Four #2
“You know my fingers just can’t strike a spark quite right anymore?” Louise grumbled, sliding her feet into slippers. “It’s such a hassle having to rely on my children for it.”
“I know, Mother.” Cin pulled himself to his feet, coming over to the bedside to remake the linens the way he did for his siblings most mornings, as he asked, hesitantly, “About the ball tonight...”
“Yes, yes,” Louise waved a hand in Cin’s direction without looking at him. “You’ll see that everything is tended here for us, won’t you?”
“Actually...” Cin ignored the little flicker of fire in his gut.
There was no knife strapped to his belt now.
He could be good. Pious. He could. “I was thinking, it would be so nice to spend the time with you and Emma and Manfred,” he lied, pretending he could want that.
“I could help Floy prepare on the way—it’s a long drive.
Their hair and makeup may need adjusting and we both know Emma and Manfred can’t handle that. ”
Louise’s gaze slid to Cin out the corner of her eye.
“I may have aches in my joints from doing the numbers for so long, but my hands are still steady enough to hold an eye-pen on occasion.” But then she sighed, staring down at those very fingers.
Emotion welled in her voice as she added, “Your father surely wouldn’t want to see his ancestral home left untended. ..”
Cin didn’t know what else to say, except, “Please?”
Louise shook her head, a look of gentle frustration on her face. “How do I say no to you? I suppose if, before we leave in the afternoon, the house and stable are both prepared for our return, then I’ll consider it.”
Cin did not know how to hate her any less in that moment, but he loved her too. “It’ll be done, I promise.”
Cinder Szule Reinholz was going to the ball.
C in had not worked so tirelessly through the morning in ages.
His sides ached from the lack of breaks, sharp pains slicing between his ribs, but he pushed himself forward with thoughts of the castle, as though proximity to those towers would take away every last hurt.
The morning meal finished and the dishes cleaned, the laundry sorted for soaking and every hearth tended to, he had just put back his broom when Manfred trudged through the kitchen with muddied boots.
“Manfred!” Cin scolded.
He shrugged, and Cin couldn’t tell whether the crook of his mouth was crueler than usual. “It’s a little dirt. Or would you rather it be ashes, huh?”
Cin wanted to hit him right in the center of his sneering mug, but he could predict how well that would go.
He grabbed the largest bucket from the corner instead, grimacing as his ribs screamed in protest, and shoved it into Manfred’s chest before he could pass by.
“I’ll need more water to mop. Since you’re already filthy , you wouldn’t mind? ”
There was half a chance he’d say no, and half a chance he’d cram the bucket over Cin’s head and laugh, but the castle’s towers must have been glinting over the horizon because this time, impossibly, Manfred just shrugged again and took it from Cin.
While he was out at the well, Cin sat to portion out the beans he’d need for their lunches—not that they should have needed lunches with the ball that night, but Floy had insisted they wouldn’t have time to eat a single bite while they were wooing the prince, and Louise claimed that if Cin was going to make food for Floy, then it wouldn’t be much more work to just make the whole pot, now would it?
By the time Cin had it in the bowl he planned to use for soaking, there was barely any left in their stores. Which should have been as good a reason as any not to make the meal for everyone, if only good reasons were considered in the Reinholzes’ household.
Manfred came sweeping in through the back kitchen door with a sloshing bucket of water.
He took one too many steps, and Cin could see the direction the swagger in his step was taking him—see it but do nothing to stop it, as Manfred slammed the bucket into the table, knocking the bowl of beans to the ground.
They scattered across the grimy floor with the soft cling-cling of Cin’s hopes dashing.
He wanted to grab that bucket from Manfred—wanted to slam it down over his head, break the wood to pieces, throw them both into the flames—he wanted to—
“My God!” Louise shouted, one hand over her mouth.
“I was just trying to be helpful, Mother,” Manfred said, somehow managing not to sound like he was snarling for once. “See, I brought in Cinder’s water.”
“After you muddied the floor,” Cin snapped.
Louise made a sound in the back of her throat.
“It’s a kitchen, Cinder, the floor is never clean.
