The Unwilling

by KELLY BRAFFET

  “The Seneschal asked me to marry him,” she said.

  Milk squirted sideways as the ewe’s teat slipped out of Elly’s hand. Hands still at the sheep’s udder, she gaped at Judah for a moment. Then suddenly, wryly, she laughed; took the ewe in hand again, and went back to work. “Well, that’s a surprise. Are you going to do it?”

  “When I was eight years old, he held a hot coal to my foot.” And put me in the snow, and bled me. She didn’t know why the coal held precedence, except that its glow had been so bright and lovely, and Elban had burned her, too. “So, no. I don’t understand why all of their plans involve us marrying or not marrying, anyway. First Elban, and then Gavin, and now him.”

  Elly’s mouth twitched. “You should marry Theron and upend everything.”

  “At least Theron wouldn’t put me under constant guard.” Judah wanted to kick something, but everything around her—the bucket, the wagon, Elly’s stool—was scarce and valuable. Savagely, she said, “Do we exist only to be married?”

  “I do. Or at least, I did. It was the justification of my entire existence.” Elly’s hands still worked at the sheep’s udder. “I hate to say it, Jude, but...hot coal aside, it’s not a bad idea.”

  Judah let that sink in. Finally, she said, “He hinted that the Nali chieftain could break the bond, but...if I can keep that from happening, and I marry him, he won’t kill Gavin. Which means he probably won’t kill the rest of you, either.”

  “That has nothing to do with why I think it’s a good idea.”

  “Should I not take into account the fact that you might be executed?”

  “Oh, please. As if I haven’t known since I came here, practically, that there was a better than average chance of that happening.” Elly’s hands flexed and pulled, flexed and pulled. Milk squirted angrily into the pail. “Gavin’s grandmother was hung in the kitchen yard because the courtiers stopped liking her. I’ve read her diary, you know. The last entry says, Thank the gods this is almost over.” She shook her head. “I’ve read all of their diaries, the Ladies. The ones that weren’t callous and stupid were miserable, to a one. I might be cold and half-starved and constantly on the verge of execution, but I’d rather live this life for six months than that life for sixty years.”

  “This is your argument for getting married?” Judah said.

  “No.” Elly’s dress was patched and now she was the one wearing a pair of Theron’s old boots; her hair was pulled into a no-nonsense braid that hung down her back. She had never used much cosmetic but even the pale pink lacquer she’d once painted on her nails was gone. Nor did she bother with the gliding gait she’d been trained to use, which was meant to look effortless but took so much time and practice to perfect. The Lady’s head was supposed to float above her shoulders. The Lady’s face should be a careful mask, so perfect and unchanging that it might as well have been made of porcelain and tied behind her ears every morning. When Judah thought of Elly now, she thought of work, unending chores and ceaseless, grueling effort. Somehow she had missed that Elly, even hungry and overworked, was more naturally herself now than she had ever been. “No,” Elly said again. “My argument for getting married is this: get out of here. Get that chieftain to break the bond and go far away. Get away from Gavin. He has a good heart, but he’ll never stand on his own when he can stand on you.”

  “He’s not standing on me.” But the words seemed small in the growing gloom. They sounded like a lie.

  Elly stood up. The ewe bleated. “Yes,” she said. “He is. My mother sent me away forever to get me away from my brothers. And Gavin isn’t dangerous or loathsome the way they were, but I’d happily send you away forever if it meant you’d be free of him. He’ll never deliberately hurt you, and he’ll be sorry when it happens, but he’ll hurt you all the same, and he’ll keep on hurting you, because somewhere deep inside where he doesn’t have to look at it, he thinks you can’t walk away from him.” She grabbed Judah’s hands with her own, warm and damp from milking. Her grip was ferocious. “Prove him wrong. Marry the Seneschal. Grit your teeth and give him a baby and make him buy you an estate in the country, and then live your life. Get away from here. Get away from Highfall.”

  Judah’s throat hurt. Her eyes did, too. “I don’t know if I can.”

