by J. M. Frey
Beyond that, I have no concept of who she is or where she may be from. Any clues that might have come from her clothing were lost when Bootknife cut them off her. Her ears are pierced, but there are no jewels from which to read her origins or history, no rings, no signets, no torques. How galling!
Her features resemble those of no family I know, which is impressive, as I have a very good head for faces. Her mouth is a small moue of pain, neither generous of plumpness nor waspish or thin. She has lines around the corners that indicate that she laughs heartily and frequently. Her cheeks are higher than I am used to and smooth, sprinkled with freckles. Her skin is dusky in tone, quite similar to the color possessed by the outdoor laborers from the Flung Isles after a season’s work, but not so reddish. Hers is closer to the hue of well-cared for honeywood, made even more yellow in tone by the Sheil-purple of the blankets surrounding her. Her nose is short, adorable in a way that many women curse for being too childish looking. Her lashes are dark, and her eyes sweep upward at the outer edges.
I can tell by the curve of her exposed back, where it swells into her hips and the sides of her breasts, that she’s never starved, never seen a rough harvest or overlong winter.
In summary, she must be a well-off merchant’s daughter, and quite possibly yet another merchant’s wife. I would say a nobleman’s, but she cannot be the child of any nobleman I know from court, legitimate or not.
She could be from another, distant kingdom beyond the borders of Hain, but I have met much of the nobility from Urland and Gadot, as well as a few from Brystal, and she does not bear the trademark of any house that I know; her skin is either too light or too dark, her eyes too round or not round enough, her nose too snubbed or too high, her chin too round.
In short, the collection of her features does not come together to spell out her parentage.
Infuriating.
And fantastic. I am intrigued, instantly. How long has it been since I have been gifted with such a mystery? And that she was imprisoned by the Viceroy for so long without my knowing he had kidnapped anyone . . . was holding anyone at all. It was only an accident of circumstance that she was even rescued, that I even know she exists. The Viceroy had been raiding magical archives and libraries the world over, and when I had put together the picture the sorts of tomes he was stealing painted, I ordered my Men to raid and retrieve. That they had also found her was sheer coincidence.
At least, I believe it is an accident. I cannot imagine any person would allow such agony to befall them for the sake of gaining my pity and entrance to my Hall. Spies usually do not bleed.
I cannot recall the last time something like this happened accidentally in my work, and my heart flutters against my ribs.
The entire situation is completely astounding. Magnetic. Incredible. And so impotently frustrating that I cannot know more, cannot have my curiosity slaked immediately. I wish she were awake to answer my many questions.
The only thing I can know for sure is that the Viceroy wanted something from her, and she refused to give it to him. I cannot guess what it might have been, for he has the power to take anything he wants—even her, had he so chosen. Mother Mouth did not say anything about signs of a violation, but perhaps she wanted to be delicate while my staff was in the room and means to discuss it with me in the morning. The woman in my mother’s bed is pretty enough; the Viceroy likes the pretty ones.
To resist the Viceroy for as long as this woman did, to keep her secrets for so many days that the pattern on her back had the time to grow so complex, must have taken real strength of spirit. As much as she must have been screaming, she’d never told him what it was he sought to learn.
I admire her greatly all of a sudden. There are very few who can keep secrets behind their teeth when Bootknife’s art is in their flesh.
That makes her beautiful to me.
It does not matter how her features are arranged; her will is strong. And, as it was Bootknife she was resisting, I can hope that her morals are also true. I allow myself to follow the soft curve of her pain-paled cheek with my eyes, the delicate protrusion of the tendons in her neck, the place where her breast presses into the blankets and is hidden under her body. I am struck with a sudden swelling of attraction, and I stomp it back viciously.
No. A woman as remarkable as this, unexpectedly arriving at Turn Hall? There is only one explanation—she is for Kintyre. Women like this are always for Kintyre.
