by Rebecca Ross
We stared at each other, the starlight sweetening the shadows that had fallen between us.
“Tell me what he said,” Cartier softly persisted.
“He was not impressed with my three years.”
He sighed and roughly drew his fingers through his hair, his frustration tangible. The buckles on his doublet winked in the dim light as he said, “Then he is not worthy of you.”
I wanted to tell him that was kind of him to say. But my throat had tightened, and different words came out instead.
“Perhaps it was never meant to be,” I whispered, and began to walk away from him.
His hand took my elbow before I could stray, as if he knew words were not enough to keep me there. And then his fingertips slowly traced down the inside of my bare forearm, exploring all the way to my palm, to catch the curve of my fingers. He held me there before him on the grass—steady, resolute, celestial. It reminded me of another time, long ago, when his fingers had encompassed mine, when his touch had encouraged me to stand and earn my place in this House. When I was but a girl, and he was so far above me I never thought it possible to catch him.
I closed my eyes as the memory haunted me, a jasmine breeze weaving between us, trying to knit us closer.
“Brienna.” His thumb brushed my knuckles. I knew he wanted me to open my eyes, to look at him, to acknowledge what was unfolding between us.
He is breaking a rule, I thought. He is breaking a rule for me, and I let that truth gild my heart as I drew in a deep breath.
I opened my eyes; I parted my lips to tell him that he should let me go when we heard laughter on the other side of the hedges.
At once, his fingers released mine and we stepped farther apart.
“Bri! Bri, where are you?”
It was Merei. I turned to the sound just as she emerged from the path, Oriana with her.
“Come, it’s time for bed,” she said, not seeing Cartier until she took a step closer. She halted when she recognized him, as if she had walked into a wall. “Oh, Master Cartier.” She and Oriana instantly curtsied.
“Good night, Brienna,” Cartier murmured, bowing to me, bowing to my sisters as he strode away.
Oriana gazed after his retreat with a frown, but Merei kept her eyes on me as I moved to join them.
“What was that about?” Oriana inquired with a yawn as we began to weave our way to the back of the house.
“A deliberation about patrons,” I answered.
“Is everything all right?” Merei asked.
I linked my arm with hers, exhaustion suddenly snaking up my back. “Yes, of course.”
But her eyes were regarding my face as we emerged back into the candlelight.
She knew that I was lying.
NINE
SONG OF THE NORTH
Monday arrived with rain and restlessness. The Dowager was in her study, conversing with interested patrons for most of the day. The ardens had nothing to do but pace the second floor. We were told to remain nearby, because the Dowager would soon request our presence to discuss our offers.
I sat with my sisters in Oriana and Ciri’s room, listening to their conversations excitedly flicker back and forth as the lightning that raged outside.
“Were all three patrons interested in you?”
“Who are you going to pick, if they are?”
“How much do you think they will offer?”
So the questions spun about me, and I listened to my arden-sisters share their experiences, their hopes and dreams. I listened but didn’t speak, because as the hours stretched thin and the afternoon progressed, I began to prepare for my greatest fear to come alive: a creature molded from the shadows of my dismay and failures.
When the clock struck four, the Dowager sent for the first girl. Oriana. As soon as she left the room for her meeting, I retreated to the library. Sitting in the chair by the window, I watched the rain streak the glass with The Book of Hours in my lap. I was afraid to read about the Stone of Eventide again, afraid that I might shift into the nameless Maevan lord once more. And yet I wanted to read about the stone, about the shackled magic. I wanted to see Princess Norah again for no other reason than to discover if she had truly been the one to steal the stone from her mother’s neck.
I trembled as I read it, waiting for the shift, caught between dread and desire. But the words remained words on a ripened, speckled page. And I wondered if I would ever shift to the past again, if I would ever see him again, if I would ever know why it had happened to me, and if Princess Norah had truly been the one to hand the stone over.
There were so many questions, and no satisfying answers.
“Brienna?”
Thomas, the butler, spoke into the darkness of the library. He caught me off guard and I rose to my feet, my legs prickling with pins and needles as I saw him standing on the threshold.
“Madame would like to see you in her study.”
I nodded and set The Book of Hours on the lesson table. Following him, I tried to gird myself with courage. I dwelled on the image of Liadan Kavanagh, imagined her giving me a tiny measure of her victory and bravery. Yet I still trembled when I entered the Dowager’s study, because this was the moment I had spent seven years trying to champion, and I knew that I had failed.
The Dowager sat at her desk, warmed by the light of flickering candles. She smiled at the sight of me.
“Please, come sit, Brienna.” Her hand extended to a chair before her.
I walked to it and sat with stiff knees. My hands were as ice, and I folded them together over my lap and waited.
“How did you find the solstice last night?” she asked.
It took me a moment to choose the proper response. Should I act as if nothing was wrong? Or should I make it evident that I knew none of the patrons had contended for me?
“Madame, I must apologize,” I blurted. This was certainly not the answer I had prepared, but once it had broken from my lips, it rushed forth. “I know that I failed to passion last night. I know I have failed you, and Master Cartier, and—”
“My dear girl, please don’t apologize,” she gently interrupted. “That is not why I have called you in.”
