“I said I had news. After our conversation in the carriage, and after seeing how you two did in the Throne Room, I managed to send a magicked piece of parchment to Rhodopalais, like the invitation to the ball that was sent to you.”
Ash dropped her spoon with a slop. “Really? What did it say? Vanita, is she.. Is she-”
“She is alive. Her writ back was brief. But she seemed of sound mind and resolve. She’s a brave woman, your sister. I intend to ensure that she survives your stupidity today. She deserves that much.”
As if he had said too much, the duke abruptly nodded, then left, without finishing his gruel. Ash and Derrick stared at each other.
“He’s right, you know,” said Derrick at last. “If you weigh up acting like a simpering maid versus Vanita surviving this, well…”
“You are right. It’s just… Oh, Derrick, it’s so difficult. And you’re a man. What do you know of it?”
“I’m a servant, Ash. What do you think I do each day of my life?”
“You are right it’s just… Oh, Derrick, it’s so difficult. And you’re a man, what do you know of it?
“I’m a servant Ash. I ‘happened to have been born’ a lower class. What do you think I do each day of my life?”
Ash looked down. A softer, gentler Derrick took her hand a moment later. He would never have dared to do such in their own home, but in this stronghold of propriety, he’d done it twice in one week.
“Think of Vanita,” he whispered into her ear.
The room misted over. “I… I cannot… Every time I think of her I just want to stay in my rooms and weep. I am useful for nothing. Whenever I do think of her it’s as though someone has forced a glacier down onto my throat and chest, I cannot breathe. I’m so afraid, Derrick…”
“Use that fear. I’m certainly no learned man but, well, glaciers sounds powerful. Use it to push you forward. She’s waiting for you.”
As her eyes dried, the room began to clear, and she nodded. They had finished their gruel, and Derrick stood to go. She wanted to go to her rooms now, shut herself in and see no one for hours. The thought spurred her on.
Please be waiting for me, Vee, her heart whispered as they left.
Chapter Five
Wounds need to be cleaned
It was time. She knew it was. And still she was afraid.
Vanita stared at her face in the broken remains of the looking glass, trying to will herself to be brave. Even the heroes in the few adventure stories she had read required their bandages to be changed and dressed every day, and she was certainly not one of them. She couldn’t even face her own bleeding, her own loss.
“Do it,” her bandaged reflection seemed to say. But it was no use. She turned away.
Perhaps she could do it later and do something less taxing for now. She had not eaten yet and the sight of where her eye had been would surely make her feel faint. The room had become their whole centre of existence, practically, and it was a mess.
“Come Mother,” she said to the silent woman next to her. “Let’s tidy up.”
The crockery littered everywhere had to go downstairs, but could be piled together for now and put at the door. Vanita’s hands still overreached and caught empty air often, but they were soon made right again.
“Look how much better it looks, Mother! This tidying thing is satisfying. I might do it every day.” Her mother stared at her blearily, smiling a foggy smile.
Vanita made sure to dress her every day at least, and it was probably one of the things that took the longest. The old woman would at first that this strange woman trying to undress her, would raise her twig-like arms and shield her face, murmuring incomprehensibly. That had been very difficult to watch, the first day. Yesterday it had been the grey frilled house dress and today was the fussier maroon one. Vanita mostly rotated just the two, as they had been what her Mother had chosen most often. They were the ones in best repair.
“How about wearing something different today, Mother? There is – oh, look! Do you remember this? This is the blue dress you would wear at parties that I wanted to wear when I grew up. Do you remember? I tore a hole in it when I was small, I had gone into your cupboard and… It’s a bit shabby now, and it’s not a day dress but, well, who cares? Shall we put it on you, Mother? What do you say?”
“Hmm,” said Mother.
Vanita didn’t mind it, really she didn’t, most of the time. But she crossed over to her mother and sat looking into her face. She put the blue froth of the dress under her mother’s weathered hand, so she could feel the fabric. And she watched her, for any spark, any sign of recognition. Any retort about the stupidity of wearing party dresses at the end of the world, and in the daytime too. Her daughter’s frivolity. Her daughter’s weakness. Anything.
But there was nothing.
“Mother?”
“Hmm?”
“Mother?”
“Hmm.”
“We need to get you a new sound to make. You would always “hmm” when I was an especially colossal disappointment. That “hmm” meant you were cross, but I didn’t dignify a conversation about it. And you “hmmed” at Ash a lot and she was so good to us. So, no more “hmm’, alright?”
“Hmm.”
Vanita looked down as a hot stinging started where her left eye had been. Tears hurt, they burned. And even though her one eye was gone, when she looked at her mother now, both eyes still wanted to cry.
“I’m going to take the crockery downstairs,” she said stiffly and left.
Once Vanita got to the kitchen, there was a piece of white parchment there on the table. It reminded her of that first day the invitation to the ball arrived. She shuddered but managed to put down the saucers and cups without breaking anything and found herself drawn to the parchment, its startling whiteness.
