by S E Zbasnik
Hayley cracked open the first seal by wiggling her thumbnail under it and popping the wax free. Unraveling the fold, she read, “‘To Ser Gavin, It is with greatest hopes that I request your service in the…”
“Skip it,” his voice called. Hayley hadn’t even bothered using her fledgling literacy skills. Damn near half the letters began that way, begging Gavin to leap to their far side of the kingdom to solve some dispute, or act as champion for a minor scuffle.
The next letter bore a bright red blob of wax, but the seal wasn’t the usual knight crest. It looked as if someone pressed a thumb into it, which had to be painful. Tugging that thumb seal off, Hayley began to scrutinize the letters that formed words.
“My dearest Gavin, This winter is becoming un…unbear able. Oh, unbearable. Every frozen day with nougat but…wait, no that’s naught. Every frozen day with naught but the winter winds and blanketing snow. Every unending night without your chiseled body pressed to my bosom. How I—”
“Wait, wait!” A flurry of hands caused Hayley to look up. Her knight, dressed in only his long, woolen tunic and leggings came barreling from his room. His fingers cinched tight to the letter and pulled so hard it nearly ripped in half. Hayley let go just before she was left with the bottom bits.
Breath buffeted from his mouth as if he just ran around the estate chasing Finn, his cheeks redder than any cold could cause. “This is…it’s…” He gasped, his amber eyes engulfed in the words wrenched from Hayley’s grasp. Shaking it off, he crushed the letter closed and hid it behind his back, “You need not read aloud the ones I receive from that address.”
“Okay.” She blew her breath through her cupped lips, having no idea what the address was. Hayley rarely bothered looking as she had a hard enough time with the words inside. Outside was Devon’s problem.
“Here,” Gavin reached out and greedily scooped up the other letters, “I’ll read them myself.”
He very obviously hid the forbidden letter at the bottom of the pile. Gavin gave a once over to the about-to-be kindling one asking for his assistance before he moved to the third. Less than gracefully splitting it open, his eyes ripped through the words before he paused and turned the outside around to spy the seal. “I’d hoped,” he whispered to himself before shaking it away. “Hopes are for fools, dreams doubly so.” That last part he spoke as if they were someone else’s words.
“Ser?” Hayley tipped her head to the side in confusion.
Gavin seemed to come back from wherever he vanished from that third letter. “Ah, it’s…something my grandmother would say. She was a bit of a fatalist.”
“She killed people?” Hayley gasped, trying to work her mind around the idea of a little old lady, brown skin more wrinkled than chipped beef, jabbing a sword through some guy’s throat.
“No,” Gavin chuckled, “It’s…it’s not important. For now, we continue to watch and wait.”
Despite being fully lost, Hayley bobbed her head. This must be one of those politic things. What with her having to learn how to fight, how to read, how to feed fat geese, how to cook, how to clean, and how to maintain arms and armor, that whole other side of being an on-call soldier fell by the wayside. There was one harried night as the snow rampaged from the clouds when Gavin and another dusky knight of the lion order sat beside the fire speaking only in harried whispers. Whatever it was, Hayley never learned, and she assumed the problem fixed itself. Maybe that wasn’t so true.
“Ser, should I…?” She jerked her thumb back to the pile of still drying weapons.
“Yes, yes,” Gavin bobbed his head, Hayley turning to her duties, when he suddenly coughed, “Squire.” She spun back fearing she missed something important, but it was a humorous smile rising on his cheek. Reaching towards her, he deposited the last letter in her fingers. “This one is for you.”
For her? Sunlight bounded off block letters inked onto the parchment, the sum of which Hayley only came to recognize as her name a month or so ago. She twisted the folded up piece of vellum around, worrying the ends as if that was how to open it.
Amber eyes darted over his brows. “Well, do you intend to read it or rip it to shreds?”
“Sorry,” she mumbled, but…she could rip it apart, couldn’t she? It was hers. Sort of. Maybe it was a mistake. Or the Knight-Captain was sending marching orders. No reason for Erin to not go through Gavin, but it could be her way of sniffing out who in the order was illiterate.
