“It can be a . . . selling point,” I said, now as hot as I had been cold only a moment before. It had certainly been a selling point at the Shining Tiger.
“What if it don’t matter?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“What if. It. Don’t. Matter.” He rinsed the soap off and ducked his head before starting on his hair. “What if you say, I don’t care and fuck anybody who does. What happens then?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He sighed and handed me the soap. “I know you don’t. And it ain’t like I’m any good at it my own self.” He slid down to rinse his hair; numbly, I started washing myself. When he sat up again, he said, “If there was any way in the world you could get rid of them scars, I’d help you do it. You know that, right?”
“Yes,” I said. My throat was suddenly tight.
“But there ain’t. They’re part of you. And, you know, they ain’t no nice part, but.” He bent his head a little, caught my eyes, and held them. “Pretending they ain’t there and hiding them all the time, it don’t help.”
“You would feel differently if that scar weren’t on your face,” I said bitterly, viciously, watching the soap lather over my pale skin.
“You think?” His voice was neutral, and I was not about to look at him. He carefully worked his way out of the bathtub. He didn’t ask for help, and I didn’t offer. He dried off while I quickly washed my hair. I got out of the bathtub while he was still rubbing the towel vigorously over his head.
“You think that scar makes you ugly,” I said.
He straightened up, watching me warily. How good we are at this, I thought detachedly. How easily we read each other when we’re out for blood. “You think yours make you ugly,” he countered.
“No. I think my scars show what I am. But you think that scar makes you ugly. You think you’re ugly.”
“I am ugly.”
“No, you aren’t.” I stepped closer, painfully aware that we were both naked, aware of the scars on his face and thigh, of the scars on my back. Of my tattoos, which were scars in their own way. “Did Kolkhis tell you that? Did she tell you you were repulsive?”
He backed away from me, but there was nowhere to go, and he jarred his shoulders against the door. “Kolkhis don’t have nothing to do with—”
“Oh yes she does. Because I’m right, aren’t I? She told you you were hideous. She told you no one would ever want to kiss you.”
His tongue touched his upper lip nervously. “Maybe.”
“She lied.” I was close enough now to feel the damp heat of his body, to see water beading at his hairline. “I can show you just how terribly she lied to you, Mildmay.”
“No,” he said, flatly, with finality, and—unbearably—with pity.
“You won’t . . .”
“No. I ain’t molly, and I don’t want you. And you promised you wouldn’t rape me.”
His voice wavered a little, but his eyes didn’t, and I hated myself. Again. Still. Just one more reason on top of all the others. My hands clenched, and I burst out, “Hit me.”
“What?”
“Hit me. If you won’t kiss me, hit me.”
“Felix, you don’t—”
“Damn you. Hit me. You want to. You’ve wanted to for years. I know it, you know it. So do it.”
His eyes had clenched shut; I could see the tension radiating upward from his fists, turning his shoulders into a bar of pig iron. I wanted to feel his strength; I wanted to feel him. I didn’t care how anymore. I just wanted him to touch me.
And I knew how to do it.
“Hit me,” I said, pushing the obligation d’âme as hard as I could, and at the same time I swung at him.
It wouldn’t have been much of a blow in any event—You hit like a girl, some tormentor sneered in the back of my head: Keeper? Lorenzo? Malkar? I couldn’t even tell—but Mildmay had the reactions I didn’t, and my hand didn’t come anywhere near his face before he moved, faster than I could see, and I was on my back on the floor, with my ears ringing.
Mildmay was still standing against the door, hands poised defensively in front of his body, and he said, snarling, “You happy now?”
“Deliriously,” I said, not moving.
“Good.” His eyes were lurid poison green. “Then get the fuck away from me. And if you ever do that again, I will fucking kill you. You hear me?”
“Yes,” I said, still not moving.
He wrenched the door open and left, not bothering with his clothes. Some lucky Fawn daughter, I thought remotely, was going to get an eyeful.
It was a good minute and a half before I was able to make myself move.
