“Scratch.”
“Yes, Highness?”
Frances bit her lip, worrying it between her teeth. “What would you have done? I mean, would you have sent you to the dungeons? How would you have gotten you out if you were me?”
“Hmm.” She considered for a beat, then, “I would have thrown me in the dungeons, then fed me very little. I would have kept me in there longer: another day maybe. Not too long, but long enough that I was desperate. Pliable. I wouldn’t give me soft treatment because then the Koravian king might think I’m soft. I don’t know how he operates, or why he’s chosen to side with you.”
“I do.” Frances grinned. It was rakish and sly, and reminded Scratch fiercely of Maisie. “Go on.”
“I would have tested the waters with the king, figured out how he viewed the situation, and then acted accordingly. The most important thing is that alliance.”
“I agree.”
“Good. Then I would have spoken to Brella. If I’m as dangerous as she believes, I could have deceived her, convinced her that I was an ally when I had every intention of spying for your father.”
Frances chuckled mirthlessly. “Brella wasn’t talking to anyone last night. I doubt even I could have gotten information from her.”
“Did you give her any incentive?”
She lifted a delicate shoulder. “I gave her nice quarters.”
“Nice quarters she wasn’t allowed to leave,” Scratch said. “They could have been the royal gardens, and she still would have seen them as a prison.”
“Fair. What incentive?”
Scratch arched an eyebrow. The right one, with the scar. “Me?”
Frances laughed, louder this time. “You’re saying I should have traded my prisoner, my one and only bargaining chip, for an opinion on said asset from my partner’s sister?”
“Of course not. I would have lied.”
“Ah, yes.” The princess appeared pleased by that.
“I would have said ‘if you submit to questioning, we’ll treat Scratch better.’ Or ‘your word could be what frees her.’”
“And if she didn’t believe me?” Frances wrapped her hands around her teacup. “What then?”
Scratch waved her away. “I wouldn’t have pressed. Then, I would have subjected Brella to the wizards. Me as well. Get a truth serum, or some kind of spell. Find out whether I’m lying, or if I figured out how to bewitch her. Make sure I’m not a spy for your father.” She gripped her teacup. “I’m not, by the way.”
Frances rolled her eyes, a wordless yes, obviously. “And then what would you have done?”
“I would have appointed me my Hand.”
Frances let out a peal of laughter, full-bellied and surprisingly deep. “You are good, I will admit.” She pursed her lips. “I’ll give it some thought.”
“Thank you.”
“Is there anything else we need to discuss?”
“Yes.” Scratch took a deep, bracing breath. “Gorn.”
Frances’s green eyes widened, then narrowed. “What of him?”
“How long have you been planning this with him?”
The contact inside the castle. It couldn’t have been anyone except the violet-eyed wizard. There had been magic in Scratch’s capture, a spooled fate ball pulling her away from the feast. No apprentice of Gorn’s could have been responsible. They were too low of rank to have regular contact with Frances. And the most telling bit of intelligence? She liked him.
“How did you know?” Frances demanded. “Does Brella?”
Scratch shook her head. “I figured it out on my own. Don’t worry, he’s safe.”
The princess’s shoulders dropped fractionally.
“How long?” Scratch asked.
“Years.” Frances bit her lip. “He practically raised me. My father was always . . .” She froze. “Why am I telling you this?”
Scratch tried not to appear outwardly smug. “We get along. It’s an asset if you choose to appoint me.”
“So it is.” Frances stood, a clear dismissal. “You’re free to go to Vel and Brella’s chambers.” She paused, smoothing down her starched skirts. “I won’t apologize for the dungeons. As you say, it might have been prudent to keep you in there longer.”
“One more thing, Princess. If you don’t mind.”
Frances flopped back down, a little gracelessly. Scratch took the looseness as a good sign. “It’s about James, isn’t it?”
Once again, Scratch was startled by the princess’s quick mind. “Yes, actually. He’s a good storyteller, and very observant. I’d like him to be your historian.”
She nodded. “Fine. Yes.”
Scratch nearly laughed. “That easy?”
