Two carrots, a leaf of basil, salt cure, one dried red pepper, three potatoes—Maud leaned back with a bite at the side of her thick lips in thought. No, she smiled at a memory and put another potato in the basket. And two pears. Not three.

  Vigora was getting one less after plucking her last turnip from the garden and playing with it until it was nothing but slobbery leaf bits yesterday. All because she didn’t like the oats Maud had gotten that week. The little spoiled shit can go without a pear at lunch, Maud decided. One by one, she put all of it into her basket and let out a long sigh.

  Her eyes strayed into a memory for just a breath. Her father guffawing about some joke he had made and her younger brother hiding his snigger from across the table from him. Her mother stirring the stew-filled pot—the very same pot that now hung empty in a hearth of shadow and soot. Shadow and soot. Her hand pressed down on the wooden table where her father’s bowl might have been set if he were still alive. Her eyes looked to where her brother might have been sitting.

  She didn’t cry. Her tears had long dried up by then. Sometimes, when she lay alone in the bed beneath the loft, she would try to cry. She would swaddle herself in those memories, in the pain, and make herself cry. For a time, she was able to. She would cry into her brother’s stuffed bear that she coddled as if it were him instead.

  It was his bed she slept in, not hers up on the loft. His bed, with the pillow that smelled like his hair and the blanket that smelled like his sweat. She had always smelled them from up on the loft, but down there, in his bed with his stuffed companion tucked against her chest, it was as if he were hugging her, reassuring her that she would be alright. And she would join the orchestra of her mother’s own sobs from beyond the bedroom door on the other end of the house.

  Her mother’s door creaking made her eyes dart toward it. Not fast enough. The door shut softly. Maud sighed and finished filling the basket.

  Two carrots, a leaf of basil, salt cure…she reminded herself of the ingredients in the basket, making certain she didn’t forget anything on the way to the door.

  She hesitated beside her mother’s door. She stilled her breath to listen. A rustle, fidgety footsteps, then silence.

  “Ma?” She said into the door. She pressed an ear against it. Silence, not even a rustle. She felt heat go to her cheeks and stiffen her jaw.

  She couldn’t get out of that house fast enough.

  Maud had never been in a cave. She had heard stories from the soldiers about them. Deep, damp dark places where monsters hid in shadows and fear dripped as readily as sweat in the summer sun. Her home, the house she had lived in her entire life felt just like that. Deep, damp, dark, and makes her want to run away. It didn’t matter where she would go, so long as it wasn’t back there. And yet, every night, that was precisely where she returned.

  It was the summer sun that greeted her. Hot and bright as ever. Thankfully, it was above her and not in her eyes. She had learned to make her trips to and from the Kelger House at certain times because of that. In the mornings, going up that hill was walking directly into the sun and the same when returning too early in the afternoon.

  She went over the ingredients in her head again. She was certain she had everything she needed. A mere thought of going into the village made her stiffen. It was a hassle, now. The ferryman was able to take near twenty people at a time, less if there were any cattle or horses, and only as far as the wooded fort on an island of bricks halfway. That was as far as she would ever go.

  For Maud, it was the other direction now. She made her way up the hill with the basket in the crook of her arm, glad to see the Kelger House grow with each step she took. She spent every step, every day, thinking about what that house should be named. The Kelgers were long gone and the name didn’t necessarily fit any longer. Draka’s House, sounded too…simple? She played with his names and titles and anything else she could think of but nothing ever seemed to convey how she saw the little brick house and the wobbly shack across from it dangling with husks from Draka’s most recent kills.

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  “You there! Girl!”

  Maud had nearly reached the front door of Draka’s House before she noticed the three horsemen looking down at her.

  Two were men at arms. That was easy to tell. Broad shouldered and thick armed men with thick brows and noses crooked from breaking. Chainmail armor and halberds. Their horses were tall, strong, and proud. Maud’s eyes glanced toward the stable. The gate was shut, which was good. Meant Vigora wasn’t going to cause any trouble with their horses…for now.

  It was the third man that had Maud narrowing her eyes and raising her brow. He also had broad shoulders and thick arms. He had the same misshapen nose and thick brow. But the similarities ended there. He had a trimmed gray beard that made his head look like it was set on a plump sack of a neck that spilled from a brocaded tunic that was far too tight for his roundness. Brown eyes a shade lighter than his skin peered down at her expectantly.

  “Yes, girl, you!” Maud blinked at him, silent. “What is the cost of housing our horses here? Water, feed, and all, tonight and possibly the next?”

  Maud raised a brow. She glanced at the stable. It was made specifically for Vigora and, truth be told, anything that was made for Vigora was most certainly not made for another horse to share with her. Grinning, she held up all five fingers.

  “Each?” The plump man shook his head as he dug into a shirt pocket. “I remember when my arrival to Talkro was met with kindness, not robbery.” He reached out with a handful of coins after counting them. She regarded his fist of coins for a moment. He sounded impatient, “Well? Take it already.”

  So, she did. Fifteen gold coins, she counted after setting the basket down. Then, with a smiling nod, she carried her basket inside and shut the door behind her, leaving all three of them gaping.

  “The Baron’s here to see you,” Maud ended Draka’s nap with a hard shove of his muddy feet from on his bed on her way to the table.

  She dropped the coins on his lap as his heels bounced on the hard floor and he sat upright. She set the basket at the end of his long table and brushed her hair from over her sweaty face.

  Draka stared at the coins on his lap, then up at her questioningly. Golden eyes beamed at her from beneath dark brows and tangles of graying long auburn hair. She often imagined that his hair had once been thick and wavy, bouncing with every bound atop Vigora in his knightly charges in battle, instead of how it hung in messy knots over his high cheekbones. Thick lips curled at her.

  While she sorted everything from inside the basket onto the table, she mimicked a man’s deep voice, “Thank you, my dear Maudeline. You truly are my best friend. I hope the Baron didn’t think you were my serf or less than my closest and dearest friend.”

  “Yes,” she met his eyes with a glare, speaking in her normal voice. “He did. In fact, those coins are what he paid me to house, feed, and water his bloody horses. I’m surprised he didn’t ask what the going rate of raising my plowing skirt was.”

  Maud stomped over to the desk along the wall, raked a piece of parchment into one hand while grabbing a quill with the other, and threw both of them at Draka. He blinked at her, dumbfounded.

  Mimicking a man’s voice, “I’m sorry that I forgot to tell anyone that you take care of me as if I were your child and that you should be treated like the daughter of a homesteader you are. I will make quick work of it so that it never happens again.”

  Draka’s chin stiffened at her. She knew precisely what he would say if he didn’t have that wonderful oath of silence preventing him. “I’m going to what?”

  She said with her normal voice, “That is so wonderful of you, Draka. Also, can you send someone to tell Captain Gerard that he needs to feed them because I didn’t know that I was feeding three men and an ox today instead of two women and a Prince.” She pinched his cheek with an innocently toothy smile, “Thanks.”

  Draka glowered at her. She knew his eyes were following her across the room. She tried to hide her smile as she went. His eyes are more golden when he is annoyed.

  She got back to the basket and slammed her fists on the table when she realized she had forgotten the…“Plowing vinegar!”