by CJ Brightley
“What do you think a marriage is?” I asked tightly, digging my fingernails into my outer skirts. “A business arrangement? A marriage is starting a family. It’s putting your entire life in somebody else’s hands. It requires absolute trust and dedication. If you don’t think that’s necessary, there’s a problem.”
“But you were willing to marry a stranger,” Genn retorted. He seemed oddly vehement about this. “If you’re willing to marry somebody you barely know, you have to expect —”
“Expect what?” I exploded. “Expect to have a rotten marriage because your deadline is imminent? I’m not the desperate person here, Genn! And I won’t be treated like it!”
Genn swallowed. “You’re right,” he said in a low voice. “I’m sorry.”
I closed my eyes and breathed for a moment. I released my hold on my skirts slowly. Okay. Okay. This is fine. We will be okay.
“It’s just,” Genn burst out, “you landowners practically all marry strangers, don’t you? Most vassals marry people they’ve known their entire lives. The only time you see a rushed engagement is when somebody gets pregnant. But heirs rush in all the time!”
“Because once you find someone who’d work, why would you waste years waiting?” I shot back furiously. “Not everybody has the luxury of knowing somebody their whole life that they think they’d want to marry! You should know — it’s not like there was somebody on this land you wanted to marry!”
Genn’s mouth opened and closed. He didn’t look at me.
I felt my face go cold. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no . . .
“There was, wasn’t there?” I asked tonelessly.
Genn grabbed his wrist and rubbed it. He didn’t look at me, or answer me.
“Who was it?” I demanded.
“Lilla,” Genn said quietly. “You’ve met her.”
I had to think about it for a minute before it clicked.
“The mathematician?” I asked incredulously. “How old is she? Thirteen?”
“Nineteen! She’s older than you!”
Wow. She really didn’t look it.
Wait a minute . . .
“She lives in this house!” I exploded. “And you didn’t plan to tell me?”
“It’s not like that!” Genn protested, holding up his hands. “I knew you’d see it wrong! That’s why I wasn’t going to say anything!”
“You had better tell me what it is like!”
Genn took a deep breath. “Leola only met me in the first place because I kept coming up to the house to see Lilla. She took a liking to me. Eventually, she offered to make me her heir.”
“If you were engaged to a mathematician, why in the world would she make you an heir?” I asked, with rather remarkable volume restraint. My fists were clenched so tightly, I felt nails digging into my palms.
Genn swallowed. “We . . . we weren’t technically engaged. We had more what you would call . . . an understanding. We had since we were children. We grew up sort of . . . knowing that we would wind up together. Most vassals have somebody like that, you know.”
No, I didn’t know. I’d had no idea. I knew most of our vassals by sight, but I didn’t know how they went around courting people.
“Well, were you in love with her?” I demanded.
Genn’s eyes fastened on the floor. He wouldn’t look at me.
“Are you still?”
Genn said nothing. The silence took on volumes of dank, sludgy meaning.
“Well, obviously you should marry her, then,” I said, my voice shaking as I tried to make light of it. “What are you, stupid? Why would you even consider marrying me?”
“I can’t marry her!” Genn cried, looking up. There were tears in his eyes. “Don’t you think I’d like to? But I can’t! I agreed to be the heir! If I allow some random strangers to come in and buy the land instead, and anyone dies from incompetence, it’ll my fault!”
“People don’t die from landowner incompetence —” I protested.
“Yes, they do! It happened every cold season with Leola! Every cold season, we lost two or three elderly people or small children we didn’t have to, because she couldn’t be bothered to keep our houses properly insulated! Every single time! It matters!”
Genn’s face was red, his eyes were wild, and he was breathing heavily. I was shocked. It was the first time I’d ever seen him like this. I didn’t even know he could be like this.
“Genn,” I said slowly, almost afraid to talk, “most landowners aren’t like that. If they are, you should report them to the Ruler’s Road with red. You . . . you know that, don’t you? It’s a crime that should be punished by being stripped of status and having the land sold to another family. The Ruler’s very strict about it.”
