I sneezed. Something––a great, big something––moved to my left, and I pushed back into a heap of straw. Pain swelled through my leg, and tears started in my eyes.
The horse looked at me over her hindquarters. I knew her grizzled face. It was Liskara, Father’s mare, well traveled enough that she had stolidly and successfully made her way back home.
“Liskara makes for the dullest company.” Trid leaned close and peered into my face. “So we thought you’d be especially good for each other.”
We were in a stable stall. He sat on an overturned crate. There was a small jug of water at his feet, and I stared at it until he shoved it into my arms. I drank all of it, spilling it down my front.
“It’s mid-morning.” Max was squeezed on the crate next to him. He’d a hunk of bread and an apple, and he put them both into my lap. I almost smiled. “I wouldn’t have treated you to a lie-in.”
Andrei pushed Max off the crate.
“Right clever of you,” he said, taking Max’s spot, “draping yourself across my only path back to bed. I was tired enough.”
Trid snorted. “I thought she weighed less than a dead fly.”
“Where’s the dove?” I’d finished the bread, and I propped myself up on my elbows. “Where is he?”
Trid pushed me back into the straw. “Roosting on the windowsill above your head. Don’t get up, you haven’t got to stand to see it.”
“Don’t listen to him.” Andrei pulled Trid back. “Jump up and run around––better our chances at winning.”
“Winning?” I said. “At what?”
“Max and I are wagering twenty celms that Trid won’t be able to fix it. So poor Trid’s going to have to pay back double that amount, as well as carry you around.”
I stared at them. “You’re bettin on a leg?”
“Yours.” Max leaned against the doorpost and fiddled with his belt.
“Not really,” said Andrei, “as I rescued it.”
“I fed it,” Max said.
“And I’m going to mend it.” Trid knelt down and straightened it. I cried out and broke into a cold sweat.
“I don’t know.” Andrei looked doubtful. “Maybe we should get Gadfrem. He does dogs.”
Trid leered at Andrei. “Arguing over the sparrowshit?”
Andrei thumped Trid in the chest, Trid fell on top of me, and I blacked out briefly and saw starbursts. I came to and gave a much louder shout than before.
“Maxim Garvad,” came a woman’s voice in the corridor. “If I catch you torturing a cat, I’ll wallop you black.”
Max’s ears grew red. “Didn’t have anything to do with it, did I? Why’s it always my name that pops into people’s heads?”
“A pointless question.” She looked round the door. It was Bequen from the tavern, Ackerly’s black-haired wife.
A muscle throbbed in her jaw. She said quietly, dangerously, “Who’re you sitting on? Is that the girl you were yammering about?”
Trid didn’t reply. He was trying to make himself small as possible.
”Off her, please,” said Bequen. Small though she was, she hauled Trid off my legs by his hair. “A minute ago I could’ve sworn you had at least a scrap of Elde sense.” She gave his head a fierce jerk.
“They were brawling over her,” said Max.
She gave Trid another shake. “Locked her in with the breakdown, have you? Was that supposed to be funny?”
“Yes,” said Andrei.
“Get yourselves gone, you’ve damaged her plenty.”
“Not before I’ve spoken with her alone,” said Andrei. Bequen ushered Trid and Max out, but Andrei stood obstinately by.
She looked back at him. “If I hear anything––”
“I shan’t lay a finger on her! Are you done?”
She went through the gate, and Andrei stuck half his body after to make sure she’d gone.
He turned back to me. “I read a letter last night. It had a near-perfect description of you.”
I thought of how lucky I was. After all, Herist had seen the seal and Andrei had read the letter, and they might’ve put two and two together if they’d hated each other any less.
“And although my Gireldine is atrocious,” Andrei said, “and I couldn’t make out more than half, it sounds like someone cares about you. Fantastic job they’ve done.” He smiled grimly. “And I think I know now why you refuse to hate me. It’s not that I––It’s because you refuse to say you hate me. Funny.”
He went out the gate. I was awestruck for a few seconds.
I called his name and he reappeared in the doorway. “Have you any idea how many lives you make miserable every damning day?” I said.
“Yes. Thank you,” he said nastily, “for giving me an opportunity to make Herist’s life a little more miserable. Oh!” He looked above my head into the rafters. “Fancy us putting you in here.”
He jumped and caught a beam with his arms. His shoes dangled in front of my face. “As you won’t be running anywhere for a while…” I looked up and something fell between my knees. My saddlebag. He dropped next to it. “Didn’t check for contraband. I was afraid something might bite my hand off.” He laughed. “I hope nothing too horrible comes of it. Don’t try Bequen’s patience. She sings nicely, but she’s a tongue more acid than yours.”
He left me alone with Liskara.
I’d gathered some ill-founded ideas about the nature of Bequen Celdior, and when she reappeared in my stall I struggled so fiercely to get my point across that she understood me quickly, and refused me even quicker.
