At this point, I don’t know that I would, either…
She tested the first step with her toes, then the second. The tiles did not move.
“It’s not me you want…” she whispered, looking across the room to the clock.
The minute hand shuddered past midnight. Rhea took a deep breath and strode out across the seemingly solid floor.
She found Crevan’s study easily. The memory of the earlier trip was embedded in her mind, and it was a good thing, because Ingeth was nowhere to be found.
After she left Sylvie out in the orchard, I don’t care if she never shows up again…
She did not knock.
Crevan was sitting behind the desk with candles burning around him. He was wearing white again. He looked clean and elegant, and Rhea was reminded again of the swan from the millrace.
Very noble, very beautiful, and vicious down to the bone. And if I try to tell anyone what’s happening, they’ll look at me like I’m insane…
Crevan looked up as she entered, and for one moment, surprise showed naked on his face.
“It’s not sunrise,” he said blankly.
Rhea stared at him.
He thought I was going to sit out there until sunrise? Why would anyone do that?
And then, a second, teasing little thought said He didn’t know I was coming. Was his magic not working? Is it because the clock-wife shook the house just now?
Perhaps he isn’t all-seeing after all…
As she watched, the urbane mask fell down over Crevan’s face, smoothing the lines. “Miss Rhea. You’re back sooner than I thought.”
“I’ve failed your test,” said Rhea shortly. “Now what?”
Crevan shook his head, smiling. It seemed to Rhea that the smile was just a trifle forced, but perhaps it was the light. “Have you? Such a shame.”
“That I’m not a killer? Not really.” Rhea folded her arms.
“Aren’t you?” asked Crevan. His smile broadened. “Surely, for a moment you must have thought about it. The way out of all your difficulties…”
Oh, Lady of Stones. He really thought I was going to sit there until sunrise, wondering if I should shove her into the well. He thought this was some kind of terrible mental torture.
“My mother raised me not to push other people down wells,” said Rhea. “It’s surprisingly easy, if you don’t get into the habit of it. What happens now?”
He rose from behind the desk, laughing. “Goodness, Miss Rhea! Perhaps contemplating murder agrees with you. We shall be wed, of course. That was always the price of failure.”
“When?” said Rhea, determined not to rise to the bait and waste this strange, heady courage that had gripped her.
“At once,” said Crevan. “I shall arrange the priest. The Viscount will attend, as he has so kindly given permission for me to wed one of his tenants.”
Rhea would never have admitted it, but she felt a brief spasm of hope. Not that the Viscount would take the side of a miller’s daughter, never that—but Viscounts could not be produced out of thin air.
He’ll have to arrange for his friend to show up. I should get at least a week—perhaps even a month—that’s a long time—I can get away—
“And your dear parents, of course,” Crevan added smoothly. “They shall certainly wish to see their daughter again. And I will be most delighted to see them again.”
He held her eyes as he spoke, and his smile did not flicker once.
Hope withered and died.
“Was that a threat?” she demanded, knowing full well that it was.
Crevan grinned down at her. “I misjudged you,” he said, “when I said that you weren’t clever. You still aren’t, but I believe perhaps you could learn.”
He turned away from her, toward his desk, and for lack of other options, Rhea took out the kitchen knife and stabbed him.
It was easier than stabbing the dog-monster, she’d give it that. And the knife actually went in a little way, which was very gratifying, right up until the point where it hit something hard and stopped going in and she tried to yank on it and his shirt got bunched up around it and the knife came out and then Crevan shrieked and whipped around and threw her into the wall.
The back of her head struck first, so all she saw were dazzling white flashes and the room suddenly seemed very dark. Then it occurred to her that she couldn’t breathe and she thought, Oh, I’ve hit a wall, how interesting.
Crevan pawed at his back, cursing. He looked like a man trying to scratch an itchy spot between his shoulders. Rhea found this distantly amusing, except for the bit where she couldn’t get any air in her lungs and the room still seemed strangely dark around the edges.
