“The air here, it’s so damp with these dour walls…”
“Yes… So many get chills from it. I’m lucky I haven’t…”
Yet the Faireweather girl was sitting right there and seemed in perfect health to Ash, although she was looking quite pale now. With some effort, she lifted her chin.
“And you, Ashlynne dear, I hear that we are to see the work of the wonderful new munitions experts on the morn?”
How on earth had she heard that? Ash had only just found out a few hours ago, and she was the one doing it. “Yes, we are. I thank you, kind lady, for your interest.” She was finished her pitiful supper, and so were the others. They all stood to leave, Bella and Naomi darting each other looks before the latter went towards the other tables in the hall.
As she was walking out, both Derrick and the Duke were walking in. The duke smiled, but Derrick ostentatiously smoothed his doublet and walked straight past, making a point of nodding to Naomi Verraine, who was now with some elderly gentleman Ash assumed was her father.
“Good evening Ash. You’re just in time.”
Before she could ask what for, a rather colourfully dressed older man bustled past Ash into the hall and cleared his throat loudly. In his hand was parchment that looked remarkably similar to the Pathfinders” one that had first summoned her to the palace ball.
“Hear ye, hear ye, one and all. It is with regret that His Royal Highness King Derumpe learns of the illness of the Faireweather clan...”
“No…” murmured the Faireweather girl standing pale and stricken in front of him.
“The family has taken ill and requires fresher airs outside the walls of the palace…”
“No, please no…”
“They will be escorted to their ancestral home at daybreak. The royal family wishes their friends of the crown well in recovering from their illness.”
A choked, wheezing sob sounded behind Ash, and she turned to see Mary Faireweather on the floor, sobbing. Behind her, Naomi Verraine clutched at her father’s arm and shook her head, murmuring comfortingly to the older man. Bella Nargosi simply shrugged.
“Poor girl,” muttered the duke. “Most likely Lord Faireweather said something stupid to someone important. It’s this way every time someone nonessential falls out of favour. They either get actively taken for “cleaner airs” or they simply get left behind the next time the carriages move for the new month.”
“But, without the royal guard, outside the castle walls, the carriors will have them – or the mobs, or both!”
“Indeed.”
She was still on the floor, still crying openly in the way that was bred out of ladies, smoothed out of them, from birth. Ash couldn’t tear her eyes away.
“Look well, Ashlynne. Word is, the next in line for this sort of treatment is you.”
Chapter Ten
Broken things
“Hello maidy,” the man growled again, slurring his words in a thick mouth full of rotten teeth.
Vanita stared at him stupidly, not moving. She could not quite believe he was there. The man seemed to have come directly out of her dream to stand, bizarrely, in the middle of her kitchen.
“What do you want?” He shifted from side to side, fingers twitching, and she realised for the first time how small she was.
“I want what all men wants,” he leered. “Feeding.”
“There is not much food to spare, but I’ll give you what I can.”
The man scratched at his chin, untroubled by her kindness. He really looked just like one of the men in her dream. “Well, whatever you have, I’ll take that.”
“I cannot give you all our food. We’ll starve.”
“Who said anythin” about giving?” He walked towards her.
He was just a few steps away now, she had to keep talking. “We have silver, maybe even fine jewels left. You can have them.”
“And do what with them? Sell “em? Oh no, it’s food we want maidy. Food, and maybe a good time.”
We? With a sinking pain in her chest, Vanita looked towards the door to see three more men come in.
The man smirked as he saw her take in their height, their build, their expressions of hate. Casually, he half turned to them.
“What’d I say, then? We didn’t need no more of us, there’s only this battered one-eyed freak here and nothin” to protect her. And in a fine house like this, with someone as pathetic as this what can’t hunt, there’s got to be stores of food.”
“Ugh, I can’t watch this. I’m going to look around,” said one of the cronies, face obscured by a tattered dark scarf wrapped all around their head. The voice was low and melodious, and Vanita realised with a start that it must be a woman. Lar, however, was certainly no woman, the way he was leering at her.
In a flash, faster than thought, he was right up against her, hand on her white throat. “So where’s the food, Maidy?”
“I… have some pu-pumpkin. Not much.”
“Cor! Listen to that, pumpkin! When I’m right I’m right, make no mistake men. Search the room.”
A small sob escaped Vanita, but she forced the rest down. She had to be strong. If they knew she had a mother here… No. She could not think of it. “Pl-please. I am only alone here.”
“Well, not anymore, Maidy. Now you got us fine gents to keep you company. We might even keep you around to help us occupy our time in a big house like this –” But he stopped short. Her voice had betrayed her.
“Check upstairs.”
“No!” She began to cry in earnest now, tears falling to the floor.
“Found it, Lar,” one of the men said somewhere behind her. “Whole pile of the stuff! We’ll eat for a month, we’re careful.”
“Ah, grand. Take most of it, then, we’ll have a small bit here for a party for us. We can have her cook it for us after.” Dimly, Vanita was aware of the fourth man producing the filthiest sack she’d ever seen, piling their precious pumpkin into it, and darting off out the door, quick as a cat.
