The spider paused on the sill when I put my finger out. It tickled as it stepped upon my skin. I breathed and let the world grow quiet. I closed my eyes and reached, the way I always did, not with sight or sound but with the part of me that knew the small hidden workings of living things.
I trimmed and stretched. I moved plates and joints. I split what had been two into six and then into four again, the way wings should be. I pared venom into nothing and opened air-holes along a new body. I gave it weight where it needed weight and lightness where it needed lightness. It was careful work. My hand shook once, and I stilled it.
When I opened my eyes the thing upon my finger was slender and bright. Its wings were clear. It clung for a heartbeat, then lifted. The wings whirred. It rose to the window, darted out into the salt air, and was gone.
I watched the space where it had flown and tried to hold the shape of it in my mind, the way I held the other dreams when they came. In those dreams there were white lamps and sharp smells. I heard a woman weeping behind a door I could not open. I loved a smiling, flying girl with pale golden hair. When I woke, the shapes slid away. They had been growing sharper of late, my dreams. I could not say if I liked that.
Someone somewhere was going to get an interesting surprise when they saw a flying spider.
The yard below filled with the morning tide and the voices of men. Velton's hall stood above the beach. A knife of wind came in from the bay and set the banners on the palisade to their muttering. I wiped my finger on my skirts and went down.
The doors were set wide. The rushes had been changed, clean straw over dark earth. My lord father sat his chair upon the dais, a plain thing of oak with iron bands. Mother had settled by his right hand, the light on her hair. Ser Alwyn stood below with two men-at-arms, one of them old Hobb who limped in wet weather. Our maester kept to the left with a tablet and quill.
"Come here, little bird," Mother said when she saw me. "Sit straight. Do not swing your feet."
I sat and kept my legs still. Father's voice filled the hall.
The first petitioner was a fisherman with stove-burned cheeks.
"M'lord," he said, cap in hand, "the storm two nights past took my best net. If it please you, I'd have twine from the stores. Elsewise I'll not make my tithe."
"How many mouths?" Father asked.
"Three little ones and my old mother, m'lord."
Mother leaned and spoke low. "We have coarse twine yet from last year's levy. It mildews if it lies too long."
Father nodded.
"A coil of twine from the stores, and you will pay it back before harvest sends us south. Ser Alwyn, see it done." He tapped the arm of his chair. "And take care with your moorings, man. I'll not set the whole of Velton's stores upon the sea."
"Aye, m'lord. Seven keep you." The fisher bobbed his head and backed away.
Next came two men with a boundary quarrel. Each had a stick they used to point and jab at nothing.
"The hedge has crept," said the first.
"The hedge does not creep," said the other. "Your sheep do."
"Enough," Father said. "You will walk the bounds with Ser Alwyn and Hobb this noon. What they see shall stand. There will be no pulling at hedges in the dark. If either man shifts the stones after, I will have him in the stocks."
They both muttered that they would not dream of it. They would have, if the words had been softer.
A fishwife named Mara came with a bruise on her cheek.
"My husband struck me, m'lord," she said, "for a crust I gave to Old Nan. He was drunk on barley beer."
Father's mouth thinned. "Where is this husband?"
"Out with the boats," Ser Alwyn put in. "I would have fetched him, m'lord, but the tide waits for no man."
"True enough," Father said. "Right then. Hobb, when he returns, two hours in the stocks before the sept. And the price of the barley beer will go to Old Nan's name upon the poor list."
Mara's eyes shone. "Thank you, m'lord."
"Take care of that cheek," Mother told her. "Come to me after the noon meal. I'll give you comfrey."
"I will, m'lady."
There were more. A boy who had lost a piglet to a stray hound. A thatcher who wanted wages for the roof he had not finished. A man who asked leave to marry without the fee, for love was stronger than coin, and Father said love might carry him but the roof would not, and halved the fee. I kept my eyes on their faces and tried to hear the words beneath the words. When Father paused to drink small beer, Mother's hand found his cup before he reached for it. She saw to such things in a way that seemed simple until one looked close.
The maester's cough came soft as a page turning.
"My lord," he said, "if it please you, I would have the lady Amelia for her lessons."
Father set down his cup. "Go on, little bird. You may hear petitions again on the morrow and learn from them. Take care to remember the faces. A lord that forgets his people should not call himself lord."
"I am not a lord," I said.
"The same goes for a lady," he answered, not unkind. "Above all else, we are shepherds of the people."
The maester, Merlon by name, led me from the hall. His chain clicked with each step, link upon link, dull in the light. He smelled of parchment and lamp oil. In the solar, the wind was a hush against the shutters. He set the tablet on the table and drew his stool close.
"History," he said. "Begin with the Darklyn kings. Before the dragons came."
I folded my hands. "They styled themselves kings of Duskendale."
"Good." He dipped his quill. "What did they hold?"
"Duskendale and the lands around the bay road. The Dun Fort and the harbor. Villages along the coast to the north and south." I did not look out the window. I knew what lay there: the grey sea, the long line of shingle, the nets drying upon poles.
"And who set them at war, more oft than not?"
"Their neighbors." I named them. "Rosby. Stokeworth. The Masseys further down. There were wars for tolls, and wars for marriage, and small wars for pride."
Maester Merlon made a thin sound in his throat that might have been approval. "Dates."
I thought of the old maps he had shown me, the ink browned at the edges, the lines wavering. "Long before Aegon's Conquest. In the Age of the Hundred Kingdoms, after the Andals came over the sea with steel and septons. The Darklyns took to the Faith of the Seven. They raised septs and swore oaths."
"And when the dragons came?"
"They bent the knee." I said. "It was wiser to kneel than to burn."
"Some call that wisdom." Merlon's mouth quirked. "Others call it cowardice. They kept their lands, in any case, and their seat at Duskendale."
"And we are a cadet branch," I said, because he would ask. "Darkwood from Darklyn. We hold Velton by their leave and pay our dues to Duskendale when the sums come due."
"As it is and as it has been," he said. He tapped the tablet. "Names of the Darklyn line you recall?"
I gave him five. I had learned more, but the names slipped when I reached for them. To be frank, I cared little for their names.
"We shall fix them by and by. Now, numbers."
He drew a charcoal and set a slate before me. "A boat goes out with four men and returns with eels. The eels fetch six teen-sticks of copper at market, and the boat owes the seventh eel to the lord's tithe. How many coppers remain to be divided, if the men pay also for salt and coals, which together cost ten coppers?"