Genn blinked back tears, still breathing heavily. Apparently he didn’t know that. “But it’s still my responsibility,” he said, his voice cracking. “It’s still my duty —”
“And is that the only reason you want to marry me?” I asked. “For your duty?”
“It’s . . . it’s not the only reason,” Genn said, swallowing. He rubbed his right wrist, which was twitching. “I mean, I think we’ll get along well. And I have to marry somebody. It can’t be Lilla, because mathematicians can’t be landowners. It can’t be any other girl I grew up with, because I don’t have enough status to buy the land. Together, you and I do.”
My heart shriveled within me. “Well, thank you for being honest,” I said, smiling brightly. “Now, let me tell you what you should be doing. Attend social events, which are not in fact pointless or worthy of your distaste, and find landowners with married children who are looking to buy land. Make sure their vassals love them. Ask if they will let you act as an advisor to them. Then either marry Lilla or move out of this house. You have lots of better options than marrying me. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
I whirled around and stormed towards the entrance.
“Raneh —” Genn started to say.
I didn’t stop to listen. Through the kitchen doorway, across the shrunken sitting room, past the stairway, down the gloomy hallway, at the blurry front door . . . ugh. I rubbed my eyes furiously.
“Raneh —” Genn tried again.
I wrenched the door open, and a blast of heat roared at me, reminding me of one more important thing.
“I’m borrowing your carriage!” I called. “It’s much too hot to walk back right now!”
Then, not waiting for a reply, I slammed the door behind me.
I made it all the way home and to the privacy of my bedroom before I started to cry.
17
Zealously, Yaika cleaned the whole house, top to bottom, waiting for the Ruler. I stayed in my room, not wanting to see or talk to anybody. It was a miserable week.
I now had nobody courting me whatsoever. The thought of starting all over again with a new boy was unutterably depressing. Another stranger, who might very well be keeping secrets from me? And Yaika’s frenzied preparations, no matter how quiet she was trying to be, were annoying.
I think the whole family was trying to cheer me up. Grandmother went out and got filias transplants from Jontan’s family, and filled the empty space in my garden. That might have helped if she hadn’t also dug out most of my groverweed seeds. Father left a book on architecture outside my door. Mother sewed an entire new bodice and set of outer skirts for me. Grandfather carved a funny-looking doll, just like the ones he used to make when I was a little, before we moved here and he became so busy. He wasn’t very good at it, but I loved those things. I smiled faintly when I picked it up.
Yaika showed up at my door with an armload of clothing she claimed she had “accidentally misdyed” in “ugly colors” that she couldn’t possibly fix. They were red and orange and yellow, with the occasional green or brown among them. Not a blue to be seen.
Finally, one morning, I was lying in bed wishing I could fall asleep again so I didn’t have to be awake for the day, when I heard a thump outside my door, and smelled the unmistakable stench o
f stinkberries.
“Yaika!” I shouted, scrambling out of bed. “You had better not be dyeing outside my room!”
I flung the door open, and found Yaika’s arm stretched out in front of her, paintbrush in hand, covered in blue paint. She froze, looking guilty.
“You were painting my door?” I cried incredulously.
She coughed and pulled her hand back. “Nooo,” she said, whipping her hand with the paintbrush behind her.
I glared at her. “If this is some misguided attempt to make me feel better about the whole Genn thing . . .”
“Oh, does that mean we can talk about him now?” Yaika asked hopefully. “Mother said I wasn’t allowed to broach the subject until you brought it up first.”
I flicked my gaze over at my door, which had thankfully not been polluted with my sister’s artistic sensibilities yet. “All right. Fine. What do you want to say?”
“I want to say that he’s an idiot,” Yaika said promptly. “And he behaved incredibly rudely at my oath ceremony. I’m glad you’re not marrying him, because you’re better off without him.”
