“How do you feel, Miss Faircloth?”
Should I sit up? Cover myself with the blanket? Dare answer? It seemed safest to bob my chin. The dagger on his belt was very near my cheek. He was not looking at me, but at what the blanket did not cover. My shift was thin, of silk. His cold eyes roved.
“My page boy is in regular contact with his twin at Winterbane. She apprises him of the Archabbot’s movements. Did you know?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t known, but I had guessed.
His hand, as if by accident, drifted from my face to my collarbone. Had I anything of value left, I’d’ve wagered it that he felt my pounding heart even in that lightest graze.
“Just this morning,” said the king, “Sebastian passed me the latest of his sister’s news. Avillius is conscripting an army of his own. He thinks to march on Jadio House, to wreck all I have assembled, and from the rubble rebuild a temple to his gods.” He leaned closer to me, studying my face intently. “But I am favored by the gods. They have turned their faces from him. They have sent me you.”
“Me?” This was no time for sudden movement. His palm pressed me hard into the mattress, very hot and very dry.
“You, Gordenne Faircloth. The Archabbot’s coffers are fat, but they are no match for the treasure troves of heaven. He cannot feed and clothe his army with prayer—especially when by his actions today he proves himself a heretic. His toy soldiers are of tin while mine are of gold.”
They are not toys, I wanted to scream. They are people! Not gold or tin but flesh. And if this war is let to rage, we shall all be crushed to dust between the inexorable convictions of crown and miter. You shall be king of a graveyard realm. The temples will stand empty with no one to worship in them, and the Archabbot will have only himself to pray to.
But I said nothing.
First of all, and obviously, Jadio was bent on this war. Lusted for it. Had done his damnedest to incite it, for all I could see. Secondly, I knew very well (for her brother had told me, not that he could be trusted to keep tail or tale straight) that half of what Candia gabbled were lies so wild only a consummate actor could hear them with a somber face. Thirdly, if Avillius were building an army, it wouldn’t be an army of tin weaklings as Jadio seemed to expect. Pricksters a-plenty did Avillius have already, and zealots. He would hire mercenaries, too, and not hesitate to use those Gentry or Gentry-babes who had fallen under his power, whether from greed or grief or some dark hold he had over them to swell his ranks. He was not the kindly man he appeared, no more than Jadio was as good as he was beautiful.
The king hauled me out of my thoughts and onto his lap, where he proceeded to crush me breathless.
“Therefore, Miss Faircloth. Gordenne.”
“Your Majesty?” I braced both hands against his chest, hoping to keep some distance, but he took it as an invitation for further intimacies. After swiping my mouth soundly with his tongue, mauling my ears, and sucking at my neck, he pulled back and grasped my shoulders, shaking me. His fingernails drew blood.
“Therefore, my darling,” he said brusquely, “today you’ll get to spinning. I have filled the ballroom at Jadio House with all the straw in Leressa. You are not to leave the room until your alchemy is performed. You are not to eat or drink or see a soul until that gold is mine. And when it is, Miss Faircloth”—he crushed me to him again, harder, letting me feel the power of his body and the weakness of my own—“when you give me that gold, I will give you my name, my throne, and my seed. You shall be Queen of Leressa. The mother of my heir. The saint of our people. My wife.”
I opened my mouth to explain how I could not do what he asked, had never been able to do it, how I’d started out a nothing, and now was even less than that. But he dug his nails into the gouge wounds he had made and shook me by the shoulders all over again.
“If you do not!” he whispered. “If you do not!”
* * *
I waited in the shadow of the spinning wheel. Dusk came, and midnight, and dawn again. My friend did not come. By the king’s orders I’d nothing to eat or drink, no blankets to cover me, no visitor to comfort me. Dusk, then midnight, dawn again. I cleared a small space on the floor and pressed my face to the cool tile, and slept. High morning. High noon. Late afternoon. Twilight. Night.
Perhaps a hundred years passed.
He held a flask of water to my lips. Quicksilver, crystal, icicle, liquid diamond. Just water. Followed by a blackberry. A raspberry. An almond. The tip of his finger dipped in honey. I sucked it eagerly.