“Ingeth!” bellowed Crevan. “Ingeth!”
Ingeth darted into the room. She looked from Crevan to Rhea, and started toward Rhea.
“Not her,” growled Crevan. “The little bitch stabbed me!”
Ingeth’s eyes went big and round and Rhea laughed, which was a bad idea because she couldn’t even breathe.
She made a hoarse hacking sound instead. Things went a bit grey for a moment.
She focused again when the world moved around her, because Crevan had picked her up by the front of her blouse. It pulled the collar tight and made it hard to breathe, but probably that didn’t matter because it was still so hard to get air in anyway.
“You have to be of reasonably sound mind in order to say the words,” he told her. “After that, if you’re a drooling simpleton, it won’t matter in the least. I suggest you think about that.”
Rhea croaked something. She would have liked it to be defiant, but it was actually “Can’t…breathe…”
The world lurched again. He carried her five steps to the corridor and dropped her, hard.
The world went thud and then it went away entirely.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Well,” said Maria. “Well, well. That wasn’t smart, as much as I appreciate the sentiment. How’s your head?”
“It hurts,” said Rhea, tentatively feeling the back of her skull.
“Of course it hurts. You keep poking it.” Maria handed her a mug of tea. “How’s your vision? Seeing double? Bright shine around things? Ghosts of birds?”
“No, I’m—ghosts of birds?”
“Well, you never know your luck.” Maria took a slurp of tea. “Let me know if any show up. It’s not likely you’re the Kingfisher Saint, but things happen.”
“W-what?”
“Never you mind. And what were you thinking, stabbing him like that?”
“I was hoping I’d kill him,” said Rhea. Her lungs felt raw. The tea helped her throat, though, and perhaps there wasn’t much to be done about the lungs.
After she had fainted—or whatever it was—Ingeth had either gone to fetch Maria or Maria had come on her own. Rhea had come to being steered down the stairs, held against Maria’s side, and had allowed herself to be helped groggily into a chair.
“That’s not the way to kill him,” said Maria. “You’ll need the clock-wife’s help.”
Rhea looked up, startled. Her head rang with the motion and she held her head in her hands, elbows on the kitchen table.
“Don’t worry,” said Maria. “Himself is gone, off to the city to fetch the priest and some of his high and mighty friends. We can speak freely, at least for a little while, and you’re not going to sleep until I’m sure that crack on the head didn’t addle your wits.”
Rhea exhaled. She had so many questions, and suddenly only one seemed important.
“When will he be back?”
“End of the week, he said—and with orders to see that all is ready by then, if you please! Although how he expects me to pull a wedding feast together by myself, I surely do not know!” She glared into her mug.
After a moment, she added “He left you a note.”
Rhea put her forehead down on the table and let out a single dry sob, almost a laugh. “Of course he did. He’s very fond of notes.”
&nbs
p; “Perhaps he’s afraid you’ll stab him again,” said Maria.
Rhea looked up, startled, and caught a wicked gleam in the cook’s eye.
It wrung a laugh out of her, not much different than the sob. “Where’s the note?”
Maria slid it over.
It was very short, four lines only. Rhea dared to hope that he had written it in haste.
It will do no good to lie and say that I am not disappointed by your behavior, Miss Rhea. Still, I have chosen to attribute your actions to an overabundance of nerves. I shall return for our wedding in one week.
I suggest that you use the time to reflect on the behavior proper to a girl of your station.
Crevan
Rhea thought about getting angry. She actually thought about it, about letting the words sink in and dwelling on how wrong they were. She could taste the hot wash of fury that would go through her and there was no denying that it would be good to be so angry, because if she was angry, for a little while, she wouldn’t be afraid.
Reluctantly, she pushed the anger away.
It would not help. He was not here. And she had to put the time she had to the best possible use.
“Maria,” said Rhea, gathering her thoughts, “you have to tell me everything.”
“Ask,” said Maria. “What answers I have, I’ll give.”
