Nobody's Lady

by Amy McNulty

  In her hand she held a yellow coin. Golden. Like the bangle Elric wore and the rings that held up the veiled curtain.

  Metal a color I’d only seen with the lord and his brother.

  My blood ran cold, and I swallowed, unable to speak, my heartbeat thundering in my head. I wrapped my fingers around the coin she held out to me and nodded.

  “You and me.” Jurij pointed at me and then himself. “You want to go with me to Elweard’s tavern.” Buried beneath the exhaustion of a long day at the quarry, the look on his face was pained disbelief.

  I rolled the golden coin between my fingers and the table. I didn’t make supper, or even start a fire. I was hoping that might be enough to convince him. “Fine. Let’s not go, then. There’s some bread in the cupboard. It’ll have to do for supper.”

  Jurij patted Bow’s head and climbed over her to reach the table. He pulled the chair out and sat down beside me. “No, it’s fine. It’s just … why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why the sudden invitation to the tavern? The tavern you’ve yet to set foot in since you went through all of that with your father.” He took a deep breath, and the skin between his eyebrows furrowed. “Is she going to be there?”

  “What?” My thoughts were so far from Elfriede, it actually took me a moment to figure out who he was talking about. But there could be no other. Jurij might not have known the pain of the commune, but his watered-down version of those men’s torture centered pretty clearly on my sister, the woman who supposedly used to have a hold over him. I tapped the coin on the table. “I doubt it.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “Do you want me to ask her?”

  “No!” He eyed me suspiciously. “But you didn’t tell her we’d be there at the livestock fields that day, did you? You didn’t tell her we’d be at the tavern tonight?”

  “Of course not!” The accusations stung, but I knew he was thinking about how I tried to convince him to go home when I found him in the cavern. “Jurij, are you going to live your whole life in hiding? Or are you going to learn to put this awkwardness behind you?” The coin slipped between my index and middle fingers, and the last of the day’s sunlight streaming through the window caused the coin to sparkle. “You’re not the only one who feels awkward, you know.”

  Jurij snorted and slapped a palm on the table. “I don’t think Sindri or Darwyn or Tayton seem to run into their former wives as much as I run into mine.”

  “You’ve seen her one time since you left.”

  “And that was more than enough. She teased me about Arrow and then stole him back right after.”

  I leaned back in my chair, tapping the coin on the table. “You act like your feelings are her fault.”

  “Of course they’re not. But they’re not exactly my fault, either.” His gaze wandered across the table, catching sight of the coin I rolled beneath my fingers. “What’s that?”

  My hand froze, my mind racing over the possibilities. A part of me wanted to keep it secret, as well as what it might mean. But the other part of me was rolling it on the table in plain sight, and I could hardly pretend I didn’t know what he was talking about. I slid the coin across the table to him. “I got this as payment today for one of my carvings.”

  Jurij took the coin between his fingers and held it up to the last rays of sunlight. “It’s not copper.”

  I leaned over and snatched it back from him. “I know that.”

  “But what is it? It’s hard like copper.”

  I examined the coin again. Whenever I moved it, the fiery glint of the sun sparkled. “Golden copper.”

  Jurij looked as skeptical as he did when I first invited him to the tavern. “Who gave that to you?”

  “A little girl. I don’t know whose daughter.”

  “And you didn’t think to ask where she’d gotten it?” Jurij dragged the coin across the table for a closer look.

  “I did ask,” I corrected him. “She said she found it in the village, on the ground. But I might know where it really came from.”

  “There’s a golden copper source, and you’re keeping it a secret.”

  “Not a source exactly.”

  “The cavern?” Jurij picked up the coin, examining its smooth, unadorned surface.

  “No.”

  Jurij froze, and the coin slipped from his fingers and bounced onto the floor, rolling away.

  “Jurij!” I jumped to my feet, stepping over Bow to stop it just before it disappeared beneath the cupboard.

  “You mean it’s from him, don’t you?”

