Free Arrows of Promise (Kingmakers Book 2) by Honor Raconteur Page A

whispering a word that Broden recognized as a locking spell. “Ye be locking
the man in?”
    “More like I’m locking other people out. The only person
that can leave readily is Edvard.” For just a moment, she let her own fatigue
show. “His head barely hit the pillow before he was fast asleep.”
    “Potion be a good one, I take it.”
    “I didn’t get the potion into him before he sat on the bed.
He was that tired.” Ashlynn ran shaking fingers over her head. “I’m worried,
Broden. What about the people that we sent across the channel? If we have no
money....”
    Aye, he was worried about that too. But not as much as
Ashlynn. He put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her to his chest. “Brace
up, lass. They be fine. There be game aplenty over there; they will no’ starve.
And there be timber, and ore, and like as no’ a lot of other things they have
no’ discovered yet. We be in more of a pickle than they.”
    “True, they could hunt.” She snorted and there was only a
trace of amusement in the sound. “It might end up that they have to feed us.”
    There be truth. “Best I think to tackle one problem at a
time. Let us start with the one that we have a notion of how to solve. What do
we need in order to make money?”
    Ashlynn pushed gently away and found her own feet,
re-centering herself. “Offhand, I’m not quite sure. A lot of it needs to be
decided with the provosts. The denominations, the amounts, how much needs to be
made, etcera. But there are some things that we can do to speed the process
along. We can find artists to design the money for us and have them ready to
go. I can contact Ash and alert him that he needs to be searching for ore so
that we know what materials we have to work with.”
    He watched her as she started to put together a mental list
of things to do. How did women do this? They went from being depressed and in
low spirits to energetic and ready to tackle the world all within a minute. He
had watched his Riana do the same thing several times. Broden smiled as he
suggested, “Best to talk to Ash first, I think.”
    Nodding in agreement, she lifted a hand to her ear and
called her brother’s name distinctly. “Ash.”

    Ash cupped a hand to his ear and listened intently for
several moments before growling in disbelief, “We’re what?”
    Riana stopped dead in her tracks. She didn’t like the tone
in his voice, not at all. They had been in the middle of discussing which land
needed to be cleared next to make room for a marketplace when the call from his
sister had come in. Whatever it was that Ashlynn was saying was not good news.
    “I take it that I need to go looking right now. Yes,
alright. I know that you need an answer on this soon, but I’m not sure if I can
deliver one by the time that the provosts meet. As long as you realize that.
Fine, I’ll look now. Go find an artist or ten.” He dropped his hand and looked
at his partner. “We are running out of money in Estole.”
    Riana’s mouth dropped open in dismay. “What do we do?”
    “Make our own money. It is the only thing we can do.”
    He said that so simply, but it must be more complex than
that.
    Ash looked at the water pouch at his waist and peered
inside. “I think we have enough to do a bit of a hike with. Let’s go exploring,
shall we?”
    It was safe enough to do that at the moment. They hadn’t
seen hide nor hair of a bandit. Still, she made sure she had a full quiver of
arrows before joining him. He had mentioned something to Ashlynn about looking,
but Riana wasn’t sure what they were looking for. “So,” she queried as she
followed him further into the woods, “what be we looking for?”
    “Precious metal. Or I should say, ore to make metal with.
The Land Northward is a very mountainous region so odds are good that we have
plenty of ore, aside from iron, here to work with. If I can find it.”
    Riana looked around her, eyebrows screwing up in confusion.
All she saw was a lot of trees,