“I suppose what you’re saying,” the duke put in smoothly “is that the noble-born ladies of the castle could, if and when the Expansion iron weapons eradicate our carrior problem, become valuable assets once again. A lady such as Bella Nargosi of House Nargosi, for example. She has Southern connections, an alliance of marriage from there using her would be advantageous. It would be a pity to lose an asset like that to something silly like a mob assault. Self-defence would preserve her, value. That’s what you’re saying, is it not?”
“Ye-es?”
“And what about the Lady Naomi Verraine?” asked Rize, smirking. “Surely you’re as interested in her, um, value, for some reason, Cousin?”
The king chortled lecherously in his chair, then remembered the seriousness of the argument. “That’s a no, Carrior Girl. Next on the agenda?”
“Sorry about that Ash,” Derrick said to her quietly once the meeting was over. She blinked up at him in surprise. She was surprised because his mentioning it made her realise that the king’s insults didn’t sting so much anymore, but she was more surprised that he’d mentioned it at all. It was the most he’d said to her in days.
“Thanks Derrick, it’s fine though.”
“Your team, well, they seem to be doing great out there. Well done.”
“Thanks – yours too.”
“Good, good. Well, nice seeing you.”
And then he was gone. Ash stared at Derrick’s empty seat for a minute. “Nice seeing you” were words she’d never thought she’d ever hear him say. Oh well. She waited long enough to ensure she wouldn’t see Derrick in the corridor again, then left herself.
“Ash!”
She was halfway down the stairs when Rize was suddenly just a few steps behind her. She was too tired for conversation and, to be honest, still rather unimpressed with the way he’d “royal ordered” her around in front of the men, but she turned around and smiled anyway.
“Morning Rize.”
“Thanks for waiting. Are you free currently for me to show you something? I believe there’s to be no fieldwork or digging today?”
“No there isn’t, so I suppose I am. What did you have in mind?”
***
It was a dark room, large and cold and drab, several floors lower than Ash had ever been in the castle. Empty iron birdcages and prisoners” cages swung empty in the high rafters, and the uncarpeted flagstones chilled her through her shoes. In far corners, various glass vessels on wooden shelves reflected what little light there was. She could not imagine the Rize she knew spending much time in this place, so far away from the sun he tanned so easily in. “What is this place?”
“This is the Pathfinders” experimentation room. I’ve only been allowed in here quite recently. Since I am trying to reverse effects of the Expansion Project, they’ve let me have open access, and it’s very interesting. They’re very supportive, they ask me what I’ve learned nearly every day.”
“I’m sure.” Ash wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm “I should be getting back. What did you want to show me?”
His black eyes flickered in the dim light, like they were the only living things around. “It’s so interesting – I wanted you to see it first… Look here. This is a sketch of mine, from years ago. As a sort of project, a hobby really, I had been studying fish. This is the Carassius Auratus – do you know it?”
“A what? This in the sketch is a normal goldfish - yes, we had them at the estate. What about them?”
“Well, I found that with pure water and a big environment, with high oxygen levels, that failed to produce something invisible they exude out their skin that makes them stop growing. They grew to as large as the pond that I put them in! So, I started thinking recently… what if we could isolate that thing and give it to carriors?”
Invisible things exuded out of skin? Sounded like witchcraft or, more likely, Pathfinders” sinister magick. “Um… it’s an interesting thought Rize, but no one has any fish anymore. Also, then wouldn’t the carriors grow as big as the whole sky?”
“Ha! Excellent question!” He grabbed her arm and yanked her towards the gloom where, she found, the room kept going another few yards she hadn’t seen before. “Not if you’re careful… Look!”
It was the rock pigeon, staring at her silently from a wrought iron cage. Its feathers looked as though someone had dragged it through a thorn bush backwards, and it was leaning to one side as though it had hurt a foot.
“Rize!”
“What? This bird is perfect. A fully grown carrior, but not a complex one like the predators, and if I’m right it’s a nesting female too.”
