Each of the heavy cast-iron pans had rings for eight small tarts. Odosse took two of them and pressed the pastry dough into the rings, covering the molds evenly on the bottoms and sides. She made thirteen shells, pricking their bottoms with a fork, and poured a finger-depth of water into the empty rings to protect the molds while they baked.
Mathas peered at the trays as Odosse loaded them into the coolest oven. “Thirteen? Mistress Halfrey wants twelve.”
“My father taught me to always make one extra for tasting before sending the rest out to our guests. Butter’s expensive, but failure’s worse.”
The baker nodded, gruffly pleased. “Taught my daughter the same. She’s up in Isencras now, baking for King Raharic’s kitchen. Sends me letters from time to time. She can’t read, no more than I can, but her boy’s only seven and already knows his letters. Might be yours could do the same, if you want. Blessed Andalya teaches the town’s children. When she’s here.”
“Does that mean—” Odosse began, but Mathas cut her off.
“I’ve got a spare room over the bakery if you need a place to stay. Room and board, all the bread you care to carry home at the end of the day, and threepence a week. It’s a generous offer.”
“It is,” Odosse said, hardly believing her luck. “I thank you for your kindness, and I’m honored to accept.”
HER DAYS SETTLED INTO A COMFORTABLE rhythm soon after she moved into Mathas’ bakery. Early each morning, when the stars were still bright and the air sharp with frost, she went downstairs to help pull the loaves from their baking-boards and load them into baskets, covered with cloth to keep in the warmth as she carried them through the town.
Half the baskets went into a donkey-cart to be delivered by a taciturn old man named Haeric. The other half were divided between the bakery’s front room, where Mathas sold them to customers who came to his door, and smaller deliveries to taverns and large households within a few minutes’ walk of the bakery. Baskets of loaves went to inns, guildhalls, the town hospice—anyplace that had hungry mouths gathered together and no servants to spare for the errand. By the time Odosse finished her rounds, it was usually well into the morning, and the town came alive around her as she walked.
It was the best introduction to Tarne Crossing she could have hoped for. Odosse learned the streets and the people, the houses and their guests. The bread basket on her shoulder made her welcome at every door, or at least kept people from setting their dogs on her; with the Langmyrne accent still strong on her tongue, she could hardly have expected more. Sometimes she took Aubry bundled up in his carrier, so her son could share the delight of discovering a new town, and she was grateful to Mathas for giving her that chance. She would never have dared take her son out in Oakharn without the shield of her bread basket.
Once her baskets were delivered and the last of the previous day’s retrieved, Odosse returned to help make the next day’s bread. They did more than simple peasant loaves; there were spicebreads and currant cakes, sweet saffron buns and glazed chestnut rings, honeymilk tarts and dried apple pies. Those, too, had to be delivered when done, and if Haeric was not yet back with the donkey-cart, she carried them herself. Between errands it was easy enough to steal upstairs to see the babies; sometimes she played silly games with her son while the loaves were baking.
She did not play with Wistan. She couldn’t. The sick baby was the one cloud of worry in her sunny days. Some days he seemed to be improving: he would take milk and bread-mush with little coaxing, smile at her silly faces, gurgle happy sounds that were almost words. On those days Odosse’s heart clenched with the agony of hope.
But there were bad days, too. He was putting on weight, slowly, but he remained smaller and weaker than Aubry, and the slightest chill could send him spiraling back down. On his bad days Wistan seemed lost in delirium again, and Odosse had to force-feed him milk and water. Once he refused to eat until she thought the child might die; the sunken spot on the top of his head returned, and his lips grew white with dry flaked skin until it looked like he’d been kissing salt. He recovered, eventually, but it terrified her.
Odosse didn’t know what to do for him, beyond feed him and clean him and pray that the Blessed might come back soon. But she didn’t have time to dwell on that worry, either, with so much work demanding to be done.
