“What do you want me to say? Even if I told you the truth, you would think I was lying.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I already told you the truth, and you already said I was lying. I really did just walk to the market.”
“My guards said you came home long after curfew, and that you were drunk.”
“I hate to be the one to tell you this, my lord, but you can buy things in a market. Some of the vendors even sell wine.”
“How much did they charge?”
“Too much. It tasted of vinegar.” I shook my head and tried a mocking smile, “Are you having fun asking all these stupid questions, your highness? I want to go back to sleep.”
“In a moment.” He steepled his fingers in front of his eyes and studied me, “I have not told Mistress Dahra that you left the palace. She also doesn’t know you were wearing men’s clothes when you collapsed. I want you to know that. If I ask you any more questions, I hope you will remember that before you answer.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. I choked and curled my fingers against my forehead, willing my pounding head not to explode. “Dahra will not believe a word you say.”
“Is that so? Are better at lying than I am at telling the truth? You couldn’t even convince Clay that you have a fever. I’m sure that when I leave this room she’ll be clinging to me, making her voice ever so sweet as she begs for the truth. The woman loves you, but she’s a fool. She speaks about you as if you were an innocent child.”
“She knows that I’m not.”
“Perhaps that is why she does not trust you.” He shrugged.
I looked away, “You sound like you hate her.”
“Does that shock you? The great Lady Clay either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. Why should you?” The man stood up and rooted in his pocket for another cigar. He did not light it, but looked thoughtfully at me, “I will not compel you to hold your tongue. I think we understand each other.”
“Keep your end of the deal.” I growled. He grinned and bowed far more deeply than he ever had for Clay. I closed my eyes, and by the time I dared to open them again I was alone.
CHAPTER 16
I did not dare to write to Guinn and ask if Jonas had recovered. When I felt better I comforted myself with the thought that he was improving, too. When my fever broke I was relieved for him as much as for myself. The palace physician was too frightened of Dahra to linger once I was past the worst of it. As soon as I started to heal he was chased from our rooms. My Altissi medicine was replaced with Siren potions and tonics.
Dahra was furious that she had mistaken a fever for poison. It was an insult to her skill as a herbalist, and everyone knew. She was determined to cure me herself. I had never spent so much time with her before. The woman was curt and unsympathetic. She refused to leave my bedside, and often fell asleep with her hand on my wrist so that any change in my heartbeat or temperature would wake her up. I marvelled at her skill, but it never came to anything. I dragged myself out of bed and was pronounced cured, but my back still ached and my stomach was sour. I did not dare tell Dahra that I was still unwell. She would have blamed me for her failure.
I forced myself back into the public eye, and followed Clay wherever she went. Coluber publically welcomed me back to court with a kiss on the cheek and a meaningful look in his eye. I smiled and thanked him for his attention. Each morning I had to strip my clothes down to the thinnest layers so that I might not sweat through them. I drank whole jugs full of water, and stopped taking wine with my meals, but nothing seemed to help.
Clay overheard me vomiting on one of her sleepless nights. She held my hair until I stopped. Then she glared as if it was my fault I was ill, “You should have told Dahra.”
“She thinks I’m better.”
“Nevertheless.” The woman chewed her lip, “Wait a moment.”
It took her a few minutes to go through my belongings, but she finally found a plain brown cloak. “Nobody knows what you look like. Go down into the city and find a real doctor.”
“I thought you wanted me to tell Dahra?”
She pulled a face and did not answer. I pulled the cloak on and huddled into the warm rabbit-skin lining.
“Do you want me to go with you?” Clay asked anxiously. I shook my head. I knew my way around the city like an alley cat.
Still, I wanted to say yes. I was frightened that my sickness had lasted as long as it had, and when she was being tender my Mistress was the best kind of nurse. She could be completely silent, letting every care fall from my shoulders and absorbing them so easily that I felt lighter for it. Only her boredom made her cruel.
She gripped my hand in her thin fingers, and ran her other through my hair. Her green eyes were so soft they looked black. I nestled against her for a moment, and then the sharpness of her perfume made my throat catch.
The sun was just rising when I slipped through the gates. There were a hundred apothecaries and healers I could have gone to, but my feet led me down to the darkest alleys of Crozier. I was so used to being secretive with Jonas and so frightened of Dahra that anything to do with my body felt like it should be hidden away. I told myself that nonsense, and kept walking. I was feeling dizzy from the exercise when I found a shop with a pestle and mortar etched into the door frame. It looked clean enough. The healer was eating porridge beside the fire, but she stood up and welcomed me the second I opened the door.
“I’m a… a servant.” I said carefully. “I’ve not been well. My Mistress sent me to get a potion or…” I shrugged. Who knew what could heal me? I had tried everything.
