by Claire Luana
“You had a party,” Sable said. “Some weeks back. You ordered some cupcakes styled like roses from Master Oldrick’s shop in Maradis. We need to know who attended that party.”
Mistress Violena eyed Wren appraisingly. “Does this have something to do with your dear guildmaster’s premature departure?”
“It does,” Sable said.
“And I take this to mean that you do not think your darling Wren here is the culprit?”
“You know about that?” Wren asked with dismay, her face heating.
“I know about everything,” Violena said. “For instance, I know that the king and his dog of an inquisitor are sleeping at an estate a day’s ride north of the city. They will be back in the palace by mid-afternoon tomorrow.”
Wren’s stomach lurched.
Hale cursed and banged his fist on the table, rattling the dishes and startling them all.
“Are you sure?” Sable asked, her arching brows narrowed in dismay.
“Sure as the grave.”
Wren felt ill. Her stomach was roiling, protesting the rich food and hot sun and sparkling wine. Her hand flew to her mouth. “I’ll be right back.” She stood and ran from the room, headed for the nearest washroom.
Wren emptied her stomach two times before feeling well enough to stand back up and make her way to the sink. Her complexion looked ashen in the ornate mirror. She felt shaky and uneven, like she was back on the ferry, riding across a rolling sea. There was no way she could prove Chandler was the killer before the inquisitor came for her. Tomorrow or the next day.
She could run. She was already out from Maradis’s city walls. Mistress Violena’s home was filled with expensive treasures—surely, there’d be jewelry and coin and enough to keep her going for months. But if she ran, what would become of Lucas? He’d be executed—going to the grave thinking she’d betrayed him, that what had passed between them meant nothing to her. She couldn’t bear that—to be the one to crush his optimism and send him to the gallows.
And it would only be a reprieve of her sentence, anyway. Perhaps a part of her had known—when she had fled her home six years ago with only a waterskin clutched to her chest and blood under her fingernails—that she would pay for what she had done. She thought she had paid when she had ended up in Brother Brax’s orphanage. She thought she had paid when Ansel, the one person who had promised to keep her safe, had betrayed her, leaving her alone and brokenhearted. But it seemed the gods didn’t believe she had paid her debt. They had come to collect. Letting Lucas pay it for her wouldn’t make it stop; it would only make it worse.
Wren let out a shaky breath and leaned her head against the door. She was wrung out, empty.
A soft knock sounded on the other side of the door. “Wren?” Hale’s voice. “Are you all right in there? I brought you some water.”
Wren wiped her mouth and opened the door, emerging to find Hale with a soft look on his face. She took the glass gratefully and downed it.
“We’re close, Wren,” Hale said. “Mistress Violena is certain her butler still has the guest list. We’ll prove Chandler is the killer. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”
Wren nodded, unwilling to let her cynicism dampen the bright lamp of his hope. Its glow was almost enough to banish the darkness. Almost enough for her to believe it would be fine.
Chapter 28
Sable and Violena were sitting in the dusky dark of the patio overlooking the cool black expanse of the lake.
“Feeling better?” Violena asked as Wren and Hale took two seats.
Wren nodded, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Violena shushed her.
They sat in silence for a while, Sable nursing the dregs of a large glass of whiskey. It was perfectly quiet, but for the chirp of the crickets, and the clink of Mistress Violena’s boats against the dock and the ice in Sable’s glass. Stars were emerging overhead like winking eyes. Wren’s heart twisted painfully in her chest. As a child, she had loved the calm of the forest, the comforting presence of ancient trees holding the world still around her. This was the closest she had gotten to that feeling in years. Despite what might come tomorrow, the quiet of the lake made her glad that tonight she was alive.
A sound broke the silence, sobs as soft as raven feathers. Sable. Sable was crying. Wren looked at Hale in alarm, unsettled to see her sponsor, normally composed with a will of iron, so undone. He wore a look of infinite tenderness on his face. “These stars,” Sable said, murmuring to herself, seeming to have forgotten the rest of them were there. “I don’t see them. I don’t see the great spirits in these stars. Are they gone? Because I abandoned them?”