Dearest Vanita,
I am writing to inform you that your sister had her first war council meeting this morning.
Your sister is… well, she certainly has a strong will, and I am sure she will succeed here in no time…
Vanita, forgive me. I am not writing to tell you of Ash’s success. The Vanita, forgive me. I am not writing to tell you of Ash’s success. The truth is I am writing to you because it calms me. I had kept a journal secretly every day for many years before the Expansion Project, but when paper started to become precious I did away with such luxuries. But writing to you feels like it might be alright. I think it is needed, for Ash and for you to know that the other one is safe, and I can get my peace there.
Also, and don’t ask me how I know this Vanita, but I somehow know that you will understand. I can imagine your face looking at me, and it understands why I need to write. If I am wrong, please do not destroy the illusion! But I think I am not because I see your face every day.
I hope you are well, that you are taking care of yourself and not only of your mother. I know you, Vanita. Don’t ask me how but I do. And you need to take care of your own self before you can go looking at others and seeing who needs help.
Your sister, I am sure, sends you her best wishes and fondest regard, although I have not yet seen her today.
I do too.
With regard,
Lorin of Novrecourte
Take care of yourself before looking at others. Madame Cerentola’s religious book had said to “remove the grit from your own eye before looking to anyone else.”
Well, that was clear enough. Before she could change her mind, Vanita climbed the stairs, her hand on the bannister to speed her along. She burst into her mother’s bedroom without a word and went to look in her mother’s wardrobe again, this time for something white. All the bandages were white in the stories and, if she were going to do this, it should be right.
“I’m borrowing a scrap from this, Mother, hope you don’t mind. You never liked this dress anyway.”
When she was done, she faced the cracked looking glass again – the same one she and Ash had preened into after they’d been magicked ball gowns, half a li
fetime ago.
“Wounds need to be cleaned out with water, I think. And honey, Old Merta said that, but we have none. And fresh bandages every day and lots of cleaning,” she told the cracked reflection. One, two deep breaths and then her hands went behind her head and pulled the scraps of Ash’s dress down.
She looked away quickly and, suddenly light headed, she put the foul scraps and their discharge aside. She cupped up some water in trembling hands and managed to splash it all over before she found her eye. The sensation was immediate pain and immediate relief all at once: soothing coolness but hot sharpness behind. She sucked in breath and took up the new white scraps of her mother’s old dress in hand.
But something in Vanita made her stop, and slowly she lifted her head to the looking glass once more and faced herself. The ruin that had been her eye was red and puffed, seeping teary liquid down next to the delicate slope of her nose. It was horrific, but somehow not seeing it would have been worse. The rest of her face’s skin looked pale and smooth next to that darkness, her remaining eye shining brightly. It was perhaps the clearest she had ever seen her face, apart from that one eye, in her whole life.
“This is me now,” she said to the reflection in the glass and, without moving, the reflection seemed to nod. Satisfied, she bent her attention back to the bandage-rags, soaked them in more water and wrapped them around her head firmly.
Gouging pain rang through her head, and the bravery of the previous moment was gone. Without thinking, Vanita went crying like a child to the shell of her mother still lying on the bed.
She didn’t respond of course, but Vanita didn’t care. She took the weathered hands and thin arms and put them around herself, found the bony chest and snuggled in. “Mama,” she sobbed. The word came out of nowhere, out of fourteen years ago, when she had called her mother that before she’d put a stop to such childish words. “Mama, Mama” the nonsense word rolled around in her mouth again and again as the pain continued through her head and seemed to go out into all the world.
Dear Lorin,
It was nice to get your letter. I confess, it is good to have some conversation. My mother’s head was hit very hard on the day I am now calling “the carrior day” to myself – you may remember her being unconscious when you arrived. Since she woke she has not been herself. I cannot get a word, nor any sign of recognition for her. I feel selfish for even penning these words but, whatever Gods there are, help me - it is difficult.
Please do not stop writing, if such luxuries as parchment and ink allow. When I read your words I am there with you, and you here with me. It takes me out of the pain of the moment while at the same time, curiously, enables me to process the moment for the first time. That is a magick to rival a Pathfinder’s, I would say.
It also helps with the pain. With these injuries - some mornings it is bearable, some it is not. Sometimes it feels as though my world is pain, my sun and moon and stars, and that is not how I want to live. When I read your words and compose my own in return, rolling off my mind just as smoothly as though you were standing here, for some reason, I forget to hurt.
I must go, the pumpkin needs chopping. It took me the better part of two hours to cleave off the smallest pieces the first time I attempted to feed us both – I now have it down to thirty minutes!
Fondest regards,
Vanita. Just Vanita
Chapter Six
Good women
Later, it was a more chastened Ash who left her rooms again.
She had slept, almost immediately, wetting her pillow with teary thoughts of Vanita for no time at all before she was lost in dreamless sleep. It was funny, but whenever Stepmother had been particularly difficult, or it had been a whole day without food and Vanita was upset, she would say: “I just need to lie down. Everything is better after a sleep.” Good lord, what had become of the world - she sleeping and Vanita out at Rhodopalais taking care of them both. They were turning into each other.