Kay
The Pigrin train station was like being trapped in a metal rookery. My hands instinctively went to cover my ears, though it did no good, and when the catafalque lurched forward, I had to stagger and lunge to keep my feet under me. I had learned within minutes of leaving the church’s courtyard not to let myself fall, for the ox driver would not halt his beasts on my behalf.
I had walked from Howrack to Pigrin, knowing the destination only because the soldiers spoke of it to one another, complaining bitterly that they had not been given leave to visit Miss Evie’s, which I knew to be one of Pigrin’s jezebel houses. The catafalque stopped several times; each time I, like the oxen, was given water. My hands had to be guided to the dipper; at the third stop, they had to be supported as well, for I was shaking too badly to get the dipper to my mouth unaided. I expected the soldiers to mock me, but they did not. They spoke to me as little as possible, but they were not cruel; when I stumbled painfully over a road stone as we entered Pigrin proper, someone’s hand in my shift collar dragged me back to my feet. I did not understand it, but I was grateful.
I did not know Pigrin well; had come here once to speak to Gerrard when his wife, pregnant with Charles, was taking the waters. I remembered walking with Gerrard through the great, vaulted, rose marble halls of the Pigrin Chalybeate, remembered his laughter echoing and the scandalized expressions of the invalids and ancients. Did not remember what we had spoken of. And I had not taken the train, for I hated them, foul-smelling cacophonous horrors that they were—and ah, Lady, who will keep them out of Rothmarlin now?—so that although I had been able to follow a rough mental map from Howrack to Pigrin, for Pigrin itself I had no map. I could only follow the pressure of the collar around my throat. Was all I had ever been able to do, in truth, but it had been easier to bear when I had had some sense of the direction we traveled. Now I felt as though every step might lead me over the edge of a precipice. It shamed me to admit it, even to myself, but without the catafalque to drag me, I might not have been able to move at all.
I could feel blood sticky on my feet against the smooth stone of the station floor, and I wondered if I was leaving a trail of red footprints like the sea maiden in the story. My neck was bleeding, too, where the soldering had left rough edges, and there was the heat of bruises across my shoulders. Art lucky to have come so far without worse injuries, I told myself, and then, in proof or mockery, my foot came down on something that burned it. I yelped like a kicked dog, my whole body jerking sideways, and had it not been for a hard-callused hand that closed around my upper arm, the combination of my unwise movement and the drag of the chain would have put me on the floor.
“Steady, m’lord. You stepped on a cinder, that’s all.” A Corambin voice, like Intended Gye’s. A soldier—the same one who had saved me before?
“Leave him be, Oddlin!” shouted someone else, and I recognized a sergeant’s voice when I heard it, even with Corambin vowels.
“Thank you,” I said in a whisper as raw as the bleeding places on my neck, and the hand was gone. I followed the pull of the catafalque, limping now, trying to keep my burned instep from touching the floor. Trying not to think about the possibility of more cinders.
Then the pull changed, becoming slower and . . . upward? A ramp beneath my feet, stubbing my toes, and I understood: we—the cata
falque, the oxen, and I—were being loaded into a baggage car.
The prospect was actually less unpleasant than the idea of being chained in a passenger car with Glimmering for several hours.
The catafalque halted. I heard the sergeant’s voice again, this time ordering one of his men to block the wheels and another to help the driver with the oxen. Someone bumped me in passing; I edged to my right, away from the ramp and the open door. Three cautious, shuffling steps, and my outstretched arm found the wall of the car. It would have to do, for I did not think I could keep on my feet any longer. Whether was grief or blindness or something else that weakened me, I knew not, but a journey that would ordinarily have been a pleasant morning’s walk had left me exhausted. I put my back to the wall and sat down, drawing my knees up under my chin so that I might be as little in the way as possible. Did not truly expect that to be enough, and it was not. I barely had time to feel relief at having my weight off my aching feet before the sergeant was shouting, equally at his men and at me; I was dragged upright again and pushed hard enough that I could not brace myself. I staggered forward, my hands coming up reflexively, and collided with the side of the catafalque. A hard boost from someone and I was sprawling across Gerrard’s shins. “You’ll be out of the way up there,” the sergeant said; I bit my tongue and did not ask, Out of the way of what?