“Milkmaid,” he said.
“Go away.” I pressed the hand that pressed my face, keeping him near. “I have nothing left to give you. And anyway, why should Jadio win? Keep your gold. Go back to the Ways. There’s a war coming. No one’s safe…”
“Hush.” He slipped a purple grape into my mouth. A green grape. A sliver of apple. His scars were livid against his frowning face.
“Milkmaid.” He sighed. “I can do nothing without a bargain. Even if I—but do you see? It doesn’t work without a bargain.”
I felt stronger now. I could sit up. Uncoil from the fetal curl. My legs screamed as I stretched them straight.
He’d been kneeling over me. Now he kept one knee bent beneath him and drew up the other to rest his chin on. This position seemed an easy one. The frown between his brows was not of pain but inquiry.
“I heard how you were…I could not come sooner. I was too deep within the Veil.” He smiled. His teeth glowed. “With the Deep Lords, even—in the Fathom Realms beneath the sea. Do I smell like fish?”
I sniffed. Green and sweet and sunlight. Maybe a little kelp as an afterthought. Nothing unpleasant. On an impulse, I leaned my nose against his neck and inhaled again. He moved his cheek against mine, and whispered with some shortness of breath:
“Milkmaid, have you nothing to offer me?”
I shook my head slightly so as not to disconnect from him.
“You are not to take my cows in trade! Gods know what you Gentry would do to them.”
It was he who drew away, laughing, and I almost whimpered at the loss.
“Much good they’ll do you where you’re going.”
“Eh,” I shrugged, pretending a coldness I did not feel. “Da has probably already sold them off for mead.”
“Perhaps he did,” my friend agreed. “Perhaps he sold them to a hunchbacked beggar whose worth seemed less than a beating, but who offered him, in exchange for the fair Annat and the dulcet Manu, a wineskin that would never empty.”
For that alone I would’ve whapped him, had he not tucked a wedge of cheese into my mouth. The finest cheese from the finest cow that ever lived. It was like being right there with her, in that homely barn, where I sang Mam’s songs for hours and Annat watched me with trustful eyes.
“You have my cows already.”
“Aye.”
“So I can’t trade ’em. Even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”
“Nay.”
I smoothed my silk dress. Three days worth of wrinkles smirked back at me.
“Time moves differently, you said, in the Veil?”
He nodded carefully, smiling with the very corners of his mouth.
“It does indeed.” He sounded almost hopeful.
“Well. That being so, would you take in trade a piece of my future? See,” I rushed to explain, “if he gets that gold, Jadio means me to wear his crown. Or a halo, I can’t tell. When that happens, you may have both with my blessing, and all the choirs of angels and sycophants with ‘em.”
“I do not want his crown,” the little crooked man growled. For all he had such a tortuous mangle to work with, he leapt to his feet far faster than I could on a spry day.
“You’re to wed him, then?” he demanded, glaring down.
Oh.
This needed correcting—and quickly.
“He’s to wed me, mister, provided he deems this night’s dowry suitably vulgar. Oh, do get on going!” I begged him. “Let us speak no more of trade. Lea
ve me with this tinderbox and caper on your merry way. For surely as straw makes me sneeze, I can withstand Jadio’s torments long enough to die of them, and then it will all be over. But if he marries me, I might live another three score, and that would be beyond bearing.”
He snorted. A single green flame leapt to his finger, dancing on the opal there. The light lengthened his face, estranged the angles from the hollows, smoothed his twists, twisted his mouth.
“I’ve a trade for your future.” His voice was very soft. “I’ll spin you a king’s ransom of gold tonight—in exchange for your firstborn child.”
“Jadio’s spawn?” I laughed balefully, remembering that hot, dry hand on my neck. “Take him! And take his father, too, if you’ve a large enough sack.”
“You barter the flesh of your flesh too complacently.”
“No one cares about my flesh. It’s not mine anymore. I’m not even me anymore.”
