Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
He did not have to force me into the room; I went in myself.
There was no hope of escape. Not right now.
When the door shut, I turned to it. No knob or handle, no obvious way to open it. I couldn’t even get my fingers under the edges. A room with no exit was a cell.
You know what I am.
I did not, but I did. As soon as he said it, an inkling had slithered through my head. Pieces had begun to fit together. Monster, yes, but that was as imprecise a word as predator, as prey.
I turned toward the room. Plush brown animal skin covered the floor. At the far end stood a four-poster bed draped with a gray-and-black-furred skin. Two fat green pillows, their cases bound with bramble-cord, sat at a headboard carved with a forest scene of tall trees and dark hollows.
Maybe not a cell, then. But any place could feel like a prison.
To my left sat a dresser that looked like it had been coaxed from the tree itself, its edges gnarled and uneven with knotwork handles for the drawers.
Beside it was a curved doorway into a smaller room.
To my right, a tall, uneven bookcase of the same woodwork had been filled with books.
A dark-green armchair sat beside it, and an elaborate tapestry had been hung across the rest of the wall.
I stepped up to the tapestry, which was twice as tall and wide as me.
The bright-colored thread felt like a declaration and an invitation.
Before me was a bird’s-eye scene, the sun’s rays enormous over a land that appeared divided into four sections.
At the center, the radials of a compass pointed north and south and east and west. My finger touched the bottom left corner, where a dense forest grew over the whole area, and I traced a bramble spire rising out of the trees.
The very spire I stood under now. The place Dorian had called Sylvanwild.
My hand drifted upward. At the top left, another spire emerged like a crooked gray finger from a treeless, barren land. The tapestry’s threads were gray and black and purple.
At the top right, a mountain range offered waterfalls. And out of that a gray stone spire rose from the mountaintops like a peak.
And at the bottom right—adjacent to Sylvanwild—a fourth spire. White stone, not unlike ours in the southern district; it sat amidst a wide, grassy plain, and here the sun seemed to shine brightest. The land was dappled with lakes and forests.
Not my land. Not my people.
And none of them would come for me. My mother was dead, probably my sometimes-father, too, and Theo and maybe Elisabet were gone.
Nobody otherwise cared about a greenhorn guard.
And while the horror of their deaths felt like a thousand-ton weight, I didn’t feel that way over my disappearance.
It was better to know no one would come than to live in hope.
If I was ever going to escape, it would be on my own feet, by my own hands.
Through the curved doorway, I found a wash basin, a mirror, and a fat stone tub with a full bucket of water beside it.
The closest thing I had ever seen to a tub was the horse trough at the barracks.
Only the king bathed—we washed ourselves like statues, with sponges we squeezed back into our bucket of rationed water.
I approached the wash basin. It was large and deep and full of clear water; so clear, I could see down to the sanded-wood bottom. I almost didn’t want to touch it, to dirty it with my hands. I lifted my palms and found them brown and red with dirt and dried blood.
My blood, and maybe other people’s.
I stepped over to the mirror and sucked in air. My blond hair was matted and dirty and my clothing was ripped. I could barely make out my own features, but my eyes were a startling blue.
Some crooked part of me relished the image staring back. The dirt and blood were proof. And there was something else I saw, too—a thing I couldn’t really describe, but it made me press my shoulders back and lift my chin.
I stared into the mirror and wondered if I was in shock. I should be curled on the floor, bawling into the fine wood. But the longer I stood there and waited for it, the more I realized it wasn’t coming. Not tonight.
I crouched by the wash basin and lowered my face to it.
At first I simply set my lips to the surface and allowed my tongue to touch the water.
It was cold and smelled divine. Then I gave in, dipped my mouth into it before I could stop myself.
The water was the best I’d ever tasted. Once I started, I couldn’t stop—I drank and drank until I gasped for air, and then I drank more.
It felt like a religious act. It felt sacrilegious.
Who was I to drink this freely from water like this? A girl from the southern district. Daughter of the Dip.
You’re a daughter of scorn, my mother’s voice said, soft but willful. Drink.
And so I did, gulp after gulp until my belly stretched tight.
I jerked my head up, chest heaving. Somehow the basin looked untouched, the water as clear as ever. I stared at it a moment, brow drawn, but that passed as soon as my eyes moved to the tub and the large bucket of water beside it.
A pad of green moss had been set beside the bucket, from which steam rose. I approached and knelt, setting my fingers into the water. I jerked them back; it was warm—no, hot, like someone had just filled it.
My heart beat faster. I rose and glanced out the doorway, but the bedroom was empty. I turned back to the stone tub, and a longing like I’d rarely known overtook me. Water, hot and all for me, and a deep tub and the whole night to be in it.
Maybe my last night.
I took my mother’s journal out of the pocket of my jerkin and set it atop the animal skin on the bed. Then I removed my clothes, piece by piece, and set them neatly on the floor.
But when I stepped into the bathroom, I carried my knife with me.