In another moment, I found out. The noise was unmistakable, even if it made no sense here, clattering hooves and an aggrieved noise somewhere between a moan and a yell: the bawl of a cow who did not want to go where she was being driven.
“Cattle,” I said blankly.
“His Grace’s gift to the Seven Houses,” said someone, most likely Oddlin, who had helped me before.
“Cattle?” said I, still not quite able to believe it, but then the first of the cows came up the ramp, and if anyone answered me, I had no hope of hearing it.
The half-wild shaggy Caloxan cattle were small but hardy, and their milk was richer than that of their larger and more placid cousins. Listening to the soldiers and the cowherds cursing each other and the cattle indiscriminately, I realized I ought to be grateful to be up on the catafalque, out of the way of boots and hooves alike. But Gerrard was lumpy and dead underneath me, and one good kick from a cow might have put an end to this wretchedness, even if for only an hour. I was not grateful.
I was, though, exhausted, and willing to risk wrath that I was fairly sure would not be forthcoming. These soldiers had their orders, and they would follow them, but they were not zealots. Was it obvious to them that my penance was a sham, a ploy of the duke’s? I shifted carefully, trying to find some measure of comfort without further disturbing Gerrard’s body. And then, my head pillowed on a wadded section of the burlap draperies, and despite the appalling noise, I fell instantly and heavily asleep.
I woke once when the train began to move—to which the cattle objected, as they had objected to everything else—but no one seemed to be paying any attention to me, and if nothing else, I thought with grim, half-dreaming humor, I’d learned my lesson about seeking trouble. I fell asleep again.
I woke the second time because the train stopped with a tremendous jerk. I was thrown forward and then back so violently that I ended up lying on the floor of the baggage car, entangled with Gerrard’s body in an obscene parody of a lover’s embrace, the breath knocked from my body and my head ringing like a full peal of church bells. Around me, the cattle were bawling like outraged virgins, the oxen were bellowing, and the soldiers were cursing with an impressive fluency and variety of expression. I lay still, afraid that if I moved, I would damage the body, and after a few moments, the sergeant interrupted his excoriations of the train, the cattle, and life in general to say, “Ah, strewth, we’d better pick up his lordship. Oddlin—you’ve a talent that way.”
So it had been Oddlin who had helped me the first time. I could not decide if it made me feel better to know that I had a champion, or more like a helpless girl.
It took two of them to lift Gerrard’s body back into the catafalque. I stayed still, listening to the sergeant ordering someone to go up the train and find out what had happened, listening to the cowherds settling the cattle. “Art not hurt, thou great daft mop,” one of them said, exasperation and affection so mingled that they could not be separated, and I remembered Benallery saying to me, long ago, “Just because Gerrard throws himself down a well, doesn’t mean you have to jump after him.” Even then I’d known, although I hadn’t said so, that that was exactly what it did mean.
I felt motion and heat beside me, and recognized Oddlin’s voice when he spoke. “Are you hurt, my lord?”
“No,” I said, being now fairly sure I told the truth. “What happened?”
“We don’t know, my lord, but Lark’s gone to find out. Come on, then.” He lifted me first to my feet and then onto the catafalque; I realized he was larger even than I had thought. Most men were taller than I—and many women, too—but this one seemed a giant, maybe as tall as Angel Vyell, who was over six feet, the largest man I had ever known. I added to my list of things I ought to be grateful for, even if I wasn’t able to be, the fact that Oddlin was inclined to be gentle.
They had made no effort to arrange Gerrard’s body—and why should they? Was not their failed king. Shouldst be grateful, again, that they do not desecrate the body. I thought of bodies I had found after the Usara had finished with them, and could not help shivering a little, imagining those things done to Gerrard.
