Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
ISOLDE
Boundaries are the distance which we can love others and ourselves equally.
—Matri’sion proverb
17th Day of Autumn’s Son Moon,
Age of the Locways, Year 272
La’Angi Faire Grounds
If my hand was on her wrist I would have felt Audrey’s heart racing, but it wasn't. I knew, though, from the way she held herself so still, from the angle of her shoulders and the position of her feet, that she was working hard to remain present.
I walked behind her and Yasmine as they wandered along through the crowded market thoroughfares, traveling from stall to stall while their attention was caught by trinkets or possibilities.
I didn't try to follow their conversations, or pay any mind to what caught their eye. Rather, I watch the ebb flow of people around them, tracking the eyes that tracked them.
There were too many watchers.
The wind was cool, the sun was warm, and people stopped, forming little pockets that felt like groups at a party. Many had a glass of alcohol, plenty held food. The music seemed to be everywhere. It was joy that she’d brought to the city, but it hadn’t brought joy to her.
There's a certain satisfaction in knowing that she'd done a job well.
Had anyone asked me, though, I would have argued that she'd already deserved that satisfaction long before the faire began.
Yes, the influx of population, and the coin that came with it, was good, but it felt unsustainable.
At least, not from the early morning rants that I'd been overhearing.
The way that she paced back and forth with her hands drumming on her thighs, the words spilling from her lips as she practiced and then practiced again.
Her speeches, her scripts, the responses to all the different questions the people could ask her, or to the situations that could arise.
She'd been awake this morning when I'd gotten up, already deep in her planning.
I'd never stopped to think whether this path might be good for her rather than good for the world.
Everything has a cost. She and I had discussed it. Nothing was ever free. Survival wasn’t free. But this cost…
I heard her laugh, a rolling, warm sound that wasn’t hers at all. Even with her best friend, she was wearing her armor.
This felt like more than the usual stress and hassle. Carrying these burdens properly without letting them drag along behind her would take more strength than any human could claim.
I'd worked so hard to do my job well, to prepare her properly, to open her eyes and keep them open.
Now I had to wonder if I’d done my job too well.
“Let's get something for you,” Yasmine said.
“I don't need anything,” Audrey told her.
She meant that in the truest sense.
“Sometimes it isn't about need,” Yasmine cajoled. “Sometimes it’s about want.”
“I think you want an excuse to look closer at those pots,” Audrey said, laughter in the words. “Here, let me oblige.”
Yasmine made a happy noise. I found some shade while they looked over the brightly painted pots and pretended not to notice, in the crowd ahead, Luca standing with a group of men.
I smelled the perfume stand before I saw it, possibly due to the crowd that, despite being four deep in places, melted out of the way for Audrey as she moved along to it.
I stayed at the back as conversation flowed between the women and they lifted bottles to their noses, commenting on the combinations of ingredients.
Luca had located her, though. He was moving in.
I braced myself, knowing it was too late to quietly move around him.
Nearby, Chay and Thomas settled into place in the shade, much as I had. They didn’t stop beside me. All three of us were working, not here for chit-chat or to compare our thoughts on products.
Audrey was working, too. I saw a man who might’ve seen thirty winters glaring imperiously at Audrey as he wandered by. Luca caught his gaze. The hardness in the lordling’s expression took me off-guard.
Luca knew him. And he, very clearly, also knew Luca.
I didn’t like what I was seeing. Audrey didn’t have many enemies, but her primary enemy was enough of a problem, even if he was solo. She didn’t need to risk Luca’s enemies deciding she was an extension of him.
The assistant, red-faced, leant back from murmuring something to Audrey about the deep purple bottle that was in her hands. She’d waved away the concerns, but then Luca got involved.
“By the wife,” I heard near-by, from a younger woman with a pale blue hat. “She’s buying funerary oils. And not even nice ones. She really has no decorum.”
“Soft like gold, not enough silver in her to polish,” agreed her friend behind a gloved hand.
The memory of my charge standing in the shafts of sunlight in the orchard at noon, the naked sword in her hand and the shield thrown over her back as she drank deeply from a flask, rose in my head.
