Sorrel, full of his victory and his back to Saraband, was oblivious. “I am not always a coward, Clovermead,” he said exultantly. Now Clovermead could see that his cheek had been cut. “I do not always run away, and you see that I am indeed a skillful warrior.” He looked down at his bloodied yellow coat and he grinned. “I have saved your life, Saraband! On the Steppes this victory would be worthy of at least a small song. I have not disgraced my uniform after all.”
“I am grateful to you,” Saraband whispered. She looked at the dead bear-priests, and she made the crescent sign with trembling hands. “Poor creatures,” she said. “Lady have mercy on their souls.”
Now Sorrel looked back at Saraband and a flicker of perplexity and anger crossed his face. “They do not deserve your good wishes,” he said. He wiped his sword on his bloodstained clothes, sheathed it, then looked worriedly toward Chandlefort. “We must leave before more bear-priests see us,” said Sorrel. He rode forward to grab the reins of the two dead bear-priests’ Phoenixians, then cantered back with the horses stumbling after him. “Follow me, Clovermead. I know a place in the hills where we can hide.”
Clovermead nodded her furry head yes—and then her stomach rebelled. She turned to one side and vomited up grass from yesterday morning. What little blood was left to her raced feverishly, she could not get the bear-priest’s face out of her mind, and she was weeping. But there wasn’t time to think about what she had done. She ran after Sorrel and Saraband, and in a minute she left the man she had killed far behind them.
As the sun set, they cantered into a labyrinth of rocks in the middle of the hills. There Sorrel led them onto a path that was invisible from the Heath and led between huge boulders up to the top of a sandstone crag. When they came at last to the summit, Sorrel looked down to the Heath and smiled with relief. “No one is following us.”
Clovermead changed back into human form. “I’m glad,” she said. “Excuse me, Sorrel. I need to be alone for a little bit.” Then she almost ran to the other side of the rocky hill. She found a flat shelf of rock, sat down, and stared out at the plain. She could not stop thinking about the bear-priest she had killed, could not stop seeing his face. She tried to spit out the sour contents of her mouth. Her back stung where the bear-priest’s sword had sliced the skin. She was no longer cold, she couldn’t stop feeling, and she wished she could be cold again. “I’m a Cindertallow now,” she whispered, rocking back and forth. “I can kill, Milady will be happy, and I wish I were back in Timothy Vale with Father when I didn’t really know what killing meant. Poor Father, he has to be a soldier and kill people too, and he’ll turn bloody and hard like me. Oh, Lady, I don’t want my blood anymore. Just dust.” She heard a scrabbling noise behind her, and she was glad Sorrel had ignored what she’d said and come after her.
But it was Saraband who came scrambling over the rocks to join her. “I thought you might want company, Cousin,” she said. She looked at Clovermead’s back, satisfied herself that the cut was minor, then settled herself by Clovermead’s side. “How are you doing?”
“Why didn’t Sorrel come?” asked Clovermead. “I don’t want you. I want him.”
“The brave Yellowjacket is full of his victories,” said Saraband. “He scarcely notices how I shrink from his bloodstained clothes, and he didn’t see that you were upset.” She grimaced. “I don’t think he’d make good company for you now anyway. He’s too cheerful.”
“Why don’t you stay with him, then? Go away.”
“Don’t tempt me, Cousin,” said Saraband stiffly. “I don’t like your rudeness, and I won’t stay for it.” Clovermead wanted to yell an insult to her face, but she bit her tongue. She wanted the comfort of Saraband’s company more. “Sorrel’s not good company for me while he’s drenched in blood,” Saraband continued. “If I stayed with him, he would realize how much I dislike his killing. He would not understand my revulsion, he would get angry with me, and we would quarrel. So I think I should stay away from him for a while.” Her face twisted in repugnance and continuing horror. “I knew Yellowjackets killed, but I never imagined it would be as awful as that.”
“What are you complaining about?” asked Clovermead bitterly. “You wouldn’t even fight to save your own life. You made us fight for you. I had to kill for you.” She said the word kill, her heart wept, and then Clovermead’s tears were brimming over. She beat her fists against Saraband, but Saraband took Clovermead in her arms and held her and wouldn’t let her go. Clovermead could not stop weeping, Saraband was weeping with her, and Clovermead let herself go limp. She huddled against Saraband’s warmth.
