“I could be again,” she insisted, and tugged.
“Do you want that?” Brella asked. Her fingers were strong on Scratch’s palms, digging down into the flesh. “Really. Think about it. For that king? The king who denied you the promotion you deserved.”
“Not for him. For her!”
Brella let go so abruptly that Scratch nearly tipped over backward.
“For her?” Brella asked, stunned.
“Frances.” Heat rushed to her face. She cast her eyes down, feeling stupid and juvenile. “I know it sounds . . . wishful. I just thought that if we brought her back and the people knew, or we told people . . . I don’t know, that their king was corrupt? They like Frances, I know they do. We could keep her safe. And she could . . .” She winced. “Take the throne?” she squeaked.
Brella didn’t move for so long that Scratch was sure the magic of the room had frozen her in place. Then, her lips curled into a small smile, then bigger, showing her teeth, and she was laughing, gulping in air as she whooped and giggled.
Scratch pouted. “It’s not that funny.” She hunched into herself, crossing her arms over her chest.
“No, Scratch.” Brella wiped her eyes and reached forward to cup Scratch’s elbows. “It’s great. It’s so great. I want that, too.”
“You . . .” She looked up. Brella wasn’t laughing anymore. “You want that?”
“The king. He’s terrible in ways you can’t imagine.” Brella bit her lip. “I think Frances would be better.”
Scratch had never really considered the merits of King Ingomar. It didn’t matter what sort of king he was in the end. He was the king, so Scratch served him. Whether or not he was good for the people hadn’t been a pressing factor while Scratch busied herself rising through the King’s Guard. Ingomar would be king until he died and then Frances would be queen and on and on it went, and Scratch had nothing to do with any of it. Why should it matter to her? She cared that she and James lived comfortably. That she could be proud of herself. That she saw in herself something greater than the world saw in her. That she could make the world see in her the things they refused to.
King Ingomar had seen, and still he’d disregarded her. Then he’d thrown her in a dungeon.
“You have a plan,” Scratch said, savoring the feeling of knots coming untied. “A plan you kept from me.”
“Not so much a plan.” Brella pulled her knees up to her chest defensively. “An idea. A hope. Did you think I was risking my life just so my sister could get her lover back?”
Of course not. “I wasn’t sure what to think.”
“If I tell you about the king,” Brella asked carefully, quietly, “will you listen?”
Scratch didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”
“Okay then.” Brella smiled, and she was breakfast, warm and sweet. “I’ll tell you everything.”
Chapter Eighteen
The rest of the night was a swirl of loose memory and magic. Brella promised to explain King Ingomar’s faults after she and Scratch formed the blood bond, but she didn’t get the chance. The last thing Scratch remembered from the night was slicing her palm with the kitchen knife. A moment later, she was blinking herself awake on the floor of the lavender room, comfortably swaddled in a sea of monstrous pillows and blankets.
A few feet away, a mound of quilts rose and fell, a sort of plush tortoise shell, out of which a sleeping, bronze-tufted head emerged. The cool, purple-tinged light from the lavender windows illuminated Brella’s sleeping face, her lashes forming a perfect line of wheat stalks resting on the warm, brown sunrise of her cheek. Scratch nearly raised her hand to touch that cheek. Would it feel smooth? Warm, like the heat from a hard-boiled egg still in its shell? Soft, like a glistening, yellow-dough morning loaf? Did freckles feel different on skin? Scratch didn’t have any, nor did James, so she had no frame of reference. Were they just bits of color, or did they feel like the seeds of a strawberry—little divots of tucked-in pebbles, sleeping on top of skin stretched taut over juice?
She supposed she was rather hungry, on top of everything else. She cleared her throat.
Brella slept.
She poked a leg out from under the blankets and stamped her heel against the floor.
Brella slept.
She yawned loudly, stretching her arms over her head until her back and shoulders clicked.
Brella mumbled a bit, nestling deeper into the quilt. She snored.
