kiri said. “Let’s go inside.”
Garon agreed. He guided Kiri back into the cabin with a hand on her back. She went meekly along. He might be overreacting, but at least he hadn’t fallen down in the dark. And it was sheer carelessness, too. She could run on rooftops with no trouble even at night; it was only because she wasn’t paying any attention that a simple little rock had tripped her up.
After Garon shut the door behind them he searched all around the outside of it.
“What are you doing?” Kiri asked.
“Locking it.”
“It doesn’t lock from this side,” Kiri said. “It doesn’t lock at all. This is a public-”
“Ah ha!” Garon interrupted her. His hands were at the top of the doorframe. With the right one, he gripped something and then pulled away. There was a metal-on-wood shink-thump.
“Deadbolt,” he explained to Kiri. “Dropped it in. I didn’t think a royal would build a place without some kind of security.”
Kiri nodded. “Guess you’re right.”
“Here,” Garon scooped up the water bucket and gestured Kiri to a seat at the table.
Kiri did just have a few scrapes. The blood was already drying. She managed to convince Garon they didn’t need bandaging, but he insisted on washing them. The water was clean. By the time Kiri slipped into her bedroll, she was already half asleep.
~
Thuds at the door, not knocking or banging, but pounding, jolted Kiri awake. She sat straight up and looked over at Garon. He was wrestling his way out of his bedroll, one leg tangled up inside. Kiri slipped smoothly out of hers; in an instant she was at the door.
“Who’s there?”
“Open it, please!!” A woman’s voice, high with anxiety. “He’s hurt!”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Kiri reached for the bolt, but she wasn’t tall enough. Garon came up behind her, pressing against her to reach past her hand for the deadbolt. The instant she heard it slide free, Kiri jerked the door open and stepped backwards, right into Garon. He stumbled away from her.
Two people were standing in the doorway. One, a middle-aged woman with gray-streaked black hair, was supporting the other, a young man in leather armor. It had been torn partly away from his shoulder, and the white and rusty red of a hastily knotted, blood-soaked bandage showed through the gap. While the woman’s eyes flicked between Kiri and Garon, he didn’t even look at them. His eyes stayed fixed on his own stumbling feet as the two came through the open door.
“Over here,” Garon said, and Kiri saw he was already by the table, pulling chairs away. She got under the young man’s other arm and helped guide him over to the table. She and the other woman helped him lay down on the table and Garon pulled his legs up. He shoved the bucket into Kiri’s hands.
“Get more water.”
Kiri was dying to know what had happened to the two, but she didn’t hesitate. She ran back to the door, which was still standing open.
Two horses, both sweat drenched and breathing heavily, were standing right outside the door, their reins hanging to the ground. Kiri was surprised she had not awakened until the woman banged on the door. These two must have galloped here. Why hadn’t the hoofbeats woken her? Maybe she and Garon should post a watch if they were going to sleep through noise.
Kiri transferred the bucket to one hand, balancing it on her hip to keep from dropping it, and took both horse’s reins in her other hand. The pump was right against the stables, and these horses looked like they could use a drink from the trough. There was no time to stable them properly. Kiri just brought the two horses up to the trough and dropped their reins again. She hoped they didn’t drink themselves sick. She filled up the bucket quickly and ran back to the main building, not caring that the water sloshed out onto her bare feet and the bottoms of her leggings.
Garon had pulled off the makeshift bandage and was mopping off the man’s shoulder with a fresh white cloth. The woman was talking but stopped mid-sentence when Kiri kicked the door closed behind her. She snagged the bucket out of Kiri’s hands and set it on a chair beside Garon.
Garon’s pack was open at the floor by his feet. The woman reached into it and pulled out another white cloth and a roll of bandages. Kiri was surprised to see them. Garon hadn’t said anything about packing them.
“Good thing you packed bandages, Garon.”
Garon glanced up at her and then back down at his work. “You never know what can happen on the road. Thanks.” The last was to the woman, who had dipped the white cloth in the water and handed it to him. He swapped it out with the one he had been using.
Kiri, useless now that she had brought water, sat down at the opposite end of the table. “Well, good thinking.”
“You were saying?” Garon said to the woman, not acknowledging what Kiri had said.
“I never had any reason to fear him before,” the woman glanced at Kiri. “My husband, I mean,” she explained. “He attacked us, and we had to run--he’s gone mad. He’s delusional; I think he must be sick. But I couldn’t help him, he--”
“Maybe you should start at the beginning,” Kiri said. “Start with what you were doing before this happened, and go from there.”
The woman kept her eyes on Garon’s hands, cleaning and bandaging her still-dazed companion’s wound. “We, all three of us, my husband and I, and young Terin here, were all traveling with Lord Fel. I am one of his lady’s maids, and Terin and Enrick both tend the horses. We had been in Belir. It was my first time to see that city, but I have been in Laed before. We were in the Brightwood, two nights ago. It was after that big storm; it had washed out the road, and we took this strange old road through the forest. We went to bed late. When it was almost morning the watchman woke us up because one of the other maids had gone missing. She was new; I didn’t know her.”
Garon looked up and met Kiri’s eye. They knew this part of the story. That lady’s maid was the spy Neal had told them about in his note.
“They organized us into groups, and at the first hint of light we searched near the old road--the guide had shown it to us the day before. The three of us--Terin, my husband, and I--were away from the rest of the group. We sometimes could hear one of the other groups looking. We were all supposed to meet back at the camp for a noon meal. Sometime in the day, my husband started to get angry. He was short with us. I’m not sure exactly when it started, but it seemed to get worse and worse. And then, when I was walking near Terin, he stepped between us and shoved me to the ground.”
She stopped talking then, and neither Garon nor Kiri prompted her to go on. She took a few shaky breaths, and rubbed her eyes with her fingertips.
Garon finished bandaging Terin and started cleaning up the mess. Kiri filled a cup with water and pressed it into Terin’s hands. The young man seemed to be waking up. His eyes met Kiri’s when he accepted the cup. He took a sip, still staring at her, then his eyes flicked over to his distressed companion.
“He called me a whore,” she said, her voice shaking a little on the last word. “I don’t know why-” She stopped and swallowed hard. “You have to understand. I’d done nothing! Nothing! He’s never been the jealous type. So many years, and I-” she shook her head. “He must be sick. But I couldn’t even answer him. I was so surprised, and his face...He was so angry! Terin stepped in when he was about to hit me. He hit him. But then Enrick brought out his knife, and-”
“Is that when Terin was stabbed?” Garon asked.
“No,” Terin said, quietly. “We slipped away.”
“We ran,” the woman said. “We tried to get back to the camp, but Enrick knew that’s what we would do. He kept cutting us off. We could never get past him. And then we thought we had and--and that’s when he hurt Terin. So we ran the other way. We ran all the way here. He could still be right behind us.” She glanced at the door, fearfully.
“I don’t think he realized we left the Brightwood, Daia.” Terin said. “We’re safe.”
“Kiri,” said Garon. “Lock the door.”
“I can’t reach,” she reminded him.
Kiri tried not to be nervous about the fact that he had just used her real name. Had she called him Garon earlier? It was too late to worry about staying anonymous now. She gave Daia a reassuring pat on the shoulder when she jumped at the swish-thunk of the bold sliding home. “Just in case.”