“Hold on to the pommel,” the witch hunter directed.
“The what?” She hated feeling stupid.
“Here.” He guided her hands to a raised portion at the front of the saddle. She gripped it tightly and looked down at him.
She expected to see scorn on his face, the same mockery she could hear from George as he chortled behind her, but there was none of that, only an unflappable patience.
“You’ve got this,” he said, ignoring George. “Just relax and get a feel for how the horse moves under you. Move with him as much as you can. Ease up on your thighs. He’ll take any pressure as a direction to go faster.”
The muscles in her legs were rigid. The witch hunter would know that because his hand was resting on her thigh.
“I need to adjust the stirrups.”
He waited for her to nod before bending down to pull on the leather strap. When he was done, he placed her feet back in the stirrups. He grimaced and looked up at her. “Do you have sturdier boots?”
These ones were bad even by the standards of Toam. They were short. The leather was worn and the soles were thin. Her neck warmed. “No.”
A muscle tightened at the corner of his mouth, but he nodded. “They’ll have to do.”
He somehow managed to keep hold of her reins while he mounted Kenzi. “I’ll lead you until you feel ready to take the reins. Which way?”
Right. Her job. She was the guide.
She pointed up the lane, past the last house where the woods stood looming, dark and ominous even on this bright day. She noted the way he moved in the saddle, using his knees to guide Kenzi onto the road. Her horse followed behind before the reins had even gone taut. The lurch of motion made her hands tighten their grip, but she tried not to let her body stiffen up again.
The captain looked back at her.
“I won’t let you fall.”
He said it like he meant it. She wanted to believe him, even though she knew he wouldn’t be able to catch her if Copper decided to throw her off.
Even though he was the last person in the world she should ever trust.
Tilly was right. She was an idiot.
13
She took the reins after their first break. Though her back and thighs ached, she was starting to grow comfortable with the sway of the horse. The captain rode beside her, showing her how to hold the reins and how to move them to guide the horse. He critiqued her seat and posture and the way she shifted her weight. Generally, he seemed to view her as one of his recruits in dire need of extra training.
He was used to ordering people about. That was clear. But he wasn’t an ass about it, so she didn’t put up much of a fight.
She wanted to learn, and he was a good teacher. Besides, it was easier to focus on guiding Copper with a flex of her thighs and a turn of her wrists than to think about where they were and who she was with. If the captain was frustrated at their slow pace, he didn’t comment on it.
The woods were quiet, but it wasn’t the breathless silence from the day she’d found him. Instead, it was the peaceful quiet of when they’d first moved to Toam and she and Toby had run free through the woods.
She automatically noted the familiar spots, the wide-branched tree where they’d built a treehouse out of scraps takenfrom the abandoned shed at the edge of town. There was still a board up there, though they’d had to haul the rest back to Toam when Toby’s father had found out what they’d done. He’d been most upset over the wasted nails. There was the stand of trees where they used to stage battles using fallen pinecones as weapons. The pool where she’d learned to swim until her mother found out she’d been stripping to her shift in front of a boy.
She wondered what the witch hunter would have to say about that.
Toby and his family moved away when she was sixteen. He’d been the only other person her age in Toam. It was funny. You’d think the brand would have launched her into adulthood, their poverty, her mother’s blindness. That had been awful, but she’d actually liked living in Toam more than she’d ever liked Jarn. The neighbors hadn’t been as judgmental. Her mother had stopped pestering her about training for the Academy. And she’d had more freedom than she knew what to do with.
Some of that freedom led her into trouble, like the time Toby fell on his head when they were climbing the cliffs above the river. She’d thought he was dead for nearly an hour before he came round. They’d been so far out she’d been afraid to leave him. Or the time she’d gone out to feed the chickens and there was a strange man crawling out of the coop looking like he’d slept with the hens. She’d had to drive him off with a rake. Or the time the priest came to town to deliver charity baskets but wouldn’t give one to her because she refused to drop to her knees. Or when Toby stole a bottle of cheap wine and they’d both gotten violently sick with it.
And then Toby was gone.
There hadn’t been anyone else to talk to or go on adventures with. Being alone. That was what finally made her grow up.
The witch hunter drew his horse up beside hers. “Are you all right?”
