by S E Zbasnik
With that last bit, her knight vanished out the door. No doubt he had to check on plans with his Lady and maybe try and kiss her boots once more for letting him have two squires. Hayley sighed and stretched her neck. Accepting her fate, she too walked towards the door, her brain already wondering over what Ania could have cooked up for the morning. She got new jams at the tourney for the both of them to try out. That’d be…
A great scream erupted from Larissa. Wild-eyed, she hurled the plate of eggs at the wall. While the plate survived, the poor eggs smashed into the mortar, leaving an oily wake as they slithered to the floor with a plop. Larissa was huffing, her chest and shoulders heaving as if she just ran across the grounds. No more words came from her, just the lone girl glaring murder at eggs cooling on the stone floor.
“Okay,” Hayley began, easing further out the door. “If you want, breakfast is this way.” She jerked her thumb towards the manor house but didn’t wait to see if Larissa would follow. Not wanting to get her head ripped off and probably be blamed for bloodying Larissa’s boots, Hayley booked it towards the warm hearth of the kitchen. How in god’s name was she going to survive a week without Gavin and that shrieking banshee sleeping on the floor below?
It did not go well. Not that Hayley thought it’d be all rainbows and sunshine with Larissa around, but every attempt she made to be civil always ended in Hayley wanting to rip her head off. It didn’t help that every chore Hayley plopped into Larissa’s lap she was instantly perfect at. Even the geese didn’t attack her, though Bastard jr. came for Hayley’s legs.
After saying a bitter goodbye to her knight, Hayley tried to keep herself busy away from Larissa. Gavin gave the new squire the pigs to take care off. They only had a handful in the sty — the litter having been farrowed back in spring. The once adorable piglets were quickly morphing into the snorting, prone to escaping, two hundred pound hogs of their parents. Larissa seemed to prefer the hogs wallowing in mud to Hayley or anyone else on the farm for that matter.
In order to be nice, Hayley tried to introduce Larissa to Ania. It began as a simple, “This is Ania and she’s…”
“Deaf,” Larissa interrupted without a thought. Both Hayley and Ania shared a look, causing Larissa to continue, “I knew a deaf man who worked in the fields. He’d often stare the way you do.”
Hayley coughed, tugging on her collar, “I was gonna say she’s the one who takes over with the farm life when we’re out wandering the countryside, but… Yeah, you just say that stuff without thought.”
“What? It’s true, isn’t it?”
Ania answered her question with a mile long stare. The signs and fervid whispers were saved for when Hayley curled up in the kitchen trying to escape Larissa’s curt words. The viper talked as if she didn’t have time for anyone, anyone outside of Gavin or the nobility anyway. So anything who didn’t help advance her cause. God, it was no wonder she was impossible to deal with.
When night fell on the first day, Hayley slumped out of the warm kitchens to the house. It used to be a refuge for her. She’d scrub out her hair from below her cap while Gavin would exposit on some latest letter he received. Or help her read through a fresh page in an even harder book plucked from his library. All the while, a kettle would nearly boil over by the fire — one which Gavin would add a few extra drops of brandy to before bed for the both of them.
Now, it was filled with Larissa. Her stacks of gear and clothing huddled by the door, nearly causing Hayley to whack them over when she’d enter. There was no warm kettle but some grog concoction filling the little house with the stench of nettles and burnt cinnamon. Hayley’s nose tried to burrow to safety while Larissa just kept on stirring the kettle around the hot stones as if that’d help it along.
She paused before her pantry door, uncertain if she should say anything. But when Larissa’s venomous eyes darted over, Hayley shut her trap and clambered into her bed. Sleep was her only salvation away from the girl.
Or so she thought.
The sounds weaved into Hayley’s dreams, stirring the empty blackness with gashes of silver and a rising thrum of red dripping like blood from a fingertip. She sat up so fast, her heart trying to rip out of her chest, Hayley nearly collided with the roof. “Shit,” she cursed under her breath, trying to calm herself from the nightmare when her ears placed the sobbing.
