Deliver (The Blades of Acktar Book 4)

by Tricia Mingerink

  “I see.”

  Of course she did. Everything. Or, almost everything. Maybe she’d drop the subject now.

  She drew in a deep breath. “You can’t judge my faith based on the actions of one minister.”

  Nope, she wouldn’t. Martyn sighed and pressed his palm against his thigh to stop himself from tugging on his hair. “If it was one man or even two, perhaps I could dismiss their actions as an exception. But I’ve found them to be the norm.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve been hurt by bad examples claiming the name Christian. But perhaps they go to prove that wickedness does exist and is a real danger even to those that know better.”

  “It’s not the existence of evil I doubt. It’s your claim that your faith changes you that I find suspect. I’ve seen very little evidence of that.”

  “I—”

  Time to end this conversation. “Where’s that next snare?”

  Martyn dipped his rag in a bucket, wrung it out, and slapped it back on the floor. How had he gotten talked into scrubbing the floor? Something about Kayleigh being in too much pain to get down on her hands and knees to do it.

  Kayleigh balanced on one leg as she washed a window, musty curtains mounded at her feet. The other three windows in Old Man Bendwick’s cabin already sparkled. She’d taken out the bed linens and restuffed the straw tick with straw they’d found in the shed behind the cabin.

  Martyn shifted, his knees aching against the wooden planks of the floor. He was about ready to be done. They’d worked hard all morning checking the snares, skinning the rabbits and squirrel, and starting the tanning process on the skins. Now they’d spent all afternoon cleaning the cabin. More scrubbing and dusting than Martyn had done in years.

  He crawled to a spot next to the fireplace and rubbed at a patch of dirt. His fingers slipped, and his knuckles scraped against the brick hearth.

  Martyn swore and dropped the rag. Blood filled the tiny divots in his knuckles, flaps of skin sticking up. An ache speared his fingers. He swore again.

  Kayleigh’s walking stick, the one she’d insisted he fetch for her that morning, thumped on the wooden floor. “Your mother never washed your mouth out with soap, did she?”

  “No.” Martyn hadn’t sworn a whole lot back then. It was a habit he’d picked up later. “You’re going to get all bossy and tell me not to do it.”

  She crossed her arms and eyed him. “I bet you couldn’t stop if you tried.”

  He couldn’t rise to her bait. She wanted to trap him into a dare. “Doesn’t matter to me what you think.”

  She huffed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Fine. I’ll make you a deal. If you swear in the next hour, you have to wash your mouth out with soap.”

  Martyn sat back on his heels. Should he accept the challenge or let it be? Why not? He could go a whole hour without swearing. A slow smile curled his lips. Perhaps he could get something out of this bargain. “Deal, on the condition that you’ll wash your mouth out with soap if you can’t refrain from dishing out orders.”

  “All right.” She turned back to the window and stood on her tiptoes to scour the top corner.

  No way would she survive an entire hour without giving him at least one order.

  When he finished with the floor, he tossed the suspect-looking brown water outside. After refilling it, he strode back into the cabin and held up the bucket.

  She didn’t fall for his trap. Instead, she bit her lip, made a sound in the back of her throat, and drew in a deep breath. “Could you please set that down over there? And if you would like, could you please clean out the fireplace? Those are questions, not orders.”

  After setting the bucket next to the wall, he cleaned the ashes from the fireplace and hauled them outside. When the fireplace was mostly empty, he stuck his head inside and peered up the chimney to make sure it was free of buildup and animal nests. He could make out a patch of sky far above.

  A gust of wind whined over the chimney opening, and cinders fell into his face. Something stung his eye. He yanked his head from the fireplace, clunking the back of his head on the bricks.

  Pain scratched across his eye. Martyn forced himself to blink, but the speck wouldn’t come out. He rubbed, but the speck clawed his eye into watering.

  Through the blurring, Martyn could just make out Kayleigh standing in front of him. She held something out to him.

  Soap.

  “You’ve been swearing up a tornado for the past few minutes.” She raised her eyebrows.