I spent hours in my tub. At first the water was scalding, but soon I got used to it—and then I could hardly bear to leave it. The water never seemed to cool, and I alternately scrubbed myself and rested and stared up at the gold-flamed lantern hanging from the ceiling.
The flame inside flickered, but it didn’t look like fire. It had a staticky quality, and the color was paler as it shivered over the walls. It was inexplicable, mesmerizing.
After some time, it occurred to me the water and tub should be filthy—as filthy as my body had been when I’d stepped in. But when I climbed out, the water was as clear as if I hadn’t bathed at all.
A cruel, uncanny purgatory.
I took hold of what must be a towel, but the fabric felt unlike anything I’d touched, like someone had softened and woven bark threads with moss. It was so soft, almost too lovely and green and lush to use, yet I did, blotting my hair with it as I gazed down at the tub.
After everything strange I’d encountered, why not this?
It was all inexplicable to me, and so my brain had decided at some point to allow for all of it. A survival mechanism, maybe, so I could go on without the overwhelm pulling me under.
I needed clothing, and mine looked and smelled unholy.
In the bedroom, the dresser had three wide drawers.
I pulled the first knotted handle open and an array of cloth in earth colors emerged.
I lifted a dark-green piece of clothing out—a leather tunic, but far too large for me.
The neck was woven with even darker-green threads.
I put it on anyway, rolling the sleeves. At least it wasn’t dirty and bloody. On me, it was as long as a dress.
Several more tunics and a pair of pants lay in the first drawer. I didn’t even bother trying on the pants.
The next two drawers held jackets and blankets and slippers. I drew out one of the slippers; it was a pale leather tufted with white fur, and so fine it felt almost wrong for me to be touching it. And it was twice my size.
In the bottommost drawer I found a hairbrush with thick, surprisingly soft bristles. I stood in front of the mirror and drew it through my hair and removed all the snarls.
The girl looking back at me, whistle-clean and sleek, didn’t look like Eurydice Waters.
This all felt like a girlhood dream, when I’d fantasized about endless water to drink and bathe in and fine clothes to wear.
That girl relished all of this—every bit of it.
She was the reason I’d taken such care, why I’d indulged in this space that I had for one night to myself.
After all, I might not see tomorrow.
Soon enough you’ll get your chance to run.
Who knew what these creatures—these monsters—would do to me when the sun rose? I’d rather die clean and sweet-smelling than covered in others’ blood and rank.
When I had finished cleaning myself, I came out of the bathroom and stepped barefoot into the bedroom. I turned back the animal fur and found the mattress covered with light-brown sheets so soft I couldn’t stop running my fingers over them.
In a place where crops only grew indoors, linen was a marvelous luxury.
I had to climb to get into the bed, and once I was in it I felt ridiculously high off the floor. Around me, the room bore a soft gold light, the only shadows from the dresser and the bookcase and armchair.
On one side of me I laid my knife, and on the other my mother’s journal. Even then, cross-legged with only the stillness of the lantern burning above me, I could not cry.
Crying was for afterward. And I was far, far from afterward.
I slid my legs between the sheets, the fabric gloriously cool against my skin, like passing through water. The pillows were just as inviting, though I doubted I’d be able to sleep. Not in this place, with these people all around. Not without knowing what would happen to me tomorrow.
One thing I could be certain of: their kind had killed my people. They had killed those I loved most. For that, someday I would slice each one of their throats. I doubted they had hearts to stab, anyway.
Once more, Dorian’s words floated through my brain: You know what we are.
For a moment I saw his cloak again, and the symbols on it. One seemed familiar: a tall, bountiful tree with branches reaching toward the sky. It reminded me of a child’s song my mother used to sing:
“Within the tree where lichen glows, the quiet folk in crystal rows…
They sip the wind and weave the light, and never sleep through silver night.”
She had a lovely voice. I didn’t know how or why an illiterate baker would come to have a voice like hers, but I adored it like I adored the feeling of her fingers on my hair, stroking my arms, the feel of her soft hollow of a shoulder as I lay side by side with her in her small bed…
A sharp rapping sounded at the door.
I jerked upright, scrabbling for my knife. I had fallen asleep—so deeply asleep I didn’t have any idea how much time had passed. My fingers came over the grip of the knife and I jerked it up in front of my chest.
I stared at the door. The three raps came again, harder.
“Nothing? Not even a grunt?” A man’s voice came muffled through the door.
Dorian.
I climbed out of the bed in slow, fluid movements. I stalked toward the door, careful, foot over foot, flicking my knife from its fold. I came to stand at the hinge of the door, just past where it would open.
Outside, his voice: “I’m coming in, then. Be decent, at least.”
The door swung inward, and Dorian stepped into the room. His gaze scanned the empty, unmade bed. His brow furrowed, but his focus wasn’t on me.
Good. That was all I needed.
I leapt on him, my body slamming into his, my sunlit knife palmed underhand.
If this was how I died, so be it.
But I’d make damn sure he died first.