The Unwilling

by KELLY BRAFFET

  Distantly, Nate was aware of an increase in the warm flow of blood on his arm. At the plague shrine, Derie grunted; back in his mind’s eye, she unfolded the picture before them. Like a napkin wrapped around a morsel of food, like a rose with a bee at its heart. Like nothing Nate had ever seen before. He’d once seen a human arm dissected, skin sliced open, muscles and tendons and ligaments all on display, and it was a little like that, but it was also completely different. It was nothing he could have drawn in ink, not if his life depended on it.

  In the center of everything, exactly where it was but also everywhere else, like wind or smoke or music, he saw the Work, like a thick purple rope that led from the young lord’s chest to the girl’s. But the words thick purple rope were too small, too limited. He had never seen the Work before, and like the spots that danced on the inside of his eyelids, he could not quite manage to focus on it. He knew that thick purple rope was the only way his mind could process the strength of it, because it was immense. It was everything. The people in the room were half-real by comparison. Nate himself barely existed.

  Then Derie dropped his arm and, like that, it was over. The memory, the power, the invading hands: all gone. Nate found himself blinking into the darkness, feeling empty and disarrayed. Real again. Real enough that he was nearly sick. Hard Working did that to the inexperienced—while Derie was training him, their Workings had often left him puking and reeling in the dirt—but it had not happened to him for a long time.

  Derie merely said, “More Maia’s side than Tobin’s. Comely enough. Wish I could see if she has enough power to break the binding, but—she must, with that blood in her. And the boy’s well bound to her, at least.” She took a scrap of cloth from her pocket, wrapped it around her hand and used her cane to hoist herself to standing. Only then did she squint down at Nate. “Pull yourself together, boy.” She sounded faintly disgusted.

  He did so, as well as he could. Although he couldn’t stop the great whoops of air forcing their way into and out of his lungs, and couldn’t stop the way the world lurched around him. He didn’t have anything to wrap his bleeding arm with so he would just have to hope it wasn’t noticed. He wasn’t the only one to ever walk around Brakeside bloody. “This isn’t your first Work today,” he said, making his voice as neutral as he could.

  “Caterina sends vague feelings of pride,” Derie said. “Try to earn them.”

  * * *

  As he made his way back to Arkady’s manor he had a headache, and the smell of the Brake seemed worse than usual. The Work Derie had done on Nate shouldn’t have left him feeling so bad; it was small, specific, and over no great distance. But the Work Derie had done inside the Work—exposing the bond between the heir and the girl—was a feat on another order. It was as if, having been assured all his life that his body contained a heart and lungs and a liver and two kidneys, someone had actually unzipped his skin and taken them out, one by one. It was unnerving and fearsome and magnificent, so bright he could barely think of it. Also bright was the memory itself. Which happened: when someone fooled around in your head, the things they touched never quite went back to the way they’d been. Sometimes the memories were left detached, almost faded, like they’d happened to somebody else. Sometimes only the shape of them remained, like a glass empty of water. In very rare cases, this was done deliberately, as a punishment or a healing; an unskilled or malicious Worker could leave them burning more fiercely than ever. Spreading them out like sketches on a table, and not bothering to put them away.

  This was what Derie had done to Nate—not out of any deliberate choice, but because she simply hadn’t cared enough to undo what she’d done. It wasn’t the first time she’d left him this way. When he and Charles were together they could fix each other, but Nate hadn’t seen Charles in weeks, and when he reached for the sense of his friend in his head, the other man was there, but also...distant. Like there was smoke between them.

  So as he stumbled home through Brakeside, as he stopped twice to retch in the dirt, his head was full of the girl, clear as crystal. He had the time and luxury now to notice her without the press of the other people in the room, without Derie dragging his gaze around. The girl’s hands were strong; their movements were quick and determined, not languid and ornamental like those of the courtiers. They were hands that wanted to grab, to hold tight. Her mouth seemed full of words bitten back. She was a torch waiting to burn; she was a Working, the moment before it ripped the world open.

