Misery's Child

by J Belinda Yandell

  Lilli nodded. It was not necessary for Osane to elaborate on which of Lendenican’s questions she meant. It was strange to be sitting with a total stranger and yet feel the unspoken words flowing between them.

  “The cadialana has voted to award him the Shallanie Medal of Valor. I will present it to him myself at the final ceremony.” Osane shuffled the papers in her lap and then laid them aside. “He is an attractive young man, I’m told. Would you agree?”

  Lying would be as foolish as feigning indifference. Yanna had impressed upon her time and again the duty of a cadia to speak truthfully to her sisters in all things. Word games, she said, were for others, not for the cadia. She wondered if the question were a test.

  “Yes, my lady Osane. I found him very pleasant to look at, though in truth I have few men besides my father and brothers to compare him to.”

  The dedre laughed.

  “Well spoken, my dear. Yanna has prepared you well.” The dedre was silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was sober. “You told Lendenican you saw Yanna defending herself against the bandits, but I found her report rather vague at that point. Perhaps you’d like to tell me again what happened.”

  Lillitha flushed violently, remembering how she had faked a fainting spell to distract Lendenican from further questions. But the small voice that had warned her to remain silent then was itself silent now.

  “Yes...,” Lilli trailed off awkwardly. “There is something I did not want to tell Cadia Lendenican or anyone else. Though if anyone had asked me directly I would have told them, for I know it is not my place to lie. But…. Yannamarie — she had a dagger.”

  Osane nodded, unsurprised. Lillitha sensed that the dedre already knew what she had to say; yet the woman was intensely focused on her responses.

  “Did you see her use this dagger?”

  “Yes.” Lillitha looked the cadia dedre directly in the eye. “She cut a man’s throat as cleanly as our cook slaughters chickens for the table.”

  Osane blinked just once, as an owl might.

  “Why did you keep this from Lendenican?”

  “I...I don’t know. It just seemed to wisest course not to bring it up.”

  “Wisest? Why?”

  “My lady, I don’t know what you want me to say.” Lillitha’s hands twisted in her lap. “It surprised me that Yanna fought so like a man accustomed to battle. I thought it would shock and upset others as well. So I did not mention it. Yanna always said some things were nobody’s business... Did I do wrong?”

  “No, my dear. I’m just amazed at your intuition for one so young. You know why my burlang is red, while yours is white?”

  “Yes, my lady. Yours is red because you are cadialana and have been blessed with motherhood. Mine is white as any virgin initiate’s burlang should be.”

  “Did Yanna ever tell you why her robe was black?”

  “No, my lady.”

  “Did you ever ask her?”

  “Yes, my lady. Once.”

  “What was her response?”

  “She said she was chosen to wear the robes of shadows for a reason and that I was not sufficiently prepared to know that reason.”

  Osane’s smile was wry and touched by sadness. She sighed as if her thoughts were very far away, then seemed to come to herself again. “You did the right thing in keeping this to yourself. On the behalf of the cadialana, I thank you for your discretion.”

  Lillitha was confused and longed to ask the dedre if Yanna had done something wrong in defending herself. But Osane was rising to her feet, indicating that their audience was at an end.

  Lillitha rose and the dedre, hardly a hand’s width taller than she, escorted her to the chamber door.

  “You will continue to remain discreet on the subject, I trust?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Good night, Lillitha.” Osane kissed her gently on the forehead. “The mother’s blessings go with you, little sister.”

  The cadia-chatel was waiting to show her the way out. Lillitha had barely taken two steps before Osane called to her again.

  “Yes, my lady?”

  “What prompted you to tell me?” she asked in a low voice.

  Lillitha did not even have to think about her answer.

  “Yanna would have wanted me to. You are the dedre. The keeper of secrets.”

  Osane nodded and bid her goodnight once more.

  Lillitha followed the chatel in silence, unaware that her fate had been sealed.

