Truth in Cinders

Crouching alongside her at the hearth, he looked up with vivid blue eyes. “Help me, girl. They want to kill me.”

Coin-pinchers are getting more bold and violent these days. Condrie flapped her hand to draw him toward the center of the room.

The gentleman helped her slide the heavy table aside. She plucked up an iron ring in the floor’s hatch. He didn’t balk at the dark pit. He didn’t hesitate to plunge blindly into the root cellar with the barley stalks, juniper berries, cardamom pods, and radishes. Enough of a glow came from the smoldering fireplace to see the top of his head. Shaggy, pale hair was like fronds of wheat crouching among the bitter vegetables.

Condrie let the hatch fall. The table was too heavy to drag back into place by herself, so she adjusted the stools and then dropped a sack full of lemons over the hatch’s iron ring.

Someone knocked on the back door.

Condrie swallowed her heart back down into her chest.

“Open in the name of King Davarche of Xol,” demanded an angry voice. Several others muttered outside.

She frowned to wonder why agents of the kingdom to the south had ventured so far from their domain. Briefly she wished for the courage to shout at them, Go away, your hornets! You have no business here!

Condrie slid aside the plank that bolted the door.

Knights of Xol entered the kitchen—tall, muscled beings clothed in the dark wool of foreign rams. Metallic chips were riveted to the shoulder pads of their coats and the bracers on their forearms. Crescent gorgets hung over their chests. Their heavy boots pounded on the hard floor. Seven of them—seven soldiers and seven swords—entered to poke around. One stayed outside to watch the street.

One beardless knight spoke in a strong, clear voice. “We’re looking for a gentleman. Have you seen or heard someone of quality run by?”

A woman! In the identical stiff uniform as the others, and with the mannerisms of a cavalryman, Condrie had not recognized this knight’s sex until she spoke.

Condrie shook her head to answer. She continued gawking, not only because a woman bore arms in service of the southern king, but she had the exotic look of a foreigner. She had wide-set pale eyes, a blunt nose, caramel-toned skin, and auburn hair that she had chopped short to the collar like the other knights.

“Is your mother at home, girl?”

My mother is dead. I’m an orphan. I just work in the kitchen here. Too many words, too much explanation clogged up at the back of her tongue. Again, she shook her head to answer.

The woman knight stepped in closer to stare down at Condrie’s upraised eyes. “Are you a mute?”

“N-n-n-n-no . . . I-I-I-I. . . .” She balled her fists, silently cursing her stubborn tongue. Of all the times for it to fail! Why could the words never make the journey smoothly from her mind to her mouth? Especially at a time like this. They’ll think I’m nervous; they’ll think I’m hiding something.