by Megan Hart
He broke apart the bread in his palms and scattered the crumbs on the ground. A blackbird came to snag a bite, then flew away before his hand could reach it, should he have been so foolish as to try. More crumbs. Another bird. By the time the woman had crossed half the distance between them, he’d fed half his loaf to the flock.
Again, she paused, perhaps taking his measure. And what, exactly, did she see? A man wearing the rough garb of a woodsman, no axe but a worn leather bag at his side. His hair worn too short for fashion. What might she make of his features, the length of his legs and breadth of his shoulders? Would she find him a threat now she could see him closer, or would she take the confidence of her privileged life and continue past him?
She answered his question in the next few moments when she again lifted her chin and strode forward with steps swift enough to flutter the edges of her cloak.
Ah. A bit of a fool, then.
She slowed as she approached, at least showing that bit of caution. Cassian paid her no mind, concentrating instead on uncorking his flask and sipping from it. He didn’t need to see her to know when she came closer. The breeze brought the scent of her, and he muttered something like a curse at the foolishness of a woman who’d travel on her own and tart herself up before doing so. Did she wish to be raped on the roadside?
“Good day.” Her voice, low and sweet, was tempting enough without the added seduction of her perfume.
Cassian set his jaw and looked at her. “Good day, mistress.”
The woman kept her distance as she flicked her gaze over him. Now that she was closer he could see the sheen of sweat on her brow and upper lip, and no wonder, since her cloak, though fine, was sewn of heavy wool and not a fabric more suited for the weather. This interested him. Cassian knew from experience the fluctuation of wealth and how those whose pockets once hung heavy with coin could keep the appearance of all they’d gained even as their coffers gathered dust.
“It’s warm,” she said.
Her tongue slipped out to lick at her lips, a gesture a lesser man might’ve taken as invitation. Cassian was no lesser man. He knew the blatant attempts at seduction, and this miss meant none.
“I’ve been walking a fair distance. Longer than I’d been advised,” the woman said.
She had pale eyes, the color startling against her dusky skin, beneath dark, shapely brows. He’d wager the hair beneath the hood was dark, too. It would be long and silken. It would be beautiful.
“The carriageman who left me off told me the Motherhouse was this way,” the woman said when Cassian again made no answer. “A half day’s walk, he said. Yet I’ve been walking since early this morn and seem to grow no closer.”
“It would seem, then, the length of your stride was overestimated.”
She seemed as though she meant to laugh but held it back at the last moment. “It would seem so.”
He watched her gaze follow the path of his flask to his mouth, watched her lips part and her throat work as his did when he swallowed. She would be thirsty, trekking in that heavy cloak, even in the shadows. The distance from the main road to this point was indeed a half day’s journey, made simple when provisioned appropriately. She didn’t seem to have been so.
A gentleman would have offered her a sip from his flask, but Cassian had long ago been denied the opportunity to become one. He eyed her, wondering if she’d ask him for a taste. Wondering if he’d allow it.
“I hadn’t expected the day to be so overwarm,” she said.
“I would guess that, by your cloak. Perhaps you should take it off.”
Her gaze flashed, but she didn’t retreat. Her jaw tightened for a moment, only. “I can’t.”
Cassian drank again, slowly and on purpose. Yes, it was a dig, but what person of intellect ever set out on a path of unknown length without appropriate provisions, without the right clothes? The right footwear? She hadn’t been limping, but he bet she wore a pair of pretty silken slippers beneath that gown, not sturdy walking boots. He’d seen enough young women staggering into the yard in half a delirium because the last leg of their journey to the Motherhouse had been so unexpectedly difficult.
To his surprise, however, the woman in front of him reached into her cloak and pulled out a small linen traveling bag. From within she drew a leather bottle closed tight with a cork. He watched her tip back her head. Watched her throat work as she swallowed. He had to turn his gaze, his mouth tight at the corners.
He didn’t like that.
“I’m on my way to the Motherhouse,” she said with lips still glistening.