"Teen-sticks?" I said.
"A childish measure. It will do."
I worked it. The counting came easy. I did not stack stones the way he had taught me. I did not need to. The totals came and set themselves in place without squeezing. "Divide among four after the tithe and the costs?"
"Just so."
I told him.
He blinked twice and wrote down my answer. "Another. If there are three casks of barley and each cask holds—"
"Forty-eight scoops," I said, remembering the casks in our stores.
"Very good. If the septa takes a tenth for the poor and the brewer takes enough to make twelve gallons of beer, and every gallon asks two scoops, how much remains?"
I told him. We did more, and more after that. Fractions. Weights. A man's oath to pay a stag in two months' time with the promise of two stags if he failed. He tried to trick me and could not. When my answers came too quick, he sat back and let the quill fall against his chest.
"Seven save me," he said, soft. "Your aptitude for numbers is astounding for your age."
I felt heat rise in my face. "It is only counting."
"It is more than counting," he said. "It is seeing. Your father will be glad of it. You must not boast of it before your cousins when we go to Duskendale. They will not love you for it."
"I do not boast," I said.
"No," he said. "You do not."
His eyes were gentle when he said it, and that made me wish to look away.
We spoke then of measures and marks. He taught me the reckonings for interest on coin and the way to cut a tally without losing track. My hand cramped. I pushed through. When the light shifted toward afternoon he closed his book.
"You have done enough for one day."
Before he could rise, a knock came at the door. Hobb stuck his head in.
"M'lord wants the lady in the hall," he said. "Beg pardon, Maester. There's been a quarrel over mackerel again."
I went at once.
The hall had filled with the smell of smoke and fish. Men had come back from the sea. Their boots tracked wet into the rushes. Father was not on his chair. He stood by the fire with a cloth to his mouth. When he coughed, it was a raw sound, deep in him.
Mother's hand was on his back.
"You should sit," she said.
"It is nothing," Father answered, and coughed again. His eyes were sore at the corners. There was a flush high upon his cheekbones.
Maester Merlon turned his head at the sound and frowned. "My lord?"
"A draught," Father said, waving him off. "I do not need a draught for a tickle in my throat. Hear these fools about their mackerel and let us be done."
He would not be done. Petitioners made voices and gestures. They spoke of a net set too close to another net and the way fish ran when the moon was thin. Father listened with a patience that wore like a thin cloak, and coughed into his cloth between their words. He denied one man, granted another, split a third matter down the middle. By the time the candles were lit his words were rough. When he swallowed, he winced.
I stood behind the arm of his chair and watched him. I felt the itch in my own throat in answer. It was not my itch. It was his. I could feel it when I set my hand on the wood, the way heat comes through a door when a fire burns behind it. I should not have felt it through wood. I did. It was there. I could have walked away and let the maester boil willow bark and honey, and perhaps it would have set him right by morning. I did not wish to wait.
No one was looking at me. Mother's eyes were on the men-at-arms. The maester was speaking to a man about barley counts. Father put his cloth down to reach for the cup. I moved without thinking about moving. I stepped close and set my hand upon his wrist where the skin was thin.
It was warm. Under my fingers the beat ran hard. I reached the way I had reached for the spider. I saw what was wrong at once: swelling where there should have been none, a red soreness down the throat, little invaders that should not have been there making mischief. I drew the swelling down and eased the soreness. I undid the mischief. I made the wrong things stop. It took only a breath, and then one more.
When Father drew air again it came easy. He blinked and looked down at my hand.
"Little bird," he said, hoarse still but not so hoarse, "what are you about?"
"Only standing near," I said, and let go. "You are warm, Father. Will you sit?"
He squinted at me. His mouth softened. "A clever girl. A seat, then."
He sat. The next cough, when it came, was light and did not pull at him. Maester Merlon came with his draught and Father waved it away.
"Another time," he said. "I am mended enough."
Mother took his hand and frowned less.
Petitioners still spoke. The sea spoke. The wind pressed at the shutters. I stood behind the chair and folded my hands to keep them still. A small part of me hummed with what I had done. The rest of me was quiet.
When the last man bowed and backed away, Father leaned toward me.
"You looked bored," he said. "Were you bored?"
"No," I said, lying.
His smile reached his eyes.
"Liar," he said, but mild. "Run along to your mother."
Mother drew me close on the settle and smelled my hair. "Your lessons?"
"I learned of the Darklyns."
"You will learn more when you see Duskendale," she said. "The Dun Fort stands yet, old and stubborn. Your cousins will try to pull your nose. Do not let them see you flinch."
"I will not," I said.
The candles burned down. The men-at-arms stacked their spears in a corner. Hobb stretched his bad leg and sighed. Maester Merlon made a list with a neat hand for the morrow. I watched Father for the space of ten breaths. He did not cough.
When the servants banked the fire, Mother took my hand for the walk to our chambers. The air in the yard was cold and clean. The sea carried a sheen of moonlight out beyond the breakers. I looked to the window where the spider had flown and tried to see if anything still hovered there. There was nothing, only the dark and the moving air.
"Come on, little bird," Mother said. "Mind your steps."
I minded them. I did not look back.
AN: Oh look, a fresh Denheim fic. Who'd have thought?
The raven struck the stone beside my window and fell to the floor in a tangle of wings. The sound was sharp. When I knelt, the neck lay wrong and the eyes had gone to glass. Still alive but close to death.
I set my hand to the feathered throat. I breathed and let my thoughts go narrow. The break was clean at the joint. The breath had stopped where the passage narrowed. I closed the torn places, set the bones to their seats, and eased the swelling. The heart stuttered and took hold again. The air moved.
The bird jerked once. I steadied it with my palm. Its gaze came back to me, quick and black. I meant to pull away then. My reach went too far. It brushed against other workings—the places that fix fear and food, the places that say flock and mate, the small marks of bond and order. I smoothed a knot without meaning to. Something caught.
The raven stood, shook itself, and stepped onto my wrist. Its claws pinched. The leather tube on its leg was scuffed. I slid the thong free and left the seal unbroken. It hopped up my sleeve and climbed to my shoulder, light and certain. Its beak touched my ear. I turned my head to move it on; it would not go.
There was no time to wrestle with it. I took the letter to Maester Merlon.
