Dradge muttered curses as he stubbed his foot on the guest room door frame.
“Sorry,” Lyara said, helping him the rest of the way to the bed.
The cover was another of her mother’s quilts, colorful and intricate in its design but dusty from lack of use. Guest rooms only had purpose when guests visited, and in recent months those who could afford to avoided travel. The centaurs were the newest scourge, years before that vicious talking animals—the nostkynna—had dogged roads instead. But not in Edras, of course.
Dradge sucked in a sharp breath as he lowered himself onto the bed. He offered her a smile, and almost hid the way pain tightened the creases beside his eyes. “See? No trouble.”
On the opposite side of the small room, Adela pulled back the curtains to let the last burning rays of the evening sunlight warm the air. Then, she plopped down in the upholstered armchair in the corner.
“You won’t even notice me,” Adela said, meeting Lyara’s gaze in apology. She pulled a newly started knitting square, needles, and a roll of yarn from her apron pocket. “I hope you aren’t mad at me for agreeing to this, but your mother pays well. I promise, I’m on your side, really. I’ll have nothing to say unless she presses me.”
Lyara scoffed, cheeks flushing with heat, and made a point to leave Dradge’s side and wander to the other end of the room. “We’re not going to do anything.” She fiddled with the unlit oil lamp on the bedside table.
Adela just nodded and turned furiously to her knitting. “Pretend I’m not even here.”
Eyebrows raised, Dradge glanced at Adela sitting in the corner. When she didn’t look up from her knitting needles, he shrugged, then hauled himself onto the bed and leaned back against the headboard. He sighed contentedly and shut his eyes.
Lyara watched him, not sure if she wanted to let him rest or if she was ticked at him for trying. “How’d you hurt your leg?”
“Trampled,” he said, not opening his eyes.
“You were trampled? By your own men?”
He chuckled. “They can’t always help it. But no.”
Old fears stirred in her heart, and she sank to a seat on the bed. “…what are they like?”
He opened his eyes, slowly, and stared pensively at his own feet. “Big.”
She started to grin, ready to poke fun at his answer, but he continued.
“Stronger than me. Faster than most cavalry mounts, too. I would’ve been fine, but the thing got me in the chest with the butt end of a pole-arm and knocked me off my horse.” He tugged down the loose collar of his shirt, and Lyara gasped as that revealed a horrid black and purple bruise. It covered nearly his entire chest.
She reached for him, as if to mend it, then hesitated. She was useless when it came to things like this.
He looked at her, somewhere between amused and pensive, as he resettled his shirt. “It’s fine. Hit the hard part in the center, didn’t break anything.”
Lyara could only stare at that bruise, then at his bandaged-and-splinted leg, heart aching with the pain she’d buried while watching the procession, waiting to see if he’d come home at all. “It doesn’t bother you?”
“What bother me?”
“Well…” She glanced down at her hands. “Death. That you could have died.”
Dradge shrugged. “Everyone dies. I guess I don’t really think about it.”
“You don’t even think about it?”
He frowned. “You think, you hesitate. You hesitate, you die. The battlefield isn’t a place for thinking. It’s a place for doing.” He adjusted his position to sit up straighter, grimacing. “Gods know I’m not made for thinking.”
She watched him, even though Dradge didn’t lift his gaze to meet hers. Her previous suitors thought of themselves as thinkers, all while they stumbled along paths paved by others they never knew and never tried to understand. But that’s how Edras folk lived. They thought, and they spoke, and they never did anything.
Most days, she was one of them.
Lyara rose, then rummaged through the bottom drawer of the dresser to find the painting she’d made of that centaur. She returned to the bed with it, sitting a bit closer to Dradge this time, and placed it in his lap. “This is what I did while you were gone.”
He gently picked up the canvas, tracing each brushstroke with his eyes. “Wow!” That wasn’t a placating smile—she’d seen plenty, and long ago learned the difference. He pointed to the centaur’s head. “His ears are too big. And not so much fur here on the chest. But everything else… How did you do this?”
She shrugged, smiling with a swell of pride. “I read about them in my father’s books.”
“You read about them, and put something together like this?” He studied the painting, eyes wide like he didn’t quite believe it. “Glad someone put those old things to use for once.” He gingerly handed the canvas back to her—as though it were something delicate, something valuable, and looked away. “Sorry. Read what you like. I’m just bitter I guess, from all those years my father tried to make me sit still turning pages.”
She tossed her painting on the nightstand, then grasped Dradge’s hand and held it up. “No man should ever be ashamed of making his living with these.”
Gradually, he smiled at her. “What’s that from?”
“It’s not from anything. I say it.”
His smile widened and he intertwined his fingers with hers, lowering his arm to rest it on the bed beside him. He rubbed his thumb on the back of her hand, the clink of Adela’s knitting needles filling the silence. “…you ever put in a request with the army? As a cartographer maybe?”
Lyara snorted. “I’m not inclined to commit parricide. Because that’s what would happen, you know. Both my parents, dropping dead the moment I floated the idea.”
He smiled at her in apology, but that didn’t hide his disappointment. “With skills like that, you’re probably painting portraits?”
She glanced away. He’d prodded at her sorest point, and didn’t even realize. Four years she’d put in requests, to different houses and officers and even King Hilderic, and she’d made nothing of it. Most, after seeing the best of what she’d done on her own, gave her a test commission. Every time, she choked.
Lifeless eyes… stiff postures… Uninspired use of color…
A muse was a fickle beast indeed, and it thwarted her every attempt at earning an honest wage for herself. She lived day to day on her father’s charity, if she made any money at all, and as time stretched on she grew closer and closer to accepting a simple—though useful—role cleaning houses or sweeping streets.
Her parents welcomed her in their home, they provided for her every need, they assured her they were happy to do it—for as long as they needed—until she found the job or the place in the world she wanted. And she was grateful. Ashamed, more and more so with each passing day, but still grateful.
“Lyara’s a bookkeeper,” Adela piped up—violating her promise to remain unnoticed but, given how long Lyara had let the silence linger, she meant well. “Mister Orvist says she’s invaluable, his trade records would be an absolute mess without her.”
Lyara offered her friend a pained, though appreciative, smile.
Dradge nodded, placatingly. He studied Lyara’s face a moment. “Sometimes cartographers travel with the troops. Not at battles or anything, but in the camps.”
She grinned. “I suspect you’re trying to ask me something.”
He returned the grin sheepishly. “I might be. The only other way they’d let you tag along is if we were married.”
She laughed, but cut off suddenly as she realized her heart was more intrigued than amused by the idea. “I’d be a fool to marry a man when we’ve only gone on two dates.” She repeated that again, in her own head, for her own sake.
A mischievous gleam glinted in his eyes. “Then I guess I’ll have to ask you on a third one.”