By dusk prayers she was exhausted, but every night she took a bag of the day’s leftover bread to the Broken Horn. Most nights Brys was there. He didn’t seem to be having much luck tracking down the architects of Willowfield’s ambush, but there was no shortage of other rumors to fill their ears. Sellswords liked to talk, it seemed, and he had a gift for encouraging them.
“Blessed Andalya’s delayed in Bulls’ March,” Brys told her one evening when she came to deliver the day’s leavings. He rummaged through the bag, picking out a pair of small tarts. “What are these?”
“Yellow’s egg custard, red is elderberry jam.” Odosse pushed back a strand of mud-brown hair that had escaped from the coif she wore while working. “I thought the Blessed was supposed to be coming back to Tarne Crossing. Didn’t they decide she couldn’t help the old lord?”
“Suppose they want her there until he dies. They say his first wife died for lack of a Blessed, and his people don’t plan to repeat the mistake.” He took a bite of the elderberry tart. “Did you make this? It’s good.”
“You needn’t sound so surprised,” she said, nettled. “If the Blessed isn’t coming soon … what about Wistan? He needs help. He’s done far better than I expected, but he’s getting worse every day.”
“I know. We might have to go to Bulls’ March, though I’m not eager to risk it without knowing Albric’s role in this. Or … there’s a Sun Knight said to be riding around on the Langmyrne side of the river. The Burnt Knight, they call him. Kelland’s his name. He’s keeping the peace for Lord Eduin, supposedly, but I hear he’s asking questions about Willowfield too.”
“The Sun Knights are Blessed, aren’t they?”
“They are.” Brys shook off the crumbs of the first tart and started on the egg custard. “This one’s good too. If I’m allowed to say that.”
She ignored him. “Then why can’t he heal Wistan?”
“He can. I’m not convinced it’s wise to ask him. The Knights of the Sun are a strange lot. They do what they do for their own reasons. I don’t like asking favors of a man when I don’t know what he’ll ask me in turn—especially not a man so godly it’s addled his wits. There are other reasons, too, but that’s the one that sticks.”
“We’re talking about a baby. A baby.” Odosse bit back her anger. It wouldn’t help to scream at the man. She simply couldn’t believe that anyone could be so callous about a child’s life—not even someone who so casually spoke of killing men and had probably murdered at least two in Tarne Crossing. She still had the silver that Brys had taken from them; she hadn’t been able to make herself spend it. “Whatever the knight wants, it’s worth paying. And I really don’t think that someone who’s dedicated his entire life to the Bright Lady is going to ask for your firstborn’s blood.”
“Let’s hope not, because I have no idea which brothel you’d find him in.” Brys smirked. “But even if you’re willing to pay a price before asking what it is—and I’m not—good luck finding the man to tender it. The Burnt Knight’s riding all along the border. Might be I could catch him, if it were just me and a horse, but you? Not as easy. Carrying both babies, and with winter nigh upon us? Impossible. Even the Blessed can’t cure the dead, and you’d be frozen solid your first night out.”
“Then what can we do?”
“Let me think on it. Stay at the bakery in the meantime. I like the cakes.”
Odosse stalked out, too vexed to correct him. Tarts, not cakes. But she came back the next night with another bag. And again the one after.
On the third day, she was delivering the Broken Horn’s morning basket of bread when a young man in the commons called her over. He was tall and handsome as S
ir Auberand from the stories. Golden hair tumbled over his shoulders in loose, lazy curls. A small strawberry birthmark stained the side of his neck, but it barely diminished his proud beauty.
When he first beckoned in her direction, Odosse looked over her shoulder to see who else was there. But she was alone; there was no pretty serving girl standing in the doorway, nor any elegant lady guest coming down the stairs.
“Yes, you,” the blond youth said. He seemed amused, but his smile was so charming that Odosse couldn’t help but forgive him. “Come here, silly girl.”