Well, there was nothing for it. Scratch raised a cautious finger and poked what, in her best estimation, was Brella’s shoulder.
“Mrgh,” said the quilted thing.
“Brella. It’s morning.”
“Na.”
“Yeah. I was thinking we should eat a bit of breakfast.”
As though “breakfast” were her name, the sleeping thing raised her head. The quilt fell back and Scratch was treated to the full, undiluted Brella of morning. What ochre hair had not formed a startlingly vertical nest atop Brella’s head was plastered to her face with nighttime spittle. Her cheek bore the imprints of the pillow, a written history of a night spent in rock-solid sleep. Her eyes, usually so alert, were dazed and soft, dying firelight instead of sparks.
And, gods help her, Scratch felt her mouth go dry.
Brella was a mess. She slept like a hibernating bear, and she did it remarkably. Resplendently. As far as Scratch was concerned, Brella was the best ever at sleeping. How many people knew that this sleepy softness lurked underneath that hot, hard glare?
Scratch pressed her small skinny hand against a chest that suddenly burned.
“I’m going to go,” she whispered hoarsely. “You’ll wake up?”
Brella nodded, or perhaps just shifted in sleep. Scratch raised herself from the sheets and left, closing the door behind her. Her hands were in fists. Slowly she opened them and breathed.
Vel and James sat in the living room, having a leisurely breakfast of scones swirled with mysterious fruit alongside eggs with yolks so bright they could not possibly have come from a chicken.
“You seem livelier,” Scratch told James, pushing down the discomfort that she had meant to leave behind in the lavender room. “More upright at least.”
“Kind of you to notice.” James kicked a chair away from the table for her. “Join us, why don’t you?”
The lads, as it turned out, also had no memory of forming the blood bond. They had woken up dizzy and tangled before stumbling into the living room to discover Nana, who helpfully assured them that this sort of memory lapse was to be expected.
“Nothing to worry about,” James trilled. “Just your average, run-of-the-mill fair folk stealing memories, blood magic ritual, our minds are too mortal to understand, blah blah blah sort of thing.” He winced. “She’s in there with Gultin now. Apparently, he’s not doing as well as I am.”
“How can that be?” Scratch accepted Vel’s proffered mug of something steamy and coffee-like but somehow . . . sparklier? “You got hit much harder.”
He shrugged. “Apparently his struggle is not of the physical sort. Nana said we could talk to him when you woke up. I figured we ought to do it together.”
“How about we don’t and say we did?” she muttered, but she was already standing, reluctantly leaving the beckoning baked goods behind. She followed James to a door with a cheerful white daisy painted on its face. He opened it, releasing a cloud of warm air scented with rot.
“Oh, gods.” James covered his mouth. “It smells like the field hospital in Kyria.”
“Come in,” Nana called from the dank darkness. “He’s awake.”
With a shared wince, they entered the dim room. Curtains were drawn over every window, letting in only slivers of orangey light. Nana sat in a rocking chair beside a low, small bed. The covers were crisp and white, like a healer’s robes.
Gultin lay propped on stiff pillows. He had always been big, even as a kid at the Academy. Scratch remembered the first time she had seen him, this galumphing thing with too-large ears
and a nose that had already been broken so many times it had morphed into a multi-planed prism of flesh. He rarely smiled, only grimaced, pacing the grounds with the sure-footed stomp of a man who looked for fights and won.
He smiled now.
“Hello, Keyes. Bowstring.” There was a blankness about his face, his open eyes and docile, pleasant mouth. He looked both younger and older, less hardened of expression, but wizened beyond his years.
“Gultin.” A small bench appeared—or had always been—beside the bed, and Scratch took a tentative seat. James remained standing, hovering near the door.
“Gultin,” he squeaked. “You look well.”
“You always look well,” Gultin replied, regarding James with lightless eyes. “I rather fancied you at the Academy. I thought of asking you to walk with me, but Father would have disapproved, so I beat you instead. Do you remember?”
“You beating me?” James swallowed. “I remember.”
