by Sharon Shinn
That was the last event of the day. People were on their feet even as the final amens sounded, yawning through the last note and wishing each other sweet dreams. The old woman was once again complimenting Elizabeth on her baking when Rufus materialized at her side, smiling in the firelight and taking her chilly hand in his.
“Time to rest after a very long day,” he said, tugging her in the direction of their tent. “I am sleepy if you are not.”
Elizabeth could not help herself. She glanced quickly at Naomi, who was standing close enough to listen, and who responded with a quick nod of encouragement. “I am ready to go to our tent,” Elizabeth responded. “A long day indeed!”
In a few minutes they were ensconced inside, hearing all around them the sounds of the Chievens settling in for the night. It was completely dark inside and much colder than it had been sitting before the fire, shoulder to shoulder with others, and for a moment, Elizabeth felt both lost and despondent. What was the point of wearing a dreamy blue dress and placing pins in her hair if she was just going to shiver on a blanket in an unlit tent? Who would notice her finery, who would be moved to passion by her arts?
Rufus was on his knees, maneuvering around the tent poles, but it was hard to get lost in such a small space; he fetched up against her immediately. She felt his arms slip about her, chasing away some of the cold. “Ah, I thought I caught a sweet aroma when I pulled you away from the fire,” he murmured into her hair. “What is that scent? It makes me think of springtime.”
She smiled in the dark. “Something Naomi lent me.”
His fingers ran lightly over the soft folds of the wrap. “And this? This lovely outfit you are wearing? I don’t remember seeing it at any time while we were on the road.”
“Another gift from Naomi. A loan.”
“And is there any reason this Edori clanswoman would have for lavishing exotic perfumes and sumptuous fabrics on a allali woman who has just happened by for a visit? Jewels in your hair, even. What could she mean to accomplish with such decorations?”
Elizabeth could feel her lips bow into a smile. “I don’t know. Perhaps she felt sorry for me, bedraggled and grim from my travels. Perhaps she thought she might make me beautiful to catch the eye of an Edori clansman. There are one or two handsome men among the Chievens, I noticed.”
His hand now was combing through her hair, pulling out the glittering pins one by one. “Did you now? And do you have extensive experience with Edori lovers?”
“I do not,” she said primly. “I don’t know if they’re joyous or solemn, faithful or faithless, whether they boast about their conquests or keep every secret whispered to them in the dark.”
“Joyous,” he said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. Her skin warmed under his lips. “Faithful. Keeping every secret.”
She turned in his embrace, putting her arms around his neck and drawing him close enough so that she could whisper her next words against his mouth. “I would take an Edori to bed, then,” she said. “I would learn what such a lover is like.”
“So little choice,” he said. “Only one Edori in the tent.”
“Then I would make love to him.”
“There is much still to be decided between us,” he said, but his arms tightened around her back, and she felt the pace of his heartbeat quicken.
She laughed softly, her breath mingling with his, and then she pressed her mouth to his in a long kiss. “This will help us decide,” she said at last. “Let me take off this gorgeous blue gown.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Everything was so simple once Rebekah decided what she must do.
She had to leave Breven. She had to go to Cedar Hills with the angel.
She had no choice; she could see that now. All her worries about leaving behind her family, entering into a new life surrounded by strangers—none of those mattered when measured against the likelihood of losing her life. She could go with Obadiah and transform herself completely, or she could stay in Breven and die.
And her baby would die.
She was astonished at the fierceness of her determination to protect the life inside her. She had always known she would have fought to the death to save Jordan from harm, and Jonah had such a hold on her heart that she could not imagine what it would be like to leave him, but even these emotions paled before the intensity of her love for her unborn child. She schemed for this child; it figured in every calculation. Every night she dreamed about a baby who was fair and serene and watched her with dark, unreadable eyes. So strong were her tactile impressions of holding and nursing this child that when she woke in the mornings, her arms empty, she was assailed by a sense of ungovernable loss. She had not known it was possible to love—love so much—something invisible, intangible, alive only in imagination.
Yet the mound of her belly grew more rounded every day, and the Kiss in her arm pulsed with a dangerous fire. Not so intangible after all.
She must leave Breven as soon as possible, before she was discovered. Long before her marriage. She thought there was a good chance she could conceal her pregnancy until very late in her term if she carefully chose her jeskas and ensured as much privacy as possible when using the water room. So, although it was imperative that she leave Breven, it was not urgent. Not yet. She still had time.
The knowledge that she was truly going to leave her family, her home, every single familiar detail of her life, at times overwhelmed her with a grief so great that only an even greater corresponding fear kept her resolution intact. She did not know how quickly the angel might return and how swiftly she might be able to plot her escape, so she could not gauge how much time she had left among the people and the things she loved. Her days were invested with melancholy as she did her routine chores. She might never sit in the garden again in the winter sunlight, watching Jonah crawl between the bare, spindly bushes. She might never again linger at the communal dinner table, listening to the old women gossip and the young women whisper. She might never hear Jordan boasting about some horse he had mastered, though Hector told him he was not strong enough to hold such a brutish animal. She might never endure another public scold from her mother and then late in the day receive, not an apology, but a kiss on the cheek or a gentle “thanks.” She might never know if her mother loved her. So often she had been sure Jerusha did not, but when Rebekah was far away, lost to her forever, would Jerusha weep into her pillow until Hector begged her for silence?
