Chapter 15 In Which the Scenery Changes
In Which the Scenery Changes
Sahir banged on my door. I assumed it was Sahir, even though he usually didn’t knock with violent force, because nobody else visited me in the evenings.
I considered ignoring him. I lay on my back in bed, Doctor Kitten curled in the juncture of my head and neck.
“Get up, lazy human,” Sahir said, unaffectionately. I almost retorted with the timeless gem: I know you are, but what am I?
But Doctor Kitten stuck his nose in my ear and snuffled until I rolled away from him, squeaking. “Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll get up.”
Sahir, apparently listening outside, flung the door open. “Make haste.”
“Your mom should make haste,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I heaved myself off the bed and stood up. “What am I making haste for?”
He made a show of looking me up and down. “You look disgusting. When did you last bathe?”
Since he’d seen me last night and not commented on my appearance or otherwise been remotely insulting, I bristled a bit. “What’s the point of bathing? I’m trapped either way.”
Sahir leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. “When we go to war and our enemies imprison us, our armies maintain our discipline. We rise early and practice our exercises. We sit quiet and when they torture us, we make no sound.”
I had stooped and stuck my head under the bed, looking for a shoe.
“That sounds terrible,” I said. “And your enemies shouldn’t have imprisoned you in the first place.”
My shoe appeared to have nested in a pile of old shirts covered in cat hair. I fished it out.
“Who should have done what is irrelevant,” he snapped. He sounded close to the end of his tether—I wondered distantly if he’d explode back into a wisteria if I kept pushing him.
“Right, and so I shouldn’t do anything,” I said, because I am a florist at heart. “Anyway, are we going to dinner?” I stuffed my feet into my shoes one at a time. One shoe had untied laces, but I couldn’t make myself bend to tie it.
“No,” he said, “we will go outside. You have been in the Court for too long.”
“Outside?” I repeated.
“We will visit a town in Faerie.”
“Oh, good, so you’re with the tourism bureau now,” I said.
“Take your shoes off and clean yourself,” he said. “I won’t be seen with you like this. It reflects poorly on me, and anyone could interpret your appearance as a failure to fulfill my oath and stab me.”
I considered arguing, but what did it matter?
“Fine.” I kicked off my shoes again and stalked toward the cascading waterfall of the shower. I shucked off my sweater as I went, not even glancing back to see if he had left.
The door slammed shut behind me. I divested myself of my remaining garments and stood shivering in the cold air.
Doctor Kitten had come to stand on the narrow ledge of the shower stall, next to the rocky wall that likely held the pipes. He mewled when he saw me hesitate.
Without checking the temperature, I stepped into the water. It hit me with enough force that I almost staggered. But the water felt nice as it sluiced down my body, wiping away days’ worth of grime and dander.
I took up the lavender soap and scrubbed my chest and arms with it, my heart pounding.
Why had Sahir walked in so angrily? I lathered my hands up and massaged the suds into my scalp, my nails digging in.
He’d pissed me off, storming in like that.
But the lethargy reemerged before I’d even rinsed the soap away.
Doctor Kitten, having jumped back a step to avoid splashing water, started bathing himself, too. He sat decadently on the stone floor, one leg outstretched with ballerenic poise, licking his own phantom balls.
I stepped into the drying stream that came through the vent. Within moments, the water droplets beading my skin had been flung up and away into what I could only assume was the ventilation system for the entire Court.
After that I went to the bed, unsurprised to find clothes already laid out for me with magical precision.
They were the usual fare: a simple brown shirt, a thicker overshirt in deference to the cold weather, and leggings with a woven belt.
Doctor Kitten, doing his civic duty, had somehow beat me to the bed and covered them in cat hair in the past thirty seconds.
I nudged him onto the bedspread and pulled the clothes on. Sahir had laid out my soft boots as well, and thick woolen socks. I considered sticking to my sneakers but couldn’t make myself care enough to defy anyone. Especially not in a gesture as hollow as my choice of footwear.
When I opened the door again, Sahir was sitting on the floor across the hall, typing on his work phone—which I recognized because it matched mine.
“Exciting day at the office?” I asked, sounding simultaneously snide and miserable.
“No.” He stuck his phone in his pocket and stood up. “Quite boring. Several hours of meetings about a new bond issue, and then a very long and distressing discussion about a strategic initiative.”
