Three of Clubs (War and Suits Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  War and Suits book 2

  The Clubs

  8th January

  9th January

  10th January

  11th January

  12th January

  13th January

  14th January

  Other books by J.A.Armitage

  A note from the author

  Three of Clubs

  War and Suits book 2

  J.A.Armitage

  Copyright 2016

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  War and Suits

  The Clubs

  Two of Clubs – Rose Persimmon Club

  Three of Clubs – Stargazer Lily Club

  Four of Clubs- Tarragon Brodie Club

  Five of Clubs – Ash Ever Club

  Six of Clubs – Iris Larkspur Club

  Seven of Clubs – Juniper Hawthorne Club

  Eight of Clubs – Fern Foxglove Club

  Nine of Clubs – Sorrell Snapdragon Club

  Ten of Clubs – Sequoia Hollis Club

  Jack of Clubs – Sage Salix Club

  Queen of Clubs – Heather Lotus Club

  King of Clubs – Reed Cardamom Club

  8th January

  Knock Knock.

  The insistent knocking was like a sledgehammer to my sleep deprived brain.

  I opened my eyes a crack, just enough to see that it was still dark. I’d been up all night tending the bloodied and injured and had only just fallen into bed a couple of hours previously.

  “Yes?” I yawned as I answered. It came out as “Yaaaawwwsssss?”

  “They need you in the hall, milady.” It was Willow, one of the castle staff.

  “I’ll be down in a minute.” I yawned again. Usually, I took the time to paint my face, but this morning with a little over two hours’ sleep, I decided to leave it fresh and uncolored. I had been given a healer’s robe the night before, and I threw it over my head. Dried blood of a hundred different men had left splotches of deep red on the white robe, and I wondered, not for the first time, who on earth would have picked white for a healer’s uniform. A deep red or brown would have been a better choice given the circumstances. At least then, it would hide the stains better. Still, it was better than wearing one of my dresses.

  I opened my bedroom door five minutes later to find that Willow had waited for me.

  “You didn’t have to wait, Willow. I could have made it downstairs on my own.”

  “I’m sorry, milady,” he stuttered. For some reason, he always appeared nervous around me. I put it down to the fact that his official job was to be a gentleman of the bedchamber to Tarragon. We all had our own lady in waiting or gentleman of the bedchamber. They were there to help us dress or aid us with everyday tasks. Most of my brothers and sisters didn’t use theirs, much preferring to dress themselves, but Tarragon still used Willow quite a lot, although more as an assistant than a dresser.

  “You look lovely today. I rarely see you without the flowers you paint on your face, but if I may be so bold, you look prettier without.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was teasing me. I looked dreadful. I was covered in dried blood, and I’d just remembered I’d not brushed my hair that morning. It was still tied up in the knot I’d put it in the day before when dealing with the injured soldiers. It was customary for the Club ladies to paint flowers on their faces, and, although it was a custom that was dying out, it was still something I took pride in doing. My mother and my sisters only did it on special occasions and weddings, but my grandmother had painted hers every day before she passed away. The truth was, I felt naked without the makeup and was embarrassed that Willow had pointed it out, even if he was telling me how nice I looked.

  “Thank you, Willow,” I said, dismissing him.

  “Anything else, milady?”

  “That will be all.”

  He walked slowly down the corridor, and I could see him waiting at the end in case I changed my mind. He really was diligent in his duties, a little too diligent for my taste. My own lady in waiting didn’t bother me as much as Willow did.

  The hall was much quieter than I had left it just a couple of hours before. Most of the men that had come back from the battle with The Hearts were now sleeping, although some were still howling in pain. My mother saw me and came over.

  “I’m so sorry to drag you out of bed, but we are horrendously understaffed. I’ve had to send many of the healers home because they were dead on their feet from fatigue. I’ve not even gone to bed myself yet, and I’m so tired, I barely know which way is up.”

  “You should go to bed. You look exhausted.” And she did. Usually, the formidable rock of the family, the last couple of weeks had really taken its toll on her.

  “I can’t. I have to set an example. Your brothers and sisters are here helping, although I’ve just sent Sorrel and Fern to bed. Iris, Juniper, and Rose went to bed at the same time as you, and I‘ve sent someone to get them. Sage, Sequoia, and Tarragon, are still here helping. Your father has had his advisors put out an emergency request for healers in all the main newspapers except for the Heart Echo. I’m hoping we have some Diamonds respond because they can use magic, which would help us a great deal. Our water might work miracles, but it can’t mend broken bones.”

  “How many men are here?”

  “We’ve sent home all the ones that could walk out of here. We had families coming from all over The Club Kingdom to pick them up, but we still have over a hundred that are too sick to move. We lost a few in the night, and I’ve had to put Tree in charge of finding relatives of the dead to claim the bodies. If that’s not bad enough, we’ve got plenty of the Heart soldiers here too. A lot escaped, but those that were too injured to move by themselves were left by their own men, so our side brought them back to be cared for here. Can you imagine that?”

  “Go to bed,” I insisted. “If Fern, Juniper, and Rose are coming down, we will be ok while you have a rest. Hopefully, we’ll get some volunteer healers today, and if you’ve put the advert in the Diamond times, we should get some magic healers within a couple of days.”