  Elly didn’t release her hands or her gaze. The sheep moved to the manger and began to eat. Low, rhythmic chomping filled the stable. “I don’t know what Gavin’s doing to you,” Elly said finally, “but I know he’s doing something, and I know it’s bad. I can see it in the way he looks at you. Maybe he’s angry at me, and taking it out on you—”

  “Elly, stop.” Judah was desperate.

  “I don’t care what it is,” Elly said harshly. “I don’t know if I love Gavin or not, but if I do, it’s because I never had a choice. You, I love for your own sake. I want you to be happy, for your own sake.” Her voice grew thick, as if she was fighting back tears. “So you’ll have a guard. Guards can be bribed, or befriended. You could meet people, maybe even find your stableman. He probably left the city, but—oh, no, Jude, what? What’s wrong?”

  Because Judah had yanked her hands back and was pressing them protectively to her chest. She felt cracked, suddenly. Unwhole. It was a cruel thing for Elly to say. Elly was never cruel. The two things could not reconcile in her head. “He’s dead,” she said. “They killed him.”

  Elly’s brow furrowed. “No, they didn’t.”

  The ground bucked under Judah’s feet. “What?”

  “That was somebody else, some man from the midden yard who wouldn’t quit groping the kitchen maids. I felt bad about that, but—no, Jude. Firo helped us. I made Gavin have actual dinner with him, he hated it. Oh, gods, have you been thinking he was dead all this time?” She stared at Judah, baffled. “We got him out, Jude. Gavin said he told you.”

  Judah pressed her hands closer to her body. “Gavin told me he was dead.”

  Elly’s lips pressed together with cold fury, and all at once Judah knew the truth, and found herself filled with rage.

  * * *

  Back in the study. Gavin lay on the sofa, reading a book with an unmarked binding. When he saw her he sat upright in surprise, letting the book fall closed. “Is Darid dead?” she said, with no preamble.

  “Who?”

  “Darid!” Her voice was shaking. “The stableman. My stableman.”

  “Oh.” His confusion vanished, replaced by a resigned impatience. “Him.”

  “Him.” She was on the other side of the couch now. She didn’t remember walking around it. He stood up to meet her. If he hadn’t, she would have pulled him up by his throat. “Don’t lie to me, Gavin.”

  “I don’t know why you’re bringing this up now.” His tone was cool. “He was executed. You know that. You know why, too.”

  Lies and more lies. Enough. She grabbed his head in both of her hands and reached into him, deliberately. She hadn’t known she could do that, but it wasn’t hard, it was easy. He gasped. His shoulders snapped back and his eyelids fluttered. Maybe she was hurting him. She didn’t know. She didn’t care. The inside of his head was like a book and she ruffled the pages until she found what she wanted: his bedroom, pain, sun streaking in long knives to the floor. The cool white of his pillow. Elly’s voice, urgent. All blurry, all underwater. But there.

  —we got him out, but Firo will expect something in return. Dinner, lunch—some sign of favor—

  Gavin. I gave my blood to help her. Why should I do any more than that?

  Elly. Because it is a good thing and you can do it and you will. For once in your life, you will not be selfish.

  And worst of all was that Judah was on the inside of him, not the outside, and so she felt the resentment, the anger, the petty, unreasonable betrayal that cycled through Gavin’s mind. It wasn’t just the caning; Gavin felt as if Darid had tracked mud on Gavin’s favorite rug, or lamed his favorite horse. His
. Judah was his. Just because he, himself, wasn’t fucking her—

  She let go. She didn’t want to know any more. Gavin stumbled, put a hand to his head. Gagged once or twice, but didn’t vomit. When he managed to pull himself upright, his face was filled with defiance. “I did it, didn’t I?” His voice was low and furious. “I let the world see me with Cerrington, let them see me treat him like he mattered.”

  “Did it cost you so much?” Judah felt strangely calm.

  Gavin recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “Forgive me if I didn’t want to watch you waste your life fucking some staff boy.”