“My lord.” She dropped a curtsy, clumsy with yesterday’s bread basket still in her hands. Her lack of grace made her flush. She couldn’t say why it seemed proper to curtsy, or to grant him the title, but it did. His clothes were not especially fine, and he wore no lord’s ring or knight’s medallion, but the honorific seemed to fit. He had that aura.
“Oh, don’t be so formal. Do you have time to sit and talk a while?” He gestured to an empty chair. Next to him, not across the table.
“It’s the middle of morning deliveries, my lord—”
“I won’t take long. A moment of your time. I was hoping to learn a little more about you. Even if it’s only your name.” He smiled again, patting the seat of the empty chair and giving her a slight, suggestive arch of his eyebrows.
She went to him, feeling strangely light-headed, and sank into the offered chair as if in a dream. It was the middle of the morning, and she had five full baskets waiting at the bakery, but somehow Mathas’ disappointment and customers’ impatience were insignificant when set against the stranger’s smile. Odosse straightened the linen band over her hair and tried to smooth out her skirts, as if that might make her more pleasing to his eye.
“My name, my lord?”
“Yes.” There was a whisper of scent about him: musky and spicy, headier than wine. It reminded her of the oils and resins in the charm-crafter’s cottage, each one labeled like a fairy-tale potion. Something about that tugged at her memory, but the thought was soon eclipsed by the force of his presence. All Odosse wanted to do was bask in his nearness.
“Odosse,” she breathed, leaning closer as though pulled by invisible strings.
“A name as lovely as you are.” He touched a fingertip to her chin, drawing her still nearer and tilting her face up so that their gazes met.
Odosse did not resist, but his words hit her like a splash of icy water. Another, comelier, girl might have been flattered. And perhaps she should have been thrilled to have such a beautiful man lavish compliments upon her. But she felt only embarrassment and the beginnings of rage, because this was all wrong and she’d been so, so stupid not to see it.
Handsome men did not take an interest in her, unless it was to mock her later. She’d had her fill of that in Willowfield. The village boys had made her the butt of so many jokes she’d lost count. Not just the handsome ones, either: the plain ones had joined in when they’d seen how much fun could be had from her. Most of their pranks began exactly like this: with feigned interest and flattery to make her drop her guard. Even Coumyn, the one boy she’d thought might be different, the one she’d thought might really love her, had done the same. That one hurt worse than all the rest combined. She’d believed him.
Odosse had thought grown men would be above such petty cruelties. Evidently she’d been wrong. The warmth she’d felt for him melted away, leaving suspicion and bitter distrust in its stead.
But when she met the stranger’s eyes, all thought fled from her head.
The force of his gaze was like a physical blow. Odosse gasped, and flinched, and would have pulled away if not for his fingertip against her chin. That single touch, so light she could barely feel it, held her pinned as surely as a spear driven through a fallen foe.
His eyes belonged to nothing human. The pupils were large and misshapen, spreading outward through his irises like drops of ink in water. The blackness of them was so total, so all-consuming, that it made the darkest scribe’s ink seem insubstantial as morning fog. A soul could fall into those pupils and never come out: they were as infinite, as alien, as the void between the stars.
So profound was the power of his gaze that it took Odosse a moment to realize his charm had cracked around it. His golden hair was not lustrous as she had first imagined: it was brittle and strawlike, not shiny at all, and flecks of ash had caught between the strands on one side. His cheeks were pale and sunken, his lips dry and faintly blue, like a dead man’s. When he smiled she could see that his gums had receded almost to the jawbone, leaving his teeth bared in a skull’s snarl. His tongue was fat and purplish behind them. The scent of his perfume, so sweet a moment earlier, now reeked of corruption.
He is a monster, she realized. But no one else seemed to see it.
A serving girl had come to sweep the commons while they talked, and she went by him with no more than a quick glance and a shy smile. He was still as beautiful in her eyes as he had once seemed in Odosse’s. And the stranger kept smiling, as if he did not realize that Odosse could feel how corpse-cold his touch was and smell the stench of decay on his breath. He is a monster, and he does not know that I know.
