“Help me . . . Sir Guard? Help . . .” I made my voice thin and weak and leaned on the doorframe, both hands beneath my cloak, as if I were clutching my belly.
It was very dark, beyond my door. The branches were black and there were stars among them, but no moon. My breath was white; the brightest thing I saw.
“What is it?” He was dark too, though as he neared I made out the silver glint of his eyes. He had a beard, contrary to the custom begun by Teldaru. This almost made me regret what I intended to do.
“I’m ill . . .” I retched—a wracked sound that produced no vomit but was nonetheless convincing. “I need . . .” I leaned over, heaved again.
“Very well,” he said hastily, “I’ll take you.”
I stumbled after him to where he had been sitting. He picked up his lantern (which glowed only weakly) and led me to the latrine. I thought, as I lurched inside and slammed the knot-holed door, that it did not stink as much at night.
I straightened up against the wall and waited. The bottle was in my hand, which was already raised. I counted my own heartbeats; twenty of them, before the guard rapped on the wood.
“Come on, then,” he called. “Come out.”
Fifteen more heartbeats.
“Girl . . . Nola. Come out now or I’ll come in.”
Five more, and the door creaked open. I was relieved that he did not pound it open, because I was behind it, and needed him to be tentative in order to carry out my plan. I was relieved, but sorry again, in a clear, sudden, silly way—and then he was in, head and neck, and I was bringing the bottle down on him with all my strength.
He fell onto his stomach with a grunt that sounded puzzled. He tried to twist onto his side when I stepped over him; I slammed my foot against his forehead and he fell back again. I ran out the door and into the shadows of the trees. I ran as if I had done it before, here: skimming over roots and crackly grass, toward the keep that flickered with red-orange light. I heard only my own footsteps—no one shouting; no one following.
At the double doors to the keep I halted. I leaned against the stone, panting in long, vanishing plumes. Think. Think: this part will be harder. . . .
I pulled the doors open and saw a stretch of torchlit corridor. No guards; no one at all. I stepped inside and pulled the doors shut behind me. Walked quickly, but not too quickly. I remembered this place a little; I knew I would see a staircase, at the end of the hall, and yet another set of doors, and another guard. I did. I stood and watched him. Think, Nola, think. . . .
I burst into the brighter light of the entrance hall. He saw me almost immediately and stiffened, though he did not draw his sword. “You must come!” I cried. “The guard in the seers’ courtyard—someone has attacked him!”
He stared at me for a moment, then rushed off the way I had come. I scrabbled at the double doors until they creaked open and flung myself down the long staircase outside. It seemed very dark here, after the keep, and I was moving swiftly; I slipped several times and flailed my arms gracelessly to keep my balance. There were knots of people at the bottom but I flew past them, and past the guards who were standing by a wagon at the main gate. My feet pounded the cobblestones that sloped away from the castle. I made for an alley that branched off the main street. It was narrow and dank and there was no light at all, so I slowed, dragging my shoulder along a rough wooden wall. The alley twisted downward.
Yes, I thought as I followed it, take me away from him; take me to a street I know—the one with the brothel, so that I can find Bardrem. We’ll leave the city together and he’ll write a poem about it someday, when we’re old. . . .
Light flickered ahead of me. I quickened my pace, blinking, clenching my hands to try to keep them warm. A pony clopped by where the alley met the street. I edged forward and peered out after it. The castle was there, very close, looming against the sky. I stared at the shapes of its gatehouse towers and walls, thinking, No—that’s impossible—I ran down, away. . . .
This time I took the main road, and I walked. Down again—I was sure of it, because when I glanced over my shoulder I could see just the black shadows of the gatehouse banners. I breathed and wrapped my arms around myself and kept walking. A woman carrying a yoke and two buckets was coming up toward me, and I stepped to the side to let her pass. When she had, and I went back into the middle of the street, the castle was directly ahead of me.
