Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
D rake didn’t stir again as he kept his back to me in his cot, though the way he shifted every now and then told me he wasn’t sleeping peacefully, if he was even asleep at all.
His words were stirring beneath my skin as I went over what he’d told me, and what he’d assumed of me too.
I could have told him that my life wasn’t some fairy tale where I slept on a plump mattress, surrounded by a feast of food and ale whenever I wished for it.
My shackles may have been dipped in silver, but they were no less real than the shackles of the poor.
Though I didn’t envy him or any of these men for the hardships they had no doubt endured on these streets.
While they were struggling to be heard by the emperor, stripped of their right for food and comfort by the unfortunate fate of being born to a street girl, I was handing my rights over to the crown, my life stripped of all things the men in this building craved.
I was taught to live modestly, any coin I earned was mostly sent home to my mother.
The few hours I was given off duty were meant for rest in preparation for further duties.
I had been beaten for drinking until one day ale tasted like blood on my tongue and I could no longer stomach it, I had knelt at the feet of my captain alongside four other guards whom I’d been secretly playing card games with in the barracks, betting metal bottlecaps with each other to pass the free time we were given, and Marik had forced me to swallow every one of the bottlecaps before being left there with my wrists bound to my ankles for twenty four hours.
So no, I didn’t know what it was like to fend for yourself in the slums of Osaria, but I did know what it was like to suffer, even if it was a privileged kind of suffering.
I kept the knife in my grip as I shut my eyes, laying rigidly on my back on the floor, the floorboards hard beneath the thin blanket I’d placed there, but I’d slept in less comfortable spots.
It wasn’t that which was keeping me awake, it was the sound of a hundred thieves shifting around in this place, the echo of drunken laughter carrying from downstairs, the heavy thud of footfalls and the clink of concealed knives which could rip a man’s throat open with one slice.
It was the moans of pleasure from women far less inhibited than any I’d ever known and the grunts of the men enjoying their company so openly without an ounce of shame.
The shuttered window on the back wall of the room rattled as the wind blew heavily against it, and the familiar sound of the sand crackling against the wood alongside the jangle of the windchimes out in the streets brought me back home for a moment.
My sister Fatima would be singing, and Mother would cheer her on despite the pitchiness of some of the notes, while Lyla would beg her to stop and the others would laugh.
I’d be in the cellar practicing with my father’s old sword, a small pillow strapped around the blade by my mother for fear of me cutting my own hand off.
I had trained more rigorously after he had died, the pain in my heart over losing him always spilling into a need for brutality harboured within my fighting Affinities.
And while I practised, Ma-mar would come to me with tea, kiss me on my cheek and call me her little Rahr before speaking of how proud she would be when I joined the royal forces in my father’s place.
Looking back on it now, I knew she had been afraid.
Upper Fae or not, women were not often the sole keepers of their own households, and as the only male in the family, I had needed to claim a position of authority in Osaria as soon as possible to ensure our house wasn’t seized from her.
Captain Marik had come to the house often after Father’s death, and I’d always felt this creeping sense of dread whenever he’d been there.
I didn’t like to think on those days much, because when I did, I saw them through a man’s eyes instead of a boy’s who was only verging on adolescence.
And I knew all too well what I hadn’t known back then.
“Shh, please, you’ll wake the children,” Mother’s voice carried from down in the garden as I sat on the balcony at the back of the house in the shadows.
I crept forward, keeping low and pushing my dark hair away from my face as I knelt at the edge of it and peeked through the gap in the railing.
Marik was a large man and he towered over my mother as he stood before her, her back against the old lemon tree at the centre of the yard.
He came over here a lot lately, sniffing around my mother like a dog looking for scraps, but I didn’t know what it was he was after.
I did know that I didn’t like him. He barely spoke two words to me or my sisters, and when he did they were always sharp, commanding or disciplinary.
His hand caressed her face and she shivered, or maybe it was a tremble, because she caught his wrist and pulled it away from her.
My mother was beautiful, the kind of beauty people commented on in the streets.
