Her words cut through me. I dip my head, but I cannot keep the tears from leaking out of my eyes. “Mother,” I say, my voice breaking. “Please. Valka would have—”
“Get out.”
I manage to choke back my sobs just long enough to close the door behind me.
I stand in the shadow of the courtyard watching a pair of servants hastily load trunks into a carriage. A torch burns before the hall, and in its light the carriage appears like a great, hulking beast, hunched over and lying in wait.
Foolishness, that. A carriage is just a carriage, after all. I rest my cheek against the rough wooden wall beside me. There is Valka now, walking sullenly behind her elderly aunt and traveling companion. She casts one fierce, angry glance about the empty courtyard before clambering up. Daerilin will remain here through the summer, as he promised, but Valka has been disgraced past reprieve. There will be no stay through the summer months for her, no betrothal to announce in the fall.
I watch as the carriage door closes, and the servant at the back straps on the final trunk. The driver shakes the reins and the carriage trundles forward, rattling over the uneven cobbles. I watch the carriage as it lumbers out the great wooden gates, pulled open for it; watch as the sentries slowly shove the gates shut, and even after that I stand, staring at their dark form, my ears straining for the faint sound of the carriage’s passage.
There is no undoing what I did today. And perhaps I don’t want to undo it, but oh how I wish it had happened differently. I grasp the edges of my cloak and wrap my arms around myself, as if I could warm myself with wool and solitude alone.
Inside, I drift down the halls. I do not want to go back to my room, to the elderly servant who took me under her wing after my father died—I do not want to discover what she thinks of me now, if she judges me as harshly as my family does. So, instead, I find myself treading the stairs again, up to the hallway where Valka stood, brooch in hand. I stand, staring at the hallway, dimly lit by lamps set in sconces along the wall. Our luminae stones, as my brother is so aware, light only my mother’s room. Here, there are shadows and the occasional flicker of flame, and a sense of darkness. More foolishness, I suppose, for there is darkness everywhere, just as there is light.
Still, I wrap my cloak tighter about myself, even though it is warmer in here, warm enough that my palms are sweaty in their layers of wool.
“Alyrra.”
I turn to find Maralinde coming toward me. She watches me and I watch her in return. Surely she, at least, is still my friend? But then why does she seem so distant?
“We’re leaving tomorrow,” she says when she is even with me.
I nod.
“Father isn’t going to ask your mother for anything. Not after that.”
No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t dare ask for a concession when my mother’s greatest concern will be placating Daerilin, the man whose family has been disgraced through his. Even if it was Valka who did wrong and not Emmanika. Even if it was my words that brought Valka down, and not really Maralinde’s family at all.
“I’m sorry,” Maralinde says quietly, “but I don’t think I’ll be writing to you this summer.”
I grip my cloak tighter. “You think I’ll turn on you?”
“I think my father can’t afford Daerilin’s hatred. Right now, this is about you and Valka, the way the court’s talking about it. That’s how it has to stay.”
I nod woodenly. There’s nothing else I can do, no words I can find. Maralinde never cozied up to Valka, never simpered at my brother, because she did not like what she saw. She said she liked me. But that is no longer enough in the face of what I have done.
She stands a moment longer, the shadow of regret in her eyes, and then she walks on to her room, leaving me alone.
It will get better, I tell myself as I trudge slowly through the halls to my room. It has to get better.
“Going somewhere?” My brother steps forward from where he leans against the wall, his face hard and ungiving, as if it were carved from ice.
I pause at the top of the stairs. It is morning now; Maralinde has already departed with her family—I watched them from across the courtyard, watched how she never even glanced toward me—and it is finally time for my lessons. I tell my brother so in a halting voice.
“Ah, yes, I agree. You’ve a great deal of learning to do,” he says, only it’s more of a growl, a low, angry sound that roots my feet to the wooden planks. “Seems your teachers haven’t taught you half enough, little sister.”
