The Safe-Keeper's Secret

by Sharon Shinn

  Angeline looked alarmed. “Is anyone hurt?”

  “Not that I can see. They all look mad, though.”

  “Can we drive around?” Fiona asked.

  “Field’s pretty wet,” Reed observed. “Might get stuck.”

  “I don’t think I can bear to sit one more hour on the road,” Angeline said.

  Reed had already pulled the handle and opened his door. “I’m going to walk the last couple of miles,” he said. “I’ll be home before you.”

  He had one foot out the door when Angeline said, “Wait.”

  He turned back with an inquiring look on his face. Fiona was already staring at her aunt. Angeline had been so quiet during the whole long journey that Fiona had assumed she was sleepy, or maybe had developed a headache from the rock and clatter of the coach. But now something in Angeline’s taut features and expression of misery gave Fiona a creeping, bone-deep chill.

  “What is it?” Fiona asked in a low voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “There is—when you get home—you’ll find that your mother’s been sick,” Angeline said.

  Reed drew his foot back in and shut the door very carefully. Fiona said, “How sick?”

  Angeline shook her head. “I don’t know. We both thought—and even Elminstra thought—if she spent the summer very quietly, doing nothing, she might recover. That’s why you both came to stay with me. And Elminstra went to see her every day, and tried every potion she knew. But she—but your mother—she hasn’t gotten stronger. She’s gotten weaker instead.”

  “How weak?” Fiona asked in the same clipped voice.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her. But Thomas says she’s very frail.”

  Without another word, Reed palmed the handle, shoved open the door, and jumped out of the coach. Fiona called after him, but he was already ten yards away, racing at a full-out run across the fields, by the shortest route back to the cottage.

  Fiona returned her attention to her aunt. She was furious. “How could you do this?” she whispered. “How could you take us away from her when there might not be very much time left?”

  Angeline shook her head. “Our hope was to make her better, not to keep you away from her.”

  “How could you not tell us such an important thing?”

  “She asked me not to,” Angeline said starkly. “And I’m a Safe-Keeper.”

  “And Thomas? He knew?”

  “He knew.”

  “And he did not tell me? He, who repeats every thought the minute it pops into his head? He knew, and he didn’t tell me?”

  “Sometimes,” Angeline said sadly, “a Truth-Teller can choose not to speak. It is just that nothing he says is false.”

  “I hate you both,” Fiona said flatly, and got out of the coach.

  She could not run as fast as Reed, but she was a good walker, and she knew the way as well as Reed did. The ground was muddy but only impassable in a few spots, and she followed Reed’s footprints around any particularly marshy places. She was so full of rage and fear that she almost was not aware of her feet moving and her body working. Her skin was hot from sun or exertion or terror, but her heart was cold.

  No one had had to speak the truth out loud for Fiona to know that her mother was dying.

  She was panting a little by the time she made it in sight of the cottage. The garden looked overgrown, as if no one had tended it all season. The back door was open, as if Reed had run through without bothering to close it behind him. The carriage with Angeline was nowhere in sight—it was probably still stuck behind the hay cart two miles down the road.

  Fiona pushed herself to a run and hurried through the back door, into the welcome coolness of the cottage. Damiana and Reed were right there inside the kitchen. He was on his knees and weeping into her skirt; she was standing there gazing down at him, her arms cradled around his head.

  She looked up and smiled when Fiona burst in. “I hope you were not cruel to Angeline,” she said, and her voice was raspy, as if she had been crying or coughing or simply not talking very much. “None of this is her fault.”

  It was Reed who had always been able to express whatever the emotion of the day brought; Fiona was not able to fall to her knees and lament, much as she wanted to. She merely stared at her mother and read the story in her eyes.

  “This was a secret you could have trusted me with,” she said.

  Damiana shook her head. “This was a secret I never wanted to tell,” she replied.

  Angeline did not come to the door for several more hours, though Fiona thought she heard the coach lumber by the front gate about a half hour later. By that time, Reed had calmed down enough to sit and have tea, and the three of them were gathered together at the kitchen table, talking.

  “How much time?” Reed asked.

  Damiana shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

  “Till Wintermoon?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “I’m not going back to school,” he said.

  “Of course you are! You—”

  “I’m not, either,” Fiona said.

  Damiana looked at her helplessly, as if she had been counting on Fiona’s support. “But I want you to finish your studies. Both of you.”

  Fiona shrugged and sipped her tea. “I don’t think there’s anything you can make us do right now. Except take care of you.”

  “That is not what I would choose for you,” Damiana said softly. “Spending precious months of your life tending a dying woman.”

  “You have already taken away three of those precious months,” Fiona said, her voice unyielding. “We’re making sure we have the rest.”

  Reed looked over at Fiona. His happy, carefree face was set and serious; he looked like a different person. “I can keep the garden and do whatever has to be done around the house,” he said. “And I’m better at math than you are, so I’ll buy the goods we need in town.”

  “We might need money,” Fiona answered him. Both of them ignored Damiana’s small wordless exclamations of distress. “I can see if Lacey has any piecework I can do here at the house.”