  “I can’t go to bed; there is too much to do.”

  “You are going to be ill yourself if you don’t get some sleep. Let’s not have to worry about you too.” My mother was always the first to help in a crisis, but this past week had really rattled her. Usually a bastion of strength, now she appeared frail and weak. The dark circles under her eyes aged her, and this was the first time in my whole life I’d seen her with her hair out of place. The elegant bun she’d been wearing yesterday had fallen down, and now her hair waved messily around her ears.

  “You really are a wonderful daughter.” She brought my head forward with her hands and kissed my forehead. Her lips felt dry upon my skin.

  After she was gone, I looked around to find one of my brothers. Sage was the closest.

  “How can I help?” He sat, stroking the hand of a man who was asleep but still moaning as though sleep was not alleviating his pain. When I looked down, I saw that he had no legs left below the knee. I did my best not to cringe at the sight of the bloody bandaged stumps.

  “I’ve given him a whole vial of Knieval’s knockout tincture, but you can see that it’s not helping as much as it could be. We are running out of medicine, and most of the men are surviving on just our magic water alone. Sequoia is leading a group of men and women who are bringing bucketfuls of water from the stream, but it’s not enough. We lost fifteen men overnight. Some of which might have been saved if we had enough medicine. We have the castle physician and some herbalists in t
he banquet hall preparing medicine, but there are only three of them, and they can’t go any faster. Do you think you can help out in there?”

  I agreed gladly. As much as I wanted to help, the stench of the dying and injured men was a smell like no other, and seeing the bloodied bodies was almost too much for me to bear.

  I walked through the rows of men, hardly daring to look at them. I recognized most. These were men who had attended the warrior training on the castle grounds. How many times had I watched them enter the training grounds as I was working with my animals? Day in, day out, they marched past. I could hear them over the walls of the training ground—the clink of metal on metal as swords clashed, the thumping sound of bare-knuckle boxing, the thwomp of arrows hitting targets. I’d seen them all grow up. Boys only a year older than me spending years of their lives training to defend our country and growing into men. And now, look at them. Some of them couldn’t walk and would never walk again. Some would never see again. And they were the lucky ones. There hadn’t been an official tally of the dead, or if there had been; no one had told me. The whole Club Army was currently laid out in our hall save for those who had been lucky enough to go back to their homes and the ones who hadn’t been lucky at all and were now laid out in body bags in our dungeon. The thought scared me. If anyone decided to attack now, we’d have no one to defend us.

  I passed Rose coming in as I left the hall. She looked as sleep deprived as I, but there was something about her that sparkled. She was smiling despite the black rings under her eyes.

  “Hey, Star! What’s going on? Any change down here?” she ran to me and hugged me tightly. It was quite unlike Rose to show her emotions in such a way. I put it down to the strange week she’d had. She’d been acquitted of murder only days ago. I supposed I’d be happy too if I knew I no longer had the death sentence hanging over me.

  “No change,” I said and then decided to tell her what was worrying me. Rose was not known for worrying about anything, plus, she’d spent the whole day with our father when she’d gone to court, so maybe she knew what he was planning to do if we were attacked while the majority of our army was incapacitated. “Rose, do you know if Father has any backup plans, you know, if someone decides to attack the kingdom?”

  “Backup plans?” she barely heard what I said. It was as if her mind was elsewhere.

  “Yes. Our whole army is wounded or dead. If the Hearts decide to invade again, we are toast!”

  “They won’t invade again. We won! Their army must be in a worse state than ours. A lot of them are here, and we are looking after them.”

  “Yes, but...” A blood-curdling scream from behind me cut me off mid-sentence. I turned to see what it was and was confronted with one of the soldiers coming straight at me. I recognized him. He was one of the Heart soldiers I’d tended to the previous night. He’d lost an eye in battle, and I’d bandaged him up. Now, though, the bloodied bandage had fallen, and I could see the hole where his eye should have been. The last thought I had as he lunged for my throat was, inexplicably, not for my own safety but that I should have done a better job of bandaging him. His fingers found my neck and began to squeeze. I fought for breath, but none came. Fighting him off was pointless as he was twice my size with a hard muscular body. I was nothing more than a ragdoll to him, and he began to shake me. I didn’t know why he picked me to hurt, and I’ll never find out because just seconds after he’d gripped my throat, I felt the coldness of metal fly right past me. He only had one eye, but the look of shock in his other was unmistakable. The grip on my neck lessened and then slacked off completely. We both looked down to find a sword in his side buried right up to the hilt, blood gushing out from the wound, staining his already blood-stained trousers (He had no top on just as the other Heart soldiers were equally undressed.) I didn’t recognize the sword, but there was no mistaking where it had come from.

  I turned in shock to Rose as the man fell down by my feet.

  “Rose! What did you just do?”

  “I had to.” She appeared as shocked as I felt. Apparently, some things could ruffle her feathers after all. “He was killing you.”