I glared at her. “Thank you. That’s so helpful. Now if only I had any other prospects, life would be great.”
“Who says you have no other prospects?” Yaika asked, looking confused.
“I’ve met everyone else in the area,” I muttered, glaring at my sister’s palette and water cup on the hallway carpet. It was a faded design, woven by the landowners before we came here. “Either I’m not interested in them, or they’re not interested in me. That leaves nobody.”
“Oh, please,” Yaika said, rolling her eyes. She reached down and grabbed the cup and rinsed her paintbrush in it. “Do you know when Mother got married? Twenty-two.”
“Well, yes,” I fumbled. “But she had —”
“And she was engaged to somebody else before Father.” Yaika pulled her paintbrush from the cup and tapped the water out of it. She clicked it into the side of her palette, which was covered in dried pats of other colors. “Did you know that? She told me yesterday. He broke it off one week before their wedding, and then he went and married some other girl instead. Apparently he had decided she was more useful for his ambitions.”
I stared at her, dumbly. I’d never heard about this.
“Of course Mother couldn’t stand to watch the two of them together, so she started going further and further away to attend social events,” Yaika said, putting her cup and palette down. “And guess what? She found Father. She wouldn’t have found him if she hadn’t started looking further away.”
I blinked back tears. “Yeah, but . . . she’s so beautiful, she must have had no shortage of . . .”
“Oh, do you think so?” Yaika folded her arms. “She was twenty-two, Raneh. Most people get married by twenty.”
“Fine,” I mumbled, scrubbing my eyes. “So having trouble finding a guy runs in the family. Wonderful. That’s just great.”
“Just look farther away!” Yaika said impatiently. “There are plenty of heirs out there you haven’t met yet!”
“How am I supposed to do that?” I cried. “I don’t have any friends who live days away! I have nobody to stay with!”
“Uh, hello, Raneh?” Yaika said. “I have status now. And lots of friends. Three of whom will be taking their oath this season, four of whom live almost a day’s journey away in different directions. Just because you’ve only been looking in this area doesn’t mean I intend to. Whenever I go off somewhere, you can come with me.”
I stared at her. “You seriously . . . mean that?” My voice cracked a little bit.
“Sure,” Yaika said. She tossed her hair, which was down, even though she really should have started pinning it up. “The more boys who get the chance to see how beautiful I am, the better. And you’d make a great chaperone. If you’re with me, Mother will be willing to let me go farther away sooner.”
A slight smile quirked at my lips. “That sounds good. Thanks.”
“Ummm . . .” Yaika looked down. Her stockinged toes pawed at the frayed spot in the carpet by my door. “Speaking of which, can you help me make the bodice for my coming-out party? The middle part is complicated, and I really hate sewing.”
“Why don’t you ask Grandmother? She’s better at it than me.”
“Because she says she’s helped me enough already!” Yaika wailed. “I think maybe she got a little mad because I yelled at her about my outer skirts before the oath ceremony.”
“You don’t say,” I said dryly.
“Please!” Yaika cried. “I’m desperate! I have to look amazing! Especially with the — um — the people coming . . .”
“The Ruler?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
“Oh, gosh!” Yaika burst out. “Mother said I wasn’t allowed to mention that to you either until you brought it up! And I’m going crazy! I have no idea when she’s going to show up, and it’s been over a week, and I’ve cleaned the whole house, and I’ve weeded my entire garden, and there’s nothing else to do, and Grandmother won’t let me dye her dishcloths anymore! What else is left to do?! I can’t even attend any social events until after my coming-out party, which we can’t hold until the Ruler’s here, because I want her to be part of it, and —”
I stared at her. “You want . . . the Ruler . . . to be at your coming-out party? Are you seriously not planning to pick a day until she happens to show up?”
Yaika stuck her jaw out. “What’s wrong with that?”
I cleared my throat. “Well, other than nobody knowing when it is, and therefore managing to make it . . .”
