The Unwilling

by KELLY BRAFFET

  “This empire is a machine. All the cogs must spin without impediment. She can have another child later, if she wants,” the Seneschal added offhandedly, and then Nate understood: she could have someone else’s child later, if she wanted. Would the maybe-child in question be Elban’s or his son’s—and which son, for that matter? He would not have suspected Theron, since the poisoning, but he supposed it was technically possible.

  “I’ll pay her a visit,” Nate said.

  “I’ll let her know to expect you. By the way, I understand that you provide some of the courtiers with preventative measures. You’re not to do the same with Lady Eleanor. If she asks, give her something fake. And harmless, of course.” He ran a hand over his thinning hair and suddenly looked very tired. “Judah’s timing really is spectacular. I hope Lord Gavin won’t be ill long; it would be good for Lady Eleanor if she were pregnant by the time Gavin’s father returns. It would be good for both of them, really.”

  They had been walking all this time, and now they came to the door leading to the main corridor. There would be no guarantee of privacy on the other side. “So, that’s two possibly pregnant who shouldn’t be, and one who should be and isn’t,” Nate said.

  “As our day’s work shows,” the Seneschal said, as if he and Nate had spent the day building a stone wall together, “people don’t always know what’s best for them.”

  True enough. But Nate had no intention of letting Eleanor get pregnant. Not with Elban’s grandchild. Elban’s line would die with his sons; she, too, could have someone else’s baby later, as far as he was concerned. She seemed nice enough. He hoped she did.

  * * *

  He found Derie waiting in Arkady’s parlor, shoes propped in front of a blazing fire, tumbler of wine in her hand. She cackled when she saw Nate’s surprise. “Read you like a book,” she said. “Not that it was hard. You were practically shouting.”

  Nate dropped his things on the floor and himself into the other chair. “I’m tired, Derie,” he said, and then, “She still lives.”

  “I know that, boy. Tell me everything else.”

  So he did. When he was done she said, “I hope you got everything her blood touched.”

  “It’s in there,” Nate said, nodding wearily at the bundle he’d carried.

  Derie crouched on the floor next to the bundle and untied it eagerly. It fell apart: the rags, the destroyed towel, even the silk quilt from Lady Eleanor’s bed. He’d told Lady Eleanor he would burn it all. Nate was not squeamish but when he thought of Judah bleeding on that quilt, he felt queasy. Derie pressed her face into it like it was a perfumed handkerchief.

  “Good boy,” Derie said, and stuffed the quilt into a big rough-spun bag like the one laundry women used. Nate hadn’t noticed it before now, but she’d had it waiting. “Help me.”

  So he knelt and helped her, choking with revulsion as she exclaimed with delight over every bloodstained scrap. Nate was no innocent but normally, when he’d dealt with blood in these quantities, it had been willingly given. It felt different. It smelled different. He didn’t know what Derie planned to do with the stuff but he knew that anything marked with Judah’s blood was too valuable to burn or toss away.

  As she worked, she said, “The courtier can’t be pregnant by Elban’s line. I don’t care which of them stuck it in her.”

  “You and the Seneschal are in agreement, there.” Nate wondered if he would ever get the smell of blood out of his nose.

  Her cane lay against the chair she’d been sitting in. She picked it up and used it to haul herself up. “Neither can our girl. Her babies will be too precious to waste on some stablehand. You’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

  All this talk about pregnancies, those that should be and those that shouldn’t, shuffled and passed around like cards in a game, and it was one thing to have those conversations with the women themselves but this way made Nate think too much of old dead Arkady. Magus has power, he can give help or he can withhold it. He much preferred the former. “Can I give her a chance to recover from being beaten bloody before I force a miscarriage on her?” he said wearily.

  “Stupid boy. Of course not. You don’t know how long that stableman’s been having at her. Soonest broken, soonest mended.”

  The exasperation swelled into anger and he said, “That stableman is a person. The courtier and the young lord and Judah—they’re people. Real, actual people.”

  Without warning, she switched her grip on her cane and hit him with it. Hard, on the side of his head. His glasses flew off and he collapsed to his hands and knees. “Maia and Tobin were people,” she spat, and hit him again. In the side this time. He felt one of his ribs crack. “They gave up their lives for her, and you’re going to lay on the ground like the weak-willed little worm you are and whine to me about Elban’s foul blood?” The cane came down again. He felt a blaze of pain in one of his kidneys, exactly where he’d told the guard not to hit Judah. “I grow weary of dragging you along by the ear, Nathaniel,” Derie said conversationally. “If you weren’t Jasper and Caterina’s son I’d drown you in the Brake like a runt kitten. I’d drain every thought out of your head and dance you like a puppet.” Spasms racked him as the cane came down again and again. Punctuating her words like breaths. He curled into a ball to protect himself. “You were born to do a job just as she was and you will do your job and you will see that she does hers, and you will not whimper about her being a person, and I will do my job and refrain from beating you to death, as much as you deserve it, because we have come too—”

  Whack. The old woman grunted.

  “—far—”

  His eyes were open and through a haze of pain and nearsightedness he could see Derie’s pointed shoes in front of him.

