Amaskan's Blood Raven Oak (polar express read aloud TXT) 📖

She had used him. Ida had used the King to escape the Amaskans and later, to save her own neck.

Adelei didn’t remember her birth father, but after the story Ida told, she understood his fury. And his wish to kill Ida with his bare hands. If Adelei had half the brains, she’d do it now and save everyone the trouble. As the story had flowed, so had the ale. Ida’s heavy snores punctuated the silent room, and Adelei frowned.

There was no way she was getting to sleep with all that racket. Not to mention the thoughts that bounced around in her brain. She breathed slowly to still her pounding pulse. Might as well go see what there is to know.

The dagger, she left behind, as well as most of her throwing knives. She kept the one tucked into her wrist as it was the hardest to detect. She pulled her hood around her bald head and rested her hand against the door.

No change in Ida’s snores or any in the hall outside, and Adelei cracked the door. No guards waited outside nor were any people lingering in the hall. By the sounds of the clinking glasses and frothy talk, all the action was downstairs, and Adelei set out for a table near the bar.

When Ida and Adelei had first arrived, the random scattering of people at the inn had ignored the two women, but as Adelei reached the last rickety step, all dozen heads turned toward her. The servant from earlier pointed a shaking finger in her direction and looked up at Mel, the barkeep. “That’s her. That’s the Amaskan.” he said, and Mel pursed her lips together.

“That true? You Amaskan?” asked Mel while she poured a bottle of something red into a glass.

Damn. Adelei slumped her shoulders toward her chest and forced a shudder. Instead of answering, she played the part of simpleton and looked on the crowd with fearful eyes.

“You hear Mel, girl?” The man closest to her stumbled drunkenly into reach, his nose bumping hers, and she held her breath to keep the stench of his breath from making her gag. She backed up a step and let her bottom lip tremble.

No way was she squeezing out tears when she was this angry. Ugh, why had they picked now to be so observant?

“Didn’t Ida say she was stupid or somethin’? Mabbe tha boy was wrong,” said the man to Mel’s right, the owner of the red liquid in a glass.

Mel came out from around the bar and shoved the man with the horrible breath out of the way with one burly arm. “If that’s tha case, what’s she doin’ down here? You hear me, girl? Whatcha doin’ downstairs?”

Adelei pitched her voice as high and squeaky as she could. “I was thirsty.”

“She can talk.” The boy tumbled backward to land on his rear end, and the audience laughed.

“Of course she can, ya fool. See, Mel, I told ya this boy been spinnin’ lies again.”

The barkeep grabbed Adelei’s chin and jerked her head side to side as she studied Adelei. Her white hooded cloak covered her healing scar, though Mel didn’t give Adelei’s jaw much look at all. Her gaze lay intently on Adelei’s cheeks and chin. She must not have known where the tattoo was normally marked.

"I’ll bring you somethin’ ta drink. Go sit down,” said Mel.

In the corner of the room rested a small table with only one chair, and Adelei chose it as her spot. She kept the hood close to her head, and maintained the look of frightened girl as she watched everyone with widened eyes.

When Mel plopped the mug down, it wasn’t milk this time, though it didn’t look like the ale she’d served Ida. Nor was it the red, foamy liquid the man at the bar savored. Adelei held the cup with shaking hands and sniffed it before turning up her nose in a soured face. “What is it?” she asked.

“Mead. Go ahead and give it a try.”

Adelei suppressed the urge to roll her eyes and took a sip from the mug. Watered down raspberry wine more like—not a proper mead at all. She rubbed one hand across her leggings while scrunching up her face for their benefit.

The men in the room guffawed and bellowed. “She’s no Amaskan, Mel. Look at that face. That’s the face of someone who’s never had good mead before,” one patron yelled, and Mel grinned as she returned to the bar.

As her customers resumed their drinking, Adelei leaned the chair back against the wall and listened. Most of the chatter involved women—who had one, who was looking, and who was avoiding theirs by sitting at the inn—but none spoke of the upcoming royal wedding or the attacks on the royal family.

“Heard the shepherd boy got himself a new bundle of thatch.”

“Oh? Does he look ta be buildin’ a house?”

“So it seems. He’s rather sweet on the baker’s girl.”

Adelei ignored the conversation and turned to the table to her left, which fared little better. “My Lady of the House of Hertwig is looking for a good breed mare. Might be seein’ if ol’ Betsy has a few more in ’er.” Laughter followed the statement, and she stilled the tapping of her foot.

I’d say they were avoiding the conversation with me in the room. Even if I’m a harmless dull-wit.

She sat in her corner nursing her “first glass of mead” for an hour with little of use said in the candle lit room. Her jaw-splitting yawn was a warning. Boredom and fatigue were not friends to an Amaskan. Unwilling to arouse more suspicion or fall face first into her mead, Adelei sauntered back up the stairs to the room she shared with Ida. The warrior answered the door’s groan with a loud snort.

Adelei stripped off her clothes and pulled on a long tunic for sleep. Between the loud snores and her throbbing head, she ended up staring at the planks of wood overhead and imagining she