“You’ll never get away with this.”
And she had smiled at him over the bright knife’s edge. “I didn’t intend to. I never have.”
***
In the softness of the bed, aloneness close in the darkness, she felt safe to let her mind wander for the first time that day. And she wondered for some reason about what that silhouetted Pathfinder had said that morning, about imagining the Path and then letting your mind go blank. She imagined the temple-room and it’s winding painted ways, but the unambiguous golden sunlight of the morning was no longer there. Instead, silvery moonlight filled the middle of the room with a cold, thin white light like a sword. She walked it, and there were no painted orange trails, only this, only the one.
Once she’d walked it all the way up to the empty altar she tried to visualise her path, her life, and she thought she could see something, dimly. But it didn’t work, she must have been doing it wrong, for when she tried to see Rhodopalais she couldn’t and, when she tried to see Vanita, she couldn’t see her either. It was just Ash, alone and walking in the dark.
Chapter Nineteen
Ashes
Everything was ready when they heard the knock.
The day had passed in an odd combination of frantic bustle and boredom until it had slowed to a gallop with this, the elaborate dressing process Ash couldn’t believe she’d ever had time for.
“Stop fretting,” said Tarah, as if she’d read Ash’s mind. “There – I’m done. You can look now.”
Ash crossed over to the looking glass. Ever since she’d found out what they really were, she’d avoided the one in her room. But to not look would seem suspicious – the very reason she hadn’t ripped it out the wall. Slowly, she turned in the reflection for who knew how many eyes.
“You look lovely,” said Tarah, and she did. They had chosen the gown together – a tightly-bodiced silver creation that blossomed into a full skirt fit for court and off-shoulder sleeves which trickled down her arms like streams. She wore her hair up for once, and it looked blonder somehow. A fetching sight of gold and silver, twirling prettily. Ash had meant for it to look like she was trying, like a conventional noble lady, but she didn’t. She looked like someone’s prize.
“Did you sort out those baskets for me?”
“It raised quite a few eyebrows, but I did.”
Ash nodded, then leaned closer. “And you’re certain of all those movements? That that’s the exact time she always used to leave?” she asked in a low voice.
“Yes. Good lord, now I’m nervous. I can only imagine how you must feel.”
She looked back at her reflection. “I am feeling… Quiet. I am alright, actually. I expected to be more… Unstill?”
“Well, you’re certainly pacing like you’re unstill. Grief, and Walters will be there tonight. You’re sure he won’t say something about last night?”
“How could he? I told you, he told me everything. The words to make the carriages go and the castle we go to next – Motte Hill or something like that - the schedule of the Head Pathfinder most of all. I know how to tell when a man is full of fear, and this one is. He’ll behave.”
“Well, now it’s your turn to behave. Stop your pacing, you look like a worried raindrop and, more importantly, you’ll wrinkle your dress.” Tarah’s face softened into a smile. “You really do look nice, you know. You look like water.”
And those exact words, said in the same way in that same commoner voice, hit Ash like a knife from the past, and she stared at Tarah without speaking as she felt a tear roll down her cheek. How Old Merta would have scolded her for all of this…
She looked up at Tarah, to find the girl looking intently at her already, eyes bright.
“You look alive,” said the servant slowly. “It’s something I never wanted to lose but, in all this, with the carriors after a lifetime of bleedin” cleaning and washing and dukes and barons leerin’… It stopped. It’s why –”
“It’s why you do things to get caught and punished,” Ash said softly. “So that you’ll be whipped.”
“So I’ll feel. This, all this craziness you’re doin’, well… I feel something again. So thank you.” The two women, one in rags and one in satin, stared at each other.
A knock on the door broke through the silence.
“What on earth?”
“You expecting somebody?”
“No…”
A knock again and, this time, the door opened.
“Ash?” called Derrick’s voice through the open crack in the door.
“You can come in.”