Trapped in her little room, the eternal cry of despair crawled under her door in a perfect mimic from the slave ship. How, even with their spirits broken, they couldn’t stop the mournful wail whenever reality would strike back. That memory-pain was what yanked Hayley to the waking world, and there was no chance she could get back to sleep with it going on.
Damn it. Gripping tighter to her blanket, Hayley called out, “Are you okay?”
The sobbing dried up instantly. Well, it solved the problem at least. Though now eerie silence pulsed between the stones. The kind that you knew could burst at any second and drown you. After a handful more breaths in the dark, Larissa’s raw voice called out, “What do you care?”
It’s loud and keeping me up.
No, be nice. ‘Kill her with kindness’ had been Ania’s suggestion. It wasn’t one Hayley was happy about, but she’d at least try it. “If it’s the floor, we could try and find a bed tomorrow. I think there’s an extra mattress in the…”
“The floor? You think I care about a few cricks in my back? That I-I am too spoiled and delicate to sleep upon a floor?”
“Well…”
Larissa snorted. “I don’t even know why you talk to me. Why you bother to care. You already ruined my life. Ruined everything I had, everything I could have been.”
“Seems to me you’re doing just fine now,” Hayley shot back. Her nice persona shattered, the words buried deep inside her erupting free. “Even with me ruining it all. You got to win a tourney, you’re working for the best knight in the Order, and you can trounce my ass every god damn day. Sounds like you won everything you wanted.”
“You know nothing, you understand nothing. Leave me alone!”
She had enough. Leaping off of her bed, Hayley threw open the door to find Larissa huddled up on her pallet. Her green eyes widened as Hayley advanced, the hackles rising higher.
“I don’t know nothing? You don’t know shit about me. Do you know what it is to nearly freeze to death in a ditch when you ain’t even lost a baby tooth? Do you know what it is to go so hungry you seriously want to eat the dead rat floating in the sewage? Do you know what is it to be chained to…” Hayley pinched deep into her flesh, shutting off her words. It was bad enough Finn knew, she sure as shit wasn’t telling Larissa nothing about that.
Staggering closer to the girl huddled tight to her blanket, Hayley spat out, “Life ain’t fair. To nobody. Don’t matter who you are, or what you do. Fate’s cruel, and people…people are even worse. You’re lucky. So God damn lucky—”
“Lucky?!” Larissa surged up from her bed, the body swaddled in a nightshirt nearly bashing into Hayley’s. “I cannot escape that night. I feel his putrid breath on my neck at all hours of the day. Everything I worked for. Everything I hoped to be. He stole it all away.”
Shit. “You ain’t,” Hayley shuddered in a thought that’d been rolling around in her brain, “broken or dirty from it.” She reached out to try and comfort Larissa, but the girl whipped Hayley’s hand away.
“I don’t care about that! I trained with all my heart to be the best, to prove myself. To show to my family that I deserved to wear the shield same as the rest. And I did it. I won. I was the best at the tourney.”
All of Larissa’s boasting broke, her high nose and chin crashing to her chest as she fell to her knees. “And he…he took it all away. I can’t even think about that day, what should have been the best day of my life, without remembering his fingers bruising my thighs. The pain in…you don’t know anything. Not about me. Not about that.”
Hayley’s lip wobbled, the strained breath burning in her lungs as she watched Larissa fall apart. She
hadn’t considered…much of anything. Thinking about it, even if Larissa refused to say any details, was torture on Hayley’s brain. There’d been other girls on the ship, girls and boys who spoke of closing their eyes and waiting for the pain to stop. She’d thought they meant the punishments, that if they just did as told it wouldn’t hurt. Like it was easy to escape.
Though, Hayley never did as told no matter how much the lash ripped up her skin.
“I’m…” Hayley whispered to herself, “I didn’t mean to…”
“Leave me alone!” Larissa repeated the same mantra, her body rocking back and forth as she hugged her hands around her chest.
Cold shame wrapped around Hayley’s body. She couldn’t stay near Larissa when she was in this mood. Dark, forgotten thoughts rose higher to the surface. Hayley couldn’t remember the details, but her body flinched at the feelings trapped inside. Down, down, keep the bad memories down where it was easiest.