“She’s pregnant? You’re sure?”
“It’s not a she, Ash, it’s an “it’, but no I’m not sure. We’ll find out though, soon enough.”
“Rize, this bird is hurt. It needs salve and a bigger cage. When are you going to release her?”
“Release? Why would I release it? The cage is the whole point of what I’ve been trying to tell you. If I can get this carrior to ingest some of the fish stuff somehow, I can maybe get it to actually shrink to its environment! Or give it to the eggs once they’re out, and then those won’t grow more than the size of their cages! We could solve the Expansion problem, isn’t that wonderful? Ash?”
But Ash was almost at the door already, just in time to see a tell-tale hem of an orange robe whisk around the corner out of sight. She looked back at the dim room and saw that there were many looking glasses on the walls – a strange luxury for such a dark room.
“Rize, didn’t you tell me that the courtyard glass roof was invented by the Pathfinders?”
“Oh yes, they invent many things.”
“And you said it could be made to be reflective or not reflective, right?”
“Yes, why?”
“No reason.”
***
The rock pigeon’s listless eyes, the faint glittering of the glasses on the walls and in Rize’s eyes… It had all made a twisted tangle in Ash’s head. She found herself feeling sick, as she headed up the nearest stairs. By the time she knew where she was going, she was already there.
“Back again for some more?” The servant girl Tarah raised an eyebrow beneath her fiery mop of hair.
Ash nodded. “May I help again? Just do glazes or something?”
But this time Tarah wasn’t letting her off so easy as last time. “Why?”
Ash sighed. “It will sound stupid if I say it aloud.”
“Try anyway.”
“Because it smells like home here, in the kitchens. I had someone who, who was home, who worked in the kitchens. She always smelled of flour, even long after we ran out of flour. So, these kitchens smell like her and nowhere else in the castle does. That’s why.”
“Fair enough,” said Tarah, after a pause. “But perhaps you may want to put an apron over that pretty silk dress first.”
An hour later Ash’s shoulders were aching from rolling out pastry with a pin – it had been nearly two years – but the other knots in her shoulders, ones from war council meetings and stupid princes, were almost gone.
“You’re good, you know, for a cook who hasn’t been in it in a while. You roll well.”
“Thank you Tarah. I always wanted to open my own little shop one day, on a good corner off the local market.”
“Me too! I had a spot picked out and everything. Near the fountain?”
“That’s a lovely spot. I wanted near the old main church, since it got that traffic on Sundays?”
“Oh yes, good idea… Do you miss it?”
“What, church? Markets?”
“No. Having dreams.”
It wasn’t a question Ash had been anticipating. She breathed out heavily, finding her eyes pulled back to the dough and avoiding Tarah’s bright blue gaze. “I used to. I put them away for a long time, and then there was a ball –”
“Oh yea, you’re famous from that ball alright!”
“Yes, well… Around then, I started thinkin
g about dreams again, and missing having a life in which you thought beyond surviving the next hour. I missed it then. And now… well, now I mostly just miss my sister.”
“Didn’t know you had a sister. I had one too. Tell me, what was she like?”
“Oh, she’s not… I mean, she could well be now, I haven’t seen her in near a month. But she was lovely. She had a kind mind, a pretty face, gentle and sweet. But not in the boring way of ladies in stories. She wasn’t all dull and lifeless, waiting for some hero to rescue her. She was just… good.”
“Yea. My sister was the definition of good when she was snatched up – eight years old.”
“Oh no… I’m so sorry.”
“Nah, it’s alright. Well, now it is. One o” the girls in the pantry said something and she’s right, you know. Little Merrian would’ve grown up to look like me, pretty like as not, but more so.”
Ash started, unused to hearing girls talking about their looks so, but Tarah only shrugged, clearly hadn’t meant it as a compliment to herself. “No, Merrian would have been pretty alright, and pretty is no good thing for a kitchen girl to be. It would’ve been just a couple years more “fore the noblemen start noticing, and start taking what they like. Better to die than that.”