Rhea nodded. “He—he takes something from each wife, doesn’t he? He took your magic and Sylvie’s sight—”
Maria nodded. “Aye, indeed. Something from each. He’s a sorcerer, you understand, and he works by contracts. Most of them favor contracts with demons, but Himself figured out that a marriage contract works as well. Sign the paper that says you’re wed, and you’re in his power—though he’s careful with it.”
“How does it work?”
Maria shook her head. “I am—I was—a witch, child, not a sorcerer. I imagine they do it the way I do witching, which is to say that it can be easily practiced but not easily learned.”
“But people have been marrying magical folk for years—centuries—I’ve never heard of anything like this!”
Maria sighed. “It’s a perversion of the contract, child. My first husband was a sweet man and signed his X next to mine on the page, and would never have dreamed of doing such a thing, even if he had the power.”
Rhea turned the silver ring on her finger grimly.
Maria held out her hand. An identical ring gleamed in the lamplight.
“As near as I can tell,” she said, “he gives you his name—whether you want it or not—and in return he can take something from you. One thing. He only ever takes one. It may be that if he took more, he’d have to give more.”
Rhea considered this. “Could we use that somehow?”
Maria shook her head. “If you’re looking for a way to break the contract, I do not know. You’d need a demon or a barrister to answer that.”
Rhea took a deep breath. “What does he want from me?”
The other woman grew very interested in her tea.
“Maria—!”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I thought perhaps, you being so young, it was your youth he wanted, but I don’t know.”
Rhea took a deep breath. It seemed to get caught up somewhere inside her chest.
“He can do that?” she asked.
Maria shrugged. “Maybe. If he can take someone’s death or someone’s will, what can’t he do?”
Rhea put her face in her hands. She did not feel young. She felt about a thousand years old, and Maria, who was three or four times her age, did not seem to have any answers for her.
“He doesn’t usually keep the gifts, you understand,” said Maria. “He kept mine, though.” There was a perverse pride in her voice at that. “Without mine, he’d not have half the power he does, to keep the house bent to his bidding. And all those golems—he makes those with my magic. I could do it, too, but I was a defter hand with the needle and I never did it to a living thing.”
She shook herself. “He gave the rest away—or traded them, anyway. A lot of fingers in a lot of pies.”
“Gave them away?” asked Rhea, even more confused. “How do you give away somebody’s sight?”
“Magic,” said Maria. “As it happens, I know that one, for she came in here in a hood and jesses. He gave Sylvie’s sight to the Eagle-King’s daughter, hatched blind from the egg.”
Rhea blinked a few times.
I’m hearing things. I was hit harder than I thought. It’ll be the ghosts of birds next.
“Eagle-King,” she said.
“From the farthest west. Turns out Eagles won’t let you inherit if you’re blind. Himself offered to fix her up, so he married Sylvie and traded her sight away a few months later.”
Rhea fisted her hands in her hair.
If hedgehogs can summon slugs to save me and bears can be familiars and Crevan can exist at all, I suppose there can be Eagle-Kings. Dear Lady of Stones.
“And Ingeth’s voice?” she asked dully.
“I don’t know that one.” Maria shook her head. “Nor who he gave the clock-wife’s death to, nor Lady Elegan’s life. I imagine he killed a rival of his, or someone powerful.” She paused, tapping a finger against her lips. “A great lord in the city had a daughter who was deathly ill, though, about the time the Lady died. Even the boy who delivers the food was full of the news. She made an amazing recovery they said, almost magic. But I’ve got no proof. People die and don’t die all the time. Might be coincidence. Still, there’s enough witchblood left in me to get the wind up.”
“What about the golem-wife?”
Maria poured more tea. “Was a young man here, a few years back. Nice young fellow, but no spine at all. Not even enough to question that a sorcerer’s household was a handful of women, no more.” She gazed over the rim of the cup at Rhea. “Set upon by his relations, he was, and him a prince of some far land. Himself married poor Hester a fortnight later, and took her will within the week. And the prince goes back to his own country with his jaw square and a flame in his heart. He didn’t get that courage out of a bottle.”