“Lords,” she said. “You with the courage of a wolverine and the skin of a mudskipper.”
Then she sang a verse about the seasons:
Evening thins to water
As the nights grow longer,
And slips from blushing hauteur
To kiss the cheek of cold,
For he’s diligently sought her
From the month she fled his hold.
Then Floy flew in at the window and told me I should stay the winter. But I was resolved.
Before Trid had the chance to do anything unnatural to my leg, I stacked the crates beneath the window and climbed over the sill. It was sunset and too dark to see how steep the hill that fell away from the stable. I climbed down, Leode and my saddlebag underarm. I took one step, tripped, and rolled down the hill, yelling all the way.
Andrei was at the bottom, loosening the cinch at his horse’s belly.
He put the crates somewhere else, and brought Trid with him early the next morning to set my leg.
Trid, who’d lost even his scrap of Elde sense, chose to do the splinting in the stable. I screamed and the horses did, too, enough that Andrei had to take Liskara out and quiet her. He came back in a foul mood. “If you Elden didn’t wear your ridiculous, stupid hearts on your sleeves––”
I socked him in the armpit. “Better than not havin one at all.”
Trid leaned on my shin. “I’m running out of patience,” he said. “You’re like two crabapples, trying to out-bitter each other.”
Trid was handier than I’d dared hope. Once he’d bound my leg between two sturdy sticks, the pain diminished. It didn’t go completely, though, and Liskara was moved to another stall.
The longer of the splints stretched up to my right armpit, making movement nearly impossible. Trid promised a crutch, to be given after I behaved myself, and Andrei promised another broken leg, to be given upon my next escape attempt.
***
When I was left alone I sewed a pocket for Father’s ring inside the front of my chemise. I had to be quick, because I wasn’t alone very often. Two small stable boys ran always underfoot, yelling at each other, the stallions, and me, until Bequen appeared to jog their ears with stirrup irons.
Becky the barn-sour broodmare, as they called her, kept me fed on bread, apples, beans, and porridge, but mostly porridge, and I grew wan and red-eyed. She felt sorry enough that she gave me a cart so I could propel myself around by one foot. She kept me busy cleaning tack, picking hooves, filling feedbags, and mucking out stalls. Sometimes she sat me on a tower of crates so I could groom a horse.
Trid refused the crutch for a long time, explaining I’d better not risk anything for a while. But he gave me yarn and twigs for setting Leode’s broken wing.
As the days grew colder Max often came by in the afternoon to amuse me (and himself) with short, excitable games of blind-the-traitor, dice, cards, and a book, where he would write down everything I could tell him about the niceties of Gralde tavern-life.
Meanwhile Andrei was always nearby, awfully concerned over his horse. And when we were all together in my stall he couldn’t stand for anyone to torment me save himself.
As the troughs outside grew a thin layer of ice, Andrei’s behavior got queerer and queerer. I owed him my hand. I expected, even wanted, him to bring this up, if only for the maintenance of my comfortable hatred. But Andrei kept quiet about it. So quiet I wondered how I could make him angry enough to give Herist a mention.
My ridiculous, stupid Eldine heart gave me the idea. I tangled Max into it; Max was most likely to settle an argument with his fists, and he was also closer to my size than the other two.
“Why’ve ye got a face like a weasel?” I asked him one evening, after I’d unlatched all the stall gates in the corridor. “Is it cause you weasel yer way out of every steaming pile you drop?” I itched my leg under its bonds. “Or is it you just like coats, an’ ye’re sure to grow one for the winter if you snivel enough?”
“You shouldn’t talk, squirrel,” Max shot back. “Lost your nuts, you have, and got nothing to nibble on except Trid’s neck.” I jabbed his knee with a splint when I tried to kick him, and he fell on top of me. We wrestled on the ground, stirring up straw and dust. I thought of the Queen’s horrible, white face, and howled my rage and frustration; and the horses went wild.
They rammed at the walls, laughing in fear, and at least a few found the gates unlatched. The ground shook: two charged past. I climbed over Max’s shoulders, and grabbed the withers of a buckskin.
“You can’t be serious, Reyna,” Floy shouted as my splints jabbed dangerously about. I clung to the horse’s side like a leech, and we passed shouting stable hands and barking hounds in an uncomfortable blur until we halted beneath the icy stars at the shout of his master.
“Sandal, you halfwit. You great, stupid heifer. You crazy, fly-bitten vagrant. Sandal!”
Sandal turned around. I dropped from the horse’s side. Andrei took my splints in one hand and Sandal’s halter in the other, and dragged us back to the stable.