The kettle over-boils. Water foams into the fire with an indignant hiss, bringing me back to gloomy reality, and I make myself a pot of tea. Then I settle back into my chair, my portable desk on my lap and an afternoon’s worth of tedious paperwork stacked on its surface.
The only sounds to break the silence are the sputtering of the candles arrayed around the room, the slow tap of the rain just beginning to fall against the roof of the manor, and the pained, almost inaudible whimpers my guest exhales with each labored breath.
I dip my quill into my ink pot and add the scratch of a nib on parchment to the quiet symphony of pain.
✍
“Oh,” the woman whispers, dry lips rasping against the silk pillow casing. “It’s you.”
I have fallen asleep in my chair, and the quiet murmur of her voice yanks me back to wakefulness so quickly that my portable desk clatters to the floor. Ink sprays across the wood and splashes over the Sheil-purple rug beside the bed. I wince. Oh, Mother’s rug! It will take my staff a terrible amount of scrubbing to clean it.
There is nothing I can do about it at the moment, so I right the pot, step around the spreading puddle and toppled papers, and go to her side.
“Greetings,” I say. “Water?” I’m not certain how I’ll get the cup to her lips without spilling all over the pillow or forcing her to sit up, which will be a special new agony in and of itself.
She nods and presses upward on her hands, grimacing but holding herself there until I manage to tip the earthenware cup against her mouth. She sips slowly, grunting as her arms tremble. When the water is gone, she flops back down into the pillow and doesn’t hold back the yelp that such an action causes. It makes anger froth beneath the surface of my own skin, to realize that she has learned how to move with such injuries in order to drink. That Bootknife must have made her learn.
And that I have been unable to spare her that pain in Turn Hall. I’ve failed my first task as her guardian already.
She shivers all over, and my first instinct is to cover her snugly with the blanket. But that would irritate her wounds and allow fibers into the open ones, so instead I put the kettle back on the hook, stoke the fire back to life, and close the windows. Air that was fresh and crisp at sunset has become biting.
She watches it all with eyes that are a very normal, boring shade of muddy green, yet sparkle with keen observation. As I first noted, they are ever so slightly cat-like, turned up at the outside in a manner that I have never seen; though, it is even more pronounced with her eyes open. I have never been on the receiving end of such an intent gaze before.
She watches the same way that I watch.
I fidget until the kettle hisses, welcoming the excuse to duck out from under her odd gaze. As I pour the boiling water into the bowl my staff has left beside the ewer, mixing in the room temperature water until the heat is bearable, I cannot help but ponder on the strangeness of the young woman’s eyes.
Perhaps it is about her eyes . . . ? I recall that the Viceroy has a sickeningly obsessive fascination with Sir Bevel, who is plain but has eyes such a dark blue that they are an anomaly. The Viceroy often threatens to pluck them out and have them rosined for a cloak brooch. It would be very much like him to pick this woman simply because of the unique almond-shape of her eyes. But, then again, that makes no sense at all, for what would Bootknife have tortured her for if the Viceroy had only wanted to collect—possibly extract—a piece of her?
This cyclone of reasoning is near to making me dizzy. Instead of dwelling on answers I cannot deduce alone and cannot ask
for now, I sit on the side of the bed with the bowl and a cloth.
“May I?”
“Sure,” she rasps. “This is so unreal.”
“Your injuries are, in fact, quite real, I’m a-afraid,” I say.
She stares at me for a moment, and then turns her head back into the pillow, purposefully obscuring her expression. For a brief moment, it seems as if her eyes are wet.
“I know,” she mutters into the muffling fabric. “It’s insane, but I know.”
I dip the cloth into the bowl and begin to bathe her back, careful not to oversaturate it. It would not do for excess water to slip down her sides and soak into the bedding beneath her. The ointment has dried into a yellowish crust and must be wiped away carefully before reapplying. The warm water soothes her goose-pimpled skin, and she alternates between soft moans of gratitude and small hisses of pain caused by wounds suddenly being exposed to the air or jarred.
