The Sin Eater's Daughter

by Melinda Salisbury

  “So where do we go, my lady? The castle is yours.” I note the return to my title and again my feelings war against themselves, ease and disappointment.

  “To my temple.”

  “Very good.” He strides to the door and throws it open, sweeping into a low bow, and I can’t help but smile. He returns my smile, his tongue peeping from between his teeth, and my stomach tightens.

  * * *

  Despite my confusion, my freedom bubbles inside me and I can feel an un-Daunen-like smile on my face as we leave the tower and walk down the corridor. Though I doubt any child has ever skipped or run through these halls, in this moment I want to. “Goats skip, little girls walk,” my mother once said to me in a rare moment of parenting. Nevertheless, if I thought I could skip, I would.

  I can feel Lief at my left, as if there are threads between us, connecting our hips and knees and elbows, our necks and ankles. When his hand moves to adjust his belt, I feel the motion, passed to me on the air that separates us, as aware of him as I am of myself.

  “Might I suggest a detour, my lady?” Lief says when we reach the gardens.

  “To where?”

  “I’d like to show you something, if I may.”

  “Show me what?”

  “It’s a surprise,” he says, smiling at me. “You’ll be safe.”

  I saw him fight Merek; I’m not worried for my safety. “I don’t want to push my luck, Lief. The prince said to be discreet.”

  “It is discreet, my lady. I can promise you that no one will know you’re there, or that you’ve been.”

  “I can’t, Lief.”

  “I understand, my lady. Forgive me. It was nothing important, just something Dimia showed me.”

  Dimia again. “If we’re swift,” I say quickly. “For a few moments.”

  I can hear him smiling.

  * * *

  He leads us past the walled garden and through the stables. I stop to give my horse a pat on the nose and then we continue, through the kitchen gardens where the offending dandelions once grew, and beyond. This part of the castle is new to me. Dorin would never have brought me here. I feel another pang as I think of him.

  “There.”

  Then I forget Dorin, Merek, and even Lief. Every thought that has worried and plagued me falls away, and all I can do is gape at the garden. All the wildflowers I thought had been banished from the castle grow before me, poppies and coltsfoot, hellebore and flax, tuberose and tansy. All there.

  “This is where you got my flowers that morning,” I breathe.

  “It is. It’s the castle apothecary garden.”

  “Does the queen know?”

  “Yes. It’s where all the plants for the healers are grown. She might not like their look, but even she can’t deny their usefulness. Come”—he holds his arm out to guide me—“follow the path to the center. Be careful, hemlock and nightshade grow at the far end. Though I don’t think they grow your Morningsbane here.”

  I walk through the plants, some as tall as my knees, trailing my fingers through their leaves, a smile on my face. If I’d known this was here, I could have drawn flowers for my screen myself. I’d wager Merek doesn’t know any of it; none of his drawings of cultivated blooms match the plants that grow before me.

  When we reach the center I sit on a small stone bench, my gaze traveling around all of the plants as they sway in the light breeze. The garden is a riot of color: reds, purples, yellows, oranges, and greens, and I love it. Nothing grows in a row; though I can see that there are beds, there seems to have been little effort made to keep the plants within them. Poppies bloom everywhere, and I cannot help but grin when I see a clump of dandelions.

  “May I have your cloak, my lady?” Lief asks, and I frown at him.

  “Why?”

  “Trust me. You’ll be warm enough. I lied about the chill.”

  Puzzled, I unhook the clasp and pull it from my shoulders, holding it out to him. To my surprise he shakes it until it billows and then lays it on the floor.

  “Lie down.”

  “I can’t!” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m Daunen Embodied.”

  “No one will know, save you and I.”

  “What if someone comes?”

  “They won’t. The servants are working indoors, and they only ever gather the plants at dusk and dawn. An apothecary never gathers under the midday sun. You’ll be safe.”

  “Lief, I can’t.”

  “Ouch,” he says, raising a hand and rubbing his shoulder. “If I hadn’t such a bruised shoulder, you know, the one I bruised fighting for your freedom, I certainly would.”

  “That’s not fair,” I protest.

  “I know.” He smiles. “I’ll keep watch, I promise.”

  I look at him, his play on my feelings working more than I’m willing to let on. “All right,” I say. “But you must never tell anyone.”

  “Cross my heart,” he says with a grin.

  I sink to my knees before I sit down daintily on the cloak.

  “You need to lie down.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Just for a moment.”

  I roll my eyes and sigh, leaning back and folding my hands primly on my stomach. And then I gasp.

  The sky stretches above me, blue and clear and endless. If I turn slightly to the left or the right, I can see the stalks and undersides of the flowers around me. But what I cannot see is the castle; the perspective down here hides it, and it thrills me.

  “I could be anywhere,” I murmur.

  “Anywhere at all,” he says, sitting on the stone bench above me. “Do you see now why I wanted you to see it?”

  “Yes,” I breathe. Everything is perfect and I close my eyes. The sun beats down on my face and I pretend I am alone, not because of him, but because he is my guard. I am just a girl lying amongst the flowers on one of the last days of summer.

