The Sin Eater's Daughter

by Melinda Salisbury

  Lief and the other guard move to stand at the rear of the room. On the right, the wall is lined with chambermaids, pages, spit-turners, and kitchen servants. I see Rulf, and my skin tingles with guilt. The entire castle is here to bear witness.

  Merek looks at me as I walk to my seat and frowns. He leans over to the queen and says something, and she shakes her head. On her left, the king leans across again, also talking urgently. But again the queen shakes her head, and both men sit back in their seats, the king chewing his lip and looking angrier than ever. Merek looks back at me and subtly raises his shoulders and then drops them before he turns his gaze away. Then it is the queen’s turn to seek me out and I hurriedly sit down, toward the back, on the bench next to Lady Shasta.

  She blanches when she sees me and slides across the bench, though I could have fitted six of myself into the gap between us. I close my eyes when she clutches her husband’s elbow and he slides a protective arm around her waist. Whoever is being tried is on trial for treason. And for treason I am the executioner. After the next Telling in a week’s time, I’ll be killing one of our own.

  When I open my eyes, the queen is standing, staring down at us all, and I know I am not the only one whose shoulders hunch and whose eyes lower. When she has completed her survey of the room, she turns to the side and nods. The door is thrown wide and a woman, shaking, sobbing quietly, is dragged in. At her sides two guards are struggling to control dogs leashed on thick chains.

  As one we all shudder. Lady Shasta gasps and I see her husband’s knuckles whiten as he holds her tighter. It is Lady Lorelle.

  Poor Lorelle’s eyes are black holes in her face; her hands are clasped before her as though to beseech the queen. She is not bound; there’s no need with the dogs there. I search the crowd for her husband, Lord Lammos, but cannot see him. He must be here somewhere; the whole court is, but not even love will be enough to make him risk the queen’s wrath. The accused is brought to stand before the queen, who gazes down at her with no pity, no recognition of her so-called friend, and we hold our breath as one, waiting for the charges.

  Then the queen speaks. “You are brought before me on the charge of treason against the crown of Lormere. If you are found guilty, you will be sentenced to death and there will be no Eating for your soul.”

  Lorelle lets out a terrible wail and one of the dogs growls, a guttural, chilling sound. I look at Merek, but he looks down at the table, as does the king.

  “I find you guilty,” the queen says, as softly as a girl confiding secrets to her best friend.

  A shiver moves through the crowd like a disease, passing along the benches from the front to where I sit, and I feel my stomach lurch. A noise behind me makes me glance to the side and there is Lief, standing at my back, one hand on the hilt of his sword, his fingers flexing.

  As the queen speaks again, I turn back to the front, frightened Lief’s movements will draw her attention to me and remind her that her executioner is sitting in the room. But she has eyes for no one save her former friend, quivering before her on charges too heinous to be named.

  “As you have been found guilty of treason, I sentence you to a traitor’s death. Come the—”

  “Helewys, please!” Lady Lorelle cries. “We were children together. I have done no wrong … I thought I was too old … I didn’t know—”

  “Come the next Telling,” the queen continues, her voice raised to drown out the other woman’s appeal, “you will be taken to the Morning Room and there your life will be forfeit for your crimes against the throne of Lormere. May the Gods have mercy on you.”

  “No,” a voice says firmly. We all look around to see who spoke, and then with a slap of shock I realize it was the king.

  “No, Helewys,” he says again, standing, and every pair of eyes in the room turns to him. Merek stares at his stepfather, his face unreadable, as the queen turns to her husband.

  “You dare?” she whispers, but the stone walls carry it and we all hear it. “You dare contradict me?”

  “It’s not treason, Helewys,” the king says. “It’s a gift from the Gods.”

  The queen and the king lock eyes and then I know what Lorelle’s supposed crime is. She’s with child. She and Lord Lammos are going to have a baby. Alianor was the last child born to this court; since her death no one has dared to conceive. Not when the queen has not. It’s been an unspoken pact between the ladies of the court that if the queen cannot get with child, then they cannot, either.