Cassian said nothing. He tucked away his flask and stood to brush the now imaginary crumbs from his hands. He no longer felt like walking in the forest.
“The Order of Solace?” Her voice tipped up on the end of her sentence, quizzical.
She hadn’t moved out of his way, and unless he pushed past her he’d have to go around the rock to get to the path. He glanced over his shoulder to the thick pad of needles on the ground, the spikes of shadow flowers pushing through. A few measures beyond were the trees growing close together, with just enough distance for a man to slip between.
“Do you know it?” she persisted.
He felt the tug of her hand upon his sleeve, and Cassian looked at her, finally. He stared hard at her fingers plucking at his elbow until she took away her hand. Then he looked at her face, her open eyes, her parted lips.
“I know it,” he said.
The woman’s expression tightened, her mouth pursing, brows furrowing. She crossed her arms and lifted her chin. Oh yes, this one was used to having her way.
“Could you tell me which direction I should choose?” She pointed ahead to the place where the path split.
“I could.”
The forest would never be silent. Always, the wind would rustle branches, birds would sing, and animals would rattle in the undergrowth. The waterfall hidden in the trees behind him would rush and pound the stones below. But now, with this woman staring at him, a wave of silence swelled between them. It broke upon the hiss of her indrawn breath, and he imagined the sound of her lashes fluttering—surely he couldn’t hear such a noise, though they be long and lush, seeming even to brush her cheeks as she looked down.
When she spoke, her voice was light but low. She looked him in the eyes, then, no shy cutting of the glance or false demureness. “Will you tell me the direction?”
It wasn’t the first time he’d been asked such a question, and it was not the first time he’d given such an answer. “Certainly, mistress. The path you seek is just ahead, to the left. Follow, and it will take you where you need to go.”
She narrowed her eyes and looked him over. Cassian had been observed, watched, spied upon, and giggled over. He’d never been so studied.
At last, she inclined her head. “I thank you.”
He watched her set off down the path with a sure and steady step. She looked neither to the right nor left, but straight ahead. She didn’t even look back at him, and Cassian, for the first time, found himself wishing he’d given a different answer.
For the first time in the many he’d been asked, he wished he’d told the truth.
Damn him to the Void.” Annalise muttered the invective as she plucked yet another piece of straw from her hair. “Damn him and all his spawn.”
It was uncharitable, to say the least. Certainly not in keeping with the image she was set on portraying, that of the demure and spiritual Seeker. A Handmaiden.
Did Handmaidens curse?
He’d lied to her, the bastard. May the Invisible Mother turn her back on him. May the Holy Family bar him from the Land Above. May he rot in the Void for eternity—
“Mistress?”
Annalise, scowling, turned to face the small, round woman who’d lent her a place on the stable floor. That the stalls hadn’t seen a horse for a long time hadn’t made her night any more palatable. The wood had been hard, the straw musty and not thick enough to cushion her, yet invasive enough to penet
rate her cloak, gown, and shift and fully infiltrate her hair. She’d spent too long a time trying to brush it out, and was certain bits still clung to her in places she couldn’t see.
“Sun’s up,” the woman said carelessly, as though Annalise couldn’t see for herself.
She had, in fact, been wakened after too-few hours of sleep by a sharp shaft of light stabbing directly into her eyeballs. Though her first retort was sharp, she tempered it. Not from the kindness of her nature, but from what her mother had always taught her of being gentle with those less fortunate. This woman would qualify, Annalise thought with a look around the stable and through the door to the bare earth yard beyond, where a few scraggly chickens pecked.
“You’d best be getting on,” the woman continued, blithe, as though she had strange women stumble into her yard in the middle of the night all the time.
Perhaps she did. Annalise stretched, her neck and back creaking in protest at her hard night. Her stomach rumbled and she put her hands over it. “I don’t suppose I could—”
The woman snorted lightly. “Impose upon me for something to break your fast?”