“I felt him die,” Clovermead sobbed. “My paw went into him and I felt it. I killed him.” She took a shuddering breath. “Me, Clovermead. Not the Demoiselle and not Lord Ursus and not anybody else. Dear Lady, he was so frightened when he died.” Her throat was thick, and she tried to clear it with a cough, but she hiccuped instead. The hiccups continued, and Clovermead laughed through her tears. She tried to wipe her nose, but her hands were bloody. “Saraband, what have I done?”
“You saved my life,” said Saraband. She pressed her wet cheeks against Clovermead’s yellow hair. “I’ll always be grateful to you.”
“We disgust you.” More tears spilled out of Clovermead. “Sorrel and I are just alike. Killers. He told me how he cried the first time he killed a man, and now look at him! I’ll be as jolly as him the next time I chop someone down. Oh, Lady, we deserve to disgust you.”
“I think I could rather like you, Clovermead. When you forget you don’t like me because I’m a prissy dancing girl, you can be rather nice, in a bumptious, farm-girlish sort of way.” Clovermead couldn’t help but giggle in her tears, and Saraband laughed with her. “See? We can laugh together.”
“But I’m still a killer,” said Clovermead. “Even when we’re laughing, you’ll always look at me and know that.”
“I’ll also know you hate bloodshed almost as much as I do,” said Saraband. “That matters most.” She paused a moment. “I wish Sorrel minded killing as much as you do.”
“Tell him how you feel. Tell him to give up fighting. I’m sure he’ll oblige you.” Clovermead felt ice stab in her, and she shrugged out of Saraband’s embrace. Saraband let her go, but she kept Clovermead’s hand in hers. Clovermead clenched her fingers tight around Saraband’s. She didn’t want to let her go entirely.
“I don’t know that he would,” said Saraband bleakly. “When we were in the mountains, I thought he might. Now that I see how much Sorrel enjoys fighting, I’m afraid to ask again. I think he’d say no.”
I wish I could believe that, thought Clovermead. Sorrel would run to the ends of the earth for you—any fool can see that. Ask him anything and he’ll say yes. But she couldn’t help but hope that Saraband was right about the Tansyard.
“He likes you more than he likes battles,” she said out loud. Then she shook her head in perplexity. “Saraband, I can understand not wanting to be a soldier, but it seems awfully strange to me that you’d rather die than defend yourself. Why do you hate fighting so much?”
Saraband was silent for a long moment. “It’s a matter of loyalty to my mother,” she said at last. “I cannot fight and be true to her.” She looked levelly at Clovermead. “I won’t go against her wishes again.”
“What did you do the first time?”
Saraband smiled bitterly. “Mother didn’t want me to accept Milady’s request that I become the Demoiselle Cindertallow.”
“The Demoiselle? I’m the Demoiselle!” Clovermead stared at her cousin incredulously. “What are you talking about?”
“We’re cousins, Clovermead. Who do you think became the Demoiselle when you were thought dead? Surely you knew.” Dumbfounded, Clovermead shook her head. “Hasn’t anyone mentioned this to you?”
“Milady didn’t have an heir when I came to Chandlefort,” said Clovermead.
“I was no longer Demoiselle by then.”
“I’m very confused,” said Clovermead. �
��How did you come to be Demoiselle and how did you stop being Demoiselle?”
“Your mother was responsible for both events,” said Saraband. “It was like this.”
Chapter Fifteen
Saraband’s Story
After my father died, my mother and I left Sconce Keep and went to Silverfalls Abbey. Mother had wanted to be a nun before she met father; now she returned to Silverfalls and made her vows at last. Usually no nun was allowed to bring a child with her, but the old Abbess made an exception for me. I grew up in the company of nuns—I had fewer friends than most children, but the nuns delighted to have a girl around, and they spoiled me more than most too.
Mother was my friend as much as anyone. She taught me my letters, and we learned our prayers together. We also learned medicine from the Abbess: Mother had a fierce desire to be a healer, after father and uncle died in battle, and she had considerable talent as well. I think I was a fast learner too, for a child, but I never learned as much as Mother. She read books of medicine late into the night; I concentrated on nursing and what could be taught by example. I was happy enough that way.