He was looking handsome, his tanned skin scrubbed to a shine beneath a crisp new white outfit. He cleared his throat. “I know things have been… difficult lately. I think it’s just been a difficult time. I wanted to ask you if you wouldn’t mind me accompanying you downstairs?”
Ash turned around, but Tarah had gone, soundlessly as any good servant. In the corner, the looking glass looked on.
“Oh, oh right… Of course not.”
It was an unseasonably warm night, and Ash could feel the heat radiating out of his arm beneath hers as they approached the stairs. The silence dragged around them like an unwelcome observer. “You look nice,” she said more to interrupt the silence than anything.
“Thank you. It was a present.”
“Ah.”
“And you, you also look fine. Good dress.”
“Thank you. It was Rize’s mother’s.”
“Ah.”
Out the corner of Ash’s eye she spotted a familiar figure approaching, not quite close enough for him to see them yet. Thank goodness. She turned quickly and placed a hand on Derrick’s chest.
“Derrick, I just realised I forgot something in my room. You go ahead, I’ll meet you downstairs.” She slunk out of view before he could protest and, as soon as he was gone, darted into a hidden servants” entrance to the corridor and waited.
Soon enough, the familiar sandy head came into view. For the millionth time, Ash silently thanked Tarah for showing her these servants” passages. She would see this duke now on her own terms, beneath the mask, and find out what was truly there. Ash was just getting into a more comfortable position when the frothy skirts of an icy blue gown came into view, and a blonde head with it.
The duke straightened and gave his gallant, public bow. “Well met, my lady. You look ravishing for tonight’s celebrations.”
“Well met yourself, Duke Novrecourte.”
“What brings you to this desolate wing, my lady? To light it up with your countenance?”
Ash resisted the urge to snort. Countenance… who had last used such a word? This courtly circling and braying was as outdated as it was ridiculous, but still, the duke had not done anything untoward. Not yet.
Lady Naomi Verraine cocked her slender neck to one side in mock surprise. “Why, good duke, I suppose that the assumption is that I came all this way to see you, is it?” So far, so conventional.
But the duke did not take his cue. Instead, he slouched a little into a normal standing posture. The courtly composure and rakish grin slipped a little, and for the first time he looked Naomi Verraine straight in the eye.
“Why do we do this, my lady?” he asked quietly.
Naomi did not respond, but Ash could see the blonde form stiffen just slightly, no doubt trying to figure out what game they were now playing.
“Whatever can you mean, Duke Novrecourte?” she responded at last.
“It’s just… We were raised in court, so we do things according to the courtly way. We “think court’. But when does it stop? How easy would it be to just say, “well met my lady, are you in this area to see your father?” “Why yes, I am. Good day to you, Duke.” What’s so wrong with that? When did we stop answering questions – half a hundred years ago? When did we stop really talking to each other?”
To her credit, Naomi did not gasp or titter, as a lesser lady would have. Instead, she took a soft step forward. “Is that what you are saying
, Lord Duke? Lorin, do you want to really talk to me?”
They were close now, noses almost touching. Eye to eye, they stood for a minute, maybe more, in silence. Then Ash saw a Naomi jump slightly as the duke put his hand on her one shoulder. Ash felt her eyes harden.
“Naomi… I don’t know if I’ve ever said this, but you are lovely. Truly. A fine example of a lady, as well as fair of face. You would make anyone in the world an excellent wife.”
He took a step back, the hand coming off her shoulder. “I did not know that this was how it happened. All this time, I didn’t know that you go about unawares, and then all at once, or maybe a little at a time, you meet someone and just realise that this is the person that life has for you. They are not always the most sensible match or the prettiest or the smartest or best connected, but… it doesn’t matter. It’s your person.”
The breath caught in Ash’s throat. She didn’t have to be a Pathfinder to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were both thinking of the same face.
“I suspected for a long time, that we would eventually end up together. It just made sense. And, if I didn’t have a person, I think that would have happened. It would have been good, truly. But… and I’m sorry Naomi… but I’ve found my person.”