  Chapter 13: The Golden Lock

  Excerpt from The Histories of the Realm by Cadia Kesava:

  Marta of Kirrisian has long been an overlooked player in the story of tey Mysirrati. She has been hastily sketched either as a silly child who assisted her sister and her lover in their escape out of romantic notions, or as a petty schemer too intent upon her own resentments to understand what she set in motion that fateful night. It is my contention that Marta was both and yet much more. Unfortunately, Marta either could not write or, more likely, was not inclined to, and so her side of the story has been lost to history.

  By the third day of the festival, Marta was bored. She was sick of the high and mighty Shallanie, sick of living in a damp tent, sick of watching people bow and scrape to her sister and those other dismal-looking sheep in white robes.

  When, she wondered, would her own life ever begin? She’d been certain that Danaus was going to approach her father to begin matrimonial negotiations, yet still the merchant did not seek him out. Marta had followed Danaus and Tomack one night to the rooms they had rented on the other side of the river. She was furious to realize that the hostelry they’d chosen was only a street away from that bellinta’s house. She’d begun to worry that Tomack, besotted with one of those brazenly gilded women, had forgotten her. He was never without his father, so she had no opportunity to remind him of her charms.

  She had run into Danaus and his son “accidentally” on three occasions. The merchant had seemed pleased to have her company as he ambled through the markets and shops comparing the wares of other merchants with his own. Tomack had been distant. She could not tell if it was merely his father’s proximity, which always made him awkward, or something more. She behaved with perfect decorum, turning down the tasty tidbits from the food stalls that were offered to her, casting her eyes at the ground demurely whenever Danaus fell into business talk with other men whose eyes roamed her figure hungrily.

  And instead of the sly, sidelong smiling glances she normally aimed in Tomack’s direction, she beamed with the open adoration of a new bride on her husband.

  “Would you like to visit the consecratia camp?” she asked of Danaus. “I could take you in, if you would like.” She pointed to the purple armband around her sleeve.

  He had laughed, not altogether kindly, she thought. “I’m here for business, girl. Not for gawking at cadia.”

  “Oh, well, I guess you know more about your trade than I,” she sighed, biting her bottom lip in the most charmingly distressed manner. “Just this morning I overheard Vidoress Liscocila complaining that her daughter’s presentation dress needed just the right piece of jewelry. She’d noticed several of the other consecratia with the loveliest medallions—”

  Danaus eyed her sharply, immediately catching the drift of her thoughts. “Is that so? You’d think the vidoress of a province like Corellia would have already seen to such details.”

  “You know how silly we women are. The mothers do nothing but spy on each other to see how well their daughters are fitted out. They see someone else with something they don’t have and they are suddenly desperate to acquire the same thing lest their own daughter look shabby beside the others.”

  She had no idea how much coin changed hands by the time Danaus left the compound but she thought it must have been a very profitable afternoon if one could judge by the hard little smile on the merchant’s face. Tomack no longer needed both hands to carry the sample cases, which were a good deal lighter than they’d been that morning.


  “Tomack, take those back to the hostelry and wait for me there,” the older man ordered. “And tell that lazy mistress of the house to have my supper waiting for me. Don’t let her serve that swill she passes off as wine, take out a bottle of that jurora we bought this afternoon.”

  Marta watched him melt into the crowded street and sighed.

  “Come now, my lady of Kirrisian,” Danaus said. “You need not be so obvious. We both know you’re much smarter than that.”

  “Obvious? In my admiration for your son? Such emotions should be obvious.”

  “Clever women generally make me nauseous, but you’ve a mind for business as well as intrigue, as you demonstrated this afternoon.” The merchant threw back his head and laughed. “Brilliantly done, my girl, brilliantly! There is nothing like vanity and competition to make women part with their husband’s gold. They did not even attempt to haggle over the price. Pity you’re a woman, you’d make a fine trader.”

  Marta smarted at his double-edged flattery. Nothing was ever going to happen if she didn’t start pushing. Were men really so dense or did they just pretend to be so to infuriate women? Now was her chance, and by Oman, she was going to take it.

