Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ISOLDE
“You must forgive yourself before you can ask others for forgiveness”
~ Matri’sion proverb
M y head still pounded like a war drum. Audrey had gotten us out of the Blackguard’s hands, straight back onto the Butcher’s block. We were being moved to the central spire, where her mother had lived—and died.
I took the washcloth and dipped it into the water, breathing in deeply the healing herbs that were steeping. Audrey crouched down to where I was kneeling, taking the cloth from my shaking fingers. The room pulsed and distorted around me with the drumming of the blood in my veins.
“Beatrice—I’m sorry, I know you’ve so much to do, but, please, if we could have some juice. Whatever those dogs used on Isolde still hasn’t left her system. She needs to drink.”
I saw the wary look thrown our way by the ’Ban knight—by her knight—from behind a dresser he was carrying. I met it, stare for stare. Drugged and sore-headed or not, I’d wear his guts for garters.
Audrey’s hand was firm as she pressed the cloth against the throbbing back of my head, where someone had hit me after drugging me. I felt the water trickling down the throat of my dress. My skin was ready to crawl off my flesh, but I stayed locked in position. People moved to and fro, carrying out large dust cloths, bringing in chests of Audrey’s books and belongings. Most weren’t allowed over the threshold—only Millie, Beatrice and Grahame were permitted past the guards.
The Duke didn’t like his daughter being threatened.
The increased security didn’t matter. If he was heading off to war, delaying our leave-taking for a few weeks would only help us. There had been no time to discuss it, but I knew what Audrey was like. She’d need time to process all these new angles. And he’d be further away when she felt comfortable to take up the reins. I hadn’t looked at the maps, yet, but winter would be upon us soon. The Brannough wouldn’t freeze, even in winter, but the storms would make crossing it difficult and dangerous. We could wait until winter, and Audrey could process what she needed.
I watched as she withdrew the cloth and wrung it out. Blood bloomed in the water. Mine, from the blow I’d taken to my head, not hers, and that brought me a measure of peace. I’d played my role. She’d been able to look after herself. She’d have been fine, even if that big lout hadn’t stepped in.
He’d never believe that, I suspected, but he sure regretted his actions. Bloodsworn to Audrey. If my head hadn’t been pounding so hard, I’d have laughed myself sick.
I tipped my fuzzy, furiously aching head to one side as she cleaned my wound. My eyes fell closed as I listened to them moving around us. Occasionally, someone would stop and ask Audrey where she’d like something, and she’d give directions merrily.
At some point the spiced apple juice arrived, and she pressed a glass of it into my hand, then helped me move onto a divan that was half covered in writing implements. The folded cloth was held against my head. “Sit still,” she told me, kindly. “I’ll be back. I just need to help Millie.”
I drank the juice like a tonic, then crushed the rebellion my stomach attempted to stage. I let the noise of my surroundings wash over me, a back-and-forth conversation about getting something up the stairs, a knock at the fortified door, the scratch of bristles on stone.
It wasn’t until I heard steps coming in my direction that I cracked open an eye. The young guard with the beautiful horse and no idea how to use a shield.
He took the cup from my fingers, topped it off, and returned it, stiffly. “We haven’t really met properly,” he said, kneeling as if he were about to lay the fire. “I’m Chay.” I lifted the glass to my mouth and sipped without responding. “And Audrey needs you.”
I withdrew the cloth from my head and set down the juice. I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but he was bloodsworn to her. He couldn’t harm her if he tried. The tribes wouldn’t allow him into the Matri’sion when we left, but he could make his own way. As long as she was safe, he’d done his duty.
He understood his role and didn’t follow me, his eyes locked on the ground and his jaw stiff.
If he knew I could care for Audrey by myself, so much the better.
I kept one hand on the cold stone wall, just in case. With each step my head ached with a fierce pressure, but I climbed every damned stair to the second level. As painful as it was, the knight was right. She was best served by me.
When I got there, I found Grahame on one end of a bed held on its side, with the person on the other end hidden from my view. Grahame’s face was red and covered in dust as he tried to maneuver the massive wooden thing into the room.
I blinked at it. How had they gotten it down the spiral staircase? But I turned away, my eyes searching.
Audrey was there, on her knees, scrubbing at the floor beside Millie. “Feeling better?” she asked me, brightly. “We’re just getting rid of that old bed. It’s far too large for me anyway.”
I looked back at the bed. It didn’t look like they were getting rid of it. It looked like they were blocking off the staircase with it.
Without bothering to tell her that, I turned my eyes pointedly at the sudsy brush in her hand. Millie sent me a guilty look. I paid her no mind because I had none to spare. “What’re you doing?”