“Milkmaid.” He stared at me. It was strange to have to look up at him. How tall he seemed suddenly, with that green flame burning now upon his brow. “Some of my dearest friends are consummate deceivers, born to lie as glibly as they slip their skins for a fox’s fur. I was sure they were lying when they told me you were sillier than you seemed, soft in the head and witless as a babe. Now, I must believe them. To my sorrow.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Your flesh,” he murmured, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “How can you say no one cares for it, when I would risk the wrath of two realms to spare it from harm?”
My heart too full to speak, my eyes too full to see, I lifted both my hands to him. When he grasped them by the wrists, I tugged gently, urging him back to the floor, and to me.
He fingered the ribbon of my bodice. Triple-knotted as it was, it fell apart at his touch. The sleeve of my shift sagged down my shoulder. Our eyes locked. There was a pearl button at his collar. A black pearl. I unhooked it. For the first time I noticed the richness of the black velvet suit he wore, its fantastic embroidery in ivory and silver, the braids and beads in his hair.
“Were you courting a Deep Lord’s daughter?” I asked. “Is that why you were in the Fathom Realms? Did the distant sound of my sneezes interrupt you mid-woo?”
The sound he made was maybe a “no,” more of a sigh, slightly a groan. Then I was kissing him, or he me, and we were both too busy happily undressing each other to do much talking, although when we did, it all came out sounding like poetry, even if I don’t remember a word of what we said.
* * *
Of my wedding three days later I will say nothing. That brutal night of consummation, and all nights following until Jadio marched east with his armies to meet the Archabbot at the drowned city of Lirhu, I will consign to dust and neglect.
Though I would not have wished Jadio near me again but we had an impregnable wall spined in spikes between us, I did regret the loss of the page boy Sebastian. Upon taking his leave, he told me with his usual feral insouciance, “I’ll probably not return, Gordie. You know that?”
I knew the look in his yellow eye—that of a fox in a trap, just before he chews off his paw to escape. Not long was that rusty iron bracelet for Sebastian’s wrist. Nor would too many months pass, I guessed, before King Jadio learned this cub would never again come to heel.
“Luck.” I clasped his arm. “Cunning. Speed. Whatever you need, may it await you at the crossroads.”
“Same to you, Your Majesty,” he said with a cheeky grin. (He had no other kind.) “If I can’t stick around to see you hacked apart and flung about, you may as well live a few years yet.”
I flicked the back of his russet head. “So young and yet so vile.”
“You’ll miss me.”
“More than I can say.”
“Gordie?”
“Aye?”
“When he comes to claim his own, ask yourself, ‘the One-Eyed Witch lives where’?” I blinked. That was the name of an old children’s skip-rope rhyme. But Sebastian did not let me catch up with my thoughts. “Go to her. She’ll have a notion how you’re to go on.”
Gentry pronouncements are often cryptic, indefinite, misleading, and vacuous—which makes them, amongst all oracular intimations, the most irritating. But just try to interrogate a fox when everything but his tail is already out the door.
In my neatest printing, I wrote, “The One-Eyed Witch Lives Where?” on a thin strip of parchment. When this was done, I whittled a locket out of ash, the way Mam had taught me, shut Sebastian’s advice up safe inside it, strung the locket with a ribbon, and wore it near my heart. It had not the heft of ivory, but it comforted me nonetheless.
After Jadio’s departure came nine months of gestation, the worst of which I endured alone.
I was facedown in a chamber pot one morning when a messenger brought me news of the Archabbot’s victory at the Cliffs of Lir outside the drowned city. Heavy losses to both sides, after which Jadio’s soldiers retreated, regrouped, and launched several skirmishes that further decimated the Archabbot’s armies.
Some weeks later, another messenger came to shake me from my afternoon nap. The Archabbot had found the lost heir of Lirhu wandering the ruins of the city. The prince, dead King Lorez’s only son, was still enchanted in the form of a great black bear and a wore a golden crown to prove it. The Archabbot had goaded the bear-prince into challenging Jadio to hand-to-hand combat on the field for the right to rule Leressa.