And I learned to dance from Mother. She loved the music, she loved the motion, especially those nights when her sorrows lay upon her more heavily than usual. She would call in a nun who played the fiddle, and we would dance together. The frown would fade from Mother’s face as she lost herself in the music. Sometimes she would even laugh.
Lady Cindertallow came to Silverfalls when I was nine. There was no warning: I had been sewing an altar cloth with my mother, and she suddenly dropped her needle. I turned and saw a lady with golden hair. I knew who she was: Mother had described her well enough over the years as she cursed her. Besides, I knew that no one else was allowed to wear a brooch with a burning bee. My mother set aside the cloth and stood still and pale, just looking at Lady Cindertallow. I curtsied, very awkwardly. I thought she might gobble me up or set me on fire just by looking at me.
“Hello, Meadowlark,” said Lady Cindertallow. Her voice was astonishingly human. It was not gentle, but it was not the thunder I had expected. There was self-confidence, command, and pride in her face, but no deliberate cruelty. I did not understand why my mother feared her so.
“Lady Cindertallow.” My mother tried to curtsy but could not manage it.
“Melisande,” said Lady Cindertallow. “I have always wanted to be Melisande to you, Meadowlark.” There was sadness and pity in her voice.
“That is impossible, Lady Cindertallow,” my mother whispered.
Lady Cindertallow looked angry for a second. Her lips thinned, her eyes blazed, and now I understood my mother’s fear. My mother would be helpless should Lady Cindertallow lose her temper.
“As you wish,” said Lady Cindertallow at last. She turned from my mother and examined me. “Lady Saraband, I believe? I would recognize you anywhere. You have your father’s strength and your mother’s beauty. A better combination than the reverse, eh, Meadowlark?” She laughed, but my mother would not smile, just moved closer to me and put her arms around my shoulders. I let myself fall into her protective embrace. Lady Cindertallow scrutinized me again, and I felt like she was weighing my soul teaspoon by teaspoon. I wanted to run. At last she nodded. “You look fit enough,” she said. My mother stiffened.
“Fit for what?” I asked. Everyone was silent. “Fit for what,” I repeated.
“Some years ago I lost my husband and my daughter,” said Lady Cindertallow at last. “My Council recommended that I remarry so that I might bear another heir. I asked them to give me a while to mourn. Now the time I asked them for is up, and I find that I have not ceased to mourn. I will not remarry. Still, I must provide an heir for Chandlefort. I have no brothers or sisters. Your father was my only first cousin, Lady Saraband, and you are my closest female relative.” My mouth fell open with shock. She was going to make me the Demoiselle Cindertallow.
“You can’t have her,” said my mother. It was a whisper, a shriek, a saw slicing upward from her throat. “You can’t take her from me too.”
“Lady’s diadem, what do you think I want of her, Meadowlark?” asked Lady Cindertallow. “I mean to have her trained as my successor, but I won’t steal her from you. She’ll live with you, dine with you, and sleep with you. I’m not inhuman.”
“I don’t want her to become a Cindertallow,” my mother said, with a brittle determination that did not at all mask her fear. “I don’t want her to justify her whims as the good of Chandlefort. I don’t want her to learn how to break people without remorse. I want my Saraband to stay soft and gentle. I don’t want her to become like you.” She was trembling with fear, but still she spoke.
“Hold your tongue,” said Lady Cindertallow sharply. “I’ve done you no harm.”
“You killed Mallow,” said Mother. “You led him to love you, then you cast him aside in an instant and his heart died. He threw his husk away in battle, but you killed him. Athanor died trying to save poor Mallow and you killed him, too. I’ll never forgive you for their murders. And now you want to take my daughter from me. Don’t think I’m giving her to you.”
“I also grieved when Mallow died, Meadowlark,” said Lady Cindertallow. “I did not love him, but he was dear to me. I loved Athanor as a brother, and I grieved yet more for him. I wish you had let me attend their funerals.” She was clearly angry, but she made herself speak gently. “If I was thoughtless in my treatment of your brother, if I bear any responsibility for their deaths, I think that Our Lady has punished me well for my sin. I have lost my Ambrosius and my Cerelune, and I ache for them as much as you do for Athanor and Mallow. Meadowlark, let this hatred come to an end.”
