The Unwilling

by KELLY BRAFFET

  Cold sick heat flooded Judah. Her mind whirled. A warning.

  Beauty in death. That which is about to die.

  The hunt.

  Theron.

  * * *

  Elly was in the parlor. A pile of armor sat discarded in the corner but there was no sign of either brother. Lunch waited on the table, bread and cheese and cold meat with vinegar sauce. A knife to cut it with. All untouched. “Theron went to the workshop,” Elly told Judah. Frustration twisted the word, stretched it in Elly’s mouth. “Gavin hasn’t come back.”

  Judah crossed to the table. The meat was rimmed in a thick layer of fat but the cheese looked delicious. It reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since the night before. She picked up the knife. Then she flattened her left hand against the table, and drove the blade through it.

  Elly gasped. Judah didn’t even flinch.

  “He will now,” she said.

  * * *

  Judah let Elly wrap her hurt hand in a towel, knife and all, to contain the blood. But she refused to let Elly remove the knife or dress the wound. Nor would she tell Elly what had upset her. (She knew nothing, anyway, she told herself; she had only Firo’s unpleasant intimations.) Elly was furious. She paced, lips tight and silent. Judah watched with dull detachment as bright splotches of blood bloomed on the towel. Once it had been white, the towel, but now it was a dim sort of gray. Somebody—Clorin, perhaps—had embroidered peonies on its edge. She had known that towel her whole life. It would probably have to be burned now.

  The door flew open and Gavin stumbled in. He wore an unfamiliar shirt, his left hand wrapped in some filmy, garish material. The glower he gave Judah would have melted glass.

  “You’re out of your mind,” he said, holding his hurt hand in his whole one.

  Elly stopped in front of him. She was a full head shorter, but as she took in the silk shirt and the feminine scarf, something in the force of her made him look small. He withstood only a moment of that glare before his eyes slunk away and he collapsed into the chair where Judah normally sat. “Elly,” he said.

  “Don’t,” Elly said. “Just don’t.” She picked up the bandages, sat down next to Judah, and without much gentleness, tore away the towel and pulled the knife out. Judah didn’t react; neither did Gavin. Each of them was watching the other, to see. Blood surged from the wound. Elly washed it away and smeared the holes with salve. She made two thick pads of bandages, sandwiched Judah’s hand between them, and tied a third around to hold it all together. Then she stood and went to the table; dumped half of the bread out of the breadbasket and began to refill it with slices of meat and cheese.

  “Elly,” Gavin said again.

  Elly held up a hand. The straightness of her fingers and the stiffness of her wrist was enough to stop him. “Theron missed lunch. I’m taking him some food.” Throwing an acid look toward both of them, she added, “Try not to grievously injure yourselves again before I get back.”

  Then she left. As soon as the door shut behind her, Gavin scowled at Judah and said, “One minute I’m opening a bottle of wine, the next my hand is gushing blood. I thought I was hallucinating. What if someone had been there, Judah?”

  “You shouldn’t ignore me.”

  “So I’m learning.” Gavin sounded exhausted. Tearing the scarf from his hand, he tossed it into the fire, where it smoldered and stank. His wound had stopped bleeding already, because it wasn’t actually his; it would heal long before hers did. He moved to sit next to Judah, and began to wash his hand in the basin Elly had left. The water was red with Judah’s blood and by the time he was done, it was even redder. Judah didn’t offer to help as he dressed the wound, tearing the bandage off with his teeth. He did almost as good a job with one hand as Elly had with two.

  “Well?” Judah said when he was done.

  “Well, what?”

  “Theron,” she said. “The hunt.”

  Gavin leaned back and closed his eyes. Judah waited.

  Eventually, eyes still closed, he said, “Second sons don’t live.” She could feel the words pushing out of him in a torrent. “That’s why I’ve been trying to get Theron down to the fields to practice a little bit. So at least he has a chance of defending himself. I know you heard me; your heart is beating hard and your skin’s gone all cold.”

  He was right. Her heart was beating hard. The rush of it filled her ears and made her hand throb. “The second son commands the army.”