“I—I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” He laughs, a single harsh huff that frightens me more than his words. What does he want from me? Does he mean to punish me?
“It’s far too late for sorry. It’s far too late for anything, you little fool. How could you do that to Valka? She was your friend. She was—” He shakes his head, his teeth showing between his lips. “Do you know what you need to learn?”
His eyes are as blue and cold as winter, cold as steel that knows no mercy. They are a color that promises pain without remorse.
“You need to learn what happens to traitors who think they’ve escaped punishment.”
He takes three quick steps forward, grasps my shoulders, and then shoves me. Hard. I stumble, teetering for a single, unending moment on the edge of the top step, and then I hurtle backwards, rolling and skidding down the stairs, terror locking my cries within my throat.
At the bottom, I lie curled on my side, my heart thundering in my ears as pain throbs through my legs and arms, across my back. At least I managed to protect my head. And they were wooden stairs, not stone. That is something to be grateful for, I tell myself. As if that might lessen the pain. Or stop my brother.
I lie still, listening for him. Just as my heart begins to calm, I hear the tread of his boots—terror flits through me, and then I realize he is moving away, along the hall at the top of the stairs. The breath I take is almost a sob.
I rest my cheek against the wood, trembling. He hates me now. Not that he ever cared for me. I’ve always known that. Just as I’ve always known of his penchant for cruelty, harsh games and tricks that hurt those around him, if only rarely me. But now it will be different. Now he will discriminate, because I robbed him of the girl he meant to marry, and he will never forgive me for that.
“Your Highness?” The voice is soft and hesitant, and distinctly boyish.
I lift my head to find a page hovering a few paces away, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot. He is the same young boy who stood in the hall upstairs under guard yesterday.
“Can I help you up, Your Highness?”
I nod, and he offers me his hand, and then supports me as I untangle myself from my skirt and cloak and stumble to my feet.
“Thank you,” I say as I release his arm.
“Thank you, Highness,” he says, as if correcting me, and with a dip of his head hurries off up the stairs.
I look after him, bemused. My whole body aches with a constellation of pain that will blossom into bruises. My brother has never attacked me like this before. Not this openly, this terribly.
I take a shuddering breath and start down the hall, limping slightly. My feet and ankles are all right, it is my back and legs that hurt most. I stop before my mother’s room. I know she is still angry with me, I know precisely what she said yesterday—but surely she will not allow this? No matter how furious she is, I am still her daughter, am I not?
I knock hesitantly at her door, my scraped knuckles making me wince. At her call, I step into her front sitting room. She stands in the doorway that connects to her bedchamber, and as our gazes meet, her features tighten. From behind her come the faint sounds of rustling: her maid, no doubt.
“What do you want?”
“S-someone pushed me down the stairs,” I stammer, not sure why I cannot quite admit it was my brother.
But she knows. She laughs, a short, unamused sound. “Someone? Your brother, I presume. No one else would dare.”
I
nod, searching her expression for some gentling of emotion, some hint of kindness.
But she just laughs again, a sharper, more cutting sound. “Well, what did you expect? You’ve destroyed what he had hoped for with Valka. That’s your concern, not mine. Now get out; I’ve greater affairs to attend to than your clumsiness.”
My shaking has begun again, accompanied by a sick feeling in my stomach. I turn and let myself out of the room because there is no arguing with my mother, no salvaging her regard.
She has discarded it for the things she would not lose: Valka’s father’s support, my brother’s future. Politics and power.
I have never felt more alone in my life.
I reach the great wooden gates without incident, acknowledging the guards with a raised hand. They nod and go back to their conversations, used to my heading out for a solitary ramble now and then.
Outside, a wood warbler’s high twittering call carries across the cleared, grassy land from the surrounding forest. I turn toward it, taking a half-worn path through the grasses, ignoring the road down through the village. I want only to get away.