The accent she forced into her voice made it clear she was mocking. Annalise cut off her own snide reply to say instead, “Not if it would be an imposition. No.”
“More than letting ya sleep in my stable with naught but your cheery smile as compensation?” The woman laughed and slapped her knee. “Ah, you’re a fine one. Yes. Most of the girls who come this way make me laugh, but you . . . you’re somewhat else, girl.”
Annalise could deal with hunger for a few more hours. Surely they’d feed her at the Motherhouse, should she ever manage to find her way there. It couldn’t be far.
“Tell me something, girly. What’re you seeking at the Order?”
Annalise brushed at her skirts and sleeves and gave up detangling her hair. “I want to join it, of course. Why else would I go there?”
The woman’s grin quirked. “Why else? There are as many reasons to seek the Motherhouse as there are women who go there. They all want to join, girly. But why? Why do you want to give your life?”
A dozen lies, the ones she’d told her family and friends, tripped over Annalise’s tongue, but became trapped by her frown. She didn’t owe this old woman any truth—not for the dubious pleasure of having been allowed a vile night’s rest in a shoddy stable, at any rate.
“I had a vision.”
Both of the woman’s brows lifted so high they disappeared beneath the fringe of hair hanging down on her forehead. “So you say?”
Annalise frowned at the woman’s tone. “I do, indeed!”
“Think ya visions are to be had by just anybody?” The woman laughed and tilted her head. “No, no, they are not, indeed. Think ya the Invisible Mother, blessed be Her name, has time to go ’round granting visions as though they’s apples to fall from a tree?”
Annalise gathered her cloak at her throat and drew herself to her full height. “Madam. I thank you for your . . . hospitality . . . but I must get to the Motherhouse today. So, if you’ll but point me in the right direction, I’ll be on my way.”
Her rumbling stomach refused to be silenced, no matter how she might wish it to remain so. The woman laughed and reached out to pat Annalise’s belly, not noticing or unconcerned at the scowl she earned for her presumptuousness.
“Without breaking your fast?”
Before Annalise could say anything, the woman grabbed at her wrist. Her tone turned wheedling, her wrinkled face coy. She tugged, and Annalise stepped closer, unwilling even in her annoyance to be disrespectful to an elder.
“I have fresh eggs. Brown bread. I have cacao, girly. Steaming and steeped with milk.”
It had been a day since Annalise had eaten a full meal, not a handful of nuts or dried fruit from her pack. Her stomach protested again, louder this time. She had ever been made irritable and clumsy with hunger and this morn was no exception. And with no telling how long the journey still might be, she would be foolish to step out upon it without eating.
“I would be fair grateful,” she said while gently extricating her arm, “if you would grant me the honor of being allowed to eat at your table.”
The woman shifted, the heavy layers of her gown brushing the bare, swept earth. She didn’t reach again for Annalise’s wrist, but instead gestured. “Come, then, girly. Come inside.”
The small hut with its thatched roof and old-fashioned split door had looked to be as neglected as the stable from the outside, but inside proved to offer rather greater comfort with a cheerful fire and a well-scrubbed table set with two chipped but clean plates. A small bedstead filled the far corner and two chairs settled in front of the fire, while a rickety-looking ladder led to a small loft above.
“Sit, sit.” The woman gestured. She moved faster inside than she had in the stable.
Annalise chose a seat at the table and watched the woman shrug out of several layers of clothes she hung carefully on hooks along the wall. Each layer diminished her until at last the woman who turned with a brisk clap of her hands seemed half the size of the figure that had greeted Annalise in last night’s darkness. The woman, who’d kept the kerchief wrapped tight over her long braid, tied an apron around her waist and bustled at the small stove before turning with a platter of food that she set on the table.
“Eat, eat.” The woman, who had yet to offer a name, flapped her hands at Annalise.
“Aren’t you going to join me?”
“Ach, I broke my fast before the sun rose. You go ahead. Go on.” She waited, expectant.
