12
IT WAS THREE months before Aerhril’s sixteenth birthday that the letter came from her mother. She thought it was early for the train ticket, but she opened it and read the words and she did not know what to do with herself.
It had been her mistake to read it when it was delivered at the breakfast table. The servants sorted out the letters and left them in a pile next to their plates in the morning. Breakfast was almost always some kind of grain porridge, wheat or oats, with a bit of molasses or honey to go over it.
Celedin looked up at her breath of dismay, jeering at her. “What is it, yellow pale thing? Something distresses you?”
She shook her head, wordless. The letter said that she would have a place at home after her stint as a ward was over, but that the family had no money to pay for her passage, so she must make her way on her own, by any means necessary.
It went on to say that the family had been forced to let go of all their servants and that there was no income but what her father managed to scrape up by selling things off, and that she might consider becoming a tutor.
Like Galadril, she thought as she read it.
Probably some other keep in the north, for they would like it if they had a fair elf to serve them, to teach their children, they would all like that very much.
Her mother apologized for not letting her know how dire the situation had become.
Truly, though, there had been signs. The last time she had been home, there had been paintings missing from the walls, there had been a number of meals with no meat, only beans and rice, and there had been the missing butler, who they said they were in the process of replacing.
Her mother said that she and her father had been certain it was all going to reverse itself, and they hadn’t wished to worry her or her sister, but that the time had come to own up to the fact that things were very bad.
“Tell me,” said Celedin.
She shook her head.
The first problem was to find some way to get a train ticket, and she could not pay for one, and she had no means of getting any money at all.
She sat there, stunned, staring into her oatmeal, thinking through anything she could sell. Why had her mother not given her some sentimental family heirloom, some priceless jewel that she hung round her neck, a handy thing to sacrifice for this exact situation? That always happened in novels.
She had nothing to sell.
“My family cannot afford to purchase a train ticket for my return to them when my wardship ends,” she said to Celedin, and she did not know why she told him, except that they would all have to know eventually.
Perhaps they would let her work here.
But there was no one to tutor, of course.
Perhaps they would know of another steward or warden in search of a tutor. Of course, she was not well educated, so what sort of tutor could she really be? What was there for a girl like her?
She thought of scrubbing floors or bearing ash buckets and a part of her recoiled at the shame of it. She could not lower herself in such a way.
“Truly?” he said. He reached across the table and snatched the letter from her hands.
She stood up. “Give that back, that is my private correspondence, and you cannot look at it.”
He was reading it, letting out laughs of delighted surprise, as she went round the table and took it back from him. He did not resist when she did, just let the letter go. He smiled up at her. “So, then, you have nowhere to go.”
“I can go home,” she said. “I only must find my own way to get there.”
“You could stay here,” he said.
She blinked at him. “What?”
“It happens,” he said. “More often in the Vale, I think, and almost always with the girls, but there are number of wards who simply marry into the households where they have been raised. You’ve been here most of your life, after all, and why not?”
Marry. “Are you saying that…?”
The smile on his face was horrifying. “Can you imagine just squeezing out all of my heirs, one after the other?”
She ran out of the room.
“Is that a no?” his voice echoed after her. He was still laughing.
She ran directly to Dathor, but Dathor was working. He was polishing saddles, and he was not alone. The driver was with him. The driver looked up when she came into the stables, but Dathor did not.
“I have need of Dathor,” she said in her most important voice.
“No, you haven’t,” said Dathor, still not looking up. “I am not here at your beck and call. I do not serve you. You do not command me.”
Oh, fine time for him to get in one of his snits about all of this. He accused her so often of acting as if she was his mistress and he was her servant, claiming she took him for granted.
They were kissing a lot at that point, but he kept his clothes on after the incident with Celedin.
She still came to him, and they talked and made plans of what they would do when they both went to the city in the Vale.
But she could sense that he seemed to hold against her that she was an elf, a fair elf besides, a fair elf with a wealthy father.
All of that he held against her, as if it were a personal insult against him that she chose.
She could not change it. She did not like it.
Whatever he wanted from her to make things equal between them, it was beyond her power.
“It is not me who asks, but your uncle,” she said.
Dathor set down his polishing rag. “I don’t believe you.”
“You’d best go and make sure,” said the driver, glancing at him. He eyed her. “But if I find you’re using the master to get him out of work while the two of you go sneaking around, I’ll have to tell him.”
She was horrified.
When they were out of the stables, she whispered, “Have you told the driver about us?”