“No,” said my mother. She was ablaze with anger and sorrow. “I’ll never forgive you. I’m glad your husband died and I’m glad your daughter died. You deserve those sorrows and a thousand more. You may not have my daughter. I defy you.”
Then I saw the fury truly gathering on Lady Cindertallow’s face. There is a mosaic in the Abbey chapel of The Wrath of Our Lady, when she saw the mistress making her servant work during temple services, and all the light in Our Lady’s face turned to terrible anger. Lady Cindertallow looked like that—majesty, power, light, and rage. I knew she would order my mother killed if she spoke. I knew I had to turn aside her wrath.
“It’s not my mother’s choice whether I stay or go,” I said, and somehow my words managed to stay Lady Cindertallow’s anger. “It’s mine, Milady. Isn’t it?”
She could not speak, from grief and rage. All she could do was nod her head.
“Then I choose to go,” I said. I turned to where my mother stood frozen in despair. “Don’t you understand?” I whispered to her. “She’ll kill you otherwise.”
“I’d rather die,” my mother whispered, and some part of her was broken. Thanks to me. She took her arms from around me, backed away, and averted her eyes. “If you go, Saraband, I won’t see you again. I’ll have no truck with Cindertallows.”
I hugged my mother and I kissed her terribly hard on the cheek. She shivered in my arms, small and delicate and wounded. Then I let her go. “Good-bye, Mother,” I said.
My mother nodded and drew herself up to her full height. “Take the Demoiselle with you,” she said to Lady Cindertallow. Then she left the room.
I came to Chandlefort, and I began to train to be the next Lady Cindertallow. I rode, I practiced fighting and ceremonial, I studied history and statecraft, I watched Lady Cindertallow in her various offices. She was civil to me but never warm: I was an unwelcome necessity. Whenever I told her I had to go, she never urged me to stay.
My mother was right: It was a terrible thing to be a Cindertallow. In ceremony they taught me never to make a mistake; in fighting they taught me how to kill; in statecraft they taught me to be ruthless. I cannot fault the schoolmasters who decided on this mode of education: For making a Lady Cindertallow competent to lead Chandlefort, it was excellent. But it also made a Lady Cindertallow terrible in her heart—a Lady Ci
ndertallow who would destroy men in a second if she thought it suited the interests of Chandlefort. And when I saw those whom it was necessary to destroy, I saw my mother’s face. I hated what I was being taught.
I far preferred to dance. I danced with children, at the balls with the lords and ladies, and for long hours by myself in my room. It wasn’t only the urge to follow my mother in some part of my life that made me love dancing so. It was somehow the opposite of everything I had to learn during the day. It was beauty unalloyed with terror, prudence, or any of the hard virtues of the Cindertallows. Dancing, I could be soft. So it became my passion, and I spent many hours repeating dance steps, until they were ingrained in my body far deeper than any swordplay or matter of state.
I spent three years as Lady Cindertallow’s Heir Apparent. My last day in that exalted position came some four years ago when I saw a dozen prisoners from Low Branding in the great courtyard of Chandlefort playing the fiddle and dancing. They were patricians who had been captured in a skirmish and allowed on parole within the city walls while they waited for their ransoms to arrive. They had borrowed clothes from lords within the Castle, had their wounds bandaged, and now one of them had borrowed a fiddle and was playing a Low Branding tune while his companions danced with one another. The beardless youths took the women’s parts.
I was due at Lady Cindertallow’s study to review a particularly dull piece of ceremonial involved in receiving emissaries from the Empress of Queensmart. There was very little chance the Empress would ever send an emissary to Chandlefort again, but in case she did, I had to know the proper protocol. I was in no great mood for my studies, and the dance music tempted me as I walked. I was no truant, I told myself, but my feet turned toward the music, and then I was gawping at the dancers.
The music was fascinatingly different from that of Chandlefort—sometimes lazily slow, sometimes brisk, and sometimes rollicking and rolling, but never as stately as our Chandlefort court dances. The young patricians were no experts, but they clearly enjoyed themselves, and they had attracted an admiring audience. I stared at their whirling feet and clapping hands and listened to the fiddle play. My own feet started tapping to the tune, then imitating the patricians’ movements.
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