by Carol A Park
“Forgive me, Da,” Ivana said, “but you don’t seem keen to provide this…service.”
Patli jerked her head. “I do this because at one point, it put food in my stomach and the stomach of my children. If it weren’t for irresponsible nobles, me and mine would be living on the streets right now, if not dead.”
Ivana hesitated. “Your husband?”
She snorted. “Good-for-nothing man who dragged me to this backwater region seeking riches and then left me alone with three little ones when he didn’t find them.”
Ivana blinked. That was terrible. She could never imagine her own father doing such a thing. “But does the shop not provide—”
“Too late for that now,” Patli said. “I’m one of only a handful of apothecaries in all of Setana who knows anything about seeing this done, at least safely. If I refused, the nobles would see me out of business as soon as the coins were back in their greedy hands. They don’t like bastards. Not good for anyone.”
Ivana rubbed her forearms. She had never thought of herself as living a privileged life, but it struck her deeply that such things had never affected her. They lived comfortably off her father’s income educating Lord Kadmon’s children. She had never known what it was to be hungry, or to fear lack of shelter or warmth over the winter.
“Sometimes,” the apothecary said softly, as if to herself, “one does what one must do to survive.” She finally turned back, holding a steaming mug. “Now,” she said. “Before we continue, you need to know what you’re getting yourself into. We’ll need a few hours. I trust you have that?”
Ivana nodded. She was glad she’d splurged on the carriage.
“This isn’t going to be pleasant. Expect heavy bleeding, pain, weakness, and when all is said and done, a terrible headache. But it will cause you to miscarry.”
Ivana’s stomach churned. “Is—is it safe?”
A not-quite-smile twisted Patli’s lips. “For the mother.”
The word, a word Ivana had associated with warmth and care, now ran cold into her gut.
Mother. She hadn’t yet thought of herself in that way, yet that was what she would be if this continued. And yet the father would be no father. How was that fair? How was that right? And yet…
“Hopefully,” Patli continued, “you will be wiser going forward, yes?”
Ivana’s throat closed at the reminder of her folly. He had beguiled and seduced her, and she—she!—had fallen for it, allowed herself to be used, against every shred of common sense, done everything, everything he had asked.
An unbidden rush of air escaped her lips, and something fierce began to burn within her.
No. Not this time. She wouldn’t let him have the satisfaction, would take his blood money and use it to raise the child he so despised.
She stood up so abruptly, the chair nearly toppled over. “No.”
Patli raised an eyebrow.
She breathed in deeply, wanting the words to come out confident, bold, but found that her voice quivered nonetheless. “I-I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time, Da, but I…” She choked on her words for a moment and then spit them out. “I can’t do this.”
Patli studied her. “You realize that you won’t get a setan more from Gan Gildas’ treasury?”
Her resolve wavered. “I…” But she could force no other words past the lump in her throat.
Patli nodded, and then she slid aside a number of the coins still lying on the table. “I’m sorry to say, I still have to take my payment. The herb that makes this work so well is rare and quite illegal, as it grows outside Setana. I pay a high price to have it imported under the noses of the Conclave.” She gestured to the abandoned mug. “I can’t get it back now.”
Ivana bit her lip. “I understand,” she whispered.
Patli swept the remaining coins back into the purse. “Lucky for you, Lord Airell’s carelessness and arrogance has its benefits as well.” She gave the purse, still heavy, back to Ivana.
A bribe. Payment to dispose of a bastard, and payment to silence the mother.
To make her fade away.
The flame that had spurred her to this decision sputtered as self-loathing rose in hot tears behind her eyes.
She bowed to Patli and hastened to leave. She didn’t want the apothecary to see her cry.
She would reserve that for the lonely carriage ride home.
The two hours of thinking about how she was going to tell her parents and deep breathing to calm herself were wasted.
Izel was waiting for her at the end of the path leading to their huddle of homes, and she was pacing.
Ivana wasn’t given to swearing, but she did then, even if only in her head. That could only mean that her parents had found out she wasn’t working at the inn today.
Her carefully crafted lead-ins to telling her parents would be worth nothing now.
She resumed the deep breathing, hoping she could at least appear outwardly calm as she approached Izel.
Izel’s face melted from worried to relief to glee. “Ana! You are in so much trouble.”
Ivana hadn’t even told Izel that she had lied about her planned whereabouts that day; in retrospect, perhaps she should have. Izel had safeguarded the secret of Ivana’s romance all this time; why would this have been different?
Only she knew why.
Ivana didn’t trust herself to speak. She didn’t want to waste whatever composure she had stored up on Izel. So she merely glanced at her and walked by.
Izel dogged her footsteps. “Was this another secret meeting with—?”
“Hush,” Ivana said, though it hardly mattered now.
“I didn’t say anything, if that’s what you think.” When Ivana didn’t respond, Izel offered an explanation anyway. “Mama and I were in town this afternoon buying cloth for new dresses, and she decided to stop by the inn to see how you were doing.”
It had been inevitable that something like that would happen eventually. She had been lucky until then.