  “They’re supposed to, but they never actually do, because they all die. Go down to the crypts and see for yourself. The dates are all there. I can show you the records. Illnesses. Injuries. Whoops, my knife slipped and landed in his throat. We tried our hardest to pull him out of the aquifer, but his fingers kept getting caught under our boots.”

  The sick rush of his anger washed over her. “Hunting accidents?”

  “I try to protect him,” Gavin said. “I try on the field, and I try off the field. I tell every guard and courtier I meet about my genius brother, how he’s the only one who can figure out how the old things work, what an asset he’d be if someone gave him a chance. It doesn’t do any good. Nobody cares. All anyone cares about is that Elban’s army is strong enough to hold this mess of an empire together, and Theron’s kind of cleverness won’t do that. Do you think it’s easy to sit in Elban’s study and listen to him tell me all the different ways my brother could die?” His fists clenched. The pain in their hurt hands was searing, but he spoke with crisp, precise consonants: like Elban. “A true Lord thinks only of the city. A true Lord does not let himself be distracted by mere people. People are tools, and they are only useful if they work. Theron doesn’t work.”

  She could feel white-hot fury inside him—but it was still his anger, not hers. She’d had years of practice telling the difference. She felt... How did she feel? Curiously blank. When she thought of Theron himself—trudging up the hill in his ill-fitting armor, for instance—there was a high flutter of panic and fear in her chest that snatched at her breathing and, yes, made her skin cold. But the rest was nothing. Vacancy. Emptiness. “So you’ll keep an eye on him,” she said. She felt no surprise at all, no shock. And why should she? Killing was nothing to Elban. Theron was nothing to Elban. The only one he cared about at all was Gavin. None of this was new information. She touched Gavin’s arm. His bare skin. A casual gesture, except it wasn’t at all. When her skin touched his she nearly recoiled. A deep well of worry ate at Gavin; something ominous and sick-making, huge and impossible.

  “Keep an eye on him?” he said, incredulous. “Judah, I’m the one who’s supposed to kill him.”

  Now she felt shock. Now she felt dizzy and sick. Even after she pulled her hand away from him, the sickness remained. It was hers. All hers. “You wouldn’t,” she said.

  Of course I wouldn’t, he was supposed to say. Instead, he leaned his head back on the sofa again, as if he were too tired to hold it up. “If I don’t, Elban’s taking Elly.”

  Those words made no sense. “Taking her where? Back to Tiernan?”

  “Judah.” Gavin grabbed her bad hand with his and a wave of pain crested over her, echoing back and forth between the two of them. She could feel that the pain gave him a hard pleasure: like clenching a fist when you were angry, except he was clenching her fist, too. He thought he deserved his pain. He thought he deserved all of it. “He’s going to marry her.”

  Her hand was on fire. “The Lord doesn’t remarry. Not once there’s an heir.”

  “He can, in special circumstances. Guess who decides what constitutes a special circumstance?”

  “The people like us more than him. Firo told me.”

  “Of course they do.” Bitterness, sticky and black, filled his voice. “We’re a fairy tale. But how much do you think they’d love the prince if he cast the princess aside and refused to marry her? After all this time? Because that’s the story Elban will tell. With him
as the hero, swooping in and saving her from the shame his feckless heir thrust upon her.”

  “He’ll—” Panic rose in Judah’s throat. “You have to tell her. You have to tell both of them.”

  “Tell them what?” he said. “That if I don’t kill Theron in cold blood in front of an audience of courtiers, Elly will spend the rest of her life chained to our monster of a father? What do you think the two of them will do with that knowledge?”