  Ever since he was nine years old, the idea of the girl had been the center of his existence, his reason for training and learning and being. Comely, not comely—who cared? She was real. He had heard tales of her his entire life, for half a decade before she was even born, and she was real. He had seen her, spoken to her, touched her. He soaked himself in her Work-brightened image like a drunk in a keg of whiskey. Nate had lusted; he’d loved, even. This was neither. This was—bigger. This was like the first Working he’d ever done as a child, the quick painful flick of Derie’s knife opening a world that was so much deeper, so much more possible than he’d ever considered. He’d been frightened beforehand, but never again. That vast stretching possibility that he only ever felt under the knife was worth any pain. It had changed him. It had changed everything. And now, he found everything changed again. The girl was real. The bond between the girl and the heir was real. Once he’d helped her untie old Mad Martin’s knot, he could have that sense of possibility anytime he wanted, no knife, no bloodshed. Anybody could.

  She could. He’d never seen her when she wasn’t hurt or worried; the Work would make her happy. To be the one to make her happy, to be the one she confided in: yes, that would be nice, to have those dark liquid eyes trusting him to listen, to help. He sometimes indulged in ridiculous private fantasies wherein he entered the shabby parlor and her face lit up because now, finally, here was somebody who truly understood her. In his smaller moments, he indulged in even more ridiculous fantasies in which he came upon her being mistreated somehow, at the mercy of those poisonous lady courtiers who peopled the House like beribboned vipers or—and these fantasies were very secret—at the mercy of one of the men. Sometimes the imaginary man he rescued her from was the heir himself. Even in his fantasies he knew better than to think he could physically best the tall, strong young lord, who’d been training in combat since he was half-grown, so in these fantasies Nate’s tongue became as acerbic as Derie’s, his wit as quick as Charles’s, his sense of justice as stalwart as Caterina’s. It was one of these fantasies into which he slipped, with the preternatural clarity of his Worked memory, as he crossed the deserted cobbles of Limley Square. His imaginings carried him up the steps of Arkady’s manor and through the front door—he no longer bothered to sneak out of the gate—and only when he met Vertus in the hall, and the servingman scowled and said, “What’s got you so bloody happy?” did Nate realize he was smiling.

  “Nothing.” Quickly, he wiped the smile away, and nodded at the covered chamber pot Vertus carried. “How is he tonight?”

  “Leaking blood from every hole.” Vertus lifted the lid and showed him.

  Nate waved the pot away, recoiling a bit from the smell. “I’ll give him something to put him to sleep.”

  “Please. Just our luck the old lizard didn’t get one of the wasting-quietly-away diseases, huh? Something that takes the lungs out first?”

  “Healthy people shouldn’t complain about their luck.”

  “Whatever he’s got, it’s not wasting any time. Ever seen a cure for someone as far gone as he is?”

  Nate shook his head.

  “I have,” Vertus said. “It’s called death.”

  He took the pot out into the back to empty. Nate followed him as far as the lab, where he mixed a sleeping draught. It was one of the first things Caterina had taught him to make as a child. He made this one strong, and added a few extra things. They were the same extra things he added to almost everything Arka
dy ate or drank now. After smelling what was in the tonic the old man had fed the heir’s unsuspecting brother the previous week, Nate had found his own qualms about poison significantly eased.

  Upstairs, in the front bedroom, a fire blazed on the hearth and the room was prickly with heat. Arkady lay on top of the bedclothes, wearing only a thin nightgown, his limbs covered in slack flesh and the sheet beneath him brown with sweat. His eyes rolled toward Nate when he heard the door open. “Freezing to death,” he said, his voice dry and cracked. “More wood.”

  “No more wood. You can have a blanket.” Nate crossed to the table and checked the pitcher. There was just enough water in it to dilute the draught.

  Arkady called him a foul name. Nate took a dirty glass from the table, poured the rest of the water into it, and added the draught. Arkady eyed it suspiciously. “What is that?” His voice was thin and querulous.

  “Valerian, mostly. A lot of it. So you’ll sleep.”

