Marcom grew serious, and he let his hand fall away from her shoulder. “Yeah, I heard about that. I’m sorry, kid. Didn’t mean for things to get out of hand yesterday.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said, watching as Celine and the others began pruning, watering, and weeding. Marcom followed her gaze, and they stood in silence for a moment.
“I should get to my…” Emily trailed off, motioning toward her cabbages and roses.
Marcom came out of his reverie and looked down at her. “No. That’s why I’m here. You’re done in the garden. The mistress just sent word.”
Emily’s heart missed a beat, and she looked up in alarm. Was that it, then? Was she being sent away?
“What do you mean?”
“The mistress has decided you’re not to be an apprentice. But that don’t mean she ain’t got a use for you. You’re to train with me now. Come on.”
He started off toward the three smaller towers that stood at even intervals along the north wall of the fortress.
With one last, uneasy look at Celine, Emily followed.
“I’m captain of the mistress’s guards here. That means I’m in charge of defenses at Seven Skies, and I’m also a sort of constable for the city.” He led her through a grove of tall trees, then along a winding path that seemed to be taking them to the central of the three towers. Brush grew in thick profusion from their roots right up to the stones of the path. The trees, oak, maple, and others she didn’t know towered fifty feet or more overhead. It was cool in their shade, and their presence was soothing—a stark contrast to the things she’d seen in Marianne’s tower. As the path wended between them, she realized that the sounds of the fountain and the city beyond the fortress were muffled by their mammoth trunks. You could almost imagine you were deep in a lost and lonely forest here.
“Does the city have a name?” she asked, realizing for the first time that she didn’t know if it did.
Marcom shrugged. “Not really. When folks say ‘Seven Skies’, they mean the fortress, or the city, or both. Marianne rules from here. Most of the other places have names, though.”
He stopped at the foot of the steps leading up to the tower and turned to face her. “You showed a hell of a lot of raw skill yesterday. I was impressed. So was Marianne. That’s why she’s told me to take you on in the guard. She thinks you’ll be more useful there than pullin’ weeds.”
Emily shifted her weight uncomfortably. Fencing and archery as a sort of game was one thing. Real combat seemed like quite another. She wasn’t sure she would do nearly as well as a member of the guard. What would that entail, anyway?
A vivid image of the men who stood outside Buckingham Palace came to her. She’d seen a video of the changing of the guard once. She tried to imagine herself standing still and solemn outside the entrance to Seven Skies and couldn’t quite manage it.
She opened her mouth to voice her uncertainty, but Marcom raised a hand to forestall her.
“Listen, it’s this…or else Marianne turns you out. Trust me, this is better. You’ll be training mostly with me for the next few days at least. You’ll continue to stay in the tower with the other apprentice hopefuls until we figure out what to do with you in the guard towers.” Now it was Marcom’s turn to look uncomfortable. “We…uh…we’ve never had a…woman here before.”
Emily laughed despite herself. “Okay,” she said. “I get it.”
He looked relieved, and turned to start up the steps. “We won’t be training today. I heard you were ill last night. You need to be well and rested, and tomorrow’s soon enough to be gettin’ on with that. Besides, I’ve got other things I need to be takin’ care of. Today, I’m goin’ to hand you off to Matthew to find you some equipment and such.”
She followed him up the stairs and to another pair of those great wooden doors. The brass plate between these had a different image emblazoned upon it. Instead of the entwined clover and rose, this plate was engraved with a sword whose blade seemed to have been snapped in half over a large boulder. Marcom placed his hand on the plate, and the doors slid smoothly into the stone walls on either side.
He led her into the tower, down a short corridor, and into a huge circular room. The ceiling was vaulted some fifty feet overhead, and huge arched windows let in brilliant sunshine. It was such a contrast from the gloom of the other towers that Emily was taken aback.