  There is movement near me and my eyes fly open as I sit up. Lief has moved to sit beside me and I have to blink, the world turned blue from the bright sunlight.

  “What are you doing? You must keep watch.”

  “I have big ears, my lady. If anyone makes so much as a move toward the garden, I’ll hear them and be on my feet before they notice us.”

  I look at him with unease. “We should go …”

  “Stay a little longer. I want to see what you see.”

  I give him a long look before I lie back down, my heart pounding so loudly I can hear it in my ears. After a moment he lies beside me, keeping space between us but close enough that I can hear him breathing.

  “Is this all right?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “I used to do this with my sister, you know, on the farm.”

  I hold my breath. He rarely offers information, real information, about his past, and I don’t want to startle him. But his words feel like an opening and I reply quietly, so he can ignore it if he wants to. “Did you? What’s her name?”

  “Errin. She’s a year younger than me, the same as you. In the evening, after supper, we used to go and lie in the garden and watch the sun go down and the stars come out. Sometimes our parents would join us; Mother would bring blankets and mugs of cocoa and Father would play his mouth organ. It was good.”

  His words bring a lump to my throat. How can he bear it? “You must miss them.”

  “All the time. It’s hard being this far away, not knowing exactly how they are. My mother took my father’s death badly. He was the love of her life. She’ll find it hard to be without him. And poor Errin was almost finished with her training. She was apprenticing as an herbalist.”

  My eyes widen as the information slots into place. So that’s how he knows so much about plants.

  “She’s had to stop, for now,” he continues. “Our mother needs her. But one day I’ll have enough money and she can carry on. As I said, I can do more for them here. Like you for yours,” he sighs. “We both have to do whatever it takes to take care of our own.
”

  “Lief,” I say softly, rolling onto my side to face him and smoothing my skirts down. “How did you lose your father?

  He sighs, wrinkling his nose, and I think he won’t answer, that I’ve exhausted his desire to confide in me.

  “There was an accident on the farm,” he begins. “He was trying to move our bull; it was a grumpy old thing that hated the lot of us. My father was trying to tempt him into stirring himself and the bull charged him. He escaped the bull but landed badly on a rusted pitchfork we hadn’t put away. My sister cleaned the wound and dressed it—she’s good at that kind of thing—but by the time the physician came my father had the lockjaw. It can’t be cured, not even by our physicians.” He smiles sadly. “He knew he would not survive.”

  “I hope it was swift,” I say.

  “It could have been swifter,” he says softly. “But he wasn’t in so much pain, thanks to the poppy tears. I stayed with him most of the time; my mother and sister couldn’t bear it.”

  “I’m sorry, Lief.”

  “Thank you, Twylla.”

  We look at each other and I notice he has freckles on the bridge of his nose, a few faint marks, but I’m charmed by them. I have freckles, too, on my face and shoulders, chest and back, and then the image of his naked shoulders fills my mind, the smooth, unblemished skin there, and then I feel too hot, my skin on too tight. When I look back into his eyes the world stops, and I have never been so aware of the blood in my veins pulsing through me.

  “Can I ask you something secret, Twylla?” he speaks softly.

  I nod slowly.

  “Do you love the prince?”

  I did not expect that. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Something Dorin said when I first came.”

  I sit hurriedly. “What did Dorin say?”

  Lief sits up, too, and raises his hands to placate me.

  “Nothing bad, I promise you. He was telling me the history of the castle, and he mentioned your betrothal and said …”

  “Said what?”

  “He said that your role weighed heavily on you, and it was his job, and mine, to ease it where we could. He said you used to be less serious, but then there was an incident with a boy, and that it changed you. And so we had to do what we could to make your life pleasant.”

  I turn away from him.

  Lief nods. “It’s not your fault—what happened with that boy—you know?”

  I laugh harshly, my stomach aching. “Isn’t it? Because they were my hands on his skin.”

  “No,” he says firmly. “You were doing what you were ordered to.” He pauses. “So do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you love him?”

  I look at Lief before I lie back down and close my eyes. I don’t know, in truth, what I feel. I’ve never thought about it in terms of love. We are betrothed; we have been since I came here. I always knew we would be married one day. It’s like knowing the sun will rise, or the sky is blue. It simply is.

  “I don’t know,” I say finally. “It’s not … It doesn’t matter anyway.”

  “That’s a no, then,” he says, lying next to me again.

  “Why?” I open my eyes and turn my head.

  “Because when you’re in love, it does matter. Very much.”

  “How do you know?”

  He looks me straight in the eye. “You just do.”

  His expression is terrifying and I think of last night. How I wanted to touch him; how my eyes were dark and round in my face when I peered into the looking glass after he’d left. “Have you ever been in love?”

  “Twylla …”

  The sound of a horrified gasp sends us both scrambling to our feet, Lief with his sword half drawn.

  Dimia stands there, white as old milk, her huge eyes accusing as she looks back and forth between us.

  Dimia’s hand rises to her chest as she stares at us, clutching at the neck of her smock.

  “Get out of here,” Lief says roughly, sheathing his sword. “You ought not to be here.”

  “Forgive me, I …” She turns, but Lief catches her arm.

