Havoc's Daughters

Chapter 3 - Blade: Day 1 (part II)...safety?

Following his cousin’s gaze from his position on the floor, Blade saw Father was staring at a man lying unconscious on the next pallet. 

Raven black hair contrasted against the deathly pallor of the man’s skin. If not for the shallow rise of his chest with each slow breath, Blade would have thought him dead.

Had thought him dead.

The sight was so unexpected, it took Blade a moment to recognize him. 

Cousin Caidrin, the healer, was on her feet in an instant. Looking slim and unyielding as swordsteel, she stood between her looming king and a man who had carried a price on his head, in Cumbera, for most of her life. She was as pale, now, as the man on the pallet, but stood resolute. 

“The people who are brought to me for care have my protection,” she said. “They are mine until such time as they choose to leave.”

“Even Havoc?” Father asked, his cold eyes narrowing.

Caidrin gave no answer. She knew defying Father only made him more determined in his course. Blade had, on occasion, seen her manipulate that habit to get what she really wanted. Having acted without thought, she now dared say nothing that would trigger Father’s instinct. But neither was she willing to give the patient up.

And Blade, watching sovereign and niece exchange stares as each awaited the other’s next move, thought:  Especially Havoc.

Of course. She’s only two years older than I. She’s been raised on the same legend. Even in the convent, she must have heard the stories. And Setigera’s summer lodge was on the bluff, right across the river….

It explained why the Cumberan army had arrived in Mirze Vale to find the Roenish forewarned, the bridge down, and the fords planted with sharpened stakes. 

An ugly thought occurred. Cousin Caidrin was both ruthless and subtle. Perhaps she doesn’t need me, after all?

A movement drew Blade’s attention to see a woman materialize in the shadowed entrance to the ward. She was dressed in a divided skirt of wool, and a belted linen tunic, both in earthen shades. Exactly like his cousin, in fact, less the veil. Well he remembered that unruly mop of sunset curls. 

Perhaps it was the Mist gathering at the periphery of his consciousness, the shadow of his own mortality. Blade had never before known anyone to grab his attention so thoroughly. She stood statue-still in the doorway, and yet seemed to him as vibrantly alive as a filly testing her fleetness against a spring breeze in a mountain meadow. His breath caught, and the moment held.

The confrontation that would determine the fate of her father consumed the young woman’s attention. She wore a dagger at her belt, his dagger, and Blade had no doubt she would apply it with a vengeance if Cousin Caidrin lost this fight. 

What was I thinking? 

Blade had never taken a woman by force. It was something his idol had never countenanced. And the woman who’d been more a mother to him than his own might have been decades gone, but he could imagine her horror and disappointment. And what was the point? The world held no shortage of willing wenches. 

Just as well she defended herself so ably. 

He remembered lifting a compact, struggling form…and nothing after. But his dagger in her belt was evidence enough she was responsible for his condition. Being near done to death by a woman was not nearly as dreadful as what might have happened had she been less adept with his knife. Imagine the embarrassment if he’d managed to make off with her, and then had to figure out what to do once he’d come to his senses!