Wren had absolutely no idea what Sable’s words meant, but the twisted sorrow pained her like a physical thing. It was clear that Sable was mourning. And that Sable was very, very drunk.
“You didn’t abandon them,” Mistress Violena said. “You were taken. And you survived. Your clan lives on because you survived. That’s what the spirits would want for you.”
Sable shook her head, her black curls coming loose and dangling about her face. “Look at me. This dress.” She picked at the fabric disdainfully. “The sea would swallow me whole in this, the whale spirit wouldn’t even recognize me as a clan child. I didn’t survive. I died. And was reborn as this… unnatural surrogate.”
“You adapted,” Hale said. “All animals do it. It’s a natural process.”
“I can’t live without the sea and the stars and the ice… I should go back.”
“There’s nothing to go back to,” Violena said gently. “You know that.”
Sable hung her head, wrapped in a world of her own misery.
“I think perhaps it’s time to get Sable to bed,” Violena said. “Hale, could you…?”
“Of course.” He stood and wrapped one of Sable’s arms around him, but she was as limp as a rag doll. In the end, he swung her up into his arms. “Good night,” he said. “I’m going to stay with her, make sure she’s all right.”
“Thank you, dear,” Violena said.
When Hale and Sable had disappeared, Violena leaned back in her chair. “That girl. I doubt she’ll ever be able to see far enough past her stubbornness and pride to realize she has a good man who loves her waiting on the other side.”
Wren realized her mouth had fallen open and she quickly closed it. Hale and… Sable? Hale was in love with Sable? How could Mistress Violena know such a thing? She hadn’t even met Hale before tonight. But… Wren’s mind flashed back through her weeks at the Guild. Hale and Sable’s easy quips, the light in his eyes when he looked at Sable. How she was the only woman he didn’t flirt with, didn’t joke with. As if their relationship were too sacred a thing to sully. Even when he talked about her. All that she had accomplished at such a young age, her political prowess. Wren had thought it to be admiration and fondness, but she could see now…
Wren turned back to Mistress Violena with new respect.
“I know people,” the woman said. “And their words may lie, but you can always discern the truth. If you know how to recognize it.”
Wren shook her head with amazement and moved one chair over so she was sitting next to Violena. She felt like she needed to be this woman’s apprentice. “What was Sable so upset about? If you don’t mind me asking?”
“She gets like that sometimes—when she drinks. When she’s near the water. I should have remembered. It’s been so long since she’s been upset like that, though.”
“It’s because she’s from Magnus?” Hale had explained a little on the ferry, but Wren wanted to understand this piece of Sable. As best she could.
“Sable’s life started out very different from the one you see today. Her clan lived in the far south. They made their living fishing—hunting seals and whales. They were a proud clan. The Alesians had made it that far south in their “humanitarian” efforts around the time Sable was six. They pretended to be there in peace. What they brought was disease. A new rule. Many of the adults in Sab
le’s village fell ill and died. It was a story repeated throughout Magnus. Sable, together with many of the other children, were brought back to Alesia to be raised in crown-sponsored boarding schools.”
“The rest of her family died?”
“There’s nothing left of her village now. Back then, the king was ‘leasing’ some of my property in Maradis for one of these schools. Not that he gave me any choice in the matter. Or fair rent. I decided if there were children living on my property, I was going to make sure they weren’t mistreated. I visited from time to time, trying to make efforts to improve their situation. I swear to the Sower, every time I visited, Sable was in trouble. She was twelve by then, and she was a terror. Practically feral. I think they switched her so much, they broke the branch they used. But I saw something in her. There was intelligence in those eyes. So I brought her to live with me.”
“She grew up here?”
Violena nodded. “She’s like a daughter to me. I helped her to find a way to live in this world while not forgetting her old one. But sometimes, the guilt comes out. Like tonight.”