  “No, Dimia. Please. Forgive me,” he says emphatically. “You startled me. I did not mean to be so abrupt.”

  She nods, though her eyes narrow as she looks back and forth between him and me. I bend to pick up my cloak, throwing it around my shoulders as if it were a shield.

  “Why are you here?” I ask her.

  Immediately, she drops her gaze. “Forgive me, my lady. The prince sent me to find you. I have searched everywhere for you.”

  My stomach lurches with the terror of what this could have meant. What if Merek had come to these gardens himself, what if he had overheard Lief and me talking? We were fools …

  “The prince?” I say as calmly as I’m able.

  “Yes, my lady,” she says quietly. “He came to your tower as I cleaned and told me to find you at once.”

  “No one must know the lady was here, Dimia,” Lief says firmly.

  “But the prince …”

  “Dimia—” Lief begins, but I cut him off.

  “You will say nothing,” I say coldly, stepping toward her, my skin already crawling with what I’m about to do. “You will forget you saw us here and you will lie if anyone asks you about it. You will forget anything you heard. Because if you don’t, I might find myself accidentally bumping into you. Or your brother.” To emphasize my point I hold my hands up.

  If possible, Dimia pales even further and Lief turns to gape at me. I ignore him, focusing on her. “So if I were you, I’d learn to be silent. Do you understand me?”

  She nods mutely.

  “Go,” I say. “You haven’t seen us.”

  She nods again and scurries off, leaving Lief staring at me. I turn away from him.

  “That was unkind,” he says quietly.

  “I had no choice,” I reply, though I’ve sickened myself doing it.

  “Yes, you did. She was terrified. Couldn’t you see that? She wouldn’t have said anything.”

  “You don’t know that. I couldn’t take the risk, Lief.” When I force myself to look at him, the reproach in his eyes makes my face redden as though slapped.

  “So you threatened to execute her? And her brother?”

  “I would never actually do it. Never,” I say. “I know better than anyone what it means, and I would never, ever touch them. But it’s the only power I have in the world, Lief. All I have is fear. And if I have to say such things to protect you, then—”

  To my surprise he cuts me short with a bark of laughter. “Protect me? Why would you want to protect me?”

  “Because—because I do.”

  He looks at me, his brow furrowed before he nods. “Come, we’d better get you back.”

  “Don’t be angry with me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I was trying to protect you,” I say softly.

  “It’s my job to protect you. It’s also my job to protect them from you.”

  His words feel like a slap to my face. I had never thought of it in that way.

  “Will you apologize later, to Dimia?” I say in a quiet voice. “Tell her I’m sorry and that I didn’t mean it and that I never would.”

  “No,” he says simply. “You should apologize.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  He walks ahead of me and I feel sick inside, the feeling only growing when I see Merek standing in the threshold of my tower with a grim expression. I bow to him hurriedly.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he says, and though his voice is hard, his expression is soft and I pull my cloak tighter around me.

  “Forgive me, Your Highness,” I say. “I was walking the grounds.”

  “I thought I told you to be discreet,” he says.

  “I was, Your Highness,” I say. “I wanted a little sun on my way back from the temple.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” he says curtly. “That’s not why I’m he
re.”

  My heart sinks as I look at him.

  “Let’s go to your quarters.” He gestures for me to pass him but stops Lief as he tries to follow. “Bring wine,” he orders, before herding me up the stairs. My legs are heavy as I climb. I feel as though I’ve aged a thousand years since we saw Dimia. When I open the door, I catch the sunlight being extinguished by a cloud through the window and I turn to Merek.

  “What’s happened?” I have to choke the words from my suddenly dry mouth.

  “I wanted to tell you myself … Dorin is dead. I’m so very sorry.”

  I blink at him, the walls of the room closing in on me and pressing against me, squeezing the life from me.

  “Twylla?” I hear him say and then I’m flat on my back, staring at both my guard and the prince, confused that there is a roof above my head when all I should be able to see is flowers and sky. It takes me a moment to realize I must have fainted and that I’m back in my room. I’ve never fainted before.

  “What do we do?” Lief asks. “I can’t touch her.”

  “I can—”

  “No,” I hear myself say, my voice coming from far away as I struggle to sit up.

  The relief in both of their eyes is naked and Lief rushes to fetch a glass of water. Merek kneels beside me and holds his hand out for the cup. Lief hesitates briefly before he shoves it, somewhat roughly, into Merek’s hand, glowering down at him. But Merek doesn’t notice as he brings the cup to my lips.

  “Drink,” Merek says, and I do.

  “When?” I ask, once he’s taken the cup away and placed it beside us.

  “A short while ago. I came to tell you the end was near but could not find you. By the time you returned here, I’d received word he’d passed.”

  I finish the water and think of poppy tears. If I hadn’t gone to the gardens with Lief, Merek would have found me … I could have at least been there with him, gotten there in time to say good-bye.

  “Was he alone?”

  “The healer was with him. I don’t believe he suffered in the end.”

  “May I see him?”

  Merek looks pained. “I don’t think he’d want that, Twylla. A man like Dorin would rather you remembered him as he was.”

  I nod, a lump back in my throat, and this time I cannot swallow it down.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Again.”