The Unwilling

by KELLY BRAFFET

  The first time the magus had tapped on the open parlor door, a few days after they’d been freed, she was glad to see him. His was a different face to look at, and nothing about him made her feel guilty. “The Seneschal sent me to make sure you’re all still healthy. And I brought food,” he added.

  But it wasn’t just food, it was good food: butter and ripe cheese and bread, real bread, yeasty and crusty and sometimes even still warm. And candy. Dear gods, the candy. Of all the things Judah missed, she craved sugar the most: not soap or meat or even coffee but sweets, cream cakes and fruit tarts and smooth chocolates with bursts of liqueur in the middle that exploded like kisses in her mouth. She could stand the grime that covered every surface, the clothes that never quite felt clean and the constant feeling of being slightly colder than she’d like to be; she could even stand the drudgery (or had so far) but the idea that she might never again taste caramel made her want to burn down the world. That first time, he’d brought candied orange peel. Not even one of her favorites but the feel of the sparkling crust of sugar on her tongue had nearly made her cry. She’d intended to save some for the others but she’d eaten every bite, her throat aching with unshed tears.

  He came every week after that, and proposed an exchange of goods for services: he would bring them food if they would let him check in on them. And maybe, he suggested, Judah could show him the House. Despite all the time he’d spent inside the Wall since Arkady’s death, treating courtiers and the four of them, he knew only the corridors, their parlor, the Seneschal’s office, and a few of the guest rooms.

  “That’s funny,” she said. “I always had the impression that Arkady had to be forcibly removed from the premises.”

  With a sourness that she wasn’t accustomed to in him, he said, “I’m not Arkady.”

  So she took him everywhere: the deserted solarium and the council chamber, the great hall and the kitchens. She’d shown him the retiring rooms and described to him the vanished tables of pastries and cheeses, the silver samovars of coffee and tea and drinking chocolate, the plush chairs and polished tables. She’d even shown him the tailor’s suite and the cold, moldering baths. Soon she looked forward to his visits. She knew he was spying for the Seneschal to some end she would probably regret, but the food was precious and he wanted so little in return. He asked her to call him Nate, but that—oddly—she found that she couldn’t do, so she called him nothing at all and he didn’t seem bothered.

  He was the one person she knew who didn’t seem at all changed by the coup. When she met him in the courtyard the day after she found the apples, his clothes were neat and plain, his hair in its tidy queue. The glasses Theron had mended still sat on his nose. The eyes behind those glasses lit up when they saw her, as they always did, with an intensity that she didn’t take personally.

  He held out a small white paper bag. “Toffee almonds. How are the others?”

  Chocolate-covered toffee almonds, actually. They were sweet and salty and rich and perfect. She ate three immediately and slipped the rest of the bag into the inside pocket of her coat so she wouldn’t be tempted to eat the rest. “They’re fine. Thanks for the candy. What shall we see today?”

  One of the buttons on his shirt didn’t match the others, and the thread wasn’t exactly the right shade, either. Like the rest of him. She’d never been able to put her finger on the off thing, but it didn’t bother her. “How about the outbuildings?” he said. “The stables, maybe?”

  Fine. The shortest way to the stables was through the walled garden. During the wet summer it had sprouted a truly impressive crop of ferns that bent and swayed over the path; these and the other plants drew the magus’s interest and she waited while he wandered around, peeking at mosses and, once, pulling up a root, which he brushed clean and pocketed. The toffee almonds called to her: the smooth chocolate coating, the crisp toffee jacket beneath it, the meaty almonds themselves. She tried not to think about them.

  “Find something useful?” she said when he returned, and was surprised when he blushed.

  “I think it’s a sort of wild turnip. Good for lightening black moods.”

  “Do you suffer from black moods?”

  He laughed. “I suffer the aftereffects of being raised by Caterina Clare. My mother can no more pass by a useful plant than she can fly.”

  “I forget that there are female magi where you come from.” She didn’t know where that was, but she knew it was far away.

  “There are no magi at all where I come from. We call ourselves healers or herbalists. My mother prefers herbalist. I prefer healer. If she’d called herself a healer, I’d probably want to be an herbalist.” He grinned. “I guess it’s always that way with mothers.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  His expression softened. “Surely someone was there for you.”

  “Elban was all the father a girl could want,” she said with a flat smile.

  “Oh, well, fathers,” he said dismissively, and then laughed. “Sorry. It’s not an important relationship where I’m from. I always found it bizarre how obsessed with paternity the courtiers were here.”

  Judah thought of Firo, with his showy makeup, his embroidered coats, his absent son’s dead mother. “What happened to the courtiers?”

  He blinked, surprised by the change of subject. “Most of them left, at least the ones who had somewhere to go outside the city, and a way to get there. The heads of the richest families were...encouraged, I guess you’d say, to sign new trade agreements with the Seneschal, and then they left, too.”

  That wouldn’t have been Firo. She remembered him telling her how poor Cerrington was. “What about the ones who weren’t rich?”

