Leda

Chapter Thirty-Three: Barefoot Beats Boots

"Are you listening to me?" Oræl scowled with sullen ill grace, lodged between a pair of humourless guards as they rowed back across the lake.

"I've been listening to you all morning," one of them replied. "I'll bloody gag you if you don't shut up." He had a knife stuffed into the back of his belt. She'd seen it as they climbed into the boat.

Oræl shifted, stretching out an arm. "Look, how many times do I have to explain? She's not who you think she is."

She jutted her chin in Leda's direction, her fingers curling around the hilt of the man's blade. Leda sat silent and pale in the prow of the rowing boat, walled in by soldiers. The clothes they'd given her were far too big. At a different time and in a different place, Oræl would have thrown back her head and laughed at the sight of Leda enveloped in trousers which flowed over her feet and shirtsleeves so long they flapped like wings at her side. But it wasn't funny. Not really. None of this was. Because the guards would hand Leda over to the Emperor, and that could only be bad for both of them. For Leda because she'd be forced to marry him, and for Oræl because...well, what mercy could she expect? She was a crofter, a fisherwoman, a freak ˗ that, at least, was what her parents' neighbours called her. She was surprised the guards hadn't killed her there and then on the shore. Perhaps they had other ideas. Her spine prickled with unease.

"She's not Leda Nérac or whoever you say she is." The knife rose from its sheath. The guard hadn't felt a thing, encased in all that leather and steel. "That's my friend Katya. We were just out for fun in my boat ˗ which you've now destroyed." Now came the difficult part: smuggling the weapon into her own pocket.

"Women shouldn't be on the water anyway," one man sniffed. "It's not right."

"I'm the finest fisher on the western shore!" She squeezed her hand between his thigh and her own, tucking the knife away, wriggling as if scratching an itch.

"You'll have a fine black eye if you don't shut up!"

It was no good; they didn't believe her. But she wasn't going to stop. As they powered their way back across the lake in long, determined strokes, she made out a few men waiting for them on the eastern bank. Oræl shifted with discomfort, freezing in her wet clothes. Of course, not being a lady, she didn't get dry ones. She should have run when she'd had the chance, she told herself ˗ should have sprinted away, leaving Leda to the guards. She could have saved her own skin easily enough. After all, Leda had just got Oræl into more trouble than she'd ever known. And Oræl had seen a lot of trouble. But something had made her stop. Something had held her rooted to the ground, transfixed, as Leda tugged off her dress and dived, the fine contours of her body slipping beneath Brennac's surface. Oræl had always imagined ræslings looked like that. She couldn't leave Leda to these men. Something urged her to protect this strange woman who'd come from nowhere and knew her name. Perhaps, Oræl thought with a sudden pulse of fear, Leda really was a ræsling. But no ræsling ever let themselves get caught, stuck in a boat and forced into clothes three times her size. Leda was real enough. Mad, perhaps, but real.

"Look at her," Oræl blurted out suddenly. "Does she look like a lady to you?"

One of the guards cocked his head on one side ˗ a young man, broad of shoulder with sandy bristle for a beard. "Well now you mention it..."

Leda stiffened, raised her head and jutted her chin to the sky, her pride clearly wounded.

"I mean look at her," Oræl said, unable to stop. "Would a lady go around jumping naked into lakes?"

Leda glared at her, her eyes glittering a threat.

"Or fooling around in boats with the likes of me?" Oræl continued. "But that's Katya for you. She's a wild, wild girl."