Page 7 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

The old man chuckled. “Lad, if I ran off to a wise woman every time my old bones creaked, my shop would never open.” He chuckled again. “Tell your mistress with as rough as the sea has been, at least another month before we see a tea trader.”

Enya thanked him and counted out the coppers, sweeping little bags and jars into the satchel slung over her shoulder. The heavy sacks of sugar and salt she pressed into Liam’s arms as they strode back out into the street, squinting in the sunlight.

Clear blue sky with wispy clouds stretched until it disappeared into the ocean. No, it certainly did not look like there was a storm coming, not unless Liam refused to put his eyes back in his head. She dragged him by the elbow to the chandler.

With bundles of candles added to the satchel and plenty of coppers left in the coin purse, Enya jerked her head toward the peddler in silent question. Liam grinned, dumping the salt and sugar into her arms, and swaggered back across the street.

“What flavors do you have, good sir?” He asked.

“Apple, peach, cherry,” the street vendor barked back.

Liam returned to the hitching post with one of each, splitting them in half so they could both have a bite of all three. They were still licking the sticky mess off their fingers when her father appeared, a small box tucked under his arm .

“How is it you are always eating?” He laughed as he approached. “It is a wonder Alys manages to keep the kitchen stocked at all.”

“You work us too hard,” Enya shot back.

Liam held his hands up defensively. “I have no complaints about my work, my lord.”

Her father chuckled and clapped him on the shoulder. “I know my boy, I know. Shall we then?”

“Lord Ryerson! Lord Ryerson!” The shrill call stopped them short of mounting.

The source was easy enough to locate as a plump woman in a lemon yellow gown waved a ghastly pink parasol over her head.

Enya could not stifle the laugh that bubbled up in her throat as Lady Blakwell dragged a girl that could only be her daughter toward them, ignoring the curses that followed in her wake as she shouldered through without regard.

Alma Blakwell, the Widow of Westforks as she was often called, was as jarring as her choice in dress would suggest. And she had been trying to get Renley Ryerson’s boots beneath her dining table since the day she put off her mourning blacks.

For all his bluster about her , Enya knew her father was rather glad he didn’t have a sociable young lady he had to escort about town.

From the time she’d been just a girl, the ladies would cluck over how she needed a mother, how lonely it must be upcountry or that Lord Ryerson did not look well enough tended, and it just so happened they had a sister or a cousin or a daughter who would be most suited to that sort of thing.

Enya had no memory of the woman who had succumbed to yellow-eye fever only months after she was born, but she laid flowers on the grave every year at Sun Day.

But more often than not, when Enya rode Arawelo past the stone in the orchard, she saw that it had been adorned with fresh petals, for her father’s devotion never seemed to wither.

She once asked him why the gravestone was not with the others at the edge of Greenridge, and he simply said that she had liked the orchard best.

Without knowing what she’d lost, Enya did not feel it so keenly.

Her family had always been her father, Liam and Del, Griff and Alys, and Marwar.

The stable boys and Del’s hands had been much like cousins and uncles over the years, and she’d never seen a feast day with empty chairs in the dining room of Ryerson House.

Her father had made it abundantly clear he had no inclination to add another, until he started on this suitor business.

She looked over to see how he enjoyed pursuit, and from the set of his jaw, she knew he did not. But the lord of Ryerson House clasped his hands behind his back and gave a slight bow, the picture of good manners.

“Lady Blakwell, you look as well as ever.”

Enya had to bite her lip. The preening woman drew herself up, threatening to spill out of that alarming yellow dress.

“Ah, Lord Ryerson. So good to see you after such a long and dreadful winter. Of course here in town, we managed just fine. How was it upcountry?”

“Fine, my lady,” he answered.

“How you manage alone out there on the estate, I cannot begin to fathom. It must grow so terribly lonely.” As if suddenly remembering the girl she held by the arm, she let her go and shoved the girl forward. “Do allow me to introduce my daughter, Crissa.”

The doe eyed girl dropped a well-practiced curtsy.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, my lord.”

“The pleasure is mine.”

