The Unwilling

by KELLY BRAFFET

  “You should go back to the House,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here.” His fingers loosened on her arm, and she surprised herself by putting her other hand over his, so he couldn’t take it back. The pressure made the burn hurt more but she didn’t care. For a moment they both stood, stock-still, and stared at the simple, impossible thing between them: his hand on her bare arm, her hand over his. And why shouldn’t her hand be there; why not, when soon enough—but she couldn’t think about that, that was a place she did not want to go. And it came into her brain that she wanted to kiss him, which was even more impossible, but this was a night for impossible things, a night for the unthinkable, and so she did. Her lips touched his, and pressed.

  He jerked back.

  Then his arm was around her shoulders. Not affectionately. This seemed to be her night for being grabbed and shaken and dragged from place to place, because he was pushing her into the stable. The horses whickered softly at the intrusion.

  “What are you doing?” His voice was as angry as the Seneschal’s had been. Her night for making people angry, too. But she heard fear mixed with the anger now. She didn’t want Darid to be scared of her. She wanted him to stop talking. She put her hands on his face and held it. His breathing came fast and alarmed.

  But he didn’t pull away. She felt him—sink. Like something in him had collapsed under its own weight.

  “You’re going to get me killed,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You should send me away.”

  He didn’t send her away. She didn’t leave. The horses stamped; blew; calmed.

  Chapter Eight

  The morning after the ball, in the warm blue light that presaged the coming dawn, the massive drums started up. The Lord’s Guard assembled in the courtyard, helmets and spear-points hovering ghostly above their armor; the House Guard lined up in ranks to see them off, the Seneschal at their head. The Lord’s Guard wore scarlet badges; the House Guard wore white. The cavalry horses stomped and champed but no human spoke. The drumbeats filled the courtyard like mist. Even the raucous dawn chorus drifting into the courtyard from the gardens was buried under the throb.

  The rest of the House was sleeping, except for those who hadn’t slept at all. The sleepers included the courtiers, half of the kitchen staff, and most of the outdoor staff: shepherds and kennelmen, orchardkeepers and gardeners. The still-awake included the other half of the kitchen staff—busy with breakfast before the shift changed at lunch—the stablemen, and the new pages, who already scurried through the halls cleaning shoes and creeping through unlocked doors to silently lay fires, empty night pots, and brush discarded finery. Also awake were the entertainers from outside. Most of them had already loaded their supplies back into whatever conveyance they’d arrived in, and stood yawning and waiting for the campaign forces to march so they could leave.

  Not far from the entertainers, Judah waited, too. She was one of the ones who hadn’t slept. She still wore her gown from the night before, although the green silk was dulled by a thin sheen of dust and littered with bits of straw. The silver-and-diamond headdress had been first removed and laid carefully aside with gentle fingers, and then carried into the parlor in a damp palm and dumped into an unceremonious heap on the table. It lay there still, tangled beyond recovery for all Judah cared. She had taken the time to jam her dirty feet into boots and put her coat on. Catching a glimpse of the unruly mess of her hair in the mirror, she had picked up a hairbrush; then decided that she liked the unruliness, and put the brush down.

  Now she stood in a corner where she wouldn’t be noticed. Her mind felt thick with exhaustion and her eyes were hot with it, but for the first time in weeks, she was at peace. Gavin and Elly were officially and publicly betrothed, and nobody could hurt them. Theron, too, was safe. Across the courtyard a stableman appeared, holding the rein of a giant black warhorse with silver metalwork on its black leather tack. The stableman had broad shoulders and curly hair, and she felt no tension when she looked at him, either; only a memory of ease and warmth.

  Darid didn’t normally deal with the warhorses once they were transferred to the cavalry stable. But when the Lord’s Guard marched, all the stablemen worked. The horse he held was Elban’s. It would not be long now. And, yes: the doors were opening, the honor guard forming a neat gauntlet, banners aloft. There he was, white hair flowing loose over his black armor and the pommel of his sword rising over his shoulder like a second head, gnarled and silver and deadly.

