At last the guard was focused on him. Almost shocked to see him.
Garmand was much better at swordwork than the other two, and Luc was not at his best. His ribs were on fire, but his arm was strong enough, and there seemed to be a warmth emanating from the cut on his forearm which Ava had sewn for him.
In a sudden flight of fancy, he imagined the warmth as extra strength and accuracy, helping guide his arm as he fought, and once it was in his head, he couldn't shake it.
He gasped with pain as he ducked down to avoid Garmand's swing, his ribs lighting up in agony, but it was worth it to set up the counter swing, coming up from below. He felt the sword bite through the thick fabric of Garmand's tunic, into the flesh and muscle of his side, and then he was standing over Garmand's body, breath sawing in and out of his lungs.
Garmand stared up at him from the ground, eyes dulling.
Ava came to stand beside him.
“They thought they were clever. That he would . . .” Garmand coughed. “Kill. You.”
Ava said nothing.
“Why would I kill her?” Luc had wondered at this logic from the start.
“They think everyone is like them,” Ava said.
“Dangerous . . .” Garmand's eyelids flickered and then he stopped talking.
“Let's take their cloaks, use them to slip out of the castle.” Ava turned to the first guard Luc had killed. She crouched beside him, unpinning his cloak, and delving into his tunic to retrieve her scrap of fabric.
Instead of pocketing it, as he thought she would, she moved to the burning torch one of the guards had slid into a bracket on the wall.
She hesitated a moment, looking back at the guard. “I'm so tempted to leave it, but my grandmother always said we should be careful to never leave deliberate traps, lest they come to haunt our dreams.” She dropped the fabric into the flame and then pulled the cloak around herself.
Luc stared at the sudden flare of light as the fabric caught in the fire and then rolled Garmand to the side to get his cloak off him.
“What was that all about?” he asked as he pinned it at his throat and then chose the middle guard for his boots, as they looked like the most likely to fit him. “Why are they scared of you?”
She was straightening her disguise and her lips twisted in a wry smile. “The Herald told them stories about me. To keep them from befriending me.” She lifted the hood of the cloak and looked down at the three bodies on the ground. “That didn't go as I thought it would, but the result is the same. We are alive, and they are dead.”
When her gaze lifted and rested on him, he felt the weight of it. He was being evaluated afresh.
“You didn't behave as I thought.” Her voice was a low murmur. “But that is neither of our faults. We don't know each other well, and have never fought together before.” She inclined her head as if absolving him of something. “And you don't know my training or my skills.” She shrugged. “We will do better next time.”
Better?
Luc stared around the room. As she said, they were alive, the enemy was dead.
That's as good as it got.
She turned and started walking back down the passage, and he noticed a slight hitch in her step as she passed her mother's chamber.
“The general ordered them down here, so there will be others coming to check on them when they don't report back.”
She was right, and he set after her at a fast clip, leaving the dead behind him.
Chapter 5
It was the perfect time to escape.
Dusk had settled over the fortress in all its dark blue-and-gray shadowed glory, with the bright pink and orange of the sunset high in the sky an extra distraction.
Ava led the way, although it had been some time since she had been allowed through the halls and passageways of the building. Those occasions had been early on in her incarceration, when Herron had wanted her brought to him while he sat in pomp and circumstance, to show all around him, but especially her, that he was the one in charge.
Being dragged down the stairs into Herron's presence had stopped abruptly after six months, and she had always wondered if word had gotten out about her presence here—rumors or gossip—because of the many eyes on her in those audiences with the Herald.
Now she wondered if it was because her mother was being held below, and he didn't need to intimidate her anymore.
Whatever the reason, she remembered most of the twists and turns.
The time of day meant most people were either preparing for the evening meal or ending their work, and she and Luc were able to slip through the jostle of people moving in and out of the many entrances.
She had lifted the hood of the cloak and kept her head down. If anyone looked closer, she hoped the short, cropped style of her hair would look similar to some of the younger recruits who were shaved completely when they were inducted, to prevent the spread of lice.
Luc was a silent shadow at her heels.
She didn't know how someone so big could be so silent, and she thought of her careful plans, ruined by him earlier, and almost shook her head.
She hoped the guard she'd spelled was about to turn on his own friends. If it had worked, Luc could have easily mopped up the leftovers, but instead he'd struck the weapon she'd created down first, rendering him useless.
Her mother had always insisted that only black silk could be used, but she had used her own hair when Herron had taken her thread away, and it had worked fine. So well, he kept her hair shaved ever since.
If Luc had waited just another moment, she would have known if the plain cotton she'd used on the guard had worked, too.
She forced herself to relax and unclench her jaw.
It had ended well, and unless she planned to tell him what she had done, she should be grateful they’d escaped without her having to explain anything away.
She might still have to explain the wound she had stitched. But maybe not.
He might not notice the improvements.
She didn't have enough experience to know if the results of her needlework faded over time. She had always assumed they did, but everything she'd ever created had been taken from her or destroyed, so she had no way of knowing.
Her grandmother's things had lasted a very long time, but as she'd seen with the unpicked cloak wrapped around her mother's body, even that could be undone.
And her mother . . . her mother had had a fear of her own power and strength, and had tried to chain Ava's, as well. She had never worked anything unless there was no other choice.
It had taken Ava years to work out her mother had been kidnapped when she was young. Ava's grandfather had rescued her before her captors had reached their destination, but it had made her mother cautious beyond normal bounds. Whatever had happened to her on the road had had a profound effect on her.
Even as a child, Ava had understood her mother balanced on the knife-edge of fear, lifting and setting down needlework over and over, without making a single stitch.
Her father's response had been to soothe his wife, and order the servants to pack her sewing away.
To Ava, he told her to learn what she could without her mother, and out of her mother's sight. There would always be those who would try to use her, and the more she understood about herself, the less they could.
Her grandmother had begged Ava's mother to allow her to show Ava what she could do, but her mother had been too afraid for Ava to accept.