Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (4 page)

“You think he’ll do that?”

“I certainly hope not.” Owen looked down his long nose at her. “The Blade, Nora! Imagine being the first humans to find it after over two thousand years!”

“I imagine it as being a major disappointment. ‘Oh, look! The legendary Living Blade is just a legend after all.’”

“What if it’s not? What if the Blade is real? The prince seems to think it is.”

“Well, then he’s in for a big surprise, isn’t he?” Nora shook her head.

They sat and watched the sky. Slowly the weak sun called it a day and gave her reign over to the creeping darkness. Owen looked back to where Master Diaz stood, as unmoving as a stone marker. He was far off. Owen lowered his voice anyway.

“But if you stay near the master, I don’t think he’ll let them touch you again.”

Nora snorted.

“Or you could go back.” He said it as casually as he dared.

“With you?”

He shook his head. “I think I will become a pilgrim. And who knows? Maybe I’ll even be there when Prince Bashan and Master Diaz find the Blade.”

“Just like in the stories.” Nora sighed. “Remember when the coalers’ families let us tend our burn with them? We’d listen to stories and sing under the stars all night.”

“And read by the campfire.”

“That was good. I wish it could be like that again.” She ran a hand through her hair. “If I stay, I might be raped by this lot. If I go, I’ll have to marry Wolfe at Solstice. Fucked either way.”

“Noraya Smith! Swearing is a sign of stupidity, as though you lack the vocabulary for expressing yourself in an accurate manner.”

“I’d say that was as accurate as can be. And shut up, Owen!”

“Wolfe seemed nice,” Owen said quickly. “Or, well, I’m sure he
is
a nice guy.”

“That’s a bit vague for you, master of observation.”

Owen shrugged. He opened his mouth as if to say more but then stopped himself. Was there a safe platitude you could say in moments like these? Nora raised one eyebrow at her brother’s restraint.

“His hands were sweaty.” She grimaced at the memory.

“So he’s a nervous nice guy. Anyone’d be nervous who has to marry you.”

“I know. He is a nervous nice guy.” Nora gave him a smile, then took a raggedy breath. “But if I go back to the Ridge, I have to marry Wolfe to stop being the evil temptress from hell.”

Owen flushed. There had been talk about Nora, and he’d never been entirely sure which rumors were false. This was tricky ground.

“Do you even want to marry him?”

Nora threw her hands up.

“It’s not that easy, Owen!”

“Make it easy. Yes or no. A binary choice.”

“I don’t even know what binary means.”

Master Diaz cleared his throat audibly. It sounded painful, a noise one couldn’t ignore. He stood silently behind them, and both twins stared up at him.

“Can we move along now?”

They both stood up. Nora held out her hands, wrists first, forcing him to see the welts. The half-wight looked down at them. He reached behind him and gave her back her own knife.

“Here. This is yours, Noraya of Owen’s Ridge.”

She looked at Owen. She had made the hilt herself out of smooth antler this summer. Owen had watched her do it across the charcoal clamp they were tending. Their foster father had forged the blades for Nora’s dowry, but she had carved and scraped the hilts. A good set of knives, three in all, rolled into a leather pouch. In the half-light, the rods the smith had beaten into one smooth blade curled and twisted against the warmth of Master Diaz’s fingers like smoky wisps. Owen knew he’d never be able to craft such blades, even if the smith’s work had interested him, which it hadn’t. Nora probably could. She was good with her hands and had often helped out at the forge, hammering away at horseshoes and plowshares while Owen kept the books. She was right. Life had been good for a while. Very good. At least until Mother Sara had died. There was nothing for Nora here. Nothing keeping her but him.

She took her knife from the wight and left it unsheathed, tucked between her belt and her shirt. She didn’t thank Master Diaz. Just stared into those dark eyes, black like the big sky above them.

“Use it well,” Diaz said and went off.

A drizzle set in as they followed.