“Sorry about that.” He turned to Scratch. “Did you take the princess?”
“No.”
“Kill her?”
“No.”
“Ah, well.” He smoothed the blanket down over his legs. They looked impossibly small under the tight bedding. “You still escaped the dungeon. That’s a bit illegal.”
“We shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
“True enough.” He turned his eyes toward the door. “Hello, Bowstring. Did you know, I rather fancied you at the Academy.”
James was shivering. “Did you?”
“Your eyes are so green. Did you know?”
“Yes, Gultin. I know.”
“All right.” Gultin blinked slowly, like a cow. He yawned. “Well, I ought to get back to sleep soon.”
“Gultin,” Scratch said, unease creeping along her spine. “Are you getting any better?”
“Better?” He cocked his head to the side. “Why would I get better?”
“So you can leave.” She pressed her hands against her thighs to keep them from shaking. “Don’t you want to get back to your life?”
“What life?” he asked. There was no bitterness in it. No anger. It seemed to be a real question.
“Your family?”
“Oh, they don’t like me.” He waved the thought away like a gnat. “That’s why I went to the Academy. I had Branch and Hester, but you killed them.”
He said it so simply. Not an accusation—a fact. A dull knife, slicing her from belly to throat. “I’m sorry, Gultin.”
“Don’t be.” That wave again. “I know why you did it.”
“You could come with us,” she offered, trying not to think of what a terrible idea that was. Something in Gultin’s nothing face was making her desperate. “We’re rescuing Frances.”
His smile didn’t shift. “No, thank you. I’m perfectly content where I am.”
James made a strangled noise. “You.” He rounded on Nana. “You did this.”
She eyed him narrowly. “I did nothing different than what I did with you. This one decided not to fight.”
“There’s still time.” Scratch grabbed Gultin by the shoulder. His bones, under papery skin, pressed against her fingers. “Gultin, come on. You have to move. You can get better.”
“What for?” His eyes were splotched green and brown like algae over a murky pond. Scratch had never noticed the color before. There had never been reason. “I can’t be in the Guard anymore.”
“We can’t either,” she protested.
He blinked. “It’s nice to talk to you, Keyes. I forgot to say, I liked your octagon.”
She fell back onto the bench, dizzy. Nana rose with a sigh.
“Say your good-byes, you two. You’re leaving after this.” She patted Gultin’s covered foot. “The good news for you is, since he’s staying, I’ll only take something minor from you lot as payment. This one’s feeding me up well, isn’t he?”
Gultin smiled dopily at her. “Yes, Nana.”
Scratch watched Gultin breathe. His chest rose slowly, and there was a whistle to it, like consumption. She had the uncomfortable urge to swaddle him up and rock him.
“I have your sword, Gultin,” she said, realizing too late that it came out as a motherly coo. “It’s in the other room. I’m sure Nana will give it to you if you ask.”
“That’s sweet.” He blinked once, twice, and then turned toward the ceiling.
A powerful urge to leave struck her, and she grabbed on to James’s hand on the way to the door. He didn’t move.
“Gultin.” James sniffled. “You know I fancied you at the Academy.”
Gultin’s face went still, his eyes wide with wonder. He sat forward slowly, dreamlike. “You did?”
“I wanted t-to—” James’s breath hitched. “To take you walking. But I didn’t.”
“I fancied you too. Your eyes are very green.”
“Will you come with us? Please?”
Gultin leaned back against the pillow and closed his eyes.
“I won’t, James. But you’ve given me a very nice dream.”
Chapter Nineteen
It was morning, which meant Mama was about to send Patience out for the day. She hated mornings, always shutting her eyes against the sun and wriggling down under the thin blanket, bits of hay from her under-stuffed mattress poking through the old, threadbare sheet to scrape at her skin. If only she could wait a few moments, stay in the relative warmth of their little house. This season, mornings were cool and drizzly more often than they weren’t. Evenings were worse, the sky heavy with the sort of soft, cold dampness that could barely call itself snow. She wasn’t ready to leave. Besides, her left shoe had a big hole and she hadn’t had socks in months.