Wren’s understanding of Sable opened wide.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t mention this to her. Ever. That’s best where Sable is concerned.”
Wren nodded. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”
“Now, in payment, you have to share something with me.”
“What?”
Mistress Violena’s eyes were sharp in the dark of the evening, her white hair standing out like a halo. She leaned forward, wine glass in hand. “What is it you’re not telling Sable?”
Bells of alarm sounded in Wren’s mind. “What do you mean?”
“Like I said, girl. Their words may lie, but faces never do. I don’t believe that you killed Kasper, but that doesn’t mean there’s not something off about you. Sable may be too distracted to notice it, but you can’t get anything past me. So what is it?” Mistress Violena peered into Wren’s face as if her soul were showing.
Wren clasped her hands together, struggling not to squirm under the intense scrutiny. The woman was right, of course. It seemed she had a nose for lies like a pig did for truffles. Wren had to tell her something, but could she dare tell her anything as audacious as… the truth? As soon as the thought surfaced, it filled her. The desire to be told. To share this burden that she had kept buried deep in the earth for six years. The desire for another human being to know—truly know her.
Wren eyed Mistress Violena, her lungs tight, as if she couldn’t get enough air. “If there were something… what would you do with the information?”
“I have no desire to throw you out on your ear, if that’s what you’re worried about. But old habits die hard, and I’m very protective of Sable. I need to know you aren’t a danger to her. Or that god-like sculpture of a man she calls her artisan.”
“I’m not a danger to her,” Wren said. “They’ve taken me in. I’m grateful to them. I owe them. Isn’t that enough?”
“No. Because some secrets want to be told. And this one does. If you don’t lay down this burden now, it will rear its head at the most inopportune time.”
Wren wilted, her willpower gone. She did want to tell this secret. “If I tell you, will you keep it between us?”
“I will promise to share your secret only if I deem it necessary for Sable’s safety.”
“That’s not really an answer,” Wren grumbled. “Fine.” She stood, pacing to the railing of the patio, looking down at the waves gently lapping at the lakeshore. She didn’t deserve to be here in a place so achingly lovely. She didn’t think Mistress Violena would share her secret, her deepest shame, but if she did, what harm was there? The king and his inquisitor had returned, and she had no proof that Guildmaster Chandler had poisoned Kasper. She was likely to be questioned tomorrow, and who knew if she would ever be the same? It was time.
Wren turned and faced Violena, a weariness washing over her. “I didn’t kill Kasper. But I did kill someone.”
Violena nodded as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. She gestured to the chair next to her. “Tell me what happened.”
Wren sank into the chair gratefully, downing a finger of whiskey that Hale had left in his glass. She coughed and spluttered as the liquid slid down her throat, setting fire to her insides. Good, let me burn. “I killed my father.”
One of Violena’s eyebrows did rise onto her wrinkled brow at that. “What happened?”
“We grew up in the foothills of the Cascadian mountains. A little logging town called Needle Falls. My mother died in childbirth—giving birth to me. I guess I killed her too,” Wren added with a grunt of irony. “My older brother was my world. Hugo was… everything to me. And I was everything to him. My father had been in a bad logging accident when I was little, and his foot had been crushed. He could work, but barely. He was in pain all the time. So he drank. All the time. When he drank, he got violent. Hugo protected me from him. He took the brunt of it. By the time I was ten, things were bad. We had no money. Whatever my father made, he drank away. We were in debt to the royal mercantile. I was working at the bakery for as many hours as they would give me, paid in burnt loaves and leftover eggs. Hugo was fifteen. He was big, muscular already. Old enough to work. Strong enough to fell trees. Strong enough to die in that forest, his first week on the job.”
Wren closed her eyes, but the image of Hugo’s broken body would never disappear from her vision, not completely. His broad, easy smile and dimpled chin, crushed beyond recognition, a mangled mess of blood and skin. Hugo, who had made her a crown of aster flowers and called her ‘the princess of the birds,’ told her stories of where she would fly to one day. Who flew himself too soon.