I stopped. Everything swam in my vision, as if I were beginning to Othersee. I staggered where I stood, and turned around to look behind me. I saw the castle again: a mirror castle and a real one, or maybe neither? Men were approaching from both. Guards—four of them, led by the bearded one I had hit. As he drew closer I saw that his left eye was swollen shut. I spun and spun and there was no path away from them. Even if there had been I would have been too dizzy to follow it.
“Nola,” the bearded one said softly as the others fell in behind him. He closed his big hands around my upper arms so tightly that I cried out. His mouth was nearly touching my ear. “He warned us you’d be tricky.”
“No.” I whimpered and wrenched myself around in his grasp, but it did not matter—not only because he had me so firmly, but also because the castle was there, where it should not have been. It was everywhere.
“Back we go, mad girl,” he said. “Master Teldaru’s waiting.”
He did not come until dawn.
I heard him, after hours and hours of silence. It was almost a relief to hear him: his footsteps, his voice murmuring to whichever man was outside my door. I sat on the edge of the bed, holding one of the cloth horses in my lap. I thought of Chenn.
Borl came in with him, this time. Teldaru was holding a lantern; its light glanced off his belt buckle and Borl’s bared teeth, and something that was between his teeth—something metal. They both stood just inside the door and stared at me.
“Well, Nola,” Teldaru said at last. My muscles ached from gripping the horse, but I held it even closer. “You still do not appreciate all I have done for you, it seems. You still seek to defy me, even though I have offered to lift the curse if you obey.” He stepped toward me, and I flinched. “And you evidently had little faith in the curse itself. You will never leave me—I bent your Paths to make this true. Perhaps now you understand? You can try to run, but your feet will always lead you back to me.”
I remembered the alley and the street, and the castle that had waited at the end of both. Sickness bubbled up into my throat.
“And yet,” he continued, “even though you have been disobedient, I have brought you something. Something you might have been missing.”
This something was small and pale, and he was holding it between his fingers. He dropped it onto the bed beside me and I reached for it, even though I did not want to. Paper. Just a square of it, wrinkled where it was folded—but it was not folded now.
“Do you remember it? You should: it was in your dress—that lovely pink dress you were wearing when you first arrived here. Remember?”
You are beautiful help!
I nodded.
He whistled and Borl came toward me, too. He opened his jaws and the metal thing he was carrying fell.
“And this, dearest—do you remember it?” I looked. I knew but did not know; I waited because I could not move. “Go on,” he said. “Pick it up.”
It was Bardrem’s knife—the small one, the one with which he had sworn to kill Chenn’s murderer. The one I had scoffed at because I had been thinking of Orlo’s black, restless eyes and broad shoulders. I picked it up and turned it over and over, and I saw dark streaks on the steel.
“He defied me too, your Bardrem.” Teldaru shook his head, smiled. “He yelled ‘Orlo!’ and ran at me, but too late.”
My breath shuddered in my chest. “You killed him,” I said. The blood on the blade smudged under my fingertips.
“No. Why would I be so foolish? No: he is alive now. But if you are foolish enough to try to escape me again, he dies. He dies, Nola. Do you understand?”
<
br /> I did not nod or speak, but he leaned down to me and said, “Good,” as he plucked the knife from my hands. “And now we are done with foolishness.”
He traced the line of my cheekbone, smoothed his thumb along my forehead. Bent even closer and whispered, “Goodnight,” against my hair, as Borl growled from the doorway.
He left the door open when he went. I stared after him, at nothing—until someone else appeared on the threshold, maybe minutes later, maybe an hour.
“May I come in?”
I blinked, heard myself say, “Yes.”
The girl Grasni came to stand in front of me. She plucked at her voluminous brown dress with one freckled hand. “I heard,” she began, and cleared her throat. “We all heard the commotion last night, with you and the guards. No one will tell us what it was about, and I’m not here to ask you—just to say that I’m sorry. You must be feeling unhappy here, lonely—I know what that’s like, so I thought I’d come and give you these.”