  “Dirk might let me work at the tavern a day or two a week. He’s asked me before.”

  “Fiona, Reed—don’t talk that way—”

  “And I have some cuttings I brought back from Kate’s garden,” Fiona said, still speaking only to her brother. “Some things that Elminstra doesn’t have. I can make some potions up, see if they make things easier for Mother.”

  “Fiona, darling, don’t pin your hopes on your herbal remedies,” Damiana murmured.

  “One’s for pain,” Fiona added, as if Damiana hadn’t spoken. “In case nothing else works. It’s gotten a good solid rooting, too. I can probably pick a few of the leaves tomorrow.”

  “Don’t talk like this,” Damiana implored.

  Fiona looked over at her mother, at her hurt, hopeful face, seeing the first faint ravages of the disease and the thin lines traced by fear. “We will take care of you,” she said in a precise voice. “All you have left to do now is realize how much we love you.”

  Angeline arrived at dinnertime, in company with Elminstra, who brought a casserole. The old witch came rushing in, throwing her arms around Reed and Fiona in turn, whether they wished to be hugged or not. Fiona felt some of her hardheld anger and panic melt a little against Elminstra’s comforting embrace. She took a deep gulping breath and had to fight hard not to start crying into the freshly starched linen of the older woman’s dress.

  But she controlled herself and stepped away. “Thank you so much for all you’ve done for my mother while we’ve been gone,” she said.

  “Yes, and I was glad to do it, and I’d do it another three months or another three years,” Elminstra exclaimed. “But it is good to see you back, you and your brother—she has missed you so terribly—”

  “Elminstra has brought us dinner,” Angeline said in a subdued voice. “And will stay to eat it with us if we’d like.”

  “Yes, please stay,” said Reed, and
that settled it. Fiona laid another place and they all sat down together and ate.

  The meal was the strangest one Fiona could ever remember. Damiana and Elminstra asked hundreds of questions about how their summer had gone, what they had learned from Robert, from Kate, what marvels they had seen in Lowford. Elminstra in turn related bits of gossip, news of events that had transpired over the summer and that might not have made their way into their mother’s letters. Reed talked easily, though without his usual buoyancy, but both Fiona and Angeline were quiet, monosyllabic when they spoke at all.

  And yet, for all the awkwardness, it was an infinitely precious meal, one that Fiona would never forget, for here they were all together in one room, the four people she loved the most in the world. Someday soon to be reduced to three.

  Someday after that—maybe not so far distant a day—to be reduced again, when Elminstra died, or Angeline. It had not occurred to Fiona till this very moment, but that was the normal run of things; adults passed on, children became adults, more children were born. What she had now, this circle of beloved faces, might come together again only a few more times in her life, and who knew when the next member might be culled? Panic gripped her so tightly that her hand shook on her water glass and she had to set it back on the table unsipped.

  “Fiona,” Damiana said in a quiet voice. “I want you to take your aunt out to the garden and show her the fleurmint you planted this spring. It bloomed for the first time yesterday, and she’s never seen it.”

  Fiona nodded blindly and pushed her chair back. She did not even look over at Angeline, but stepped away from the table and out the back door before anyone else could say a word. Outside, it was dark already, the early dark of late summer, and the smells of laden orchards and cut hay were very strong. In the faint moonlight, Fiona could see only high shadows where the tall stalks of hollyhocks should be, and a low furze of darkness where the summer vegetables lay in their cradles of green.

  Angeline stepped outside, the door knocking shut behind her, and Fiona whirled around. It was as if the sobs were breaking her from the inside, snapping her in two bone by bone. Angeline said nothing, merely took Fiona in her arms and held her as long as the crying lasted.

  Chapter Nine

  What Fiona remembered about the rest of that season was Reed’s gentleness. The boy whose chatter could only be stilled by sleep, the boy who ran so fast he could only be caught by nightfall, became a young man who could sit still and silent for hours at a time. It was Reed who brought Damiana her breakfast in the morning, and Reed who carried her from room to room when she grew too weak to walk. It was Reed who sat and read to her for hours, or listened when she had the strength to talk. He did the household chores he had promised—weeded the garden, chopped the wood, shopped in the market, fixed the gate—but more of his time was spent indoors than out, his hand always on their mother’s arm.

  Fiona, who would have said that she was the one better suited to caretaking, found that she could not bear the quiet vigils for long. She busied herself in the kitchen, cooking and canning; she made daily treks to Elminstra’s to fetch more serums or a new soothing tea that the witch thought might ease Damiana’s coughing. She tried making her own potions against pain, using cuttings brought back from Kate’s garden, and stirred these into her mother’s juice every morning. She greeted visitors at the door, and admitted them when she thought they might lift her mother’s spirits, and turned them away when she was sure they would not. She would have sent them all away, every one—how dare they intrude on these last few weeks when there was so little time left—except that she could tell Damiana was renewed by the visits, made happy by the small attentions. But she watched in some jealousy as friends from the village sat and laughed with her mother, making her forget, however briefly, that she was sick, that she was dying. Fiona herself did not have that gift. She had love, and she had grief, and she had strength, but she did not have the ability to pretend.

