Page 102 of Into the Heartless Wood
After that I report to a different training field for sword drills, which are conducted by the younger female guard from last night. Her name is Luned, and she’s Commander Carys’s daughter. She has me and a dozen other recruits practice guard stances, footwork, and raising and lowering heavy wooden swords in thrusts and parries until I’m certain my arm is going to fall off. It only gets worse when we trade our swords for muskets, and are made to load, tamp, aim, and fire at hay bales draped in brightly painted canvas. My ears ring with the noise of the guns, and my left shoulderhurtsfrom the recoil of the musket ramming into me again and again.
By the time Luned dismisses us for lunch, not only am I fairly convinced I’m dying, I almost want to. We’re fed lentil stew and days-old bread in the mess tent, and I itch to be back home in the kitchen, yelling at Awela to stop flinging her porridge in all directions while I chop lamb and veggies to put in our cawl.
In the afternoon, there’s riding drills and marching drills that fill the time until dinner. Afterward, a majority of the soldiers tromp off to the bathhouse, while the rest of them play cards in the mess hall, bemoaning the fact that there isn’t time to go down into the city and be back before the gates shut for the night.
I drag my weary body up the hill to the palace, following a worn track from the training fields that leads to the kitchen courtyard. It’s as good a place to start looking for Awela as any—I’m not about to attempt the front door.
A harried-looking serving woman is plucking chickens just inside the courtyard gate. “If you’re sniffing about my girls, you can go right back down to the barracks, young man,” she informs me curtly.
I’m rather offended at her implication. My face warms. “I’m not sniffing about at anyone.”
“Then you were sent up to help?” Her whole face brightens. “We’re so short-staffed, and the kingwillhave his feasts every night. There’s a mountain of potatoes to peel. Go on.”
Before I have a chance to protest, she shoos me inside, where I find she wasnotexaggerating. A pale-skinned serving girl stands at a huge wooden counter in the center of the room, dutifully peeling the potatoes that cover nearly the entirety of it. This seems to be some kind of back room to the kitchen proper, which I glimpse bustling past another doorway. The serving girl looks up as I come in, and her eyes grow huge. Her hand slips with the knife, and she yelps, blood welling red on one finger. She stares at the cut and turns almost green. She looks like she might pass out.
“It’s just a little blood,” I say hurriedly, grabbing a clean-looking rag and pressing it against the cut. “It doesn’t look that deep.”
She sucks in shallow, panicked breaths as I tear another rag into strips and tie one of them tight around her wounded finger. She leans against the counter and, slowly, returns to her normal color.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
She nods mutely, still staring at me with her large eyes. She’s pretty in a pale sort of way, with blonde hair pinned badly underneath her maid’s cap, and a generous allotment of freckles covering her nose. Her blue uniform and crisp white apron hang overlarge on her skinny frame.
“I can help for a few minutes,” I say, grabbing a spare knife and starting in on the potato mound, “but I’m really here to sneak into the palace. I’m looking for someone. Could you show me to the servants’ entrance?”
She nods again and picks her own knife back up.
We peel together in silence for longer than I mean to, and the light outside the window begins to fade. We’ve made barely a dent in the potatoes.
“Thank you for helping,” she tells me, when I tell her I have to go. “I can bring you through the kitchen now.”
She does, leading the way through a huge rectangular room, where cooks and servants vie for space amongst four iron stoves and a half-dozen work stations. Thankfully, they’re too busy to notice us.
“That way,” she instructs, pointing to the narrow stairway that winds up from the kitchen.
I smile at her. “Thanks. I’m Owen, by the way.”
“Bedwyn,” she returns, with an unnecessary bow. “And thank you for binding my hand. I—I don’t like blood.”
I shudder at the unbidden memory of the train passengers, slaughtered in the wood. Of my mother, cradling her heart in her hands. “I don’t either,” I reply, and climb the stairs.
I want to search the palace for any sign of Awela, but it proves more difficult than I’d thought. There are servants and nobility roaming the halls, and I’m terrified of bumping into the king around every corner. I do my best, darting down hallways and hiding behind large potted trees, the sight of which make my skin crawl.
It seems the king is obsessed with the Gwydden and the wood—there’s evidence of her influence everywhere, from murals and tapestries depicting the wood itself to floor tiles patterned with leaf designs, and, of course, the potted trees. Each floor seems to be going for a slightly different section of the forest—oaks on one floor, elms on another, birches on another still. These last ones make me shiver.
Every hallway flickers with more of those eerie electric lights. The whole palace hums with them, giving it an unnerving energy that feels like insects crawling up my spine.
I wind my way nearly to the top floor of the palace without finding the slightest hint of Awela’s whereabouts. But at least now I have a general idea of the layout, and can focus my search better tomorrow.
The stars have been out quite a while by the time I crawl into the horrible bunk in my dormitory. My exhausted body drops immediately into sleep, and I dream I hear Awela screaming.
I wake to the sharp blast of that damned trumpet, and drag myself from the bunk to do everything all over again.
Another day passes in an excruciating haze, and the second night’s search of the palace ends in disaster. I’m caught on the birch tree floor, and the guard who finds me drags me all the way to Taliesin’s office for judgment. Taliesin seems exasperated to have to suffer my presence again so soon after our last meeting. He barely looks at me as he waves a dismissive hand and orders me to be whipped.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
SEREN
