Nobody's Lady

by Amy McNulty

  “What’s he doing?” Lowering my voice seemed to be the only thing that would make Jurij willing to talk. I wasn’t in the mood to explain the volume of our voices probably didn’t make any difference. It wasn’t like someone had stolen the piece of paper. Ailill had clearly wanted us to have it.

  Jurij ignored my question. “What if he has pages for all of us?”

  I thought about that. Paper Luuk flinched and crouched, only to see a rabbit burst out of the line of trees in front of him. He breathed easier, stood, and kept on his way. “Maybe he does,” I admitted.

  Jurij tapped the paper. “Well, he at least doesn’t have Luuk’s anymore.”

  “What are you saying?”

  I didn’t think it was possible, but Jurij lowered his voice even further. “Then Luuk’s the only one he won’t see coming.”

  “You sent a child to the castle alone?”

  Jurij shushed me again. This was beginning to feel a bit ridiculous.

  “Okay,” I whispered, pointing at the paper. “What is he going to do?”

  Jurij shrugged. “Just look around a little.”

  I crossed my arms, not caring that I scraped off some of the hardened poultice as I did. “Luuk. The kid whose hand Nissa had to hold every time they strayed too far in the cavern.”

  “You wouldn’t help us.”

  “So I keep hearing.” Luuk arrived at the castle gates. At least they were bound to stop this foolish plan, since I doubted they’d open. “Does your father know? Or your mother?”

  “Father does.” Jurij pulled the paper closer to him. Luuk was pushing on the gates to no avail. “We haven’t spoken to Mother in days. It’s not really easy between Father and Mother at the moment.”

  “Of course.” I imagined Siofra or Alvilda would have tried to knock some sense into them. Maybe literally. Luuk was running his hand over the wall now. Looking for a secret entrance? “So why is a spec—servant in the room next door? Is he looking for this?” I pointed to the paper and gasped when I saw Luuk grab onto a protruding stone and haul himself up. He dangled on the wall, his feet a short distance from the ground.

  “We think we convinced him it was stolen. Maybe.” Jurij seemed unconcerned with the little drawing of his brother, who swung his arm out a few times until he finally found another stone to grab. “We ransacked Jaron’s room ourselves before the servant got here.”

  “He’s going to hurt himself.” My face snapped up from the paper. “You guys did that? Why?”

  Jurij stepped closer, one finger in front of his lips to quiet me, the other reaching out to touch my shoulder. “The servant in the room next door can hear you.”

  I tore my eyes away from Jurij to make sure Luuk was okay. He’d reached the top of the wall. “How is he going to get down?” I whispered. Luuk answered my question for me by swinging his legs over to the other side and dangling from the top. He slipped, falling the few feet straight to the ground. I flinched, but Luuk stood up and brushed off his pants.

  I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding as Luuk slinked away from the wall. I tapped the paper. “You think he has pages like this to watch everyone?”

  Jurij nodded.

  “So he could be watching us watching Luuk right now.”

  Jurij nodded again.

  “So what was the point of the ransacking if he can see us looking at the paper?”

  “We just wanted to make sure we kept the servant nearby. Jaron and the others are explaining that it was stolen.”

  “What’s the point of keeping one servant nearby? There are at least a hundred servants at the castle! Where you sent Luuk!”

  “We know. We just figured that if the lord’s watching, he’ll be watching the servant in the village. The one with us.”

  I touched my forehead with my fingertips, shaking my head and not caring about the tiny prick of pain in my sore finger. “I wish I had offered to help you. I could have told you that the man’s not as stupid as you seem to think.”

  Jurij reached for the hand that was tapping my forehead, tugging it gently downward. “What happened to you?” He cradled my hand, running a fingertip across my skin so lightly I couldn’t help but picture a flower petal swaying gently across the back of my hand. Lying down in the warm grass. Jurij at my side. Right there, yet so out of reach. Ailill. Of all the people to think about now, I had to think about Ailill, holding my hand just like this the night I first met him. Were they so different, now that I knew Jurij capable of anger, and Ailill capable of compassion? Was it the curse that made them seem so different to me at first, or was it … Ailill had been alone for so long. Jurij didn’t understand how fortunate he’d been, having a family to love him. Having Elfriede accept and love him.