Rhea pushed her tea away. “So he’ll take something from me, and give it away,” she said. She didn’t know why that would make her feel worse, but somehow it did. It was one thing to have someone steal something you valued, but to have them steal it and hold it so cheaply that they gave it away.... “He just—just figures someone else should have it.”
“Oh, aye,” said Maria. “Figures himself a great humanitarian. He’s helping the goodly and the great, and what are we, after all?”
“And the clock-wife—”
“Hello, Ingeth,” said Maria, too loudly. “I see you skulking by the door. Come in, if you want something to drink.”
Ingeth came in. She had her wrists drawn up against her chest and would not look at Rhea.
“Himself’s gone,” said Maria. “You know it better than I do. You can come sit in here if you want, instead of dancing attendance.”
Ingeth took a few steps. She looked like some strange praying mantis, not like a person.
Pity and rage warred on Rhea’s tongue, and in the end, she wasn’t sure which had won. “You brought Sylvie to the well. Why would you do that?”
She expected a glower, but instead Ingeth snatched the mug of tea and hurried out the door.
“Easy now,” said Maria. “I make no excuses for Ingeth, but don’t lose sight of the real enemy.”
“The task was to kill Sylvie,” said Rhea. “Ingeth brought her out there. I was supposed to kill her.” The world seemed to spin as she said it. Perhaps it was only her bruised skull.
The cook’s breath hissed in between her teeth. “I might have known,” she said. “Bitch. Not you; Ingeth. How dare she? Taking Sylvie out in the middle of the night!”
It seemed to Rhea that Maria was angry about the wrong thing. “But Maria, I was supposed to kill her!”
Maria rolled her eyes and poured out another cup. “Which you had no chance of
doing. Even Himself knew that, and he doesn’t know half as much about human hearts as he thinks he does.”
Rhea took a long slug of tea, not sure if she should be angry or not. Fortunately Maria was angry enough for both of them.
“Sylvie could have caught her death out there. She’s not well. She was never strong, but he shattered her health when he took her eyes. She’s not even thirty, you know.”
Rhea hadn’t known. Sylvie’s fragility seemed more akin to someone very old. Perhaps it was the paleness of her hair. Only the very old had hair that color, in Rhea’s experience.
“I do my best to take care of her, but there’s only so much to be done. It’s hard when he takes things.”
“How bad is it?” Rhea asked.
Maria exhaled. “Bad enough,” she admitted. “I nearly died. A witch’s magic is like a witch’s skin. Ripping it all off at once would kill most people. Sylvie’s health broke. You’ve seen Hester—the golem-wife.” She turned her mug in her hands, worrying at a chip on the handle with her thumb. “He’s gotten better at it. Ingeth was—pretty horrible, with her throat laid open like that, but she healed up fast.”
Rhea had been thinking of the marriage to Crevan as something horrible and possibly fatal. It had not occurred to her that it would also be excruciating. She bent her neck and set her forehead against the scarred wood of the table.
“I can’t run,” she said miserably. “I tried. The white road—it’s full of monsters. Devils. I don’t know what.”
Maria nodded. “Most sorcerers have them,” she said. “Things they called up when they were young and foolish, and couldn’t send back to wherever they came from. They put them somewhere, but the beasts are always hungry, and they’ll kill the sorcerer if they can.” She pursed her lips. “Himself’s cleverer than most,” she admitted. “You can get to this manor any number of ways, but all roads out of here lead to the white road, unless he sets it different. He took his failures and made them prison guards. There’s no running for us. But you know that already.”
Rhea nodded. “If it was just me, I’d ruin the wedding. Yell “No!” when the priest asks if I’ll marry this man. But he’s threatening my parents. He’ll kill them—take the mill—turn them out—oh, Maria, I can’t!”
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