Audrey looked at me, surprised. “It’s been more than a decade since this tower’s been used. We’ve chased out mice and all sorts, haven’t we, Millie?” Millie nodded her agreement, but stayed silent. “Best to start fresh.”
She wasn’t cleaning, she was pushing water around. Before I could muster up some sort of response, there was a grating noise, and both Grahame and the bed came into the room in a rush.
“There is no way that’s getting down those stairs,” I told Audrey. She waved away my statement and shot a sunny smile at Thomas, who’d emerged from the other side of it. One of the cuts on her face left from where they’d attempted to use her face to mop up the tonic I’d shattered—picking up mostly glass—broke open. A single bead of blood appeared below her lips. His eyes skittered away.
The bed was her mother’s. The realization hit me like lightning. She wanted to get rid of it because it was her mother’s. Everything in here was.
I went up the stairs to the upper level of the tower, the pain pushed further away by necessity. The cleaning hadn’t begun here—there was a bird’s nest in the rafters, dust cloths waiting, and some aged fabric piled to the side.
I knew Arabella had died. The official story was that she’d died at the hands of a fanatic assassin. She, and everyone in the tower. There’d been no survivors. The locals didn’t talk about it often, and never at length.
I walked through the circular room. The light was excellent, with privacy and temperature safeguarded by expensive colored glass panels in the windows. There wasn’t much furniture, now the bed had gone, just a big, opulent dresser, clearly the bed’s pair. I walked over to it. The dust cloth had kept it in reasonable condition, and the tower hadn’t leaked—the wood was glossy. I ran my eyes over the tracks left from moving the bed, the boot prints and drag marks in the thick dust that had settled over the exposed floor of the tower’s upper level in the almost two decades it had sat untouched.
There was something unusual about the stones where the bed had sat. I walked over, keeping away from the tracks out of habit. My head swam and throbbed, but I narrowed my eyes, forcing myself to focus. Audrey had never spoken about what happened here. I assumed she didn’t know, either. She’d been an infant, barely old enough to walk, still not talking, if the stories held true.
I studied the flooring. It was definitely a different color here. And when I looked closely—the change wasn’t abrupt. It bled along the hairline joints between the stones. It looked neat, too, as if the stone had faded beneath the bed, which was impossible. Curious, I went over and shoved the dresser, which went all the way to the floor. It would be impossible to clean under it without moving it.
Footfalls, quick and sure, made me look over toward the stairs. Moving my head at that angle made my head throb and the world go gray around the edges. I turned my body to match the direction I faced, and some of the sickness eased.
Chay appeared at the top of the stairs, an axe in his hand. He gave me a nod and turned his gaze to the lone piece of furniture. “She might do better on the lower level.” His words were icy. “This probably isn’t going to be quiet.”
Warily, I positioned myself better to defend against a cut from the tool. “What isn’t?”
He lifted the axe, wordlessly, pointing it toward the dresser I’d just shoved.
I glanced at it. I wasn’t one for furniture, but I saw no reason to smash this one.
“Look inside it,” he said, annoyance in his tone.
I narrowed my eyes at him. His oath to Audrey didn’t extend to me, the same way Mikus’ oath to Victor hadn’t extended to Audrey.
I’d deal with him, later. For now, I gave the door of the dresser a nudge. I watched his shadow as I glanced in, keeping track of his movements even as I saw the completely empty hutch. Empty, except for a tiny brown handprint on the side of the door where a child had pulled it closed.
The bottom dropped out of my belly. I threw it open. Some streaks here, on the ground. Dragging. Small feet, pushing away from the door, into the hiding place. Another handprint on the bottom of the cabinet. Coming or going, she’d needed purchase.
She’d been here. She’d seen it.
I drew back, staring at the floor, disgusted with myself.
The stones beneath the bed and dresser weren’t faded. The others were stained.
My stomach churned. No survivors. It was the mantra, the warning, when the locals were bold enough to speak. And yet there was one. Why hide that?
The whole assassin tale never sounded right to me. Not when I’d seen the violence that man turned against his own daughter. The world spun around me, making my stomach lurch uncomfortably.
Chay said nothing, watching me with impatience.
Disgusted, I realized he’d seen it long before I had. But the oath was doing its job if he was getting me to defend her against old demons. I didn’t care how grudging he was. I cared about the final victory.
“Give me time to get her downstairs,” I told him, resisting the urge to hold my skull.
Lips thin, he nodded, waiting as I left.
Audrey was standing with her hands on her hips, looking at the bed like it was a vase that didn’t quite match the décor of the room. “Well, it’s too big, it can’t stay here.”
She wasn’t going to sleep up in the top room, not with the ghosts that lived there. And she was right, the bed was too big for any of the three little rooms on this level.