Something in the tightly coiled flesh beneath the icy blue dress loosened, even relaxed, and Ash saw the lady almost imperceptibly cock her head to one side again.
“I’ve never found my person.”
“I know you haven’t, but I am certain they are out there. And a damned sight better a man then me.”
Other footsteps rang out in the hall, and all at once it was over.
“Good day, my lady,” said the Duke of Novrecourte, mask once again firmly in place.
“Good day, Duke. May you have every happiness.” A small dip of a curtsey, and she was gone.
Ash smiled, once to herself and once to the duke, though he could not see her. Then she turned and walked away too.
***
Not knowing quite what to do, Ash stopped for a minute in the hallway. Her head and heart were full of images of Vanita. Vanita laughing, Vanita joking with her gently, Vanita in once-fine dresses and now in rags. Vanita wheezing each morning as Ash held her. Vanita sprawled bloody along the carriage floor that awful night, her life bleeding out of her slowly and her face all torn flesh and ruin.
She walked a few more paces, then placed her hand against the solid wood of her room’s door as if it would her ground her back in this moment, remind her what was real. But Vanita was realest of all, Vanita in her complex beauty and pain and quiet unbent patience, flowering even under her mother’s tight fist. Ash had seen Vanita every day for most of her life, and she doubted she’d ever seen her so clearly as now, when she hadn’t seen her face for weeks. She curled her hand into a fist to keep the helpless tears away.
“Ash?”
Luckily, there was always someone intruding on her thoughts to keep the feelings all at bay. She turned smoothly, composing her face into an untroubled one as she curtsied for her prince.
“Rize. Good evening and, may I say, happy birthday.”
He smiled. Tonight, fortuitously, he was dressed in an onyx black that matched his eyes. It was military dress, but a more high-ranking one than she’d ever had the chance to see up close before, and it made the most of his broad shoulders and lean frame. She smiled a real smile this time and walked towards him.
“What are you doing this far away from the ballroom? It’s your night, after all.”
He chuckled. “Why do you always ask the question that’s hardest to answer first?” Rize ran his fingers through his hair, blushing. “It’s just that I know things have been difficult lately. So, I wanted to ask you if you wouldn’t mind me accompanying you downstairs?”
Ash opened her mouth, then closed it. “Uh, of course not. Accompany away. Actually – wait a moment. I have something I’ve been meaning to give you all day.”
She was out from her room again a moment later and placed the fragile offering in his hands. There hadn’t been much time in between all the scurrying around for tonight, but she’d snuck into the now-defunct castle’s greenhouse in the morning. She had only found two things there that she could use, so that’s what she’d done.
It was crudely cut, but she’d used a borrowed kitchen blade to slice two bits of parchment into shape and had then fashioned them on the end of the greenhouse’s dead flower stalk and a thicker dead tree branch.
“I know you like flowers, so I wanted to give you some. But all the plants are dead, and it didn’t feel right to take your own waterlilies… So, I tried to make some. Happy birthday Rize.”
The prince’s eyes were wet and shining as he looked back up at her. “I don’t know what to say… I… No one’s ever given me flowers before, I’ve always had to make them myself.” He let out a shaky laugh. “Thank you, is what I mean.”
“Thank you. It’s nice to know that there are still men alive who believe in flowers at the end of the world.”
“And other people who go out there and make them for themselves,” he said quietly, nodding. Then footsteps started rounding the corner, and he straightened formally, grimacing. “Quite a sight we’ll both make in the ballroom, hey? Shall we just run away from the whole thing?”
“Not on your life. Come on, Prince, you’re supposed to be accompanying me.”
They were almost on the last stair when he turned to her again.
“I can’t go in holding paper flowers like this, imagine!”
“Who cares what other people think?”