  I held up the coin to get a look in the dying light for dents or scratches. But the coin was flawless, except for a speck of dust. “How would a random village girl find a coin from the lord?”

  Jurij scoffed. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  I rubbed the coin against my sleeve, buffing away the dirt and restoring the impeccable surface. “Maybe I don’t really want to know,” I mumbled quietly.

  “You don’t want to know anything.”

  I gripped the coin in my fist. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  Jurij pushed his chair back and pointed east. “There’s a man there who, if rumors be true, has lived since before our parents were born. Before their parents were born.”

  I said nothing as I clutched my fist to my chest, my focus on Bow, who’d put her head down, satisfied what I held was nothing she wanted.

  “The village exists one way for generation after generation. No one was complaining,” he continued. “Well, practically no one.” We shared a pointed look. “And then one day, for no discernible reason, it just stops. Everything we know, our entire way of life just … stops.”

  “And you’re upset about that?” I asked. “I thought you were happy to finally have your freedom.”

  “This isn’t about me being happy or unhappy.” He stared at me like he was waiting to study my reaction. “This is about you.” He pointed to the wall again. “And him. Isn’t it?”

  I couldn’t look at him. I opened my fist and rubbed the coin with my fingers.

  “Noll, do you know why the curse broke?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Do you know how the lord was able to heal your mother?”

  I still said nothing.

  Jurij sighed, and I heard him push his chair back. “All right. Keep your secrets. Keep your weird golden copper and your weird former husband.”

  “We never got married.”

  “Right.” He grabbed his cloak from the stand Alvilda and I made together. “You’re right. It’s a nice night for the tavern.”

  He slammed the door behind him, waking Bow from her nap. She stood and looked at me, the door, and back again.

  I closed my fist over the golden coin until it dug into my palm. A nice night for the tavern? “I know, girl,” I said to Bow. “I’m going.”

  But I’m not walking there with him. Let him stew a bit.

  ***

  I thought I’d gotten used to the stares. In a village where nobody seemed to care about anyone other than their goddess or their man, it had taken a lot to be noticed. But between the kinds of trouble my friends and I would get into, being so long without a man, and the lord finding the goddess in me, I’d managed it. And then there was the fact that my father, who’d somehow managed to live while his goddess was “dead,” had practically moved into the tavern, and on more than one occasion, I’d had to go collect the man before he drank our last copper. I’d walked this path down the village many times before, feeling all the stares.

  But I thought those days were behind me. Everyone else had their own problems now. I wasn’t just a thorn in their sides, disrupting their blissful couplings with my oddness. We were all odd now. So why did I swear every head turned my way as I passed by?

  I stopped in front of Vena’s tavern door and took a deep breath. No, I was imagining it. I sold my own carvings now, and no one batted an eye
. I bought bread and cheeses. Delivered Alvilda’s carvings. I thought I’d finally earned the right to disappear into the crowd. Even if it was past sunset and the crowd had significantly dwindled.

  The door opened, and the laughter from inside spilled out into the alleyway. The man who stepped out was grinning from one ear to the next, a dark flush over his cheeks. He barely noticed me as he passed, and for once, I felt validated. I was just imagining the prying eyes. The sound of laughter grew muffled as the door swung shut behind him.

  I could do this. I put my hand on the door handle and pulled.

  No one looked up as I entered, even with the bells on the door chiming to signal my arrival. I pulled the hood of my cloak back and scanned the tavern for familiar faces in the muted light of the fire. The place was bustling, far more packed than I’d ever seen it when I’d come to get Father. There wasn’t a free table in sight, and there were only a couple of small spaces at the counter if you felt like wedging shoulder to shoulder with men on either side. And almost every table was full of men. I recognized one young woman, maybe one of Elfriede’s friends, on the lap of a man at the table nearest the fire, and I nearly choked in surprise. No. That couldn’t possibly be one of Elfriede’s friends. Those girls were always too reserved. They were all supposedly devastated by their husbands’ departures. Not exactly the type of woman I expected to sit with her arms around a man’s neck, her lips brushing the tips of his ears.