  “Glad I am that I’m a woman.” She tossed her head, causing the golden tresses to shimmer like water in the sun. “I might make a good trader but I’d make an even finer wife for Tomack.”

  If he laughed again she would kill him. But he did not laugh. Instead he stared at her.

  “Marry my son?” Danaus’ small eyes narrowed even more. “What makes you think you’re fit for my son?”

  Marta’s chin tilted. “I am the daughter of the Vidor of Kirrisian. That makes me fit enough for a noble. Certainly better than a son of a merchant could hope for.”

  His face flushed red and his lips tightened. She’d hit upon his envy as she had intended.

  “The younger daughter.”

  “The only marriageable daughter.”

  Neither batted an eye as their gazes locked.

  “True.” Danaus sighed mockingly. “But let me speak plainly, as you have spoken so bluntly of my son’s untitled position. You are the dowryless daughter of a placaless vidor. Any of the rings on my fingers would fetch a higher sum than everything your father possesses.”

  “And everything you possess can not buy my father’s title or rights.”

  His eyebrows arched as he smiled in what was not a completely pleasant expression. “Can it not? Perhaps I misunderstood you? Were you not offering yourself and your father’s title for sale?”

  The color drained from Marta’s face. The muscles in her stomach quivered with rage.

  “You brazen trollop,” Danaus laughed. “It’s all over the camps how you paraded yourself through the market, bartering your sister’s name for scraps. Yet you have the gall to stand there and insult me.”

  To his surprise, Marta laughed. It was a merry sound, the giggles of a small and innocent child.

  “Dear Danaus, whom I had hoped to call good-father,” she said gaily in a voice that belied the rage she’d swallowed, the anger that now writhed in the pit of her stomach. “My excursion through the market would quickly fall from people’s mind should I tell them about your friend—what’s her name? Obviously a common girl, though a very pretty one. Abshira, isn’t it? Yes, I believe her name is Abshira.”

  She had him now. She could feel the confusion and disbelief in his mind. Till the day he died, Danaus would wonder how on earth she had known about Abshira.

  When he did not speak, she continued. “Oh, I know that visiting a bellinta isn’t really a crime. Still, it must be quite embarrassing to be found out or fine upstanding men like you wouldn’t be so sneaky about it.”

  “Oh, you are a clever one, aren’t you?” His eyes took on the same steely glare they acquired whenever he counted the coins in his safe or the placas in his drawstring purse. “Perhaps I’d better wed you to my son. I don’t know that I’d sleep well at night knowing you were bending those guiles of yours on behalf of some other man, even at the far side of Omani.”

  She gave him a smile so dazzling he almost forgot how much he hated her. Hated her family, her title, her poverty and that damning, tempting beauty that she wielded so thoughtlessly.

  “You’ll speak to my father then?” She asked casually, as if it were a trifling matter already settled.

  “Yes.” His lips were set in a thin, tight line and his eyes were calculating. “Yes, I will speak to your father this very nightfall. Now go from me, I’m tired and I want my dinner.”

  He watched her go, hips rolling languorously from side to side, hair flouncing over her shoulders. If he were free, he’d marry her himself. Then she’d learn a thing or two about power.

  As it was, Tomack would have to teach her those lessons. Danaus would see to it.

  ***

  “Good, there you are.” Ersala’s arms were deep in a ball of dark brown dough. She kneaded it briskly and violently; it hurt Marta just to watch. “Go and sit with your sister awhile—”

  “Oh, muma, I was just about to go and see the jugglers—”

  “You’ve been roaming half the day already, it’s little enough that I ask you to do.”

  She did not want to go but her mother’s expression told her not to argue. This was no holiday for Ersala; on the contrary, she had almost as much work to do here as at home and no Tesla or Edlin to help. There was food to be shopped for, prepared, cooked and cleaned up after; firewood to be gathered, fires to be built and water to be fetched. Then there were the social obligations of a mother to a consecratia and a vidoress to be attended to. No, her mother was tired and short-tempered. Marta had no desire to put Ersala in a foul mood before Danaus’ visit that evening.