“Leave it here,” I told them. Her knees were wet from the water. Had she seen the brown of old blood seeped into the stones here, too? Had she recognized it for what it was? “After all, why not?” I asked her, at her surprised look. “Look. A spot for a bath.” I pointed to one of the side rooms. “For me.” Point. “For your clothing.” Point. “It’ll be warm, protected, and central. We can use the downstairs space for entertaining, and the upstairs space isn’t really needed. It’ll be cold up there, too.” And a perfect empty space to train together. I went over to where the bed was propped on one side against the ground. “Unless it isn’t to your tastes?”
She looked around and chewed her lip. “I suppose here would work. I was thinking?—”
“Oh, but the sunlight here, milady,” Beatrice said, rallying. “Those small chambers, they’re fine, but look—look here.” She threw open the shutters and showed Audrey a view of the gardens. “Imagine waking to that, milady.” There was a smile in her voice. “Mistress Isolde, she knows what’s good for you.”
The woman didn’t know how right she was. Audrey met my eyes, relief in her shoulders and in the sheen of tears in her eyes. She nodded once, sighing. “It seems excessive, but if it just won’t fit…”
“The downstairs, that was for the guards, back in the day,” Thomas said, as he lifted his end of the bed without too much difficulty. I made note of that, grimly. A soft belly didn’t rule out strong arms. “But there’s only two of us. We hardly need it. There are two bunk rooms—we’ll use one as a sitting room.”
Audrey was about to argue, but I had Chay’s warning ringing in my ears. “Let’s go look,” I suggested brightly, looping my arm in hers and tugging her toward the staircase just vacated by the bed as Grahame and Thomas settled it in the center of the room.
Behind us, I heard the crash and splinter of Chay’s demolition. Audrey flinched. Her smile widened. “There’s a lovely window,” she said brightly, her feet skimming down the steps, “that overlooks all the baileys. I’m glad you’re feeling better now to look at it, because you’ll love it. Back when La’Angi was the capital, in The Country That Was, this was where royalty lived. Look. Don’t we need a window seat here?” She swept over to the wide window, with its curling, beautiful prison bars.
I had no interest in a window seat. I skimmed my eyes over the space. “Put your desk there,” I told her. “It has the best light.” It had the only real light on this level, with the other side all reinforced stone and steel. She needed the light with the hours she spent lost in reports and scrolls.
“Well, I suppose I have no window seat to put here,” she said sadly. “I do like to think of you here, watching.”
She was right. It was, strategically, an excellent position. It was also a vulnerable one, if they had a sharp bowman. It wasn’t so much one window as three, with tall pillars of stone placed between to allow watchful eyes to track people’s movements. “You ought to sit back a little, with that desk,” I said as she began to shove the heavy thing over, her body held to protect her muscles and maximize their power. “You don’t need the wind and rain on your books.” Or to make herself an easy target in case our assassin’s friends came to visit.
She nodded her agreement, stopping somewhat back from the windows. There were no sharp bowmen I knew around these parts. The greatest threat to Audrey came from the man who had unrestricted access to everything in this city. Still, the small layer of protection that distance and angle afforded her made me feel better.
Audrey reassembled her desk. Tapestries were hung, and the fire was stoked. I stood, leaning against the wall, exhausted and sick. She was hurting. She was hurting and scared, and there was no time or safe place for her to process that. I let her go because this busyness was a way of coping. It gave her a measure of control.
In the back of my mind, I was storing away information for when my head ached less. Doors that could be barred from both sides. Barred windows. Tight, defensible staircase, favoring the upper levels. This place could be either a refuge or a trap.
Over the walls and buildings of the city, I could see all the way to the tourney grounds where flags were flying. In La’Angi, not even the death of the King’s right-hand man could stop the tourney.
A knock at the door made Audrey straighten from her broom, but Thomas moved past us at a fast pace.
Beatrice hesitated beside me, the smile on her lips sad. “It’ll take us time to get used to these new rules,” she said, looking at where Audrey stood, watching Thomas the way a rabbit stares at a rustle in a bush. “Such a brave girl,” she said fervently. “After this morning, to be so kind still!”
I smiled. It felt like someone else’s skin moving on my face. Kind? Brave? This was learned and perfected through a lifetime of torment. I didn’t have tears left in my soul. They were ashes.
Only when Thomas returned alone did Audrey relax.
She had Grahame and Millie fooled—Beatrice, too, and Thomas. She was bubbly, her words coming fast, her hands full of chores. I watched as the three men brought in my own bed, hating that intimacy. Millie was already making up Audrey’s. But my eyes stuck to Chay. Of all of them, he was the threat.