He had two candles going though it was still early. His chain lay on his breast, dull links, dull light. When the raven made a small sound he glanced up, quill in hand, and then did a double take.
"Well now," he said. "That is bold of you, little sir."
He held out two fingers. The bird eyed him and stayed where it was.
"Odd," he said, but he smiled. "Some folk have a way with beasts. It is not unheard of. The crannogmen speak to frogs. I've seen a hedge witch teach a goose to fetch. Ravens are cleverer than geese."
"It flew into my window," I said. "I thought it stunned."
"Better stunned than dead." He broke the seal and read. "Stores and tallies. The Dun Fort asks for an accounting before the road dries. A packet on barley blight from the Citadel. Duskendale's maester sends his courtesies and complaints. Nothing that won't keep."
He looked at my shoulder again. "You may want to give him a scrap of fat or meat later, if he insists on you. They fix on a person at times, and that is that."
"I did nothing," I said.
"Mm," he said, mild. "Affinities move in their own fashion. Off with you. Your mother asked for you."
There were no petitioners that morning. The doors stood open and the hall stayed empty save for smoke and the echo of men's steps. My father had Ser Alwyn bring the cobs round, and we went down the slope past the drying racks and the salt sheds. The wind had turned and carried the smell of weed and wet sand. Hobb rode behind with two spears across his back. The raven rode my shoulder and shifted to keep its balance when the cob changed pace. Once it croaked into my hair. I put my hand to its breast and it stilled.
"We'll see the water meadows first," Father said. "The last storm silted the ditch. If the sluice sticks I'll have men on it before noon."
He coughed, once, and let it pass.
We took the path by the shingle and cut inland where the ground rose. The first farm belonged to a man called Jace Prowse, brown as leather, with a wife and two little girls who peered from behind her skirts. He had an argument with his neighbor about gleaning rights. The neighbor said his boys had gone for missed heads only. Jace said the boys had cut. Father made them speak in turn. He asked how many sheaves stood at sundown, how many in the morning, whether the field horns had sounded. He decided for the neighbor in part and for Jace in part, and said next time the horns would sound twice before any went in.
At the next holding a hen roosted in the croft wall and laid on the wrong side. Two women spoke at once and waved arms at feathers. Father said one would mend the gap and the other would return the last three eggs and keep the shells for the garden as a balm to pride. Lady Serys thanked both for their thrift and asked after their stores. She took note of a child with a chapped lip and promised salve.
We came on a man mending a fence while his old father sat and watched him work. The fence had blown. A cow had strayed and trod seedlings. The cow's owner offered to pay; the fence owner wanted more than coin, he wanted a public apology. Father gave him the apology and put the coin on top of it, out loud, so that no one could say later there had been a slight. He had a way of making a small thing feel finished.
At a bend of the lane, a farmer ran toward us with his hat in both hands. His name was Harlen Moss, and sweat had dried white on his brow.
"M'lord," he said, breathless, "forgive me, m'lord, my boy's leg. A horse kicked him. He was spooking at a sheet on the line and the boy—"
He swallowed. "We set a splint best we could. He screams, m'lord. He screams and screams."
Father's mouth tightened. "Where?"
"Here, m'lord." He pointed to a low house with a turf roof. A horse stood head-down beside it, rope slack and flank quivering.
"Maester Merlon should see him," Father said. "I'll send Hobb at once."
Harlen looked at my father's boots, then at me.
"M'lord, m'lady. Please. My boy is twelve. He's a good boy. He minds the gate, he doesn't steal apples." His voice broke. "Please."
"I will pray with him," I said, before the words could turn to dust.
Father turned his head.
"Prayers won't set bone," he said. "And I'll not have you blamed when prayers fail."
"Let her go," Mother said. "A prayer costs little."
Father let out a breath.
"If you must," he said to me, quieter. "Do no harm. Speak soft. We will send for Merlon."
We went in. The hovel was low and warm and smelled of peat and horse. A pot hung over embers. A boy lay on a pallet, pale and shaking. His leg was swollen from knee to ankle. The foot turned out where it should not. The splints were two slats from a broken barrel lid tied with cord and cloth. The boy's teeth chattered when the pain bit at him.
"Will," Harlen said, kneeling. "Look—m'lady has come."
I knelt by the pallet and looked to Mother. She stood by the door and kept it shut with her hand. Father waited outside with the man and said nothing.
"May I touch you?" I asked the boy.
He nodded and then shook his head and then nodded again, eyes gone wide.
I set my palms above the swelling and let the rest of the room fall away. The bone had shattered into points along the shin. The calf muscle had pulled back and bunched. The small vessels had leaked into the hollows between. The skin was hot. The splints kept some shape but not enough. I could make it right in a breath. I did not.
I eased the broken ends until they lay near true and left the tiniest space where a body would lay its own bridge. I called the workmen that build bone and set them to their tasks. I unwound the knotted muscle a little and left it to creep back over days. I dried the blood where it pooled and kept it from rotting. I left traces that would tell the maester his poultices had done some good. I took the pain and quieted it.
His breathing slowed. The worst sounds stopped.
Harlen was on his knees with both hands on the pallet.
"Will? Will?" He looked from the boy to me. There were tears in his beard. "He is not hurting. Gods be good, he is not hurting."
"Keep the splint tight," I said. "Do not let him rise. The maester will bring willow bark for the swelling. In a few days the heat will go away. After a little while you may loosen the cord, a little at a time. Do not hurry it."
"Bless you, m'lady," Harlen said. He tried to take my hand and then thought better of it and bowed his head instead. "Bless you. The Seven have touched you. I knew it when you came in."
I stood. The raven had come inside without my seeing and sat on the house beam, head cocked. It watched me as I watched it. I put up a finger. It dropped to my shoulder as if it had always lived there.
When we stepped back into the yard, Father looked at the boy's door.
"He is quiet," he said. His eyes found mine. I kept my face even.
"He will rest," I said.
"Good," he said. He put a hand on Harlen's shoulder and told him what to do about the horse and the sheet. He promised a measure of oats if the gate was mended before next turn of the moon. Harlen wept again and blessed him and blessed me and blessed the horse, which twitched an ear.
By noon the sun had warmed what it could. We ate beside the ditch with our backs to the hedge: hard cheese, a heel of bread, two apples between three, small beer in a skin. The raven hopped down to the bread and tapped it with its beak. I broke off a piece and the bird took it in two precise bites and looked for more.