  Arkady snatched at the glass with a palsied hand. “Paltry kindness.”

  “It’s self-serving. If you sleep, we sleep.” Nate watched as the old man greedily sucked down the draught. Then he picked up Arkady’s wrist and felt for a pulse.

  “More water,” Arkady said, but he didn’t show any actual signs of dehydration, so Nate shook his head.

  “In the morning. Unless you want to wake up in your own piss again.” He went to the chest at the foot of the bed and took out a blanket. “I’ll leave this here for when the fire burns down. But I’d put it on now, if I were you. That draught will work quickly.”

  Arkady pulled the blanket over himself. Nate helped him, pulling it down to cover the knobbed, yellowing toes. The old man complained, said it was too heavy and too rough, but left it where it was. “You’re a shitty nurse, boy,” he said, “but you make good sleeping draughts.” His words were slurred and his eyes unfocused. Nate wondered how much he could still see.

  “Glad you approve,” Nate said coldly.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Arkady sounded as if his failing health were an intellectual puzzle that only vaguely interested him. “My mind feels wet. Like paper. Falling apart in my fingers.” The old head rolled toward Nate like a fruit about to fall. “You’re good, boy. You figure it out.”

  But Nate didn’t have to figure it out. Nate knew. There were rotting black holes burning their way through Arkady: his stomach, his bowels, his lungs, his brain. His blood was separating inside his veins and his heart was struggling to pump the resulting sludge. He would not last much longer. Nate no longer felt even remotely bad about it. “I’ll bring water in the morning,” he said.

  * * *

  He didn’t exactly forget the water, but neither did he go out of his way to remember. When Arkady’s cracked shouts began to drift downstairs, Vertus knocked at the open door of the lab. “Should I bring him water?” he said.

  Nate glanced at him. There had been a subtle change between them since Arkady had grown ill; they had gone from being equals to being—something else. Arkady’s courtier clients still came to the manor for medicine and Vertus couldn’t provide it, so Nate did. Slowly, without fanfare, he had moved more fully into the manor. He still slept on his pallet in the kitchen, and Arkady’s chair in the parlor was always left respectfully empty, but it was a token gesture. Nate had taken over the lab, the parlor and the garden as if they were his by right. When there were decisions to be made, Nate made them. Vertus, for the most part, appeared to accept the change in their relationship with equanimity, but Nate felt something unsaid between them, and suspected that when it emerged it would be nothing pleasant. Even as Vertus asked advice about Arkady—should I bring him water, should I open the window, should I give him brandy—Nate could feel the servingman watching, calculating. Vertus was not stupid. Nate suspected that he knew more about Arkady’s illness than he let on. Sewn into the lining of Nate’s battered satchel was a cloth pocket that held, among other things Nate would rather keep secret, a leather wrist cuff with a tension-released blade attached: his springknife. Nate hadn’t worn it since arriving in Highfall, but he often found himself thinking of the knife when he was alone with Vertus, thinking he might feel better with it strapped inside his sleeve. Vertus was a big, solid man, and wiry was the kindest word ever used to describe Nate. He wasn’t sure wiry would be enough, if it came to a fight. He wasn’t sure the springknife would be, either.

  So he stepped lightly around Vertus, even as he rearranged the contents of Arkady’s lab and replaced the sorrier plants in the garden with more useful ones. Arkady’s courtier patients mostly wanted headache powders and contraceptive sachets, which took barely any effort. It wasn’t hard for Nate to keep up his Gate Magus work, which he considered more important. His secret patients still came to the back gate, but without the need to hide from Arkady, anyone who needed help could come right through the garden and knock at the kitchen door. No messenger had come from the palace since Lord Theron had been poisoned (which was troubling, because no news of the boy’s death had come; either the antidote had worked, or the boy was dying as slowly as Arkady) but Nate hoped to take over those duties, too, tending to courtiers inside with brains stirred by drops or stomachs burned with alcohol.