I hated the whole situation. That he’d spotted those handprints before me, that he’d seen through Audrey’s act, that we were stuck with him.
If only she’d cut his throat in the orchard, we’d be in a very different position right now.
He was fetching and carrying when Millie, coming down from above with an arm full of fabric, crashed into him, though he stepped back to avoid her. An impersonal hand under her arm steadied her. She went beet red, but he didn’t seem to notice, stepping out of the way so she could continue on.
He’d make excellent fertilizer.
Audrey began unpacking in earnest, and all I could do was be there beside her until her bath was drawn. When it flooded the room with the stink of too much lavender, I took the books from her hand and herded her toward it.
“I should be looking after you .” Her protest was strident, and I could see pushing her harder would complicate the situation, so I let her help me wash Wade’s touch from my body, knowing it would take time for it to fade from my soul. The bath wasn’t relaxing, with work continuing in the tower, but it served its purpose.
The water was still warm when I finally got her in and sitting down. I dressed swiftly and then leaned on the door. Ignoring the bumps and scrapes of what was happening outside, I sat in front of it and held the world back.
At first, she scrubbed herself briskly. “I’m not done yet. I should be bathing later, once it’s all sorted. I’ll just get dusty again.” I didn’t argue. I watched as she scrubbed off the dried blood and lathered her hair. At about that point, I could see her begin to calm. It was a small change, initially—she’d pause to look at the water trickling from her hair before going back to scrubbing. She’d let out a long breath. But gradually, these pauses grew longer and closer together, until I judged she’d come back into herself. As much as she’d be able to, anyway.
The comb I’d been using on my own wet curls, I turned on her hair. She shut her eyes and let me—a testament to her exhaustion and trust.
“Want to talk about it?” I asked, unsure if I could do a good job of this conversation, but understanding the necessity.
“What a day.” She sounded achingly sad.
“You did well.” Nothing but the truth for her. “You protected yourself until you had an opening. You did exactly right.”
The breath she let out was long and shook a little. “I killed a man.”
“You did.” My memory of it was blurry, but I remembered taking the knife from her fingers. “You won free from the best swordsman in the land.”
“Chay’s the best swordsman,” she said quietly.
“Well.” I worked a snarl in her hair free, slowly and gently. “You saved him. Does that make you the best?”
“Doubtless.” But the word was sarcastic.
I wondered what played more on her mind—today, or her yesterdays. “Will you be able to sleep in your mother’s bed?”
“I’d sleep in an apple tree,” she said wryly. I hadn’t asked that, but I let the attempt at misdirection go and kept working on the snarl. “I remember curling up with her in that bed.” Her words were as thin as the few tendrils of steam coming off the water. “When it was dark and cold. I remember how she’d wrap me in with her and kiss my head. It felt safe.”
Safety was an illusion that discouraged people from seeking change. I didn’t need to tell her that. She’d seen it herself.
The snarls eventually unraveled, and I sat, my shoulder against the bath, and met her eyes. Simultaneously older than she ought to have been and younger than I expected, she didn’t offer me any false smiles or reassurances.
“I never thought he’d put me here.” Her eyes were on the ceiling.
“Why?”
“Because it’s still hers,” she said slowly, as if she were figuring out the answers even as we spoke. “He can’t even say her name.”
I couldn’t read the emotion in her voice. “What was it like, between them?”
She frowned. “I don’t remember a lot. I remember him coming by during the day, taking her upstairs. I remember one night when I went to get in bed with her, he was there. He was more terrifying than whatever dream I’d been running from. I remember she told me…” she trailed off, breathing deeply. “She told me to be very quiet when he was near. She told me—” she smiled, a little, “—to never cry when she was hurt. ‘He wants us to be his, and we are not.’”
I whistled, long and low. “He wouldn’t have liked that at all.”
“He killed her,” she whispered, the words floating like an admission of guilt into the gathering shadows, lurking there.
“I know.” I gripped her arm and watched the tears crawling down her face. I had nothing to give her, no way to alleviate the decades of pain and loss. “And that isn’t your responsibility. You survived. That’s exactly what you should’ve done.”
She sank lower in the water, breathing in deep, her face carved in lines of old, unhealed pain. She said nothing, but her hand wrapped around my forearm, a strong, anchoring grip. She shook. She wept. I sat with her, my heart a desert.
Her mother had thought they were safe here. And mayhap she had no options—mayhap they couldn’t have fled successfully. Look at what had happened, though, when she hadn’t taken that risk. Would the Butcher have killed his own daughter had she not hidden so well? The thought made fury kindle deep in my belly, made my head pound harder. I rested my forehead against hers and felt her shudder.
“He will not have you,” I promised her from the depths of my soul.