  Since he’d already lost, Martyn allowed himself a few more choice swear words. She grimaced and waved the soap at him. He scowled back. “But I have ash in my eye.”

  She sighed and set down the soap. “Hold still and let me see.”

  He froze as she hobbled closer. She gripped his chin with one hand and tipped his face up.

  The fingers of her hand grew large and fuzzy in his vision. It was all he could do to hold still as she held his eye open with one hand and touched his eyeball with a finger.

  She swiped her finger from his eye and nodded. “There. Got it.”

  He blinked. His eye still watered, but the burning, scratching pain was gone. He blinked his vision clear, only to be confronted once again with the bar of soap thrust toward his face.

  A deal was a deal. Martyn took the soap and grimaced at it. Brown-colored suds had dried in waves along its off-white surface. Dirt from the floor? The walls? Probably best if he didn’t know. Flecks of some sort of plant imbedded in the bar.

  Did he really have to put that thing in his mouth?

  He drew in a deep breath, opened his mouth, and ran the bar of soap over his tongue. For a moment, he couldn’t taste anything. Then, a floral something, tasting exactly as it smelled, coated his tongue followed by a bland, almost milky aftertaste.

  He bolted to his feet, mouth watering. He prepared to spit.

  Kayleigh pointed at the door. “Not on our nice clean floor. Spit outside.”

  He dashed for the door, found a convenient spot of dirt, and spit until his mouth was dry. When the floral, milky taste still wouldn’t leave, he fetched water from the well and rinsed his mouth several times. The taste still wouldn’t leave, pouring through his nose when he breathed out.

  He nearly spit out a few curse words but managed to hold them in. Kayleigh would probably make him wash his mouth out again, and that would only make the taste worse.

  Although…he marched back into the cabin. Kayleigh had finished scrubbing the window and was gathering up her cleaning supplies.

  Martyn retrieved the bar of soap from the floor where he’d dropped it and held it out to her.

  She eyed it, a wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. “What’s this for?”

  He grinned. “I believe you gave me two orders. I might even argue it was three.”

  “What?” Her eyes glazed as if she was running their conversation through her head. Her expression twisted. “Bother!”

  “I held up my end of the deal.” His grin widened until it hurt against his cheeks, as if his mouth wasn’t used to stretching that far. “Your turn.”

  She scowled and took the soap. “Which side did you lick?”

  He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. Revenge was sweet. Or, in this case, an annoyingly floral taste that still clung to his tongue. “It’s soap. I’m sure it’s sanitary.”

  Opening her mouth, Kayleigh scrubbed the soap twice across her tongue. She clamped her mouth shut and hobbled for the door.

  Martyn remained where he was. A silence filled the cabin, its windows and floor gleaming, the corners free of dust and spiderwebs. Smaller than Kayleigh’s cabin, Old Man Bendwick’s cabin had only two rooms, the kitchen where Martyn stood and the bedroom in back.

  Not Old Man Bendwick’s cabin. Martyn’s cabin. Two whole rooms all to himself. With windows and everything.

  Did he dare call this place home? For the first time since King Respen died, something loosened in his chest. He could see himself living here, gather
ing most of his food off the land, trading a few furs for the rest, having his meals made for him.

  He slammed his thoughts away. No, he wasn’t the daydreaming type. This was just a temporary arrangement. Nothing more.

  Leaning on her cane, Kayleigh tromped back into the cabin, patches of her shirt wet as if she’d spilled water on herself in her haste to rinse out her mouth. “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, though the taste sticks with you, doesn’t it?”

  Martyn let the inner cold fill his chest. He couldn’t get attached to this place. “Yes, now let’s finish here and eat. I want to get an early start tomorrow.”

  The smile dropped from her face. “Where’re you going?”

  “We need supplies.” And Martyn needed a bit of space, a measure of solitude, to get his logic back in place.

  Her face whitened. “I know but…”

  “I’m going to Walden. I need to report in. I’ll be gone for three or four days.”

  Her body relaxed. “All right. Of course you need to report in. But you can’t leave tomorrow. The rabbits and squirrel won’t last three or four days, and I can’t check my snares by myself, not with this leg.”