Our neighbour Sandrine always joked she should cover her face to give the other women a chance.
I didn’t like Sandri, she shouted at us over the wall that divided our gardens whenever me and my sisters made too much noise.
“I can be quiet,” Marik purred, his hand going to her breast and squeezing, making my nose wrinkle.
She pushed his hand away again, but he caught hers this time and stepped closer, so close I had to strain my ears to hear his next words.
“Your husband’s orgery is about to run out. What will you do then?”
I knew that word, Mother often mentioned it.
When my father had died, he’d left some money in his will to the emperor which meant Mother could keep living here.
There was some stupid law that meant women couldn’t own property, but now there was only a couple of months left until the orgery ran out.
Unless the payment was made again, our home would no longer be ours, and from what Mother had said, she couldn’t afford to pay it.
“I’ll figure it out, and when my children are old enough, they will be able to provide what is needed. My daughter Imani will no doubt make quite the seamstress, she has already shown the Affinity for it,” Mother insisted.
Marik chuckled in a dark, forbidding way that made my spine prickle with dislike. “She would do better to marry and start providing heirs to a man of good inheritance when she comes of age.”
“I teach my daughters to provide for themselves first and foremost, Marik,” Mother said firmly, but as he inched closer again, she seemed to shrink.
Father wouldn’t have liked this; he’d have placed himself between Marik and my mother and told him to go.
I’d tried to do that before, but Marik had warned me not to make trouble with lawmen and Mother had made me promise not to do it again.
“A pretty idea, yes, but an unrealistic one. You’re going to be in such trouble soon, and I am so terribly concerned for you. Do you know what will happen when your husband’s orgery runs out?”
“Yes, of course I do. But we’ll manage,” Mother hissed, raising her chin.
Marik lifted a hand, tugging a lock of her raven hair between his fingers and caressing it like he owned it.
“No…I don’t think it has truly sunk in, my sweet.
You see, the day the orgery runs out, the court will send a clerk here to collect the next payment.
And when you cannot deliver it, your house will be reclaimed by the emperor. And where will you go then, love?”
“I have some coin, I’ll find somewhere,” Mother said firmly, though something in her voice made me fear she wasn’t being totally honest. And that made my heart judder uncomfortably.
Were we going to lose our home? “Besides, Cassius will come of age in just a couple more years, then he will join the Royal Guard and earn plenty of coin.”
“A couple more years?” Marik gasped. “And what will happen during that time? You have no Affinities which earn you coin, you have nothing but a fruitful womb, and what good has that been to you but delivering you child after child before your husband up and left-”
“He died in duty, Marik,” Mother growled as my jaw gritted from his words. “As you well know. Or was he not your friend as you claimed?”
“You know he was,” Marik conceded, still stroking her hair in a way that I didn’t like at all. “It still pains me to think of the day I had to deliver that news to your door, my sweet.”
Mother’s eyes welled with emotion and she dipped her head to hide it. Even after all these months, I was sure she still loved my father, and it made me sad to think she was never going to heal from losing him. I wasn’t sure I would either. Our pain was shared and always burning.
“Look, I don’t want to upset you. In fact, I want to offer you a solution.
” Marik inched closer again and Mother looked up at him, her back pressing to the lemon tree behind her as she ran out of room to evade him.
“I have no wife, nor children, and I am willing to bear the embarrassment that few other men would of entertaining the affections of a woman in your situation.”
I frowned at that, unsure what he meant exactly but my mother seemed to know, some dawning comprehension filling her expression as she stared up at the beastly man whose shadow consumed her.
“It does not even have to be public, if you would prefer?” Marik offered, moving closer again. “Our little secret, hm?”
His fingers moved to her face again then slid down onto her neck, and Mother didn’t push him away this time. Did she want him to touch her like that? I didn’t understand it. Marik was rude and bossy, and he didn’t seem to like me or any of my siblings. Why would she be interested in him?
“The orgery?” Mother breathed as my heart beat furiously and confusion wrapped around my mind.