“I’ve never seen you like this before,” she grunts as I lean close to concentrate on cleaning around a fanciful curlicue carved into the sweet dimples right above where her back swells into her buttocks. The latter are covered with a blanket to preserve her modesty, and I am careful not to jostle it.
“You’ve never met me before,” I counter without looking up, soaking in every syllable of her speech. Her words are queerly broad. “How can you say that you have never seen me like . . . whatever it is that you mean by ‘this.’”
“That’s also the longest sentence I’ve ever heard from you.”
What a deliciously strange accent! So flat and lacking the jumps and dips that fill the speech of Hain Kingdom’s people. I’ve never heard anything like it before, which both thrills and shocks me. Knowledge is my currency; so how can she hail from a place that I do not know? How can such a place exist, as every clue she gives up suggests?
I am careful to school my expression, to not appear too thrilled or eager.
“Of course,” I agree, “as you’ve only heard six. Eight, if you count the last one, and this one.”
She turns her face into the pillow and groans. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Again, ‘this,’” I say, because it’s easier to look at her back and work on her wounds than look her in the face. I am ashamed to be causing her pain. It feels like a stab in my own gut.
Useless old Forsyth, as usual. But Mother Mouth asked me to have her fetched in the morning, not in the middle of the night. So I will muddle through, try my best, and hope that she does not chide me too much for the attempt at playing healer myself.
“Master Forsyth Turn, the king’s Shadow Hand . . . boiling his own water and closing his own windows. Elgar Reed would be horrified.”
I feel nauseous immediately.
Oh no, no, how does she know? No one, save my Men and Mother Mouth, is meant to know. The whole village thinks I am no more than the younger son, left behind to be the Master of Turnshire and surroundings, Lordling of the whole of the small but fertile Lysse Chipping; a man soft and slightly useless. That she knows, and speaks of it so casually . . .
A Shadow Hand must be secret above all else. The king will have me turned out—might even have me killed—for failing to maintain this secrecy. How can I function as Hain’s spymaster if I am known?
“Oh,” she says softly when my ministrations stop. “Oh, sorry. Shit. Sorry. I know, I know, it’s not supposed to be talked about. I won’t say anything else. I just meant, you know, you’re the Master of Turn Hall. Shouldn’t a maid be the one with the cloth? Shouldn’t someone be here to open the windows and boil the kettle for you?”
“I am n-no lay-layabout. I am c-capable of do-do-doing it myself,” I say, and I curse all the harder in my head when she cranes her neck around, wincing as the whip-fast movement stretches her wounds. She blinks at me like a stunned owl.
“Did you just stutter?”
“Of c-course n-n-n-not,” I deny, but my words prove themselves liars. I bite my lower lip and scowl, fingers going so tight around the cloth that it creaks and water splashes down my arms, pooling uncomfortably into the bunches of fabric against the insides of my elbows. I hate that feeling.
“Oh my god, you stutter,” she says, and her expression is a mixture of horror and amusement. “Reed never said anything about you stuttering.”
“I do-do-do not stutter,” I snap.
“Hey, no, it’s cool,” she says, rising up as if to turn to face me, but the motion makes everything in her back pull. She yelps again and flops back down to relieve the pain. “Fuck!” she screams into her pillow. She slams her fist against the mattress, clearly infuriated beyond coherence.
“S-stop,” I say softly, setting aside the bowl and placing gentle hands on her right shoulder, the least cut up one.
She flinches away from my touch so dramatically that it looks more like a full body spasm.
“Don’t touch me!” she screams.
I flinch myself, springing off the bed to give her the space she so clearly needs.
She goes still, save for her ragged breathing. One of the thin, deep cuts below her left shoulder blade seeps blood. A low coughing sound, muffled by the pillows, fills the air. I realize that she is sobbing.
Oh, Forsyth, you stupid man. You are useless at women.
