Page 61 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

thirty-two

Enya

E nya spent the weeks riding for Misthol in silence, reciting her list and letting Arawelo’s hooves pound the rhythm to her grief.

It was the only way she knew to mourn her losses without unraveling.

The man she’d known as Marwar. The mother she didn’t remember.

The father who was not her father. One after another, the visions and the losses peeled away parts of her with the dexterity of a questioner.

Renley Ryerson.

Liam.

Herself.

A lantern with two casks of oil, flint and steel, her belt knife, a spare bowstring, a waterskin, a tin cup and bowl, a small kettle, a blanket roll, towel, bandages, a salve, a needle and thread, sewing scissors.

A brush, hoof pick, feed bag, a sack of oats.

A hair comb and a bit of soap. Honey and tea.

Silver. The horse head carving. Arawelo.

My bow and quiver. My wits. The dust scarf.

It was strange to wear a new name. It was stranger still to know her own death.

She’d felt the cold bite of steel in that vision.

It was a cold so deep her bones felt brittle, like the one between the worlds.

If she hadn’t already felt it, she wouldn’t be able to fathom a cold like that as she galloped south under a blistering sun.

For all she thought she had dealt with the price on her head and what it meant, for all she thought she had accepted turning herself in, the certainty of the viewing made her ill.

Ill enough that she had to keep her mouth firmly shut whenever she thought of it.

She fumbled for Liam’s carving, trying to convince herself there was no use fretting over it. Perhaps, perhaps there was still some hope. There had been for her mother. She had changed what she saw. But she was afraid there was none for Liam. She didn’t even know where he was.

Oryn hovered close to her most times, his jaw set firmly enough she thought it had to ache. And if it wasn’t for the cracking of her heart, she might have wondered if his vow mark was already chafing. In truth, she hadn’t quite sorted how she felt about Oryn. It was easier just to be angry.

Enya could smell the sea before she could see the city, but unlike the cool wind that came off the Ilbarran Ocean, here the air was thick and heavy.

She couldn’t tell if it was the air or her own sweat that dampened her shirt, and loose tendrils of hair curled around her ears and forehead.

The damp threatened to drag her back to those first weeks she crawled east, but she was not cold and she was not alone.

Colm rode at her side, scrubbing at his nose.

“Does it always smell like dead fish?” She asked.

He chuckled. “If you thought Windcross Wells was bad, Ansel, wait until you see Misthol.”

Ansel. She hadn’t known where she’d conjured the name from, but it would be far easier just to be Ansel. She supposed she could after she fulfilled her end of the bargain.

The others had split off, angling for a different gate. Oryn was too recognizable to enter with Enya, and even though he had run his own dye powder through his hair, turning the silver to black, there was not much to be done about Kiawa. He would rejoin them later, not that Enya cared.

She was too tired to care much about what the demi-elves did, too exhausted from her restless nights spent with Hylee’s visions, but a small part of her was glad Colm was at her side.

She supposed he was the closest thing she had to a friend now.

She vaguely wondered if that was sad. He wasn’t really hers, she knew.

He was Oryn’s if it came down to it. They all were.

When they finally rounded a bend along a low hill and the city sprawled before them, Enya’s eyes went wide. Sunlight glinted off the blue expanse that stretched to the horizon and ringing the broad bay was a high wall of brown stone .

“Haarstrond Keep.” Colm pointed to the unmistakable turrets jutting from a castle on a bluff overlooking the bay. She followed his finger to the north where a black dome rose out of the sprawl. “And that is-”

“Blackash Keep,” she breathed. She’d had a suspicion Colm knew what it was she was about, but he’d held his silence all the way to Misthol and she supposed that ought to count for something.

Enya’s amazement at the sprawl of the city was short-lived.

She pointed to the rough hewn hovels outside the city walls.

They sprawled almost as wide as the city proper, leaning haphazardly. “What is that?”

“The Foreshore,” Colm answered. “Where the poor have been pushed as the city swells.”

“No one does anything about it?” She was appalled that there could be so many living in such squalor in plain view of the gilded palace. The hovels of the Foreshore made that leaning barn she slept in look sound.

“No.”

Enya’s incredulity only grew when they passed between the first ramshackle huts of the Foreshore.

