Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(54)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

Betrys met her every blow with practiced ease. It hardly seemed like a fair match; Betrys had a solid five inches on the other girl, which meant she had the longer reach with the blade and Arianwen had to move faster, strike with more power, to even out that advantage.

 

Then again, I supposed, real fights were only ever fair by chance.

 

“She did say daylight, didn’t she?” Cabell asked, peering up at the sky. He was all but bouncing on his heels, as impatient as I was to get going.

 

“She did indeed,” I groused.

 

“And cease,” Bedivere said from behind us.

 

Both girls fell back, returning their wooden swords to a nearby rack. Betrys used the sleeve of her tunic to swipe the sweat from her brow, then wrapped an arm around the other priestess’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “I told you you’d have it in no time.”

 

Arianwen beamed, leaning into her. It was hard to tell if her face was sunburned or merely flushed from the training. “Are you off to the kitchen?”

 

“Cook awaits my skilled knife,” Betrys confirmed. “You?”

 

“Mari needs help with the laundering,” Arianwen said. “Are the two of you waiting for Cait?”

 

With my brain thick with fog, it took me a moment to realize she was talking to us.

 

“Yeah,” I said, a bit more harshly than I meant. “Unless we have different concepts of daybreak, she should have been here a while ago.”

 

Arianwen’s brows rose. “It’s not like her to be late—you don’t think she’ll need someone to go with her, do you?”

 

“I’ll be joining them,” Bedivere told her with a small, knowing smile.

 

“Yes,” Arianwen continued, “but are you absolutely certain—”

 

“It’s the laundry, Ari, not the gallows,” Betrys said, shaking her head.

 

“Easy for you to say—you won’t be smelling like lye for a fortnight,” Arianwen said.

 

“Yes, but you get to use the wash bats,” Betrys said, guiding her away. “I know how much you enjoy beating the dirt out of linens.”

 

Arianwen sniffed, her voice trailing off with her steps. “It is invigorating.”

 

“I’ll see if I can’t find Caitriona,” Bedivere told us, scratching at his white-tipped beard. “I’m certain she’s only making her morning rounds.”

 

“And here I was hoping she’d fallen into a well, never to be heard from again,” I muttered.

 

“We’re not going anywhere,” Cabell promised, elbowing me hard in the ribs.

 

I leaned back against the fence, too annoyed to respond. My eyes drifted around us, moving aimlessly over the stones and the blurs of people passing by.

 

While the cover of night had given the tower an air of hallowed mystery, the bleak light had burned that lie away.

 

Now its structures wore their raggedness as plainly as starved bodies. Sections of stones had been chiseled away, revealing desperate patch-up jobs, and more than a few walls slumped so badly they had to be braced. Mildew, rust, and soot smeared themselves over every surface, somehow giving the impression that everything was slowly sinking into a boggy abyss.

 

The banners depicting the Goddess’s symbol, a three-hearted knot at the center of an oak tree, hung listless in the still air.

 

Worse, patches of the Mother tree had turned a sickly gray, spotted with mushrooms. I didn’t need Neve to tell me that these fungi were likely eating the decay inside it. Even Deri looked weaker—the wooden parts of his body brittle. It didn’t escape my notice that several Avalonians were either studying the rot on the tree or working to help Deri try to cut it from the trunk.

 

I sighed, eyes skimming the courtyard again. Neve was still cheerfully greeting the horses that had been tethered outside of the stables, which stood on the other side of the training ring. They, along with the infirmary, were located behind the tower. According to Cabell, one of the stone buildings at the front of the tower was the kitchen, a cramped, boilingly hot space ruled by its cook, Dilwyn. She was an elfin, no bigger than a child, but she more than made up for her diminutive size with her no-nonsense personality.

 

Laundry, I presumed, could only be done in the springs, unless they wanted their clothing and sheets to come back with more bloodstains and fewer washers.

 

Waiting had also given us our first real opportunity to see and be seen by the survivors of Avalon. Most of them gave us a wide berth as they took their places on the wall or carried up water from the springs. Some watched with obvious curiosity, others with outright suspicion. Some even regarded us with terror, dropping their pails and tools to retreat into the tower.

 

The worst, though, were the faces that revealed nothing at all, as if the horror of what they’d confronted had hollowed them of spirit. They moved from task to task without lifting their eyes, like restless spirits imprisoned in a mindless loop, operating on pure muscle memory.

 

These people, though—they knew they were trapped. They’d utterly surrendered to it.

 

Cabell followed my gaze, his voice hardly a whisper. “How can this be Avalon?”

 

“Stories are always more beautiful than the truth,” I said. “That’s why Nash couldn’t bring himself to live in the real world.”

 

But perhaps he’d found himself trapped in this one. Caitriona’s words to me last night—I’ll take you to see your father—had implied that he wasn’t here, within the walls of the fortress, but some part of me had still expected to see his face among the others this morning. I wanted to enjoy his shocked reaction, dine on his disbelief.

 

I’d overheard Betrys and Bedivere discussing some sort of watch outpost in the forest as they’d set up for the session with Arianwen, and that seemed like our probable destination.

 

Cabell sighed. “It’s so strange to think he’s alive after all this time, and we’re going to see him. I’m not even sure what I’ll say.”

 

“I’m not going to say a word.” The hope I felt was tinged with bitterness, like the bite of a sour berry. “I’m going to punch him in the throat.”

 

He laughed. “Come on. You really think he’d willingly stay here if he had a way of getting back? Time works differently here. He could think only a few months have passed.”

 

Given how much we had changed in the last seven years, it was strange to think that Nash might look exactly as he had when he’d vanished. Even his old jacket—the one Cabell wore now—bore the marks of our travels and travails over the years, remolding itself to fit its new owner.