  “—to start—”

  He would have sworn the shoes lifted from the floor with the force of each blow.

  “—over!”

  Then the beating itself was over. At least, it seemed to be. Distantly, he heard her stomp away and then stomp back and he used the time to survey his battered body, to guess which of the painful places would be enduringly painful, and which were merely bruises. “I’m sorry,” he gasped, even though apologizing never helped.

  “You’re more than sorry. You’re pathetic.” Something clattered in front of him and she kicked him in the thigh. Not as hard as she might have. “You’re a disgrace to your entire line. Sit up.”

  He tried. On the third attempt, he managed it. The clattering thing was his knife. “Draw your blood,” she said coldly. “Right there in the dirt on the floor, because dirt on the floor is what you are.”

  He fumbled for the knife. One of the blows had landed on his wrist and his fingers were numb. Derie kicked him again and he managed to force them around the hilt. Then, awkwardly—he was afraid to put the knife down again—he unfastened his cuff, pushed up his sleeve and cut his arm, deeply and unevenly. The blood dripped onto the dusty floorboards and he watched it form drops, then bigger drops, then a puddle.

  “Sigils,” she said. “All the way back.”

  Shakily, he dipped his finger into the puddle. The warm, thick feel of it was familiar but drawing his sigil on rough wood instead of slick cool silver or warm skin felt debasing, shameful. As it was meant to.

  “Nathaniel Clare,” he said.

  Next to his sigil he drew his mother’s and his father’s.

  “Caterina Clare. Jasper Arasgain.”

  Then his grandparents, on both sides. His mother’s mother had not been born Slonimi so that line ended with her, but Jasper’s went all the way back to John Slonim. With each name, he drew a new sigil, right next to the one that came before. The sigils marched around in a circle like dancers around a campfire. With each sigil came the lightest touch inside his mind. When he could not remember the name of his great-great-grandfather, Derie kicked him until he did, and when he reached the end, he had to begin agai
n, with the girl—with Judah. And Maia, and Tobin. He had to cut himself four more times to finish them all. The circles were as big as his arms could reach, all of those sigils and all of those lives spiraling out from John Slonim himself. By the last one the world was graying around him, but his mother’s sigil still shone, distinct, near the end of the shortest line. He had never been much good at reaching across distances but he thought he felt her, not a stinging bee but a hand on his head, stroking his hair. Like she’d done when, as a child, he’d come home from lessons with Derie, weeping and beaten. Her soft, warm voice: next time you’ll do better, my child. My Nathaniel.

  * * *

  When he heard Bindy moving around in the kitchen the next morning, he dragged himself from his pallet, which he’d moved to the lab. Thankfully, Arkady had arranged for running water to be piped into the sink there. It was cold, but it woke him up and cleaned off the worst of the blood. He’d kept bleeding during the night, and his bed looked like somebody had died there, or been born. He tossed the thin sheet into a corner along with his ruined clothes from the night before. He’d burn it all later. It would be unpleasant; that was part of the punishment.

  Waves of light-headedness swept over him and, as always when he’d overdone it with the Work, things were a bit blurry: not just shapes—his glasses were still on the floor in the parlor—but colors and sounds and smells. He wanted to go back to bed but Bindy was here, and the phaeton would be coming. He hoped that Derie had found something worthy to do with Judah’s blood. He hoped Judah felt better than he did.

  And she might, for all that, because he felt like death. He was surprised and a little hurt that Charles hadn’t felt him suffering and come to help, but with the amount of Work he and Charles had together over the years, Charles might not be feeling that good, either. Or he might be deep in a vial.

  For the first time, the vial didn’t sound like a terrible idea.

  No. The phaeton was coming. He had work to do, for the Seneschal and Derie and all the names he’d drawn in blood on the floor. Next time he would do better; next time he would not falter, would not fail.

  How many times had he made that exact vow to himself, and how many times had he broken it?

  He managed to put on a clean shirt and a clean waistcoat, and to tie his hair back like a real magus—on another day, the length of the resulting tail might have pleased him—before stumbling out into the kitchen. He had to grab at the door frame for support.

  He didn’t remember cleaning up the blood on the floor but he must have, or Derie had, because it was gone. Bindy stood at the stove, staring blankly at the teakettle, which was whistling. Nate had heard the noise but assumed it was inside his head. “Morning, Bin,” he said.

  She jumped, startled. He expected her to be horrified by his appearance—although Derie had not hit him anywhere it would show; she never did—but she hardly seemed to notice. “Oh,” she said, “are you unwell, magus? I’m making tea.” She pulled a cup and the tea box down from the shelf, then looked around. “I think there’s bread somewhere.” It was on the counter, next to her elbow. She saw it before Nate could point it out. “Oh.” Then she picked up a knife, and seemed to forget what to do with it.

  “Bindy, what’s wrong?” Nate dragged himself to a chair. Fortunately, it was already pulled out from under the table. “Where’s Canty?”

  “Ma kept him today.”

  “Is he unwell, too?”

  She seemed to have to think about this. Bindy was quick as lightning, fleet as a fox. She never had to stop and think about anything. “No,” she said. “It’s just, my brother is dead. The one inside. A guard came this morning and told us.”

