“Yes.”
“You’re head stableman,” she said. “I’m just the witchbred foundling. It should be you who thinks better of me, really.”
“Is that what this is?” His voice was filled with fascination. “Have you put a spell on me?”
“I hope you’re joking.” This time she didn’t care if it sounded friendly or not.
“Put a spell on me,” he said. Suddenly she found herself swept up into the air, one of his massive arms under her knees and one behind her back. Her stomach lurched nervously as he carried her through the dark to some unknown place. Instinctively, she clutched at his neck. “Put a thousand spells on me.”
“Put me down, or I will,” she said.
But he was already putting her down, somewhere soft and prickly with hay. She felt him drop next to her. Then he was kissing her neck and collarbone urgently. The urgency was sweet and the hand stroking her side was not entirely unwelcome, but—
“Darid,” she said. Not sighed, not breathed, not moaned, but said, in a normal tone of voice. As if she were about to ask him to pass the bread.
The stroking hand paused, and the kisses stopped. She felt him looming over her, waiting. And since he was waiting, she had to speak. She didn’t know half the words for what she needed to say. They were things that nobody had ever talked about to her. “I don’t think,” she said carefully, “that I want to—” She felt him freeze, and so, quickly, she said, “No, no. I want to be here. I thought about you all day. I saw you in the courtyard this morning and I couldn’t stop seeing you.” She reached up, then, and touched his hair. Which was only fair. It was soft and very silky and the curls clung to the tips of her fingers.
He pressed his head against her hand like a cat. “I saw you, too. What don’t you want to do?”
“The thing that everybody does. The thing the courtiers do, and the thing that Gavin and Elly have to do—”
“Have to do?”
She wasn’t sure, but she thought he might be laughing. “For the heir,” she said a bit stiffly.
“Oh. That thing.” He bent his head down and she felt his forehead touch her shoulder. There was no doubt now: he was laughing. His breath came in quick puffs against her neck.
She was hurt. “Don’t laugh at me. Hardly anybody ever talks to me about it and when they do, they use words that don’t actually mean anything. The Seneschal told me I wasn’t allowed to take a lover; should I have said that I wanted to be here and I wanted to kiss you but I didn’t want to be your lover? Would that be better?”
“Why would he say that?” he said in surprise.
“Because if I got pregnant, it would be—complicated. It’s hard to explain.”
She felt him touch her cheek. The laughter was gone. “I think there are probably a lot of things about your life that are complicated and hard to explain.”
“Only a small library’s worth.”
“Lucky for me, I don’t read that well,” he said. “All right, witchbred foundling. We won’t do that thing. You’re not the first person who’s told me that, you know.”
No, she wouldn’t be, would she? Because staff girls had as much to lose as she did. Maybe more. “What words did they use?”
He chuckled and put on a thick Highfall accent, the kind staff children all had beaten out of them in their first month, so Judah had hardly ever heard it. Every word seemed to have an extra vowel thrown in. “I’ll not be having sex with ye, ye greet hulking lummox,” he said. “Put it right out of your filthy heed, aye?”
Judah was delighted. “Oh, that’s amazing. Do more.”
“It’s been a long time,” he said, in his normal voice. Which probably wasn’t his normal voice at all, she realized, as he slipped fluidly back into Highfall. “But sure, girl, if it give you a chuckle, I’ll oblige ye.”
“I love it.” Then, greedily, “And I want to hear about all these other women who wouldn’t have sex with you, too.”
“Do you?” He was laughing again, but this time she didn’t mind. “Why?”
She couldn’t say. It had something to do with the courtiers, and the way they carried themselves, like the world was a performance; it had something to do with Gavin and Elly, who were expected to produce an heir as soon as possible, and it had something to do with the black void where her own life experiences should have been. “Never mind why. Just tell me.” She kissed him. “I want to hear about the ones who didn’t say no, too. Tell me everything.”
“Everything?” he asked, a bit querulously.
“Everything.”