  And she would have me take both Lady Lorelle’s life and the child’s because of it. I could never … not that. I couldn’t take the life of an unborn child.

  “I say it’s treason and I sentence her to death,” the queen says.

  “Then I pardon her. Lady Lorelle, you have my pardon,” the king says firmly, and I cannot tear my eyes from them. The queen has turned bright red, and the king’s shoulders are rising and falling rapidly, as though he’s been running. I would never, ever have made a wager on this happening, and from the look on the openmouthed faces around the hall, no one else would have, either.

  “You cannot …” the queen says.

  “I am the king. I can,” he replies. And then he kneels before the queen.

  Shock causes me to gasp loudly, and I see everyone else in the room reel, too. It is an old custom—though never, to my knowledge, used—that the queen can intercede with the king to plead for clemency for the condemned. But a king has never, ever knelt before a queen. This is history, being made as I watch. A king begging a queen.

  He looks up at his wife and holds his arms out to either side. “Please, Helewys, I beseech you to spare her life.”

  “You would work against me?” she asks, and there is real curiosity in her voice.

  “In this, yes.” He bows his head. “I will not sanction the death of a woman for the crime of getting with child.”

  The queen glares at him and, with utter disgust warping her face, she stalks out through the royal doors, to the passageway to her solar. The king stands slowly and turns to the room.

  “Take the dogs away,” he orders the Master of the Hounds, who hesitates, looking toward the door the queen left through before he obeys. Then the king looks at the weeping Lady Lorelle, finally in her husband’s arms. “Lord Lammos, please take Lady Lorelle from the castle. Tonight. Horses will be made available to you and you may return to your hall in Haga.”

  Lord Lammos stammers his thanks and Lady Lorelle sobs, her hands shaking as she clutches her husband. The two leave the room, their arms entwined.

  The king ignores the astonished court and follows the queen out of the Great Hall, his shoulders slumped wearily, though he pauses to clasp Merek’s arm as he passes. Merek’s eyes meet mine as he stands, and he raises his eyebrows once before he follows his mother and stepfather from the hall.

  The moment the door is closed behind them, the murmuring starts.

  Lief crouches down behind me, whispering urgently. “My lady, I would be so bold as to say we should go now.”

  I nod, utterly stunned, rising to follow my guard. The king stood up to her. And he won. I look at Lief to see what he thinks and his eyes are bright and manic as we walk, his pace swift as I struggle to match his stride.

  “The other guard,” I begin, but he talks across me.

  “Forget him. He doesn’t matter now. Turn left.”

  I stop. “Where are we going?”

  “To see Dorin. While we have a chance.”

  “We can’t—”

  “The other guard isn’t likely to tell the queen he lost you, is he? This is your best chance if you want to see him.”

  I gaze at him, weighing his offer, before nodding. “We must hurry.”

  When we reach the bowels of the castle, he pauses, closing the door to the stairwell behind us. “Wait. I owe you an apology. Another one. I haven’t written it down, so you’ll have to take me at my word.”

  “Not now, Lief—”

  “Please. I’m not—I want y
ou to understand why I am the way I am. I’m not used to being a servant; I’m used to being my own master.” He shrugs, glancing up at the ceiling before meeting my eyes again. “I come from a farm and I was to inherit it eventually. But my father died unexpectedly. With a mother and younger sister to provide for, it fell to me to make ends meet. So I came here. As fate would have it, you needed a new guard and I arrived on the day of the trials. I am making mistakes, I know, but I am trying, my lady. I am trying.”

  I look at him, fear and pity warring inside me. “Why are you telling me now?”

  He chews his lip before he answers. “Because you deserve an explanation—the way you put up with me.” He smiles sheepishly. “And if the king can be brave, then I can, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She would have killed that woman if he hadn’t stopped it. She would have made you do it. And for what? Because she is with child. That was her crime against the throne of Lormere. She did what the queen can’t.”

