she “came out of my womb swinging! Nearly knocked out poor Nelly, the midwife who was helping with the birth.”
So Keran had gone off one day and entered the fighting guild. Unlike the stonemasons and blacksmiths, she didn’t have to start off as an apprentice, working for nothing and tolerating the general abuse of the elders. Instead, she just started fighting those who were her age, her size. Eventually, she moved up the ranks until she was known throughout the lands.
But, also unlike stonemasons and blacksmiths, eventually all fighters had to stop. If they wanted to live. She was more than forty springs and had gone out on top. She could have returned to the guild and instructed the younger fighters but . . . that wasn’t her. She had no desire to teach others.
Keran also could have gone home, but . . . for what? Her family had no use for her. And she didn’t plan to spend the rest of her days listening to her siblings and their youngsters chastising her about her choices. So Keran had come to see her aunt. Also a blacksmith, but she’d always been kind and Keran had liked her young cousins.
It still had shocked her, though, the way they’d welcomed her. Without question. Without judgment. And Keeley . . . sweet Keeley had given Keran a job. “Stay at the forge,” she’d said over some ale at the local pub. “Keep an eye on things when I’m not around.”
“I can swing a hammer, Cousin, but only to break someone’s jaw,” she’d reminded her.
“Really? I can crush a man’s entire face with one hammer swing.” She’d grinned, showing those adorable dimples. “I have enough blacksmiths working for me. All men, by the way, which should keep you highly entertained.”
“I do have an appetite.” She’d studied her cousin. “You sure you don’t mind?”
“You’re family!” Keeley had exclaimed. “We always make room for family. It’s just about finding what you’re good at. And keeping those bastards in line when I’m not around . . . that, my cousin, sounds exactly like what you would be good at.”
And she was. As always, her cousin had been right.
Still, sweet Keeley had one weakness. Her only weakness. Her siblings. All the younger ones, she kept in line just by being herself. But the second oldest . . . dear, pious Gemma? She’d always refused to fall in line.
Which made seeing her in her holy garb, covering herself completely as if even the wind touching her was a sin against the higher ones, more entertaining to Keran more than she could say. Because she knew how Keeley would react.
Exactly the way she was reacting now. Like a crazed banshee exploding from all her rage.
How dare her sister not do exactly what she’d told her to do!
Ahhhh. The women in her family. They were amazing. And insane. Because you needed to be both if you wanted to survive this world the way they did. Making their own choices and rules and ignoring all the men who tried to tell them no.
Even better, though, was that Keeley hadn’t returned from the forest alone. She’d brought friends! Amichai friends!
Keran had met Amichais before, but they weren’t a friendly people. Not that she blamed them. Those in the Hill Lands didn’t like those from the mountains and made that clear by their treatment. So the Amichais wisely kept to themselves, sticking to the wooded areas and bigger cities—where they could mostly be ignored—in their kilts, chainmail shirts, and heavy armaments.
She still wanted to keep an eye on the Amichais since she had no idea why they would help her cousin and that skittish boy. There was just one problem: She was unable to see out of the corner of her left eye. Not since that brutal battle with a man three times her size; Keran woke up three days afterward with the winner’s gold purse and a blood-filled eye that didn’t clear up for weeks.
So it wasn’t her sight that told her something had happened off to her left. It was the sounds: a man’s cry of pain and the destruction of the wall separating her room from the rest of the shop.
Keran was off the windowsill and facing the rest of the Amichais in seconds. But they were just standing there, while one of the workers was writhing on the floor of her bedroom, holding his chest with one arm . . . and sobbing.