The woman gestured for me to follow her into the kitchen. There were cats milling around on the dirty floor. The healer cleared plates off the splintered table and gestured for me to lie down. Her hands were just as impersonal as those of the old women on the island, but the cluttered room and mewing animals made me feel faint. Finally, she helped me pull my dress back on. She poured herself a mug of beer.
“You’re pregnant.”
I felt blood rushing into my face, and her words whined shrilly in my ears. She gulped down a mouthful of beer and belched. I gaped at her like a fish. The woman laughed and shook her head. “How on earth couldn’t you tell?”
“People only get pregnant when they want to.” I said stupidly, because on the island it was true. The woman wasn’t tactful enough to try to hide her scorn. She took another mouthful of beer.
“Well, do you want to keep it?”
I froze. My world only impregnated women who chose to breed. It made no sense for them to change their minds. The servants took celibacy so seriously that we barely knew the first thing about pregnancy. The midwives were retired Siren. Those women would never talk about something so visceral in front of us.
I crossed my arms over my stomach, “I… don’t know.”
The midwife patted my knee, “You’re not far along. You have a few weeks to decide. If you come back to me I will not ask why, and it will be over quickly.”
I nodded on instinct and stood up. Arms and legs moved, but my body felt like it was miles away from me, “Thank you.”
She held out her hand, and I pressed a golden loret into her hand. She looked up blankly, and I gave her two more. Her fingers closed over them, and she smiled.
I walked back through the city in a daze. I was too tired to walk to Guinn’s house, and too confused to go home. I pulled my arm inside my cloak, and kept it pressed over my stomach. The silk bandages caught on my belt, and I felt them falling away. They lay on the paving stones like a bright flame.
No one would be able to see my wrist. It was hidden inside the thick brown wool. I wondered how long I would be able to hide a swelling belly for. Perhaps, if I raised the waistline of my dresses, I would make it through the winter before it became too obvious. It was a foolish thought; Clay would notice the second my seams began to stretch, and Mistress Dahra would doubtless force a potion down my throat before the day was over.
&
nbsp; The thought horrified me. I was more frightened of destroying the seed growing inside me than I was of being caught. I think that was the second when I knew that I could never abort my child. I would sooner claw Dahra’s eyes out than swallow a single drop of her filth.
Would Jonas fight as hard? Would he be the one to tell Clay? I had seen him with her. If she truly wanted to know something, then he would tell her. I had never worked out the tangle of their past, and when Jonas tried to explain I had pressed my fingers over his mouth. I told him I would not understand. His story would sound like one long excuse. But without the truth, I could not trust either of them.
But… this secret was important. Jonas had not told Clay about our trysts, nor had he betrayed me by acting any differently when he was summoned to her side. He acted as skilfully as a mummer. He told himself that he was not lying to her – it was Clay’s fault, for not seeing through the illusion.
My feet found their way to Guinn’s door. Jonas closed me in his arms and kissed me until my crying stopped. Healthy. Alive. Unharmed. I told him that I loved him. It was all I trusted myself to say.
***
Dahra returned to her old ways. Her collection of potions shrank, and grew again when I bought new supplies from the market. As the seasons changed, young leaves and roots became available, and finally flowers and seeds. The woman was ravenous for them.
The potions sent the men she lured home into blissful agonies. Sometimes there was more bliss, and sometimes more agony. Dahra might spend a whole week using different doses of one tonic before throwing it into the fire. She grew far more irritable.
One night she poured half a glass of green liquor down a man’s throat and almost throttled him to make him swallow it. The man drooled for a full day before he woke up. One of his eyes was so bloodshot he could not see, and he laughed hysterically. Dahra slapped him until he stopped. The man was sent back to the stables to explain to the other hostlers that he had been mugged, or in a tavern brawl, or tending a sick uncle – anything but the truth. Miette was useless at controlling her apprentice, but she could at least brew an amnesia draught.
I was terrified. What if the man had died? What if he had needed to be carried away, instead of walking on his own two feet? I could imagine Dahra throwing the body into the fire with as much care as she had for her potions.
I waited until Dahra left to raid the herb garden, and crept into her room. Normally I would not have dared to tamper with her potions, but she had been so distracted that Miette had to remind her to eat. I knew enough about potions to be able to dilute them. I poured water or fresh milk into the vials. Some of them needed drops of sweet oil, or base alcohol. They potions looked different by the time I was finished. They were a little more opaque, or they caught the light a bit differently. I hoped that Dahra wouldn’t notice.
A few weeks later, when I was about to sneak in and doctor her new batch of potions, the woman’s mood suddenly changed. She was almost like the old Dahra – sharp, and snide. Her trembling stopped. The experimental vials disappeared from her room, and all that was left was a single flask holding thin grey fluid. She shook it absently when she was in her room. Black sediment swirled in the liquor. It cured her sickness, but not completely. She still shivered when she was tired or agitated. Her appetite did not return. When she swallowed the potion her eyes glazed over and she mumbled nonsense until Miette took her to bed.