  Elban was the last thing she feared. He was leaving in minutes but she would belong to him eventually. The steady beat of the drums—their skins the size of tables, the mallet heads larger than her own—drove deep into her, jangled her nerves, throbbed in her eardrums. They were so loud she couldn’t hear her own heartbeat. Surely nobody was sleeping now. Surely that was the point. Everyone in the House, and probably beyond, was being pulled roughly from sleep. They could yank blankets over their heads, muffle the pounding with pillows, sip from the bottles or vials they’d gone to bed with; but when they woke, they would know. Elban’s army had marched. His embarkation would not be ignored.

  Gavin and Elly, Judah knew, waited on the balcony above the Lord’s Square, so they could raise their hands in farewell as Elban rode out of the city. She had not seen them led to the Safe Passage but she could imagine their progress through the locked doors and switchbacks that twisted through the Wall, the fumes from the oiled rushes on the floor and the metallic smell of the guards themselves. The closer Elly came to the spiral staircase and the tiny chamber at its top—the closer she came to the narrow balcony so high above the Square—the more her feet would drag, the more her hands would shake. She would force herself out onto that balcony but she would cling to Gavin. She would be terrified and embarrassed. He would be thrilled.

  At the solstice, Judah would be with them, but this time she hadn’t been invited. She could have been in bed or having breakfast or washing her feet. But she had wanted to see for herself as Elban strode down the aisle his guard made for him, as he leapt onto the back of the warhorse. When it felt his weight in the saddle, the horse tossed its head, hooves restless on the cobblestones. It was eager to go. Judah was eager to see it, and its rider, gone. From the saddle, Elban scanned the crowd. She didn’t think he could see her in her shadowed corner. He paid no attention to Darid. “The gate!” he cried, and each guard began to stomp one heavy boot down on the cobbles, in perfect time with the drums. The two ancient winches groaned to life, six men at each, and the enormous wooden gates, thicker than a human being was long, began to part as the great House opened its mouth to speak the army into the world. Judah had never seen the Lord’s Square from the ground before. Now, if not for the guard, she could walk out into it; stand on its surface and wave to Gavin and Elly. The cobblestones in the courtyard were the same as those in the Square. For some reason, that was what she found most startling: the cobblestones continued.

  Gates fully open, the House held its breath. Then Elban gave a mighty cry; the drums quickened; the guard began to move, boots still keeping time with the drums. The drums themselves began to move, pulled on wagons by small tough ponies that, Judah knew, would be the first to be eaten, if it came to hunger. The mass of men and weapons that moved through the gates, slow and relentless, would rumble through the city to the bivouac outside Highfall, where another hundred men waited. Then they would move on to the next town, and the next bivouac, and between collected forces and conscriptions picked up along the way, the guard that seemed so fearsome inside the Wall would be but the smallest, deadliest portion of the army that eventually boarded the ships and sailed across the strait to Nali territory. A smaller portion still would return. For all their training and weaponry, they were nothing but rocks thrown at the enemy, and some of the rocks would break through and some would fly wild and some would simply shatter, because even a rock could break. Particularly when it was made of flesh and bone and blood.
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  For now, though, they were fearsome. Judah didn’t look at the faces beneath the helmets. Because she understood, seeing the guard on the march, what Elban had said—that people were simply tools—and found it horrible. Their willingness to follow him, their acceptance of their fate. Prisoners, he’d said. Men with death sentences, given a chance to live again. They belonged to Elban, too, and perhaps she found that most frightening of all, because the next time this featureless mass marched, she would be among them. As would Gavin. Tools, waiting to be used.

