Chapter 21
Twenty-One
The Souls of Sentinels
Dorotèa’s decision to trail Oste inside and take advantage of the haunting numbness in the air had more to do with her fighting experience than it did her own personal remorse, even though it settled in her stomach like bile.
She’d seen plenty of moments before spars and brawls, and knew the situation with the bathhouse attendants was on its way to becoming ugly.
The tension made the humid air even heavier, more sickly, but there could have been springs under the floor for all she knew on account of the degree of restless shuffling of feet that always tipped her off to someone preparing to lunge.
The women wept, but so too did they shake with rage, and the guards inside were no help or diffusion.
Every word was hissed. Every sentence made them lean in.
Well, she was no city doctor or member of the Palais herself. She wasn’t even anyone who, by right, was allowed a permit to carry a sword. Dorotèa was, however, a woman, and an angry one, and that vocation left her prepared to handle her compatriots.
Dorotèa corralled the women present into the proprietor’s office.
The viguerie had finished their questioning, and the women had long since lost sight of any conductive accusations or retorts; there’d been nothing left to be done but set fires, and as fond as she was of flames, not everyone in the bathhouse deserved to work in the heat.
“They wouldn’t even let me see her,” a woman with pale hair cried viciously from the arms of another.
“You don’t want to,” said Dorotèa. Her tone was level to match the calm she conjured when she dialed into her fights. “You mustn't remember her that way. And she’s in good hands—”
“Good hands!” the woman shot back. The tall, dark-skinned girl holding her teetered from the force. “What has the law ever done for us? Nothing, or less than nothing, if word is to be believed. One of their ilk is the one doing this.”
Dorotèa exhaled steadily. “My husband is in there right now, and I know he’ll do right by Alida. I’m as frustrated as anyone, but—”
“Some worthless constable won’t—”
“He’s a civic physician.” Dorotèa frowned, and it shut the frantic woman up. “He gets the most heinous of duties, and does it without complaint.”
The youngest of the bunch, a dainty girl with short, chestnut curls looked up. “Oste Lézin? You are married to Oste Lézin?”
Dorotèa nodded. The girl’s eyes widened.
“Why,” she continued, “I heard he’s the one who paid for Frances’s burial. Bought her a pretty stone—saw it when I brought flowers last week. She… She was my neighbor.”
Dorotèa felt like she’d been stabbed in the gut.
She hadn’t known, especially not when such a flurry occurred in the immediate aftermath of that woman’s murder.
Oste hadn’t breathed a word. All at once, she choked on the realization that she herself had accused him of doing too little when, doubtless, he’d only just arranged a greater gesture than she ever knew how to thank him for or repay.
Frances had mattered; all these girls did.
He’d done all he could do from the start.
She covered her mouth and masked the sob that wanted to rise from her throat. Forced down and quieted, she let her hand fall away when it slid back down. “Yes.”
“It was a pretty stone,” the tall woman holding the other agreed.
“It was,” said the pale-haired girl. She then jerked herself out of the embrace and covered her eyes.
“Oh, God! Oh, my heart. Nothing makes sense anymore, not a thing. Alida never looked at anyone funny. Not a mean bone in her body. She… She’d take spiders outside—even the ugly ones.
Was the only crime that did her in the fact that she was pretty? ”
“It isn’t fair,” Dorotèa agreed with a shake of her head, “and it isn’t right.”
The girl sniffled miserably and shoved a now-frizzy lock of hair behind her ear. “I hope she stuck it to the monster for once in her life. I hope she managed to be a little mean.”
“Unlikely,” the tall girl groaned. “The matron says sometimes you ought to go along until a chance to get out presents itself, or the bugger starts to trust you. And Alida, well, Alida…”
Dorotèa inclined her head. “I can’t say the matron is quite wrong, but there’s hardly a prayer of that working out unless you know what to do in a fight or an escape.”
The youngest hung her head. “Some chance for us…”
The tall one sighed. “Mmh, imagine that.”
“No, no, listen!” Dorotèa pleaded. She took a step closer and felt the prickle of anticipation draw lines across her palms. “You very well could. You’ve all got arms and legs; there’s no reason why you can’t use them to your advantage.
We know better than most where a fellow keeps his weak spots. We had to know.”