"You've a friend," Father said, amused despite himself.
"It likes me," I said.
"Birds smell fear," Hobb put in. "That one smells something else. I'd not wager what."
What was he talking about?
Maester Merlon found us at the third farm with his satchel and his chain bouncing. He had sweat in the hollow of his throat.
"Harlen Moss's boy?" he asked. "I brought willow, and comfrey, and a clean bandage, and a little poppy if it comes to it."
"He sleeps now," Father said. "He'll shriek less when you shift him, with luck."
Merlon's gaze went to my shoulder when the raven croaked.
"Still there," he said, softly surprised. "Well, then."
He turned to father, "I'll see to the boy, my lord, and meet you by the south meadow."
We left him to it. In the south meadow a ditch had clogged with weed and a sluice stuck half-shut. Father waded in with his boots on and hauled the lever while Ser Alwyn and two men dragged out the mats of green. He snapped at them when they were slow and laughed when the water leapt forward and filled the side ditch. He coughed once and waved away Mother's eye. I stood on the bank with my hands on my belt and watched the float of sticks spin. The raven blew its feathers smooth against the wind.
The afternoon passed in small reckonings. A woman asked to gather driftwood outside the old bounds. Father said yes if she stacked it neat and took a turn at the watch fire. A boy had set snares too near a neighbor's traps. Father made him pull them and promise aloud. A man had taken a pail from a smoking hut and not returned it. Father told him he had until sundown. The man said he had forgotten and looked ashamed of his mouth.
On the high ground we looked back and saw the sea like hammered tin. The Dun Fort lay a smudge to the south. I thought of Duskendale and its harbor and the cousins Merlon had spoken of and felt my stomach turn in a way that was not hunger.
We reached the hall while the light still stood. The doors were wide. The rushes were swept. There was no line of petitioners, only a scullion with a broom and the sound of a pail being dragged. Mother sat me on the settle and took my hands in hers.
"In three days we will go to Duskendale," she said. "You will practice your courtesies to-night and on the morrow. When you curtsy, keep your eyes level. When you are spoken to, do not rush your answer. If a lady asks after your health, do not tell her about bruises and coughs; say you are well and that you hope she is the same. If a lord speaks of weather, do not tell him how to mend a sluice, no matter how much you know."
"I will remember," I said.
"Your cousins will be there," she went on. "They will try to pull your nose. Do not give it to them. If they boast of hawks, be glad for them. If they speak of gowns, be glad for them. If they ask you what Velton has, tell them we have good fish and better sense."
"Better sense," I said. That made her mouth lift.
"Also," she said, flicking a speck from my sleeve, "do not take the bird to the Dun Fort."
The raven clicked its beak against my hair and made a sound that might have been a laugh. I lifted it from my shoulder and set it on the back of the settle. It hopped back at once.
"Let it be," Father said from the dais. "If it follows her, it follows her. I have seen worse ornaments in Duskendale than a raven. My cousin had a hare once."
"Not in the sept," Mother said. "The septa would faint at the feathers."
"Then not in the sept," Father allowed.
We ate pottage and smoked fish. Father spoke with Ser Alwyn about the men for the ditch and told Hobb he could take the first half of the night off his bad leg. Maester Merlon came in late from Harlen's and told us the boy would mend if the swelling did not turn wicked, which it would not. He gave me a small look then, thoughtful and kind, and went on past it as if it were nothing.
When the fire was banked, I kissed my mother's cheek and took the stairs to my chamber. The raven came with me. It settled on the sill and tucked its head under its wing. I lay upon my bed and closed my eyes and saw not the sea or the fields but a narrow place with a tower of glass at the far end and light too white to be candlelight. A girl stood there, black-haired and thin. Her face was a careful thing, hard about the mouth.
She raised her hand and the air filled. Beetles and flies and wasps rose in a skin over the world. They moved when she willed, a storm with a center. She did not blink when they passed her eyes. She looked at me as if I were a puzzle to be set right.
I reached out and woke with my palm open to the dark. The raven shifted on the sill and made a soft sound. The room was quiet. The wind pressed at the shutters and let go again.
I lay and listened until my breath matched the bird's. Then I slept, and the girl was gone.
AN: Chapter 4 is out on Patreon! Just click on Fanfictioneer Too
The hovel was warm with peat smoke and close air. Merlon set his satchel down by the hearth and knelt at the pallet. The boy—Will Moss—slept with his mouth parted, a dampness at his lip. Harlen Moss hovered at the foot of the bed with his hat crushed in both hands.
Merlon eased aside the blanket and studied the leg. The splints were rough but straight. The shin should have been a ruin from a horse's kick, a wet bag of shards under the skin. He had seen such before—bone turned to crumbs and meat torn, a stink that climbed into the nose and would not go. Men lost legs to less.
He ran his fingers along the calf with a slow, steady pressure. Heat, but not the wild heat that ran before rot. Swelling, but drawn down. The bone ends lay so near true he felt the brush of them. There was a small give where a body would lay a bridge in its own time. The muscle had eased from a hard knot to a tired rope. The boy breathed low. No shudder, no sudden bite of pain when Merlon pressed as he must.
"This should not be so," he said under his breath.
"What's that, Maester?" Harlen asked. His eyes were red about the rims.
Merlon did not answer him at once. He took up his charcoal and tablet and noted the signs: alignment near-true, inflammation tempered, pain stilled, no foul blood pooling. He wrote the word impossible, then scraped a line through it and wrote unlikely. A month's rest and the boy might walk. With care, he might walk clean.
He had come ready to argue for the saw if corruption set in. He had come ready to dose poppy and cut. Instead, he wrapped the leg anew and bound the splints tighter, with better cloth and a surer knot.
Harlen had crept closer.
"I prayed," the man said in a hoarse whisper. "But it weren't my words did it. M'lady came in and laid hands. She said prayers over him and the screaming went. You mark me, Maester—she's blessed. The Seven touched her."
Merlon looked up. The peat smoke wavered between them.
"Many are moved to say so when a sickbed turns," he said.
"I know what I know," Harlen said, stubborn.
"Her hand, Maester. She's gentle, and the pain went. Like that." He snapped his fingers and flinched at the sound.