  “Oop. Careful now!”

  I stepped back just in time to avoid the slosh of ale that escaped one of the mugs Vena held in a single hand. Her other hand held a platter of meat arranged hastily with some wilting parsley leaves for garnish. She put it all down at a table several paces away, her intrusion not even noticed among the men doubled over in laughter. Rubbing her face with the back of her wrist, she smiled. “Haven’t seen you here in ages! You looking for your father, dear?”

  She passed by me again, slipped into a small opening between two men at the counter, and tapped the countertop. “Two more, honey!”

  I could just make out tall Elweard on the other side of the counter over the heads of the men in front of him. “Sure thing!”

  “Hey, there, sweetheart!” A man from a nearby table sloshed his mug toward me. “I know who you are!” He raised his mug higher. “To your man. No. To the lord!”

  “To the lord!” said the two others at his table. They clinked their mugs together and took large gulps, laughing as they slammed their mugs down.

  One of the men winked at me. “Nice of you to drive him mad enough to decide he’d had enough of all this goddess business.”

  “She can’t have been any worse than my wife,” scoffed his tablemate. He eyed me over the rim of his mug. “She’s a fair sight better to look at, too.”

  I stared at a grain in the wood on the counter, determined to ignore him. The look in his eyes reminded me painfully of the men from the past who’d set me down the path I’d regretted to begin with.

  “All right, all right,” said Vena. “You leave Noll here alone.”

  “Aw, Vena, you’re no fun!” said one. He raised his mug. “One more!”

  “Not for you! I’m not stupid. I’ve learned my lesson: You show the coppers you have for the night upfront. You only had enough for three mugs. You want more? You bring more coppers.”

  The man and his nearest tablemate started snickering. One quietly said something like, “ … can mine some more tomorrow,” but Vena didn’t notice. Was Ailill keeping watch over the quarry workers? Along with the stone for buildings, the workers used to mine copper not just for use for all of our metals, but for coins on occasion, too, which the blacksmith made and the specters collected for … Quarry worker wages? I’d never thought about it before, and it would have never occurred to those men to make coppers for themselves back then. But I just realized I was staring at two quarry workers and the rarely working blacksmith, and it didn’t seem so impossible anymore.

  Vena leaned her elbows atop the counter and sized me up. “Don’t mind them. They’ve been doing that for weeks. Toasting the lord for, well, their newfound freedom, I guess you’d call it. But you don’t care about that.” I think I was starting to. Who was running this village if Ailill allowed the men to spend their days doing nothing? Toasting him indeed.

  “Your father hasn’t been here since … ” Vena looked at the ceiling and took her time thinking, so I answered for her.

  “Many months ago.”

  “Two nights ago,” finished Vena at the same time. She turned back to grab the mugs Elweard plopped down behind her. “Don’t think he’s been here tonight.”

  She brushed past me, again holding the mugs in the air as she squeezed through the small walkway between me and the parade of men walking back and forth from the counter. The both of them. I stepped up behind Vena. “My father still drinks here?”

  Vena jumped slightly but tapped my shoulder as she managed to squeeze back past me. “Honey, everyone drinks here. Every man anyway.” She gazed around her crowded tavern and put her hands on her hips, something approaching pride on her face. I could almost hear the gratitude for the freedom of men on the tip of her tongue, but maybe considering her man didn’t use it as an excuse to leave her, she knew better than to be grateful for something that few other women would count as a blessing.

  Vena pulled a wrinkled rag off of her shoulder and dashed across the room. I followed, my gaze darting from one smiling man to the next, not recognizing anyone I’d come for. Vena stopped at a table that had just emptied, her rag a flurry of action across the tabletop.

  “I’m looking for—” I stepped back to let one of the table’s recent occupants pass, the stench of alcohol foul in the air as he let out a belch. “I’m looking for Jurij.”