I stared up at him. “Where are we going?”
“Outside,” he repeated, striding down the hallway—toward the river, not toward the clearing. I trailed after him, a small bubble of frustration rising in my chest and then deflating. It didn’t really matter where I went, did it?
We stepped out of the Court and I shivered in the chill air.
The faeries had replicated the seasons. It was a pure, crisp night, and it even smelled like fall: spicy and cold and exciting.
It felt like an adventure. I couldn’t stop myself; I looked around for something, the way I always had as a child.
A magic carpet or a moving castle or a child flying in the sky.
No magic carpet popped up, but Sparkles did, along with another horse for Sahir.
I glanced at him. “Going for a scenic horseback ride is a very odd thing to do on a work night.”
“I have reasons for everything I do.” He wouldn’t look at me, though. Instead, he gestured to Sparkles. I stared at her bare back, trying to pinpoint the moment the saddle appeared.
He hefted me, his thumbs under my armpits. I flopped onto her back, where the saddle was suddenly beneath my legs. I sighed and watched him mount gracefully.
“Let us depart,” he said. The horses, who were much better listeners than me, started along the path.
We’d wended our way along the riverside for almost an hour when Sparkles began to slow.
The horses’ hooves clacked on the errant stones in the dirt path, and we wound upward and upward, the river falling away from us, until we’d crested a hill.
We veered left, away from the river and the path, and I stared down into the cup of the valley.
It wasn’t a town, at least not by my human standards.
It was more like a street, a row of permanent structures set at a juncture in the winding road where it followed the river most closely.
On the riverbank, a neat row of piers jutted into the water, set among the marshy shallows with waving cattails and thick reedy grass.
Across the dusty dirt track the buildings squatted.
They were not beautiful, but elegant in the way of old things, made of rounded stone set with mortar so ancient it had all but crumbled away.
There seemed to be a crowd of people standing at the entrance to an alleyway between two houses.
Sahir had dismounted before his horse even stopped, in a motion so swift I didn’t follow it. He was at my side in another, his form blurred against the twilight into an indefinable smudge.
This time I slid into his arms without a flicker of emotion, too dull to feel shame or embarrassment.
He caught me and held me in a cradle, saying something to Sparkles in a language I didn’t understand.
Both horses trotted toward a paddock situated a little way off the path, with a narrow structure jutting from one side.
I lay in Sahir’s arms like a dead fish.
He dropped me.
I stared up at him. “Ow,” I said.
Something flickered in his eyes. “Get up, mortal.”
“This was your idea,” I said. I could feel my brows furrowing. Everything felt far away, like I was watching us through a pane of glass. Like a badly directed film, where I knew the emotions I should be feeling but couldn’t connect.
“You embarrass your kind.”
I felt the smallest lick of irritation and shoved up onto my knees.
Almost like he knew what he’d done, Sahir smirked down at me. His brown eyes twinkled. I hadn’t looked at his eyes in weeks.
From a distance we must have looked a picture—a knight, supplicant, ready to receive benediction, and her lord above her.
“The Princeling did not bring you here to shame you or yours,” he added. He held out a hand to me, and I shoved it away.
“I didn’t ask to represent my kind,” I burst out, roiling up to my feet. He held his ground, so we stood nearly toe to toe on the grass. He had bags under his eyes, and his hair was a little greasy, shining in the starlight. He looked tired, hunted.
“None of us asked to be what we are.” He left his hand where I’d slapped it, at his side and palm up.
I couldn’t keep looking at his face; a flicker of shame heated my cheeks.
He was my knight and I definitely wasn’t making his life any easier.
I stared at his hand instead. He had scars in the meat of his palm, near where it connected to his wrist. My gaze traced them, up to the first joint in his long pinky.
“What you are is probably a lot better than what I am right now.” My anger had cooled, and it sank in me like a hunk of basalt, cracked off and cooling in the embrace of the oceans.
“Do not presume to know what I am,” Sahir said.
I only stared at his hand, still open toward me. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t empathize with you.”
The silence stretched on long enough that I looked at him, not curious, exactly, but maybe a little impatient. And guilty. Definitely aware enough to feel guilty, and melodramatic, and frustrated with myself more than him.