My back burned, and my leg ached, and I was pleased to see he was angry. When he finally managed to speak, his voice was shrill as a boiling lobster’s. “Why am I bothering? Go, if you must, but it’d be less trouble if you just drowned in the trough or hanged yourself.” He ran a hand through his hair until it stood on end. “You want to know why you’re here? It’s because Bequen keeps her nose out of my business, and because Herist’s horses are on the opposite side of the grounds.”
“Herist––”
“Herist! I won’t talk about Herist, I can’t even think about him without getting a cramp in my stomach. That’s all the explanation you’re getting.”
I wanted another. “Sandal?”
“He ate one of mine when he was a yearling,” said Andrei. “It was canvas.”
I struggled for civil words and came up with, “Ah.”
“Goodnight,” he said, and when he turned towards the door he couldn’t keep from saying, “If I’d broken your other leg, Trid would’ve tried to fix that one, too, demanded more silver, and raised the stakes too high for me to stomach, the nice, upstanding boy that I am.”
Bequen came in the next morning with my porridge. She reached up to fill Liskara’s feedbag, and the hem of her skirts lifted. Her legs were bruised black above her boots. I refused the porridge, so she touched me gently on the head and left the bowl at my feet. My heart sat heavy in my chest.
“Reyna,” cooed Leode in the corner, “you’re upsetting the horses.”
“She didn’t deserve it. I’druther he had yelled and cussed and called me names, and hit me, even.”
I wouldn’t speak to Andrei for two weeks. After these passed I became more compliant, because Trid gave me with an oak crutch as a new-year’s gift. The fork was whittled into the shape of a squirrel. I suspected Max had something to do with it, as he had a talent for that sort of thing.
“Does it hurt?” Max had asked after my first go.
“The ears dig.”
“Good.”
“Weasel.”
He grabbed a broom for a stave and we began fencing, and then Andrei swung himself into my stall and shut the gate.
“Quit your noise,” he said. “I’m hiding.”
“Andrei,” called a girl. “Mother said you’d go riding with me.”
Max held his stomach and made retching noises. “Natalya,” said Trid. “What’s she doing outdoors? We’d better hide him under the straw.” He glanced worriedly at me. “Let’s hide both of them.”
He and Max got as far as our knees before Natalya looked over the gate. She’d an exquisite knot of chestnut curls pinned to her head, and a face that looked about my age.
“Ooh, what’s that?” she said.
“None of your business,” said Andrei.
“A saebel? Let me in. I’ve never seen one.”
“Go play with your dolls.”
“I haven’t got any dolls, Andrei.”
“Go away.”
“I’ll tell Mother about the roaches.”
“Just wait out there, Natty––the world doesn’t stop when you say so, and nor do I.”
I gawped at him. “Why ain’t you that polite to everyone?”
Andrei got up and threw a handful of straw into my face. “She’s my sister.”
Trid looked frustrated, and Max burst into laughter and sang in a Gralde lilt:
“If only the stars hung as low as my trews;
If only my wife grew the nose of a harse,
I’d send her to Tinop, ignore me mam’s views
And give you a star before fecking your––”
Andrei reached and pulled at Max’s hair. “Did you teach him that?” he asked me, and he stumped out, slamming the gate behind him.
***
The next time he came to the stable his cheeks were flushed with cold and he had a woolen tunic and stockings rolled around his arm. The horse blanket in my saddlebag was eaten away in pieces, but I didn’t care. I refused to wear his tunic and stockings.
“So be it,” he cried. “You can sleep in the dung when the trees start popping.”
But he left them there, and I drew the tunic over my chemise after he had gone.
The weather grew bleak and I had great stretches of time with nothing to do but watch for the boys out my window. I gathered a pile of snowballs on the windowsill to hurl down the hill when I saw one. Max hurled back boulders of ice, occasionally with enough precision to knock me off my feet and bloody my nose.
I had other company besides the boys. The little Lady Natalya was curious and didn’t stay herself paying me more visits than what was comfortable.
When Trid was tightening my splints one day, she said, “If we were to poke those in the ground like stakes, I wouldn’t wonder when she sprouted roots and became a tree.”
Max lifted his eyes toward the rafters. “And I wouldn’t wonder when she strangled you with her branches.”
“She’s not a saebel,” said Andrei, sitting next to my ankle. “And if she were, she’d still have more brains than you.”
“But look at her eyes.” She crouched so low I caught the scent of honeysuckles. “So strange and empty.”
Andrei pulled her back and held her there by her cloak. “All I’ve ever seen is hatred, and you’re not helping. And, gods, Aloren, why don’t you defend yourself? I know you’re capable of it––you defend every other Gireldine in the world.”
I realized I was capable of it, in a way.
“Do y’know why saebels don’t have souls?” I asked Natty.
“No.”
“It’s cause they’re pure hedonists. They seek passing pleasures like havin their hair done up all the time, and wearing pretty dresses and fur cloaks.”