And then, her heart sank like a stone.
“Found this too, Lar.” The other man, back downstairs already, holding the slumped grey form of Vanita’s mother.
“You leave her alone!”
The man from upstairs smiled, almost genially. “Or what?” She looked from him to her mother and back again. A tendril of grey hair had escaped her mother’s bun, falling lightly over her face. Vanita took it all in – she did not think she would get a chance to see her mother again.
The first man turned back to her. “Well, this is quite a catch. Food and not one woman but two. Thank you then, Maidy,” the man leered, his dark brown eyes like pits as he stood, nose to nose with her. On his breath was the strong smell of rotted meat, or some other flesh.
“Let me show you my thanks,” he began, edging closer, but was interrupted by a garbled cry and fleeting movement near the door. Vanita’s mother was struggling in the other man’s arms, scrabbling with her hands mutely, but with some of the old, cold fire in her eyes.
The man holding her did not know what progress this was, what a monumental leap for the old woman. He just lifted a hand and hit her smartly across the head.
“No!” Sobs of rage came tearing out Vanita as the grey head hit the doorframe and her mother fell to the floor without rising. But the big man now had his big hands on her shoulders, driving out all thought except the overwhelming stench of him, the sickening heat coming from his body so close to her own.
He pushed her down.
The side of her face without an eye smacked the cold floor, and for an instant the word went black. Rough hands, cut-glass hands, all over, pawing at her, scraping her raw from the inside out. It hadn’t been a dream.
It was at that moment that it came, soft, then louder. It came from her, but also from around her, from everywhere in the room all at once.
“Remember Gelanne” the voice said.
At once the hands were off her and the cool returned as the man retreated, all of them retreated, and st
ood in a corner watching her.
She looked at them. “Remember Gelanne,” the voice said again.
The woman with the wrapped face had snuck soundlessly back into the room at some point. “How does she know about Gel, Lar?” she asked in a low voice.
“No. Nobody knows. No one, y’hear?”
“She’s a witch!”
“If she’s a witch, why’d she act so weak and dumb then?” tittered one of the other boys, eyes just about rolling back in his head in fear.
“To trap us, like as not,” said “Lar” grimly. “We’ll be her slaves here. Or she’ll turn us into food!” Three heads turned and viewed the piles of mute pumpkin. The men shuddered.
When Vanita did not speak, but continued watching them, the men began to move in single file towards the door, slowly and facing her as though she were a wild animal. “We meant no… well, we weren’t going to do any harm. All we wanted’s was food, see? Mercy please, maidy - ah - m’lady. Please. We’ll be going now.”
They scampered out the door, escalating to run as soon as they were over the threshold. Vanita watched them go without a single thought in her head. She turned to her mother and with the same curious detachment felt her chest, saw that she was breathing evenly and fine, and curled up next to her.
And there she lay.
When it was growing dark, Vanita remembered the food. Stiffly she reached over to the last scraps of pumpkin, their bright orange a small enough portion to cup in both hands.
She stood to put it in the bowl on the table. But her judgment wasn’t what it had been. As if watching someone else, she saw her hand knock it to the floor, shattering it completely.
She sank on her knees next to the bowl, still holding the pumpkin. She cried and cried.
At first, Vanita couldn’t explain what had made her dry-eyed through the assault and now weeping hysterically over pottery. But after some minutes staring at the shards, she thought she knew. She was crying because broken things could still be broken, and she hadn’t known that. All those years of flitting through life with two eyes in her head and a pretty face and servants to do everything… She hadn’t known it, but she had assumed that there were whole things and there were broken things.
But now she knew the truth. Just because you were broken, didn’t mean you were safe. Broken things could still be broken again. They just got smaller and smaller.
She lay back down.
Chapter Eleven
Hear, hear
In spite of it all, the sun rose hot and early the next day again, as though nothing was the matter. The roiling in her stomach woke her, so much so that Ash rose up, gasping, gulping like a fish over the side of her bed.
She had had a dream about Vanita, Vanita being in danger, and she had not been able to help her. It was fading with every gulp of air she took in, and as her breathing slowed, the detail was lost completely. Only a general sense of unease stayed, mingled sickeningly with the duke’s words last night and Mary Faireweather’s face.
A sharp knock on the door jerked her upright, and the room spun for a moment. For a single bizarre instant, Ash imagined it was Vanita there, that she would open the door to find her sister, pale-faced like Mary Faireweather and traumatised, but alive, standing there. If only it were that simple.
The sharp crack of knuckles on wood came again. She sighed, then got up.
“About time,” Duke Novrecourte quipped, with a sleepy Derrick in tow, when she finally opened the door. “It’s your big day, Ash. Are you ready for it?”
She whipped around to face him as fast as her sleepiness would allow. “Are you? Perhaps you could show us all how handy with carriors you are.”
After the fallout of what she said to the king on the matter of these lily-handed nobles killing carriors, she expected surliness from the duke. He only chuckled. “Oh no, that’s your job. I’ve already made myself valuable around here. Now it’s your turn.”
