Lyara fumbled with the soggy quilt, not for the first time cursing her height.
Her mother used to assure her she’d grow. “We’re tall in this family,” she’d say, unconsciously straightening to increase her own respectable stature. “Our ancestors, on the other side of the ocean, they were warriors. Drink more Mucuna.”
Lyara scoffed as she heaved the quilt over the clothesline. Her ancestors had braved the sea and its monsters—running from that country—for a reason, and at twenty-four, going on twenty-five, she knew no amount of tea or anything else would change her fortunes. She’d just have to spend the rest of her life struggling with the wash.
“Here,” Adela said, grabbing hold of the one corner Lyara’d managed to flip over the line. “Let me.”
Lyara helped heave the freshly cleaned cloth over the clothesline anyway, as if that proved something. Her mother’s maid was five years her younger and already a handbreadth and a half taller. They had the same black hair, though, and the same white skin and round, light blue eyes—most strangers mistook them for sisters.
Adela fished a clothespin from her apron pocket and leaned towards Lyara as she secured the quilt. “He’s still watching us.”
Lyara sniffed and looked over her shoulder.
Her father owned a large house at the edge of the Inner Circle—that left their lives comfortable, though still filled with the menial chores the wealthier paid others to do. Their clothesline ran from the wall of their second story to the post set in the court square fountain, one of a dozen in this tight-packed neighborhood.
All the grey stone buildings were houses, but a few families made their living by turning the lower floor into a business. Lyara had the fortune of living beside the bakery, while across the street sat the only bar permitted to operate within walking distance of her district.
A single soldier—his crimson cloak and his white tunic, with the blackbird and crossmarks, gave him away—sat on the ground beside the bar’s now closed door. He might’ve been her age, but the well-trimmed black beard on his cheeks made him look older. His long, dark hair was greasy, pulled back and hastily tied, but his bright green eyes watched her and Adela work with a soft smile. Like a pilgrim gazing at the sunrise.
Lyara shook her head and pulled one of her mother’s dresses from the laundry basket to hang it on the line beside the quilt. Any decent man would’ve put three hours of work behind him by this time of morning. Or, he’d at least have climbed out of the bar’s shadow and looked toward the mountains to watch the actual sky.
But, uselessness was not a crime—a lucky thing, the city of Edras would be a den of criminals if it were.
“I don’t like it,” Adela whispered, stealing glances in the soldier’s direction as though he were a rabid dog that might notice and snap at her. “What’s he doing?”
Lyara grunted. “Working through a hangover, I expect.”
An entire troop had closed the bar last night, drinking the barrels dry, shouting and dancing in the streets into the dark of the wee morning hours. The din would have kept her up—revelers at the bar often did, no matter how much her mother complained—and made her cross, except this time her oil paintings did a better job. Her inspirations were so fickle lately, she’d taken to letting the muse consume her the rare occasions it reared its ugly head.
“He’s not right,” Adela said, hanging Lyara’s father’s shirt beside the dress.
Lyara tilted her head. “A soldier has more right to drink than most men.” Especially last night.
Avaron’s troops had won a decisive victory against a Lovarian raiding party by the Rohgen Mountains. A rarity—not the victory, but the fact King Hilderic had actually deployed men to defend the poor border towns at all. Lyara’s parents said Hilderic used to allocate resources equally among all his subjects, but in her years she’d only seen him expend effort on those citizens rich enough to pay him back.
“I’ll have to walk past him on the way home,” Adela continued, too worked up to keep her whisper. “What if he follows me?”
Lyara lowered the trousers she’d picked from the basket and gave Adela a smirk. “Do you want me to go talk to him? Tell him to leave?”
Surprise sprang in Adela’s eyes, which quickly turned to a conflicted sense of relief. “N-no. You’re probably right, it’s nothing.”
Lyara chuckled. She dropped the trousers, wiped her hands dry on her pastel violet skirt, and turned to stride across the courtyard.
“Wait!” Adela called out, then yelped and covered her mouth as her voice echoed within the small ring of houses. Lyara didn’t turn back.
“Hey,” she said, stopping less than a stone’s throw from the soldier to cross her arms. “My friend doesn’t appreciate how you’ve been staring at us. Maybe it’s about time you went home, huh?”