“Truthfully . . .” Frances’s voice dropped low, less conspiratorial than chagrined. “I forgot I needed one.”
Scratch let herself smile. “We’re building a new country, Highness. Certainly that’s worthy of recording.”
“Too right.” Frances tensed, her hands coming together in her lap. The ghost of a wince passed across her face. “I owe you an apology, Scratch.”
“Oh, no—”
“Hush, your princess is speaking,” she interrupted tartly, though with none of the threat those words could have held. “That night, when I found you on the bench. I knew what would happen to you. And I still got you high and told you that you’d never achieve your life’s goals.”
“Highness—”
“Please be quiet. I could still have you beheaded. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about why I said what I said. Yes, I believed that my father had contempt for your heritage and your sex. But why should I tell you? To torture you? To see what you’d do? To have you rage at me, so that I’d feel justified in ruining your life? To see confirmation that you were really the ruthless warmonger I believed you to be?” She shook her head and sighed. “If I were to tell any of my father’s commanders that they had been wrong about something, they’d be polite to my face—I’m a princess, after all—but they’d rage. None of them know how to be wrong. You know how to be wrong, Scratch. And how to listen to the people who might be right.”
“Thank you?”
The princess nodded brusquely. “You’re welcome. I’m not sure what I’ll do with you, but your ability to adapt is a mark in your favor.” The princess made to stand, then stopped. “Anything else we should discuss?”
“Not at this moment.”
“Very well. You may go.”
“Thank you, Highness.” Scratch rose. Mercifully, her legs had regained a bit of strength, and she found she could stand without getting dizzy. Frances stood before her, a young princess with Scratch’s entire future in her neat little hands. It struck her then that they had both gone on the same journey. Had Frances been enchanted by the magic of the Between? Had she seen into Maisie’s dreams? Had Maisie trespassed in the dreams of a princess?
Questions for another day perhaps. Scratch nodded farewell and walked carefully to the door, not stumbling once.
“You’re still a prisoner, Scratch,” the princess called after her, a laugh in her voice. “But I’ll send you all a nice dinner, all right?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Her Hand.” Brella lay against the rug, languorously stretching her long limbs. “When you defect, sweetheart, you do defect hard.”
She was whispering, trying not to disturb the heavily sleeping Vel and James. The lads had pleaded exhaustion after mowing through the food and wine Frances had sent up for a late supper. Knowing James, the early bedtime had likely been a ploy to claim the room’s only bed before Scratch and Brella had the chance.
“I never claimed to be anything other than the best.” Scratch grinned over her nearly empty goblet. “You oughtn’t be surprised.”
“Nothing you do surprises me anymore.” Brella yawned, nearly spilling her wine. She wasn’t wearing her apron for once, and it hung forlornly over the side of a nearby divan. Now, Scratch could see that the inscrutable embroidered plants were from the Be
tween, mystical little shoots and saplings dotted with blue balls of magic. “What if she says no?”
“I really don’t know.” Scratch downed the last bit of wine, letting it splash over the rising doubt in her throat. What if. “Something else. And you?”
“Me?”
“What do you want?” Scratch murmured, reaching down to push an unruly hair behind Brella’s ear. Brella tracked the movement with her head, depositing a kiss on Scratch’s palm that lit her up like spirits.
“My preference would be your mouth, but the lads are here.” Brella’s breath ghosted warmth over Scratch’s fingers, and she found herself caught between a laugh and a gasp. “Have you seen the bath chamber?”
In the dark, they tiptoed across the rugs, stifling giggles. The bath chamber hid behind a door cleverly disguised as a bit of wall. Brella pressed it open and darted into the darkness. Soon, the room began to emit a yellow-gold glow.
“Gas lamp,” she explained, pulling Scratch inside. “The advancements this country has made are incredible.”
When Scratch’s eyes adjusted to the light, she found herself in a large room lined with shining square tiles. Some were painted with flourishes of blue and white, swoops and dots forming a pattern at the intersection of flora and fauna, reminding Scratch inexorably of the Between’s magical plant life and dancing Sweets. Others depicted scenes, tiny bathers soaking in identically tiled tubs, the patterns repeated in meticulous miniature. Along one wall, underneath a line of small, flickering lamps, a mirror stretched, doubling the space. Opposite, a grand window let in the night sky.