N
ora fought to keep her
eyes open. She sat on the squelching earth, having no other choice after the rain, arms crossed over her knees with Owen’s back against hers. She felt her brother relax as he fell asleep like a stone falls into water. His head lolled against her shoulder. She wished she could surrender to sleep like that, too. But as soon as her head nodded toward her chest, she woke with a start, heart pounding. She shifted into a more upright position, stared at the sleeping men around her, and tried to think of ways to escape the predicament they were in. Every time her eyes ripped open again from her moment of sleep, there he was—the master wight. Always on the watch. Never asleep. How did he do it? Was it some kind of wight magic? Nora tried to remember the old legends she’d heard about the Lords and Ladies, but her mind started to drift and she woke up a few moments later, a little angrier at herself.

When someone crouched down next to her, her hand was on her knife before her eyes focused on the master wight. He watched her lower the knife, but she didn’t put it away.

“You can sleep tonight. I will watch over you.” His voice sounded like he needed to cough even when he whispered.

“Yeah, right.” She rubbed her stinging eyes, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders. Owen lifted his head from her shoulder, shook it slowly and curled up on the ground next to her. “Just like yesterday?”

“I assumed the men would be too exhausted from running to try—”

“Well, you assumed wrong!” Nora wiped her face, numbed by tiredness. She should get up and walk around. That always helped. She gave the wight next to her a glance. Would he let her?

“You are free to leave, you know,” he said as though he could read her mind. “But I wonder, where would you go?”

And there was the crux. Where could she go? This was crazy. They never should have left the Ridge unprepared in the first place. They should have had a plan. Now she was stuck here in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a knife, and Owen seemed to be entertaining the thought of some grand quest with these last dregs of humanity swept from the gutters of the world into the open arms of a banished prince. She blinked the sleep away from her eyes, set her mouth, and stared right back at the wight.

“What do you want me to say? What do you want?”

“You were lucky it was I who grabbed you by the tree. Any of the other men and your death would have been slow and painful because you would have fought them. A little trust would be a good start, don’t you think?”

Nora snorted.

“Yeah, sure. I trust any random stranger I meet in the woods who holds a knife to my throat, lets me get nearly raped by one of his mates, then beats me unconscious for trying to escape.”

He sucked in air audibly through his clenched teeth, then held it in for a moment.

“He was not ‘one of my mates.’ Don’t ever count me among them. I am a pilgrim master, and I swore to guide Prince Bashan through the northern realms to find the Living Blade. Yet foremost, I am oath-bound to protect the innocent.”

“Well, if you’re oath-bound to Prince Bashan, too, then your oath to protect the innocent is worth nothing, Master Diaz.”

His eyebrows disappeared into the shadow of his deep hood and a short flicker of anger played around his jawline. Instead of standing up and walking away, he took a deep breath. Why was he trying so hard? Nora followed the wight’s gaze downward to where Owen slept in the damp grass.

“Your brother trusts me.”

“He does.”

Those black eyes flicked back to her face. Nora sighed.

“Come on. You don’t really believe all that mumbo jumbo about twins having a double soul? We may look alike. But we’re not the same person.”

“Did you run away from home because someone there realized you were not just brother and sister, but twins?”

“No. They knew and hated us for it.”

“Because you didn’t like the man you were supposed to marry?”

“No.”

The truth was, she had liked Wolfe just fine. It wasn’t his fault her life had become such a mess. That had been the baker’s busybody wife. “What do you care?”

“Who taught you how to fight?”

Nora bit her lip and looked away.

“I’m not fighting. I’m defending myself.” She shook her head. “And no one taught me. I learned through practice: kick hard when you have the chance. Aim for parts that hurt. Hope you get lucky and his surprise shocks him into being stupid. Then knock him out with the shovel if you’ve got one handy. If not, go find the shovel.”

“And you’ve had much practice defending yourself? I can’t imagine why.”