The next time I broke into her room I left the grey vial alone. There were a few bottles that she had kept from her experiments, and a couple more she had brought from home. I did not trust the woman any more. How could a woman who couldn’t even mumble her way through a sentence make sense of a complicated potion?
I diluted every single bottle, and then resolved to leave the woman alone. When Dahra returned to the island the other herbalists would help her. I had done all I could, by making sure that she couldn’t hurt herself. No, I wasn’t really that altruistic. I was frightened that the witch would poison one of us, next. Pretending I was doing it to help was the only way I could give myself the courage to open her door.
Naturally, I told Jonas about it. He had a thoughtful way of listening which was deceptive, since he often erupted into excited ramblings as soon as I was done. This time, he gripped my shoulder and made me promise to stay away from Dahra. It was easy for me to agree. I did not want to be near the woman. Jonas smugly reminded me that he had predicted that something like this would happen.
“You might have.” I retorted, “But you didn’t think I was going to fix it, did you?”
“I don’t think you should.” he replied, looking surprised, “Whatever that woman does is her own fault.”
“Ye-es…” I said slowly, “But when we go home, nobody will be pointing fingers at Dahra. If anything goes wrong she’ll tell them I did it.”
“So you want to fix other people’s problems because you think you’ll be punished for their mistakes.” Jonas shook his head. “I don’t get how you Siren…”
“Stop.” I pressed my hand to his lips. “Please. I promise I won’t do anything else. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“I should learn how the Siren think.” he insisted, and then ran the back of his hand along my shoulder up to my neck, “It’s part of who you are.”
I bit my lip and felt my eyes close at the gently caress. Whenever he touched me I was acutely aware of myself, and utterly at odds with it. “I don’t know if it is a part of me. I don’t understand the Siren either. I don’t even know if I am one anymore.” my voice grew painfully soft as I confessed: “I don’t want to be.”
Jonas was silent for a long time. Then he moved his hand back to my neck, and pulled me closer, and for a long time everything about myself made perfect sense.
Afterwards, we lay together in a tangle of limbs and Jonas stroked my hair.
“Will you marry me?”
I froze, and swallowed back a hysterical laugh.
“I’m not allowed.”
“Allowed!” he rolled his eyes, clearly frustrated now his moment had been spoiled, “I have no idea which rules you’ll break. I assumed that we’d already done the worst.”
“The best.” I corrected him, and was happy to see a mischievous smile crossing his face. He slid his hands down to my wrists and ran his fingers gently over the silk strips on my stump.
“What’s waiting for you when you go home?”
I thought about my body swelling up like a blister, and my friends casting me out of their chaste circle. I imagined the scorn, and the rumours. I saw my child being taken up as another motherless Siren whore. I saw myself banished to the lighthouse until the smoke smothered my lungs.
I admit that my fear was far more convincing than the love that I bore him. I think that Jonas understood that. I don’t think he proposed because it was romantic. We were both keenly aware that everything we had was going to end. Even if Jonas was allowed on the island, I wouldn’t even be allowed to meet his eyes. I thought about never seeing him again, and my eyes burned with tears.
“The Siren couldn’t touch you if you were mine.” Jonsa kept speaking, his voice low, “You said you did not want to be one of them. You don’t have to be! We can stay here, in Altissi. I’ll work as a journeyman, or I’ll guide people through the pass… I’ll look after you, Harriet. Please say yes.”
He wanted me. I would lose my family if I said yes. I looked at my lover, and thought about what I was getting in return. Love, not fear, made my decision breathtakingly simple.
“Yes.” I whispered, and watched his eyes light up like the sun.
CHAPTER 17
I overheard someone in the market talking about a woman who had been cheated by an abortionist. It was a piece of cheap gossip, and they laughed about it, but my blood ran cold.
A whore with a pocket full of gold.
Had the midwife betrayed me? I remembered the coin I had pressed into her hand and doubted it. She was still expecting me to come back. She would have kn
own that betraying my secret would cost her at least fifty lorets. Someone had seen me creeping into her home in my silk dress. They had invented a story about a courtesan who had travelled from another city looking for a skilled herbalist. The story was clearly false but the townsfolk lapped it up. If Clay or Dahra had made their way into the marketplace then I think they would have worked out the truth in a heartbeat, but of course they did not.
Clay was so wrapped up with her duties and her lover that she only came back to her rooms to change her clothes. Dahra was… fading. Whatever she poured down her throat made her eyes as black as night and her mind as soft as gosling down. Everyone was too distracted to care about me. I relaxed. People lost interest in the story, and nobody had pointed a finger at me. Then the midwife decided that I wasn’t coming back. The miser got her revenge in the only way she could. This time, the story was unmistakable. The beautiful slut had a foreign accent, the palace insignia on her cloak and, of course, a missing hand.
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