On the Subject of Griffons

by Lindsey Byrd

  “I don’t think even Morpheus himself could have argued the point better,” Aurora teased. It made Faith laugh too, coughing as the giggles overtook her.

  Urging her gelding forward, Aurora seemed prepared to leave, but was forced to stop when the apothecary rushed out in front of them. He was out of breath, eyes wild and chest heaving. Kera’s lips pressed together, and the man approached her horse with a stumbling gait. He held up his palm full of coins. “Please, my lady, I . . . I acted out of turn and—” He grabbed at her hand.

  Aurora slapped him hard with her reins in response, striking him off Kera without the slightest bit of hesitation. She had turned her gelding around, bracketing him between them, and the man cursed and cowered as he looked at Aurora in shock. But Aurora peered down her nose at him, reins held aloft and ready to strike again. Kera’s gallant guardian, like in the tales of old.

  Seemingly emboldened by Aurora’s bravery, Holly stamped her feet and huffed at the man. Her ears pointed forward and she whinnied in protest. “Enough,” Kera commanded. The horse snorted unhelpfully, then settled. Aurora merely glanced back at Kera to confirm. “Thank you, my friend,” she said soothingly. “But please . . .” Nodding, Aurora shifted so her gelding allowed the man just a little more space to move. As she did, the apothecary approached once more. He placed her coins back into her possession. She felt their weight, and scanned the amount. “You’ve given me too much.”

  “Your Grace.” He was using the wrong honorific. She was not his grace, and never would be. “I’ve returned all your coin to you.”

  “I understand that, sir. And it is too much.” Carefully she counted out two coins and returned them into his possession. “When I leave here, you will be a man whose work was paid for with fair compensation. And I will have been a customer to your store. I will not be the wife of Morpheus Montgomery, who demanded your work for free.”

  He stared at her. Dumbfounded. But she couldn’t bring herself to explain any longer. She tucked her coins back into her purse and released the anger she had longed to hold on to for just a little longer. She adopted the face she’d spent years perfecting, the one that let him know that he would receive no further ill will from her or her party. “Thank you for your honesty, sir. At the end of all things.”

  He was still staring. Stumbling now, as he tried to formulate words. “Of course, Your Grace, I mean—Lady. Widow? Widow Montgomery. Of course. And—and you’re going to the griffons, you said?”

  “What’s it matter to you?” Aurora asked.

  “It’s only . . . be wary—the nightwalkers between here and Kytesberg are more harsh than they’ve been in years. All that construction on the capitol is waking them from their graves.”

  “Thank you for your warning, sir,” Kera replied. “We shall be careful. Good day.”

  “G-good day.”

  Turning back to Aurora, Kera dismissed the man from her thoughts. She angled her heels down, adjusted her grip on her reins, and nodded at her companion. It was time to move forward; the dead were behind them, but also ahead.

  She didn’t want to think about the apothecary anymore.

  “G-g’day, mi lady,” Aurora mocked. She wasn’t capable of keeping her amusement to herself. Just kept going on and on and on. Kera thanked the gods that her own skin was dark enough to hide the blush that stained her cheeks. She kept her eyes fixed on the road so Aurora wouldn’t see how mortified she’d become with each horrific reenactment. Her saving grace came from the sound of Faith and Aiden giggling at the theatrics. They were both awake enough to enjoy it, even if Kera felt worse with each passing second.

  “I don’t believe he was quite that bad,” Kera tried to excuse. Now that it was over, her mother’s voice kept chastising her. She’d been impolite. Rude. Hostile. Ladies didn’t shout and Kera knew better than to toss about Mori’s name like that. It wasn’t fair to him, and it wasn’t fair to his legacy.

  Having a wife who shouted to defend his honor took away from his image. She shouldn’t have involved herself. It was foolish, foolish, fool—

  Aurora was laughing again. “We could hear you, you know? All the way round the corner ’n’ all. We could hear you clear as day, and I gotta tell you, Lady, there’s never been a man given quite the same talking to as that ol’ maester.”