She would never know that, either.
It was impossible to guess when Obadiah might reappear. She had taken pains to make him think she was safe, so he would not haunt the streets of Breven, looking for her, drawing more attention than would be good for either of them. But that plan might have been miscalculated, since she had no way of letting him know her situation would soon be desperate. She did not think she could convince Jordan to deliver a second missive to the Hotel Verde, since he had been so reluctant to carry the first. She had had to explain over and over again how she had met Zoe at the house of one of Martha’s cousins, how she was a nervous and fretful girl, prone to imagining the worst.
“She will have heard what happened to Martha,” she said. “And she will be crazy with grief and worry over me.”
“What do we care what a Manadavvi girl worries about?”
“Please. She’s a friend. I have no other way to reach her.”
In the end he had consented when she allowed him to read the letter—so carefully composed, so full of hidden messages!—and agreed that he could toss it away and disavow it if by some chance it seemed too dangerous to deliver. This had not kept her from pouncing on him the instant he returned and demanding to know if he had put the letter in Zoe’s hands.
“No, of course I did not! I gave it to some man inside the hotel. He looked Manadavvi—her brother, perhaps.”
“But you told him it was for Zoe? He knew?”
“Her name was on the paper.”
“But you told him?”
“I told him.”
And she was fairly certain the letter had been forwarded to Obadiah, for there were no more signals dropped on her roof or in her garden in the next few days. But he would be back. She knew him well enough by now to be sure of that.
She spent a great deal of time imagining what their next meeting would be like. What would she say first? “I want to leave Breven to be with you” or “I’m carrying your child.” What would his reaction be to either of these statements? She had no doubt, none at all, that Obadiah was an honorable enough man to see her to safety even if he no longer loved her, even if he was horrified or repulsed by the news of her pregnancy. But he might be rendered speechless by the miracle, might be struck dumb and senseless by joy. She rather thought Obadiah was that kind instead.
How to meet him to share this news was another one of her preoccupations. It was not clear when the extreme measures of security would be lifted from Hector’s house—indeed, from all the wealthier houses of Breven. The men no longer slept in their beds; they slept on the floor before the kitchen door, on the landings between stairwells, anyplace that might conceivably be considered an exit. There was no way to steal from the house by night.
Rebekah could not help imagining scenes of great daring and boldness. She pictured herself charging down the steps in the middle of the day, sprinting through the garden with Hector and his brothers in full pursuit, dashing down the street at a flat-out run as her Jansai relatives grew ever closer—and then being snatched up by an angel swooping down from the hard bright sky. The trouble with this scenario, of course, was that Obadiah would have to know in advance just exactly when she would require him to be swooping.
More likely, she thought, was that he would leave some token on the skylight and she would find a way to creep up the back stairs by night. Perhaps it would be Jordan guarding the upper floor on the night she wanted to escape, and he would let her pass without even a question. Perhaps it would be one of Hector’s brothers, both of them big men who liked to drink, and who might sleep soundly even on the rough floor of the hallway. Perhaps they would be easy to step over and leave behind.
Now and then she thought about a third course, as risky as the others. She would sneak from the house in her boy’s guise—night or day, whenever the opportunity arose—and make her way to the Hotel Verde. There she would wait, hidden and sheltered in one of the opulent rooms, until Obadiah could be sent for. There was little risk that the Jansai would track her down there, and so she could wait in relative safety for however long it took Obadiah to arrive. No one would think to look for her in such a haven; no one would have any reason to suspect she had any association with the Manadavvi.
Except Jordan.
Once that thought occurred to her, she turned it over and over in her mind. She could not believe Jordan would betray her, would lead Hector and his family to her hiding place, knowing what would befall her at their hands. He had been so distraught over Martha’s expulsion that she could not believe he would engineer her own. And yet, Ephram was the one who had denounced his sister, and he had been greatly lauded among the Jansai for his quick and ruthless action. Jordan might be hungry for some honor of his own.
No. Not Jordan. Not that sweet, funny, generous, happy boy.
But still she made no plans to don boy’s clothes and creep out into the street. She would wait until she knew the angel was in town. Her escape would be much more certain then.
Even though she would rather not have, Rebekah accepted Hali’s help in finishing up her bridal trousseau. The companionship was pressed on her by Jerusha, who claimed Hector’s niece would be a good, steadying influence on Rebekah, who had “seemed so flighty these past few weeks I honestly don’t understand how you make it through the day.”