Gulping, Hayley dashed towards the door leading out into the warm summer night. She’d find somewhere else to sleep. Maybe the kitchens or even curl up in the bathtub. Anywhere away from the dark edges. “Gavin’s a good knight,” Hayley paused, “a good person too. You’ll probably become the best squire in history with him.”
Larissa’s weary eyes lifted along with her head. “And you’ve had an entire year to bond with him. I’m…leftovers.”
Bonding? Hayley staggered away, her feet churning up the dewy grass as her brain shuffled through Larissa’s words. What bonding? Sure, Hayley knew how he preferred breakfast, and that he always shaved half his face before pausing to turn the page in his book. But that wasn’t bonding. It was just knowing stuff.
You climbed a well and ran into battle for him. You carry his deepest secret, as he does for you. And it worries you just how far you’d go for him because the world only offers pain to those who care.
Shut up.
The next morning, Hayley woke to a slobbery upper lip trying to excise her hair. She slapped at the warm kiss while shouting, “Get off, Trevor!” and rose from the straw she bedded down in. Gah, it itched. Slices of the straw cut through her thin nightshirt. Hayley began to claw at her skin as she rose up to her feet to find a massive forehead staring at her. There were eyes too, stormy ones that could peel all the layers off her without a thought. So she kept focused on the forehead instead.
Hayley scratched her bum a few more times, before she asked, “Yeah? Whatcha want?”
“You’re…” Finn coughed to himself, then partway shielded his eyes, “in your night clothes.”
Her head dipped down to the wafting linens that came to her thighs. “What of it?”
“Never thought I’d, um, see all of your…” The pervy boy dropped his blinders and leered at Hayley’s chest.
Damn it! She swiped her hands over her breasts, trying to hide away barely a hint of anything bulging below the arm cross. Finn seemed fixated on what he thought he saw, his jaw hanging slack.
“Oi!” Hayley lashed out with her foot as she wasn’t dropping her hands for anything. That was enough to drag Finn away. He scampered back fast, not wanting to take a kick to the gut or nuts. “Stop being all creepy.”
“Creepy? I ain’t the one who spent the night with the horses.”
Hayley sighed. “You make it sound dirty. It wasn’t like that. Or whatever gross things you got in your brain.”
“That so? ‘Cause last I knew you had a perfectly fine bed in a house and everything.”
She blew a breath up through her hair, scattering a blonde tendril. Oh shit, where was her hat? Hayley scanned through the straw before remembering it was back in the house. “Didn’t want to stay in there, okay. It was…uncomfortable.”
“So you picked the horses?” Finn chuckled at her as he hefted up a pitchfork to unearth a pile of hay for the greedy equines. “Don’t you hate ‘em?”
“Not as much,” Hayley muttered to herself. He was acting as if the entire tourney and Nell thing didn’t happen. Like everything was perfectly normal. Hayley reached for Trevor, the horse’s leech-like tongue spiraling around her hand. It was gross, but she came to expect that from the goofus. “What? You mad cause I didn’t search out your bed instead?”
“No,” Finn shot out so fast Hayley laughed.
“You are?”
That caused his cheeks to redden to cherries. Finn stuffed his face deeper into his coat as he turned away from her to mutilate the hay. Hayley wasn’t about to give up, her stomach still rotten from the talk with Larissa. Taking it out on Finn, who super deserved it, seemed proper.
“What, in all the shit you pulled, in the way you treated me, in the fact you were hiding away your fiancé makes you think for a second I’d come crawling back to you?”
The pitchfork paused. “It ain’t…”
“Don’t say it ain’t like that, ‘cause it is so. It is exactly like that. You saying it’s different doesn’t change the facts. Messing around with me, telling me crap just to make you feel better. Acting as if I was…as if I’m worth it to…”
Hayley’s rant paused as she caught a horse come flying through the gate and across the ground. Not literally, but its hooves were running so fast it was a wonder sparks didn’t shoot out. As she dashed out into the yard, Finn hot on her heels, she recognized the rider.