Walking is easier now that some of the sting from my fall down the stairs has faded. I know I could have stopped at the stables and asked the hostlers there to saddle Acorn, but I don’t want to see anyone right now. My mother’s words ring in my ears, my cheeks are damp, and there is a hollowness in my chest that threatens to swallow me.
As I reach the woods, I hear other birds—sparrows, a goldcrest’s distinctive chattering call, and further away, a woodpecker. At the edge of the forest, there is plenty of undergrowth, but as I follow the twisting trail into the deeper wood, the canopy blocks out the light. There are fewer low-growing bushes here, the walking easier.
I wander without direction, or rather, with only one direction: away from the hall. Away from my family who would discard one of their own so easily, and from a friend whose caring carried so little substance, and from the memory of Valka.
My eyes blur again, and I swipe at them often until finally I stumble to a stop, sinking down to rest against a tree. I’ve found a little dell, partially wooded with grasses and shrubs growing up where the sunlight falls at the center of its slight valley. There is peace here, and a faint, skipping breeze that blows past me and then funnels around again, hemmed in by the dell.
I rest my head against the tree, listening to a quiet beat. A beat that grows steadily louder. I go still. That is not a bird, not any creature but a horse, trotting through the woods. Without thinking, I scamper down, past my tree to a dense tangle of blackberry bushes at the bottom of the dell. I cannot push within their thorny bramble. But the hoofbeats are coming from the same direction I did; I hurry to the other side of the brambles and hunch down behind them.
I’m being stupid, of course. There is no reason to hide from a rider here. There are no bandits so close to my mother’s hall, no rogues or outlaws who might attack. But it’s not them I fear as I crouch down on all fours, sheltered by the brambles, the young leaves unfurled just enough to hide me.
My cloak catches on a single thorny stem that extends past the rest. I tug the fabric free and then tilt my head, listening. The wind slides past me again, quieter now. I hear the distinctive clomp of a horse coming to a stop up above, among the trees. Can the rider see me from their vantage point? Almost, I look up—but the movement would call their attention if they haven’t already seen me. No, better to stay still.
“I know you’re out here, Alyrra.”
My shoulders hunch instinctively against the threat in his voice.
“Do you think you can run from me? Mother told me you came to complain about me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, willing him away. My fingers dig into the damp earth, claw-like.
“No one complains about me.”
“Go away,” I whisper softly. “Please. Please.”
The wind, a gentle breeze slipping past me, pauses. I blink my eyes open, but here is the truth of it: not a single blade of grass stirs, not a leaf on the bushes moves. And then it starts up again, flowing smoothly through the dell.
“A-lyr-ra,” my brother calls in a singsong voice that is still slightly fainter. Is he turning? Searching for me? But then his voice returns, clear as ever. “I’m not letting you get away from me as well.”
As well? With a sudden, sinking sensation, I think of the serving girl, the one Valka chose to blame. Surely he doesn’t mean her? But even if he does, she must have evaded him somehow or he wouldn’t have spoken so. Please let her have gotten away.
With unexpected suddenness, the wind whips through the bushes at the end of the dell, cutting through them so that their branches rustle along a single, clear line, as if marking the path of a fleeing creature. Or person.
My brother gives a shout and sets his horse after it. I stare, my gaze moving from him to the bushes, now still. It was only an errant wind, wasn’t it? But what wind blows so strangely?
Wind sprite, I decide. Fickle creatures of the air, they are as likely to hinder as to help, or so the stories say. I don’t know why this one aided me, and I don’t have time to worry over it. I start to my feet and scramble up the gently sloping side of the dell, moving as quickly as I can in the opposite direction from my brother. I stop only when I reach the undergrowth that marks the edge of the forest, the hall just visible through the branches of the remaining trees.
I drop to the ground, my cloak pooling around me, and try to catch my breath. So long as my brother did not turn back after me, I should be safe. I press my hand into the stitch in my side and focus on breathing as I watch the wood. There is no sign of him. No movement in the forest, only the leaves of a branch waving there. Then, again, closer to me, the leaves on another branch flutter.