  “Then who shall I fuck, Gavin?” It sounded so normal. Just a question. “Who do I have your permission to fuck? Oh, yes. I remember: any number of dumb, good-looking courtiers who only want me so they can get close to you. That’s what you said, isn’t it? Back when you thought I was fucking Firo.”

  “Quit talking like that,” he said. “Quit using that word.”

  “Which word? Fucking?” She wanted to bite him. She wanted to tear his throat out. “You used it. Or is that something else you’re allowed to do and I’m not?”

  He ran his hands violently through his hair, and his voice shook with an obvious effort to retain control. “Look, dead or alive, it’s not like you’re going to see him again, so I’m not sure why we’re arguing.”

  “We are arguing,” she said, “because you seem to think that all of my decisions should be made with your best interest in mind. You seem to think that I should just stand quietly off to the side until you’re bored and need entertaining, or upset and need soothing, and then come running to serve you, because of course I should never want anything for myself. I shouldn’t even want to live except through you. I should just let you use me and use me and use me until we both die of it!”

  She was screaming now, the sound luminous and resonant. Like she had opened a door inside herself and discovered an aquifer’s worth of grand hot rage, as precious as gold. She had thought Darid was dead. She had thought it was her fault.

  Gavin grabbed her upper arms. She tried to pull back, but he wouldn’t let go. “You’re hysterical,” he said, furious. “You need to calm down.” He pulled her close, fingers digging deep into the meat of her arms, and pressed his head roughly against hers. The more she struggled the more fiercely he held her. When she felt him push into her mind she was not surprised—she’d expected that—but she hadn’t expected the implacable cold that spread through her. Her rage dulled and then faded entirely. What was left was still and stony as marble. She watched from far away as her legs collapsed under her and both of their bodies slid to the floor, his head still against hers. The feeling didn’t have the gentle flow of water, the soft ripple of reflected light. It was dry. Her eyes closed and then everything was still. A shared stillness: theirs, nobody else’s. Together.

  And then, like the crate of wine emerging from the depths of the aquifer, something began to take shape, there in the quiet. A face. Another. They drifted behind her eyelids, carved and pale—all different, all somehow the same, so many with the same particular mouth—

  And then, his face. Hers.

  Horror bloomed in her. He was thinking of the crypts. Instead of living water he was imagining them both as stone effigies of themselves, unending and unalive. She tried to pull away, but she was too heavy to move or even breathe. The stone pushed everything else out. Motion was a faded memory that belonged to somebody else. She could feel nothing but cold, could hear nothing but the sound of the increasingly thick air fighting its way into her lungs. Somewhere, her heart beat. But slowly. Slower. It wasn’t that she couldn’t breathe. It was that she couldn’t remember why she’d ever wanted to.

  No.

  With incredible effort, she pushed him away. Inside her head and out of it. The two of them were slumped against the sofa. Gavin’s skin looked bloodless and cold. His head lolled to the side as if he didn’t have the strength to hold it up. Then his eyes focused on her, and he seemed to gather himself. “Please, Jude. Let’s end this. I can’t stand it anymore.” He reached for her again.

  This time she fought, lashing out with everything she had. On the floor, scrabbling and clawing at him like an animal. She felt the give of flesh under her nails and four long scratches appeared on his cheek, one welling up with blood. She felt the sear of them on her own face, too. Fighting him was hard. She could feel the emptiness inside him, yawning like hunger. He was weak, hurting. He needed her. She could help him. Nobody else could. It would be the easiest thing in the world. It would be like falling asleep. She was so tired.

  Then she was up on her feet. Standing over him. “No,” she said.

  His fists clenched. His head dropped. The void inside her ached and it would be so simple to fill it, but then there would be nothing, she would be nothing. She would never be apart from him. She could not be near him. There was no choice, except to flee.

