Thirteen

 

When day dawned, Bianca stepped over the pile of shoes without a second thought. She tiptoed past the snoring adventurer and made her way to the dining hall, where she knew breakfast would be served for her. While she ate, the kitchen staff prepared a basket of provisions for her to take on her ride. Usually she gave most of it to Kun in thanks for the woman's time training her, for there was far too much for one person, but Bianca wondered what the staff would say if she returned with a basket that wasn't empty.

They might send less food with her on the morrow, she decided, which would not do. She had no other way of repaying Kun.

So, though it was the last place she wanted to go after Kun's comments yesterday, she guided her horse along the road to the old woman's house.

The sound of an axe biting into wood stopped her before she reached the cottage. Tethering her horse to a tree, out of sight of the road, Bianca paused for only a moment to render herself invisible before she continued on foot.

It was probably some villager, looking for some healing herbs or a good luck charm from Kun. It wasn't the first time Bianca had arrived when Kun had a customer, so she was content to wait until the man was gone. A princess shouldn't speak to the villagers, especially not the men. For the adventurers Efe set at their table were coarse enough, under the thin veneer of good manners they assumed, but a peasant who had no need to pretend to be polite might do anything.

Bianca's invisibility might protect her somewhat, but it did nothing to hide the sound she made. Or her scent, if the man had a dog. And if he were to bump into her...but he wouldn't get close enough for that, Bianca resolved as she crept closer.

She skirted Kun's cottage, heading to the yard where she knew the chopping block stood.

The man wielding the axe was no villager, though. Unless he was the blacksmith. She'd never seen so much muscle on a man, and there was plenty to see, for he was naked to the waist, with sweat gleaming on his broad chest. A scarred chest, she noted. If he wasn't a smith, then he had fought battles against men instead of metal. Or some horrible accident had befallen him.

The way he hammered the axe into the hapless chunks of wood spoke of some personal grudge he held against the tree. A section of trunk turned to kindling under his relentless strokes. He swept the spars up in his arms, stacked them in the woodshed, then grabbed another log to dismember. Whoever he was, he showed no sign of slowing. He must have asked for a really complicated spell from Kun, to do so much work in payment.

Bianca settled on the grass to wait.

Hours passed, but he did not slow. If anything, the furrows in his forehead only deepened as he continued to work. He allowed the timber to break into bigger pieces than kindling now before he stacked them in the woodshed, too.

He circled the chopping block, giving Bianca a clear view of his equally well-muscled back. He had fewer scars here, though they weren't entirely absent. What did that mean? That when he fought, he faced his enemy head on, and never turned his back on them?

Bianca felt the most peculiar urge to ask him. She could return to the road, dismiss her invisibility spell, and stroll into the yard as though she'd just arrived. She could offer him some of her provisions and introduce herself as Bianca. Not a princess, just...a maid from the palace. There. That would do. She rose to her feet, determined to put her plan into action.

"You've been working hard. You must be hungry. Come inside. The noon meal is ready," Kun said.

The woodcutter swiped his arm across his face, then grabbed a tunic he'd hung on the edge of the woodshed roof and pulled the garment over his head, hiding those delicious muscles from sight.

Delicious? Bianca scoffed at herself for having such thoughts. Why would she want to lick the man's sweaty skin? It would be hard and salty and...definitely unpleasant, she told herself. She was just hungry, that was all.

She rose, stretching the cramps from her legs from sitting so long, before heading back to the road in search of her horse. The mare stood exactly where she'd been left, with no sign of distress at being invisible. Bianca could see her, of course, as she could with anything she bespelled, but if she concentrated, she could also see what everyone else saw – nothing.

She grabbed the first thing she touched in the basket and bit into it. The sweetness told her it was fruit, but that's all the attention she paid to food. Her thoughts were with the scarred man in Kun's cottage.

Who was he?