  Reluctantly, he said, “Not all of them made it. There was a lot of anger.”

  “They were killed?” Even as she said the words, Judah didn’t know how they made her feel.

  “Not necessarily. I know one woman who burned herself alive rather than give up her manor, since they aren’t allowed to own property anymore. Some people would rather die than change.” His jaw went tight. “Others went underground. Occasionally the guards catch one of them and make a big show of sending them to prison for hoarding. What’s this?”

  They had come to a burned black square in the grass. The air still reeked of ash, but a few green sprigs were already fighting their way up through the char. “The kennels,” Judah said with the same surge of satisfaction she always felt. “Elban’s hunting hounds were kept here.”

  Surveying the ruins, the magus said, “The guards burned it down?”

  “No, I did,” Judah said cheerfully. “Of course, Elly took the rest of my matches away afterward, but it was worth it. My only regret is that the hounds weren’t actually inside at the time.”

  The magus’s eyes widened. “You must really hate dogs.”

  “They weren’t dogs.” There was no reason for her to tell the story, but there was no reason not to. “And they killed my mother.”

  The magus froze. His cheeks went pale. “The hounds did?”

  “Death by hound: one of Elban’s favorites. The guards locked her in with them and they tore her apart. She was pregnant with me at the time. The hounds would have torn me apart, too, except—” Except that Darid had found her, and saved her, and twenty-two years later been executed for trying to save her again. Darid was a step too far. Darid was none of the magus’s business. “Except they didn’t.”

  He swallowed hard. “That’s—that’s horrific,” he said, and his voice was rough with emotion.

  “I don’t remember it.” She didn’t know why she’d brought it up in the first place. “Obviously. So, the stables?”

  The sheep were grazing in the paddock where the colts had been weaned. When Judah and the magus approached, they made their way to the fence to see if the humans had brought anything interesting. The magus let them sniff his hand.

  �
�The big one’s Cheese. The little one’s Warm Socks,” Judah said.

  Scratching Cheese behind the ears, he said, “Clever. I’m guessing the stable looks like a stable inside, stalls and mangers and so forth. Smells strongly of horse.”

  No, the stable smelled like Darid. Or it had, the first time she’d been there after the coup. She’d had to step outside, then, and lean against the wall until she found her strength. Now the stable smelled different, and she minded it less. “More like sheep these days. But if we go in, these two will expect to be fed.”

  Cheese butted him firmly through the fence. “They already expect to be fed. What’s the building in the back?”

  It was the barracks, where Judah had never been. The magus wanted to see where the stablemen had lived, so she took him into the long building with its low ceiling and rows of hard narrow beds. Over every bed, a single nail had been hammered into the whitewashed wall; the day of the coup had been warm but only one coat hung there, too threadbare to bother stealing. Darid would never have allowed one of his men to wear something so tattered, but Darid hadn’t been in charge by then.

  “The staff must be out in the city now, too, aren’t they?” Judah said, stepping over one of the small wooden chests staff were given for their few possessions, which had been emptied when the stablemen vacated and left where it lay.

  The magus nodded. “The Returned. Most of them went back to their families. Any of them who wants a job in a factory can get one for the asking. In some ways, they’re better off than anyone else, because the Seneschal is determined to make a big show of treating them well. Don’t tell him I said that.”

  “Don’t tell him about Cheese and Warm Socks. Elly’s afraid he’ll take them away if he finds out about them.”

  “He probably would.” He gazed around the dingy room, where nothing remained to say anything at all about the men who had lived and died there. Then he shook his head and sighed. “Maybe you should burn this one down, too,” he said.

  “Maybe I will,” she said.

  * * *

  She and the magus parted ways in the courtyard. The huge doors leading into the grand foyer were heavy, and she had to strain to push them closed. Turning then, she saw Gavin sitting on the broad marble staircase, watching her with amusement. His hair grown long and his shirt half-buttoned, he had never looked quite so much like a courtier to her. A little kohl, some ostentatious jewelry, and he wouldn’t have looked even a bit out of place stumbling into one of the retiring rooms for coffee in the morning.

  She wasn’t surprised to see him. Since the coup, whenever they were together she’d noticed a weird doubling in her perceptions, as if she were seeing and hearing everything twice. She assumed the sensation had always been there, and she’d just been used to it because she’d seen so much of him. Now she saw him an hour a day, if that. “Catch,” she said and tossed him the almonds.

  He caught the bag and opened it greedily. “I thought I smelled the magus. The scent of lovesick puppy is hard to miss. What else did he bring?”

  She dropped the bigger bag from the magus on the floor, and sat down next to him. “That’s for Elly. You want a share, ask her for it.”

  “I’ll pass. She hates me,” he said cheerfully, and threw a handful of almonds into his mouth.

  The profligate gluttony of it made Judah feel twitchy. “Give me some of those.”

  “Didn’t you eat yours already?”

  “I ate exactly a fourth. But if we’re being selfish, I want my full half.”