She had been wrong. They made that leaning barn she slept in look luxurious.

They were little more than driftwood and sticks with gaps in the slats wide enough she could see through to single rooms with dirt floors.

Then she heard Arawelo’s hooves squelch in the mud and the smell threatened to knock her out of her saddle.

Coughing, she bunched the dust scarf up around her nose.

Slat ribbed children dressed in rags meandered untended and a dog stalked their shadows.

Enya thought she might get fleas just from looking at it, and the mare swished her tail in agitation.

She let out a yelp that had Colm reaching for his sword as a rat bigger than any cat she’d ever seen lumbered across the road in no particular hurry.

He leaned over and stopped her with a gentle hand on her forearm when she reached for the coin purse at her belt. He jerked his chin toward the haunted faces that looked out at them as they passed.

“Your generosity is admirable, Ansel, but a few coppers in the Foreshore are enough to start a brawl. There are rarely winners. Especially not the children.”

Enya let her hand fall away as she looked at them, swallowing her disgust. It was dreadful.

Estryia’s great cities were dreadful . All the places she and Liam had dreamed of were only gilded filth.

It was just one more thing to lose, and it was strange how that loss of wonder and a dream seemed to sting as badly as the real losses .

She was relieved when the wall reared up in front of them, if only to escape the eyes that seemed to follow her through the Foreshore. Those eyes seemed to ask how much silver she had in her purse, how much Arawelo might be worth, how much she would be worth.

She tried not to think about that as she passed between the crimson clad king’s men and the pair of wielders peering down from the guard towers. Their badges were little more than white flecks from the height, and Enya didn’t dwell on what their gifts might be as they passed quietly through.

Misthol was much like Windcross Wells; too loud, foul smelling, and overly crowded.

Much of the city seemed to be bricked in the same brown stone with matching roof tiles, but Enya spotted the occasional wood and thatch.

At least all of the streets seemed to be paved in cobblestones, and people were not throwing chamber pots from their windows.

She studied the brightly colored banners and ribbons that were draped over balconies and across narrow alleys.

They passed a troop of puppeteers carrying richly crafted beasts and knights to vanquish them with wooden swords.

She watched them disappear around a corner, only to see a group of tumblers coming up the street, followed by a man on stilts.

Colm followed her gaze. “We’re two days to Sun Day.”

Enya’s heart stuttered. The official start of summer.

At Ryerson House, her father would open up casks of apple cider to sip after a long day in the fields.

The families from the surrounding farms would gather in the yard to eat, drink, and dance as Griff played his flute and Oslee’s da sawed his fiddle.

But not this year. Not again. There would never again be a Sun Day with her family.

Had she known the last would be her last… She gripped the carving in her pocket.

“Are you alright?” Colm asked quietly.

Enya cleared her throat and nodded. “I just…hadn’t realized it’s been so long.”

Weeks had turned into months and yet, Ryerson House felt like a lifetime away. She supposed it was. She had been someone else then. Colm gave her a small, knowing smile as she scrambled to get a handle on the things that wanted to spill out. Later.

“And they celebrate for multiple days here?”

“The official festivities will start tomorrow, but the king pays the players to entertain the crowds. It helps keep the peace. ”

Enya wondered why the king needed players to keep the peace, but she let the question die as they pushed through a particularly dense crowd.

It made her chest tighten, but it eased as they pressed deeper into the city to a place where the streets were clean and the stablemaster greeted them with a pleasant smile.

The painted sign showed a country boy and girl arm-in-arm, and Lemuel Kimball welcomed them to the Gandy Dancer with a deep bow.

“Master Turner, it is good to see you again,” the round man beamed.

Enya’s eyes widened at the fat coin purse Colm pressed into the innkeeper’s palm. Unless costs in the capitol were out of control, which remained a possibility, the heft of it was far greater than they would spend on rooms and meals for a few days.

The innkeeper turned his attention to her and bent at the waist. “My staff is at your disposal, Lady…”

“Ansel.”

“A pleasure, Lady Ansel. Will your other companions be joining you?”

“They’ll be along,” Colm answered. “We’ll require the private dining room for the duration of our stay.”

“Of course, my lord.”