“No, it’s not that. These are precious to me, I don’t want someone else judging them, only to misunderstand. I need somewhere to put them for safekeeping. I have one pocket here,” the paper flower attached to the twig found itself at Rize’s breast, “and another to find a home for.”
He turned more toward her then. All the world in his eyes. Without breaking eye contact he gently pulled the paper flower loose and tucked it into Ash’s pinned-up hair. The dried flower stalk stayed in his hands though, and he seemed to be nodding slightly to himself as he fashioned it into a circle.
“No one else needs to know, and you don’t need to decide yet, but I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I thought I loved you, when I didn’t know you, and now I know you more, and that I do. I want you with me, Ash. Not for silly balls and big speeches, but for training men in the field, and for talking about flowers, and even those horrid war council meetings…”
In the quiet of the staircase outside the large, bright, glittering ballroom, he held her hand. And he silently pushed the flower stalk ring onto one of it’s fingers.
“Are you with me?”
“I’m with you.”
And as they walked in together, Ash’s baskets rained down on them both. Dark, papery flutterings that blended into his uniform perfectly.
“What is it?”
“You said you didn’t want roses while other people out there were dying. You said the only thing you wanted for your birthday was to be reminded of where we were.”
Black flakes in her hair, in her eyes.
“What is it though?”
“Ashes.”
And in the middle of the ashen ballroom, he kissed her.
Chapter Twenty
Confess
It was nearing the midnight bells when Ash stole away, right on time. It was no difficulty at all keeping her mind brightly occupied with other images. Images of them dancing, of the dazzling spin of things weighted down by that scratchy newness on her finger that she did her best to conceal in her skirts. She remembered the giddy whirl of the music, and Derrick looking sour, and polite disapprovals in the eyes all around as Rize kissed her again and again, laughing, as he smudged them both grey. In the sparkling ballroom so properly organised by Naomi, they had been in their own world in a puddle of dark.
And so, a smiling Ash caught the Head Pathfinder completely unawares as she opened the door wi
th a knife in her hand.
“What on earth?”
The Pathfinder had retired just when Walters had said she would, an hour or so before. She had clearly spoken to a few people, done a few chores or written letters before taking her hair down from the fussy bundle it had been in for the ball. Then she had blown out all but a single candle at her bed and undressed. Ash could see all this, because the Head Pathfinder stood before her almost completely naked, hair loose, in a tired old night smock. The sight of the woman’s flesh hammered home how old she was, and how human, so that it captured Ash’s thoughts fully and no doubt all over the castle Pathfinders now knew.
“Ashlynne, what on earth are you doing here?”
“I have come to get you to confess.”
The woman laughed lightly. “Confess? What to? And whom to?” She eyed Ash disdainfully in her grubby silver dress with its smudged of charcoal. A flick of her wrist, and Ash’s throat was tight in a visible grip again, her silver slippered feet dangling ever so slightly off the floor.
But Ash had learned a thing or two of her own, watching the child Pathfinders” lessons. She concentrated, imagining her concentration as a ball, and threw it at the woman. It was a tiny thing, just a handful really, but it was enough with the element of surprise to distract her a second. In that second, Ash pulled the rest of her awareness to herself and forced herself to think beyond the panic of her neck’s constriction. It was all about awareness. She was not dangling in the air, there was nothing around her throat, she could breathe freely. A second later, it took hold, and Ash breathed in deeply and gratefully, her feet firmly on the floor. She held her knife up once more.
The old Pathfinder’s eyes narrowed. “How did you do that?”
“Just copying your own tricks, Witch.”
“Even so, they’re not easily copied…” The woman had long ago flicked away Ash’s imaginary ball as though it were an insect. She stepped slowly, like an old woman, but in no time at all she had closed the gap between them. “You have something in you Ash,” she said, her breath hot. “There was a prophecy given about you, by the last Head Pathfinder. She was a brilliant woman, one of the best we ever produced, and she died far too young. Did you ever hear the prophecy?”
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