Wench

by Maxine Kaplan

  The count turned to look at the corpsman, who was struggling to explain. “Well, Sir Lurch?”

  “It started raining. But only in the grove; there was no rain on the path. It might still be raining in that grove. I left a few deputies to guard it.”

  “And?”

  Sir Lurch hesitated. “It was raining gold, my lord. Fat drops of liquefied gold.”

  This caught the count’s attention. “Really? Well, that is interesting,” he said, looking back to Tanya. “My network has reported unusually productive junkoff throughout the kingdom, but gold falling from the sky . . . that is very interesting. What does that have to do with the girl?”

  “The rain started after she pulled a quill from her arm. Immediately after, that is. It was difficult not to connect her to it, although I’m at a loss to explain the connection.”

  The count had gone very still. “A quill, Sir Lurch? You’re absolutely certain?”

  Sir Lurch’s forehead crinkled with confusion. “Yes, sir.”

  The count’s eyes did not move from Tanya’s face as he asked, “Have you confiscated the quill, Sir Lurch?”

  “Well . . . no, sir. It was just a quill.”

  “I see,” said the count icily. “Look at me, girl.”

  Tanya forced herself to meet his glare. She could not remember ever feeling more cowed in her life. Not by the Tomcat, not by the lord overseer of Griffin’s Port, not by any rough-hewed pirate in the Snake, not by any imperious duke who wanted a little something extra with his wine, not even by the stall keepers who’d shooed her away when she was left alone and hungry on the docks, tiny and nameless.

  “Your name,” he demanded.

  She took a breath. “Tanya of Griffin’s Port, proprietress of the Smiling Snake inn and tavern,” she said.

  He raised his eyebrow at her lack of family name. She could read his unspoken thought: an orphan or a foundling; no one of consequence—expendable. She felt anger inject some steel into her spine, and she stood up straighter.

  “Show me,” he commanded.

  Tanya, seeing no advantage in resisting, extracted the quill from her sleeve. She held it out to him and he snatched the quill away from her grasp.

  “Hey!” cried Tanya, but Sir Lurch’s hand on her arm held her back.

  “My lord?” asked Sir Lurch, his voice curious. “Is the quill important?”

  The count’s eyes glowed as he examined his prize. No longer interested in the tableau in front of him, he waved away the corpsman’s question with a flick of a ruby-ringed hand.

  “Thank you very much for alerting me to this, Sir Lurch,” he said, his eyes never leaving the quill as he turned toward the exit. “Please be assured that you did precisely the right thing and the Queen will be informed of your sense and service. I’ll send my own men to the grove you mentioned.”

  “What shall I do about the girl, my lord?”

  “The what? Oh, the girl. Clean her up, I suppose. Assure yourself that she’s committed no crimes and, if she’s honest, send her on her way with some appropriate token of the Queen’s gratitude.”

  Tanya cleared her throat. “My lord, if the Queen wishes to reward me, I do have a specific request. . . .”

  The count had turned away, one foot out the door, the bedraggled girl who had brought the quill already forgotten.

  “Pardon me,” he muttered perfunctorily as he collided with Violet, who had returned with a hooded cloak of rich green cloth.

  “My lord,” called out Tanya, but the count didn’t stop.

  Violet hurried forward and began arranging the cloak around her shoulders. Tanya frowned and shook her off, stepping into the doorway. The count was hurrying down a long hallway.

  Tanya threw off the cloak entirely and flexed her fingers. She felt the quill thrumming in the count’s grasp—and pulled.

  “Ayeee!” The count yelped as the quill scraped his palm in its arc back down the hallway. Tanya, her tattoos pulsing, caught it neatly between her thumb and forefinger.

  The count turned around, cradling his injured palm, and looked at Tanya as if he hadn’t actually seen her before.

  With the quill firmly back in her possession, happily spitting golden sparks into the air, Tanya dipped into a deep curtsy, dripping with sarcastic respect.

  “If the Council would make the time for one so common as I,” Tanya spat, “I have left my home and traveled far expressly to petition it. In doing so, I trusted my person to one of my Queen and Council’s corpsmen, and instead of receiving protection, was set upon by thieves, imprisoned, and escaped all on my own, with no help from the corps. But here I am and somehow I have managed to safeguard this quill. I will continue to do so until I have seen the Queen and Council, and have said what I came to say.”