  “Apothecary. ‘Maester’ is—”

  “Oh what’s it matter? Maester, apothecary,” Aurora drew out the word, taking a good long while to say. “’S’all the same thing in the end. Hack physicians who don’t know nothing about nothing and can’t explain away this plague.”

  “Ma don’ li’e quacks,” Faith slurred. She had a pretty voice, even gargled by illness and fever. A sweet sort of dainty soprano that was rather different from the deep alto of her mother. Kera imagined Faith would have a fine singing voice, if she ever had the chance.

  “Wassa quack?” Aiden asked.

  “It’s the sound a duck makes,” Kera said.

  “Not so.” Aurora waggled her brows at Aiden, making him giggle. “It’s a doctor who thinks he knows more’n he actually does and makes a right mess of things. Ain’t never met a doc who ain’t a quack.”

  “That doesn’t mean all doctors are . . . quacks, though,” Kera tried.

  Aiden wriggled a bit in front of her, his left foot swung forward and back, colliding solidly with her shin. She hissed, but he hadn’t finished maneuvering, whining as he tried to get comfortable. It took him awhile, but when he finished, he pushed his thumb into his mouth and said around it: “I like ducks.” At which Aurora laughed long and hard. She tossed her head back, and her daughter giggled with her, the both taking an inordinate amount of delight in Aiden’s claim. She had a lovely laugh, free of the social conventions that Kera’s own mother had beaten into her. Aurora neither covered her mouth with her hand, nor tried to silence it. She laughed with no restrictions. Joy for joy’s sake.

  The sun had started darkening Aurora’s already rich skin. Her cheeks carried a warmer tone than just two days prior. Kera’s eyes were drawn to a few stray curls that had escaped the wrap, sweat glistening as they sprung about her face. Aurora arched into the light, grinning like she couldn’t have asked for anything better or more satisfying. She was beautiful.

  As soon as the thought crossed her mind, Kera found herself reeling. She thought back to everything she knew about Aurora. She never thought about the various shades of who Aurora Lawrence was as a person. She didn’t know if this was a good look . . . or perhaps if there were better looks as of yet unknown.

  Aurora smacked her lips and adjusted her own seat. Kissed the back of Faith’s head as she shifted her into a better position. “Thing is, unless you’ve got the money to show for it, you’re not getting anyone who’s not a quack. You see?” Aurora asked Kera with a shrug. “And it’s not as though your physicians are any better. All of them insist on bleeding us dry and seeing if that’ll help. Like that worked well for Lord General Zakaria.”

  “You know, we’re not lords or ladies.” The transition from the title had been easy and exciting. She’d enjoyed slipping from the role. Enjoyed asserting herself as Mrs. Montgomery. Some of her peers had wavered and complained that the lack of an official gentry meant that they were no longer superior than those beneath them.

  Kera intended to continue that topic, explaining why Mori and the general fought so hard to ensure that there would be no established nobility as there was across the sea in Trent or Ruug. Aurora snorted and cut Kera’s thoughts in half with a simple statement: “You all can call yourselves whatever you like, it don’t change you into anything different.”

  She . . . had a point. One that was effortlessly valid. Even after dropping their titles, nothing had changed in Kera’s quality of life. She continued to live the same lifestyle as was expected of someone from her status. And Aurora knew it too. She looked at Kera from the corner of her eye, grinning at her with a twist of her lips.

  Her garbled and ever-changing accent gave life to new i
deas that Kera struggled to argue against. Kera’s ear struggled to find the dialect or simple pattern that explained Aurora’s cadence, but none came to mind. Perhaps it didn’t matter. Instead, she found herself lulled into Aurora’s philosophies, leaning closer so as to pick up each and every word, placed all in such precise locations. Grammar and eloquence be damned.

  “My family always worked for people like you, rich folk who don’t pay us no mind. Not any free labor, mind, but what’s a penny a week get you? Not much. But we go and scrub the floors, clean your bed pans, and do what you like. ’N’ we got good at filching from your trash to get what all we need.”