He groaned. “Aye, girl, it’s a hard heart ye’ve geet,” he said, but still, he was obliging.
* * *
Any courtier who had an estate in the provinces sobered up, packed their things and went there. The staff relaxed; some of the new pages brought in for the ball were even heard to laugh occasionally, when they thought nobody could hear. The horses had more exercise and grazing and less unnecessary grooming. With fewer people to feed, the food brought up to their rooms was fresher. So was the air, since the laundresses from the fabric rooms had time to wash the drapes and tapestries, to drag the carpets and cushions outside and beat the dust out of them.
Elly and Gavin still had responsibilities, but their days started later and ended earlier. Since there were fewer courtiers around to meet in person, the Seneschal set Elly to memorize the ancestral lines of the most prominent highborn families, and Judah spent more than one pleasant hour sitting in the parlor with the terrace doors thrown open wide, drinking iced tea and checking Elly’s notes as the Tiernan recited generation upon generation of dead sycophants. The terrace itself would have been nicer, but Elly refused.
“Lepfield...ugh, they’re a city family, they go back forever. Temper, Joren, Evett, Robert the Greater, Robert the Lesser, Robert the Bad—those three are easy—and then Caber, and—oh, a bunch of others—and then that poor, desperate woman. What’s her name. Maryle.”
“I’m not sure ‘bunch of others’ is an acceptable answer. Why poor and desperate?”
“Because she has six daughters and a district with nothing to offer. At least Tiernan has sheep.” Elly shook her head. “Maryle’s husband actually joined the army, they were so poor. He died on that last Nali campaign, the rout. She cornered me at the betrothal ball after you left. Wanted to sell us one of her daughters, for Theron. I told her the second son never married and she said, ‘Oh, they wouldn’t have to marry.’ I didn’t know what to say. At least my mother held out for a marriage contract.” Elly looked genuinely pained. “The poor thing.”
Judah didn’t know if the poor thing was Lady Maryle, or her daughter, or Theron. Who still lived as in a dream, and rarely spoke. Sometimes Judah found him blandly studying the device that still sat in pieces on Gavin’s dressing table, but now that he was less likely to meet anyone who mattered, he spent most of his time wandering the halls. The staff skittered away for fear of offending him, not knowing that if Theron had ever had the capacity to be offended by staff—which was debatable—he’d lost it. Gavin didn’t think he’d come to any harm, so they let him wander. Like a cat, they trusted he’d come back. Like a cat, he generally did. Sometimes Judah had trouble remembering when he’d been any way other than unfocused and vague. She still thought it was her fault, the way he was now, but the pangs of guilt were less acute. A person could adjust to anything, given time.
Elly was reciting more names. Judah hadn’t been checking them off. She scanned Elly’s notes, trying to find her place, but then something slammed into her left arm. Rather, into Gavin’s left arm: with Elban’s guard gone, the House Guard was spending their training time wrestling, mostly for fun. Gavin wasn’t very good at it but he came home happy. The men in the House Guard liked him. He felt good when he was with them. He felt good in general, these days. Judah had not fully appreciated how eaten alive he’d been by anxiety unti
l the anxiety vanished; he felt easy and relaxed, and as long as she kept all thoughts of Elban tucked away, she could be easy and relaxed, too. Except now her arm was numb, and half of her iced tea had spilled on Elly’s notes. The ink was running.
Elly handed her a napkin from the table. “He’ll be sore tonight.”
“I’ll take wrestling over practice swords any day. Those things sting.” Judah mopped tea from her dress.
“Speaking of swords,” Elly said cheerfully, “I saw Lord Firo yesterday.”
Puzzled, Judah said, “Why are you blushing?” but then she figured out what kind of sword Elly meant, and made a face. “Oh, Elly.”
Elly laughed. “Sorry. It’s hard to bring the subject up, since you refuse to talk about it. Which is incredibly unsatisfying for me, personally, by the way.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“So you say. Gavin says otherwise. He also says it’s not spying if he can’t help it, so don’t get annoyed with him. Ha! Now you’re the one who’s blushing.”