  Chapter

  14

  The count walked forward. As he came down the dim hall, Tanya saw that he was smiling—a not entirely pleasant expression.

  He pulled a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and began to wrap it around the cut on his palm. To Tanya’s eyes, he was a little too practiced at making impromptu bandages for one so well dressed.

  “What did you say your name was, girl?” asked the count.

  Tanya repeated her curtsy. “Tanya, my lord,” she said. “From Griffin’s Port.”

  “And you say you were traveling with a corps?”

  “Yes sir. Commander Rees’s Corps.”

  “Yes, of course it would have to be Rees,” the count muttered, apparently to himself.

  Sir Lurch cleared his throat. “When I found her, she was with the second son of Vermillon’s Path. The little one who got sent to the Royal College of Aetherical Manipulation.”

  “Really?” The count looked both curious and amused. “And she had the quill? Interesting. What have you done with him?”

  “My men will escort him to the Corps Complex. He’ll be made comfortable until I can debrief him.”

  “Please oblige me and make sure he does not leave the complex, at least not before little miss Tanya here presents her petition to the Council.”

  “I am to see the Council, then?” blurted out Tanya.

  The count approached her and Tanya bit her lip.

  “Yes girl, you will, and the Queen, too,” said the count quietly. “Whoever bears that quill is bound to be very important in this court. That might have been Commander Rees; it suits me that is no longer the case. Are you ready to be important, Tanya of Griffin’s Port? Because, if you are, for the moment, that will work for me. But are you sure your petition is worth you being an object in this court? If I’m not much mistaken, this is not an environment in which you have much experience, and, if you have any at all, it’s as a serving girl. Are you ready to be more than a . . . what? Not a proprietress, truly. Tavern wench?” Tanya started a little and he smiled a little wider. “Are you willing, tavern wench?”

  Tanya looked the count in the eye. She felt a little thrill of fear as she did so—she would never have imagined herself looking a count in the eye.

  To return to her tavern, the tavern maid had to stop being a tavern maid.

  “I’ll do what I have to, sir, in order to get what I came for,” she said steadily, her mouth feeling odd and empty around the missing deferential of “my lord.”

  The count looked over her shoulder at Violet. “You may take her to the blue room in the eastern turret,” he said. “My sister’s room at court, but she’ll never know, not gallivanting with husband number three in the Cotton Trees. And for the Sky’s sake, woman, cover her in that cloak. Use whatever of my sister’s gowns will fit her and make her look as presentable as possible. I’ll come for her when I’m ready.” And with that, he turned heel and disappeared up a spiral staircase.

  Tanya was left standing, still as a scarecrow, in the corridor. A corridor that, with its ebony-and-pearl sconces and gold-leafed ceiling, was probably the grandest room she had ever been in, for all that it was adjacent to a supply closet.

  She was still
standing there, gold and blood dripping from her wrists onto the imported red tiles, when Sir Lurch muttered a few words to Violet and disappeared out the side door. Violet draped the green cloak around her shoulders and lifted the hood, but still Tanya couldn’t move.

  The older woman began to do up the buttons, as if Tanya were the pampered daughter of some lord.

  “I can do that,” Tanya said, breaking out of her shock, raising her hands to the next button. “No need to wait on me, my lady.”

  “I’m not a ‘my lady,’” said Violet, stepping back and allowing Tanya to finish fastening the cloak. “I believe ‘ma’am’ will do.”

  The words came swiftly and dispassionately, but her tone was not unkind. And, as Tanya knew from many interactions with ladies’ maids delighted to find someone beneath them in the hierarchy, an upper servant of the Glacier would be well within her rights to accept a “my lady” from Tanya.

  “There,” said Tanya. She spread out her hands. “Will I do, ma’am?”