Chaotic rows of long wooden tables, far larger than the one in the dining room of the apprentices’ tower, were situated here and there, apparently without much consideration. Enormous wooden racks stood everywhere, on which hung weapons, bits of armor, and various accoutrements of war.
“Matthew!” Marcom roared. His voice reverberated with a deafening rumble off the high stone ceiling and walls. Emily jumped. Marcom grinned and winked at her.
A boy, perhaps two years younger than Emily, hurriedly scrambled out from behind one of the racks. His stocky build was clad in what Emily could only think of as workman’s clothes. He held a battered copper helmet in one hand and a greasy rag in the other.
“Yes sir,” he said, setting the helmet and rag down on a nearby table. He swiped his lank black hair out of his eyes with the palm of one hand, leaving a streak of grease to keep a small rash of acne company across his forehead.
He looked at Marcom, then his gaze fell on Emily, and he gaped, his pale cheeks flushing a bright crimson. Marcom ignored this.
“This is Emily. She’s goin’ to need suitin’ up. Make sure you find her good armor, a bow, and the best sword you can find in this mess.” He surveyed the room at large. In a lower voice to Emily he said, “I don’t know how the devil he finds anythin’ in here, but he’s a good lad. He’ll take good care of you.”
He looked back at Matthew. “Did you get all that?”
Matthew tore his eyes away from Emily with an obvious effort and looked back at Marcom. “Uh…yeah…sure. I mean…yes sir! Armor, bow, and best sword I can find. I got it, sir.” He blushed again and began straightening his tunic self-consciously. Marcom looked at Emily and rolled his eyes. Emily grinned but tried to hide it behind her hand. She pretended to cough, and Marcom snorted.
“Well, I’ve got some things to tend to. When you’re done here with Matthew, you’re free to do as you like, but I suggest you rest. We’ll be training in earnest tomorrow.” He slapped her on the back, making Emily take an unsteady step forward, and turned away toward the door.
“And don’t just stand there gawkin’ at her,” Marcom called to Matthew as he left the room, a hint of amusement in his voice.
Emily let her momentum carry her toward Matthew, who apparently hadn’t heard the last of Marcom’s orders. He stared at her through glazed eyes, as if he’d never seen a girl before in his life. His fascination, though, quickly turned to alarm as he realized she was heading right for him. He took a few stumbling steps backward, and the backs of his knees hit the bench of the table behind him. He sat down with a grunt of surprise.
Emily bit her lip to keep from laughing. Really, she felt sorry for the poor boy. She stuck out her hand to him, hoping her smile looked easier than it felt.
“Emily,” she said. “But I guess Marcom already told you that. And you’re Matthew, right?”
Matthew stared at her hand as though it was the most exotic object he’d ever seen, then blushing all over again, he reached out to grasp it briefly, shook it once, and got up and ducked behind a rack of weapons.
“Hang on,” he called. “Let me see what I can find for you…uh…miss!”
“Emily,” she said. “You can just call me Emily.”
“Sure, okay, Miss Emily.”
Bemused, Emily sank down onto the bench and waited, listening to the sound of Matthew’s rummaging. She looked around at the gleaming metal and polished wood. It was cozy somehow. She felt at home here amidst the smells of grease and sawdust. For some reason, it reminded her of the locker room at the rink. It made her feel safe.
It was an odd sort of place, Seven Sk
ies. She liked Marcom and Caireann and suspected she’d like this boy Matthew as well. But she wasn’t sure she liked Marianne, and she knew she didn’t like the fact that the sorceress was holding some poor kid prisoner beneath her tower. And what about the way they were forced to tend a garden full of fine food but could only eat porridge day after day? It was a place of contradictions, and she was only now starting to grasp just how conflicted her feelings were about it. Every time she met someone like Marcom or Matthew, she thought perhaps she could belong here after all, but then her thoughts would return to the boy, and she recoiled from the idea.
Matthew came hurtling back around the rack, holding a bundle of soft leather and a lump of what looked a bit like the mesh from the fireplace screen in Casey’s family room.