  I clap my hands to my mouth as though I were the one who’d said it. “Lief, you cannot—”

  “I know I cannot! You keep telling me I cannot. And I know you’re right. I don’t know how you stand it.”

  “What makes you think I do?” I stare at him. “What makes you so sure that I do stand it?”

  “You never speak of it.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t think of it. I spend hours in prayer, asking the Gods to help me understand it all.”

  “Have you tried asking them to do anything about it?” he says, and I don’t know if he’s mocking me.

  “What could they do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they want you to do something about it. If all of you stood together, then—”

  “Like in Tregellan,” I say, and he turns pale. “Do you think we should start a war we cannot win? Should we stage a coup, gather what’s left of our meager forces, and rise up and kill her, and the king and the prince? Are you suggesting treason as an answer?”

  “No,” he says quickly. “I didn’t mean that. Petition her, present it to her reasonably?”

  “Do you honestly think people haven’t thought of it? When I was in my fourteenth harvest, Lord Grevlas planned to plead for the dogs to be banished. From all accounts he had a lot of support. Until he tried to enlist the wrong supporter. Whoever it was went straight to the queen, and the rest of his supporters did the same. Had it been a year later, I would have been the one to execute him.”

  Lief looks away from me, his hands clenched tightly, before he exhales a long, drawn-out breath as his fingers uncurl and his eyes meet mine once more.

  “You’re not like them,” he says slowly.

  “I am their executioner, Lief.”

  “Because they make you.”

  “It doesn’t matter—”

  “It does to me,” he says softly. “More than I can say.”

  Then I look away, the intensity of his gaze reminding me of Merek, making my stomach twist.

  “Nothing can be done to make things right,” he says after a moment, so quietly I wonder if he meant to speak aloud.

  “Nothing,” I agree, and he closes his eyes briefly. “All we can do is stay quiet and do our best. We must be ghosts. That’s how you stay alive in this castle. You become a ghost. You keep your head down and you stay out of her way as much as you can.”

  “You should leave.”

  “I can’t. You know what I am. I have poison in my veins, Lief. It’s only the Gods’ will that stops it from killing me. If I defied them, if I turned away from them, I’d be dead before I got out of the castle. They’ll forgive my doubts because I’m mortal and I must be tested, but they’d never forgive my walking away. And even if they didn’t strike me down straightaway, the queen certainly would, you know that, you saw her now. She’d do whatever it took to revenge herself on me for it. Hurting my sister. Hurting you. You’d be killed, for not keeping me here. Chances are they’d have me kill you before they took my life. Perhaps rightly so, because this is definitely treason, Lief.”

  “I didn’t hear you say a word,” he says softly. “I heard nothing.”

  I nod and he looks at me, his eyebrows raised and his mouth pinched. “Go on,” he says finally. “I’ll wait here. He’s in the room at the end. Go and see Dorin.”

  I can’t look at the door of the Telling Room as I pass it.

  * * *

  The room is dim, scantly lit by the candles guttering beneath a copper pot that simmers and fills the chamber with the woody, spicy scent of cypress. There’s something else, some odor under it that makes my skin crawl. Dorin lies in a corner on a raised pallet, and it’s clear from his face that he is deeply ill, his features taut under skin that looks like tallow. At first he looks asleep, and I am about to turn and leave him to rest when he speaks.

  “My lady,” he says thickly. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hello, Dorin,” I say. “I came to see how my most trusted guard fares.”

  “My lady, it is good of you to come. I apologize for the inconvenience of it. I know I’ve let you down.”

  “You’ve never let me down. How do you feel?”

  “I go from strength to strength each day. I’ll be back within a day or two, I assure you. I can only beg your forgiveness that I am here at all.”

  He doesn’t look as if he goes from strength to strength. He looks like a corpse, gaunt and wasted. I’d never have known it was him if he were not the only man in the room. What kind of illness can shrink a man to this in three weeks?

  I smile at him. “I don’t doubt it,” I lie. “Though Lief is doing well. I’m in good hands; you need not fear. I’ve been praying for you.”