I drew in a deep breath, my teeth aching, my eyes resting on hers. And then I found a tiny seed of courage and acknowledged my fear. “I know that I have no offers, Madame.”
Nicolas Babineaux and Brice Mathieu had both found fault in me. But before this truth could further blister my confidence, the Dowager said, “No offers were made, but do not let this distress you. I know the challenges you have faced here over the years, Brienna. You have worked harder than any other arden I have ever admitted.”
Ask her now, a dark voice whispered in my mind. Ask her why she accepted you; ask her for the name of your father.
But to ask would require more courage, more confidence, and mine had waned. I twisted my arden dress in my hands and said, “I will leave tomorrow, with the others. I do not wish to be a burden on your House any longer.”
“Leave tomorrow?” the Dowager echoed. She stood and walked the length of the room, coming to a resting place by her window. “I do not want you to depart tomorrow, Brienna.”
“But Madame—”
“I know what you are thinking, dear one,” she said. “You are thinking that you do not deserve to be here, that your passion is contingent on securing a patron at the solstice. But not all of us travel the same path. And yes, your other five sisters have chosen their patrons and will leave on the morrow, but that does not make you less worthy. On the contrary, Brienna, it makes me believe there is more to you, and I misjudged the proper patrons for you.”
I think I must have been gaping at her. For she turned to look at me and smiled.
“I want you to remain the summer with me,” the Dowager continued. “During that time, we will find you the right patron.”
“But Madame, I . . . I could not ask such of you,” I stammered.
“You are not asking for it,” she said. “I am
offering it.”
We both fell quiet, listening to our own thoughts and the chorus of the storm. The Dowager resumed her seat and said, “It is not my choice to say whether you have passioned or not. For that is Master Cartier’s decision. But I do think a little more time here will benefit you tremendously, Brienna. So I hope that you will stay the summer. By autumn, we will have you in the graces of a good patron.”
Isn’t this what I wanted? A little more time to polish myself, to measure the true depths of the passion I was claiming. I would not have to face my grandfather, who would be ashamed of my shortcomings. Nor would I have to embrace the title of inept.
“Thank you, Madame,” I said. “I would like to stay the summer.”
“I am happy to hear such.” When she stood again, I knew she was dismissing me.
I wandered up the stairs to my room, pain blooming with each step as I began to realize what this summer would be like. Quiet and lonely. It would just be the Dowager and me, and a few of the servants. . . .
“Who did you choose?” Merei’s enthusiasm greeted me the moment she heard me enter. She was on her knees, busy packing her belongings into the cedar trunk at the foot of her bed.
My own cedar trunk sat in the shadows. I had already packed my possessions, with the expectation I would depart tomorrow with the others. Now I needed to unpack it.
“I had no offers.” The confession was liberating. It felt as if I could finally move and breathe, now that it was in the open.
“What?”
I sat on my bed and stared at Cartier’s books. I needed to remember to give them back to him tomorrow, when I bid him good-bye with the others.
“Bri!” Merei came to me, settled beside me on the mattress. “What happened?”
We had not had a chance to talk. Last night, we had been so weary and bruised from our corsets that we had tumbled into bed. Merei had begun snoring at once, although I had lain in bed and stared into the darkness, wondering.
So I told her everything now.
I told her of what I had overheard in the corridor, of the three patrons, of Ciri’s draw to the physician, of my blunders and my spoiled dinner. I told her of the Dowager’s offer, of my chance to stay through the summer, of how I honestly wasn’t sure what to feel.
The only thing I withheld was that starlit moment with Cartier in the gardens, when he had touched me, when our fingers had been linked. I couldn’t expose his decision to willingly break a rule, even though Merei would guard and protect such a secret for me.
She brought her arm around me. “I am so sorry, Bri.”
I sighed and leaned into her. “It’s all right. I actually do believe the Dowager is correct, as far as patrons. I do not think Brice Mathieu or Nicolas Babineaux were good matches for me.”
“Even so, I know you are disappointed and hurt. Because I know I would be.”
We sat side by side quietly. I was surprised when Merei stood and retrieved her violin, the wood lustrous in the evening light as she brought it to her shoulder.
“I wrote a song for you,” she said. “One I hope will help you remember all the good memories we shared here, and remind you of all the great things still to come.”
She began to play, the music soaring through our chamber, eating the shadows and cobwebs. I leaned back on my hands and closed my eyes, feeling the notes fill me, one by one, as rain in a jar. And when I reached that point of overflowing, I beheld something in my mind.
I was standing on a mountain; below me, lush green hills rolled around as the waves on the sea, the valleys veined with sparkling streams and bordering woods. The air here was sweet and sharp, like a blade that cuts to heal, and the mist hung low, as if she wanted to touch the mortals who lived in the meadows before the sun burned her away.
I had never been here, I thought, and yet I belonged.