Merlon wrote again: Father says Lady Amelia prayed. Pain ceased at once. He added a mark he sometimes drew when a thing caught at him. He could taste the iron in the air and feel the warmth of the peat at his knees. He had seen sleights and charlatans in his time, and he had seen good girls with soft hands. This was not charlatanry, and it was not a poultice's work done fast. The body had been set on a path and would go of itself if left to it for a month. A horse's kick did not do that. A hedge witch did not do that either.
He rose with a small noise in his throat.
"Keep him still," he said. "No walking. When the heat starts to fall, loosen the binding a finger's width, no more. I'll come again on the morrow."
"Seven bless you, Maester," Harlen said. "And the lady."
Merlon cleaned his hands on a cloth, closed his satchel, and went out into the chill day with a mind full of questions he could not set in a column and sum.
Amelia
The raven watched me from the sill with one eye and then the other, head tilting and tilting back. Its feathers showed a dull sheen in the morning light. I had not slept long. When I did, the dreams came again—white lamps, and the smell that burned the nose, and a girl with a storm about her, all wings and shells and hard bodies. Sometimes she looked like she might speak. I woke with my hand open to the dark.
"You hear me in my sleep," I told the bird. "You and the wind."
It squawked, a dry sound that sat in the room.
"They are getting stranger," I said. "The girl stands still and the crawling things do not touch her. She looks past me when I stand right before her. I do not know if I like it."
The bird stretched one wing and then the other, slow. When I put my hand out it stepped up without fuss, light claws certain on my fingers. Its weight felt right there. I lifted it to my shoulder and it settled as if it had done so a hundred times.
"You need a name," I said. "Else you are only 'bird.'"
It clicked its beak against my hair.
"Dusk," I decided. "For your color. And because Duskendale lies south and the word sits well in the mouth."
I said it again, to see how it felt. "Dusk."
The raven made a quick chuff like assent.
At breakfast the hall smelled of smoke and yesterday's fish. Father sat with his cup. Mother had the serving knife. Hobb leaned on the jamb with his bad leg straight, and Ser Alwyn spoke low to a boy about the ditch men. Dusk perched at my shoulder and watched everything as if it were all a game set out for him.
I reached for the plate and my fingers brushed my mother's. It was a nothing touch, a slip of skin, and yet it was not nothing. I felt the hush of it. A new work begun in her, a seed taking its first instruction. There and fine, soft as breath.
"Congratulations," I said, and took back my hand.
Mother looked up at once. "What for?"
"The baby," I said, not thinking to smooth it.
Her mouth parted. A small line rose between her brows.
"Amelia," she said in a quiet voice meant for me alone. "Do not play with such hopes."
Father snorted.
"The girl wants a little brother to pull her braid," he said, easy with it. "Or a sister to torment."
"I do not play," I said, but I kept my eyes on my bread.
Mother looked at me for a long breath, then down at her hands, then away. She shared a look with father. Color came into her cheeks. She lifted the cup and drank as if thirsty.
"Well," she said, and that was all.
The door opened and Maester Merlon came through with his chain tapping against his breast. He had a wax-stained letter in his hand. Dusk hissed at the sudden air and then settled.
"For you, my lord," Merlon said, and held the letter out.
Father broke the seal and read, then passed it back.
"Tell them what it says," he said.
Merlon cleared his throat. "From Duskendale. Word from the south and east. Prince Daemon and Lord Corlys Velaryon have taken their victories in the islands. The Stepstones are said to be cleansed of the Triarchy's worst nests. And…Prince Daemon proclaims himself King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea."
Hobb made a small sound with his tongue. Ser Alwyn's mouth went flat. Mother's hands stilled.
"King," Father said, and the word sat hard. "While his brother wears a crown in King's Landing. That is a fine way to say rebellion without saying it. A prince should find better titles to play with."
"Some will call it only a style in a hard place," Merlon said, careful. "There is salt between rocks where law loosens. The Crown may see use in a Targaryen to hold that pass."
"Use?" Father's look sharpened. "Use until the title sits too well on the tongue. I have kin in Duskendale with ears for the court. If men there start to speak of two kings, I'd have word of it."
Mother laid a hand near his. "We are small nobles, my lord. Our business is fish and ditches."
"Our business is who calls himself king within a day's ride," Father said. "If the winds change, levies are called, coin is tallied, and boys stand in lines. I like to know whose lines."
I listened and kept my face plain. Dusk pecked once at my sleeve, impatient for fat, and I nudged him with a finger. Merlon's eyes slid to me and away again as if he had left something half-said and must return to it later.
After we ate, Mother took me to the solar and set me before the narrow glass.
"Again," she said. "Curtsy. Keep your eyes level."
I bent my knees and tried to keep my back straight. Dusk shifted his talons and leaned to look at himself in the glass. The sight of the bird on my shoulder made me want to smile. Mother did not smile.
"You look like a mummer," she said. "Take him off."
Dusk hopped to the chair back and stared at us both as if measuring us for seeds.
Maester Merlon joined us with a small book in his hand.
"Titles," he said. "You will say, 'My lord' and 'my lady' to those above and equal, and 'good-sister' and 'good-brother' to the Darklyn wives and husbands by marriage. You will not shorten names unless asked. Do not speak out of turn unless you are called to it."
I tried again. My feet wanted to go wrong when I thought on them. The dip came crooked. My tongue went dry when I said the forms. Dusk gave a throaty croak that sounded like laughter. I glared at him and he fluffed his neck until he looked twice his size.
"She is a child," Merlon said after a time, kindly. "Courts do not expect high grace at her age. A straight back and a soft voice will do."
"I will not have Darklyns looking down their noses and seeing a chick from a fish-stink village," Mother said. There was steel in it. "We are Darkwood. We stand straight. We keep our bargains. She will not give them cause to say we are lesser."
"I will not," I said. I meant it. The words might not come out smooth, but they would come out true.
There was a shout in the yard then, the kind that brings men running. Merlon cocked his head. Mother went to the window and pushed the shutter.
"At the gate," she said. "Alwyn's there. Blood on the men."
We went down. The hall's doors were wide. Two men were carrying a man between them, a long body in a torn surcoat with a half-flayed badge I did not know. His hair was clotted. Blood had soaked the cloth from hip to knee on one side and through at the shoulder. His breath rattled.
"A hedge knight," Ser Alwyn said. "Calls himself Ser Tolan. Says bandits took him on the road and left him with the crows."
"Put him by the fire," Father said, rising from his seat. "Easy now."