  And so Judah fled. She didn’t know where she was going. She only knew that she was going away.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Eleanor was a child, somebody told her a story about a woman who unraveled her husband’s wool scarf to knit socks for her children. There had been some twist that she couldn’t remember; somehow it had been funny, that she was unraveling the scarf. Eleanor had loved the story about the charming mother who made socks for all of her happy children. Her own mother had been wary and grim and watchful, and as Lady of Tiernan, she hadn’t knitted. Embroidered, yes, the famous Tiernan blackwork; miles of that, and the occasional piece of tatted lace. But knitting was for peasants and shepherds and people who were concerned about staying warm. The mere sight of a pair of knitting needles in her mother’s hands would send her father into a frenzy, No wife of mine, and all that. It had been Eleanor’s grandmother who had taught her to knit, hidden away with the old people and children where her father couldn’t see. Knitting was secret, illicit. Arcane.

  The knowledge had turned out to be useful, along with several bits about sheep that Eleanor never thought she’d need. The coup had happened at the beginning of summer and their winter clothes, in storage, had been taken. Now the weather was growing cold. Theron made needles for her, and she’d started to unravel an old knitted blanket she’d found under the quilts in her linen chest. She couldn’t get the story of the mother and the scarf and the socks out of her head, but the actual work soon lost its charm. The washing and untangling and laying-out-to-dry was awkward and tedious, and too often the strand broke in her hands as she wound it. But when winter came they would need warm feet and warm hands, and to get warm feet and warm hands they would need socks and mittens. Sweaters, maybe. She’d never made anything but doll scarves. She hoped there was a book in the Lady’s Library.

  Wake up each day and figure out how to survive it: that was something else her grandmother had taught her.

  She was swishing a mess of dirty yarn in the washtub on the terrace, as far from the edge as possible, when the Seneschal emerged from the parlor and told her that her father was dead. There was a bench on the terrace, but the Seneschal remained standing. He was an oddly formal man, even now, and would not sit without being invited. “It happened around the same time Elban died,” he said. “The message just came through. I’m sorry for your loss, Eleanor.”

  “Are you?” she said. She had never particularly cared about being called lady; when the magus called her Eleanor, it was just her name. But every time the Seneschal did it, she felt like he was relieving himself in front of her. “I’m not. I haven’t seen the man in fourteen years. Who’s ruling Tiernan?”

  “Your oldest brother, Angen.”

  Her oldest surviving brother. The actual oldest, Millar, had been thrown from his horse when Eleanor was four. The paper in the Seneschal’s hand was battered, but she recognized the white wax seal: a ram’s head, lowered to charge. “There was a second message, as well,” he said. “A newer one. Angen h
as asked me to extend to you an invitation to return, given the circumstances.”

  “The circumstances?” She pulled two handfuls of sodden wool from the dingy water.

  “You were contracted to marry the Lord of the City. Now there is no Lord of the City. You have no children with Gavin. Nothing holds you here.”

  The wool had to be wrapped in an old towel and squeezed gently. “What about the money Elban paid for me? Is Angen giving it back? Or are you offering him more to take me off your hands?”

  A grudging humor came into the Seneschal’s eyes. “Neither. He has merely offered to accept you back, if you want to go.”

  She sat back and wiped her hands on her apron. “Is it really my choice?”

  “It is. May I make a suggestion?”

  “Is there any way I can stop you?”

  “Don’t refuse immediately. Consider the offer. You might not relish the idea of life in Tiernan, but at least you know what it’ll be like.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I know what life here is like. Unless you’re not planning on keeping us here indefinitely, perched on the edge of starvation.”

  “Nothing is indefinite,” he said. “Take my advice. Consider your options.”

  Then he left. Eleanor squeezed the rest of the water out of the yarn, then laid it out to dry, winding the damp, dull-colored strand into parallel ranks like soldiers in formation. Her brother. Angen of Tiernan. He would surely be married by now, possibly for the second or third time. There would be children. She wondered if any of them were girls, and pitied them if they were.

  * * *

  “Judah’s gone up to the tower,” Theron said.

  Elly was boiling oats for dinner. The heat on the stove was uneven and she had to stir the pot constantly or risk it burning. As Theron spoke, all at once the porridge thickened. Quickly, she took it off the stove. “What tower?”

  “The one above the workshop.”