Hesitantly at first, expecting to be ordered to stop, I straightened Gerrard’s body as best I could. None paid me the least heed; though I knew I did a poor job of it, it gave me some comfort to know that I had tried, and that it was better than nothing. I lay down again, but not to sleep. Not when something had happened that my keepers did not understand. I listened—as I should have been doing from the start—and figured out that there were six of them, counting the absent Lark. They had served in the long, grim, bloody siege of Beneth Castle; this assignment was in the nature of a vacation for them, nursemaiding a dead body, a blind prisoner, and twenty-four cows from Howrack to Bernatha.
With a long, rattling clatter, they opened the side door, and I was genuinely grateful for that; the cows made the air rather too rich to breathe.
“Hey,” said one, “ain’t that that fucking hill we started out at this morning?”
“Summerdown,” said another. “Yeah, we’ve come in a great big fucking circle. Welcome to the army, Tredell.”
“Oh fuck you,” Tredell said without any malice. “It’s just creepy, that’s all. I heard Webber talking about it. What they found, you know. I was glad to get away from there, tell you the truth. And now here we are back again.”
“Tredell, you talk too fucking much,” the sergeant said.
The soldier named Lark returned then, panting, and said that something had gone wrong with the engine of the train and the enginists were fighting over what exactly, and Major Browne said to sit tight and he’d let them know if there was any need for action.
“Meaning we shouldn’t be asking in the first place,” the sergeant grumbled. “But if I hadn’t sent a man, he’d be all over me wanting to know if we were all asleep back here.”
“Welcome to the army, Sarge,” said Oddlin, and the sergeant swore at him blisteringly while the other men laughed.
My time sense was gone, lost in foul unending night, but it was not very long before the train jerked and groaned and began moving again. The soldiers raised an ironic cheer, and I fell back asleep as abruptly as falling down a well. Although it was Benallery who had followed Gerrard this time, not I.
Mildmay
Powers and saints, I was mad at him. Not so much about him making a pass at me because, tell you the truth, I’d been expecting that for decads. Who the fuck else did he have? I mean, me, I could find a chambermaid or a barmaid or some gal willing to trade my face for the chance to fuck somebody new, but the further north we got, the less we saw guys who were openly mo
lly, and the more we saw people giving the hairy eyeball to guys who looked like they might be. Like Felix. It wasn’t safe. I knew it, and he knew it, and he was still pretty fucked up about everything, so I wasn’t sure he’d’ve gone hunting anyway.
But there I was, and I knew how he felt about me even if I didn’t understand it and didn’t share it, so I wasn’t surprised at him coming on to me, and I didn’t blame him or nothing. No, what had me too mad to see straight was what he did when I turned him down. It wasn’t even the part where he was getting back at me by using the binding-by-forms, it was the part where he was using me to punish himself. I don’t even know what he thought he needed to be punished for, but I’d knocked him flat on his ass, and he’d practically said thank you. That wasn’t about him wanting to fuck me. Not even a little. That was about him using whatever tool was handy to hurt himself.
I wanted to yell at him—no, more’n that. I wanted to howl at him, scream at him, beat him up for real, make him fucking admit that I wasn’t a tool for him to use. I wasn’t a knife, and I wasn’t a fucking clockwork bear, and if he wanted to hurt himself, he should have the common fucking courtesy not to use me to do it. Of course, I also wanted to pin him down and sit on him until he explained to me just why he thought he needed to be hurt, and then sit on him some more until he listened when I told him he’d already been hurt plenty and should just let it the fuck go.
But, you know, that wasn’t going to work, so I’d let it go, as best I could—but there was one thing I was hanging onto, and that was that I was not fucking apologizing this time. He wanted things right between us, he was going to have to do the work himself. And he was going to have to come out and say he was sorry. The looks he was giving me, and the awful, meek way he was creeping around like he thought I was going to hit him again and this time without being told to—that was all fine, pretty much standard for him when he knew he’d fucked up. But it wasn’t enough, and I was not going to fucking cave. Not this time.
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