  He nods, his eyelids fluttering, and I realize he is losing consciousness.

  “Stuan, no more ale tonight,” he slurs.

  “What?” I stare at him, wondering why the name is so familiar. Then I remember. Stuan was the guard who left after I killed Tyrek. He hasn’t worked here for more than two harvests. And that’s when I realize what the creeping scent is under the cypress. It’s poppy tears. They’re giving Dorin poppy tears.

  * * *

  I was in my ninth harvest and we’d been called to the town hall in Monkham. The mayor’s mother had died, which was expected as she was in her eightieth harvest year and had been ill for some time. I was excited to go to the town hall and see it, craving some of the luxury I’d seen in the castle, but it was starkly different. It was dim and dark and the room for the Eating smelled sickly sweet like rot. The coffin was in the center of the room, and the mayor had only supplied a stool for my mother, so I stood at her side as she performed the Eating. It wasn’t a large spread, but right in the center of the coffin was a dish of cream with a sprig of rosemary on top. I watched as my mother ate around the cream, never dipping into it, never taking a spoonful. She left it right until the end, avoiding it until she’d cleared the coffin of everything else. Then, to my surprise, she spoke to me.

  “Do you know what it is?” she asked.

  I nodded, too scared to reply. She’d never, ever spoken during an Eating, ever. Before then, she’d only explained her actions once we were back in her room, with me breathing through my mouth to lessen the reek of the jasmine. Never while we were still at an Eating.

  “It’s not fresh cream, Twylla,” she said. “It’s soured cream.”

  I frowned. “Why did they offer soured cream?”

  “It means the woman lost a child,” she replied.

  I shook my head, not understanding. Losing a child wasn’t a sin; everyone knew the Gods could take away as they saw fit and sometimes they called an unborn back to the Eternal Kingdom. Sin Eaters are privy to all the secrets of the dead; we know every sin a person ever committed from the feast, and from that you can piece together their life and the kind of person they were. I’d watched my mother Eat coddled eggs for thieves and boiled horse liver for scolds and nags. But I had never seen soured cream on a coffin before.
r />   “It isn’t a sin to lose a child,” I said.

  “It’s a sin to take the herbs that would make you lose a child,” my mother said, her voice tight. “Pennyroyal, yarrow, blue cohosh … rosemary. That is what soured cream is for. The milk of life gone bad. Only Næht may decide when it is time; no man nor woman should.”

  I stared at the coffin, still a little too young to understand, as my mother rose and left the bowl atop the coffin without the words that completed the Eating. I was about to follow her when a hand gripped my wrist.

  Looming out of the dark corner was a cadaverous, leathery face, its mouth and nose covered in lesions. Its eyes were black; I could see no iris in them; I could see no reason in them. The man held my wrist in surprisingly strong fingers, bone covered in thin skin. And he stank of something heavy and sweet.

  “She’s not in there,” he said, saliva pooling in the corners of his mouth, his words slurring. “She’s a witch. They have to burn her or she’ll come back. She killed a baby. She said no, no, no, but I put a baby in her anyway and then she magicked it away.”

  I screamed and the mayor flew into the room, my mother after him.

  “Let her go, Papa,” he said to the old man, but he wouldn’t and gripped me tighter.

  “She’s a witch!” he roared, and then my wrist was free. The man slumped to the floor and the mayor herded me from the room.

  “He has growths,” he said to my mother, wringing his hands in apology. “We give him poppy tears for the pain. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He wanted to be there, to say good-bye. I thought he’d be quiet. Forgive me, Madame Eater.”

  My mother looked at me. “What did he say?”

  “That—that she said no but he put a baby in her. And that she’s a witch,” I added, my voice shaking.

  My mother looked the mayor up and down, as if she was reading him the way she read the food at the Eating. Then she marched past him into the Eating room. When she returned, she had the bowl of soured cream in her hands and as we watched she tipped it down her throat, dropping the bowl to the ground, where it smashed.