Page 6 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

three

Enya

E nya had started keeping a mental list of all the things she’d rather do than entertain a visit from another suitor.

She’d rather be set to sums or recitations of Estryian history.

She’d rather sew new curtains and embroider every pillow in Ryerson House.

She’d rather endure hours of instruction at the piano that mostly collected dust in the drawing room, or be forced to sing before all the stable hands.

The last made her cringe, even as her father came stalking across the yard calling her name. But she would do it, if it would spare her a single suitor. She shrank back into the shadows of Arawelo’s stall.

She’d already groomed the mare to gleam like a newly minted copper, but as she ran the brush over her coat, she just kept seeing those depthless eyes.

Half the night she had mulled over every word he said, few as they were.

And the other half, she spent mulling over Sana’s gift.

Her gift, if the demi-elf was to be believed. Why me?

“Ah, there you are!” Her father exclaimed as if he were surprised to find her where she preferred to be. “Let’s go for a ride, shall we?”

“Who is it today?” She sighed, still refusing to look up.

“I thought we could go into Westforks to get a few things for Del and Mistress Alys, and perhaps take a ride on the beach.”

“No suitors?” Enya studied him, looking for the trap .

“Not unless you count Liam.”

Enya snorted. “Thank the light.”

A serene sort of quiet blanketed the countryside outside Westforks, punctuated by the bleats of sheep and the occasional bellow of a cow or bark of a farmyard dog.

The rolling landscape sloped downward toward the sea as they rode past a patchwork of farmyards, fields, and orchards just waking in the spring sunshine.

Farmers turning fields and shepherd boys tending flocks raised hands in greeting as they continued their descent.

They returned friendly waves as they trotted around lumbering wagons bound for the city gates.

As they topped a final rise, the sun not yet at its peak, Westforks lay sprawling below. Beyond the houses and shops stacked atop the harbor, waves crested and broke in a dull, never ending roar all the way to where the blue bled into the horizon.

The city got its name from the river that bordered its northern edge.

Swollen with runoff from Greenridge, the White Fang River split several times before it melded into the Ilbarran Ocean in a great, churning froth.

The ruin of an ancient temple devoted to Sakaala, Goddess of Water, sat amidst those forks keeping watch over the waves that endlessly battered the rocky shore.

To the south, a long run of sandy beach stretched before giving way to rock again.

Even from this vantage, Enya could see life bustling in the small port city.

Lines of wagons formed up at the gates, and men scurried up and down the docks like ants, loading and unloading the ships that lined the docks like little ducklings.

Beyond them, fishermen hauled their nets as white gulls wheeled overhead.

In the upper town, carts and carriages rolled back and forth across a tangled web of streets in no particular hurry.

They continued down the easy slope toward the gate, dirt giving way to cobblestone as they neared.

They joined the queue behind a farmer’s cart loaded with wool from the first of the spring shearing.

The driver craned his neck to give their horses an appraising look before turning back to nudge his mismatched pair onward.

When they reached the gatehouse, a gray clad guardsman lazily asked after their business.

The guard didn’t actually seem to care what their business was, hardly hearing her father’s response, before he said, “Gate closes at sundown and doesn’t open again until dawn.”

They rode forward, the horses’ steel shod footfalls ringing as they bounced off the high stone wall. Enya had accompanied her father often enough to Westforks that the towering upper city with buildings four or five stories high no longer made her gape.

Liam, on the other hand, gaped like a country bumpkin as her father led them through the maze of streets, passing the gilded carriages that belonged to the townhomes of Westforks’s well-to-do.

Matched teams with feather plumes were tended by uniformed footmen and drivers who didn’t spare a glance for the country folk.

“The horses aren’t half so fine as ours,” Enya teased quietly as they passed one particular six horse team she thought belonged to the Thornsons.

“Maybe not,” Liam whispered. “But have you ever seen so much gold? On a carriage? Light, could you imagine the polishing?”

Enya laughed as she followed his gaze to one that rolled along glittering like the sun.

Heavy velvet curtains were drawn, blocking the occupants from view of the street.