“Let’s start with this,” he said, talking rapidly and shoving the items into Emily’s arms. “I don’t have much that looks like it’ll fit you, but I think these will be all right. You’ll have to try them on.”
He stood waiting expectantly.
“Umm…” Emily said, raising her eyebrows. Matthew flushed again. His face went such a deep scarlet this time that Emily feared he would have some kind of stroke or something.
“Sorry! Sorry! Christ…so sorry!” He turned his back to her and began sorting through some of the weapons on the rack.
Emily slipped out of her tunic as fast as she could and pulled the leather jerkin over her head. The lump of metal mesh turned out to be what she thought was called chain mail, and she pulled that on over the jerkin. It felt heavy and strange, but no worse than hockey gear, she supposed.
“Okay,” she said. “What else?”
Matthew was like a tornado, hurling bits of armor and broken weapons this way and that as he searched for the items he wanted. Among these were a pair of gauntlets that fit her arms reasonably well, a longbow topped with an intricately carved gryphon’s head, a shield, a pair of daggers, a quiver full of arrows, and a gleaming sword that looked like it had come right out of the Lord of the Rings movies.
“Are you sure about these?” Emily asked, picking up one of the disturbingly sharp daggers and watching as the sunlight glinted off the polished steel. She was quite sure Marcom hadn’t said anything about daggers.
“What?” Matthew asked, pausing in his search to look over at her. “Yeah, of course. You’re going to be one of the guards, right? So yeah, of course you need those.” He frowned at her. “You are going to be one of the guards, right? I mean, this isn’t some practical joke or something, right?”
“If it’s a practical joke, it’s on me, too,” she said, smiling at him. He blushed again and looked away.
The longer his search went on, the better Emily understood Marcom’s perplexity at Matthew’s ability to find anything amidst the clutter. Already chaotic when she’d arrived, the room now resembled nothing so much as the remains of a medieval demolition derby.
“Damn damn damn,” Matthew grumbled, tossing a shield over his shoulder like a Frisbee. It clanged and skidded across the floor, coming to rest with an earsplitting crash against the far wall. “I can’t find any leg armor for you that will work at all!”
He sank to the floor beside the pile of odds and ends he’d been sorting through and put his head in his hands, continuing to speak at the floor. “Marcom isn’t going to like it, but we’ll have to have the smithy make something for you. Anything I got here is going to be too big or too short. Damn damn damn.”
He looked up at her again. “Sorry,” he said, though Emily had no idea what he was apologizing for.
“Is that everything, then?” she asked, looking down at the heap of items on the table beside her doubtfully. How the hell was she going to carry all this back to the apprentices’ tower, anyway?
“Yeah. That’s all for now. I’ll talk to Marcom though. You really should have better body armor than that, but that’s all I have that’ll…uh…fit.” His face went red yet again, and Emily, with some difficulty, forced her own into a neutral expression.
“Do you have a bag or something that I can carry all this stuff in?” she asked, thinking of the pack that Marcom had brought out the morning before.
“Sure, yeah.” He scurried off and returned with a very battered and extremely dirty leather bag. He helped fill it with everything but the bow and sword. Emily swung the bow over one shoulder and slipped the sword into a loop on her belt that was apparently intended for it.
Matthew stood back at the end of the table, watching her as she arranged the rest of her new possessions.
“Thanks,” she said awkwardly, adjusting the sword where it hung from a heavy belt he’d given her. “It was nice meeting you, Matthew.”
“It was nice to meet you, too,” he mumbled. “And no problem.” It was nice to hear someone who talked, well, normally. In fact, he sounded more or less like any other kid from Lindsey High. “It’s just my job.”
She offered him a little wave before heading for the door. She was exhausted, despite the fact that Matthew had done all the work. Marcom had been right to tell her to rest; she still didn’t feel quite herself.
Outside, she made her way down the steps of the guard tower and along the winding path through the grove of trees, lost in thought.