They laid him out on a trestle. Merlon went to him with his hands already working, cutting cloth, baring wounds. The right thigh held a deep cut that had bit into muscle. The knee was swollen wrong. There were finger marks on his throat and a bruise that ran across his ribs like a rope had been there. His eyes flicked to the roof and back to the fire as if the world would not settle.
"Hold him," Merlon said, and the men-at-arms pinned shoulder and hip. He felt along the leg and the man groaned through his teeth.
"Hush," Merlon told him. "Save your breath."
"Bandits," Ser Tolan said, each word a push. "Three of them. Iron helms. Took my purse. Would have took my horse if he weren't meaner than I am."
"You're not riding soon," Merlon said. His voice was even. "The knee is foul and the thigh is worse. If you live—and I think you may—you will not fight again. Not with that leg. Likely you will not walk true."
Ser Tolan stared at him. He shut his eyes once, opened them, and nodded like a man who'd lost everything.
"Aye," he said. "So be it."
Mother made the sign of the Seven and crossed herself. Father set his jaw and looked to Alwyn.
"Have someone ride the road and see if there are corpses there to speak for it," he said. "And let the watch know to sleep light."
Merlon bound and stitched. He set the leg as best he could and bade them fetch water and clean cloth and poppy. When he had done all a maester could do, he wiped his hands and told the knight to sleep if he could and sent the rest away.
I waited until the men went out and the hall quieted. The fire ticked. Dusk watched from the rafter beam with his head tucked and one eye showing. Ser Tolan lay breathing with his teeth clenched. He looked at me when I came near.
"Lady," he said, tired and rough. "If you've a prayer, say it. I am not proud."
"I will," I told him. "May I touch you?"
He grunted what might have been a laugh. "If it pleases you."
I set my hand to the good skin above the wound at his thigh and let the rest fall away. The knee held a torn binding and a chip that had lifted. The thigh muscle had a deep bite taken out and bled into itself. There were small leaks that would spoil the meat if left. One rib had a crack and lay sore against the lung. The throat showed a bruise where hands had pressed. The body had started to send its workmen, slow and heavy.
I drew the bleeding shut and called for a cleaner growth along the cut, not a keloid, not the proud kind that bound wrong. I set the chip back where it belonged and eased the knee's swell without letting it go slack. I pulled the torn edges of muscle toward one another and laid a thin stitch where flesh would meet flesh. I dried the wet where it pooled inside and left a little heat to make it look like it was healing honest. I kept the rib still and soothed the tender places so he could breathe without that rattle.
The blood smell dimmed. The worst of the pain went flat. I left the small hurts as they were: the cuts along the arm, the bruises at the throat, the scrape at the cheek. His skin would show what had been, and the maester's stitches would seem to have done their share.
Ser Tolan's jaw loosened. His eyes went clear and fixed on me.
"You healed me," he said, not loud.
"I prayed for you," I said. "Tell no one. I ask it plain."
He drew a breath and held it, and when he let it out he nodded slow.
"By the Seven," he said. "And by my honor. I will not speak of it. Not to a soul."
"Thank you," I said.
He made to rise and thought better of it. Instead he tilted his head, and in that small bow there was more pride than in a shout.
"My lady," he said. "If I stand again—and it seems I might, by your hand—I would be your man. I will swear my sword to you. Let me be your sworn shield. I will protect you from all who would do you harm, by my life and my sword."
Dusk clicked his beak in the high dark. I felt my heart beat hard once and then steady. I did not let myself smile. The fire snapped in the grate and the hall held its breath.
AN: Chapter 5 is out on Patreon!
Ser Tolan's words hung in the hall.
"My lady," he said again, voice rough from hurt, "let me be your sworn shield. I will protect you from all who would do you harm."
I felt heat in my face. It pleased me, and it frightened me, and I did not know which was the stronger.
"It is not mine to grant," I told him. "I cannot give you lands or stipend. Only my father, Lord Forrest, may do that. If he agrees, I would be honored to be kept by your oath."
"Then I shall speak my oath to your father, my lady."
"Do so when you've healed, Ser Knight. Sleep now."
He watched me a long breath, then shut his eyes and let his jaw slacken as if he had put the weight of the vow down beside him. I touched the trestle, not him, and stepped away.
Dusk shifted on the beam and clicked his beak once. I raised a finger and he dropped to my shoulder. I left the hall with the bird at my ear and the fire at my back.
—
Dusk woke me with a harsh caw at gray light. I started up, the dream gone before I could place it. The room was cold. He cawed again and hopped to the sill.
I went to the window. Below, the yard churned with hooves. Father was mounted, cloak thrown back. Near fifty of our men were in the saddle—spears, short bows slung, helms hanging from saddles. Ser Alwyn sat his horse at Father's right, face set. Hobb stood to one side with a spear in his hand though he did not ride out.
Father raised his hand. The gate went open. They went through in a hard run and took the road south. The palisade banners shook in the wind as they passed. I stood until the last of them was a dark fleck on the lane.
I dressed and went down. Mother was in the solar with Maester Merlon. There was a letter open on the table and a small loaf cut in three.
"Your father rides for the road," Mother said before I could ask. "The men who hurt that knight may still be near. He will sweep as far as the willow ford and back by the sheep track."
Merlon had his satchel half packed. He set aside the letter.
"Alwyn took half the riders," he said. "The rest are posted at the crossings and the bay road. The watch is doubled. We will have petitioners as ever. Your mother and I will hear them."
"Do we sit in the hall?" I asked.
"We do," Mother said. Her mouth was a straight line. "And we will not look like a henhouse because men are gone. Dusk does not come to the chair."
"I will keep him near," I said. Dusk nipped my ear as if to say otherwise.
—
The hall breathed smoke and the smell of yesterday's fish. We sat early. Hobb stood with two boys in dark green who shifted their feet and tried to look like men. The doors were open. The wind moved the rushes at the threshold.
We heard a woman ask leave to sell her husband's knife to buy salt for winter, and Mother said she might and marked her name for a smaller poor list in the coming month. We heard a thatcher swear he would finish the ferry roof by first bells tomorrow or go unpaid for the third week. Two lads brought a fox tail and argued each other hoarse over whose snare took it. I kept my hands folded and my face plain and wished Father were there to make the small straightening seem easy.
