Daughters Of The Storm by Kim Wilkins Page A

...’ The guard dropped his voice. ‘It is a tense time for Blicstowe. I mean no disrespect, my lady. Your good favour is important to me, too.’
    â€˜But I’m unlikely to cut your head off. Is that what you mean?’
    The guard didn’t answer.
    Wylm squeezed his mother’s hand. ‘I’ll go, Mother, don’t spare a thought for me. I’m not a prisoner, for all I feel like one.’ He smiled at the guard, but it was his fake smile: the one where he crinkled up the corners of his eyes to feign warmth. Nobody ever picked it for a forgery. ‘Come, my friend, I’ve been travelling all day and I look forward to ale and rest.’
    He allowed himself to be led off, glancing back with a wave. His mother seemed very small, sitting by the hall. Bitterness hardened in his heart and its name was Bluebell.

    For Bluebell, rage and sorrow, even great happiness, were best expressed physically and that meant one of two things: fighting or fucking. Byrta had strictly forbidden her from the first until her head cooled, so she found herself at Sabert’s house on a millet farm a half-hour’s ride from Blicstowe. She lay on her back on his straw mattress, body still tingling, and watched a spider spinning a web in a dark corner above the roof beams. Sabert lay on his side, running his rough fingers up and down her arm.
    â€˜Is something troubling you?’ he asked.
    She didn’t answer him right away. She didn’t feel like talking yet. Sabert had been a friend for many years. He was trustworthy and as stocky as a draughthorse, four inches shorter than her, but it mattered little lying down and the salty, spicy scent of his skin never failed to inflame her desire. Her secrets were locked inside his breast as well as her own, and she knew they were safe there. As safe as she felt now, lying under the warm blanket while a lark sang in the distance and a shiver of breeze muttered in the rowan tree outside the shutter. Her blood slowed and cooled. She let herself be still.
    â€˜It’s my father,’ she said, at last, turning on her side to face him. ‘He’s sick. They think he’s dying.’
    Sabert lifted a strand of her fair hair and wound it gently around his fingers. ‘I’m sorry, Bluebell.’
    â€˜He has fits of madness and fits of deathlike sleep. It looks to me like bad magic.’
    â€˜He is a king; he has many enemies.’
    Bluebell nodded emphatically. ‘Yes. I suspected Gudrun, but you are right. It could be anyone.’ Stillness evaporated; her stomach knotted with anxiety. ‘I need to find somebody who can fix him. And then I’ll find out who did it to him and make them swallow my blade.’
    â€˜Are you sure he’s not simply ill?’ Sabert said.
    â€˜I’m sure. Byrta argues otherwise, but what if everyone accepts her opinion? Then nobody goes out to look for a cure.’
    He didn’t respond, and she took his silence as confirmation he agreed with her. Any shred of self-doubt vanished. She sat up and reached for her clothes. She dressed quickly, pulling pants over her long legs, tying up her gaiters, wriggling back into her shirt, encircling her hips with the familiar weight of her belt and scabbard. Sabert took his time. He was a person who moved at a different pace. Long-held sorrows had stolen any need for haste in his life.
    â€˜Papa?’ A little voice from outside the door.
    Bluebell turned to him and smiled weakly. ‘Eni’s back.’
    â€˜He’s a good lad,’ he said, pulling down his shirt over his hard, hairy stomach. ‘But he can only stay busy for a little while collecting sticks. Coming, Eni!’ he called through the door.
    Bluebell cracked open the door to the main living area, where Eni waited with a handful of twigs. Eni was Sabert’s son; his mother, Edie, who had been Bluebell’s closest friend in her youth, died eleven years ago giving