Ash looked at Tarah for what seemed like the first time, taking in her slender waist, pale skin beneath coquettish freckles. The rare red hair, the bright blue eyes. It had never occurred to her what that might mean for Tarah. She hesitated a moment, then placed her floury hand on Tarah’s right hand holding her pin.
“I can teach you how to fight,” she said in a low voice. But the moment was gone, and Tarah yanked her hand quickly away. “And what, get meself hanged for some made-up charges after some sod gets one in the nobleman’s nest eggs? No thanks. Listen, thanks for your help but, if it’s all the same, I’d rather do the fillings alone. There’s actually some linens I was supposed to take to the Lady Nargosi’s quarters, perhaps you could do that for me?”
“Of course.” Ash was no good at the intricate, wordless exchanges of other women, but this one even she understood. It was her job not to say anything from this point onward, if she wanted to keep a new friend. Still, following protocol was no strength of hers, as had been established these past few weeks, and so she tried once more when she was near the door, peering at Tarah over a pile of freshly white sheets:
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. I just… I wanted you to hear out loud from at least one person that it wasn’t right, what happened to you.”
A small, fiery smile. “Thanks, Ashlynne. You’d make a good friend. A lousy servant, but a good friend.”
With that, Ash turned out into the corridor, almost dropping the blasted sheets as she went. She wasn’t hurt or angry, actually, at having been so clearly dismissed. It was surprising - a month ago, she would have been tempted to punch Tarah in the face, for all that had happened to her. Now, it seemed she was easier to soften, more difficult to offend. Perhaps that was what castle life was all about Grief, but Vanita would have been good at this, she couldn’t help thinking.
She knew her way enough now to make good time and got to the ladies-in-waiting wing sooner than expected. As she approached what she thought was the right door from the servants” entrance, muffled giggling and squealing suddenly hushed. She frowned. Ash knocked, but there was no answer. It may just be an indiscretion, but… It may be something else. Something like what happened to Tarah. Steeling herself, she opened the door.
It was a sunny room in riotous shades of pink and white. The windows had all been flung open, a wind streaming in, and at least three different girls, including Bella Nargosi, were squealing and running around as a bare-chested Derrick stood, blindfolded, in the centre of the room.
She was the first to spot Ash. A high colour from the excitement had bloomed rosy in her cheeks, and her dark curls were wantonly loose upon her shoulders. She looked viciously, inanely lovely, and as she saw Ash, she bared a few shiny white teeth at her.
“Ashlynne,” she said nonchalantly, smirking as Derrick started and fumbled with his blindfold, ripping it off. “We were just playing Blind Man’s Bluff.” She looked her up and down. “Since when do you deliver laundry?”
“Since now. And, probably, never again. Good day to you all.”
“Don’t you want to stay and play? We’re taking turns but… you can jump the queue if you like. Finder’s keepers, after all.”
Ash looked hard at Derrick, trying to see some shadow of a frown, some of the former defiance he would flare into when she would so much as look at him funny. But there was nothing there. Just a blank, smooth slate for Bella Nargosi to paint on. A painted man. She looked down too. Someone had ripped open a pillow, she realised distractedly, there were angelic white feathers all over the floor.
“Well, Ashlynne? What’s it going to be?” One of the other ladies dared to ask, she did not know who. But it was enough to turn her chin up to meet their eyes again.
“It’s going to be dead birds and long, boring meetings for me. There are still people dying in more immediate ways out there, while you kill men in other ways in here. I’ll take the form of killing that I know.”
As Ash walked the nobles” corridor back to her rooms, she found herself looking down at the floor like a servant, even though she didn’t mean to. Blind Man’s Bluff… She had always thought it was a stupid name. You weren’t blind, not in the way someone like Vanita was bling. You had just covered decided to cover your own eyes up like some fool, so you couldn’t see what was right in front of you.