“I’m having men over, Patience. For work.” Mama tied herself into a new frock, miraculously intact and free of patches. “Make yourself busy. Come back an hour after the sun has set.”
Patience flopped out of bed and tugged at her hair, an unruly, tangled mess of mats and knots. She pouted. “What work do you do for them, Mama? Why can’t I be home? I’ll be quiet.”
“No,” Mama snapped. “It is not for little girls. Now go.”
“But the other kids. They don’t like me, Mama.” Patience scrubbed at her snotty nose. From Hunter’s season through the dawn of Rider’s, it never stopped running. “They hit me.”
Mama closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “What have I said about that, Patience?”
“Hit them back or run. But—”
“No buts. Go.” And with that, Mama slammed the door, leaving Patience no choice but to occupy herself until dark.
As luck would have it, that day turned out to be rather pleasant, despite the damp and the cold. Patience managed to evade the other children, finding solace with the butcher at his stall at the covered market. On slow days he allowed her to help him with his meats.
“You’re good with a knife,” he told her. “And you’ve got quick hands. Cut along this tendon here and you might earn a few coins for your trouble. Wash your hands under the pump first. And for the gods’ sake, don’t touch your nose!”
She sliced and sorted while the butcher sold his cuts. He chatted affably with the men and women of the neighborhood, all the while pointing out his little helper for the day. She smiled and preened and cut, and before she knew it, the sun was low in the pinking sky.
The butcher grinned as he packed up his knives.
“Here.” He tossed her a few coppers. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of them, so shiny in her blood-caked palm. “And you can have this as well.” He handed her a package wrapped in waxed cloth. She squeezed it, feeling bone and meat.
“Really?” She could hardly believe it. All of this, just for her and Mama?
“You earned it. You did a hard day’s work, Patience. Hard work is the most important thing.” He patted her on the head, then added in a conspiratorial whisper, “Don’t let the other kids nick that off of you. It’s good meat!”
She sped home, litt
le legs beating the ground hard, kicking up clouds of dust behind her. Sure, Mama had said not to come back until an hour after sunset, but she couldn’t wait to display her prize. Besides, the longer she stayed out in the streets, the higher the risk of the other children stripping her of her coin and her dinner.
Mama will be so proud, she thought as she ran. Mama did hard work and so did I. And tonight we’ll have a feast.
She skidded to a stop outside the little shack. Through the cracked window, she could see the flickering of a candle—the good, wax one that Mama never let her light. Moans and cries floated from inside the house, setting Patience’s little heart to racing. Was that Mama? Was she in trouble? Was somebody hurting her?
The door was locked, but the wood was soft enough. With the mighty force of her tiny leg, Patience kicked the door open and bounded inside, dropping the package of meat at her feet to free her hands, which had already curled into fists.
“Mama! Are you all right? Is someone hurting you?”
The look on her mother’s face was nothing short of murderous.
“What did I tell you?” Mama hissed, reaching for her robe. She was naked. Why was she naked? “Get out of here! Now!”
There was a man on Mama’s shabby hay-stuffed mattress. His face was purple with rage, and he grabbed out for clothes far finer than anything Patience or her mother had ever worn.
“I hope you know you won’t be getting paid.” He had an accent Patience couldn’t place. Long o’s and rolled r’s. She would learn, in later years, that the man had been an aristocrat. But she didn’t know, when she was seven or eight, why the man had talked so oddly, or why he was so angry, or why Mama was begging him to stay, promising him that next time there would be no interruption, next time she would be entirely his, she promised, please, don’t go, please, please . . .
When he left, attempting to slam the door behind him though it hung off of its hinges, Mama crumpled to the floor. Patience ran over to her.
“Mama, don’t cry. I got us dinner. A lot of meat and a bone, too. And a few coppers. Look!” She dug the coins out of her pocket, holding her palm open. “We’ll be okay. You don’t need that man.”
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