  “A small cut.” I pulled my hand away and forced my breathing to slow. “Jurij, you need to tell me what’s going on, or I’m about to march to that castle to find Luuk.” The drawing of Luuk paused. There were no windows on the ground floor at the front of the castle. He gave the door a tug with both hands. I whipped my head back to Jurij. “What is the point of all of this? If he gets caught, he could—”

  Jurij grabbed hold of both of my shoulders and pulled me toward him, his lips pressing hard against mine.

  I don’t know how long we stayed like that. I don’t even remember if I had adequate time to step back and didn’t—out of shock, maybe. Or because some part of me wanted the kiss.

  Fool.

  Our door burst open, and I finally came to my senses. I was just about to release his lips and pull back, when Jurij took charge and ended the kiss for me. “You must have felt us calling for you,” he said, smiling. It was a hollow echo of the smile he used to give Elfriede at one of her kisses.

  A specter stared at us—stared at me. Behind him, the firelight just barely flickered over the forms of Jaron, Master Tailor, Sindri, Darwyn, and Tayton in the hallway.

  Jurij grabbed my hand, threading his fingers through mine. He brushed against the poultice, and the skin beneath it stung. I watched him warily out of the corner of my eye, but he looked straight ahead, facing the specter.

  He grinned. “Noll and I would like to get married.”

  The specter stood perfectly still. I lost my sense of time, only awakening when I noticed the group gathered in the hall disappearing into the darkness of the stairway.

  Jurij squeezed my hand, and I studied him. The lump in his throat wobbled, but he still looked straight ahead. “Don’t you need to bring out a piece of paper for us to sign?”

  At the word “paper,” Jurij seemed to remember what he’d left clear as day on the table. He guided me by the hand to block the view, his free hand extended toward the specter as if expecting him to produce one of those marriage certificates from his pocket.

  The specter didn’t respond, his red irises locked on me. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out an ink well, quill, and piece of paper.

  I tugged on Jurij’s hand and whispered, “What. Are. You. Doing?”

  The specter crossed to the table in a few strides. Jurij reached back and grabbed Luuk’s paper, crumpling it into a ball in his fist. I almost gasped, wondering if such a thing could be broken.

  “Jurij,” I whispered. I didn’t know whether to expose Jurij’s audacity in full view of one of the lord’s servants. This had to be a distraction so Luuk—and the others now too?—could explore the castle unimpeded. They’d wanted me to summon Ailill out of the castle, and I’d refused, but they’d gone ahead and figured out a way they just might do it on their own. Only it still relied on me, and without my consent. I ground my teeth together. “Darling,” I said, in my best impression of Elfriede at her finest. Jurij’s hand twitched at the word, his palm moist and sweaty against mine. “I know we’ve discussed marriage, but perhaps we should wait until our parents can attend.”

  “Marriage is just a piece of paper now,” he snapped. “And I’ve had enough overdone ceremonies to last me a lifetime.�
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  The specter dipped the quill in the open ink well and began writing.

  “We’ve discussed this, too. You’ve had ceremonies. I never loved anyone else enough to even have a Returning.”

  The specter’s arm stiffened, halting his writing. Then he dipped his pen again and wrote even more furiously.

  “Yes, but it has to be tonight, sweetheart.” Jurij squeezed my hand hard, as if to emphasize his point. I squeezed back to emphasize that I was going to slap him for using me this way the moment it was all over. I didn’t think he got my message. “You agreed, just moments ago. We can’t keep living a lie. It’s time we were husband and wife.”

  “Noll? Darwyn—oh, sorry. Am I interrupting?” Roslyn poked her head in through the open door. She glanced at the specter hunched over the table and took him in from head to foot. She didn’t comment, just pointed behind her. “I tried the room that Tayton stays in. And I was about to try Jaron’s when I saw this door open.” She shook her head. “Never mind, I’ll just tell him later.”