  Of course. He should’ve remembered. He had a responsibility to her. He couldn’t just run off into the Sheered Rock Hills and disappear.

  Was that really what he wanted?

  He no longer knew.

  14

  Renna stabbed her shovel into the ground and levered another scoop of dirt from the ground. She and Brandi stood knee-deep in a hole they were digging into the side of a hill. Jamie and Ranson dug a few yards away.

  Behind them, scraping, grunting, and yelling came from the low walls of what would eventually be Stetterly’s church. A greased timber ramp had been constructed from the ruins of Stetterly Manor up the side of the hill to the site of the church. Men strained against ropes and pulleys to haul each stone up the hill and into place on the slowly rising wall.

  Brandi caught her gaze and jerked a thumb at the tan stones forming the church’s outer wall. “Do you wish we were building a new manor with those stones?”

  “No.” Renna jabbed her shovel into the dirt again. She wasn’t wishing for a fancy manor. Of course not. She sighed and swiped at a strand of damp hair. Sweat coated her forehead with a layer of gritty slime. “I just…”

  She bit her lip. She wasn’t going to complain. Not even about having to dig a hole to live in. Everyone else in Stetterly had the same living conditions.

  “You don’t want to live in a dugout with dirt walls and earthworms falling onto your head.” Brandi flicked a wiggling earthworm to the side with her shovel.

  Renna shuddered and gripped her shovel tighter. She could tough this out, couldn’t she? “No, I don’t. But I don’t want to complain. No one else is.”

  She couldn’t say a word of this, especially not to Leith. It would only make him feel guilty that he couldn’t provide better for her. It would make him doubt, and he already struggled with that enough.

  She carved into the hill again, attacking the hard-packed dirt. “I don’t want to be weak. And helpless. And demanding. I’ll handle it. Somehow.”

  “No one thinks you’re weak.” Brandi leaned against her shovel, the short strands of her hair plastered to her head with sweat. “You are Lady Faythe. You could demand a manor, yet you’re planning on spending the winter in a dugout like everyone else. The reason you don’t hear anyone else complaining is because they don’t dare complain in front of you. If their lady is willing to live in a dugout, they can’t complain about it either, can they?”

  In other words, Renna was their example. “I’m not sure I can keep this up.”

  “You will.” Brandi grinned. “It won’t be forever. In the spring, Leith will build you the fanciest, best cabin ever—if he figures out how to use a hammer—and you’ll get married—if he ever gets around to asking you, which he will, eventually—and this winter will seem like a short, slightly uncomfortable adventure.”

  Brandi made it sound so simple. But perhaps, it was. Leaving Stetterly had felt like she’d never see her town again, yet here she was, rebuilding. Captivity at Nalgar had seemed like forever, but now it was over. Living in a dirty dugout would only last a season.

  “When did you get so wise?” Renna gripped her shovel once again.

  Brandi smirked. “That sword must’ve clunked some sense into me.”

  “Nearly dying isn’t something to joke about.”

  “Why not? I’m alive, so why mope about it? I’d rather laugh.” Brandi’s grin faded, and she kicked her shovel into the ground. “There are other, worse things that should be mourned.”

  That friend Brandi had lost in the war. Their parents. Uncle Abel and Aunt Mara. Renna swallowed and got back to shoveling.

  “Lady Faythe?”

  Renna turned. Michelle, Sheriff Allen’s daughter stood at the edge of the hole. Dirt speckled the hem of her pink dress, its bodice well-fitted to her frame. Her hair lay in an artful twist and braid.

  “Can we talk?” Michelle’s blue eyes flicked to Renna’s face before returning to the ground.

  “Yes.” Renna dropped her shovel, gripped her skirt, and climbed from the hole. She led Michelle a few yards away. “What did you need to speak with me about?”

  Had Michelle recognized Leith? She’d seen him once as a Blade, but it’d been dark and she’d been terrified. Surely she hadn’t gotten a good enough look at Leith to recognize him now.