Gratefulness that Gavin caught her earlier swelled inside of Hayley as she slit open the seal. She’d do more than just surprise Erin, she’d one up her. Send back a letter handwritten by the lowly squire herself. That’d teach her.
Her eyes darted past her name again, no honorific there — certainly not a miss, but not a squire either. The first line was nothing exciting, “Good morrow. I hope the days find you well.”
What was this? Sliding quickly past a lot of meandering nothing, Hayley slammed upon the signature at the bottom. She had to twist the vellum around to make it out, the loops and whorls coming together to form a pattern.
“Marco?” she gasped in surprise. Her knight humphed at that, not an angry one or surprise, more like he had to pass gas politely. “Why would Marco…? A letter for me, I don’t—?”
“Perhaps you should read it first,” Gavin said, jabbing a finger to the parchment.
She wished she could say enlightenment dawned upon her after the first paragraph of banal greetings but every one following it was more of the same. Littered throughout were random tidbits about him, how his days as a squire were going, and questions. Lots of questions about her.
“He wants to know how I’m doing,” Hayley stuttered. “Why does he give a shit?”
Gavin flinched at her cursing, then he picked up the letter and read through a few lines. “Ah,” he said after a moment, depositing the confounding sentences back in Hayley’s mitts.
“Ah? What ah? What’s it all about?”
“He is…” For a breath, his eyes darted down to the letter he tried to hide away under the others. “It is normal for squires to maintain a relation… friendship. Communicate at the very least.”
“Why?”
That gave Gavin pause, the man surrounded by people who adored him turning towards her. Sadness clung to his brow which only furrowed Hayley’s more. “You never know who you will need to watch your back one day, Squire. You should write back to him.”
Her head bobbed, trying to take in the words, when Hayley flushed. “I’ve never. I don’t know how to…write a letter.” She twiddled with the parchment in her fingers, the first message ever sent to her.
“Tell him of yourself, answer his questions and ask your own. That should fill in for the first one.”
“First one?!” she gasped. Writing out all those complicated words and sentences seemed like a monumental task. The idea of doing another after was bonkers.
Gavin looked up from his letters, a bittersweet smile on his lips. “I suspect there will be many more from the young man.”
Whatever. Hayley folded the letter up into a tight square and stuffed it into her pocket. She’d get to it later, probably while her hair was wet from the bath and the fire on its way out. Was that something to mention in her writing? Would he care?
At least it wasn’t Larissa. God, did she have to write to other squires too? How could she put anything down to the viper that wasn’t just Hayley swiping the parchment over horse shit? Come to think of it…
She moved to peer out the window of their little kitchen when Hayley spotted Ania furiously signing something at Finn. Ah, right. “Ser,” Hayley began, spinning to her knight. “Ania asked if I…”
His normally stoic face lifted from the letter — the one Hayley wasn’t supposed to read — and she almost gasped at the emotion brewing below. Despite Gavin constantly having nobles slapping his back, and fancy women smothered in perfume flocking to his side, he looked lonely. Isolated and morose.
Adjusting her brain, Hayley continued,
“She wondered if we wanted to eat at the main house before dinner. There’s some fancy recipe she’s got to test.”
He could say no. He would sometimes because he didn’t trust her near any of the silverware. Even the high holiday meals Hayley ate with a clay spoon and nothing else.
“Very well, Squire. I’m certain whatever Ania has cooked up is delicious.”
“Really? The way she was bouncing around while asking, I figure there’s half a dead rat inside a pie,” Hayley muttered to herself, but Gavin laughed at the charming impudence.
“Even if so, Ania shall make it taste wonderful But before you can leave, you should finish drying and honing the blades. Then scrub the floors and counters.”
Hayley bowed deeply, but snickered, “Should I make you a pair of glass slippers while at it?”
“The scrubbing will be enough,” Gavin sighed while waving a hand over her nearly bent in half form, “Squire.”