  “No!” The volume of my voice made Jurij jump. His grip slackened, and I pulled my hand away, wiping it on the front of my skirt. I’d worn the poultice down and felt my skin rip a little again. I rushed across the room and slid my arm through Roslyn’s. She cocked her head as if to ask what had come over me, but I pulled her toward Jurij and the specter as if it were only natural, as if Roslyn and I had been friendly for years instead of just the past few hours. I patted her arm. She was going to be my excuse to stop this whole mess without admitting in front of the specter that my friends were idiots. “Seeing Roslyn reminds me, Jurij. I’d really prefer we had some witnesses. It will be tonight, of course, but you have to do this for me. It’s my first and only time, after all. Please.”

  Jurij’s eyes darted from the hunched over specter, to Roslyn, to me. The specter didn’t react at all. I frowned. Had anyone ever seen a specter write anything? All the notes I assumed came from Ailill himself, written ahead of time. The marriage certificates for Vena and Elweard or Alvilda and Siofra were already written, without names, when the specters brought them out of their pockets. They just required signatures. No one had ever gotten one of these silent spirits to respond in any way—no one besides Ailill, in any case. The only way we knew they could understand us was because they acted differently when we spoke to them.

  I could feel Roslyn shrink back just a little in my grip. “Are you two getting married?” She pointed at the specter. “Right now?”

  “Yes—” started Jurij.

  “No!” I shook my head and swallowed, feeling Jurij’s expectations boring through me along with his pointed gaze. “I mean, not right now, we were just discussing that.”

  Roslyn pulled her arm out from mine and, although I expected her to flee or get angry, considering her relationship with my sister, she took my hand in both of hers. “Noll, it’s really none of my business. I won’t try to stop you from getting married. If you’re both happy, I have no reason to stop you.”

  Jurij and I exchanged a glance as Roslyn dropped one hand and guided me gently toward him. She placed my hand atop his, shackling me back to the man I once loved—maybe still loved—who’d just tried to force me to marry him because of a stupid plan. He hadn’t even asked if I was willing to participate. I felt the crinkle of paper in Jurij’s fist and slipped it out into my hand, hopefully without either Roslyn or the specter noticing. But the specter wasn’t looking. He stood straight now and put the stopper back on the ink. Jurij gripped my wrist before I could pull my hand away.

  Roslyn’s lips quivered. “It’s just—Elfriede’s awfully unhappy.”

  Jurij’s face soured. “Things aren’t the same as they were.”

  “I know! Believe me, I know.” Roslyn spoke quietly as she broke into a shy smile. “And things being different doesn’t mean they have to be unhappy.”

  I tried returning her smile, but my focus was drawn to the specter. He tapped the quill on the jar of ink to shake out the remaining droplets and laid it down beside the certificate, straightening his jacket.

  “I just think—I mean, Noll and Friede are sisters. They may not have a lot in common, but they love each other, right?” Roslyn’s voice quivered at the end of the sentence, perhaps not as sure about her statement as she pretended to be.

  I hesitated but nodded. “Yes, but—”

  Roslyn held out a hand to stop me. “I understand things between the three of you are complicated. But I do think Elfriede can be happy without Jurij. I know it. Only … ”

  Jurij’s hand on my wrist slackened at the same time his back stiffened. “Then what’s the problem?”

  Roslyn tilted her head toward me, as if waiting for me to speak. The specter stepped around Jurij and walked toward the doorway, the ink well, quill, and certificate left behind on the table. I leaned around Jurij, trying to get a better look at the certificate. “I think Roslyn is saying we need to make peace with Elfriede.”

  Roslyn clapped her hands. “Yes!” She reached forward and wrapped her arms around my shoulders for a hug. “I told Friede she just needed to talk to you!” She pulled back to look me in the eyes. “That there’s no way her sister could be doing anything to hurt her on purpose!”