Mayhap she loved a scent others abhorred; she wouldn’t be the first, nor the last. But she certainly had quite enough silver in her to polish, and unlike far too many people who’d laid down and allowed the locways to roll over them, she had iron, too.
“These are the most luxurious scents,” Luca was telling Audrey, as the person behind the stall arranged a different, much more elaborate collection of bottles on a tray and offered them up to Audrey. “How many bottles would a standard person use of this per year?”
There was color in her cheeks now. Yasmine was peering at the ingredients in these new bottles.
While Luca and the merchant went back and forth, the two friends exchanged glances.
The unkind Hat and Gloves continued to whisper.
Their gazes flitting from the expensive perfume to Luca with speculation.
Yasmine turned her face away from Audrey, disguising whatever she said. She put down the bottle in her hand like someone might set down a viper, then brushed off her hands. The look Yasmine shot Luca was full of derision.
“She doesn’t even look grateful to him,” Hat whispered.
“She’s rich,” Gloves responded. “She doesn’t need gratitude. He’s wasted on her.”
Mayhap Gloves could be saved.
Funerary oils were the exact same as bath oils, bar the label, and unless the body was being treated for the purpose of preservation.
Audrey knew that, and the salesclerk ought to have.
But the purple bottle she picked up again was taken from her hand by Luca.
He replaced it with an elaborate one. I knew more about glassware than I wanted, thanks to the cider and knappchs she’d used to fund her way back from the brink.
I could spot expensive crushed sand when I saw it.
I needed no such expertise to know when a noble was sticking their nose somewhere it didn’t belong.
That was Luca’s specialty.
Yasmine had moved along to the far end of the stall.
She unstoppered a bottle and offered it to Audrey, who wandered along in apparent nonchalance.
I started wandering too, leaving Hat to live another day.
Audrey smelled the bottle that Yasmine offered.
Though Yasmine’s expression was friendly as she held it out to Audrey, when Audrey smelled it, they both shared a quick glance of poorly hidden mirth.
The joke was shared between the two of them, but not with the audience gathered around, watching her make selections.
Rather than slip away, Audrey turned to Luca and called, quite loudly, “I’ve had enough, thanking you, lord Luca.” She gave him a polite, and remarkably shallow, curtsey. “My nose needs a rest before I shop further. I’ll see you about?”
“A twelve-month supply ought to do,” Luca was saying, flashing his smile.
My disgust rose, and so did the chatter around us. I fell into the place he’d left at Audrey’s elbow. For the first time in a long time, color sat high along her cheekbones, a mixture of embarrassment and anger, if I was any judge.
For just a moment, I thought she would freeze.
Instead, without even trying to make it look casual, she strode along in favor of putting distance between them. Yasmine and I half-ran to keep up with her longer legs.
Eventually, she found a patch of shade. Yasmine went to get her a drink, clearly looking for some way to make the situation better.
I didn’t say I told you so. This time, it wouldn’t have been true.
When she returned, Yasmine passed us cups, moved close, and said, “I don't mean to be crass,” she glanced hesitantly between Audrey and me. “But can he afford that?”
Audrey shook her head in a familiar way, as if to dislodge a thought worrying at her. My hands itched to nudge her somewhere quiet, to drum calm back into her with the rhythmic movements. But that wasn’t what she needed.
He would dare anything, that man.
“His lands…I don’t know what he makes money on,” Yasmine said, her words almost a whisper.
“His farmland is half road now, and the other half turning back to forest. The game there has been hunted out by the army when it passed through. And he bought you a year’s supply?
Of the most expensive perfume?” She looked at Audrey not with admiration, but with horror.
“Why would he do that? It wasn’t even nice. ”
I raised my brows sipping on the berry juice.
“Luca’s lands don’t make money from farming,” Audrey said, keeping her voice low. “He didn’t agree to that price simply for perfume.”
This time, when Yasmine tried to share a look with her, Audrey did not catch the exchange. Jaw tight, she took a deep pull from her juice and then strode on.
She wasn’t for sale.
He would learn.
The promise of violence in her movements brought a certain level of anticipation. I found it easier to enjoy the colors and crowds with a healthy amount of rage in my veins.