Which was true, but it had nothing to do with Firo. Judah hadn’t even seen the courtier since the ball, and had no desire to. It occurred to her now that it might be worthwhile to seek him out, and find out if he planned to stay inside. He was a convenient alibi for the time she spent with Darid.
“I didn’t know you felt—that sort of thing, too,” Elly said. “I thought it was just pain.”
“It’s not the sort of thing a person talks about,” Judah said. She found herself a little angry at Gavin, for chatting so casually about things that were privately hers. He should have at least had the decency not to mention it. Judah never had; not since the first time she’d woken in a sweat, yanked from sleep by sensations that weren’t hers. But then again, nothing was truly hers, was it?
“Well, I know, but you could have said something to me. You really feel it every time he—” Elly stopped. She didn’t have the words for this conversation, either.
“Did you want me to tell you,” Judah said, “every time he?”
Elly grimaced. “Gods, no. In fact, let’s never talk about it again. Anyway, what I really wanted to say—well, here.” From her pocket she produced a handkerchief wadded around something, and dropped it in Judah’s lap.
Judah unwrapped it and found a small sachet made of some kind of thin silk. It appeared to be full of herbs. “What is it?”
“It’ll keep you from having a baby,” Elly said bluntly. “Put it inside. First. You know what I mean?” Not trusting herself to speak, Judah nodded. Elly looked relieved. “Don’t tell Gavin. He doesn’t know I use them. He said that Arkady used to make them, too, and the courtiers didn’t think they were all that reliable. But Nathaniel Magus says his are better. And I know the Seneschal would be angry with you if you got pregnant. So.” Businesslike. “If you don’t want to ask him for more, I’ll get them for you. But he’s not hard to talk to. The magus, I mean.”
“Noted.” Judah wrapped the sachet in the handkerchief again, and put it in her pocket. The breath whooshed out of her as someone threw Gavin on his back. When she’d recovered, she said, “Speaking of Firo, Cerrington’s next.”
“Founded by Lord Cerring, then it’s Cerring after Cerring until the last six: Cantor, Oren, Yan, Hubert, Cantor again—then Firo. Who has one son, still a child. The mother died,” she added, significantly. “Anna. Generally, the women aren’t considered important enough to bother learning, of course, but I made an exception.”
“Wait,” Judah said. “Why are you trying not to get pregnant? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Wouldn’t everyone be thrilled?”
“Oh, they’d be ecstatic.” Elly’s voice was cool. “The sooner I make an heir, the sooner Gavin can go fight a war like a real City Lord. The wedding’s only a formality, you know that. They’d almost prefer it happen on childbed, so they know you’re a proven breeder before the papers are signed.” Then, less archly, “And Gavin would rest easier.”
“So do it.”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know what Elban is planning,” Elly said. Then she smiled, a cold, satisfied smile. “Speaking of not having Gavin’s babies, let’s do the Porterfields next.”
* * *
That night Gavin took a great deal of teasing from Judah, who felt like she’d spent her whole day being thrown against the ground, and from Elly, who’d spent her whole day watching. He bore it good-naturedly. “I like wrestling,” he said. “It’s honest. Two men, no weapons. And I’m not half-bad at it, either.”
“That’s what you say about everything,” Elly said.
“It’s true about everything, I’m sorry to say.” He didn’t sound sorry. “I am not half-bad at pretty much every kind of combat I’ve tried. Fortunately, not half-bad seems to be all they want of me. The training master says he thinks I’ll rise to the occasion once I see actual battle.”
“An optimist,” Judah suggested.
“I guess we’ll see,” Gavin said.
Theron drifted in. There were large damp patches on the backs of his thighs. “Where have you been?” Judah asked him.
As always, he seemed surprised to learn that other people occasionally spoke. “I was down by the aquifer. It’s quiet there.”
