The Queen's Price

FIFTY-FIVE

The next morning, Saetien went to the stables right after breakfast. Ryder offered to take Shelby to puppy school and fetch him when it was time for him to come home, and she took that offer, since she wasn’t sure how much time this task would require.

Someone—maybe Kieran, maybe one of the stable hands—had kept the mud moist. The sticks were as long as her index finger and must have been made by hand, because they were all exactly the same length and diameter, and were perfectly smooth. She wondered if Butler had spent his nights trimming lengths of wood and sanding them to create these sticks.

“Have to start somewhere,” Kildare said, using Craft to create a barrier between Saetien and the foals who would have crowded around her to see what she was doing.

There were a few stomps and squeals when they realized they couldn’t reach her, but one of the Scelties looked at the foals and growled, and everyone with hooves hustled out to the paddocks, leaving her holding two sticks.

“Problem?” Eileen asked, passing through Kildare’s barrier to stand beside Saetien.

Saetien started to push one of the sticks into the mud, then pulled her hand back. “If I don’t do it right, I’ll have to do it again. But what’s the right way?”

Eileen rubbed a hand over one side of the shallow wooden box, then another side. “Feel these holes along the top of the box? They’re evenly spaced.” She called in a large spool of black thread and a pincushion bristling with dressmaker pins. She fit the pins in the holes. “Do you see? You can make a grid. I’m thinking, once you set up the grid, you’ll be able to place the sticks in tidy rows.”

Eileen helped her get started, then went back to the house to take care of her own chores.

Saetien had finished making the grid and started setting the sticks in the mud when Caitie came by with Stormchaser. He went to his dam’s stall for a meal and a nap. Caitie watched for a few minutes, then said, “Why are you doing that?”

“It’s a task Prince Butler gave me.” Saetien pushed another stick into the mud. “Five hundred sticks in this box, in rows. I have to bring it back to him at sunset.”

“Do you have to do it alone?”

Saetien paused. Did she? “He didn’t say I couldn’t have help.”

Caitie smiled and picked up a handful of sticks. “Then I’ll help.”

Since a human didn’t actually drive a conveyance pulled by one of the kindred, Kieran was with her only as an escort—and to argue with the Warlord pulling the pony cart if the horse got bored going to the same cottage every evening and wanted to visit someone else.

She sat stiffly, holding the box and fretting about the one stick that must have gotten knocked so that it was leaning a bit. The mud had set before she’d noticed, so she was stuck with handing over an assignment that was less than perfect.

“It gives the whole thing a bit of character,” Kieran said after she’d sighed again. “There’s no point fretting over what you can’t change.”

No point fretting? She couldn’t help fretting, since she didn’t know what the box and sticks were for.

Butler didn’t seem to notice the leaning stick, despite the careful way he eyed everything, as if deciding whether or not she’d used all the sticks.

Finally, he nodded. “Come back in the morning. Both of you.” He looked at Kieran. “And anyone else who wants an answer to a question no one has dared to ask.”

He went into the cottage and closed the door.

“What question?” Saetien asked as they headed home. “We didn’t ask a question. We spent the day putting sticks in mud.”

“I don’t know the question either,” Kieran replied. “But I think we need to prepare ourselves to face the answer.”