Scratch blinked at her own reflection. She looked thin, the angles of her face sharper, the hollow of her clavicle deep and shadowed. Her eyelids were puffy, her under-eyes blue-gray and cobwebbed with capillaries. Her cheeks were pink and wine flushed, her stomach a little bloated from finally having a proper meal. There was a new timbre to her expression, too. Something strange. With a jolt, she realized that the little lines had disappeared from between her brows and beside her mouth. For the first time in years, Scratch saw her own face relax.
Despite the disconcerting weight loss—she had never had much spare heft to begin with, and was loath to give any up—she looked younger than she had in years.
Additionally, she was a mess. She had dressed so carefully in Ivinscont, always trying to appear exactly as a female guard ought: much like a man, without claiming to be one. Masculine trousers with a feminine cut. A jacket that squared her shoulders in a color that turned her blue eyes piercing. Reminders to the men above her that she was a woman, yes, but not quite. Nonthreatening. Not the same as the men, nor so very different. Palatable. Respectable. Unobjectionable.
As she stared at her wilted, filthy clothes it struck her how much each day of her professional life had been shaped around absolute bullshit.
She ran her hands through her short hair, enjoying the slip of the locks as they fell through her fingers.
“Mmm.” Brella came up behind her, wrapping her arms around Scratch’s waist. “I adore this haircut.”
“Well, it is your handiwork, after all.”
“I’m an artist, then.” Brella kissed her cheek. “And you owe me three crowns for the cut.”
Scratch couldn’t help but blush as she watched the two of them in the mirror, the low light turning Brella’s brown skin into oiled oak. Brella was so tall, strong and sturdy. Scratch shivered at her own smallness, the nigh-uncomfortable, yet inexplicably exciting idea of being delicate in her lover’s sure hands. She had never seen herself that way before, never wanted to. And yet . . .
“You make me want things I don’t understand,” Scratch breathed, feeling herself begin to tremble. In her reflection, her cheeks reddened further, and she turned her eyes away.
Brella’s small laugh was warm and wet on Scratch’s throat. “I feel the same way. I never thought I’d be so desperate for a soldier, of all people, that I’d want to drop to my knees on a tiled floor and have my way with her.”
“Mph,” Scratch squeaked, shocked and embarrassed and delighted all at once. “So you’ve changed your mind on the King’s Guard, then?”
“Absolutely not.” When Scratch turned back to the mirror, Brella’s reflection was serious, though a little smirk played at the seam of her full lips. “They can go to the infinite hells, the lot of them. The commanders especially.” Brella put a hand up Scratch’s shirt, warm and confident on her tensing belly. “I don’t see any soldiers here.”
“I could have asked her for that, you know,” Scratch mumbled, distracted by the path of Brella’s clever hand. “Frances. I could have told her I wanted a command.”
“Yes.” Brella sighed. Her hand stilled, to Scratch’s great disappointment. “I want you to be you, Scratch. I want you to have everything you want. You didn’t have much choice the first time around. Selfishly, I’m relieved you chose to try something different.” She buried her face in Scratch’s shoulder. “I know there will be fighting. More fighting, probably for a long while. At least, this time it’s fighting for something.”
“I thought I was fighting for something.”
“I know, sweetheart. I know.” Brella squeezed her around the middle. “My opinion on the Guard hasn’t changed. But my opinion on the guards themselves . . .” Scratch felt her shrug. “I understand that it can be the best of few options. It was for you, at least. But can I say that the King’s Guard isn’t cruel, if what they perform is cruelty? I wonder how many of them would leave if they knew the destruction they’ve caused. I wonder how many know, and just don’t care.”
“I wonder if I ever would have left,” Scratch whispered, “if not for you.”
Brella didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. They both knew the answer.
“Do you think I’m . . . absurd?” Brella asked, her voice impossibly small.
Scratch spun around. “Why the hells would I think that?”