The man held her gaze, his grin widening the longer she spoke. “No trouble. I wasn’t watching her, anyways.”
She rolled her eyes. “Watching, like what? A ravenous wolf?”
He kept staring, with that stupid grin. “Like a damned fool trying to pluck up the courage to go talk to you.”
She wouldn’t give away her good graces that easily. “Look, I appreciate your service, but don’t you have somewhere to be?”
The soldier just shook his head.
Lyara frowned, scanning him up and down. Dried mud splattered his riding pants and boots, brown splotches of blood stained his white tunic, and he even had a bandage wrapped around his left forearm. Apparently, he wasn’t habitually useless. A half-empty bottle of whiskey sat on the street at his side.
She scoffed. “Isn’t it a bit early for drinking?”
“Early?” He picked up the bottle, sloshing the amber liquid within before returning it to its place beside his leg. “I assure you, milady, I started drinking at the proper time and I simply haven’t finished yet.”
She sighed. Adela was a poor judge of character—too nervous to see the kindness in this man’s eyes—but that didn’t make his behavior any less despicable. “How much overindulgence do you need to celebrate killing?”
The smile faded from the soldier’s eyes for the first time, and she was almost sad to see it go. “I kill, sure, but I don’t celebrate that. I celebrate because what I killed won’t have the chance to kill you.”
She lowered her arms, her heart softening. “What’s your name?”
The soldier’s smile returned, tinged with disappointment. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
Lyara frowned, studying his face again. She ought to be able to place those striking green eyes in her memory, but she couldn’t. A past suitor, possibly? She’d had her share—usually the better-off in the Outer Circle, trying to marry their way deeper into Edras. The unwed daughter of a successful merchant was a worthy pursuit. Though, none were rich enough that her father insisted she entertain them, and few suitably captured her attention to court her more than one or two dates.
The soldier laughed, fully smiling again, and pointed to an upper window in the house beside the bar. “I used to watch you from up there. Still like a damned fool, just a lot younger so I might have had a better excuse.” He pointed next to the alley beside Lyara’s house. “Back there, you knocked Gode Evrich on his ass after he pulled your pig tails. And Mhiler took the fall for it, but I know you were the one who goaded him into filling the fountain with weaver’s dye on Iverset.”
Lyara caught herself smiling, too. “We went to school together?”
“Until fifth year. My father remarried that summer and we moved deep into the Inner Circle.”
She squinted at his face, trying to picture all her old classmates. It wasn’t easy—fifth year was a long time ago, and only a man grew a beard like that.
“Dradge,” the soldier said with a laugh. “Son of Rhowan.”
“Rhowan!” She remembered that name—everyone in the neighborhood remembered those of their peers who succeeded in the generational quest to creep closer to the castle Avtalyon.
Dradge nodded sheepishly. “No one here seems to forget my father…”
“Haven’t you been home? I’m sure he’s waiting for you.”
“Nah. I’m not welcome there any longer.”
She pursed her lips, unsure whether to offer sympathy or think he deserved it. “Sharp as a cane rod, gentle as the growing field, a father molds the clay of his children into the statues of men,” she said, quoting A Poor Son’s Dialog.
Dradge grimaced, as though struck. “Oh, don’t tell me you spend your time these days reading that shit. Please.” He resettled in his seat, grasping the whiskey bottle by the stem. “Actually, if you do, just let me down now and I’ll get back to my drinking.”
She laughed heartily. It’d been a long time since she’d done that. “My father encouraged me to memorize different passages, he thought it’d help attract a suitor of a higher station. Though, I do enjoy a little of Ivard of Gebrama’s Summerwind.”
“Yeah?” Dradge peered up at her, ragged grin spreading across his face. “Summerwind is poetry, right?”
“Mostly.”
He nodded, relaxing his grip on the whiskey bottle. “I can work with poetry.”
She shook her head, still smiling to herself. “You eaten breakfast?”
“Nope.”
She offered him her hand. “My mother’s always happy to cook something.”
“Gods Lyara, I’m drunk! I’m not meeting your parents.”
She re-folded her arms. “So you want to keep sitting there in the dirt? Adela’s going to have to walk past soon and she very much wanted me to chase you off. Besides, my father’s away on business.”
“Yeah?”
She held out her hand again, more forcefully this time. “Just leave the bottle.”