  “If it’s the truth—”

  Gavin cut her off. “If it was my death—or even yours, Jude—Theron would be very sorry, and very sad, and disappear into the old wing where nobody would ever see him again. Children would tell stories about Mad Lord Theron just like we tell stories of Mad Martin the Lockmaker. But for Elly? He’d throw himself off the nearest tower before he’d let anything happen to her, and you know it.” This was true. Elly was the kindest of them, and the most patient. Theron valued kindness and patience. Gavin went on. “The same goes for Elly. Tell her that marrying Elban means Theron lives, and she’ll be in his study by sundown, making the deal. Neither of us could stop her.” His face toppled with despair. “Hells, probably he’d jump at the same time she signed the marriage contract, and we’d lose both of them. If I could fall on my sword and save them I would, but if I kill myself—us—Theron and Elly are on their own. If he could have another child, he would have replaced me long ago—I’m sure he tried—but he won’t accept Theron as his heir. He barely accepts Theron as human. If I die, Elban will kill him anyway, and adopt a courtier or something. I’ve thought it all through, Judah. Every possible angle. But my father has, too, and he’s craftier than I am. I’m trapped.”

  “Why doesn’t he just kill Theron, if he wants him dead?”

  “Because just killing him wouldn’t make me miserable. He says the Lord of the City has to make hard decisions, with no interest in mind other than the future of the city.” Again, there was that eerie shift in diction, and the voice coming out of his mouth was Elban’s. “We are born with soft hearts, but softness is the one luxury in which the Lord of the City cannot indulge.”

  Judah felt his defeat. She saw it in the way he slumped on the couch. And she knew, suddenly, why he’d fled from them the night before, why he’d taken refuge in his courtier and her bottle of wine. “You’re going to do it,” she said, numb.

  His mouth opened, and closed, and opened again. Finally, he said, “If I kill him, he’ll suffer for a few seconds. Maybe less, if I’m good. If Elly marries Elban, she’ll suffer for the rest of her life.” He was haunted inside, hollow. “You don’t know my father, Judah. You don’t know what he’s like.”

  “I know what you’re like,” she said. “You can’t kill your brother.”

  He was silent.

  “She’ll hate you,” Judah said desperately.

  “I know.” His voice was lifeless. “You will, too. But you’ll both be alive and safe.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I don’t want to,” he said, and there seemed to be nothing else to say.

  It was ghastly, the way he switched himself back on when Elly and Theron came back. Not because he didn’t mean it, when he apologized to both of them for missing Theron on the training field or when—off to the side, although Judah knew what was happening—he apologized to Elly for the spectacle he’d made with his courtier girl. No, it was ghastly because she could feel that he did mean it. He was sorry he’d left Theron on the field alone. He was sorry he’d embarrassed Elly. But the hollowness remained, the deep sick well of horror. When dinner came the food tasted like ash in Judah’s mouth, but Gavin ate normally, and answered all of Theron’s questions about the hunt: how many people would be there, the order in which they’d all ride, the trappings and protocol and unspoken rules. And all the while, inside, Gavin was wretched.

  She was wretched, too. After dinner Elly brought out the cards and Judah tried to excuse herself, but Theron said they couldn’t play three-handed and Elly insisted she needed a decent partner. Gavin simply said, “Stay with us, Jude,” and it was that which swayed her. The hunt was in the morning. For these last few hours, they were all safe together, and life was not a horror.

  So she stayed, but she could not concentrate. She and Elly lost the game.

  * * *

  She slept uneasily and woke sometime in the early hours, her throat and lungs burning. As quietly as she could, she rose and crept out onto the terrace where Gavin was smoking. He was already dressed in his hunting clothes, tall boots and a quilted jacket. Judah’s feet were bare and the stone terrace was cold. She sidled close to him, stood against the warmth of his arm, and felt him lean his weight against her.

  “What if Theron doesn’t go?” she said after a long time. “What if he’s sick or something?”

  “Postponing the inevitable.”

  “You can’t,” she said. “Not really.”

  Her hand rested on the terrace balustrade. He laid his on top of it. The fear and horror inside him joined with hers, and reflected back, and reflected back. It made her feel dizzy and ill. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t let Elban take Elly. But I can’t kill Theron.” He considered. “I could kill Elban. But I’m sure he’s expecting that. He won’t give me the opportunity.” He squeezed her hand harder. “Help me, Jude. Help me figure out what to do.”