“No, but he has eyes,” said Dathor. “You spend too much time around me, watching me with those expressions on your face. And I can pretend to be as indifferent to you as I will, he knows it’s an act. He knows I’d never turn down the opportunity to put my hands on you.”
She walked faster. “Let us go over the hill into the wood. I have things to tell you.”
“So, you did just make it up? Are you mad?”
“Please, Dathor,” she said. “Everything is ruined!”
He must have heard something in her voice, because he didn’t protest, only followed her through a small worn footpath until they had crested the hill and were out of sight of the keep. Well, the tower was visible, but they would not be noticed unless someone was up on the turret, and no one was.
She explained everything as quickly as she possibly could, looking up at him, resting her palms against his firm, broad chest.
“Nothing? Your family has nothing?” He was stunned. “You never indicated this was a possibility.”
“I suppose there were signs. I didn’t want to see them. It was so important to me to think I could leave this place behind. And I thought I could help you.”
“We could hop the train,” he said.
“Hop it?” she said.
“When they get going, you know they’re slow. You can run alongside and pull yourself up. You can hide away in one of the box cars with the luggage or the food stores. If they find you, they’re not pleased, but they mostly just throw you off, and then you hop another.”
Her lips parted. “Oh, you really think we could manage that.”
“Have you told anyone?”
She winced. “Celedin saw. He took my letter. He said something awful.”
“What did he say?”
“He said I could marry him and he talked about my squeezing out his babes with this awful look on his face.” She shuddered.
“No,” said Dathor. “No, no, no.”
“He wasn’t serious anyway. He only said it to rattle me, which he managed very handily, I must say.”
“He was serious,” said Dathor. “And you must not consider it.”
“I am not,” she said, blinking at him.
“Good,” he said, letting out a breath. “But it will make it harder to get away. You could have simply pretended to have a train ticket otherwise. Now, the steward will get his nose into it. He won’t simply let a girl like you go off on her own somewhere.”
“He doesn’t care about me!”
“He cannot let that be known, however. He must pretend to have some kind of decency. He will want it. He’ll love it, you marrying Celedin. After all, it is not as if any of the other nearby girls like him at all. They will not dance with him, that is what you said, is it not?”
There were not a number of dances, for everyone lived very far apart, but whenever there was, Celedin was often unable to secure partners, for he was not appealing.
He wore his cruelty too openly, she thought.
People could smell it on him. They recoiled the way one might recoil from something poisonous.
“But here you are, now, and you have been living here for long enough to know all about Celedin, and now you are in need of our charity, after you have been thrust upon us for all these years, and how that will please him!” Dathor shook his head.
“By all the shadows of the forest, I cannot believe this is happening. How could you have told Celedin?”
“I am sorry,” she said.
“We’ll have to run,” he said.
“Run?” she said.
“Then they’ll know we’re together. They’ll send word to your family in the south, and I will have to hide myself away. Shadows cover us both.”
“I don’t know how it goes in the south now. I will not have the means to help you as I had hoped. I will not have anything at all. My mother makes it sound as if they are struggling to feed themselves.”
He looked her over. “Really?”
She drew back. “You’re pleased.”
“Pleased that somehow you’ve been knocked off your pedestal just a little bit? Why would that please me?”
She shook her head at him. “You know, sometimes, Dathor, you are the most loathsome creature I have ever met. How dare you?” She was going to start crying.
She had come to him because he was supposed to be kind to her.
He was supposed to soothe her, tell her that no matter what happened, they would face it together, but he was just being horrid.
She turned away and began trudging back towards Foxglove Peak.
“Creature, is it?” he called after her.
She halted and turned, exasperated. “Oh, you know I did not mean it that way. We are all creatures, after all. I did not mean—”
“You don’t mean it here.” He pointed to his temple. “But you mean it all the same. You aren’t aware that you mean it, but it doesn’t change that you do mean it. Inside, in the inner workings of you, I am below you and you are above me, and—”
“Oh, poor, poor Dathor!” she snapped. “Yes, we must pity you, always you. You are the only one who truly suffers in all of the land and all of the sea!”
“I do not want your pity. I despise your pity. What I want is to be able to do one thing for you, once, ever. If you have need of me for the first time in all of our association, how could I not be pleased?”
“Need of you?”
“Your family is starving? You have no one and nothing? Perhaps I can be useful to you in some way. Perhaps…” His voice broke. “If you are already diminished, perhaps I do not diminish you.”
She clenched her hands in fists. “Yes, yes, you, as I have said. Your pain, your suffering, your diminishment.” Turning away again, she flounced off, leaving him there.