Near noon, a farmer came up with dirt to his elbows and fear in his eyes. I knew him by sight if not by name.
"M'lady," he said, bowing to Mother and then to me. "Maester. I beg a look at my barley and the wheat in the low field. There's spots on the leaves and a black in the heads I do not like. The men say blight. I seen it once when I was a boy, and we went hungry after."
Merlon's head came up at once.
"You did right to come," he said. "We have a packet from the Citadel on new signs in the south. I will see your fields this day if my lady allows."
"Go," Mother said. "I'll sit the hall. Amelia may go with you if she promises to do better in her courtesies after."
"I promise," I said too quick.
"Not like a mummer," Mother said. "Proper."
"Proper," I said.
Merlon gathered his satchel and nodded toward the undercroft.
"First, a word with our knight," he said.
—
Ser Tolan slept when we came. The poppy still hung about him. The thigh was bound with Merlon's own neat stitches. The knee was set as best it could be.
Merlon washed his hands and worked in quiet. He pried the bandage and felt along the swelling. He pressed at the knee and watched the knight's face. Tolan stirred but did not groan. Dusk came down to the foot of the trestle and cocked his head to see.
"This is better than it had any right to be," Merlon said at last. He looked not at me but at his hands. "The chip sits where it ought. The heat is steady, not wild. If he keeps easy and the binding stays true, he may walk straight yet. With time, he may stand with a shield again."
Tolan's eyes cracked open.
"Seven smiled on me," he said. His voice had that slow drag poppy gives. "I woke from dark and the hurt had gone to a corner."
Merlon made a small sound in his throat. "If the Seven are in the habit of setting bones, I'll light offerings twice a day," he said. He bound the cloth again and tied it off. "Rest. No pride. If you pull on that leg too soon you'll rue it."
"Yes, Maester," Tolan said. His gaze slid to me. He held my eyes a moment, then shut his own.
I laced my fingers together to keep them still.
"We will look in on you again," I said. "Sleep."
In the yard, Merlon blew out a breath as if he had been holding it.
"Two in two days," he said, not to me. "And if a third comes, the Citadel has a word for it, and I do not like that word."
"What word?" I asked, because my tongue went before my sense.
"Miracles," he said. He shook his head, as if to clear something away. "Irrational. The only thing worse than Sorcery. Come, the fields."
—
We took our small cobs. The road up from the hall gave to tracks between hedges. The wind had a bite in it but the sun sat fair. Dusk rode my shoulder and dug his claws in when the cob stumbled; I hushed him and he settled.
The farmer—Eddic Parren, that was his name—met us at his gate and took us by a path through the barley first. The leaves showed small spots, brown set in yellow. Some heads carried a dark smear, and a few had a soot that came off on my fingers when I touched it.
"Smuts," Merlon said. "Rusts. Mildews. They have near names and near looks, and all of them steal bread."
He had me break a head and look close where the beard met the grain. "See the black in the crease? That spreads if you let it."
He had me bend a leaf to the light to show the powder there. "If a field has too much of that powder, the wind will carry it farther."
"Can we cure it?" I asked, though I thought I knew.
"No." He said it plain. "You cut it out. You burn what you cut. You keep clean tools. You leave space between rows if you can bear the lost seed. You watch the wind. You do not carry the rot home on your boots."
We went to the low field with wheat. The spots were worse there. Eddic's mouth had tightened to a line.
"We have four children," he said, not looking at me. "If this goes, we have nothing."
Merlon wiped his fingers on a cloth.
"We'll mark what must be cut and burned," he said. "If the wind stays kind, you may keep half the field."
He went one way and I another. He cut leaves with his knife and showed me the right kind of edge, not ragged. He spoke of the way rot hides under the leaf and shows itself only when the light catches it. He told me to taste a grain that had turned and showed me how bitter sits at the back of the tongue. He had a good way of it. He taught like Father judged: piece by piece, no hurry.
All the while I felt the wrong things working in the plants around us. They were simple. They had rules. They grew where moist air lay in the still places, where leaves touched, where hands were careless. They traveled as dust travels. I breathed and reached for the small living that ran against the grain. I shaped a thing that would take to air and sit light on stalk and leaf and grain. I set it to feed on what should not be there. I set it to die when the rot was gone. I made it wake when wind moved and sleep when the ground went dry. I gave it no taste that a tongue would find.
It needed a place to begin. I touched the undersides of three leaves and let some go on my breath. Dusk made a little sound only I heard. Merlon's voice went on about rows and space and wind. I listened. I did not look at my hands.
We marked the worst of the wheat for cutting. We walked the line where barley gave to vegetables. Eddic's wife had cabbages set in. Some outer leaves showed holes and a wet along the ribs where the green had gone soft.
"That is a different trouble," Merlon said, and taught me the look of it. "The stink is the surest sign. You smell it yet?"
I shook my head.
"You will," he said. "There is no cure for that either. You take the outer leaves off when the wet comes. Sometimes you can keep the heart if you are quick."
I bent near and tasted air with my mouth open the way he had shown me for plants. There was a sour there, faint. I sent my work into the cabbage rows as well.
When we had done, Merlon spoke to Eddic in the yard.
"You must pull everything we marked," he said. "Burn it before sundown. Wash your knife. Wash your hands. Tomorrow, if the wind rises off the sea, you may be better."
"If it does not?" Eddic asked. He kept his eyes low.
"Then you pull more," Merlon said. "I will send word to the hall for barley from the store if it comes to that."
He put his hand on the man's shoulder. "It is not your fault. This year, the air is wrong."
Eddic bowed to him and to me.
"Thank you, Maester. My lady." His wife nodded from the doorway. The smallest child hid her mouth in her mother's skirt and stared.
We rode back through lanes where the hedges rattled. Dusk fell asleep on my shoulder and dreamt, if ravens dream, with small clicks in his throat.
"You listened well," Merlon said when the hall's roof came in sight. "And you asked the right questions."
"I will do better in courtesies," I said, because I had promised.
He smiled with half his mouth.
"A straight back and a soft voice will serve," he said. "Your mother asks more because she knows you can give it."
I did not know what to say to that.
—
The afternoon brought small matters. A net mended with old cord, to be replaced from the stores with the promise of return. A boy brought in for throwing stones at the sept steps; he scrubbed the floor while Mother spoke to him about pride and the price of cracked flagstones. Hobb sent men to relieve the watch at the south gate and limped on his own rounds with his spear as a staff.