  Sage came running up to us as a commotion erupted around us. Some of the men were shouting; some were cheering and clapping. I just stood there in shock, not knowing what to do. What are you supposed to do when your sister kills someone for the second time in less than a week?

  “Ok, calm down!” shouted Sage angrily at the men. “And get back into bed,” he added to the few men that had jumped up. Usually, calm and collected, it was strange to see Sage acting so forcefully, but that was why he was a good Jack. It took a lot to rattle him; but when you did, you’d better watch out. The men complied and a deathly hush came over the room. Even those that had been moaning in pain had momentarily rallied to hear what Sage had to say. He ordered a couple of the castle staff to take the body down to the dungeons, after checking to see if the Heart was, in fact, dead. Rose and I were ushered out of the hall.

  “May I remind you, Rose, that we’ve literally just got you off a death sentence for murder?” His voice was a whisper, but it still echoed up the corridors. His expression didn’t match the anger of his voice. Mostly, he just looked tired.

  “He was strangling Star. Did you see the size of him? She’d have been dead within a minute if I hadn’t acted. What would you have done?” She folded her arms in defiance. Sage rubbed his temples and sighed.

  I rubbed my neck. I could feel where it was beginning to bruise. She was probably right. I’d not have stood a chance against the brute.

  “I would have done exactly the same thing,” Sage replied to Rose with a grudging respect. Let’s just keep this quiet, though, eh? I don’t think Father has quite recovered from his last trip in a hot air balloon.

  “Hot air balloon?” I queried, not sure what he was talking about.

  “Father and I traveled by balloon to my trial in Urbis.” She turned to Sage. “Can I go back in now? Mother woke me up to help in the hall.”

  “You can’t seriously expect me to let you go back in there?” asked Sage incredulously.

  “We are incredibly understaffed, and you can’t deny that you need all the help you can get. Mind you, it should be a bit easier with one less man to worry about.” She winked at me as she went back through the doors into the hall.

  Sage only shook his head. There was really no point in arguing with Rose. I don’t know why he bothered trying in the first place.

  “What about you, Star? Are you ok?” He touched my neck softly where the Heart had clamped his hands around it.

  “I’ll be ok. I’m going to go to the banquet hall. Hopefully, no one will try to attack me there!” I turned and walked down the corridor. Behind me, I heard the main hall door open as Sage went back to tend the men.

  I found Dockleaf, the castle physician, leading a group of three healers, one man and two women, in the making of medicine. In the middle of the giant dining table was the biggest pile of herbs I’d ever seen, plus some spices and various other unidentifiable things.

  To one side, were dozens of empty glass containers and to the other, tens more, but those were filled with liquids of varying colors.

  “Where do you want me?” I asked. I knew a little about herbal medicines and figured I could quite happily fit in somewhere along the production line. “Sage asked me to come and help.”

  “It’s not help that we need, lovey. We are running out of some of the herbs and roots. The stocks of Knieval’s knockout tincture are gone, we’ve only got enough Echina root for about twenty more vials of our homemade sleeping draught, and we are already out of Feverthorne.”

  “What does Feverthorne do?”

  Doc sighed. “It’s the only thing keeping some of those men alive, lassie. The sleeping draught might relieve the pain, as it puts ‘em to sleep, but it won’t cure ‘em if they get infections in those wounds.”

  “Can we get some from somewhere?” I asked. Surely something as important as that wou
ld be available everywhere. “What about the local physicians and apothecaries?”

  “We’ve got all the Feverthorne elixir within a hundred mile radius and taken the stores of the root from every known physician in The Club Kingdom. There is no more. It’s a rare substance and, therefore, expensive. Most have given it willingly, but your father has had to put a royal decree out, forcing people to bring any stocks of it to the castle.” Dockleaf sighed and put the root she was chopping into a small container where she topped it off with some purple liquid before passing it to the person on her right.

  “What about the apothecaries in The Heart District? They are the best in Vanatus.” I couldn’t believe we had run out of something so important.

  “Ha!” replied Doc. “Actually they aren’t. They might look like something special with their golden lettering above the door and the pretty little colored vials in the window, but let me tell yer, they don’t know anything about medicine. All the talk of miracle cures. What they do is buy the stuff from us or the Spades and repackage it in some fancy boxes or bottles and sell it for ten times the price.”

  “Ok, if that’s the case, they still might have stocks of it in their shops.”

  “That may be so, but there’s no way they are going to want to sell it to us now, is there?”

  “Why not?”

  “For a start, they are going to need it for their own men. We won this battle and look at the state of the men out there. Can you imagine what the Heart soldiers look like now?”

  “But we have some of the Heart soldiers here,” I replied, rubbing my neck as I did. “They were brought back by our own men.”

  Doc made a hrmph noise and puffed out her cheeks. “What kind of army brings back men from the opposing side, I ask yer?”

  “Well, the Hearts left them behind. If we’d not brought them back, they’d have died.”

  “It really would have served them right then, wouldn’t it? Trying to steal our water. The irony now, of course, is that it’s our water that is going to save their lives, or it would, if we could get more of that Feverthorne. It only works with our water. Something in the magical properties of our water makes the Feverthorne root work. Without our water, it’s useless.”