Chapter 101. Double Night Watch for Everyone: The Betting Pool That Ended in Tragedy

Chapter 101: 101. Double Night Watch for Everyone: The Betting Pool That Ended in Tragedy

There is no dignified way to walk into a crowded common room the morning after you have slept with the commander of the cavalry, and I would like to state for the record that I did not try to find one.

I came down the narrow stairs of the Sleeping Fox with my hair sticking up on one side and a piece of toast already in my mouth, and every Nightclaw rider in the room turned her head at the same moment.

I just finished taking a bath with Velora; yes, that was skipped, I know. But we didn’t do too much other than talking about the future.

And yes... I’m still feeling hungry.

About the crowded room? Well...

There were about thirty of them, packed onto the long benches with their porridge bowls in front of them, and not one of them was smiling.

Every single face had been arranged into an expression of such grave, serious, professional neutrality that it was almost a work of art.

A tall rider near the door was staring at the ceiling with the intense concentration of someone studying a map of a battlefield.

I sat down. And I chewed my toast.

Nobody said a word.

Then Velora came in behind me.

She had put on her full uniform, and the full uniform saved her dignity; of course, there was not a single hiccup or bitemark seen.

The white coat with the gold embroidery, every button fastened to the throat, and she had tied the white ribbon into a perfect bow at the base of her ponytail.

It was a much better knot than mine. She walked to the table with her spine like a spear and her chin level and sat down on the bench beside me without looking in my direction.

The tips of her ears were bright red. And this is such a rare thing to see from someone who was racist towards me back then.

I’d like to tell you I was a gentleman about it. I really would.

But I’d been awake for about fifteen minutes, and I’d just eaten the best breakfast of my life, and the temptation was too much.

"Oh wow... this soup is better than ten minutes before," I said, to nobody in particular.

Velora went stiff for half a heartbeat. I saw her eyes close.

Then she opened them again, turned her head, and looked me directly in the face with the flat, chilly stare she’d used on me in the first week.

"Leon," she said.

It was perfectly even. It was so even that I could tell she’d been practicing it in the mirror.

She said my name the way you’d say the name of a minor town on a map, with no inflection at all, and every Nightclaw rider in the room heard it.

Somebody coughed.

A young rider at the end of the bench, a round-cheeked girl with a pair of short brown ears, made a tiny strangled noise and clapped her hand over her mouth.

Velora’s gaze swung toward her like the barrel of a cannon.

"Yes?" she said.

"Nothing, Commander."

"You appear to be choking."

"I am choking on my bread, Commander."

"Then I suggest you swallow it."

The girl swallowed it. She went a deep, dangerous shade of red.

Velora turned back to her porridge with great dignity, and I bent over my toast so that nobody could see my face.

I found out later, from a very nervous scout, that the whole barracks had been running a quiet betting pool since the pine wood.

The question had been ’How long until the Duchess smiles at the human?’

Several of the riders had stood to make a good deal of money.

Velora got wind of it halfway through the meal, and the full punishment she handed down, which was double night watch for the entire company for a week, was probably the most terrifying thing I saw all morning.

Magnara sat at the far end of the table with her arms folded and a face like a closed door.

She hadn’t said a word to me since the day on the ice. She’d carried me out of the snow and left a boar’s leg outside my tent and stood at my shoulder at a grave, but she hadn’t spoken, and I’d been careful not to push.

Now she was glaring at a cup of tea as if it had personally wronged her. A fine mist of steam rose from it and drifted away.

I took a breath. I didn’t plan what I said, but it came out on its own.

"Do you still have that boar leg?"

She went completely still.

For about three seconds, nothing happened.

Then, very slowly, she lifted her head, and her amber eyes met mine. There was something wary in them, almost shy, a look I’d never seen on her face.

"It was cold," she said.

"I don’t care."

"It was two days old."

"Magnara."

She stared at me. Then, with an air of enormous reluctance, she reached under the table, dragged her pack up onto the bench, and dug into it.

She pulled out a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. And she unwrapped it carefully.

And there it was, a massive, glistening, slightly gray-looking haunch of roast boar, with a single clean bite mark on the side of it where someone had clearly thought better of it.

I picked it up. I tore off a huge chunk of meat with my teeth.

’Yikes...’

It was cold and tough and oily and tasted faintly of woodsmoke and old fat. But still... It was, without question, the best thing I’d eaten all week.

"This is incredible," I said, with my mouth full. "I know that I already ate minutes before, but still... I crave more food!!!"

Magnara said nothing. Her ears twitched.

She picked up her axe, which had been lying across her knees, and began to sharpen it with great, fierce concentration, as if she had suddenly discovered that it was the only thing in the world that mattered.

A faint flush had crept across the tops of her cheekbones.

I took another bite and decided I wouldn’t push my luck.

Across the table, Sylvara was watching me.

She hadn’t touched her breakfast. She sat very straight, with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea, and the morning light fell across the lavender of her hair.

She looked tired and careful and a little afraid. When I met her eyes, she dropped them to her cup.

’Later,’ I thought. ’I’ll do it later.’

I didn’t know yet what I would say. And it just keeps making it worse between us.

...

We rode out under a pale, washed-out sky, with the road winding south through low, snowy hills.

I’d like to say I was a graceful rider by now. But well... I wasn’t.

I’d spent weeks in the saddle, and I still sat on a horse like a sack of potatoes. The bay mare I’d been assigned seemed to feel the same about me and spent the first hour of the morning trying to scrape me off against every low branch in the county.

"I’m going to feed you to a wolf," I told her.

She snorted.

"I’m serious! There’s one right over there..." I pointed at Elsbeth, riding grim and silent at the back of the column. "She’s very hungry, and I bet that she hasn’t eaten in two days."

The mare flicked an ear and ignored me.

"At least pretend to be scared... jeez."