“Oh?” the blonde girl bit back. The intensity of her scowl saw her features become severe, when Dorotèa hadn’t thought her soft face could stop being pretty even with her tears. “What do you know about having to?”
Dorotèa dug her nails into her palms. “What do I know? I’m a woman—”
“Oh, good to know—”
“—who was never told what that meant, or what my body could do. What do I know? Well, I know that I didn’t know that I didn’t have to let men touch me or kiss me as they pleased, and that I had every right to leave.
I had no idea that I might have pleasure and a voice of my own.
Nobody told me what was right and wrong until I became familiar with the latter.
Do you know what’s funny? The truth is that I was taught how to protect myself, but never told what I was to protect myself from. ”
The three women tilted backwards. The blonde girl’s angular brows drew together and formed a new crease, one as precarious and hesitant as the subtle parting of her lips and twitch of the bottom one.
She spoke very quietly. “What is it that you mean?”
“Oh, my father’s ignorance of my sex had some use. He taught me every secret about preserving whatever it is that I am.”
The tall woman frowned. “I don’t—”
“If someone could teach you self-defense, would you desire to know?” Dorotèa continued.
She took another step. “If, with some hard work, you could learn the skills to get away from the next bastard who doesn’t stop when you tell him to?
Here or on the street, it doesn’t matter.
There’s always a risk. You could be better prepared to handle it. ”
“I think so,” the quiet one remarked, “but… people do not teach that.”
“I could. I promise you, I could.”
She earned a pointed glance from the blonde firebrand. “You?”
“Yes.” Dorotèa was adamant. Her chest swelled.
“I’ve wanted to. I can. If you want to know, then give me a chance, and you’ll see.
If you don’t believe that I know what I’m doing and have dealt a beating or two, then ask yourself…
ask yourself why the Duelist of Aix-en-Provence might not take off her mask. ”
Some seconds passed before the implication dawned on the women.
They seemed to stretch in height when they drew up, then back, eyes gone wide as saucers.
Dorotèa exhaled and bit her bottom lip. She hoped her willingness to be open would pave a way to greater freedom instead of pulling her down with the condemnation of everything she built up.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have spoken. Perhaps she was bullheaded and incredibly foolish. Any of these women could ruin her now.
But then the young girl took a step forward. “Teach me.”
The women were to be some of Dorotèa’s first pupils, as they arranged.
Ragonde, Symonne, and Flourie, as she came to know them by, were to come to the back room at l‘Hostel Borvo twice a week for tutoring and may each bring along an additional girl they could vouch for.
It was the smallest sliver of everything she hoped to manage eventually, but it was something.
It was three-to-six more women being able to help themselves.
Three-to-six women who could make the most out of all that they were, and pass on those skills to more of them.
This was her dream. This was her fight.
Dorotèa never expected to leave that wretched building with a greater bounce in her step.
Purpose looked good on her. Her face took on more color, pink intermingling with her light, sun-kissed freckles.
She looked as rejuvenated as any woman departing a soak in a thermal bath, and she was too blissfully thankful to feel guilty about it.
Oste was waiting outside, but his appearance didn’t invoke the same joy. Dorotèa slowed instead in unease, and the spark that compelled her gradually made her legs move as though weighed down with stones.
Her husband appeared, perhaps, how she might have assumed considering the news that brought him here, but his stormy melancholia cleared the gap between them and burrowed under her skin.
She didn’t know how the sight could physically pain her so when they didn’t truly share a heart.
Bright, devoted Oste Lézin wasn’t meant to hang his head to shadow his reddened eyes or twist his hat in front of his waist with cool-hued hands.
She could see every exhale that rocked his chest, steady but harsh, steady but crooked—that right side held stiff.
“Oste?” Dorotèa called out, because anything more than his name felt like an attack, or a violation.
He glanced up.
Dorotèa swallowed. “Did you… wait for me?”
He both answered and dismissed her with a lopsided shrug and offering of his arm. “I’ll walk you home.”
She didn’t want to protest and go back alone. She wanted him to feel that he was protecting her. Dorotèa took his arm and began to walk with him. “Will you go back afterward?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“It isn’t.”
“Alright,” Dorotèa sighed. “It isn’t.”