The Blight of Muirwood

“Move aside,” Lia warned.

“I asked you a question.”

Lia’s patience with Reome’s taunting ended. Gritting her teeth, she shoved her basket into Reome’s – not hard, but enough to throw her a little off balance. “I am the Aldermaston’s girl,” she said firmly, confidently. In her mind, she pushed the thought at Reome: stand aside, or you will regret it. Move aside, Reome, or I will humiliate you in front of these girls. I am a hunter. The tingle of the Medium coursed through her.

Reome stared at her, shocked. She hesitated. For a moment, Lia thought she would have to fulfill her threat. But then Reome took a step backward and moved out of the way. The wall of lavenders crumpled. Holding her basket with one hand, Lia reached into the basket of another girl and took a bunch of purple mint to hang with her leathers while she dried them. “Thank you,” she said stiffly as she walked past them, heading back to the kitchen invisible in the mist ahead.

“I hate her,” came the low-throated voice behind her, but Lia kept walking.

As she went, she realized she was scowling, her heart pounding, and the wicked temptation arose to go back and shove Reome into the trough. She pictured it for a moment, savoring the image of dunking her head into the water. What would the other girls do if she did?

She caught herself, realizing the danger of her thoughts. Martin had trained her to fight – how to grab a man by the wrist, twist him around, and trip him. How to disarm someone with a dagger. How to hobble someone by breaking their foot. She even knew a dozen ways to injure or kill a man quickly, though she never had the cause to use her knowledge that way. It was locked up tight in her mind, coins she hoped she would never have to spend. But thinking ill of Reome and the lavenders was dangerous. Those thoughts could emerge as actions later, in a moment of weakness when her self-control faltered.

The grass was soft beneath her feet. Smells from the flowers and grass surrounded her, as well as snippets of sounds as the learners rose to begin their studies. Geese flew overhead, splitting the stillness with honking. Lia approached the kitchen to ask Sowe or Bryn to hang her leathers by the fires to dry so she could make it to the Aldermaston quickly. Another sound caught her ears, coming from the opposite side of the kitchen. Curious, she followed it and went around the corner to the rear of the kitchen, the side most hidden from view. Her approach was quiet as doves roosting. She peered around the corner and there he was.

Colvin.

She paused, watching him, for his back was to her. His sword was out and he was practicing with it. He moved through a series of intricate maneuvers, as if he fought off ten different men at once. Each thrust and parry was controlled – precise. Memories flooded her. They were so long ago, but she remembered the details precisely. For months she had fallen asleep each night forcing herself to remember everything she could about the days when he had been abandoned during a storm on the floor of the kitchen, bloody and unconscious. One night, he had practiced with a broom and had misjudged the distance of a table and clacked the handle hard. It made her stifle a giggle.

He heard the laughter and turned sharply. The expression on his face was pure annoyance and hostility – she had seen that look a hundred times in her mind. Impatient. Demanding. Wary. Petulant. The look melted when he recognized her. He sheathed his knight-maston sword in the scabbard and approached her.

She stared at him, clutching the basket to her stomach, and wondered if the mist meant it was only a dream. It seemed she noticed every detail. The silver starburst studs on his scabbard belt, the buckles holding the dark leather jerkin closed. The long pale sleeves matching the cuff emerging from his neck. His face, his hands. The scar. Yes, the scar at the corner of his eyebrow. He was close enough now she could see its tiny little pucker and she remembered mopping blood from it.

“Were you laughing at me?” was all he said in greeting. His voice was warm.

It had been a long year – a year of pain and worry and sadness. All of that vanished like a drop of sizzling water on a hot skillet. The look he gave her bespoke friendship and admiration. He was glad to see her, not nervous. He wanted to see her. That made all the difference in the world.

Lia flung down the basket and gave him a fierce hug to prove once and for all that he was real and that she was not stained by poisoned sap any longer. She was nearly as tall as him and could feel his cheek against her hair. He smelled of leather and sweat, but also himself. She had forgotten what he smelled like. That sort of memory was too much like smoke to grasp.

“Yes, you idiot,” she said, squeezing him hard and then pulled back, embarrassed a little at herself for hugging him, but unrepentant. She looked at his face. “I was laughing at a memory. There are many of you that make me laugh. Others that have made me cry. You did not come when you promised. I am upset with you about that. But here you are now, and I am told you are staying a season or two, so I suppose I could learn to forgive you.”