Valiant

by Sarah McGuire

  My own anger rose up to meet his, not a bit softened by the small trickle of blood down his temple. When he tried to reach around me, I stepped to block him. He could forget his precious fabric just once.

  “Let me past, Saville!”

  “No.” I shook my head, glad for the strength my anger gave me. “Not until I pick up Mama’s music box.”

  I held his gaze for one more heartbeat. Then, before he could decide whether to slap me in front of the crowd, I knelt and gathered the pieces of Mama’s last song. When I was finished, I stood a moment longer between Father and his fabric.

  He hated even that delay.

  Then I walked away from the wreck, the fragments of the music box cradled in my skirts. Father shouted orders about his fabric and the men around him sprang into action to salvage what they could.

  I moved through them like a ghost, unnoticed by all but one.

  Luca limped up, favoring his bad hip, and handed me a small burlap bag. He tended the caravan’s fires and drove the wagon that carried the food. He’d tended to me, in his own way, the entire journey.

  I transferred the pieces to the bag and tied it shut, trying not to think that I’d lost the music box and Mama’s song. And I was going to lose Luca, too.

  “I’m going to miss your stories,” I said, rubbing my thumb over the burlap’s roughness. It was the closest I could come to saying I’d miss him.

  “It looked like that young merchant was telling you a fine story,” said Luca.

  I followed his gaze. The other caravan was already traveling on toward Reggen, taking with it Lynden and Fine Coat and the poor young man who’d whispered of monsters.

  I sighed. It had been fun to laugh with Lynden.

  “Don’t make me tell you about the time the caravan was caught in an early snow and I spent two weeks peeling boards off the sides of wagons to cook and feed the men,” warned Luca.

  I turned to him, knowing he was gathering one last story for me.

  He grinned. “They never knew the difference. Thought it was nothing more than tough travel bread.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. I could feel the sadness build at the base of my throat, grief for the music box and myself, and for never hearing another of Luca’s stories. But I spoke as brightly as I could. “Even if your cooking is close to boards.”

  “The tale is true!” Luca whipped his woolen hat over his heart. “I swear it.”

  He told me the story as men collected the scattered cargo and loaded it onto other wagons. He was telling it still when the caravan moved forward once more. He even bribed a young merchant to drive the food wagon so he could walk with me.

  “I’m tired of the wagon rattling my bones,” he said with a wink.

  Luca walked on with me, even when he’d finished the story. He didn’t say anything else, and I couldn’t. But I was glad to have him beside me, a Guardian of my own.

  After a while, he prodded me. “Look, child.”

  We had crested the last low bluff before the Kriva River. A bridge as long as two fields arched across it to Reggen, which was tucked between the river and the cliffs that rose behind it. I understood why tales claimed giants had cut and laid the city’s foundation stones. They were each broader than a man could reach with his arms spread wide, and they felt old, older than bones. Reggen’s brick walls looked young by comparison, great-great-grandchildren of the foundation they were built upon.

  And then there were the Guardians: two men, their bodies blurred by time, carved into the cliffs on either side of the walls, their feet near the Kriva, their shoulders rising above Reggen’s walls.

  “It’s a sight, to be sure,” said Luca. “Those two standing in the cliff.”

  “I like them,” I said. “They remind me of kings.”

  “Or giants?” he teased.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, giants. I’ve seen so many, you know.”

  “I think I saw one when I was younger,” said Luca.

  “You can’t mean that!” I turned to him, as surprised as if he’d claimed to ride dragons.

  He shrugged his crooked shoulders. “He was a great big man, that’s all I know—half again as tall as most—with a forehead like a cliff and a nose like a bag of rocks. That’s how I know those two aren’t giants, like some claim. They’re too pretty, too human. A giant would be more lumpy.”

  I laughed, glad for a chance to crawl out of the ugliness of the day. “Lumpy?”