  Gavin’s father spurred his horse and rode, as the drum carts began to roll and the army with it. Judah observed Elban’s white hair, the bony shoulders, the perfect straight line of his back. He would chain her like a dog and do whatever he wanted with her. She added this knowledge to the long list of things she could not bear and could not help: like the long days in his study so long ago; like Arkady’s cold hands poking and prodding before that last afternoon, when Gavin had felt her fear and revulsion and come in with a knife; like the mother she’d surely had but knew nothing about. There was nothing to do but endure. So she merely stood—apart from the acrobats and musicians and those few courtiers who’d managed an early start, apart from the remaining guards and the Seneschal at their head—and waited for the last marcher to pass under the arch, for the great drums to follow them. By then the sun was rising. The cobbles in the Lord’s Square were touched with pink and gold as the entertainers began to trail after the army. Across the courtyard, Darid waited to be dismissed. Maybe he saw her; maybe he knew to scan the shadows for her.

  She thought of his hands in her hair. The sweet smell of hay.

  * * *

  “I don’t understand,” Elly said later that day. “I could believe he was only being cruel, if it was just us. But that courtier was involved, too. And all the courtiers who followed her.” That courtier was the only way Elly would refer to Amie. She shook her head. “I’m not complaining, and I’m certainly not about to ask anybody for an explanation. But I don’t understand.”

  She and Judah were walking in the orchard. None of the courtiers ever went there; the soft ground was littered with dead leaves and dropped fruit, and the cidery smell of ferment clashed with their perfume. But Elly had good boots and so did Judah, and neither of them minded the smell. They’d played there when they were children. It was a happy place for them. Elly, Judah knew, wanted to be happy today. After Judah had left the ball, she and Gavin had danced late into the night, their steps light with reprieve, and not even Elban’s smug amusement had spoiled it. Nor had it kept them from slipping upstairs to their rooms when the ball began to break up. They had brought Theron with them, and Elly had put tea in a pot to steep. But only Theron had still been in the room when the tea was ready: sitting where they’d left him, watching the steam rise.

  Elly’s cheeks had reddened as she told Judah that last part, and Judah knew she felt bad for leaving Theron there to fall asleep upright, still wearing his glasses, with the tea cooling in the pot because it hadn’t occurred to him to pour it. “Oh, Jude,” she said with weary amusement. “It’s all so preposterous.”

  Judah hadn’t asked what, exactly, she’d found so preposterous. Elly didn’t seem amused at all now. “I asked Gavin what he thought that courtier would do next. He said—well, first he told me not to worry my pretty little head and let the big strong man take care of it, but then I pointed out that the big strong man was mostly why we’d ended up in this mess to begin with, and then we yelled at each other for a while.”

  “I would have liked to see that,” Judah said sincerely.

  “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Although he did almost seem surprised, as if now that we’d spent the night together I wouldn’t ever argue with him again. I think he’s still a little angry, actually. Anyway, he saw the Seneschal this morning after Elban left, and apparently he said that courtier left the House. Gavin said he thinks she’ll be too humiliated to show her face for a while. Which—honestly, I don’t know how much of this is even her fault. She might have found herself stuck in a mess just like we were. But still—” She hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Do you think you could ask Lord Firo what he thinks? I spoke to him last night, for a minute. He seemed kind enough. And Gavin says his courtcraft is impeccable.”

  “When did Gavin say that?”

  “When he was following you around after that guild dinner. Will you ask him?”

  “If I see him.”

  Elly smiled. It was a significant smile.

  “What?” Judah said.

  “Nothing,” Elly said merrily. “You danced with him for quite a while, that’s all. Also, I noticed that he seemed to disappear right around the same time you did, and I’m not in a position to swear to it but I’m fairly sure you didn’t spend the night in our rooms last night. Oh, don’t scowl, Jude. I like him well enough, for a courtier. He’s not young, but the young ones are all such pompous little jays. I can’t see you with one of them, anyway. And I know Gavin says he usually goes with men, but just because he usually does doesn’t mean he always does.”