“It’ll be alright Ash.” Derrick looked as sleep-harassed as she felt. Who knew what time he’d got to bed… if he’d even got to bed at all. She tried for a smile.
“Well, shall we get on with it then?”
It was only halfway down to the bailey that it occurred to Ash to ask what form this “demonstration” would take. She was met with silence for a moment, and she and Derrick exchanged glances.
“Well, don’t laugh but, you see, they’ve sort of organised it as though it were a mêlée.”
Ash stopped and stood stock-still staring at the duke. She felt ill, and gripped the cold stone walls, seeing Derrick’s white face reflected in her own.
“A tournament? Are you serious? What do they want us to do, joust the thing? What do they think this is – some game?”
“No, no. Of course not. It’s simply that they have no frame of reference for this sort of thing. You have to understand, no one in this castle except the two of you have ever seen what you do. We don’t know how to prepare for it, in terms of the king’s safety, his expectations… So we have simply pretended to set up a palanquin in a nearby field for him as though it were a mêlée. That’s all.”
Derrick looked as though he were about to cry. With considerable effort, Ash straightened again and made her voice adopt a light, mocking tone she did not feel. “Fine. As long as I don’t have to deal with posturing thugs in chainmail asking me how many maidenheads I’ve taken.” She could not help it, she looked at Derrick. He looked away.
If the duke noticed anything awkward between the two of them, he didn’t mention it. “Right well, let’s get you both ready and then we shall have the prince and his team call a carrior or two for you.”
“Wait, what? The prince? Why?”
“Rize is the head of what he has named “the carrior research squadron’, although I think that sounds a frightfully boring name. He insists it has more to do with “nature and science” than killing things and near-death experiences, so of course I haven’t joined in.”
“The prince will be out on the mêlée field?”
“Only until a carrior comes in sight. Then he will immediately quit the field for safety, I have his word.”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll kill him myself.”
“Don’t worry Ash, I’m sure your boyfriend will be fine,” Derrick snarled.
“Will both of you stop deciding that the other one is my boyfriend! It’s not that, it’s that I do not want to be responsible for the death of the crown’s sole heir and the only person in this kingdom who seems to be able to make plant stuff grow. Alright?”
The duke merely smiled indulgently, stopping at a small door – the same door they had first used to change before going into the Throne Room. “You may dress in here. We took the liberty of making special mêlée outfits for you both. It is a special occasion and, however sick it is, people need some excitement around here. Derrick in this room, Ash in that one, same as last time. Be quick, the guards will be escorting people down shortly.”
Five minutes later, shouting caused both duke and Derrick to come charging through Ash’s door.
“Tell me this is a joke,” she yelled at the top of her voice. She was standing in the middle of the room in nothing but her night smock, but she didn’t care. “Tell me you are not serious!” Then she caught sight of Derrick and collapsed laughing on the floor.
Her fellow munitions expert’s outfit had been made, like hers. Clearly fabric was scarce, for several different types were jostling for attention on his doublet. The one that seemed to be winning was a large rectangle of crimson satin on his chest. Crowning the effect were two yellow bows, the same colour as the accents on the king’s family crest, perched on Derrick’s shoulders.
“You – you look like someone’s present!” She gasped, still laughing.
“And you look naked! Quit laughing and get dressed, I’m sure yours is as bad as mine.”
At this, she stopped laughing, and glared at the duke. “It’s worse – look!” She gestured in the corner, not to her neatly folde
d, matching red and yellow silks, but to the enormous hoop skirt towering next to them.
“You want me to wear a bloody ballgown over a cage?” she bellowed.
Now, it was Derrick’s turn to laugh. “It’s perfect, you can just trap the carriors under there –”
“Oh shut it. Duke, I am not wearing that thing. I wouldn’t even if my life didn’t depend on it, which it does. Get me some breeches please. I’ll wear the bustier and sleeves, but that’s as far as I’m going.”
“But –”
“I swear to you that if you don’t have someone bring me breeches right now that I will walk out onto that field like this and suggest the king wear it himself.”
“Alright, alright, keep your shift on, I’m going.”
It was only a marginally more dignified Ash who emerged fifteen minutes later. She and Derrick walked out into the bailey, bows flapping, before mounting horses to take them over the drawbridge to a field just outside the castle walls. The armed guards alongside them looked perfectly decent in their armour, and Ash suppressed the urge to ask one if he wanted to trade outfits.
The doeskin breeches she’d been given were serviceable, and if she looked down and concentrated on them she forgot for a moment what the top half of her looked like: her low-cut ballgown bodice in red, shimmered absurdly in the morning sun, topped with a lurid yellow bow at her flat chest and another bow the size of a small planet at the tail of her yellow corset laces. She looked like a gender-confused harlot. That is, a gender-confused harlot who didn’t care what they looked like.
“Approaching!” yelled one of the guards right into her ear, and she turned to see Rize surrounded by similar-looking guards riding up to her. Just when this day couldn’t get any worse…
“Morning all,” said Rize, not looking at her. He must still be upset for the way she had spoken to him last night. She wanted to apologise, she did, but not looking like this.
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