So many people here seemed so ordinary. There was nothing sinister about Marcom or Matthew. Caireann had been nothing but kind to her since she’d arrived with the others, if a little brusque sometimes. There had been the man who’d fetched them from the boat, but what of it? The world was full of people like that. You were bound to have one in any group.
Maybe Celine was right. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation for why the boy was locked up in the tower. She really didn’t know anything about him. All she had was a feeling, little better than a hunch, and how could she trust that? The knowing had failed her once already, and she wasn’t even sure her feeling about the boy had anything to do with the knowing—or about anything at all, really. According to Celine, it had been an old, dark-skinned man who had brought her onboard the boat. Maybe that was what she should concern herself with, and not this boy who could hardly string two words together.
Something inside her stirred, railing against that thought. She couldn’t entirely identify the feeling, though it reminded her of when one of her linemates would be targeted by an opposing team. Indignation? Anger? Loyalty?
She sighed. She was going to have to make a decision, probably soon, about what she wanted to do. The way she saw it, she could either focus her attention on trying to discover why she was here, or else start working to find a way home. Did she want to go home? She wasn’t sure. There were things she missed—coffee and Mexican food and hot running water—but would those things make it worth facing her stepfather again? She did miss Casey. She wondered what Casey was doing now. What did she think had happened to Emily?
But what about the boy? Who would help him if Emily vanished into time?
“Help…me…” the boy had pleaded, and she’d told him she would.
She trudged onward, still thinking. Her new sword bounced gently on her thigh as she walked, and she found its weight oddly comforting.
She didn’t notice when a few branches twitched as she went by. She didn’t hear the rustle of the leaves or the creak of bending wood. It was perfectly normal after all—just the wind in the boughs.
And as she rounded the last bend where the path emptied out into the garden, she didn’t see the single blue eye that blinked after her in the sunlight before closing and blending in with the tree bark once more.
Part Four: Penalty Kill
“There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.”
—Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
“For as well as I have loved thee heretofore, mine heart will not serve now to see thee; for through thee and me is the flower of kings and knights destroyed.”
—Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur
Chapter Twelve
Ov
er the next several days, Emily trained with Marcom in a room of the guard towers that she grew to think of as “the gym”. A thick carpet of straw covered the floor, and a wide variety of combat training equipment filled every square foot of it. Targets, painted with the rough outlines of men on horseback, hung from the walls, their surfaces scarred and disfigured from years of use. Large burlap sacks, suspended from the ceiling and filled with soft down, reminded her of the punching bags in the gym at Lindsey High.
“This is why I do my target practice in the gardens in the middle of the bleedin’ night,” Marcom grumbled, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the stench. “Probably a dead mouse in here somewhere.”
From time to time, she caught glimpses of the other guards. Most were men in their twenties or thirties, but a handful couldn’t have been much older than she was. The boys, like Matthew, seemed to be squires of a sort, acting as servants and receiving training to, presumably, join the ranks in time. When she’d asked Marcom about her apparently accelerated regimen, he’d only shrugged and told her it was what Marianne had ordered.
“How many guards are there, anyway?” she’d finally asked, staring after yet another unfamiliar young man who’d brought a message for Marcom.
“Twenty,” Marcom replied, scanning the scrap of parchment the messenger had brought. He shrugged and shoved it into a pocket and looked up at her. “Well, with you now, that makes twenty-one.”
Twenty-one. That had been her number on the Timbre Wolves. It felt right. Training with Marcom felt right. Maybe she did belong here.
On the morning of the fourth day, Emily found Marcom waiting for her in the gym. His hands were clasped behind his back as he paced, creating a small trench in the straw down the center of the room. She could see the bare stone peeking through in places.
She swung her pack from her shoulder and set it down beside the crazy wooden contraption designed for solo fencing practice. She grimaced, remembering how the damn thing had given her a black eye on their first day of training.
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