While he sat in his chair, eyes devouring the secret letter, Hayley rose from her bow and snapped to the swords beaded in melted snow. Inside her mind, she churned over how to write a letter to Marco. To any boy, really. Maybe she should ask Finn for suggestions. He was a boy too, they probably spoke the same smelly, thick-hided language of grunts and farts.
It provided a distraction from that other message in Gavin’s lap, the one with a seal from the Commander of every order of Knights himself. The one that didn’t seem to come with a happy ending.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Anchor the thumb.
No, first make a little bridge with the fingers for the jabby part of the arrow to rest upon. Now pull back. Far. Farther. Not that far.
Now comes the thumb anchoring bit.
Hayley dug the entire side of her offending digit deep into her bony jawline, her upper arm waggling about as she sighted down the shaft of wood to a bale of straw down the lane. An old, tattered blanket hung upon the straw bale, giving her something to aim for.
Last step, let go.
Opening her fingers, the arrow wobbled through the air and struck right at the top of the bale. Well, at least it didn’t fly clean over like the last two. Her elbow was too high, her strength was in her shoulder, not her arm. Or whatever it was Gavin would shout at her until he too accepted it was hopeless and wandered off.
Hayley reached under her waist but her fingers didn’t scatter over any fletching. She must have used up all her arrows. Of the ten entrusted to her, only three remained punctured into the bale, the rest returned to the forest. Groaning, she stomped through the wafting grass towards the target. Her knight’s secret shooting range was perched upon a hill that overlooked the road. A ring of trees kept the area not easily climbable, but anyone wandering down the King’s Highway would spot the lone girl in battered blue cap and tan linens failing at archery.
At least the day was nice. The last of the snow finally succumbed to spring’s sun, tufts of green emerging from the dead browns of winter. She hadn’t even been told to go and practice her archery, Hayley asking of her own free will if she could head out. Gavin seemed uncertain of her request, the unspoken question of why ringing in the air.
Rather than wait for him to ask if she had some secret cache of stolen goods or a contact to meet, Hayley admitted that as bad as she was at it, she liked the bow. Mostly because she was a lot less likely to wind up on her ass while using it. That must have been enough as he let her go, though…
After fishing free the last of her strikes, Hayley peered around the stacked bales to try to find the misses. A yellow skirt flared its way through the forest. Seemed Gavin sent someone to keep an eye on her. Trying to not care about the slight, Hayley bent down to fish up her arrows.
Most were kind enough to land in the dirt behind the bale, their bright black feathers with green and yellow stripes calling to her. But two were missing. Hayley counted again just to make certain. Eight. Definitely less than ten. And they’d probably fallen further down the hill.
Before she began to give chase, her interloper appeared through the copse of trees. Hayley lifted her hand and waved to Ania. She tried to give the signal for good afternoon, but in jangling her arms the bow threatened to slap into her face. Pawing it away in annoyance, Hayley turned just in time to watch the girl bend over.
From the dirt at her feet, Ania lifted up one of the missing arrows. “All right!” Hayley shouted, running to her side.
“I take it this is yours?” Ania asked, gently twirling the sneaky thing around in her palm.
“Yup.”
“It seems to be off course.” Her glittering eyes darted towards the piles of straw before returning to Hayley.
With the great bundle of arrows, Hayley scratched nine pointed ends to her cheek and she shrugged. “I still haven’t found the last one…” Eh, she could always look later. Nine were enough for a second round. Hayley started to walk up the hill backwards while facing Ania.
“What brings you out here? Is my knight frothing in his armor?”
“No, no.” She picked up the ends of her dress, trying to keep them from dragging in the spring mud. “I only wished to…” whatever she wanted to say froze as Ania paused right beside the straw targets.
“Wished to…?” Hayley waved her arrows around before jamming each one into the ground. She stood at the line but kept the bow strung across her shoulders. Shooting was not a good idea as long as Ania was standing anywhere other than far behind her. Even that being a safe spot was debatable at times.
“To…see you?” Ania threw out and Hayley snorted.