  “Lumpy. Do you think a giant would have fingers that could sew so well as your father?” Luca must have seen the anger in my eyes, for he plunged ahead. “Or a nose as straight and fine as that young merchant’s you were talking with?”

  Then I saw the clusters of bare trees along the Kriva’s banks. They had sturdy enough trunks, but I’d never seen such branches: masses of slender limbs that hung like curtains or hair. Some nearly brushed the river. What would they look like in the spring, covered with leaves?

  I pointed. “What kind of trees are those?” I thought I knew, but I needed to be sure.

  Luca turned to see. “Willows. They’re common enough. Love the water. Why do you ask?”

  I shook my head.

  But I couldn’t look away.

  Mama had named me after a place a traveler had spoken of. Saville was a tiny village, but the traveler had described it so well that Mama’d ached to see it. She’d named me after the village with the willows.

  Now, at seventeen, I saw willows for the first time. For a few long breaths, they were all I could see.

  Then I glanced over my shoulder. Father was arguing with the merchants about the cost of delivering us and our goods to an inn.

  I scampered toward the bank, the bag gripped in my hand. A moment later, I slipped past the curtain of branches that bent close to the ground. I heard a few notes, I swear I did, as if the wind plucked the willow branches like harp strings.

  Father would remember the music box soon, and he’d want it, and then we would fight because I’d never give it to him. Or he would look for it when I was away, and I’d return to discover the pieces were gone.

  Better that they stay here. I looked around to mark the spot: three willows over from a tumble of boulders. Then I knelt at the base of the tree and began to scrape at the soil. Within a minute, I had a deep enough hole. I gently laid the bag in the ground and patted the soil over it, glad I’d found a home for Mama’s song.

  I looked at Reggen standing between its two great Guardians, then back at Father, already shouting with the merchants. Even here, with no guild to crowd him, he had to fight. It would be like Danavir all over again—the disputes with other tailors, the arguments at night, sewing for him because no apprentice dared risk his fury. I couldn’t live like that again.

  I wouldn’t.

  I wouldn’t stay with Father for a moment longer than I had to. I’d make a home for myself, somehow, even if I had to carve it out of the cliffs.

  Chapter 2

  “Here it is,” said Father.

  We stood in a narrow street, looking at our new shop—a modest storefront with a green door and windows that faced the street. All of Reggen was made of stone, as though the city itself had sprung whole from the cliffs behind it. This shop, slumping between its neighbors, was no different, its building stones cracked from supporting its weight for so long.

  I’d never missed the thatched roofs of Danavir more.

  Father had brought his old shop sign all the way from Danavir. He plucked it from the hired wagon and hung it above a small, rust-colored door in the same building: Tailor.

  Just Tailor, the way others would say King.

  Then he unlocked the narrow door—not the green one—and tugged it open. All I saw was a flight of stairs more narrow than the door itself.

  Sky above. He’d bought us a garret shop. We’d freeze in the winter and bake in the summer.

  “What do you think, Saville?” He turned with a flourish, as if he’d opened the door to a castle.

&nb
sp; I just stared, the early spring sunlight barely warming my back. I couldn’t answer. Then I rushed past him and plunged up into the gloom. The stairs were steep and uneven, and I stumbled twice as I climbed.

  When I reached the top, my breath puffed out before me. The garret was dark. One large window let in a pool of light that didn’t dare spread beyond my place at the top of the stairs. There weren’t rooms, just rope strung between hooks in the wall and a pillar to curtain off a sleeping area.

  This was my new home. I’d have cried, but I was too angry for tears.

  For the next hour, servants wrestled beds, cutting tables, and trunks up the stairs, while Father shouted instructions.

  But it was Father’s silence, after the servants left, that scared me. He stood in the middle of the dirty room, his hands pressed against his head.

  “Father?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Did you hurt yourself yesterday when you—”

  He jerked his head to look at me. “See to the fabric trunk, Saville!”