Enya tried to wipe her face blank as her father gestured over his shoulder. “My daughter, Enya, and Liam Marsh, the son of my stablemaster.”

She dropped a curtsy that was not nearly as practiced as Crissa’s, made even more awkward by the britches, and Liam gave a stiff bow. Together, they must have been a sorry sight.

Lady Blakwell sniffed. “So good of you, Lord Ryerson, to be so charitable toward the help.”

Enya’s eyebrows climbed to her hairline, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Liam turn scarlet, but the Widow of Westforks charged on, patting her daughter’s hand.

“I can only hope Crissa finds a man so decent. This will be her first season out in society, you know.”

“Ah.”

Enya clasped her hand over her mouth to physically hold in her glee.

Crissa Blakwell could be no more than a year her senior, if not her junior, but it seemed if Lady Blakwell could not have Lord Ryerson for her own, she had no qualms about offering up her daughter.

The absurdity of it nearly had Enya in stitches.

“Well, I wish you much luck this season, Miss Crissa.”

“Might we see you at Lord Thornson’s ball?” Lady Blakwell pressed.

“Perhaps.”

Enya seized her opportunity. “Oh Father! We must go. It’s the first of the season.”

Liam was gaping at her like a fish, but the steel in her father’s gaze said he knew exactly what she was up to.

“It will be a grand affair. That is, if any provisions can be found.” Lady Blakwell sniffed disdainfully, casting a look around the street.

“We don’t normally frequent this part of town, but it seems Master Copinger has cleaned the upper town out.

Preparing for a great host at the Morning Glory, it seems.”

Her father blinked in surprise. “A great host?”

“I can’t say for certain, my lord, I’ve heard only rumors.” Lady Blakwell stepped closer, lowering her voice. “It seems the Testing comes early this year.”

Any trace of amusement vanished. Beside her, Liam shuddered. Crissa gulped audibly.

Aside from merchants and peddlers, the only other reliable visitors to Westforks were the king’s wielders. Every year, they made a sweep of the realm to collect any who had developed one of the elven gifts for His Majesty’s service.

The spark was inborn, but the gifts did not emerge until a wielder reached adulthood.

Even then, their appearance remained unpredictable.

Sometimes, the gifts could skip generations or entire branches of family trees.

Sometimes, the same blood that gave one branch one gift would give another something different entirely.

Still, in other families, they ran true from parent to child.

They claimed it was dangerous to have wielders running about untrained and Pallas Davolier didn’t care where the wielding gifts came from - he took them all. It was perhaps the single greatest equalizer in all of Estryia. Lowborn or high, it didn’t matter when the Testing came.

The Testing itself was simple enough. One only had to hold the Testing rod and await the wielder’s judgment.

Enya had held it thrice before, and thrice the black coated party had gone on their way.

But it was what would happen if they found a gift and named her Recruit that left her mouth too dry to speak.

The only thing more feared in Estryia than the bone white Testing rod was the silver Recruit’s collar. Not much was known about how the artifacts imbued by the wielders worked, but everyone shuddered at the tales of those wretched things being clasped around throats .

They were said to forge some kind of link between the Wielder and the Recruit, yielding control of their gift.

But the forging... The king’s wielders needed no chains or irons on Testing day, not when they came armed with silver.

And even if the sycophants called it training, in the twenty or so years since Pallas Davolier had been pressing wielders into his service, not one had ever returned home.

Knowing a demi-elf had heard her gift, even if it was not a wielding gift, made icy rivulets of sweat run down her spine.

“Terrible isn’t it, to have children of Testing age? A mother worries so. But there has never been a wielder in my line. House Blakwell, well. I can’t say my late husband’s family was always so scrupulous.” She sniffed again. “And your own house, my lord? Has Ryerson House ever been cursed?”

“Not that the records show, my lady.”

She patted the girl’s hand. “See here, Crissa. A good, decent man from good, pure stock. Good riddance, I say, to the leashed ones. Let them stamp out the mixed blood. We’re all better for it.”

Lady Blakwell’s sentiment was not uncommon in Estryia, but it still made Enya flinch. She’d only ever known one boy to be collared, and the Coblegh family was what Enya would consider good stock.