Perhaps it would have been better had she been found out sooner. Then she wouldn’t be in this state.
In retrospect, she had been a fool.
The purse in her pocket was like a lump of lead smacking against her thigh, reminding her of the disgrace she was about to bring upon herself and her entire family.
Had she made the right decision? She was short on good decisions lately; it was as though she didn’t even know her own mind, which she used to prize.
So much for a sound mind. She was a stupid girl, a stupid, foolish girl.
Tears pricked at her eyes again, and she blinked them back.
Not again, not yet. She had to hold it together a little longer.
Both her mother and father were waiting for her as she walked in the door. Her father turned around from near his lab equipment, and her mother rose from the couch, the shirt she had been mending falling off her lap onto the floor. Izel slipped by and loitered near the door of their room—no doubt in case she needed to make a hasty exit.
Her mother rushed to hug her. “Ana! Where have you been? We’ve been so worried!” She pulled back, and the words tumbled out of her. “Why did you lie about working today? Whatever could you have been thinking? Whatever could you have been doing? We were so worried!” She took in a sharp breath, and her tone changed. “You had better have a good explanation. Your father had to miss a tutoring session to go look for you!” She swung her head to pin Izel with a glare.
Izel tugged on her pendant and sank a little deeper into the doorframe of their room.
No doubt she had been interrogated thoroughly and hadn’t even given her parents her best guess, which would have been a good one.
Her father said nothing, but his eyes reflected the worst thing Ivana could have seen there—disappointment. Not at the lost session. At the insensibility of his sensible daughter.
Oh, if only he knew.
He would know. There was no way around it now.
Her stomach tightened again. She tried to spe
ak, but the words wouldn’t come out. How could they? No rehearsals could prepare her for this. She didn’t even know where to begin.
Best to get it over with.
“I’m with child,” she said softly, but loud enough for them to hear. The last thing she wanted to do was repeat the words.
The silence in the room mimicked the suffocating weight of her shame. Then at last, her father blinked and shook his head. Ivana could almost hear his internal monologue. No, he would say. Not my daughter.
“Were you forced?” he asked instead, always the pragmatist.
She shook her head, and he closed his eyes.
Not my sensible, intelligent daughter.
I’m so sorry, Papa! she wanted to cry out in response, but her tongue stuck fast.
Her mother sank back down onto the couch, treading on the forgotten shirt on the way, her hand to her mouth.
Izel’s eyes widened in shock and then—oh, how terrible it was to watch—there was the loss. As much as she harassed Ivana, Izel had always looked up to her, despite Airell.
But this.
This was too much, even for Izel, her equal parts carefree and careless sister.
This was the lowest of shame.
Ivana wished someone would speak. Wished everyone would stop staring at her.
Her father pressed his lips together, shook himself, and strode over to his writing desk, purpose in his steps. He opened a drawer, lifted out a sheet of white pressed paper, the best kind, reserved for correspondence with the university or nobles. “How far along?” he asked.
“I-I think around five months.”
He grimaced. “Well, there will be no avoiding a scandal,” he said. “But it will fade, soon enough. I’ll send an entreaty to the boy’s parents and insist upon an immediate marriage. No boy is going to seed my daughter and not share the consequences.”
Her mother still sat, silent, hand over her mouth, tears shimmering in her eyes.
Her father sat, picked up his pen, and held it at the ready over the inkwell. “Well, what is the boy’s name, Ivana? Come. Let’s get this over with.”
Ivana met Izel’s eyes. Why did it all seem so clear in hindsight? What had she been thinking? How could she have ever thought he loved her? How had she ever been so foolish as to think he would marry her, a commoner—a commoner in good standing, yes, but still a commoner, a nobody.
She wanted to sink into the floor, to cover her horrible, seductive body, the heat of shame pricking every part of her.
“Ivana?”
“Airell,” she said. “It’s—It was Lord Airell, Gan Gildas’ eldest.”
The room went dead silent. The tapping of her father’s pen against the side of the inkwell, the soft rustle of her mother worrying at a handful of her skirt—gone.
Ivana didn’t dare look at him.
“You realize that you won’t get a setan more from Gan Gildas’ treasury?”
Her normally levelheaded, calm father simply couldn’t take it anymore. She jumped as the sound of his pen snapping against the desk broke the silence. His chair scraped back against the floor. “Gan Gildas’ eldest? Gan Gildas’ eldest? Surely, you jest. Tell me you jest!” He didn’t wait for a response. He knew she wouldn’t jest about that. “How could you be so utterly foolish? How could you have so little sense?”
She cast her eyes down. “I’m sorry, Papa,” she whispered, the tears she had been holding back finally spilling over.
He didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he strode from one end of the room and back. “It’s one thing to have a dalliance with the stable-boy. At least then there would be a good chance of marriage. But a lord? What were you thinking? Why, Ana, why? Of all the imprudent, thoughtless—”
Her mother finally collected herself. “Galvyn,” she said firmly. She stood up, paced to Ivana, and put one hand on her shoulder. “This isn’t helping.”