  I didn’t move.

  “Now!” he barked.

  I shoved the trunk against the far wall, scraping it across the floor’s rough planks.

  “Careful, Saville!”

  “The fabric is in the trunk!” I shouted. “Pushing it across the floor won’t hurt your precious cloth.”

  Father took a step toward me. “I told you—!”

  The words slurred in his mouth and he stumbled. Something was wrong—horribly wrong. A great length of fear unfurled inside me.

  Father slapped his fingers over his mouth, as if he could force it to work. When he looked up at me, I saw fear in his eyes, too. He tried to speak as I helped him to his narrow bed. Halves of words tumbled out of a mouth he couldn’t control.

  “Father, I’m going for a physician, do you hear me? I’m going to get help.”

  My terror made the next hour seem like two lifetimes. It felt like months to find the physician, years to convince him to follow me.

  I didn’t think Father would be alive when I returned.

  I dragged the doctor to Father’s bed. “Do something!”

  The doctor held a candle close to Father’s face, pushing back his eyelids as if he could somehow look into his head, then moved the candle back and forth, ordering Father to watch it.

  He couldn’t.

  I saw no sign of the man I’d known. Father just lay there. I didn’t even know if he could see us.

  “Apoplexy,” murmured the doctor.

  “What?” I asked.

  The doctor waved his hand dismissively. “Apoplexy, the paralysis that comes when someone has been struck by God.”

  “Struck by God …?”

  “What else could the old doctors call it? It’s an imbalance of bodily humors. Bile builds up in the body, pressing against the brain. Finally, it causes great damage. A victim loses his speech, the ability to move, even.”

  I looked down at Father, his eyes wide and unblinking.

  “But what do we do?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Some doctors drill into the head to relieve the pressure. Blood follows the bile, you see, and when the blood is allowed to drain away, the patient sometimes improves.”

  I nearly gagged. “Who would even try something so awful?”

  “Katar has done great work with prisoners in Yullan, though fewer than half survived the procedure.”

  “Fewer than half survived having someone drill into their skulls? I wonder why.”

  For the first time, the doctor noticed that I was not pleased with him. His eyes narrowed as he looked around the room. “It’s a good thing this happened to a tailor—”

  “The tailor,” I corrected, thinking of Father’s sign.

  “You’ll need fabric, lots of it,” the doctor said. “You’ll have to diaper him like a child.”

  He seemed to take some satisfaction from my horror.

  “You don’t want this bed ruined, do you? Change him often, girl, or it will create sores.”

  “I’ll take care of him,” I said. The doctor wouldn’t see me cringe again. “Then what?”

  He glared at me, disappointed by my reaction. “He either dies, or he recovers.”

  “Recovers? How long will that take?”

  Another shrug. “He may be able to speak again. He may be able to walk. Or he may just stay there, in the bed.”

  I looked down at Father. Time to recover or to die …

  Later that night, I knelt beside Father, watching him. He hadn’t moved in the hours since the doctor left. I’d never seen him so still in all my life.

  Even then I couldn’t feel sorry for him. I couldn’t feel anything.

  I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, as if that would blot out Father lying as still as a corpse on his bed and this awful garret—the room I’d planned to escape.

  There’d be no leaving now.

  After a long while, I looked up and knotted my hands to stop the shaking. I felt tears but blinked them back. With a deep breath, I stood, barely certain that I could, and took stock of the room: trunks scattered, tables clustered in the middle of the room.

  It was time to set up shop.

  Chapter 3

  A week after Father fell ill, I sat in front of the big window, our last few coins in the palm of my hand. Soon we would be out of money. Father lay in bed, rigid even in his sleep, his hands curled into claws. He’d clung to life with badgerlike tenacity, but he would not sew for a long time.

  I dropped the coins into my lap and rubbed my eyes. I might be able to sell the fabric, but I doubted I could get a fair price for it. And how could Father sew once he recovered if he had no fabric left? In Danavir, I could have found work with a friend. If Father had secured even one commission here before his apoplexy, I could have finished it.