  He grinned and handed the bag back. “Since we’re being selfish, want to get drunk?”

  Judah felt her eyes narrowing. “Why are you being so social all of a sudden?”

  “I’m always social with you,” he said, but that wasn’t enough and they both knew it. He sighed. “Because every week, the magus comes, and he makes you look at things you don’t want to look at and think about things you don’t want to think about, and it hurts you and makes you sad, and that hurts me, and makes me sad. Plus, I knew you’d have candy.” He stood and held out a hand to help her up.

  She stared at it. It was not a gesture he would offer casually, not anymore. Finally, reluctantly, she slid her hand into his dry palm. In the time it took him to pull her to standing she saw everything inside him. Less of it was anger than she’d expected; most of it was grief mixed with a flat, colorless despair. Then she was standing next to him, his face full of curiosity and a faint surprise. Because of course he would have been able to read her as clearly as she read him. What she’d seen in him felt slippery and she worried about her losing her footing there; if Gavin had questions about what he’d seen, he kept them to himself.

  “Come on,” he said, dropping her hand. “You’ll like this.”

  She left the magus’s bag in the foyer and followed him to the kitchen. The massive worktable, worn smooth by generations of scrubbing, was covered in dust. Gavin picked up a lantern, one of the old ones with a candle inside, and lit it. Apparently, he still had matches. “This way,” he said, and led her through the pantry to the steep staircase that wound down to the cellars. The lantern she used when she came down for water was one Theron had made, with a reflector to cast the light wide. The circle of light picked out by Gavin’s lantern was small and milky by comparison. They passed the root cellar, the wine cellar, the door that led to the catacombs and crypts; the air grew cooler and damper, the ground changing from smooth stone to brick. After Gavin passed the archway that led to the aquifer, the passageway—such as it was—narrowed. Soon she could touch either wall just by putting out an arm. Finally, they came to a small wooden door. Gavin ushered her through it.

  If the circle of lantern light seemed small in the passage, inside the aquifer’s cave it was minuscule. They stood on a stone ledge. The aquifer stretched out in front of them, silent and massive, and the cavern smelled of damp rock and cold. A rowboat lay upended next to the water. She hoped Gavin didn’t intend to use it.

  But Gavin was, indeed, flipping the boat over and pushing it into the water. The wood scraped uncomfortably on the stone, but then there was a swallowing sort of splash and the boat floated. He stepped into it and, steadying it against the ledge, said, “Get in.”

  “You’re kidding.” The thought of her tiny self floating in a flimsy wooden shell above those unknowable depths made her queasy.

  “Not at all.” He’d hung the lantern from a hook at the prow behind him, and was backlit. But she could hear the grin in his voice. “Come on, Jude. If I was planning to drown us, you’d already know.”

  Yes, she would. Gritting her teeth, she climbed into the boat, which rocked wildly. The ledge she’d just stepped off gleamed slick with moisture. There would be no climbing back up that way if she fell in.

  When she was settled, he did something to the oars, and started to pull the boat out across the water. She could feel the faint burn of exertion in his shoulders and she could feel him enjoying it. If he did this on a regular basis, she should have felt it before; but she was so achy in her own right from lugging water and fodder for the sheep that she probably wouldn’t have noticed. They spent so little time together now. They hadn’t had one of their clandestine card games in—she had to think—nearly a week. She realized that she missed him. “Where are we going?” she said.

  “Not far. You should be more impressed. This is a state secret, you know.”

  “Then how do you know about it?”

  “Elban’s journal.”

  “He wrote state secrets in his journal?”

  “A few. Mostly they’re about people he killed.” She still couldn’t see his face. Over his shoulder, the wan circle of light suddenly illuminated a damp stone wall and there was a soft thud as the boat knocked against something. Gavin shipped the oars and threw the rope over something Judah couldn’t see. “Here, watch.”

  Carefully, she leaned over the side u
ntil she saw it: a small wooden platform, floating low in the water. A short length of chain tethered it to the wall, and a dozen ropes, thick and glistening with oil, snaked down from it into the water. Gavin chose one and began to haul, making the boat rock uncomfortably. The rope was dark and wet where it had been submerged and as Gavin pulled it out of the water it lay coiled in the bottom of the boat like a serpent. When the ghost of something appeared at the end of it, floating up from the depths, it wavered in a way that seemed almost alive. Judah shivered.

  The something was only a wooden box. It was bound with a rusty iron bolt, but not locked. Gavin opened it and Judah was surprised to see that the straw inside was dry, or at least dryish. He set a handful of it aside, revealing nine small circular objects, poking out of the straw like seedlings: corked wine bottles. Gavin pulled one out. It was sealed with red wax; the metal chain around its neck was corroded but the stone tag that hung from it, carved with an elaborate S, was still legible.

  “Elban’s best Sevedran,” Gavin said. “Apparently there’s something about aging it in water. The only person who knew it was here was Elban’s favorite guard, and he’s one of the ones who died in the coup.”