  Jurij had let my wrist go in the confusion, and I patted Roslyn’s back awkwardly. Even with the paper in my fist, I figured it was better than to pat her with my hand that had started bleeding again. “Roslyn’s right,” I said, glaring at Jurij pointedly. “We shouldn’t say we’re getting married before discussing it with the people most affected.”

  Jurij furrowed his brow and refused to return my look. I followed his eyes to the doorway and noticed the specter had left us. Before we’d had a chance to sign anything.

  Roslyn noticed now too and pulled away from me, covering her mouth with one hand. “Oh! Sorry. Did I make you reconsider?”

  I scowled. Agreeing to talk to Elfriede first wasn’t the same as telling the specter we’d changed our minds. “What do you mean?”

  Roslyn stood on her toes and tried to peer over Jurij’s and my shoulders at the table behind us. “Well, they’re not supposed to pull out a marriage certificate unless they know both parties want to get married, right?”

  I felt a twitch at the pit of my stomach. She was probably right. But I’d been taken aback. I’d tried to play along, but was that the same as accepting the marriage? How did the specters judge that anyway? The piece of paper showing Luuk felt heavy in my hand, and I tucked it into my sash beside the golden copper.

  “So I figured if he left before you signed it, he must be waiting for you to make peace first.” She smiled.

  I gave her a faltering smile in return. “You’re right.” Jurij turned and peered over the table. Roslyn seemed eager to get a look, too, so I grabbed her hand gently and led her to the door. “Thank you,” I cooed, trying again to sound like Elfriede. “You’ve given us a lot to talk over. Um … ”

  “I’ll give you some privacy,” said Roslyn. I almost laughed at that, considering what we’d discovered about moving drawings on pages. She squeezed my hand. “And thank you, Noll.” She pulled the door shut behind her.

  I had a feeling that might be the last time I’d hear those words from anyone for quite a while.

  “Noll, Luuk’s page! Quickly!”

  I was across the room with my hand digging into my sash for the crumpled wad before I could think about how embarrassed and angry I was. He sounded that worried. Jurij peered over my shoulder as I unfurled the paper.

  It took me a moment to orient myself to the drawing. But Luuk was crying, tears clearly visible on his ink face. His hands gripped iron bars, and he shook them. His mouth was open, and I could almost hear the cry for help passing across his silent lips.

  “Damn it.” I shoved the paper at Jurij’s chest. He caught it with trembling hands. “I could have told you there was no way he’d get away with it. What were you thinking?”

  Jurij p
ulled the page away from his chest and examined it. “They’re on their way. They’ll find some way to help him. And you wouldn’t help us.”

  “Well, you pretty much forced me to help anyway, didn’t you? You might have told me what you were planning.”

  Jurij paused. “We thought he might be watching you too closely.”

  I threw my hands up in the air. “Well, in that case, he would have already seen me meeting the lot of you and being shown this page.”

  “That’s why we stalled the one servant. To keep his attention on him.”

  I exhaled a deep breath. “Do you think the man’s an idiot?”

  The lump at Jurij’s throat bobbed, and he laid Luuk’s page on the table, absently smoothing it with one hand. “I don’t know anything about the man. Other than he changed you.”

  “He changed me?” I crossed my arms. “Don’t talk to me about change. I haven’t changed. You have!”

  “You have changed,” Jurij said. “The Noll I love loved me. The only thing I can think of that might have changed your mind is him!”

  I snorted. “Not falling in love with my sister, having a Returning with her, flaunting your sickeningly sweet affection in front of me day after day, and marrying her?”

  “You loved me even so. You kissed me on my wedding day.”

  He had a point. I’d assumed that hadn’t meant anything to him because he didn’t have a will of his own. “It wasn’t him who changed me.”

  Jurij let out a breath. “Then what did?”

  I almost told him. He’d probably swear I imagined the whole thing or call me a liar. Yes, this new and changed Jurij would probably never believe me, but staring into his eyes and remembering the flames I once saw there, I felt the tension release from my neck and shoulders. I wanted to burst out crying. I wanted to hug him, to tell him everything. I took a step forward. But the marriage certificate on the table caught my eye.