“P-please s-stop crying.” It sounds as stupid out loud as it did in my head, but I have no other way to convey my concern. Clearly my proximity is unwelcome.
I clench my fists and shove them into the pockets of my house robe, impotent in the face of her misery. Why is it that among spies and the dance of court politics I am assured and suave, but the moment I remove the mask of the Shadow Hand and become simple Forsyth Turn, I am such a useless, stuttering sack of skin? I hate it.
Eventually, the tears wind down and she turns her face to me. Her muddy green eyes have become bright, even though the skin around them is red and swollen.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Why are you ap-ap-apologizing?”
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable about the stutter. I was just surprised. You never stutter when you’ve got the mask on.”
I only stutter when I am upset or caught off guard. As a child, I stuttered all the time, worse when my older brother teased. But I learned, through sheer force of will, to suppress it. To think about each phrase as I want to say it, to hear it in my head, clear and whole, before letting my tongue taste the words. The Shadow Hand does not stutter because he is a personality I wear, a costume I conceived. I did not conceive him as a stutterer.
I lean down and pick up the bowl. The water has mixed with the ink on the rug, spreading the stain further. My paperwork is also a sodden mess. I will have to begin that report anew. Resentment flares at the thought of having to waste another evening in correspondence, but I cannot blame my guest. It was my own clumsiness that caused them to be on the floor. I should have picked them up right away. Stupid.
“I’m sorry about scaring you, too,” she said. “I just . . . don’t like to be touched. Anymore. Don’t surprise me.”
“I understand. No woman enjoys my touch. I will fetch Neris, your maid,” I say, and turn toward the door to do just that.
“Whoa, no, wait,” she says, and I pause. I take a hesitant step back toward her and her hand shoots out, fingers wrapping around mine. I look down at our twined grip with dumb surprise. I can see her frustration at her inability to move. Warmth blooms against my sternum at the thought that she appears to want to touch me, to physically prevent me from departing. “I didn’t say that. Why would you think that? I just meant that it freaks me out when people touch me and I don’t know it’s going to happen. I never said you have cooties. Stay. Please.” I do not know how to answer. She looks up at me and adds: “You’re the only one I know. I trust you. Please.”
This is enough. I do not know how she seems to know me well enough to trust me, but she does. And I cannot betray that trust. Even though I fear that it might be misplaced. I must do my best not
to disappoint her.
“I will stay. I’ll put the kettle on again and finish your back,” I say. She lets go, fingers brushing against the insides of my knuckles, and I clench my tongue between my teeth. I memorize the ghosting sensation, trying not to let it get too far under my skin.
I can hear her shifting, trying to find a comfortable position. “God, do you have any painkillers?”
“I can mix you a draught with poppy milk, but it will make you sleep again.”
“That’s fine,” she says. “Sounds perfect, actually. Fuck, this hurts.”
“That word again.” I turn to face her, leaning back against the mantle as we both wait for the water in the kettle to reheat.
It is a good thing it is such a large kettle, or I would have had to send someone to refill it by now, and I believe that the young lady’s pain is something she would like as few people to witness as possible. She said she trusts only me. Knows only me, though how she can know me at all is a mystery. Clearly she knows enough to know my deepest secret, and now my deepest shame, but how?
“Fuck?” she says.
“Yes. What does it mean? ‘Fuck’?”
She giggles suddenly. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I just heard you swear.”
“It’s an expletive?”
She giggles harder, and I take it for an affirmative.
“And what about the rest of it?” I ask. “The things that you say you know and simply should not. Cannot.”
She sobers immediately. She turns her head away and goes silent, her shoulders becoming rigid. She looks like she is preparing for a blow.
“Ah,” I say. “This is what the Viceroy wanted. And what you would not share.” She stiffens further at his name, but otherwise does not move. I walk across the floor to her side, purposefully clicking the wooden heels of my embroidered house slippers against the boards so as to prevent startling her. “I am going to lay a hand on your shoulder.”