She put something down on the bed where Teldaru had dropped Bardrem’s note. I reached out again and felt cool metal against my fingers. “They’re for your hair,” she said in a rush, as I picked up two of the dainty bronze butterfly pins and turned them over in my palm. “Now that I think about it, I’m not sure why I imagined they’d help you be less lonely. But my brother gave them to me, and he was the one I missed when I came here. They always slide right out of my hair—yours is so much nicer than mine, and I saw that it was falling in your eyes, yesterday in the classroom, so I thought that you should try them.” She drew a deep, gusty breath and let it go again.
I looked up at her. “Thank you,” I said, quietly enough that I hoped she would not hear the wobbling of my voice. “Help me with them?”
She gathered one thick strand of my hair up and away from my forehead, gave it a deft twist, and thrust one of the pins in. She did this three more times, then stepped back and cocked her head at me. “Well,” she said, “you look just lovely. Selera will be jealous.”
She smiled at me—and despite the note, the knife, and the road that would never lead me away, I smiled back at her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sometimes I stare at the papers in front of me and am still surprised. I should be accustomed to it by now: to my hand holding the quill, making shapes that match the ones in my head. Words, thousands of them, and none of them lies. Every “Teldaru” intentional.
It interests me that my desire to speak true words is far less strong than my desire to write them. I never really tried writing anything except lessons, after that first attempt, whereas the words flowed from my mouth every time someone asked them to. I’ve grown terribly weary of listening to myself.
And now? My fire is tall and bright and I’ve just eaten and I’m not tired and animals and baby are all asleep—so what’s next?
There’s this, I suppose, which seems ridiculous and frightening at the same time:
I got used to it.
I got used to it—to almost every aspect of my imprisonment. Partly because Teldaru (to my great surprise) was distant, almost aloof, and so I actually began to enjoy myself—and also because you can accustom yourself to anything, if you feel you have no choice.
Years passed. Teldaru kept me by him in public but almost never came to me alone, and I was too relieved to question this. “Do not think I have forgotten you,” he said to me once. We were walking around the seers’ pool; I could feel the other students’ eyes on us, as they always were, wide or narrowed, curious or furious or admiring. This had been very easy to get used to. “Do not think that I have forgotten what we will do together. It is just that there are things I must try alone, first. Plans that must be made with clarity and care.”
“And you can’t be clear or careful with me around?” I was probably about seventeen by then. I had despaired of ever having Selera’s lush curves, but I had grown my hair as long as hers, and it was thick and red-gold and made her jealous.
“No, Mistress Alluring Seer, I cannot.” He smiled and bent his head close to mine.
Grasni would be turning to Selera now, saying something like, “I’m sure he’s positioned himself that way so that he can see past her to you. Yes, I’m sure of it, Lera: his fingers just twitched! He’s sending you a secret message!”
“It will be your time soon,” he said to me. “Not yet—but soon.”
I grew accustomed to hearing this and not believing it. Years had gone by, after all. Maybe whatever foul experiments he was conducting were failing; maybe he had realized how impossible his plans were and was simply too embarrassed to admit this to me.
I was comfortable. People envied me. Fear and revulsion and rage were memories. Grasni was my friend. Even Chenn’s bottles and toys and Bardrem’s note were things I looked at, but did not think about. I saw King Haldrin less, but when he did visit the school he always paid particular attention to me. The King of Sarsenay, asking after me! And his kingdom continued peaceful, I heard—peaceful and prosperous. Maybe Teldaru had forgotten. Surely he had.
I somehow got used to my curse-twisted Otherseeing, as well—probably because Teldaru hardly ever had me use it. I had been afraid that he would force me to come with him to Othersee at court, but he did not, in those first years. He had me teach the young ones (and there were more of them, as time went on), and sometimes he brought a scullery maid or guard to me, and the exhilaration of Otherseeing for them lessened the sting of false words that came after. And they were innocuous words, really, or so I insisted to myself. Words of triumph when I had seen defeat; of sadness when I had seen joy. Not big things, I thought, when I thought about it at all. Nothing that would change the world’s Pattern.