  Vena’s hands didn’t stop moving, one dragging the rag around, the other stacking the mugs and plates together. Her eyes, though, moved up to meet mine, and the firelight sparkled off of them mischievously. “Is it true what they say then? You and the tailor’s son living together?”

  I gripped my cloak with one hand. “It’s not like that.”

  “Uh-huh.” Vena paused to wipe her forehead with her wrist again. “I haven’t seen him, but it’s hard to keep track with all the business. His father and brother are upstairs, if you want to ask them.”

  “His brother?”

  Vena swung her rag over her shoulder and gathered all of the dishes. “Let me know if you want to order anything,” she said, passing by with a tune on her lips.

  I spotted a staircase at the back corner, a dozen or so men milling about between me and it. Sighing, I made my way through. “Excuse me,” I mumbled, but I couldn’t tear the men—and women entwined between the men as if carved from their bodies—away from each other for more than a moment. I had to squeeze myself through some uncomfortably tight spaces, and when I made it to the corner, I practically somersaulted forward as I broke free from the crowd. My hand rested on the wall as I caught my breath. Candlelight flickered at the top of the stairs. I’d never been up there, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, nor how Vena was expected to serve a second crowd equal in number up top.

  Only there wasn’t a crowd at the top at all. The noise from below was audible but faded. Lit torches hung from the wall every few feet, but it was still dim. There were rooms, maybe nine or ten of them, with closed doors on either side of the curving hallway. Of course. I’d heard Vena had the idea of making extra rooms out of her and Elweard’s living quarters on the second floor. Alvilda had even carved doors for rooms they must have previously left open. “Lodgings,” Vena had called it. Some men didn’t have a home to go back to if they weren’t staying with their wives any longer. The commune men never had a home to begin with. Vena’s new “lodgings” wouldn’t come close to providing enough space for all of them. It made me wonder where the rest of those men were now hiding. With new loves? In the fields? In the commune?

  But Master Tailor wasn�
�t one of those men. He had his own home. His former wife had been the one to move out. So why would he need a room?

  As I approached the nearest door, I heard the murmur of voices. The reddish glow of fire protruded from beneath the door. I knocked loud enough to be heard over all of the voices. Then I realized this wasn’t the room they were coming from. And I heard groaning.

  I took a few steps back and tried to disappear down the darkened stairs, but the door opened before I could get there. A man emerged, his shirt missing, his dark chest slick with sweat that shined in the dim firelight. He covered his bottom half with a sheet. I tore my face away. “I’m sorry, I was looking—”

  “Noll? Is that you?”

  I looked back up despite myself. It was Darwyn, running his hand through his hair. Darwyn’s half-naked body was covered in sweat. My cheeks burned. I’m very sure. I didn’t dare peek to see who lay in the room behind him.

  “I didn’t think you’d actually come!” He reached back awkwardly to close the door with one hand, the other clutching the sheet in front of his lower body. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect you.”

  I stepped back as he stepped forward, until my boot hit the wall behind me. “No, I wasn’t … I didn’t mean to bother you.”

  Darwyn laughed and turned away, beckoning me to follow him down the hallway. He took small, careful steps so as not to send the thin sheet wrapped around his waist falling. “Let me show you where Jaron’s been staying.”

  My foot froze mid-step. “Vena told me the Tailors were up here.”

  Darwyn nodded. “They’re with Jaron. It’s better when it’s a private party.” He pointed to a door around the corner. “But you probably don’t want to go knocking on all of the doors around here.” I blushed as I caught up to him, the murmur of voices—the muffled noises—growing louder.

  “I’ll be there in a minute.” He smirked and pulled his sheet a little higher. “Just need to freshen up a bit.”

  I stood still, cringing as his shuffling footsteps faded behind me. I wasn’t sure I could look him in the face again so soon after that. Then you better get inside so you don’t have to walk in with him. Or with whoever he’s got with him.