  Violet looked at her critically. “Hide your hands in your sleeves,” she said. “They’re filthy and I haven’t even examined your fingernails yet. I have a feeling I shall not approve.” Tanya obeyed. “Now, where I can, I’ll keep to the servants’ passages, but sadly the councilman’s tower is on other side of the Queen’s Hall and at this hour”—she checked a brass watch hanging from her belt on a plain chain—“I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to keep you entirely out of sight. Keep your hood up and your chin down. Don’t speak to anyone and move as quickly as you can. Do exactly as I say.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The Queen’s Hall, the Queen’s Hall, the Queen’s Hall. Tanya pulled the hood farther down over her eyes. She breathed deep. “I’m ready when you are, ma’am.”

  Violet nodded and briskly turned heel, leading Tanya up the same spiral staircase the count had taken. Tanya, careful to keep her eyes on her feet, followed as best she could.

  But first she stopped. Violet had called the count “councilman.”

  Count Hewitt was Councilman Hewitt, the Queen’s closest advisor. The very man who had signed away the Snake.

  And he didn’t even know your name before you told him. Tanya gritted her teeth and followed Violet up the stairs.

  All she saw was floor—polished mahogany planks, opalescent marble, thick-piled velvet rugs with impossibly intricate patterns, and more of the red tile. She eventually walked straight into Violet’s back. The older woman had stopped.

  “Quiet,” she ordered.

  Tanya obeyed, still hidden within the cloak. A buzz of masculine voices filtered through the hood, but her vision was blocked in every direction other than down.

  Tanya obeyed the order to remain silent, but as seconds turned into a full minute, she decided it couldn’t hurt to lift her eyes just a little, just to see where they were, and what they were waiting for.

  They had stopped behind double doors of highly polished rosewood carved with a design of a rose trellis, each thorn so lifelike, and so sharp, Tanya felt sure they would actually draw blood.

  She cautiously lifted her chin higher, peering through her lashes, and gasped.

  Through the gap in the double doors was an immense hall, the brightest lit that Tanya had ever seen, heavy with the scent of roses and vanilla. And in the center of that hall were the seven most beautiful young men Tanya had ever seen.

  They were moving so rhythmically, with such acrobatic and convoluted grace, that it took Tanya a moment to realize that they were not, in fact, dancing.

  They were fighting.

  Not a one of the seven looked alike. They had dark skin, light skin, freckled, tanned. One had golden curls, another had coal-black locks sticking up in pieces, and another had nothing but reddish fuzz covering his head.

  Their weapons were distinct, too. Tanya spotted a long sword, a set of double-pronged daggers, some sort of whip, a staff, and three other armaments that she couldn’t begin to identify, but all were wielded with deadly, controlled force.

  The fighting men were moving across the floor, a many-tiled masterpiece in blue glass, green gems, terra-cotta, ebony, and mother-of-pearl, swiftly, but mostly silently.

  The buzz came from the ring of richly dressed men—and a few women, although not as many—who stood in a loose ring around the hall, sipping something pink and bubbling out of elegant crystal glasses shaped like tulips and eating tiny tarts.

  And all the way on the far side of the hall, on a dais that appeared to be made entirely of roses, was the Queen.

  The Queen was a flower in human form, her flesh as luscious as the peach-colored blossoms on cherry trees. She was clad only in a silvery-white lace gown, an empire waist and cap sleeves flowing seamlessly into a silken train that concealed her feet.

  The Queen wore no cosmetics that Tanya could see. Her hair, the same silver-white of her dress, fell loose and shining to her waist.

  The Queen wore no jewelry except for, of course, the crown. The crown . . . it was as tall as a small child and blindingly bright—too blinding to discern anything but three glittering spikes, two shorter on the outside, and one taller, tapered one in the center.

  The Queen’s face was unnervingly still—not stern, not withering, not unpleasant. Not anything. Not human.

  Tanya shuffled closer to the door, staring over Violet’s shoulder. She realized that she had no idea how old the Queen was, and this, her first glimpse of her, did nothing to change that. Her skin was as smooth as a girl three years younger than Tanya herself, but there was something ancient in those eyes . . .

  With a shock, Tanya realized something else: She didn’t know the Queen’s name. She had always simply been . . . the Queen.