  He slumped down in his chair. This city. This city. These people. Too weak to be angry, once again he wanted to kill all of them. What a full schedule the Seneschal must have had yesterday, with the whipping and two executions: whatever unfortunate soul had been swapped in for Judah’s stableman, and now Bindy’s—

  Wait. “Where did he work?”

  “Darid? He was head stableman.”

  Oh, no. Nate’s face felt slack and the world telescoped down, shrinking to the size of Bindy’s tearstained face. But she was still speaking, her voice bitter. “They don’t even tell you how they die, magus. They just say, he’s dead, no more money. Then they ask if you’ve got anyone else to send in.” Suddenly, she sat down on the floor, legs splayed out like a baby’s, like Canty. She started to cry. “Oh, this is stupid,” she said through her tears. “I never even met him. He was inside before I was born. But we wrote letters. I made him a scarf. And Ma is so upset. She won’t let Canty out of her sight. I had to beg her to let me come here.”

  He wanted to fix it. He wanted to tell her that her brother was still alive. But she would no doubt tell their mother, and perhaps Nora would tell somebody else, and soon enough the word would get back to the Seneschal. Nothing in this city happens without my knowledge.

  “You didn’t have to come,” he said numbly, and then realized what no more money would mean, to Bindy’s family, and knew that she did. And he hated the city even more, and he hated himself, too.

  Chapter Ten

  There was a time when there was pain and the world was soft and white and something kept her from moving her arms. She didn’t understand and she didn’t try to. When a straw was held to her lips she drank, and the fluid was bitter.

  That time passed.

  * * *

  There was a time when there was pain and her eyes were closed but she saw, as if in a memory, Elly standing among a group of guards. The sound of ripping fabric. Tears on Elly’s cheeks. Wrong, all wrong. Elly didn’t need to cry. Judah had saved her.

  Hadn’t she?

  That time passed.

  * * *

  There was a time when there was pain and the Seneschal’s voice filled the room like stone and she could not breathe. The magus, she could not remember his name, but his voice was there, too, and it said, he said, I warned you, and there was anger in his voice and a tiny cramped place where she could grab the tiniest sips of air.

  But the Seneschal was the one who had warned her. Nothing made sense.

  That time passed.

  * * *

  There was a time when there was pain and she fled from it, went somewhere else, and in that somewhere else she lay barefoot on warm grass while the sun sparked gold in Darid’s hair and his face was happy, but something was wrong, there was danger, she wanted to warn him, but her mouth would not do anything but smile, she could not make it stop.

  That time passed.

  * * *

  There was a time when there was pain and somebody in the room was singing, a high thin voice that cracked on its way up and cracked on its way down.

  That time passed.

  * * *

  Time passed.

  * * *

  The pain stayed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Then there was less pain. She drifted up through the soft sea of white into consciousness, and she still could not move her arms or legs. She waited to drift away again but the current seemed to have stopped. All she could do was lie—yes, her cheek lay against something, that was the softness—and wait. Each rise and fall of her body was searing agony so she breathed shallowly. She blinked, and realized she could blink, that there was a difference between closed eyes and open ones, and also that blinking helped the blur around her coalesce and separate into specific forms. A bright blur became a window full of light. A brown blur became a wooden table, holding small blurs that sharpened into bottles and a large blur that was a pitcher and a pile of white blurs—bandages? Maybe.

  She was in Elly’s room, facedown on the bed. Some of her hair was in her eyes, blood-colored streaks across her vision like bars, and when she tried to lift a hand to brush it back her hand wouldn’t come. She could lift her head, though, and did. Pain rippled down her back like
burning water but she saw soft strips of cloth tied around her wrists, holding her down.

  So she was tied facedown on Elly’s bed.

  She took further inventory. She was naked, but covered up to her waist by a thin sheet. Her scalp itched and she could feel a thick layer of grease on her skin although the sheets she lay on were clean. There was a stale smell in the room. Her hands were sticky with old sweat. The pain in her back was constant, blazing. Her head hurt. The muscles in her neck ached. Her mouth was dry. She wished that somebody would bring her water.

  Her back hurt like the burns on her arms had hurt, but worse. Had she fallen into a fire?

  She had been with Darid, in the far pasture. He had pulled her boots off and she had laughed, and then he’d run his hand up the outside of her leg, fingertips barely touching the bare skin above her legging. She had teased him: Am I a horse you’re thinking of buying?

  Then nothing.

  Then Elly, tearstained.

  Then the magus. I warned you. He had never warned her of anything. He wasn’t talking to her.

  A fluttering, sick panic surged in her and she realized that she was scared. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to drift away. Willed it and willed it and willed it, but when she opened her eyes there were the bottles, there was the pitcher, there were the bandages.

  Her back hurt so much.

  There was a new sound. The door opening; whispering footsteps coming toward her, she could not bend her head enough to see their owner. She could only lie there and wait for them to enter her field of vision.

  Dark trousers, a white shirt. With a flood of relief she recognized Gavin, his shirt loose and unbuttoned, his jaw bristling with golden stubble. “You’re awake.”