“Devon!” Hayley called, her hand rising off her chest to wave at him.
The boy yanked on the reins, slowing his horse. His head turned to find her, then the eyes darted to the apparently too worn nightdress and Devon too blushed. Shaking off any shame as best she could, Hayley ran towards him. “How’ve you been? I assume you’ve enough letters to choke a river.”
“I come bearing news,” Devon began, and for once he didn’t turn to snipe at Finn, though the latter was certainly glaring. “It’s about Ser Gavin.”
“Oh, he’s not here right now, but I could write down whatever you’ve got to tell him later.” Hayley jabbed a finger back to the little house when she watched Devon’s entire face flash stark white.
“No, it’s about Ser Gavin. He’s been arrested.”
What?!
“And they are to try him tomorrow.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“I don’t know the charges,” Devon said flustered, his head whipping around as Hayley paced in a circle. “Only that people are…afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” Finn spoke up. “This is Gravy, for god’s sake. What’s there to fear?”
Her knight was in trouble. A trial? That’d put him before the magistrate of Ostmount, which was what Hayley was running from. Had been running from. If they saw her again, would they throw her in the cell next to him?
Knotting her fist tight, the bickering boys faded to a background whine. You have to do something. You can’t let him walk in there alone. Even if it might slap you on the gallows again.
Her head whipped up, Hayley marching towards the tack table. Finn caught her certain steps and trailed after, “What are you doing?”
She didn’t answer until she’d brushed down Gringolet and begun to saddle him. “Going to find him. To figure out what’s going on.”
“Hayseed,” Finn reached for her, but Hayley shook it off. All her focus was on getting Gringolet to take the bit properly while she slid on the bridle. “What are you gonna do? What can you do?”
“Something,” she said to herself more than Finn. Maybe it was stupid, maybe she’d show up just as Gavin was waltzing out of the magistrate’s office with everyone apologizing. Didn’t matter.
“But this is…” Finn slid close, his sweet grass breath tickling her ear. “These guys don’t play around. If they find out—”
“I am well aware what the magistrate is like.” Hayley shook him off and reached for the saddle. Just as she was about to haul herself up, Gringolet snorted and took a step to the side. If Hayley kept on rising, she’d have missed the horse and fallen flat on her face.
“Come on, you…” Hayley moved to bash her forehead into
the stubborn horse’s flank but paused. “I know you hate me.” Gringolet snorted again to try and make his point. “But this isn’t about me, or you. We have to work together for Gavin, for your master. To save him. Okay?”
She met the calculating eye of the stallion, its hide twitching while it thought. Devon scoffed. “Horses are not that intelligent. There’s no way it can possibly understand…”
Hayley scooped her hand over the back of Gringolet’s butt and launched herself into the saddle. The horse didn’t balk, didn’t shift away, or politely dodge. It let her settle into the seat that should only carry Ser Gavin. That was step one.
“‘Ain’t intelligent,’” Finn scoffed at Devon, elbowing the messenger in the side. “You’re the brainless one.”
Feeling above such petty squabbles, Hayley walked Gringolet out of the stables and into the bright summer day. It shouldn’t be so saturated in colors, not if her knight was trapped behind bars or hurled into a pit. Her shoulders locked in tight, Hayley sitting up higher as her mission was set. She was about to tug Gringolet into as open a run as she could risk when a flash of red came running to her.
“Where are you going?” Larissa chided.
“You don’t need to know,” Hayley began, Gringolet growing incensed under her at the fact they weren’t already on the road. The glower could start fires and the shame still gurgling in Hayley’s gut caused her to say, “Look, it’s to help Gavin.”
“Then I’m coming too,” Larissa insisted as if there was no chance of refusal. She placed her hand upon the back of Gringolet’s ass, which was when Hayley spun to her.
“Like hell you are.”
“He’s my knight same as yours, like it or not. My future is as twinned with his, my fears the same. Let me help.”
She had a point. Gah, Hayley hated the very idea of Larissa having a point. “Plus,” Larissa said, “you’re still in your nightshirt. You’ll look like a right twat riding into Ostmount dressed as such.”