  Gavin’s hand clutched hers, hard, and she clutched him back. She had no answer for him, no help to offer save that she always offered: so she tried to think of water. Still puddles of water reflecting clear blue sky. Cold water frozen over with a skin of ice. Dark water lapping gently at rocks. Fear swirled through all of it in hot streaks of red, but the weight of his body against hers grew heavier, and she felt his head rest on the top of hers.

  Water, she thought. Calm.

  * * *

  Dawn came a few hours later. Judah noticed the tremble of Theron’s hands as he poured his coffee. His stutter was so bad he’d hardly been able to ask for milk. Gavin had tried to be easy, but it didn’t take an unnatural bond to sense the grimness still in him, despite all the calm she’d poured into him on the terrace. It took all Judah had to let go of Theron when she’d hugged him goodbye; to watch Elly kiss his thin cheek, and not tell her to hold on a bit longer.

  Judah and Gavin didn’t look at each other. It wasn’t necessary.

  After they left, Elly prepared for her day, her bustling too busy. She didn’t normally chatter this much about her hair, her earrings. “I hate this dress. I hate the way it hangs. It won’t necessarily be a disaster,” Elly said, and it took Judah a moment to realize the subject had changed. “Maybe all he lacks is confidence. And forty pounds of muscle, and the ability to see past the end of his nose. Oh, it doesn’t matter what I look like. I’m just oiling the stupid rushes.”

  Judah picked up an earring and put it down again. “Elly—”

  “What?”

  She’ll be in his study by sundown, making the deal. Neither of us will be able to stop her.

  “Your dress is fine,” Judah said.

  Elly sighed. “Come get me the moment you hear anything, okay?”

  Judah wanted to be where she could be found, so she waited in the parlor, hyperaware of every sensation she picked up from Gavin. Burning muscles in her thighs and back: riding. Pain in her palms and fingers: were his fists clenched, or was she just feeling her own blisters? She’d forgotten her gloves when she’d gone to the stable the day before. A faint headache: that could be hers, too. It wasn’t foolproof, this connection of theirs. When Gavin was on the training field, she felt every blow, but the aches and pains of daily life were harder to pin down. She wished they’d arranged a signal for when the moment came. It might have already come. Theron could be dead already.

  She still couldn’t believe he would do it.

  She scratched him until the skin on the inside of her wrist grew raw. At first the answers c
ame immediately, almost impatiently—all right? All right—but then they stopped coming at all. Anxiety wrapped her in a tight cold girdle, squeezing her stomach, making it hard to breathe.

  Noon came. With it, a tray of bread and meat paste, along with a bowl of early tomatoes from the greenhouse. The tomatoes were as hard as apples. She didn’t even bother trying to eat. The smell of the paste was thick like body sweat. It drove her into her boots—Theron’s old boots—and out.

  Down to the stables. Where else could she go?

  “How long does a hunt take?” she asked Darid. He was scooping out warm mash, the earthy smell of which didn’t bother Judah at all, and the low chomping of the horses who’d already been fed was as peaceful as Theron’s shooting had been relentless, the day before.

  “As long as they want it to. Or until they’ve killed everything there is to kill,” he said placidly. Judah flinched. He noticed, frowned a bit with his eyes. “Or until the hounds are too tired to run anymore, I guess. Are you worried?”

  There was no point lying about it. “Accidents happen all the time on hunts. People get shot, hit in the head, thrown from horses—”

  “It’s not the horses you have to worry about.” He finished with the mash and headed into the tack room; she followed. A saddle lay over a sawhorse. He picked up a rag and a bottle of oil and began to rub it down. After each swipe the saddle leather went dark and glossy, then dull again. “If it were me, I’d be worried about courtiers who can’t shoot. And the hounds, of course.”

  “The hounds?” She thought of the kennel: the high slatted walls, the barking and growling that emanated from beyond them at the slightest noise.

  “I used to work with them.” The steady motion of the rag didn’t falter but his voice was hesitant, as if he were telling her something he shouldn’t. “My first job inside. I was excited at first. I always liked dogs. But they’re not dogs. They’re—something else.” His mouth tightened. “And they aren’t trained for clean kills.”