Natty wrenched her cloak free and walked out.
She didn’t come back for a long time. The sun inched closer to the earth, the snowdrops dangled their bells, and I pulled off the stockings, because though the cold lingered, my toes missed the air. Trid re-bound my right leg, but the splints were shorter. I could bend my knee a little. The knee felt gouty and grated when I moved it, like a hinge without grease, but I was so pleased I freed Leode of his bandages; and he stretched his wings.
My brother had been feeling irritable, and Floy diagnosed it as lack of exercise. So he flitted around the stable, and then outside, and kept absent for longer and longer periods. I hid my worry, and when the new moon drew near he flew off toward the tower in the north Daynens to reunite with his elder brothers. He’d promised to bring one back before they lost me again, and I stood at the window, watching as he blended into a star-shot sky.
I didn’t realize I was crying until my chest began to heave and my nose to drip. Bequen’s voice bloomed in song somewhere within. Her husband had gone west, as he was wanted in the city, and her songs had lately become sad.
When the earth lies still
I can hear a thrill of singing.
Strumming through the boughs,
Piping o’er the rushes, ringing
With ouzel’s cry low on the mountain,
Cutting through the mist and rock.
He hovers mellow on my doorstep,
Knuckles ready, poised to knock.
Before the blow has time to bite,
I answer with my tongue alight
And rip the door free of its hinge––
To nothing but the night.
But I catch his laugh
On the alder path in autumn,
Blown amid the leaves,
Carried soft to river’s bottom,
Where memories lie thick and muddy,
Sodden with forgotten joy:
Startled sorrel, breath of sage
Fermenting in his hateful ploy.
I fly from all the laughing scorn,
Bruising hyssop, crushing thorn
Until the sun wraps round my head
And ushers in the morn.
Come the moon in flight
I can feel him fight the terror,
Sweeping corners
For my dreams to shine the fairer;
Of hills beyond the heaving waters,
Seas above the glancing sun
Where light-moored ships of heaven-bound
Float lashed for when my life is done.
I wake with brine rubbed in my wrists,
Searching for his weary fists
That, pushing shadows from the night,
Prove somewhere he exists.
The week after Leode flew away I found two crocuses blooming beneath a hedge. I decided I had waited long enough, and cut the splints off my thigh.
Max stopped in with a question about his old pony’s wheezes, and after prescribing for her a diet of warm gruel I challenged him to a chicken fight.
We hung from the rafters in the middle of the corridor where the beams bowed low enough to reach from a stool. His longer legs couldn’t wrap around my waist, and I knocked him down twice, kicking him in the shoulders and head––but he didn’t detect anything unusual.
Trid and Andrei caught us in the third round. I jumped and landed on my feet. “You and I,” said Trid, “are going to kick off the season with benefits. Afraid I can’t say the same for the other two.”
“But we helped!” Max dropped behind me. “Me and Andrei helped.”
“How can you tell it’s healed the right way?” There was a red welt on Andrei’s cheek, and he was in a vicious temper. “We’ve yet to see her run. And dance.” He folded his arms and stood there, as though he expected Max and me to leap into a two-handed reel.
“Look at her,” said Trid, turning round. “She could walk out right now if she wanted––”
“Is she leaving?” Natty took a couple steps in from the door. “Is the nasty thing leaving?”
Andrei turned and blocked my view. His left ear was bloody. “Was it you?”
“She’s lucky I didn’t tell all of it,” said Natty.
“Is she?” he said. “I don’t think she is, as I’m going to keep her here just to spite you, you horrible, brainless––”
“Do you think she’ll let you lock her up?” Natty marched up just short of treading on his feet. “She’d gouge your eyes out first. She’s savage, flies into fits oftener than Celdior’s insurgents. You’d do better to lock up a starved leopard.”
“A starved leopard’s less a bitch than you are.”
Natty burst into tears and switched to a different tactic: “You used to spend time with me. Then Trid came from Dirlan and you got all caught up with this lock-picking Eldine for pity’s sake, and now you’re just being mean.”
“What about me?” demanded Max. “You forgot me.”
“If you all could shut up for just a moment.” Trid put his hands up. “Hear me out,” he said to Andrei. “I’ll call off the bet if you let her go. No fussing.”
“Good luck with that.” Natty fought to see over Andrei’s shoulder. “He’ll pay for her, for his watchdog, to bark at me if I get too close.” Andrei looked as though he’d been slapped on the other cheek as well. I expect I looked like a starved leopard.
“Run,” I said, and pulled my tunic from the boys’ hands.
I chased her outside on clumsy legs, bludgeoned her to the ground with my saddlebag, and ground her pretty face into a heap of horse-apples.
I got up and ran towards the palace walls, saddlebag thumping at my side.
“Hey,” Max yelled after me. “Where’re you going with our leg?”