Nora flushed. She scowled but kept her mouth shut. It wasn’t easy. She rested her hot head on her forearms and hoped he’d go away before she fell asleep. After a moment, she heard the rustle of clothes and peeped over her arm to see the master wight settle down next to her, cross-legged, his pupil-less eyes staring off into the space inside his mind. She gritted her teeth. She’d wait and watch. He had to sleep sometime. And when he did, she’d run and take Owen with her—kicking and screaming, if need be. Both of them would be safe from this mad quest.

*     *     *

In the red morning, there
was smoke on the horizon. It rose into the lighting sky in a dark plume. Nora rubbed her tired face and nudged Owen awake.

“I don’t see any smoke,” he muttered.

“Then open your eyes. It’s all across the sky like a message from the gods.”

“What?” Owen rose and stared at the black cloud looming in the west. He took a deep breath.

“The Ridge is burning,” Nora said.

“No.” Owen wiped a hand across his face. “Black smoke means unburned charcoal dust lifting from a leak. In this cold, you could see a leak from this far away. You couldn’t see a house burn.”

Nora gave her brother a look.

“Charcoal dust?”

“Charcoal dust,” Owen said.

“You emotionless lump of ore, Owen! That’s cold. Really cold.”

“What?”

“People tend the charcoal, Owen. People like you and me. Families. With kids. People we know and shared meals with. What do you think happened to them? Why aren’t they watching for leaks?”

Owen paled, then shrugged. “Maybe they just, um…maybe they…”

“Days of work would go up in the smoke! Days! When would you leave a burn untended, Owen?”

“We never left a burn.”

“When you have to run for your life, that’s when. And if the coalers ran, it means the Ridge is burning.”

Owen snorted. “Burning! How?”

“Bandits.”

“It would take a large number of men to overthrow the Ridge, Nora.”

“Yeah? You calculated how many?” Nora looked around at the Hunted Company, counting twenty armed men. Twenty armed men who would do nothing to help her village.

“Is something wrong?” Prince Bashan asked pleasantly.

Nora shot him a dark look and opened her mouth to speak her mind. But Owen touched her elbow in warning. The other men were breaking camp. And there was Master Diaz, staring at her with his beetle-black eyes. She clenched her teeth and fists. Her jaw ached with all the words she wanted to say.

“No, we’re ready to go.” Owen moved into Nora’s line of sight, shoving himself between her and the prince. “Just wondering about the smoke.”

The prince gave Nora a long look over Owen’s shoulder.

“Enjoy the view as long as you can. We’re moving out.”

Nora grabbed her cloak and bag and touched her blade. Touch of iron. Touch of home.

*     *     *

All day she marched behind
Owen in silence, bare fingers tucked under her armpits. At dusk the company camped under the empty boughs of a small wood, the trees growing among a cluster of ruins. You could find the remains of stone houses, broken wells, and occasionally, partly overgrown cobbled streets all across the Plains. The stories told of the destruction of the ancient city of Vella. Master Scyld had smitten the god of air, Tuil himself, with the Living Blade. Crashing to the earth, Tuil had buried Vella beneath his massive body. Nora watched Owen’s eyes gleam when he noticed the broken stone walls. Of course. He loved the stories. He touched the stones carefully, with awe, as though they were something more than the remains of a homestead long given up and left to crumble under the assault of the elements. When she said as much, he just smiled.

“Same story, different version. And all of them true.”

She rolled her eyes and drank deeply from her waterskin before falling asleep. A few hours later, she woke with an urgent need, just as planned. Wight or no wight, there was no way she’d sleep through the whole night around these men. Nora rose. A small fire flickered in the middle of the circle of sleeping men. The huge man with a blind white eye hunched before it, leaning against his spear. He glanced over at her when she moved toward the darkness under the trees. She nodded at him and then made a show of stumbling over a root, as though she were still drunk with sleep. He grunted and turned back to the warming fire. Ha! It would be so easy to just leave now. Although, the wight was probably around somewhere nearby. During the day’s march, every time she fell back to relieve herself, he’d slow down and wait for her to catch up again. Her own personal bodyguard. Annoying.