“I’m just fine. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re jumpy as a child before a festival, looking around you all the time as though you expect something strange or marvelous to be leaping out at you from the corners.”
That was a fairly accurate assessment, Rebekah had to admit, though she was surprised that her mother had noticed. “There’s a lot happening,” was all she said. “Martha—and my wedding—”
“Don’t you talk about Martha,” Jerusha hissed, looking around quickly to see if anyone had overheard. They were sitting together in the fabric room, and Jerusha had just expressed her impatience with the endless task of hemming linens. Her eyes had fallen on Hali, sitting demurely across the room, hands busy with some mending and expression indicating that she was listening patiently to Hepzibah’s harangue. “Martha is dead, do you hear me? They went back a week ago and found her bones. If you even mention her name, you could be dead, too.”
Rebekah raised her eyes briefly to her mother’s face, her own expression so stark and level that Jerusha actually recoiled. I could be dead for crimes more appalling than speaking my cousin’s name, she thought. “I know that Martha is dead,” was all she said.
It took Jerusha a moment to recover from the strangeness in Rebekah’s expression. When she did speak again, her voice was a little strained. “So. You will make new friends. Martha was always a wild one. But Hali. She’s a good girl. Quiet. She never does anything to make her mother worry.”
“I don’t like Hali.”
Jerusha slapped her none too gently on the fingers. “Don’t say things like that! You’ll have her help you with your dowry. You girls should be friends. That would make your father happy.”
She didn’t even waste breath saying, He’s not my father. “I don’t care who does the sewing,” she said instead, too tired to argue anymore. “If Hali is willing, let her help.”
So Jerusha invited Hali to join Rebekah, and then she casually decided to “leave you young girls alone to talk.” Hali barely noticed.
“Oh, I love the fabric you’ve chosen for your sheets,” she exclaimed, running her fingers over the smooth, fine cloth. “This is for your wedding night? It’s from Luminaux, isn’t it?”
“My mother picked the fabric,” Rebekah said.
“And the jeskas you’re to wear for your first year! I want to be a married woman so I can wear fabrics so beautiful. Did you embroider all the hems in gold?”
“Three of them. Two I embroidered in silver for feast days.”
“How long will you live in Simon’s place? How long before Isaac has his own house? I would not want to live alone in a house, just my husband and me. Will you bring some of Isaac’s sisters with you?”
“I think it will be a while before he can manage a household of his own. We might live with Simon for years.”
“Or perhaps Simon will die, and Isaac will take over his father’s house! That would be excellent, would it not? His house is very big.”
“It would not be so excellent for Simon, I suppose.”
“No, but you know what I mean! He will have to die sometime.”
So the conversation went, for the next two dreary hours—and the next two dreary days. It was the bitter tail end of winter, just weeks before shy spring was due to arrive, but the weather was colder and windier than it had been all season. As if winter could not bear to release her bony, hateful grip on this southern land, as if she wanted to prove that an old lady’s whims were more powerful than a young girl’s fertility. So they had all stayed indoors for three interminable days. There were no feasts coming up, so no need to spend hours in the kitchen, baking; none of the men were planning journeys in the next few weeks, so there was no rush to mend the tents or put their clothing in order. Nothing to do but work on Rebekah’s trousseau.
“When I am married I will have only sons,” Hali said to Rebekah on the third day. The two girls sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by piles and piles of fine cloth. Hepzibah and her sisters were gathered in one corner, working on household projects and grumbling about something Hector had done. “Five of them.”
Rebekah knew a little about the unpredictability of pregnancy, and she couldn’t let this pass. “I�
�m not sure you are allowed the ordering of such things,” she said. “When you will have children, or how many. Or what kind.”
“Yes, but I don’t want any daughters,” Hali said earnestly. “It’s the sons who will look after you when you’re old, and take you into their homes. A daughter would have to ask her husband if you could take up space in his house, and you would have to be very meek and do everything he told you to do. But your own sons would still have to listen to you and show you honor.”
“I would be happy to have either a son or a daughter,” Rebekah said softly. If I can survive long enough to bear the child.
“But I’d like to travel first. If I marry a merchant, you know, he’ll most likely take me on trips to Semorrah and Castelana and the Manadavvi holdings. So I don’t want to have children right away.”
Rebekah couldn’t help smiling at that. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t think I’ll be able to wait very long to have my first child.”
They had been at work for at least two hours by this time. Rebekah could not keep herself from glancing up toward the skylight every once in a while, wondering what she might see there: a patch of winter-gray sky, droplets of rain, a single broad feather.
“Why do you do that all the time?” Hali exclaimed when Rebekah raised her eyes once more to the glass pane. “There’s nothing to see up there!”
A shudder of fear, as if the other girl could actually piece together Rebekah’s impossible story, and then Rebekah smiled. “I keep thinking the weather might change,” she explained. “That I’ll see sunshine through the window, not clouds. I want to go out in the garden.”