Annalise put a hand on her belly, aching with emptiness, and looked at the plate. Simple fare, but she’d never been above it. Scrambled eggs settled on a slice of brown bread oozing with butter. The smell of it set her mouth to watering.
“Thank you.”
There’d never been a meal taken at Annalise’s house that had not begun and ended with a prayer. Sometimes the prayers had lasted longer than the meals themselves. Annalise murmured some now, under her breath and without thought to the words.
“What say ya?” The woman cocked her head to peer. “What was that?”
Annalise paused with a fistful of bread and egg halfway to her mouth. Butter dripped onto her fingers. “Your mercy?”
“What say ya? The words you spoke. What were they?”
“Oh . . .” Annalise swallowed her hunger but held tight to the bread for the moment. “Naught but a prayer.”
“Huh. Wouldn’t-a thought you the sort to thank the Invisible Mother for Her bread before eating it.”
“Old mother, I am on a vision-sent journey to the Order of Solace to become a Handmaiden. Why should it surprise you that I would honor Her before my meal?”
“Most do it silent-like, that’s all. Not with open mouths.”
“Silent grace so none might judge the sincerity,” Annalise said. “I’ve no care if anyone doubts my sincerity or not.”
Her hostess gave her a shrewd look. “You do know of what you speak. Huh. Well, don’t let my yapping keep you from it. You’ve a meal to eat and a day’s walk to make.”
“A day’s—” Annalise bit down hard on the words and the curse she wanted to lay on the head of the man who’d directed her so astray.
The woman laughed. “Your vision didn’t tell you this part, eh?”
“No, indeed.”
“You could turn back, girly. A swift few minutes’ trek will take you to the main road. There’s a village not far off from there. I’m sure you could send word to your people to come for you. You’ve been on the road what, a day?”
“A few more than that.”
“They’ll barely have noticed you’re gone.”
Annalise bit into the food with a sigh, then moaned softly with pleasure. She chewed carefully, aware of how closely the woman watched her eat. She swallowed. Bit again. She finished her breakfast swiftly and neatly, then wiped the corners of her mouth with a fingertip and stood.
“Thank you for
the meal and the lodging. I’m sorry I have naught to offer you in recompense, but—”
“I know. The Invisible Mother told you to set off with naught but your clothes and a day’s worth of provisions.”
This was the description of any vision Annalise had been able to find reported, but she eyed the woman and licked the last slick of grease from her lips. She’d ever been one to stand apart from the crowd.
“Actually, no.” Annalise had not shared the details of her “vision” with anyone—silent grace so that none might judge the sincerity. Or veracity. She’d done her research so she might know the details of what others had said, but she’d never claimed any of them as her own.
The woman smiled. “No? What did She tell you, then?”
Annalise rose with a lie’s thread upon her tongue, one more to add to the tapestry she’d already begun to weave. “She spoke in a voice that made my ears bleed. To be sure, there were words, but I couldn’t tell you what they were. She didn’t need words to convince me I should spend my life in the pursuit of Her return and that of Her husband and child.”
The words had begun as lie but tasted of truth.
The woman who’d given Annalise shelter and food but not her name, tilted her head to stare. Then she pointed out the hut’s small window to the yard behind the house and the forest beyond it.
“Take the path through the woods,” she said. “You’ll find what you seek there.”
Chapter 4
Cassian was not surprised to see the woman from the forest crossing the field beyond the Motherhouse. He’d known even when sending her in the wrong direction that she had the spirit necessary to find her way to the Motherhouse. The surprise came in how early she appeared. He’d not thought to see her any time before midday on the morrow, if not later, yet here she was, striding through the knee-high grass and flowers with the walk of a purpose-led woman.
This meant one thing of two—either she’d figured his ruse and made her way to the Motherhouse despite him sending her off in the wrong direction, or she’d so pleased the Sister-in-Service who waited for Seekers in the hut at the edge of the forest that she’d been granted approval rather than further misdirection.