  So she bit her tongue with more than just annoyance. Marta had never liked her sister much, even before the whole consecratia thing began; Lillitha bored her with her shyness and blushing, and Marta could not respect anyone who couldn’t say two words for herself. But her reasons for avoiding Lillitha’s company now were more compelling than ever.

  All her life, the thoughts of others had sometimes slipped into her head, but since her first blood two summers past, it happened more often and more intensely. It was worst of all around Lillitha.

  Marta didn’t like it a bit. There was nothing to be gained from peeking inside Lillitha’s mind, only a miasma of grief and fear that threatened to suck Marta down into it unless she concentrated all her mental energies on blocking it out. That in itself was exhausting, and it had gotten so much worse since arriving in Shallanie. At night, with their sleeping quarters separated only by the thin sheets of the tents, Marta would wake with tears on her cheeks, not from her own dreams, but Lillitha’s.

  Marta was amazed and angry that no one else could see how desperately unhappy Lillitha was. Oman’s beard! Misery rolled off her sister like the stench from a roadside carcass. Why was she the only one who felt it? She had no desire to become responsible for Lillitha’s well being.

  Marta found Lillitha lying on the cot alone. She looked around in surprise. “How did you manage to get rid of the hag and the drag?”

  She meant Lendenican and Iafrewn, of course.

  “Iafrewn’s physical examination is today. They should be gone until late afternoon, may Oman be praised for His small mercies.”

  “Fie, sister! Is it possible that you and I agree on something at long last?”

  “I know I’m being hateful but I can’t help it.” Lillitha stared at the ceiling of the tent and sighed. “They just make me so...tired.”

  “Aye,” Marta agreed, plopping down on the edge of the cot. “Iafrewn is a complete ninny. And Lendenican!”

  When Lilli didn’t respond, Marta poked her. “Come on, sister...aren’t you even going to tell me it’s wrong to make fun of Oman’s cadia?”

  A bitter taste flooded Marta’s mouth as she caught a flash of something hard and metallic. She knew the taste instinctively, but could hardly believe it.
Anger—from Lilli?

  She had often wondered if Yanna and her sister conversed without words in the same way the cadia had spoken to Marta that long ago night at the dinner table. Cautiously, Marta lowered her guard and allowed her sister’s thoughts to flood over her. They came in a slow, cold tide of wretchedness that was difficult for Marta not to fight. This kind of despair was antithetical to every fiber of Marta’s being.

  Why are you angry?

  Lilli’s eyes flew up in surprise and she stared at Marta for a long time. Then she closed her eyes once more as if deciding none of it mattered very much anyway. She laid her arm over her face.

  I’m not angry.

  Yes, you are. I can feel it. I thought you were just unhappy and afraid, but now I can feel that you’re angry as well. The unhappy and afraid part, I understand, but—

  Do you really think you do? Oh, Marta....

  The last was nearly a wail, causing water to well in Marta’s eyes.

  “Talk to me, Lilli.... Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Why should you care?” Lilli rolled over onto her stomach, burying her face in the cushions. “I know what you think of me.”

  “You’re right. You were always such a ninny and always so scriving perfect. Well, now you’re miserable and not very perfect and I feel sorry for you. Besides, your unhappiness keeps...I don’t know...leaking over into my head and I’m sick of it. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since we got here.”

  Lilli lifted her head. She sniffled, curiosity momentarily distracting her. “Really? You can feel it that strongly?”

  Marta nodded.

  “Maybe it’s because we’re sisters. Yanna always said it was one of the strongest bonds. But I never heard of two in the same family being tadomani.”

  Marta frowned. Lillitha was doing it again, wandering off into cadian foolishness instead of confronting the reality at hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Lillitha said, “I never knew that annoyed you so.”