for her when she arrived, and they were clearly happy when they saw her, affectionately nudging her with their big bodies and resting their giant heads on her shoulder.
But this wasn’t a one-woman business. Keeley Smythe had workers. Men and a few boys, who worked the forge. The boys were all in training, but the older men were blacksmiths in their own right. Perhaps they’d found working for themselves too expensive and working for the Old King too dangerous. More than one blacksmith had ended up on the wrong side of the Old King’s rages. Or the rages of his sons.
After she assisted the two horses, Keeley returned to Caid and the others. “Let’s get you some food and water. Samuel, there’s a place out back for you to clean up. Wash your neck,” she said, pushing him toward a back door. “I’ll put some healing ointment on it after.”
Once Samuel was through the door, an older woman emerged from another room. Yawning and scratching her head, she wore nothing but a plain shirt and, stepping from the doorway, she took a nice, long stretch, arms over her head, her body going up on her toes. Tragically, she wore no undergarments and the stretch allowed the shirt to rise until they were all given a lovely view of her crotch.
“Good gods, woman!” one of the blacksmiths complained. “Put some bloody clothes on!”
Caid had never heard a man tell a woman to put on clothes before, so he sensed she did this sort of thing often.
Smirking, Keeley pointed at the woman. “This is my cousin. Keran. She lives here.”
“It’s only temporary.”
“It’s been temporary for five seasons.”
Keran finally had her eyes open and she looked over their group with cold eyes. That’s when Caid noticed all the scars. Some on her face. Many on her neck. Quite a few on her legs and arms and more than seemed reasonable on what he could see of her torso when she took another quick stretch—much to the annoyance of the workers. But underneath all those scars were muscles. Hard, trained muscles.
What cleared everything up for him was the tattoo she bore on the side of her neck. Like her cousin, she wore the tattoo of a guild. Unlike her cousin, though, it was not a worker’s guild, but a fighter’s. Which meant that in her younger days, she’d get in a pit and fight others. Sometimes with weapons. Sometimes with bare hands. And always to the death.
He’d honestly never met a fighter with a little bit of gray at the temples. They never managed to live that long.
“Perhaps you would be kind enough,” Keeley teased her cousin, giggling as she spoke, “to put some clothes on before my workers are overwhelmed with your beautiful self.”
Keran patted Keeley on the shoulder. “I know how hard it is for them.” She turned, but then stopped; blew out a very large breath. “There is something I forgot, Cousin. In my room . . .”
“Ewwww. I don’t want to know about that.”
For a moment, the fighter appeared confused, but shook her head. “No, lady idiot. You have a visitor. She got here just a few minutes before you did.”
Frowning, Keeley stepped around her cousin, but after peering into the room her seemingly always smiling face suddenly had a thunderstorm of an expression. One even Caid would never want to confront.
“What are you doing here?” Keeley demanded, stepping back.
A woman walked out of the backroom. Prim and proper and covered from neck to feet in thick white robes that made her look a tad . . . chunky. White gloves on her hands. A small white cap sat on the back of her head, barely covering her shorn, dark blond hair. She was a nun. Caid didn’t know which sect she belonged to, though. She wore no markings on her clothes.
She lifted her hands up, palms open. “Before you say anything,” the nun began, “let me just explain . . .”
Laila yawned and the nun saw her for the first time . . . then the rest of them. Her gaze moved over their unit as she slowly lowered her hands. Caid blinked in surprise. Those were not the eyes of a godly nun. Not the way she’d just sized them up.
“Who are your friends?” the nun asked, attempting a smile.
Keeley sneered. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Startled, the nun looked back at Keeley. “What?”
“You come here, asking questions about my friends, and you think I owe you an explanation?”