She sighed. “My father went berserk that night. Full of gin and sadness, he was throwing furniture across the cabin, punching the walls. I tried to keep out of his way, but Hugo wasn’t there to protect me anymore. So I couldn’t. He got me. I think he broke a few ribs, tore out a chunk of my hair. And I was so… full of sorrow and anger myself… at the unfairness of it. That the gods would take Hugo, not him. You see, I had prayed for my father to die. But the gods were laughing at me, punishing me for wishing my father dead. Hugo paid the price.”
“The gods don’t work like that,” Mistress Violena said gently. “They wouldn’t punish a young girl for wanting to be safe in her own home.”
“They punish me still,” Wren shot back. “Why else did I get wrapped up in this mess? Why else will I be executed for a murder I didn’t commit? I tried to stay away from them, but they keep finding me. No matter where I go.” She felt herself coming unmoored now, the careful locks and doors and walls she had placed in her mind being thrown open. She had tried not to think about the gods for years, since she had apprenticed to Master Oldrick. But they wouldn’t let her be.
“You defended yourself. Self-defense isn’t murder, Wren. You have to forgive yourself.” Mistress Violena reached out a hand to lay it on Wren’s arm, but Wren jerked away.
“You haven’t even heard the end. I could have run, could have hid and let him tire himself out and fall asleep. He usually did eventually. But instead I grabbed our cast-iron skillet. I wasn’t even strong enough to lift it with one arm normally, but that night I found new strength. I bashed him across the head with it. He fell like a cedar tree, knocking his head against the corner of the coffee table. He was bleeding really bad; blood was everywhere. I should have run for help, for a neighbor, for the doctor. But all I could think about was how he was there when Hugo was gone. How Hugo wouldn’t have had to work—wouldn’t have died—if he weren’t such a worthless excuse for a father. For a human being. And how this was going to be my life from now on, with Hugo gone. So I packed a bag and ran.” Wren found herself crying now, tears flowing freely. “It wasn’t self-defense. I murdered him. I let him die. I wanted him dead.”
Wren fell silent, her head hanging. Tears dripped off her nose onto her dress. She couldn’t look up, couldn’t face Mistress Violena
. She didn’t want to see the expression on the other woman’s face.
Mistress Violena’s hand rested gently on Wren’s shoulder, and that simple motion triggered a fresh wave of tears.
“Your father made his bed long before that night. What happened isn’t your fault. I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told Sable many times. And like her, you may have to hear it many times before it sinks in. You deserve a place in this world. A place where you can be safe, and whole, and happy. Never apologize for insisting on it. For fighting for it.”
Wren looked up then, and the kindness in Violena’s eyes took her breath away. The understanding. Violena’s words sparked something within her. Relief. Hope. Fight. She wanted to believe them.
“Tell me that again,” Wren said into the moonlight.
Chapter 29
Wren fell into a heavy sleep that night, and when she awoke, late in the morning, she felt wrung out—like a twisted piping bag with all its frosting gone. Her head pounded and her throat was scratchy and dry. All in all, she wished she could crawl back into bed and never wake up. But she knew at some point she would have to face the day. So, ever so slowly, she bathed and dressed and made her way to the dining room table.
The long, polished table was empty, but for a single plate topped with a silver cover and a scroll tied with blue ribbon. The scroll had her name on it. Wren let out a breath of relief. Despite how well it had gone last night, she wasn’t sure she was ready to face Mistress Violena now that the woman knew all of Wren’s secrets. Sharing her story had seemed a grand idea in the magical dark under the illumination of a million stars. Now, in the light of day, it felt too exposing.
Looking about for a servant and finding none, Wren sat down to breakfast, untying the scroll. It was a letter from Sable, and it was clear from the contents that Sable was feeling like her usual self once again.
Wren,