Chapter Seventeen
Where would you go
Tangled sheets, tangled sleep. Someone had said that once, on the side of the waking. Who? She was old, kindly, the name was just there… But it was gone, though the tangles remained.
Vanita felt her body toss and turn, even as her mind floated orb-like beyond it. She could sense herself dreaming, but it wasn’t enough to make it stop, the sweaty cotton tangle kept her fast in its hold. Blurred images jumbled around her until she felt like she had fallen into a river and was drowning in its bubbling unease. Still, she did not wake.
‘Remember Gelanne,” said a voice far away and near at the same time, another one from the side of the waking, but also belonging here. “Remember,” said the voice, more clearly and like a real thing, like it was trying to tell her something important. It pushed her on, pushed her in, and as she felt the old cotton against her face’s skin she at the same time felt another fabric taut against the skin of her mind and, unthinking, she broke through and fell in.
All of a sudden, her dream coalesced into a vivid scene that was immediately shattered into a million wooden splinters. A memory, of the bird coming through… No. With aching dread and certainty, she watched, immobile, as the scene sharpened and sharpened over the grey form of her withered mother in her crumpled bed, her bony form clear in every detail. And every detail clear as the ceiling split apart, the house, the world, as the second carrior dived in.
Wood, more hard wood, and Vanita opened her eye. She had fallen face-first into her bedroom floor, and she did not even feel it stinging as she rubbed her faced. So powerful it had been. “Remember Gelanne” she said into the darkness, and suddenly knew what she must do.
It was only her second night staying in her own room again by herself, but it did not matter. She raced the wooden floorboards with her feet and the walls with her hands as she ran across the landing to the other door. It was the dead of night, Mother would be sleeping. She didn’t care. She knew for once what was real, and she knew with the same sharp clarity of her dream that her heart was in that crumpled bed, in that dusty room, in that bony woman who had never cared about her. It didn’t matter. She ran.
“Mother!”
“Good lord! Vanita?”
“Get up, get up now!”
“What?”
“Get out of that bed or I will drag you out! We’re leaving. Now.”
To her credit, th
e old woman must have heard something of the Path in Vanita’s voice, because she stumbled out of bed and, soon, they were fumbling down the stairs.
“Put my hand on your shoulder and guide me, I’ll go faster. I can’t do the stairs well without my eye.” It did not occur to Vanita until much later that she would never have talked to her mother this way before. In that moment, there was only the dream and the night.
“Where are we going Vanita?”
“Out the door, take the front parlour’s broken wall, it’s the fastest.” When her mother stopped and stiffened, crashing Vanita into her, she started shouting.
“I have never asked you for anything and you take and take! Mother, please, I will not ask you again, get us out of this house!”
The old woman was just navigating them through the start of the front maze when the night-dimmed shape of a falling bird soared over them, smashing their house to pieces.
***
Vanita saw just the beginning of her mind’s premonition, the shadow of the thing, before the actual bird struck. The shadow of projectile wooden splinters flying invisibly through the air came next.
“Run!” She yelled to her mother even as the deafening sound of the carrior’s landing boomed behind them.
But it was not her mother who answered her in the dark.
“Oh, I agree, you should run.” The woman had two knives out, and all her teeth. All glinting in the dark.
As Vanita faced her, she saw the shadow in her mind of her lung being stabbed, her life first and then her mother’s gone. She sank to the ground in dull surrender. Perhaps Mother saw the Path-thing too, because she started screaming. “It’s fine,” Vanita found herself saying.
The woman continued smiling.
“You should run, but where would you go?”
Chapter Eighteen
The Path
Ash woke up thinking about Vanita. She had had another dream again, a fairly normal one this time as far as dreams ago, in which Vanita had been in a fine dress for the first time in years. She was happy, and she was sipping tea in the bailey of the castle with Ash, sitting on the kneeling form of the duke as if he were a chair, and Ash was sitting on Rize the same way. She had been talking about “getting the pigs inside before the rain came’, and something about a hearth and ashes, when Ash woke up.
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