  In short: Nate was busy. He no longer had time to run this way and that, from the Beggar’s Market to the Grand Bazaar, seeking ingredients and information. He missed being out in the city, seeing the people who had become friendly and familiar, but there simply weren’t enough hours in the day. He needed to be available when people needed him, particularly courtiers and most particularly the riders from the House, should one come. He dared not ask Vertus to run errands for him, but he needed help. When he’d chanced upon the messenger girl in the Market again a few weeks before, still wearing her brother on her back, Nate had felt the baby’s head, pronounced it a bit firmer, and asked her if she wanted to work for him. “Regular work,” he said. “Every day. As much as you want.”

  Her eyes had lit up. “Can I bring Canty?”

  He’d said she could; of course he had. Bindy—that was what she called herself, although he doubted it was her given name—was irrepressibly cheerful, quick and smart and ready to laugh. While she waited for him to finish a preparation, she would play with Cantor on the floor of the lab. Highfall babies, he noticed, enjoyed the same games Slonimi babies did—peekaboo, where’s your nose, look what’s on my head, look what’s on your head—and a giggling Highfall baby was as irresistible as any other. Nate liked having them around.

  After a few days, when they were comfortable with each other, Bindy asked him shyly to tell her what it was like inside the House. At first, remembering that she had a brother inside, he told her reassuring stories about the plentiful food and beautiful gardens. But she’d heard all that before. “Tell me about the Children,” she said, her voice eager. “Especially the foundling.”

  He hesitated. He didn’t know if he could speak casually about the girl she called the foundling. “What do you want to know?” he finally said.

  She laughed. “I don’t know. Everything. She’s always been my favorite. Is she nice? Does she seem like she’d be good to be friends with?”

  He remembered of the girl inside, the wary reserve with which she carried herself, her obvious anger. Arkady had told him he always tried to separate the four to treat them: The Seneschal made a mistake. Let them be raised in a pack like dogs. Best not to get yourself surrounded.

  “Yes, she does,” he said.

  Bindy was thrilled. “I knew it! I could tell.”

  When he sent her off to Brakeside or Marketside or even to the Bazaar, she’d strap Canty onto her back, grin cheerfully, and come back the same way. The first time he sent her to one of the manors in Porterfield, though, she came back with hard eyes, and her smile seemed forced. The third time this happened, Vertus confronted him. “You can’t do that,” he said. “Send her around town, saying
she’s from the House Magus. Dressed the way she is, with that baby on her back.”

  “Are you volunteering for errand duty? Because somebody has to do it until Arkady Magus gets well.”

  “She’s a street rat. Any respectable courtier would drive her off with a stick, rather than be seen with her at their door.”

  “She’s been doing fine.”

  Vertus made a contemptuous noise. “She’s been giving your packages to the bloody kitchen maids, and probably getting quite a lording-over as she does it, too. Get rid of her.”

  Nate let his voice go cool. “Bindy stays.”

  “Then find another way,” Vertus said. “This one’s bad all around.”

  Vertus was right. Nate couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to him before. Bindy was Marketside born and raised; which wasn’t as rough as Brakeside, maybe, but her experience with courtiers probably started and stopped at jumping out of the way of their carriages. She was always clean, her hair neatly braided; but her dress was obviously—if skillfully—mended, many times over, and her boots had been worn by many other feet before hers. The day Derie had wrenched his memory at the plague shrine, he’d given the girl a few coins from Arkady’s chest upstairs, and told her to buy herself new clothes. Dress, boots, leggings and coat. Very plain, he was careful to say, not because he was afraid that she would come back with something gaudy, but because he wanted her to know this was a work uniform, not charity. “Picture an old lady you don’t like, and buy something she’d wear,” he’d said, and Bindy had laughed and said she knew just the one.

  But whoever Bindy had in mind, it wasn’t the woman who rapped at the kitchen door the day after Nate saw Derie. This woman’s eyes were dark-ringed with fatigue, her forehead creased with worry lines, but she wasn’t old and she didn’t seem unlikeable. He could smell the paper factory fumes that clung to her clothes: this was Bindy’s mother.