Her father brought himself up short and turned to face both of them.
Once he stopped talking, Ivana drew out the pouch of coins and held it out. “He gave me the money to get rid of the child.” When he didn’t take it, she walked over and put it on his desk, trembling, trying to radiate strength, and failing. “I went—I went to the apothecary. Today. That’s where I was.” More tears spilled over. “But I couldn’t do it.” Doubt seeped into her. Why? Why hadn’t she just done it? “I-I… Did I make the wrong decision?”
Uncertainty, confusion, fear—they conspired together to suffocate her.
It was like the year of the sky-fire when she had been seven years old, and Izel not yet six, and a tear had formed behind the walls of Lord Kadmon’s estate. She could still remember the sound of the bloodbane’s enraged shrieks at finding itself trapped, the rending of wood as it spent its fury on structures nearby, the shouts of Lord Kadmon’s guards as they bravely tried to corner it and herd it through the gate, so it could flee into the countryside beyond the walls…their screams as they died.
It had taken them five guards’ lives and three days to manage it. Three days of hiding, listening, praying it wouldn’t come in their direction.
And she had been but a child. She felt like that child now, confused, scared, suffocated…just wanting her father and mother to tell her it would turn out okay.
Her father looked down at her face and deflated. He hesitated, then drew her into his arms in a rough embrace. “I’ll do everything in my power to make this right,” he promised, and then he kissed the top of her head.
He didn’t answer her question, one way or the other, and Ivana could do nothing else but weep.
Chapter Nine
For the first time, it was Ivana staring smugly down at Llyr, instead of the other way around.
Granted, she had cheated.
Llyr groaned and rolled to the side, clutching at his crotch. “Ground rules. Unfair move. Doesn’t count.”
“And the point of all this is for me to learn fair combat?” she replied. The situations she would be using these skills in would be anything but fair.
He opened one eye to look at her, and then he sat up and draped his arms over his knees. His eyes flicked to her face, her clenched fists, her tense posture. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Did I offend you?”
“Stop calling me that!” The urge to kick him again—in the face, in his groin, anywhere she could connect and cause him more pain—was so strong he must have seen it, because he flinched back.
He studied her for a moment and then stood up. For a moment, she thought she might get an apology out of him, but no such luck. “I think training is done for the day,” he said instead.
“What? What about weapons?” They typically started with hand-to-hand and then for the past month or so, had ended with knife fighting.
“You think I’m putting anything resembling a weapon in your hand right now, as angry as you are?”
She blinked and stepped back from him. His constant crude remarks about her appearance and suggestive comments about things they could do outside training made her angry, yes, but he was right.
She wasn’t certain what she might do if he put a blade in her hand and he made one more crass remark.
What was happening to her?
She hadn’t wanted to turn into a monster. She wanted to not feel at all. Was trading despair for rage helpful?
She swiped at a drop of sweat threatening to drip into her eyes and noted with dissatisfaction that her hand trembled.
Fine, she thought stubbornly. She was tired and hot and didn’t feel like training anymore today anyway. Spring was drawing to a close, and for the first time this year, she could feel the near-summer sun beating down on her mercilessly.
She turned away from Llyr, meaning to set off toward Elidor’s home, but instead spotted the man himself headed her way. He occasionally stopped by to watch her train—to mark her progress, she presumed—so his presence wasn’t a surprise.
She met him at the edge of the field.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Did he? Interesting.” He waved his hand in the vague direction of his house. “Go home then. I’ll meet you there.”
Ivana had expected him to be more irritated at her proclamation. To say something about how she was wasting time and money.
She dutifully started in the direction of Elidor’s house, but not before throwing a glance back toward Elidor. He was conversing with Llyr intently.
Perhaps this was the end of it. She couldn’t succeed as a scribe, a tutor, a daughter, a sister. What made her think she would succeed as a heartless killer?
Misery quickened her steps. Several months of training with Llyr had done nothing to abate the despair that crept in at night. The sharp edge of her knife still waited to give her relief.
Ivana stood in front of Elidor’s desk, feeling like a misbehaving student about to be scolded by the school master. It had been a while since she had allowed such a juvenile emotion to grip her, which in turn made her sulk more.
Elidor watched her in silence for what must have been fifteen minutes. She didn’t know what he was hoping to find by studying her face for so long. She wanted to break the standoff, but she refused to be the first to speak. Some of her mood was simple stubborn petulance.
Finally, Elidor spoke. “Llyr tells me that you delivered an unfair blow today.”
She grunted. “It seems to me that’s the best kind for my purposes.”
He nodded, and for the first time, there was approval in his eyes. “Correct. There are no rules when it comes to the type of fights we might engage in, other than to not leave yourself in a compromising position.” He rapped the top of his desk with his knuckles. “Still. You let your anger control you, instead of the other way around. You must always be the one with the control.”
She gritted her teeth. “I’m sorry, Dal. But he makes me uncomfortable. Can we find some other trainer?”
“Uncomfortable?”
“He’s always…” She waved her hand in the air. “Making rude comments and such.”