She knocked on the door meekly, biting back her feelings, and walked in.
It was a handsome room. Bold lined wallpaper peppered the walls with thick stripes of brown and white, gold thread-embroidered brown draperies accentuating a full window above shining wooden floors. It might have been a nobleman’s solar, or a wealthy merchant’s drawing room… Except for the fact that it was filled with women.
“Good evening,” said Ash to the women, dipping her head.
“Ashlynne,” the prettier brunette recovered first again, addressing her as if she were a servant. Well, she supposed she was a servant – this lot would only know of two kinds of women. And she certainly wasn’t one of them.
“This is a pleasant surprise, do sit down.”
She struggled for the name as she inclined her head in a nod. Something foreign. Italian? Yes, Bella something.
“Thank you… Lady Nargosi. That is too kind of you.”
The lady’s rosebud lips gave an arch smile. Ash could see that her choice of words had not fallen on deaf ears. She read Ash’s dress and posture like a book, saying nothing but letting Ash see her eyes travel up and down, surveying her.
The blonde one was more to the point: “You may sit over here, if you wish.”
Ash took the proffered seat and settled herself in for a long night. They were embroidering, of course they were, though what she didn’t particularly care to know. There was even a spinning wheel complete with handsome carved chair in one nearby corner. She stifled a yawn.
“You may have one of my rings, if you wish,” said the blonde quietly to her, offering an embroidery ring from next to her. Naomi, that was her name. It meant “sweet’, her mother had once told her. Well, we shall see, thought Ash to herself. She picked up the ring and began on her needlework.
“I’m to have two new dresses, Papa wouldn’t hear of me having only one.”
“How nice,” simpered the other dark-haired girl whose name Ash couldn’t for the life of her remember.
“Lovely,” agreed blonde Naomi. “And the weather has been mild, has it not?”
“Oh yes, much better.”
“So mild…”
They all looked at Ash expectantly. Conversation seemed to move in concentric circles here.
“Did you know that with needles just like these and a hoop, if you make the needle from Expansion iron, one can pierce carrior skin? You can skin the birds and sew them together for leather.”
The ladies all looked down again.
“How useful,” Naomi said at last, a little faintly.
This was more difficult than Ash had thought it would be. At least she knew how to embroider. As the other ladies began simpering at one another again, she turned inward, trusting the memory of muscle as her hand moved up and down methodically. It was soothing, she had to admit, as long as she shut her mind firmly to thoughts of the last time she had sat like this, trying to calm herself while next to her her sister’s body lay broken. Her sister, who may not even be alive anymore.
“Your needlework is good.”
Ash almost pricked herself as her head jerked up. She had almost forgotten there were other people present. “Thank you,” she said to the Naomi lady, and tried for a smile.
She looked up just in time to see the Bella lady calmly pick up one of the silken cushions and stab it with a knife.
“What the -” But before she could finish, the cushion was neatly cut around the seams with the little silver dagger that seemed to have come from nowhere. As though this were perfectly normal, Lady Bella held the squares up to the light.
“Yes, it will do nicely for the first dress, do you not think? Enough perhaps for the bodice. I do have such a little waist…”
The others cooed, and Ash tried to make similarly empty noises, her mind whirring. So, beneath all the posturing and primping, this was the truth. It wasn’t enough to make embroidery fun but, perhaps, it was enough to make it a bit interesting.
Perhaps she was judging these women too harshly before even knowing them. She though
t of Tarah in the kitchens – were they so different to her? She turned to Naomi Verraine, her blonde head bent low over her stitches.
“How long have you been at court, Naomi?”
It was meant to be a friendly question, but the lady looked up at Ash sharply, mistrust flaring on her pretty features.
“I am no stranger to court,” she said slowly. The words were a clear statement: “I have friends here and am not one to be picked on. I am protected.” But they also reminded Ash of the duke’s words: “everyone at court says everything for a reason, for some hidden use.” Or whatever he had said. Perhaps this woman thought Ash was trying to make an ally out of her. Or to nose out how many friends or enemies she had.
Good lord, no wonder there was no real conversation. Never mind then. She would try something else. “I have not spun in years… Shall I perhaps try the spinning wheel?”
But as she stood, a hand gripped her arm.
“Oh no… That, that is the queen’s chair. And her wheel.”
“Oh. I am sorry, I did not mean to give offence. Is the queen not joining us tonight?”
One could have heard a needle drop, and many very nearly did. She had said something wrong, she could see it – each woman’s face whiter than the last. Slowly, they turned to each other. It was Bella Nargosi who replied:
“The queen is dead. We thought all the enlarged rats had been eaten by the carrior owls, but there was one left, in the palace pipes. It bit her. Now, she is no more.” The other two bowed their heads deeply, then looked at the empty chair.
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