Arrows of Promise (Kingmakers Book 2) Read Free Page A

him.”
    “Bless ye,” Riana responded fervently. It truly worried her,
as the woman was right—Ash was growing thinner by the day.
    “We’re stuck here in the kitchen most of the time, so catch
us up. What’s finished?”
    Riana did a sweep of the settlement every evening right
before coming here to get dinner, so she was able to rattle this off without
thinking about it too much. “Smithy be close enough to finished as to make no
nevermind. Inn, as ye know, only has the ground floor.”
    “And not all of it.” Nicole made a face. “I can’t wait for
the bathing chambers to be finished.”
    “I second that.” Violet raised a hand briefly before she
went back to plucking quail. “Miss Riana, take a slice of that bread and eat
something before you go back out. What else is done? Just those?”
    “The lumber mill should be done by week’s end, or so I’m
told.” Oh yum, not only was the bread fresh, but there was soft butter and a
little sugar to sprinkle over it. She bit into it with a pleased moan as her
mouth became a very happy thing. “I do send thanks that the bakery was finished
this week.”
    “We all do,” Nicole agreed. “The place is certainly busy all
day, trying to keep us supplied with rolls and loaves. But a sandwich is the
only handy thing we can wrap up and send to the men for lunch.”
    No one had complained about the repetition of the menu yet,
but when you worked that hard under a blazing hot sun, anything was welcome.
“Butcher shop has the foundation in as of last night. Ash magicked it so it
would set quicker. Tannery be missing some walls and a roof, but it be coming
apace as well.”
    “Then we’re making good progress,” Violet observed,
satisfied.
    “Ahead of schedule, we be,” Riana confirmed. “Ash said if we
can get the butcher shop, lumber mill, inn and such up and running, then a
marketplace can go in next.”
    “Now that is exciting news.” Nicole stopped and
looked around her as if she could somehow see through the inn walls. “I wonder
what this place will really look like once it’s all done.”
    “Like a mini Estole at the rate we’re going,” Violet opined.
“What’s next after this?”
    “Houses?” Nicole asked hopefully.
    “Houses,” Riana confirmed. Ash had spent the first two days
drawing out the lots where buildings needed to go and the places where houses
could be built. Half of the arguments she had fielded the first few days were
about who got which lot. Some of them wanted to be close to their businesses—if
they chose not to build a two-story building and live above their shops. Others
wanted to be closer to the main docks so they could have easy access to Estole.
With only three streets properly in and two others roughly mapped out, there weren’t
a lot of choices and usually people’s needs and wants overlapped with someone
else’s. It had been quite the headache getting it all straightened out. “I be
leaving ye to it.”
    “Drink a lot and try to stay in the shade,” Nicole ordered.
“It’s beastly hot out there.”
    “I know it.” Riana finished off her bread and waved herself
out. Let’s see, what did she have on schedule for today?

    It felt like Riana had just put her head on her pillow when
a loud clanging echoed through the camp. The sound was exactly like someone
taking a hammer to a cast iron pot. And frantically at that. She was rolling to
her feet, tugging on boots and reaching for weapons before she even properly
processed what she was hearing.
    Ash burst from his tent, still shrugging into a shirt, and
looked around frantically. “What? What is it?”
    “I do no’ smell a fire, and there be no weather to contend
with,” Riana stated grimly, belting her quiver on, “so it be only one other
possibility to my mind: we be under attack.”
    His eyes went wide before narrowing. “Let’s go see if you’re
right.”
    They ran toward the direction of the banging, and as they
got closer, they could hear a woman’s