  Judah was silent: first, because she was biting back a burst of indignation, and then—with a flash of inspiration that instantly cooled the indignation—because she realized that if Elly thought she was having an affair with Firo, she wouldn’t comment if Judah disappeared, from time to time. “Think what you want,” she finally said, guessing that Elly would take a lack of denial as a confession, and when Elly’s eyes lit up, she saw that she was right.

  “Whatever I think, I promise I’ll keep it to myself. You deserve some happiness. And it won’t hurt to have a prominent courtier like him on your side.” Elly stepped over a root. “I’m still not convinced that Elban doesn’t have some horrible new trick up his sleeve. You don’t go from I’ll have you all killed horribly to oh wait never mind without something happening in between.”

  Judah chose not to hear that. She pretended Elly’s words were birdsong that filled the air with pretty, meaningless sound, and required no response.

  * * *

  Late that night, after everyone else was asleep—Elly had insisted on not changing the sleeping arrangements, privately telling Judah that it was good for Gavin not to get absolutely everything he wanted whenever he wanted it—Judah crept out through the quiet parlor. The House was quiet, too; the few courtiers who remained inside were mostly those who had not yet emerged from the ocean of wine and drops they’d sunk into at the ball. The gas lamps were low. One of the retiring rooms spilled over with warm light and the smell of burned coffee; Judah paused at the door to let a staff girl hurry in with a tray of something savory-smelling, but didn’t look inside. The corridor doubled back and then she was passing guest rooms. Another staff girl tapped timidly on a closed door, looking uncertain; when she saw Judah coming she turned the knob, almost silently, and slipped inside. Before the door closed behind her Judah saw two bodies draped motionless over a couch. Judah didn’t know what the girl’s job might be, but she doubted the passed-out courtiers would notice if she did it or not.

  Outside, the moon was high but the gardeners were hard at work by the light of lanterns that ran on Wilmerian gas like Elly’s quickstove, trimming hedges and clipping away dead leaves so that all would be beautiful in the morning when the House woke up. They went predictably quiet as she passed. The dry fountains and broken statues in the walled garden glowed eerily in the moonlight, and the path was easy to pick out. The hounds in the kennels barked ferociously. Judah was a thing they didn’t know and so they wanted to kill her. She could not imagine Darid working among them.

  Another lantern hung from the hook outside the stable door, but the light it shed was so feeble that it barely penetrated. All seemed deserted. Judah lifted the bar on the door and went in. The horses murmured softly, but unlike the hounds, they knew her, and so weren’t alarmed. She could feel them more than she could see them, huge and warm
and breathing in the darkness.

  Motion at the other end of the stalls. The sound of footsteps, coming toward her. Darid.

  “You came,” he said and kissed her. It was strange to be kissed by somebody she couldn’t see. It was strange to be kissed at all. Kissing was a thing courtiers did, devouring each other’s mouths as emotionlessly as they did cakes or canapés. But here she was, her mouth on his, his body solid in front of her like a friendly wall. She’d never stood this close to anyone by choice except Elly and Gavin and Theron. She’d certainly never felt anyone else’s body pressed against hers, the way Darid’s was now. His hands moved across her collarbones, which she liked, and then slid backward into her hair. Which she might have liked had it not been for the drunk Wilmerian, all those weeks ago. Her hair had been the first part of her Darid had touched, tentatively, the night before. Lips still pressed against his, she wondered, a bit dispirited, if men would always want to touch her hair. Maybe she’d cut it off before Elban took her on campaign.

  But further than that, she refused to think. Tonight she’d tied her hair back with one of Elly’s ribbons; now Darid pulled it loose. He was less tentative than he’d been the night before. She put her hands on his chest, and pushed him gently back. “Hello,” she said.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d come.” He was taller than she was. Who wasn’t? His mouth was somewhere far above her forehead, which was made evident when he leaned down to kiss her there, too.

  “I said I would.”

  “You might have thought better of it.”

  “Because you’re a lowly stableman?” She knew he couldn’t see her any better than she could see him, so made sure her voice was light and friendly.