Brille Covella's Arc

Chapter 4 of 13

The door opened before her knuckles left the wood. A tall man filled the frame, green-skinned at the jaw, ears tipped like an elf's, shoulders too narrow for the strength she felt when his hand caught the door. He looked her over once and did not move. "Bow case, quiet face, wrong hour, wrong place," he said. He smiled without warmth. "Name?" "Brille Covella. Cassian said he'd get me in." "Cassian says a lot." The bouncer stepped aside anyway. "Second floor. Don't touch the knives on the table. She throws them at people who touch the knives on the table." Inside, the inn smelled of hot bread and pipe smoke. Music came from a back room. Brille climbed the stairs. At the top a woman sat on the edge of a table, red hair loose, a W-shaped scar on one cheek, four throwing knives lined up beside her hip. Cassian leaned against the wall behind her with the lizard on his shoulder. He nodded at Brille once. Nothing more. "You're the potter," the woman said. Her accent lilted. Her eyes did not. "Cassian says you shoot. Show me." She tossed an apple straight up. Brille's hands went cold. She was in a strange room, in strange clothes, with a stranger's knives an arm's length away. She had shot rabbits at forty paces since she was ten. She had never drawn a bow with anyone watching who mattered. The apple hit the boards and rolled. Brille had not moved. The woman tilted her head. "That's a no, then." "That was a warning," Brille said. "Throw it again." A beat. Then the redhead's mouth twitched. She scooped the apple up and threw it, harder this time, toward the rafters at the far end of the room. Brille had her bow out of the case before she thought about it. She nocked, drew, and released in one motion, the way her uncle had drilled her at dusk between wagons. The arrow pinned the apple to a beam. Cassian's lizard flicked its tongue. Cassian did not look surprised. The redhead walked to the beam, worked the arrow free, and came back with the apple still on the shaft. She held it up to the lamp. "Through the core," she said. "Under pressure. Fine." She pulled the apple off and set it on the table beside her knives. "You're on the list. We ride at dawn for the Coldwater road. You'll be tested proper on the way. Fail then and we leave you at the first inn." "I won't fail." "They all say that." She flicked a small iron token across the table. Brille caught it. "Show it at the south stable at first light. Don't be late. Don't tell your kin where you're going." Brille closed her fist around the token. Her aunt would wake to an empty wagon step and a missing gold piece. That was tomorrow's problem.