But then Grasni came to me, on a night in spring, and asked me to Othersee for her.
Selera had been doing this for years. It was a game she played without even understanding the rules—only that it was enjoyable, as it had been that very first time, when I had been the mad girl who had spoken to her of laughing blond children with black eyes. She never told me that she was coming; she simply appeared at my door. If someone else was with me (which rarely happened) she would send them off with an imperious word or two and a wave of her pretty hand.
She would not tell me to Othersee right away. No: first she had to talk about Teldaru.
“He kissed me yesterday. In the kitchen. He unbound my hair and wrapped it around his hands and smelled it.”
“Lovely, Selera.”
“He pressed me back into the grass, last night. He unlaced my bodice and ran his lips over my breasts.”
“Did he find them to his taste?”
“Finally—oh, finally, Nola! He woke me with the gentlest kisses, and he was in me—he was moving, so slowly—”
“Yes, yes, fine; I need no more details.”
That last time I was very quick to lose my patience, but on other occasions it took longer. This was part of the game: she would prattle about how, precisely, he had loved her—on which chair, up against which tree—and she would wait for me to snap at her. Which I always did, despite the resolve I felt when she first swept in the door. I told myself that I snapped because she was simply intolerable, but there were other layers there, beneath my angry words. Once I threw one of the bottles at her, which made her laugh and laugh. When she had gone I cried and cut my fingertips on the blue shards as I gathered them into a pile on the floor.
After she had provoked me to frustration or anger she would lean back in the chair (she always took the chair) and ease open the lid of my desk, where all my sticks of wax and jars of grain were. She would smile sweetly while I stared at her, both of us motionless, knowing what was next.
“Now then, Nola. Othersee for me. Tell me what will come.”
She had no idea why I never refused her. Maybe she thought her power was so great that I could not. Maybe she did not think about it at all. What mattered most was that she got what she wanted.
This I did not get used to. Every time I reached f
or the jars or the wax my insides clenched. My hands sometimes trembled, and she never failed to comment on this.
“It gratifies me to see how overcome you are by the prospect of Otherseeing for me.”
“Overcome by that old pork we had for dinner, more like.”
My only consolation was that, though the words I spoke to her were always lovely and golden, the visions I saw were always dark. Both Yigranzi and Teldaru had told me to speak only of the strongest image, if there were many differing ones and I was unsure which was truest. But there were no differing images in Selera’s Otherworld—and how could I have chosen which of them was strongest? The skull, the fire, the flood; the eyes that wept blood?
There wasn’t one baby or music box or swan among them, and yet these were the pictures I gave her, with my cursed voice—and as I did I smiled, inside, thinking of the truth of things. I did, though I shudder to remember this now.
When Grasni arrived, that night in spring, Selera was just leaving.
“She’s doing very well tonight,” Selera said, waving her hand at me. “I’m sure she’d tell you something spectacular, if you were brave enough to ask for it.”
I snorted. Grasni would never come to me for Otherseeing. She thought that seers should never ask for the Othersight to be turned on themselves; it was what our teachers had always said, citing the importance of purity of vision and maintenance of power. Selera enjoyed thinking she was breaking the rules in this respect. The fact that Teldaru knew about it—that he had, in fact, encouraged her to do it—surely sweetened the transgression all the more.
Grasni believed in keeping seer and seen separate. And she claimed, too, to have no desire to know where her Path would take her. I had seen her reprimand younger students, when we stumbled upon them crouched over pot lids or globs of wax stolen from the classroom or our desks. “I know what you’re intending to do,” she said in her gentle, scolding voice as they shrank from us. “And you mustn’t. All you need to know about your Path is that you will tell other people about theirs. You give; you do not take. You are too important for that. Yes?”
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