“Are you here alone?” His nail curved up under her chin, hooking into flesh. Just a little, just a hint, but it was deadly as a knife blade.
Odosse fought down her panic. She felt like a cornered mouse trying to dodge the cat’s claws. Wildly she wondered what the right answer was. The only thing she could think was that, no matter what happened, she had to protect her son. “I … y-yes, my lord. I am.”
“I thought I saw you in the market yesterday with a baby in a wicker carrier. Perhaps I was mistaken … but it’s hard to imagine two such charming girls in this town. Was the child yours?”
“I don’t know what you mean, my lord.” The lie came more easily this time. Desperation granted her a glibness she’d never imagined. “I was never in the market that day, and I haven’t any children. The only things on my back are my baskets of loaves.”
“Ah, then I am sorry to be mistaken.” He took his hand back and made a small wave, dismissing a fleeting fancy. The stranger did not stand as Odosse picked up her empty basket, made another awkward curtsy, and retreated. But his eyes followed her out of the Broken Horn, and they were cold beneath the charm.
As soon as she finished her deliveries, Odosse went back to the inn to find Brys. She would have gone sooner, but she wanted to be sure that the stranger had left, and if she had gone directly he might have followed her.
The stranger was not in the commons when she returned. Ordinary people filled the tables; the room rang with the clamor of their conversations. Odosse took some comfort from the crowd, but at the same time she wondered if another monster might be hiding among them, and so she hurried away.
Her knock on Brys’ door went unanswered. He wasn’t there. Odosse stood outside for a moment, unable to comprehend how he could be absent in her time of need. When it finally sank in she went back to the stairs, staring at the floor.
The tramp of countless boots had worn the stairs smooth in the center and left them rough at the sides. A trail of gray dirt, ground in by all those feet, snaked up the middle of each step. It was an absurdly small thing, but the shared legacy of so much humanity touched something inside her after that brush against the monstrous. Odosse sat down on the steps and cried. She was still sitting there when Brys walked up some time later.
“The hell’s happened to you?”
Odosse stood up hastily, wiping her puffy eyes and wishing for a handkerchief. “Nothing. I mean—”
“Come. Tell me inside.”
Inside his room she told him what had happened, at first faltering and then in a rush so fast that she tripped over herself in the telling and had to start again. When she tried to put the stranger’s presence in words, it seemed ridiculous, foolish as coming to cry to him over a ruined pie, and she half-expected Brys to interrupt and tell her to stop being silly. But he didn’t interrupt
, and he didn’t laugh, and when she finished her account, his face was somber.
“He asked about Aubry?”
“He did,” Odosse confirmed, then shook her head to correct herself. “He asked about the baby. He didn’t use a name.”
“But it was Aubry.”
“Well, yes. I can’t take Wistan outside. He’s so weak.”
“And he asked if you were alone?”
“He did. I said I was. It’s … it’s almost true,” she hedged, “but mostly I was afraid he was going to try to bring you into it, or Master Mathas. The boys in my village liked nothing better than to make my friends part of their joke. And I was afraid of him. So I lied.”
“Remind me to be grateful for childhood cruelties. Other people’s, anyway.” Brys closed the bag of bread she’d given him and knotted the top. He hadn’t glanced inside. “Tell me again what he looked like.”
“Blond. Very handsome. A little shorter than you, a little thinner. Young. I don’t remember the color of his eyes. Just the pupils. They were black, so black. He had a winemark on his neck, just as big as a fingerprint, right here.” Odosse touched a fingertip to her own neck to show him. “There was something about him … like he was nobility, or even kingly. I don’t know why I thought that—he never said anything about being of high blood, and his clothes weren’t any better than yours—but I was sure of it. Before. Then I looked at him again, and I thought he was a monster.”
“You were right the second time. I know that man, and he’s dead.”
“What? But I talked to—”
The River King's Road Page 19
