14. 13 #3
Then, finally, blessedly, cursedly, he was gone. I closed my eyes, and the pressure on my arm was lost, and then, when I opened them, he was nowhere to be seen. Somehow, it felt colder.
I studied the space around me, turning in one full circle, seeing him nowhere. Then I stepped back towards my friends. Whatever joy I had been feeling, something else had replaced it. Not even anger, I wasn’t allowed that. Instead, it was an air of uncertainty, laced with anticipation.
Why had he come? When I had spent one day managing not to think of him?
Without thinking, I tipped the oenochoe to my lips and took a heavy swig.
I swallowed hard, not picking up the notes of plums and cinnamon the man had bragged of, only tasting the wine.
I met the judgemental look of a mother as she passed in the side street, and she looked away before I did.
I lowered the oenochoe, not feeling any better, but needing to get him out of my head.
I might have ignored him successfully, but somehow I still felt like he had won. Even when I returned to the girls, and found their smiles ready, my mind was on those grey eyes, and the feel of his gloved hand on my arm.
Tap tap tap.
I pulled the covers up to my neck and ignored it, falling back into a dreamless trance.
Tap tap. Louder.
I groaned and rolled over, grabbing the pillow to my head. I heard a sigh, and the slide of something under a door. Paper?
An hour later, maybe two, I blinked my eyes open, and saw the morning light trying to breach the thick curtains. Past dawn then, by a few hours.
I rolled over towards the door, already feeling the tenderness in my head and the nausea threatening my stomach.
I rubbed grit out of my eyes, and my fingers caught in a knot of my hair.
I hadn’t combed it last night, clearly. I looked down at myself and was relieved to find I had changed into my night things, though I had no recollection of any of it.
What could I remember?
Wine. Lots of it. So much, in fact.
I groaned again, and then my gaze caught on it. A piece of thick parchment paper, folded and sealed on the floor of my room. I vaguely recalled the knock from earlier that morning.
My heart thumped.
Somehow, I knew who it was from. Davian’s face, pleading with me to stop avoiding him. As if he hadn’t pushed me away. It had to be him.
Then I chided myself. There were hardly a handful of people that knew I was even here; it wasn’t a mystic feeling that led me to believe it was Davian who wrote it.
It was merely logic. But nevertheless, I looked to the curtains, as if I might see his face in the window.
Even the letter seemed to remind me of his smell. How was that possible?
I pushed myself unsteadily to a seated position, my head falling into my hands at the movement, as gradual as it was. All the moisture in my body had been stripped from me, all the steadiness leeched from my limbs like the wine was cursed. I was never drinking again.
Getting to that letter, and getting back into bed with it was a task worthy of a hero of the Ten. Once I was horizontal again, I flipped it over, finding just my name, Annie, on the front in an elegant hand. I broke the seal, and opened the letter.
It was him, as I had known it would be. The letter held only four words in a rushed script.
Come to me, Annie.
I read them. And then read them again. Then I smelt the paper, and smelt nothing at all except paper.
Groaning for a third time, I threw the letter to the other side of the room, and went promptly back to sleep.
If I was lucky, all of it, including the effects of the wine on my frail body, was nothing more than a nightmare.
That day passed in a blur. I managed to make it downstairs for supper, and found Francine in a similarly terrible state and Daisy entirely fine, somehow. I spoke several words, few of which I remembered. Then I slept again.
I awoke the next day, the seventh day since Davian had paid me not to work for a week, to another knock.
I opened the door this time without delay, armed with a sheepish look. Yona stood another letter on a pewter tray. She levelled me with a look, which I returned with a shrug, and I took the letter from her and closed the door. I would have to explain something soon, but I hardly knew what to say.
I broke the seal with some trepidation, expecting another letter with half a dozen words at the maximum. What I found surprised me.
There’s been a development. Need your help.
I’m sorry.
His hand. Still his hand. The last two words were hurriedly scrawled and smudged, as if he had folded it when the ink on that apology was still wet.
Need your help.
Before, in the agora, Davian had said he wanted my help. Now, he said he needed it.
It shouldn’t make a difference, I told myself. It didn’t make a difference.
I looked across the room to my boots. They were still where I’d kicked them off after my evening celebrating Fenren with far too much wine. I could only hope the next harvest was worth my present illness.
I read the words once more, and sighed.