  A quintet of musicians—a harpist, a lute player, a recorder, a drummer, and a singer—gathered in front of the Queen’s dais. The singer began, trilling out pleasing nonsense syllables. The nobles circled around, turning their backs to the fighters—and the doors.

  Violet opened the door enough for them to slip through unnoticed, hustling Tanya through the hall.

  Finally, they reached the top of a twisting staircase where there was a carved door of pale wood. Violet brought out an enormous iron ring from inside her sleeve and placed a key in the lock.

  Violet grunted and the door gave with a sticky thud.

  “Of course, his lordship’s household ignores the rooms not immediately in use by himself,” she said caustically. “You, girl, go in there and remove your . . . let’s call them clothes, although they hardly merit the name anymore. I trust you can run yourself a bath?”

  “Yes ma’am. Is there a stove or shall I heat a pot in the fireplace . . . ?”

  “Heat a pot? No, girl, simply lower the bucket down the water shaft by the hearth.”

  “Water . . . shaft? Like, a well?”

  “What? Where did you say you were from? Never mind,” said Violet, interrupting Tanya’s half-whispered answer. “I’ll run across the hall to the councilman’s chambers and send over one of his girls to help you. And I’ll see what has been done with the Lady Louisa’s wardrobe, although I doubt we’ll find it kept in good condition. Well?”

  Tanya’s head snapped up. “Ma’am.”

  Violet had already left the room and was standing in front of a different, larger, and grander door. She pointed past Tanya into Lady Louisa’s room.

  “In you go,” she ordered her. The grander door opened and revealed a startled-looking girl in a spotless kerchief.

  “I don’t know you,” said Violet, pushing past her. “Are you new? What’s your name?”

  “Jasmine, ma’am,” whispered the startled girl, shutting the door behind her.

  Tanya stepped into the tower room and stood very still for a moment. She moved to the window and threw open the heavy velvet curtains, flooding the chamber with starlight, illuminating her path to the center of the room.

  And there she stayed, spinning slowly on her heels, until a sudden flicker of light drew her eye.

 
“I’m so sorry you had to stand in the dark, my lady,” said the little maid from across the hall as she traveled the entire circle of the tower room, lighting each lamp in its individual golden sconce. All the sconces were gold, but one was in the shape of a roaring tiger, another was a strange creature Tanya had never seen with a long hose coming out of its face where its nose should be, and yet a third a roaring cobra with glittering diamond fangs, and another . . . Tanya couldn’t keep track.

  Once the tower was illuminated, Tanya found herself sinking to her knees.

  “There now,” said the maid, sounding relieved and much more confident now that she had successfully completed a task. “I’ll get that bath ready for you, my lady, and perhaps some hot cocoa before bed . . . my lady?” She rushed to the center of the room and knelt discreetly at the carpet’s edge. “Are you ill, my lady? Shall I fetch a healer?” When Tanya didn’t answer, the maid crept an infinitesimal bit closer. “My lady?” she asked again. “My lady, are you all—”

  “I’m not a ‘my lady,’” snapped Tanya. The maid blinked and fell back. “Sorry,” said Tanya. “But, I’m not a ‘my lady,’ really. I’m not even a ‘miss.’”

  The maid, who Tanya now remembered had called herself Jasmine, smiled gently. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Whoever you are, you’re staying here, aren’t you? You’re going to sleep in that bed tonight.”

  Tanya looked toward where Jasmine was nodding and shook her head. I’d rather sleep right here, on the carpet, she thought to herself, feeling the plush threads cushion her knees, at least six inches deep. It’s nicer than any bed I ever had.

  This room, the room in which she was expected to bathe, sleep, and dress, was unlike anything Tanya had ever imagined.

  She had caught glimpses of grandeur over her years serving at the Snake. Traveling chests made of the iridescent scales of sea serpents and bound by gold; ruby-stoppered bottles of scent; jade combs, studded with pearls; a matchbox, small and made of plain enamel, left behind by some lord’s careless daughter as a useless and easily forgotten trinket, but so beautiful that Tanya had kept it among the bottles of liquor behind the bar, ostensibly so that she could quickly return it if the lady came looking for it, but really so she could admire the rainbow, shimmering and sun bright, painted on its top.