“Oh, they’ll come if the Ruler’s here,” Yaika announced. “That kind of news will spread quickly.”
She probably had a point there.
I cleared my throat. “Well, at least you should warn your friends it’s coming up soon. Lintis . . . Illa . . . Sutal . . . Eliss . . .”
“Eliss?” Yaika made a face. “Come on, Raneh. We’re not friends.”
“What are you, then?”
“Acquaintances.”
“But you get along so well,” I protested. “And you always invite her to everything.”
Yaika rolled her eyes. “That was when I thought you were going to marry her brother. Now that I know you’re not going to, I don’t have to.”
Ouch. I felt bad for Jontan’s little sister.
“Wait a minute!” I protested. “How do you know that? Genn’s the one I just ended things with, not —”
“Raneh,” Yaika said, as if it were obvious, “if you’re going to tell someone you don’t want to marry them in the middle of a dance floor, you can’t expect no one to spread it.”
I cringed. “Somebody spread it?”
“To eveeeeerybody.”
Great. I put my face in my hands. Just what I need. More humiliation.
“Which is good timing,” Yaika said brightly. “Think how many people will be coming to my coming-out party just because the Ruler’s there. We’ll get heirs from all over the place. Probably new ones you’ve never met before. There couldn’t be a more perfect time for everyone to know you’re available.”
I raised my face out of my hands. That’s probably true . . .
But then a horrible realization struck me.
“But Hurik!” I cried. “He won’t be able to go to your coming-out party! He’s going to feel so left out, having it happen while he’s gone!”
“Oh, please,” Yaika snorted. “Not having him there is a bonus. I’ll bet you anything he feels the same way.”
I glared at her. She was probably right, which made it all the more annoying.
“Now please,” Yaika said, clasping her fingers in front of her. “Please help me sew my bodice? Please, please, please, please?”
The Ruler finally came a few days later. And this time, she made no attempt to be subtle about her visit.
“There are three carriages coming up our road!” a vassal woman from our land gasped, flinging our front door open. “There’s status radiatin
g off them! Have you seen it?”
Yaika flung the underskirt she was sewing off to the side and bolted for the doorway. She shoved our vassal aside and left the door wide open as she vanished outdoors.
I snatched the underskirt she’d dropped off the floor, pushed the spineleaf needle into the fabric, and bundled it and the bodice I was working on into the sitting room cupboard. A lopsided cushion Yaika had started two cold seasons ago was still lying in the back, gathering dust.
Then I hurried to the wide-open front door, where Yaika was already gaping.
The three carriages had parked, and a flood of people were stepping down from them.
Out of the first carriage came a tall woman with a really sharp nose. It looked like she could slice bulge tubers with it. She sniffed as she brushed her arms, and the filias signature that dangled from one end of her shoulders to the other bounced behind her like a cape. Three statusless people got out after her.
From the second carriage hopped a dainty girl somewhere between my age and Yaika’s, and a man a little older than me. They also wore filias signatures, hers in scallops near the bottom of her skirt, his wrapped like a vine all the way down his arm. Another statusless man and woman exited after them.
“The Ruler!” Yaika whispered to me hoarsely, grabbing my arm. “The Ruler’s here! The Ruler will be in the last one!”
“Your fingernails are sharp,” I hinted, trying to pry her fingers off me.
The door to the last carriage opened, and a blaze of status burst forth as the Ruler alighted in all her glory. Behind us, our vassal woman gasped.
A man stepped down behind her, blazing with as much status as she had. There was a filias signature braided through his hair, which was extremely long, almost as far as his knees. He looked elegant, refined, and very, very haughty.
The Ruler’s husband, I thought, drawing my breath in. He was notorious for never leaving Central except for very important occasions, so why . . .? Has to be.
As the Ruler neared the others wearing filias, her status merged with theirs, making it obvious they were her heirs. I wondered if the Ruler had increased her status in the carriage just to show off. Since she could create and destroy status, that would have been easy.