The parlor fell quiet, too, as it always did when Theron made one of his observations. “Yes, it is,” Gavin said.
Chicken pie, that night. Despite Elly’s initial attempts, the sleeping arrangements were more or less permanently altered: Theron slept in Gavin’s bed, and Judah took his dusty little cot, which wasn’t that much different from her own dusty little cot so she didn’t see that it mattered much. Most nights she managed to slip away herself, anyway. The thing she and Darid had together was strange, not like the love affairs she’d read about in stories. She liked being with him. She liked feeling his arms around her, being close to him; she had never felt that close to anyone except Gavin, which was so entirely different that it hardly compared, except she had nothing else so she compared it anyway. They did not use Elly’s sachet, although Judah kept it in her pocket. If her reluctance frustrated Darid, he didn’t show it. The world wasn’t perfect, he said. Some nights, they barely spoke. Some nights, they just lay together and watched the stars move across the sky. But sometimes they also moved across each other and those times, it was her body that felt like it was full of stars, the sachet felt like a second sun ablaze in her pocket and the next step seemed so obvious, so clear.
Then she would catch sight of the curlicue scars Elban had left on her arms, and she would remember that she didn’t belong to herself anymore. All the more reason, she would think, resentfully, but she always pushed that thought away. The bargain with Elban had been her idea. Knowing that didn’t keep her brain from drifting toward the future she didn’t have, for all she scolded and berated it. If she couldn’t berate the gloomy mood into submission, she would kiss Darid goodbye and go back to the House. There was no point wasting what little time they had together sulking.
On one such night, she returned to the parlor and smelled tobacco smoke. The bedroom doors were closed, but the terrace door stood open; Judah barely had a chance to slip out of her boots before Gavin appeared there. “Caught you,” he said. She put a finger to her lips, and he shrugged. “Theron’s gone, Elly’s asleep. Come sit with me while I finish this cigarette?”
So she slipped her boots back on against the chill—in Highfall, the nights were only truly warm for a few weeks in summer—and joined him, leaning against the terrace railing.
Then, the words practically bursting out of him, he said, “You know I feel everything you do, right?”
His voice was merry but she didn’t feel like laughing. “Turnabout is fair play.”
He grinned. “We should be careful about our timing, though. I mean, there are distractions, and there are distractions.
And some of us can’t hide it as easily as others of us can. Now, Jude, don’t make that face. I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. I admit to being a little surprised at how much you’re enjoying yourself, though. Who would have thought Firo had it in him?”
“Stop,” she said, irritated. She didn’t feel like being teased.
“Sorry.” He lifted his cigarette, and examined the orange coal of it. “Can we talk about Firo, actually? Just for a moment? I know it’s none of my business. Elly only tells me so sixty thousand times a day. And I am really glad you’re happy.”
“But?”
“But he’s a courtier. And not a neophyte, either. He’s been around for years.”
“People do like to remind me that he’s old.”
“It’s not that at all. Don’t tell Elly, but the first woman I was ever with? Was there the night we were born. In an honorary capacity, not a hands-covered-with-blood capacity.” He shook his head. “The world is weird. You never know who’s going to catch your eye, or whose eye you’re going to catch. And I know the Seneschal doesn’t want you to be with anybody, but—”
He stopped. “But,” Judah said. Again.
“But.” There was a note of reluctance in his voice, in the tilt of his head. “I may not have to lock you in a prison anymore, but I don’t know how much joy your life is going to bring you. It’s not my fault, but it also is.” He reached over and put his hand on hers. It wasn’t the sickening experience it would have been before the ball, but she could feel sadness in him like a toothache. It was for her, this sadness. She didn’t think he’d feel so bad for her if he knew what she’d signed him up for. “I promise you, I will do everything I can to make you happy, forever. And I hate that I can’t just tell you to go forth and rejoice. But you can’t trust Firo. You know you can’t. I can feel it in you every time I say his name.”
She didn’t say anything.
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