  I pushed the coins in my lap around with a fingertip. Then I stopped, my finger on a small silver coin.

  What if I secured a commission for the tailor of Reggen and then sewed it myself? I held the idea, felt the weight of it.

  A girl couldn’t gain a commission. She wouldn’t be allowed to measure a man, let alone be trusted to sew for him. I scooped the coins up from my lap and poured them into Father’s money purse. They made precious little clatter—there was more purse than coin.

  I could dress as a boy, as Father’s apprentice.

  I sat perfectly still. I didn’t even pull the drawstring of the purse closed.

  I could sew, I knew, but to make myself into a young man? I was tall enough. My face wasn’t very feminine—I could thank Father’s jaw for that. I didn’t have to be a knight. Just a tailor.

  Ridiculous. I closed the purse and almost put it away. Almost.

  I opened the purse again and shook the coins back into my hand. Look at them. You have money for two weeks. You don’t have the luxury to sit and hope something will happen.

  I closed my hand over the coins and walked to the cutting tables to examine Father’s equipment: the shears, his box of pins and needles—long pins for thick fabrics, needles as fine as hair for sewing silks. I knew how to use each and every one.

  I set the coins on the table. Then I opened Father’s trunk and pulled back the canvas cover of the first bolt—a deep plum velvet. I made myself touch it, palm flat against the cloth.

  So much would change if I dressed as Father’s apprentice. I’d have to tell our landlord that Saville had gone to visit family elsewhere. And if Father never recovered, I’d be trapped.

  But he would. He must. In the meantime, we had to eat.

  I moved to the trunk in which Father kept his already-sewn garments. They weren’t fine, but they were useful when a client needed something quickly. I picked up a shirt and held it in front of me. It would do. I spread it out on one of Father’s empty tables, and studied it the way a knight would survey an opponent, my finger twirling in my hair. My hair!

  I reached for the shears.

  When Father woke the next morning, he sa
w his new apprentice. He didn’t recognize me at first, his eyes wide in alarm.

  “Father, it’s me.” I stepped toward him. “I’m going to find work for us—for me—until you can sew again.”

  He examined me like a suit he’d crafted, as if looking for stray threads or crooked seams. But I was prepared for his scrutiny.

  I’d wrapped a length of muslin around my chest as tightly as I could. I’d cut my hair to shoulder length and tied it back at the nape of my neck. I kept one lock and hid it in the bottom of one of the trunks. Mama liked my hair. Foolish as it seemed, I couldn’t bring myself to burn all of it. But of all the changes, it was the cravat that I hated the most. The length of silk tied around my neck felt like a hand squeezing my throat.

  Father’s eyes slid over my hair, the cravat, the shirt and breeches that hung on a boyish frame … and he nodded.

  It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even kindness. But it was the closest he’d come to approval in years.

  For the rest of that day, I wore the garments so I’d grow used to them. But the clothing was nothing compared to walking like a lad.

  I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t afford scrutiny the next day when I would go to the castle. The castle. I’d decided it would be easier to gain an audience with the king while he held court than to secure an appointment with a noble family.

  But every time I moved like a girl, I imagined being discovered. I saw the suspicion on the king’s face, heard him shout to the guards.…

  I could barely keep the fear at bay.

  I was practicing my walk that night when I noticed Father. He was beside himself with fury and flicked a finger with all the emphasis of waving his arm. He wanted me to try again.

  I gritted my teeth. I hated obeying him, but I hated the thought of failure more.

  So I walked the length of the room, then looked at Father. He blinked his eyes twice: no. The finger flicked. I walked again … and again.

  Each time was better—my anger gradually pushed the fear aside. But it wasn’t good enough for Father.

  Finally, after an hour, he raised his eyebrows as if my performance would have to do.