“You see me all the time. Usually running from one end of Assburr manor to the other…”
Ania stepped closer to Hayley, her head cocked in confusion. “Assburr?”
“Ya know,” Hayley yanked her first sacrifice out of the ground and nocked it into the bow without giving any pull. She turned around to finish talking to Ania, “‘Cause it’s Ashburn. Lady Duchess Bernadine Ashburn the first…esquire. Fancy fart blah.”
“I caught the pun, if it could be called as such, only…”
Hayley twisted back to line up her shot. Arm down this time, stop waggling the elbow near the ear. Anchor the thumb. “Only what?”
“It seems like something Finn would say.”
Her fingers slipped, the arrow flopping out of her grip like a rock hurled from a left hand. It dug into the ground uprooting a bundle of grassroots in the process. “Finn? No. Why would…I don’t talk to him. Unless he makes me. That’s all. I came up with it on my own.” Did she? “He’s a butt no matter how you look at it.”
With that, Hayley spun back to face the pristine target, trying to hide away the char on her cheeks.
Ania sighed. “That is certainly a fact.”
“And he’s always picking on me. Picking at me. Like it’s funny. ‘Ho ho, let’s do shit to Hayley when she can’t say or do nothing to stop me.’ Height of hilarity.” That arrow embedded deep into the straw nearly up to the feathers.
“They say that boys who pick on girls do it because…” Ania’s throat cleared, causing Hayley to fully turn to her. “Because they like them.”
“That’s stupid. I hate it, and I hate that he does it. Only dumb boys would think of that shite,” she growled, her face pickled at the thought. Sometimes he wasn’t such a pain in the ass, and others he was kidnapping her on his damn horse. She only got him back tit for tat, but Finn didn’t seem to get the hint to knock it off.
Growling internally at the copper-headed thorn in her side, Hayley slotted back into position. The nocked arrow rolled in her wobbly grip, her arms beginning to burn as she held onto the pose for longer and longer. She was tired of getting it wrong.
“Here,” Ania gripped onto Hayley’s extended elbow and gently tugged it back and down. “Like that.”
Hayley’s cautious eye burned through the girl, but she didn’t move her elbow back up. Struggling to find her damn aim again, Hayley released her grip. The arrow flew more straight, though it began to fall and
landed under the bullseye — which was a yellow stain on the blanket.
“Build up your muscle tension and it shouldn’t be a problem,” Ania said with a laugh, but Hayley turned to cast a shrewd glance over her. “What?”
“What what? You just happen to know how to shoot a bow and arrow. Happen to know about staffs and stuff. Happen to know about Gavin’s secret knight training place.” She folded the bow across her chest and stuck a foot back, “Who are you?”
“No one…”
“Uh uh. Can’t feed me the bullshit that no-one knows all of that stuff without being someone.”
Ania rubbed her dish-stained hands together, her eyes darting clear around the hill without landing on Hayley. She was shit at lying, that much was obvious. “I’m…” her feet tapped on the ground and Ania sputtered fast, “I always wanted to be a knight, a squire like you.”
“You want to be…”
“I know, it’s silly. Stupid, really. But I’d ask various knights to teach me a few things. Little things here and there. When Ser Gavin arrived I thought it was the,” her rapid confession paused as she smiled wide, “the greatest day of my life. He was willing to train me in defense, but…” Now the storm clouds moved in, Ania fading. “But he did not think it wise for someone like me to attack willingly. To know of the offensive moves. That it’d put me in too much danger.”
Hayley jammed a fist to her hip. “That’s stupid. Why…?” Her brain rattled around the fact that here was a girl who not only already knew some of the shit to being a squire, but was clearly enamored enough with Gavin to listen to him. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about her stealing all his coin in the middle of the night and pulling a runner.
“Why aren’t you his squire?” she asked the world. Instead of the scraggly pickpocket he got saddled with, he could have had a perfect apprentice right at home. “Is it the whole…” Hayley pointed towards Ania’s ear but paused as the girl fully flinched.
“Perhaps it is why he is unwilling to teach me some techniques, but I could…I could never become a squire, much less a knight.”