  At the end of every day, Reed would carry Damiana to her room, and Fiona would go in to ask if she needed anything else and talk over the day, as Damiana had always done with her. At these times, Fiona tried her best to speak lightly, to gossip about the villagers, and laugh when the subject seemed appropriate; she would see Damiana’s face lighten, and she knew exactly what her mother was thinking. Fiona will survive this after all. She will be strong enough to continue when I am gone. And every night, she tried to leave the room while her mother still had that look of hope on her face, and every night she would return to the main room and weep.

  And every night Reed would come and sit beside her and put his arm around her waist and hold her until the tears stopped. “How can you be so strong?” she whispered to him one night, when she did not think she would ever be able to stop crying.

  “It’s the only thing I know how to do,” he said. “To take care of her, and take care of you.”

  She wept even harder. “You should not have to take care of me, too! I at least should not be a burden.”

  He kissed her on the top of her head. “No burden,” he murmured. “Love never is.”

  Damiana was well enough to celebrate their birthday, which fell at the very end of summer or the very beginning of autumn, depending on how you calculated. She had slept most of the day, so she was almost lively at dinnertime when Reed carried her into the main room. Elminstra and one of her daughters and two of her grandchildren came with presents and a chocolate cake, and they had a very festive time of it. The event exhausted Damiana, though, and she slept straight through till noon the next day.

  Thomas arrived about six weeks later. By this time, it was near the end, and Damiana was truly dying; death no longer kept any secrets from her. She had finally asked them to send for her sister, who had promised to come stay in the final days. Angeline had visited every week or two, but Fiona and Reed had always assured her they were managing just fine, they did not need any help, the situation was not desperate yet. And so she had gone back home, and Fiona and Reed had had another week with their mother, and another.

  But she had grown so weak in the past few days that she could not move from her bedroom. Reed no longer carried her to the kitchen to take her meals, or out to the main room so she could watch the fire dancing on the hearth. He stayed and talked to her whenever she was awake; when she slept, he went outside and attacked with fierce energy whatever chore he had set himself for the day.

  Fiona had sent for Angeline the day before and here she was, arriving with the Truth-Teller in tow.

  “How is she?” Angeline demanded, tripping out of his wagon.

  “Worse,” Fiona said. She was looking up at Thomas, a little frown on her face.

  Angeline brushed past her without another word. Fiona still gazed up at Thomas. “I haven’t seen her in two months,” he said, still sitting on the wagon seat with the reins in his hands. “I gave you that much time.”

  “Are you going to stay?” she asked.

  “It’s up to you.”

  “Up to my mother, you mean.”

  He shook his head. “Your decision. You’re the one who doesn’t like me. I wouldn’t want to trouble your last days with her.”

  Fiona felt her shoulders sag. “She was asking about you just yesterday,” she said, turning away from him. “It will do her good to see you. You can stay as long as you like.”

  He did not move, either to step down from the wagon or urge his horses forward so he could stable them in town. “Till the end?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered, and walked on into the house without another glance in his direction.

  Soon enough, they were all in the house together, Angeline in visiting with her sister, Fiona making the evening meal, Thomas and Reed in the main room talking before the fire. All they were missing was Isadora for it to be like Wintermoon.

  Not at all like Wintermoon.

  Damiana slept through the meal, so the four of them ate around the kitchen table, conversing quietly, catching up. First the
re was local news to tell, of Kate in Lowford and Lacey in Tambleham, and then their attention wandered to broader topics.

  “Did you hear about the scandal in Wodenderry?” Angeline asked, shaking her head.

  “No,” Fiona replied. She rarely bothered listening anymore when people talked of anything but illness and remedies. “What happened?”

  “The queen and her baby son have fled the city!”

  Fiona glanced at Thomas. “So you were right, then.”

  He nodded. “I was not the brave Truth-Teller who informed the king that the baby was not his, but some reckless woman stepped forward and said that very thing. He had her taken into custody, to be tried for treason, but three more Truth-Tellers rushed to her defense and told the same tale.”

  “So the king sent for the queen, to ask her for the truth in a public hearing, but she was already gone,” Angeline supplied. “And one of the king’s guards with her. Thereby more or less proving the truth of the accusations.”

  “What happened to that woman? The one the king imprisoned?” Fiona asked.

  Thomas gave her a little smile, as if the question did her credit. “Released that day and given a gold ring by way of apology. Though I still don’t think the king will be welcoming Truth-Tellers to his palace any time soon.”

  “Does that mean Princess Lirabel will be named his heir after all?” Reed asked.

  Thomas spread his hands. “King Marcus seems to be a most determined man. He may already be looking for a new queen.”

  Angeline put her hands to her heart as if to stop its mad fluttering. “Time for me to head for the royal city and try to catch the eye of the king!”

  “He might be looking for someone a little younger,” Thomas observed.

  Angeline laughed. “Then I won’t waste my time.”

  “I’d like to see the royal city someday,” Reed said.

  “And you should,” Thomas said. “It’s a beautiful, wicked, holy, crowded, fascinating, and wonderful place.” He glanced at Fiona. “You should both go sometime.”