” She flicked her fingers anxiously. “Oh—just fix it, both of you. You know we can’t waste food, not even with the ball tonight.
And be more careful next time! Both of you.
” As she turned, she hissed at Cin under her breath, “You know your brother doesn’t understand how to be gentle; next time take the bucket from him, for heaven’s sake. ”
Cin did know, and all too well. He could have prevented this. He could have just collected the water himself. Like he usually did. And then there wouldn’t be lunch all over the floor.
Louise was gone for barely a moment when Manfred laughed under his breath, backing out into the garden again with a smirk. “Whore,” he mouthed as he left.
Cin just stood there. He wanted to cry—big, rage-fueled tears—and he crossed his arms over his bound chest, wishing it were flatter, if for no other reason than that way he could hug more of himself, wrap his arms all the way around his body and smother the anger seething beneath his skin.
As the sounds of Louise and Manfred moved further from the kitchen and the space quieted down to the soft, tight heaving of Cin’s breath, one by one his trio of pigeons appeared on the stoop of the back door.
Perdition cooed.
With one last sniffle that ached deep in his sides, Cin looked at the beans spread across the floor. “If only you could...”
He didn’t even know what he was asking for. His pigeons had always been there for him, showing a level of intellect and devotion he was fairly sure not a single member of his own family possessed, but they couldn’t possibly understand what had happened, what this meant to Cin.
Perdition fluttered into the kitchen, diving straight for the nearest fallen bean.
“Oh, no, that’s...” But how could he take the food from her? He didn’t have the heart.
As he lowered himself to the ground though, Perdition hopped her way up to him, bean still gently held within her beak. She bobbed her head... offering it... to him?
Ragimund and Lacey followed her lead, pecking up their own beans.
Instead of eating them, they waited for Cin to right the bowl before depositing their gifts neatly into it.
He held his breath as a flock of two dozen pigeons, doves, and more descended through the kitchen door.
Each new bird collected the little morsels of food and delivered them just the same as Cin’s trio had.
Every bean was as clean and fresh as the moment Cin had measured them.
It was like magic.
Cin could almost believe it was magic, for his pigeons were always something nearly as special and peculiar.
But in order for magic to happen, someone—usually with the proper talent—had to ask for it in such a way that the universe would accept, through word or ritual or a mixture of the two.
And the only one who’d asked for anything was Cin, and that had been a wish more than a question.
Whatever the case, the beans were sorted nearly as soon as Cin had spoken, the flock retreating out of the room. He didn’t have time to dwell on it further.
Bracing himself against the pain with each act, Cin poured part of Manfred’s water onto the beans and the rest he used to mop the floor quickly before retrieving the dry laundry hanging in the garden from the day before. While he worked, Floy came to lean against the back door.
“Why, Cinder- child , you seem nearly finished with things already.” They used Louise’s nickname for Cin, despite being barely three months Cin’s elder, picking absentmindedly at their nails while they spoke.
“I need a selection of flying bugs and bird feathers for my current scientific exploration, but I’m clean for the ball, and Mother would hate for me to ruin that.
Could you retrieve them for me? I plan to tell the prince of my findings tonight.
I’m sure he’s interested in such populations with the famine so unwavering. ”
Cin could feel his blood boiling, but all he said in response was, “It’s been quite cold some nights. Most of the bugs are gone.”
“Not all of them,” Floy replied, and left.
Cin wanted to cry again, but somehow, this time, he also wanted to laugh, as his pigeons crowded down onto the laundry lines, cooing and bobbing, the other birds twittering around in the grass.
“I mean, if you insist, I’d love the help?” he asked.
He wasn’t sure anything would happen, but in a flash, the birds all flew away, spreading out in every direction.
Cin continued taking down the dried laundry, folding the sheets and prepping the lines to hang what he’d washed that day, and by the time he finished, the flock had brought back a dozen different specimens of flying insects, each unique and undamaged, and plucked their own feathers to add to the mix.
Perfect timing, Cin realized as he passed the clock in the hall.
They were set to leave on the following hour, and he had only the soaking, changing, carriage preparation, and the lunch cooking left.