Chapter Fourteen #2
“My mother—” I cleared my throat. “My mother read it through for me twice or three times. So that I didn’t make any mistakes.”
“Ah. I think once more will have to suffice. And perhaps in the future we will have you trained to listen only once, yes?”
He read it again, as I strained my ears to catch every detail of the sounds.
He had a particular, wet way of pronouncing his consonants, perhaps due to his protruding tooth, but once I was used to it, I felt that I had memorized the passage well enough.
He handed me the book again, and I moved to sit in one of the armchairs at his hearth.
“No,” he said. “Stand.”
Another sharp stab of annoyance. What difference would it make? If I had stayed standing, he would probably have asked me to sit. He seemed the kind of man to enjoy giving orders and seeing them obeyed, even if the orders were arbitrary.
I began to “read.” My Hair started to float up, as it always did.
“Restrain it,” he ordered.
I bit my lip. The book was heavy, and when I felt my Hair start to rise again, I couldn’t spare one of my hands to clamp it down.
Instead, I stopped altogether, mid-sentence.
Ban Morin hissed in frustration and reached out himself to clasp my braid in his fist at the nape of my neck, as you might grab a snake to stop it from biting.
The Hair hung limp. I had hoped it would lash out, coil itself around him, or strike like a snake, but he must have prepared some magic against it, for it hung lifeless and lank about my shoulders as his grip tightened at the back of my neck, forcing my head down.
It was my own nervous sweat that saved me, for he gave an exclamation of disgust and pulled his hand away to wipe it on his coat.
“Do you have no control over it at all?” he snapped.
“Not … not really …”
He huffed to himself. “We must find a way. We can’t have it floating about every time you practice. Such a waste.”
A waste?
He saw the look on my face, and his smile widened. “Innocent,” he said again. I was really starting to hate that word.
“Your guardian really has told you very little, hasn’t she? Wise.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It is better this way. She knew that your future husband would want to … mold you. Few women understand the nature of power as well as your benefactor.”
I felt we were having two conversations at once, and I was woefully ill-equipped to handle either of them.
I set the book down carefully on a little side table and reached up to tighten my braid, feeling the Hair bristle at my touch like a nervous cat.
Ban Morin said nothing, but sat in the chair in front of me and crossed his arms, watching.
I picked up the book again, feeling that same shiver of revulsion at the odd material of its cover, and cleared my throat.
I worried that the fear clouding my head and turning my hands clammy with sweat would also cloud my memory, but the words he had spoken came unbidden to my practiced tongue, and I recited them back—pausing in the right places, modulating my volume and tone just as he had.
The Hair stayed still, cowed by whatever force he had used to subdue it.
When I had made it through the entire passage, I exhaled a long breath.
I was feeling almost pleased with myself when he reached out to touch the book, reading a line of it in a hoarse voice, and a pain like nothing I had ever felt sang through me, high-pitched and piercing, setting my teeth to rattling in my skull.
I cried out, sinking to my knees and dropping the book. My vision shuddered. Everything around me seemed to take a sudden staccato leap sideways before steadying. When it cleared, Ban Morin was crouched before me, holding the book. He must have caught it as it fell from my hands.
I stared at him helplessly. The pain was gone, but my skull seemed to vibrate with the memory of it, and my teeth had clenched together so tightly that the sudden loosening of my jaw started them chattering.
I began to speak—to say what, I did not know—but saw his hand lift and then felt a dizzying crack against my face that sent me sprawling. The book. He had hit me with the book, across my face.
I raised a shaking hand to my cheek. Why was my body not responding? What was he doing that had me feeling so … muffled? He was still crouched there, studying me. His watch-chain had loosened with his movement and swung by his thigh with a hypnotic motion.
“Never let the book drop,” he said. He turned to his side and spat out a bloodied tooth.
I blinked, unable to respond. A tooth. He was a tooth mage.
He got to his feet, passing gentle, expert hands over the book’s cover as if it were a beloved horse who had suffered some injury.
“I had hoped that your mother had taught you the proper handling of volumes like these,” he said.
“She did … I mean, I …” I was still shaking, but at least I could speak again.
I kept myself very small and still. Was it my imagination, or did the ring feel tighter about my finger? I thought about calling out …
For Milady?
I did not belong to Milady anymore. This man was supposedly my new master, my soon-to-be husband. Milady—my long-lost aunt—had sold me. Washed her gloved hands of me.
For Mieka? She would come if she heard, I was certain, but what could she do? At best, she would lose her position. At worst—
I didn’t like to think about the worst.
For Patrick?
What if he turned out to be no different from Ban Morin?
Ban Morin reached in his mouth and ran his fingers over his bottom teeth. “I can spare one more, tonight, I believe,” he said, as if to himself. He turned back to me.
“Get up and start again,” he said.
“My Hair …”
“Needs to stay restrained,” he said. “I have a theory I am testing.”
“What is it?” I said. For a moment, I thought he was going to slap me across the face for speaking, but then he gave his warmthless smile.
“If your Hair is given free rein, it provides some outlet for your powers. I want to see what happens when you have no outlet. Read it again.”
I took the book again, handling it as if it were made of glass. I took a deep breath and started to speak the words again. When I was halfway through the passage, Ban Morin reached out again, and I faltered, bracing for that wave of terrible pain. I felt hostage to its memory.
He shook his finger at me. “No, no,” he said. “No stopping.”
He reached out to grab me, but finally, finally, the Hair mustered enough strength to lash out like a whip and bind itself around his wrist, the thick braid strong as a rope. He yanked his arm back, and the braid tore at my scalp, making me yelp. And then, incredibly, he smiled.
“Very good,” he said. “I think this is progress.”
The Hair was still wrapped around his wrist. He read a line from the book, and the pain came again, seeming to start at my scalp this time and then reverberating through my body like the strike of a gong.
My bones seemed to press against my skin, as if under immense pressure, and my eyes felt swollen in their sockets.
The engagement ring was so tight now that I wondered if it would sever my finger.
Ban Morin took the book from my hands just as my grip on it started to slip, and yanked roughly at my hair again.
Specks of light dazzled my eyes, and I felt as though I might pass out, but the terrible pain would not let me—it kept me immobile and imprisoned, refusing to let me have the comfort of unconsciousness, keeping me in its embrace like a jealous lover.
“Good,” I heard him say as if from a great distance. “Much better.”
The pain released me as suddenly as it had come, and I fell limp and unresisting to the soft carpet. After a few moments of silence, I dared to look up.
Ban Morin had gone.
I sank down into myself again. I am not here. I am in my bed back in the Tower, and Mother will wake me soon. I am curled among the sleeping books at the Book Man’s shop, breathing in the comforting dust. I am hugging my knees in a steaming copper tub.
My own teeth felt loose in my mouth. The Hair hung about me like the canopies around a bed, making a small, private space where I could hide, moving lightly back and forth against the skin of my ears, the friction making a sound like someone whispering—oddly comforting.
The door opened, softly, and the tears I had managed to hold back so far started to burn behind my eyes.
Footsteps.
“Mieka?” I whispered.
I waited for the comforting sound of Mieka’s voice, a shawl around my shoulders but … nothing. The steps paused in front of me, and I peeped through the red strands. Elegant, embroidered slippers with a squared toe; gold laces. Not Mieka.
A susurration as Milady crouched down beside me, gold skirts spreading out in a shining mass that stung my eyes. Every part of me felt delicate, easy to break. I felt like the slightest movement, even a blink, could snap something irreparable inside me.