That was when I became aware of a slight pressure around my neck, a humming over my heart, as if I wore a heavy necklace. And as I stood on this summit looking down, I felt a dark thread of worry, like I was searching for a place to conceal me. . . .
Her song ended, and the vision faded away. I opened my eyes, watched Merei lower her violin and smile at me, her gaze glistening with passion and fervor. And I wanted more than anything else to tell her how exquisite her music was—that this was my song, and somehow she had known the very notes to string together to encourage my heart to see where it should be.
The hills and the valleys, the mountain in the mist, had not been Valenia.
It had been another glimpse of Maevana.
“Did you like it?” Merei asked, fidgeting.
I rose and embraced her, the violin trapped between us as a complaining child. “I love it, Merei. You know and love me so well, sister.”
“After I saw Oriana’s portrait of you,” she said as I let her go, “I thought of your heritage, that you are two in one, north and south, and how marvelous yet challenging that must be. And so I asked Master Cartier if he could find some Maevan music for me, which he did, and I wrote you a song inspired from the passion of Valenia but also the courage of Maevana. Because I think of both when I think of you.”
I was not one to cry. Growing up at the orphanage had taught me that. But her words, her revelations, her music, her friendship punctured the stubborn dam I had built a decade ago. I wept as if I had lost someone, as if I had found someone, as if I was breaking, as if I was healing. And she wept with me, and we held each other and laughed and cried and laughed some more.
Finally, when I had no more tears left, I wiped my cheeks and said, “I have a gift for you too, although it is not nearly as marvelous as yours.” I opened the lid of my chest, where six little booklets rested, each one bound by leather and red thread. They were filled with poems, written by an anonymous passion of knowledge I had long admired. And so I had bought the booklets with the small allowance Grandpapa sent me every birthday, one for each of my arden-sisters, so they could carry paper and beauty around in their pockets and remember me.
I set one in Merei’s hands. Her long fingers turned the pages as she smiled at the first poem, reading it aloud after clearing the trace of tears from her throat.
“‘How shall I remember thee? As a drop of eternal summer, or a blossom of tender spring? As a spark of autumn’s stirring fire, or perhaps as the frost of winter’s longest night? No, it shall not be as one of these, for these shall all come to pass, and you and I, though parted by sea and earth, will never fade.’”
“Again,” I said, “not as beautiful as your gift.”
“It doesn’t mean I will cherish it any less,” she responded, gently closing the booklet. “Thank you, Bri.”
It was only then we realized the state of our chamber, which looked as if a windstorm had passed through.
“Let me help you pack,” I offered. “And you can tell me of the patron you have chosen.”
I began to help her gather her music and fold her dresses, and Merei told me of Patrice Linville and his traveling consort of musicians. She had received offers from all three of her patrons, but had decided to choose a partnership with Patrice.
“So you and your music are bound to see the world,” I said, awed, as we finished at last with her packing.
Merei closed her cedar chest and sighed. “I don’t think it has quite caught up to me, that tomorrow I will receive my cloak and leave this place for constant travel. All I know is I hope that it was the right decision. My contract with Patrice is for four years.”
“I am sure it is right,” I answered. “And you should write to me, about all the places you see.”
“Mmm.” She made that sound when she was worried, nervous.
“Your father will be very proud of you, Mer.”
I knew she was close to her father; she was his only daughter, and had inherited the love of music from him. She had grown up beneath his lullabies, his chansons, and his harpsichord. So when she had asked to attend Magnalia when she turned ten, he had not hesitated to send her, e
ven though it put vast distance between them.
He wrote her faithfully every week, and oftentimes Merei would read his letters to me, because she was determined I would meet him one day, that I would visit her childhood home on the island.
“I hope so. Come, let’s get ready for bed.”
We donned our night shifts, washed our faces, and braided our hair. Then Merei climbed into bed with me, even though it was a narrow slip of a mattress, and we began to reminisce all of our favorite memories, such as how shy and quiet we had once been our first year rooming with each other. And how we had climbed onto the roof with Abree one night to watch an asteroid shower, only to discover Abree was terrified of heights and it had taken us until dawn to get her back in through the window. And about all the holy day celebrations, when we had a week free from lessons, and the snow arrived just in time for snowball fights, and our masters and mistresses suddenly felt more like older brothers and sisters during the festivities.
“What does Master Cartier think, Bri?” Merei asked around a yawn.
“About what?”
“About you staying through the summer.”
I fiddled with a loose thread in my quilt and then responded, “I don’t know. I haven’t told him yet.”
“Will he still give you your cloak tomorrow, then?”
“Probably not,” I said.
Merei blinked at me through the watery moonlight. “Did something happen between the two of you, last night in the garden?”
I swallowed, my heart quieting as if it wanted to hear what I might say. I could still feel that agonizing trace of his fingertips down my arm, feather soft and wildly deliberate. What had he been trying to say to me? He was my master, and I was his arden, and until I passioned there was to be nothing more between us. So maybe he was only trying to reassure me, and I had completely misread the touch? That seemed more reasonable, because this was Master Cartier, the strict law abider who never smiled.