The wind. Has it come back to check on me? Does it expect something of me now? No, that makes no sense, for what can I do for an element of the air?
“Hello,” I say softly as it reaches me. It makes a single circuit around me, a quick rushing passage, and then slows to rustle through the new growth upon the bushes around me. Almost certainly a wind sprite. I’ve heard of such things, magical creatures with changeable temperaments, their only body the movement of air. I’d thought them folk tales, but there’s no arguing with the breeze before me.
Nor is there any doubt that it helped me. I cannot understand why it would, but I am grateful to it, so grateful—for the aid it rendered me, and because it did so without knowing me, or having any reason to other than that it could.
“Thank you,” I tell it, and find I am crying again, only this is not the heartbroken sorrow of earlier. This a strange, warm feeling, tears slipping down my cheeks as I smile at the air—at nothing I can see.
The wind fans around me, cooling the tears upon my cheeks, and I smile back at it. “Thank you,” I tell it again. “I don’t know if I can do you a good turn, or if you need one, but I am grateful for your kindness.” I needed it today, this reminder that I am not alone, that there are allies and friends around me, whether I can see them or not, from this kindly wind to the boy who helped me up at the foot of the stairs.
“I hope we will meet again,” I say, wiping my cheeks. The wind only rustles around me again. It has no words to answer, but it flutters along beside me as I make my way out of the woods, and leaves me only as I near the gates.
I whisper a goodbye after it, certain it understands, and hurry to the stables. It’s foolish, perhaps, for it’s the first place my brother will come when he returns. But I must ask someone, and there is the young woman who generally looks after my horse. Redna is her name.
“Please,” I say as she steps out of an empty stall, a pitchfork in her hands. “Do you know where the girl is—the one whom Valka blamed yesterday?”
Redna is tall and tanned, her brown hair always braided back, and her plain features usually smiling. Now, though, she studies me silently, then shakes her head. “Can’t say, Highness.”
“I just—I wanted to make sur
e she was safe.”
Redna’s brows rise, and then she smiles. “She is, Highness. We all put in to give her some money, and she left before the sun set yesterday. Can’t say where she went, though I’m sure someone knows. No good letting that information out, if you know what I mean.”
I do. I wouldn’t want my brother to be able to track her down either. “I’m glad, then,” I say.
Redna reaches out and gently plucks a leaf from my hair. “You’d best go on, Highness.”
I blink at her, taken aback by the care in her actions coupled with the dismissal in her words.
She gestures with the leaf toward the back of the stables. “That way to the kitchens. If your brother comes in behind you, it’s best not to be here.”
“The kitchens?” I repeat.
“You’ll be hungry,” Redna says, letting the leaf fall and turning once more to the stall. “And I don’t know that I’ve heard of your brother stopping into the kitchens of his own accord.”
She’s right. That is the realm of servants, and my brother would never deign to set foot there. But I cannot imagine it will be a place for me, either.
“Go on,” Redna says, flapping her hand at me.
I mumble my thanks and take her advice, following the servants’ path from the back of the stables around the hall to the kitchen. It’s a noisy, warm place, filled with conversation that dies at the sight of me.
“Highness?” a woman asks, tall and well-built, her work dress patched but sturdy, her front dusted with flour. “Can I help you?”
I glance around. The remaining servants all watch me in return. Perhaps she is the head cook. I have never met her before.
“I wondered if I—well, I’m a little hungry.”
“I can have some food sent up to your room for you,” the cook says, her tone uncertain.
“I—yes, but . . .” But my brother will easily find me there. “I wondered if I could just stay here for a few minutes? By the fire, perhaps?”
The cook looks at me with dawning comprehension, but there is no pity in that look. Instead, her eyes sharpen and she says, her voice steely, “You’ll always be welcome to warm yourself here, princess. Dara, set a stool there for Her Highness and get her some fresh bread rolls and a pat of butter.”
Brambles: A Thorn Short Story Page 3
