A Bullet Or Two

Chapter 2.2

Cornswald was nothing like the East City. Dust clouded before them each time a horse and cart passed, and crops fields surrounded the edges of the station. Not many people had passed them by but those that had did not wear suits or dresses as the gentlemen and ladies of the city did. Dust sodden shirts and pants were donned instead, the common attire of the farmlands, and it was here where Delilah felt most comfortable, free from the pressures of higher life.

She heard the hooves against the gravel before she saw their owners. Felt her body tense at their whinnies. Two brown mares pulled a wooden cart behind them and trotted until they reached where Delilah and Jonnie stood. 

The driver was a tall boy, thin on the arms with little meat on the rest of his bones to anchor him to his seat. What had it been? Four years? Five? The boy's face was a double of Baron's; the bump on his nose and the large lips that took up half of his face as he spoke. "My, my, my that cannot be you, Delilah. Can it? I would say you don't look much older than I last saw you, but I'd be lying!"

"You seem like the same shrimp I left behind at the manor. Since when have you been driving carts?" Delilah waited no more than a breath before responding. The tingles of anxiety tracing her veins calmed, replaced by excitement that tumbled throughout her body. 

Ever since they left the East City she had been on the verge of imploding, a boisterousness brewing as she anticipated meeting her beloved cousins again. A smile burst onto her face, as she bartered about how big he got. It was not until she peered to her left that she remembered about her companion.

"How rude of me, catching up with you like this without even introducing you to my guard. Billy, this is Jonnie. The best marksman in my father's keep." She meant it too. Even if she planned to still his position for just that day. She truly meant that he was in fact the best. A steady hand was hard to come across without the itching of a trigger finger and it was something she knew he had practiced many times. 

As it happens he had practiced many times with her, attempting to show her how to accurately shoot a rifle. Milk bottles lined up on the stone gate to the garden. Dusk set in in the distance as the heat of the day began to cool.

"Feet at twelve and two."

"I know that."

"Keep your left-hand firm."

Delilah gripped the barrel harder.

"Relax..." Inhale. "Relax..." Exhale. "Relax..." Inhale. "Shoot."

Delilah pouted as Billy climbed down from the cart. He really had grown in those years she was away. Beside her, he shook Jonnie's hand, appearing to be only an inch or two shorter than her guard.

Yet, he was still scrawny. Scrawny as a sixteen, or was it seventeen, years old should be. 

Baron's blood was without a doubt running through the boy's veins. The dark eyes and twists of brown on his head confirmed it, along with the arrogant stare that was locked on him. One Delilah was none too pleased he inherited. "The best marksman? What happened to the other man?" Delilah looked at Billy, perplexed. "You know, the older lord. The big one, with the scar on his chin. Looks a bit like you, actually, marksman." The scar on his chin. Delilah barely remembered the man. Many marksmen had come and gone the last few years that she hardly paid attention to until Jonnie had arrived in her stepfather's study. A scar, a scar, a scar?

"Please, call me Jonnie."

"Right. He looked like Jonnie boy here. Don't tell me you don't remember him, Delilah!"

Furrowing her brows all the more, Delilah was unsure of who her cousin spoke. She tried to picture the scar, a man with blonde hair, stocky. An older version of Jonnie. An image almost sketched itself, then disappeared as Jonnie spoke. "Shouldn't we be heading to the manor? We're scheduled to leave at noon."

---

Those five or so years had no effect on the stones of Lance Manor. Sand walls stood strong against the growing vines climbing to the third floor, and the steps remained clear of any residue as if a maid had woken up at dawn to dust them. Upon the top step waited the Manor's keeper, a woman that none would expect to be a lady when she stood covered in mud with straw sticking out from the top of her pants.

Delilah could not contain herself as the cart drew nearer to the entrance. It had been so long since she had seen her cousins, and to re-join them both before the winter had been beyond her imagination. For the past few years, Baron had told her no. No visits or letters whatsoever. Lady Charlotte had her duties to attend to, and Billy was to go to school. Delilah was a distraction. 

That was what he had said. A distraction to them and a distraction to herself.

Yet, there was Charlotte, almost exactly as Delilah had left her. A beautiful mess with a toothy grin and bellowing voice that made the entire quarter look her way.

Delilah waited for the cart to stop, unwilling to fly off with the horses still moving. However, once it did, no more than five steps brought her to Charlotte. The one person in the whole, damn Quartered Kingdom that she allowed to crush her in an unforgiving death-grip. And Delilah knew it was the same for Charlotte as she clamped her cousin around her waist.

"I should kill you." Charlotte's words were gruff and mumbled. Her face buried into Delilah's shoulder, pressed against the strands of the latter's straight hair that fell over it. "Kill you. Chop you up. And chuck your pieces into the stream for those joint eaters to devour." Always so dramatic.

"I missed you too." Charlotte had not changed one bit. Still so melodramatic, careless, and - most of all - loud. They broke from their embrace, and Delilah found herself looking up to her cousin, who had been a whole foot shorter the last they saw each other. 

"Actually I'll just feed you to the pigs. They'll eat anything. And those Joint Eaters won't eat anything from the lake. I saw one you know, gross little things. A doctor enticed it out from a local's throat by the stream. It was like a snake, but not a snake. Slimy with legs. And...ergh, I feel sick just thinking of it." 

The stream lay due west of the manor and was swamped by oaks that trailed to the western border in an endless woodland. Delilah and Charlotte used to play there, splashed in the shallows, and flung mud at one another. Returning to the manor, their black footprints scattered the halls, and her mother scolded them for their states. Caked head to toe in sticky mud, Delilah's pale skin hardly peeked through, and Charlotte's own ebony was disguised too.

"Sounds like a lovely sight."

"Oh, it truly was." Charlotte paused and took in Delilah for a moment, before looking over to the cart the latter had launched from. "Is that the new marksman? Little young isn't he?" Minutes had passed already, within which Delilah had forgotten about her guard who stood awkward beside Billy. No movement came from his mouth, nor did his posture relax. Instead, he stood firm, tall, and out-of-place as Billy prattled on to the same extent as his older sister had. "He is a very good shot."

"I hope so. My shipment is in his hands completely. Speaking of." Charlotte motioned for Delilah to follow her as she headed around the outside of the manor. A good pet, Delilah did, ignoring the jealousy pinching her stomach as she recalled Baron giving Jonnie the bulk of tasks for the job.

The tasks she now possessed.