Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn

because I didn’t want to encounter Greta, and ran back down to the stables as quickly as I could. Roderick was waiting for me and, to my surprise, Kent was with him.
    â€œYou didn’t believe me!” I exclaimed to Roderick. “You had to go off and find Kent to ask him if I could be trusted!”
    â€œNo, I was just coming in from my afternoon ride,” Kent said. “I wanted to know why he was loitering here, looking so worried.”
    Roderick was grinning. “I said, ‘Yon Halsing wench, eh, is she be studying the blacker arts?’” He croaked this out in a perfect north-county accent. We all dissolved into laughter. “ ‘Be she about to poison me, eh lad, were I to give over me blood into her hands?’ ”
    â€œI could, too,” I informed him. “A few dayig seeds ground up into powder—”
    â€œIf you had any,” Kent said.
    â€œI kept them all. Any good witch would.”
    â€œWell, and we’ve only your uncle’s word that they’re poison,” Roderick said with a shrug. “I’m not so all convinced that he wasn’t making a game of us.”
    â€œAnd are you the one who’s going to test his story?” I demanded. “Not today, anyway. Now, unbutton your shirt again.”
    While Roderick was so engaged, I glanced over at Kent. “I really won’t kill him,” I said somewhat tartly. “You don’t have to stand guard.”
    The young lord looked sheepish. “No, I thought perhaps—Imyself stand in need of a little doctoring. I thought you might be willing to give me some ointment as well.”
    I opened my eyes wide. “You? You got hurt? Doing what?”
    â€œMuch the same thing Roderick was doing,” he admitted.
    Roderick was now stripped to the waist. His long, lean torso sported a few old scars, trophies of similar encounters in the past, and he smelled faintly of leather and sweat. I was suddenly aware of him as a seminude man standing not two feet away from me, but he seemed completely unself-conscious. I opened the satchel I had carried down with me and busied myself poking among the bottles and vials.
    â€œYou were practicing swordplay?” I said, my voice a little gruff.
    â€œWith Roderick here, no less,” Kent said. “I thought my lofty status would protect me from actual blows, but I miscalculated the brutality of the career swordsman.”
    â€œYou told me not to spare you,” Roderick said. “Had I known you wanted to be treated as a baby after all—”
    â€œSpell ‘Auburn’!” Kent challenged him, cuffing Roderick on his uninjured arm. “Spell out Corie’s name!”
    As Roderick recited the correct letters, I suddenly remembered their bargain on our trip. Roderick would teach Kent the crossbow, and the lord would teach the guardsman how to read. Apparently they had decided to expand into swordfighting as well. I was glad, somehow, to learn that they were adhering to their promises.
    By this time, I had composed myself and pulled out a vial of antiseptic and a medium-size jar of dark red salve. “This will not feel entirely pleasant,” I said to Roderick, wetting a clean cloth with the antiseptic. As I touched the medicated cloth to his shoulder, I saw all the muscles of his chest tighten in response, holding their coiled protest while the cleanser worked away at the skin. The sticky smell of sweat was even stronger.
    â€œIt was poison, after all,” he said somewhat faintly. “But I had hoped it would not be quite so painful.”
    I wiped the rag once more across the cut, then laid it aside. “But the salve will feel very good,” I promised. “It even has a nice smell.”
    With a businesslike air, I dipped my finger in the cream andsmeared it carefully across the wound. His flesh felt slightly hot to my touch—perhaps the beginnings of infection in the