  Kera hated how Aurora said you as if she had worked for Kera’s family. As if she had served the Leonas or the Montgomerys and had been treated poorly by them on a personal level. But she kept her mouth closed and listened as Aurora went on. “I’d see your physicians and your scholars. Your crystal worshipers”—occultists—“and hexers.” Witches. “You read your books and mind your herbs and you do everything you can to do whatever. And when it comes to us? The poor? Y’all never looked twice. Never cared what we were doing.

  “I used to look into your windows and watch you dancing,” Aurora continued. “And I’d try to match the steps. Never could get it quite right. But it never stopped me. Always wanted to learn. But you rich folks always seemed to know exactly how to do it. How to move and how to step. Figure you spend hours learning and whatnot. Even saw a few lessons when I was scrubbing some floors once. Watching as the ladies and the gents of the house got together and learned their children.”

  “Taught their children,” Kera corrected; Aurora rolled her eyes.

  “Taught their children,” she amended. “In any case, that’s what life is like. You know? You and your fancy dress and your fancy language. Always speaking proper and expecting others to do the same. Even if we don’t get the same kinda education as you.”

  “That’s not why—”

  “I ain’t blaming you, Lady. It’s a just a fact. You live your life in your tower and you don’t see it from down below. You’re a lady, good and proper. And you always will be. You jus’ can’t understand what life is like from our point of view. And you probably never will.”

  The road up ahead curved to the left and narrowed along the bend. Holly, the slower horse, fell back in line and let Aurora lead the way. It was a natural break in the conversation, and it gave Kera time to try to formulate a response. She didn’t necessarily agree with Aurora, and she certainly didn’t know if such a description was fair to impose on all persons with money.

  But . . . she was right. Growing up in a Leona household meant that she was taught how to dance as soon as she could stand. It went hand in hand with needlepoint and social etiquette. She used to long for her dancing lessons. She’d been eager and excited to show everyone what she learned that day.

  Her father was a patient man and he let her perform for their mother. He used to clap his hands and educate her on the proper footwork, while one of her brothers was drafted as her partner. Her mother used to fan herself on the chaise as she practiced. Ciara played the piano with bumbling fingers, and Gale complained. Gale said she never saw a point in dancing lessons, couldn’t they go ride ponies instead? But Kera found a sense of comfort in the steps. They were always regimented and understood. She knew her place in the dance. She knew that at the end of a turn, her partner would be there with his hands at the ready, prepared for the next part of the journey.

  Dancing required elegance in every step. It was an entire room filled with tender hearts entwined as one. Kera relished the new dances that came out. She learned each move and brought them home to perform. Her parents never quite understood the newest styles, always complaining that they seemed indecent, but the joy and the inclusivity of the steps were far too alluring for Kera to put off altogether.

  “Got asked once if I knew how to dance,” Aurora called back over her shoulder. “Was at this old man’s house, and he wanted to show his son a thing or two.” She paused, as though trying to find the words. “Ma told him ‘Yes, o’course, she practices all the time.’ Which you know I tried my best, but I never did dance once proper in my life. It don’t matter to him. He grabs me and hauls me about expecting me to keep up. And when I couldn’t, they all laughed and said something ’bout how the poor don’t have no idea how to dance proper. No point in teaching us either. Too stupid to learn.”

  “That’s awful,” Kera told her, aghast. Aurora shrugged.

  “Happens all the time.” The road widened once more, and Aurora guided her horse to walk side by side with Holly as soon as she had room. “I asked your husband to teach me once.” Kera bit her lip at the revelation. “When Jacob left us alone, but Mori still needed to stay and neither of us wanted to . . . well. You know.” She did. “He was asking what I wanted that night, and said he didn’t care. But . . . of all the things we’d done then . . . with Jacob and without . . . that’s the one thing he refused to do.”

  Kera found it harder and harder to control her face, and Aurora caught her struggling.

  “I’ve made you mad again, haven’t I?”

  Too much! Kera burst. Laughter exploded from up within her. Aiden twisted his neck to look at her face, his flushed baby cheeks squishing against her chest as he tried to see what was so funny. He’d been too young to know offhand, though every other child in the Montgomery household knew Mori’s dark secret. “My husband—” Kera giggled “—was a terrible dancer.”