She shrugged. “I’m a revolutionary who can’t stand bloodshed. I have lofty moral principles, and they all melt away as soon as I meet a beautiful, clever—”
“Hush.” Scratch kissed her on the nose. The mouth. Her flickering eyelids, so delicate and so dear. “You care so much about life. Not just that your people live, but how they live. Of course you’re squeamish. Or, rather, maybe you’re not squeamish at all. Maybe the rest of us are callous.”
Brella waited for a long moment. “Perhaps.”
They stood that way for a while, Scratch supporting Brella’s weight. She thought about how desperately she had wanted that command, that knighting. She had made her life smaller to provide room for it, and she had been left with nothing but empty space. Tendrils of shame twined around her feet, and she felt like collapsing, but Brella’s arms were around her, keeping her upright. She wondered whether she deserved it.
“Oh.” Brella’s head popped up. “There’s something I want to show you.” She scampered across the room to a tub that sank into the floor. The tiles were a deeper color in the tub, more blue than white, framing a bronze drain at the base. Brella crouched by the tub, turning a few knobs this way and that. For a moment nothing happened. Then, water began to gush from a hidden spigot.
“It’s hot,” Brella breathed, entranced. “It’s steam and pipes, and they can get hot water for bathing whenever they want. It’s not even hot springs. It’s man-made.” She beamed, eyes flickering with joyous sparks. “And it’s not just the royals. Or the rich. Scratch, everyone has hot water. Either in their home or at a public bath maintained by the king.”
“Busy king.”
“Oh, hush.”
Mesmerized, Scratch watched steam curling from the rapidly filling tub. “Everyone?”
Brella nodded fervently. “Imagine, Scratch. Taxes used to make people’s lives better, and not just, y’know, for funding feasts.”
“Or paying my salary.”
Brella snorted. “Oh, please. You’d give up a year’s pay for an indoor bath.”
“Proba
bly.” She hiked up her trousers and came to sit beside Brella, soaking her feet in the warm water. It was heavenly, and she couldn’t help but groan. “Oh gods, this feels amazing.”
“I told you.”
“I don’t want to be poor again, Brella,” she said, the thought crashing down on her, chilling despite the bath’s calming heat. Her hands tangled together in her lap. “If Frances decides to, I don’t know, throw me back into the forest as a traitor. I don’t want to be poor like I was.”
“You won’t be.” Brella wedged her fingers into the nervous ball of Scratch’s hands. “Or maybe you will be, I don’t know. I’m not a seer.” Scratch snorted. “It broke my heart, you know.” Brella’s voice dropped to a low murmur. “Seeing you so desperate and hungry. So young and alone.”
She bristled. “Mm, lovely. Any more words to describe how pathetic I was? Scrawny? Abandoned? Pitiful?”
“Hush. No, Scratch. I mean . . . I wish I could take that little part of you, the part that’s still that girl, and feed her up. Keep her warm, you know?”
Scratch curled over herself because this was too much. “That’s not me. That’s before. I wasn’t Scratch.”
“You dream about her, though.”
For a moment, she couldn’t speak. When she finally opened her mouth, her voice was faint and rasping. “Well, as you’ve seen.”
“It’s not embarrassing, I think, to still have a bit of her with you. She’s the one who learned how to butcher meat, after all.”
“Mm. My most useful skill.”
“I don’t think,” Brella whispered, each word carefully placed, “that we can get rid of our past so completely. The most difficult bits of us are the hardest to shake. I think the best we can do is reckon with the pain.”
“And what child lives inside you?” Scratch asked, wilting under the weight of being so completely seen, desperate to look elsewhere.
Brella leaned back on her hands, the muscles in her arms standing out. “Oh, an angry one. Who shouts at her lover in the forest when she knows that lover is scared and alone. Someone who wants a just world, but wouldn’t know what to do with that justice if she got it. Someone with too many siblings she resents and a code of ethics that gets in her way more than it doesn’t. Someone who wants to start a revolution, but can’t stomach the idea of bloodshed.” She shrugged. “That sort of child.”
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