  Unless Sheriff Allen had told her. He still wasn’t convinced Leith, Ranson, and Jamie were safe, and after Michelle had kissed Ranson at the Corn Festival, Sheriff Allen glared at Ranson with particular vehemence. It was possible he’d told Michelle to warn her away.

  Michelle drew in a deep breath and faced Renna. “I’d like to learn healing.”

  Renna gaped. Michelle? A healer? She tried to imagine Michelle, the town flirt, as a patient, gentle healer. “You sure?”

  Michelle nodded, her hair somehow remaining in place. “Yes.”

  Renna chewed on her lip. How to word her question gently? “Healing is a job for someone…steady. People have to see you as trustworthy. Wise.”

  “Not a flirtatious, wild girl who gets herself into bad situations. I know.” Michelle wrapped her arms over her stomach. Her brow wrinkled, as if uncertain. “But I’ve changed. At least, I’m trying to change. Being taken by that Blade last winter, it made me rethink a few things. If Father hadn’t come when he did, I might’ve…that Blade…”

  Michelle shuddered and hugged her arms tighter across her stomach.

  After all the time spent trying to show kindness to Respen and the Blades, Renna should’ve learned this lesson. She’d thought she’d learned to see the hurts and fractures that made people what they were.

  Yet, here in her own town, she’d missed it.

  “What that Blade did wasn’t your fault. He’s responsible for his own actions. He could’ve just as easily taken you if you were walking to a neighbor’s house to see if they needed help during that blizzard.” Renna rested a hand on Michelle’s shoulder. What did Michelle need to hear? Renna was barely a year and a half older. Could she claim to be all that much wiser?

  “Yes, I know that. But I’m also responsible for my actions. I made it easy for him. I’m the sheriff’s daughter. I know there are bad people in the world, and I didn’t take wise precautions.” Michelle shuddered and rubbed her arms.

  Michelle was right. Wisdom meant taking precautions, the way Leith still wore his knives even when others felt safe.

  But what was wise in this case? Train Michelle? Or look for someone else?

  Renna released Michelle’s shoulder. “Why do you want to be a healer?”

  “When Respen’s army attacked Stetterly, it took Mara Lachlan. The wounded had no healer, and some of us did the best we could.” Michelle straightened and her arms dropped back to her sides. “For the first time in my life, I was useful. Not just a burden to my father or a
young girl everyone believes doesn’t have a thought in her head. I felt…confident for the first time in my life.”

  Different ways of expressing it, but the same doubts. Same feeling of uselessness. Renna let out a slow breath. Michelle had simply hidden it under her gleaming smile and fancy dresses.

  Could Renna even train another healer? She hadn’t even completed her own training with Aunt Mara.

  She straightened her shoulders. Time to pull out an answer she’d become rather good at giving. “Let me think about it. I’ll let you know my answer soon.”

  Michelle’s mouth drooped. “I see. Thank you for your time.”

  She turned and trudged off.

  Renna nearly called after her, but she stopped herself. This was a part of leading. Sometimes she’d have to say no. Sometimes she’d have to make others wait to hear her answer.

  She needed to talk with Leith. Surely he would have some advice.

  Was he all right? What if he’d run into trouble tracking those bandits? He wasn’t fully healed. Not as strong as he’d been a few months ago.

  But he was Leith. A former First Blade. He could take care of himself.

  Leith swung Valor’s saddle onto the horse’s back. Around him, the gray haze of dawn lay cool across the prairie. A hush wrapped around the grass as the night crickets silenced and the songbirds had yet to waken.

  Such a familiar silence. An alone, yet not lonely, silence.

  Did he dare admit how much he’d missed this?

  He didn’t miss the orders, the missions, the killing. But this, the long miles spreading before him. The steady companionship of a horse. And yes, even the thrill of being the hunter instead of the hunted. No wonder Martyn had taken off the first chance he’d had. He had even less to make him settle down than Leith.

  Leith gathered his bedroll and strapped it behind the saddle. If the Rovers kept up their present course, they’d reach the Sheered Rock Hills in a few days, and Leith would be able to turn for Walden.