  Aurora’s mouth dropped. Her eyes widened. She looked as if she couldn’t quite understand what Kera was trying to say, as if the concept had never occurred to her. “Oh, when it came time to teach A—” Kera’s mirth came to a halt. She squeezed her arms around Aiden a little more. It had been four years. More than that by now. She needed to force herself not to start counting days. Not to calculate the amount of time that had passed since her first son died.

  On her left, Aurora was looking at her with a far more reserved expression. She didn’t cast judgment. She kept her thoughts to herself. Kera took a deep breath in. Let it out. Breathe. Let it out. “When it came time to teach our firstborn,” she continued, struggling to go on. It was like wading through water. Legs struggling to move forward even as her dress dragged her down. The ocean wrapped around her body. Gripped it and held her tight. She tried to press forward, barefoot in the sandy under bottom of the sea, but her toes lost their grip and the wake crested at her hips.

  One day she expected the water to pull her down into the depths, where she could never hope to recover nor stand. She would lie on the ocean floor and wait until death claimed her. The grief was unimaginable, and she was so tired of fighting it.

  Aiden reached up to her face and touched her mouth. He was all twisted about, big brown eyes staring up at her with strange understanding and awareness for such a tiny little thing. He never knew his namesake. Never knew her first Aiden. His older brother died mere months before his birth. It had been a mistake, perhaps, in naming her youngest son after her oldest. Because now, holding her boy in her arms, she was trapped reliving a horror she never wished to know. She couldn’t lose Aiden again.

  She pressed into her son’s searching fingers and forced herself to keep talking. “I had to teach Mori again so he would not be ashamed in front of his children.” She couldn’t dwell on the loss right now, and instead tried to remember the joy of the moments she recalled. “He found the beats too difficult to follow, was distracted by the music, and often lost count because he’d be thinking about something else.” She kissed Aiden’s hand and then encouraged him to sit proper. Bad posture led to sore backs, and he didn’t need any more hurts.

  Sensing that the conversation needed to be more lighthearted, Aurora offered, “Thinking about politics and not dancing?”

  “Oh, thinking about any number of things. He used the most delightful excuses for his poor performance. The first time we danced, he chattered nonstop. Compliments and great tales. He tease
d and flirted and distracted beautifully. I hardly noticed his performance until my younger sister, Gale, pointed it out. I don’t believe he was ever more embarrassed, but Gale always knew how to tease him proper.”

  “It’s hard to imagine him bad at something,” Aurora admitted.

  “He had his faults,” Kera said. “And dancing is not a trait his friends were good at either. You are familiar with the True Lord Amit san Ruug?” Aurora nodded. Of all of Mori’s friends, perhaps Amit remained the most famous alongside General Zakaria. Kera always delighted when she saw street signs named in Amit’s honor. The man might have been a poised and elegant leader in the army, but he cast a different impression amongst friends. “He once danced so poorly he knocked over Ruug’s Noble Lady Aliénor in the midst of a ball!”

  Faith and Aurora both shared the same stunned expression. Faith asked a breathy “Is that true?” her eyes wide as could be.

  “It most certainly is. His wife wrote to me about his failings, of which she found his abysmal dancing to be quaint. But the good gentleman had no talent for it, and poor Mori never did learn as a boy.”

  It was a circular argument. One that emphasized Aurora’s point to begin with. Mori had grown up in poverty. He’d never learned how to dance, and the fact that anyone thought he did know seemed to emphasize the great heights he went to to pretend he belonged with the gentry in the first place.

  “Of course, John knew how to dance,” Kera continued.

  “John?” Aurora’s confusion was understandable, the number of Johns in the world was astonishing.

  “John Sarren, Mori’s best friend . . . He died in the war.”

  The snorting laugh was unexpected, and not the appropriate response that Kera was used to receiving whenever mentioning a fallen soldier. But Aurora laughed nonetheless. “The one with the foot fungus?” she clarified when she caught sight of Kera’s discomfort.