Jadio had defeated, beheaded, and skinned him, then drove the Archabbot’s armies out of Lirhu and into the Wayward Swamps.
In the turmoil of their retreat, the Holy Soldiers abandoned a most singular object: a glass coffin bearing the sleeping Princess of Leressa, whom no spell could wake. This, too, they had discovered in the ruins of the drowned city. Jadio claimed the princess as a prize of war but did not destroy her as he had her brother. He would have sent the coffin back with the bearskin (it was explained) but he feared some harm might befall it on the road.
The bearskin made me sick every time I saw it, so I avoided the great hall and took my meals in my rooms.
When at last the hour of the birth came upon me (and an early hour it was, sometime between midnight and the dusk before dawn), I bolted the door to my room and paced the carpet like a she-wolf.
I wanted no one. No chirurgerar with his bone saws and skully grin. No Prickster midwife with tainted needles and an iron key for me to suck that I might lock up the pain. I’d do this alone or die of it. Mam survived my bursting into this world, after all, screaming blood and glory. Mam survived fourteen years of me before she up and snipped her mortal coil from the shuttle of life.
“Mam!” I pressed my back hard against the bedpost. “Please. Let Jadio’s spawn be stillborn. Let him be grotesque. Let him be soup, so long as I don’t look on him and love him. I don’t want to love this child, Mam. Don’t let me love this child.”
After that I screamed a great deal. And once I fainted. I seem to remember waking to a voice telling me that this was not the sort of thing one could really sleep through, and for the sake of my cows, my house, my hope of the ever-after, would I please push?
If he hadn’t’ve called me Milkmaid in all that begging, I might’ve chosen to ignore him utterly. But he did, so I didn’t.
Some hours later the babe was born.
“Give her over, mister!”
“That your rancor may cast her forth into yon hearth fire?”
“I did not know she would be yours! Come on! Give. She’ll need to feed.”
“Had I tits, Milkmaid, I’d never let her go.”
I smirked sweatily, winning the spat. His cradling arms slipped her into my lap, where he had arranged clean sheets and blankets, a soft pillow for her to rest upon. She was a white little thing. White lashes, white lips, white eyes. Silent when she looked at me. No mistaking her for a mortal child. A Gentry-babe through and through.
“What’s your name?” I asked my daughter. She blinked up from her nursing, caught m
y eye, grinned. Gentry-babes are born with all their teeth.
The little crooked man laughed. “She’ll never tell.”
“Not even her mother?”
He laid hands on my belly, and the bleeding stopped. Aches, throbs, stabbing pains, deep bruises—all vanished. Warmth spread through my body. He stroked my hair once before walking quickly to the hearth, turning his hunched back to me. I stared after him. Best, perhaps, he could not see the look on my face.
“That you are her mother does not matter,” he muttered. “There is war between our people. The Gentry have learned never to speak our names out loud. Not to anyone. Too much is at stake. Our lives. Our souls.”
“You have those, then?”
No answer. He crouched near the hearth, poking at the blinding green flames there. In my lap the baby choked.
“What’s wrong?” I yelped. I lifted her, tried to burp her. “Did I—I didn’t curse her, did I? When I was giving birth? And all those times before. Little one, my sweetest girl, I didn’t mean you! I meant Jadio’s son. Never you.”
My friend came to my side. “It isn’t that. It’s the milk. The more magic flowing through a Gentry-babe’s veins, the less able we are to suckle at a mortal’s breast.”
“She’ll starve!”
“Nay, sweet,” said he, “for do I not have the prize cow of cream-makers in my very barn?”
The panic clenching my heart eased. “She can drink cow milk?”
“She’ll suck it like nectar from Annat’s udder. It’s what we like best.”
“But—” I stared at my baby’s still white face, the bead of milk trembling on her lip. I wiped it off quickly, for a rash of color spread from it across her skin, along with a feverish heat.
He touched one finger to her mouth. The rash vanished. “She must eat. She will die if she remains, Milkmaid. You owe me her life.”
“What?”
“Our bargain.”
“You said Jadio’s—”
“I said your firstborn.”
Bone Swans: Stories Page 22