Enya had seen as much each time she’d come to Westforks, but she knew enough from her lessons to know that by all accounts, Westforks was considered small, perhaps even more town than proper city.

She supposed she too might gape if she ever found her way to the likes of Bridgewater or Windcross Wells, or perhaps even Misthol.

Her father spoke of it rarely, but she had gleaned he’d been to the capitol before he was Lord of Ryerson House.

Enya sometimes poured over the map in his study, tracing the roads and rivers, dreaming of the places she might ride off to.

But there was little reason to come or go from their secluded corner of Estryia, save for the merchants who came in the spring to cart off the sheep’s wool, and again in the fall to collect barrels of apples and tart cherries. And the road was no place for a girl.

It was a mantra her father clung to, and Mistress Alys repeated time and time again as Enya clutched her skirts as a girl, watching him ride out to the Queen’s Road.

There was wild country between Westforks and the rest of Estryia, and they saw few enough of the king’s men that bandits and brigands occasionally stirred up trouble, if it was not the king’s men doing the stirring.

No, the road was no place for a girl, not anymore.

As they threaded through side streets, the houses shrank.

Stone and tile were replaced by wood and thatch.

Closed carriages gave way to wagon carts and pedestrian bustle, and the smell of the sea grew stronger with each block they crossed.

When her father finally drew up and dismounted in the shopping district near the city’s south end, the neighborhood was solidly middling, without gilt or grime.

Men bustled about their business and women strolled in twos and threes, baskets hanging over their arms.

The coin purse her father produced from inside his cloak clinked as he pressed it into Enya’s hand. From another pocket, he drew out a list in Mistress Alys’s neat script.

“It’s the cobbler and blacksmith for me, spice merchant and chandler for you,” he said, inclining his head to the shop before them, and pointing to a sign up the street. “I’ll meet you right back here. Stay together, and stay out of trouble.”

He punctuated the last words with a sharp look, but he didn’t wait for their ascent. He had already spun on his heel and was striding away, his favorite old riding boots in hand.

Enya glanced at Liam whose attention had been caught by a cart peddling tarts. Or perhaps it was ensnared by the two women in scandalous corsets before it. His eyes bulged at the necklines that threatened to burst if they so much as sneezed.

Enya rolled her eyes. “You act as if you’ve never seen a corset before.”

“Not like that,” he spluttered.

Enya did not care if Liam decided to ogle every woman in Westforks, but it was the sideways looks she drew that chafed.

It was perfectly acceptable for an Estryian lady to display half her bosom, but the goodwives and their daughters eyed her for wearing britches.

She glared back and scowled, causing a knot of women to whisper and snigger behind gloved hands as they strolled.

Liam didn’t notice. His attention drifted after the tarts that meandered the same direction her father had gone. She elbowed him in the ribs.

“Do you think they can even breathe?” He asked.

“Not without a scandal. Come on.”

A small bell clanged overhead as Enya shouldered open the spice merchant’s door.

A wave of warm cinnamon, earthy tea, and spiced nutmeg washed over her as she stepped inside.

Small shelves lined the narrow space from floor to ceiling, stuffed with glass jars in a rainbow of dried leaves and ground powders.

A knobby old man behind the counter tipped jars onto a set of balance scales for the two women who waited.

Aware of their watchful gaze, Enya slapped the back of Liam’s hand when he reached for a jar filled with red powder.

He shrugged sheepishly and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

When the women departed with their parcels and disapproving frowns, Enya handed Mistress Alys’s list to the shopkeeper.

He nodded as he ran a finger down the scrap of parchment .

“I can fill it all but the Mubrijan Black. We’re not expecting another ship from the Summer Isles for some time. I have a nice Uglor Gray that might hold your mistress over.”

“Fine.”

Mistress Alys might be none too pleased with the substitution, but Enya did not fancy returning without tea.

“First order since fall? From afar then?” The spry little man asked as he bustled around behind the counter, selecting tins and jars.

“A few hours up the Queen’s Road,” Enya said.

“Good weather, upcountry?”

“Fine.”

“I tell you, I’ve got a knee that acts up when there’s a storm a coming, and it’s been aching something awful all spring.”

“Isn’t there a wise woman for that?” Liam asked.