Dusk hopped from the settle to my shoulder and back again. Each time I shook him off, he came back with his eye bright as pitch.
The light went down. The wind rose in the last hour before night. We ate pottage with a strip of bacon and half an onion chopped fine, and small beer. The door stood open for the riders.
They came in the dark. The first sound was hooves on the lane, many hooves, and then voices. The gate called. When the doors opened, men came through in a press, some walking and some borne. I counted without meaning to count. Fewer than went.
Father had blood on his hair and on the sleeve of his riding cloak. There was a cut at his brow and a tear at his shoulder where the mail had given. His mouth was thin. He swung down stiffly and put a hand to the table as if it were nothing. Men took the bodies to the benches along the wall and covered faces with cloaks. Five stayed covered. The others sat or lay and spoke in low voices. Ser Alwyn went from one to another with his jaw tight, naming names to Hobb for the tally.
Mother went to Father and put out her hand. He caught it and squeezed once.
"Later," he said to her, and then, to the room, "Food for the living. Wine for the dead. Light the candles at the sept."
He saw me then and I saw the way his eyes went small. He shook his head at once.
"Not now, little bird," he said. His voice was kind but hard. "Go to your mother."
"You are hurt," I said. I did not keep the worry from it. "Let me—"
"No," he said, more sharp than I had ever heard him with me. "Go."
I stood where I was until Mother touched my arm. "Come," she said, and drew me back. It shamed me, that I wanted to cry like a child. I did not.
"Maester," Father called, and Merlon came quick. "Your hands, if you please."
They took him to the bench by the fire. Men unbuckled his mail and cut his sleeve. I saw a flash of opened flesh and the wet shine of it and then Mother turned my head with her hand. I heard Merlon say where and how deep, and Father tell him what the men had found on the road—tracks toward the willow ford, a dead man in an iron helm, two more scattered, a third set of tracks that turned off into the reeds. They had taken a purse back and a horse without a rider. Five of ours lay on the trestles.
Dusk was silent on my shoulder. He did not peck or croak. He watched as if he knew.
When the maester's needle went in, Father let out a breath and said nothing more. Mother's hand found mine and held it.
I went to the corner when I could and sat where the light did not touch me. I made small shapes with my fingers and let them go again. I wished he had let me lay my hand on his good skin and pull the hurt down and be done with it. He would not have it. I was his little bird and not his maester.
They did not send me to bed, but I went when the candles had burned half down. Dusk came with me and took the sill. I lay on my side with my hand open in the dark.
Sleep took me and gave me no comfort. I saw water rise and fall and rise again, not in waves I knew, but in towering walls. Streets of glass went under it. Men and women ran and their mouths opened and shut. A thing moved in the water. It was too large to take in, and yet I saw its eye and the pale rim of it, and the way the water listened to it. It turned, and a city drowned beneath salt and storm. I reached and felt nothing to take hold of. The air was white and hard on the nose.
I woke with my palm raised and the room quiet. Dusk made a small sound. The wind pressed at the shutters and let go again. I lay and listened until my breath matched the bird's, and I did not sleep for a long time after.
I went to my father's chamber before the sun set the palisade tops to gold. The door was unlatched. I eased it with my fingertips and let it close behind me without a sound.
The room was dim and still. The rushes had been freshened. A brazier burned low by the wall, more ember than flame. Father lay on his back with the blanket to his ribs, bandages under his arm and over his shoulder, another at his temple where the cut ran. The linen had a brown edge where the blood had dried. His breath was slow. Mother's pallet stood across the room, empty, the coverlet neat as a folded oath. She had said she would sleep apart until he healed, so he would not be roused by her turning.
I stood and listened. There was the soft rasp of his breath, the faint tick of the brazier, the cloth at the window stirring against the night air. Dusk was not there. I had barred my own shutter to keep him in.
I slipped to Father's side and set my palm to the inside of his wrist where the skin was thin. Warm. The beat ran stout and regular. I let the rest of the world fall away and reached the way I always did.
The shoulder wound had opened clean enough but there had been dirt on the mail, and dirt in the wound. Something mean had begun there, small and hungry. It had already set to work under the binding where no eye could see, where a maester's needle could not pick it out. In a little while it would have sent its poison along the old track of a scar and into the hollow under the arm. A fever would have come slow and then strong. It would have eaten him in the end.
I crushed it. I loosed a thin wet where the blood had pooled foul, and folded the vessels closed against any fresh leaking. I drew down the heat without leaving it cold. I eased the pull at the rib and set a thin brace where the cracked place lay sore. I straightened the little fibers at the edge of the cut and bade them knit, but not too neat. A neatness would read false. I left the topmost layer of skin to show strain. The temple cut I left as it was, clean and tied. I let the ache in the muscles ride where it must to be believed.
He stirred. His breath hitched. I lifted my hand from his wrist and set it to the inside of his forearm. Skin on skin, so the sense of it would not startle him when he woke.
His eyes came open all at once. He took me in and then took in the room again and let out a long breath through his nose. The sound had a little of a laugh to it.
"Little bird," he said. His voice was rough at the edges. "So that is the way of it."
"Father," I whispered.
He drew his mouth into a line and then let it soften.
"You eased the fire in me," he said. "I felt it go. Gods, but I did. Thank you."
"I should have asked you," I said. "I did not wish to wait."
"I know." He shifted. The movement did not pull at him the way it had. His eyes went to the ceiling and came back to me. "Listen to me now. No one must know, not until the time is right. Not until you are ready to defend yourself."
I stared at him. My lips parted. I could not help it.
He huffed a breath that might have been a laugh if he had had more wind to spare. "Do not look so startled. I am not an absent father. I see what happens in my hall. Your mother sees more. We have eyes and we have sense."
"Mother…" The word came thin.
"She knows," he said. "Only she and I. Keep it so. The world is kind to small mercies until it is not. Then it takes, and takes again. I will not have it take you."
I swallowed. I could not keep from putting my hand to his brow as if I were only a daughter testing for heat.
"You are cooler," I said, steadying myself with plain words. "The pain will be less. You should sleep now."
"A lord should argue, to hear you tell it," he said, eyes closing already, "but I am not a fool. Put me to it."
I set two fingers at the side of his neck and eased the rush of wakefulness into a long low tide. His breath deepened. His mouth slackened. He slept.
I drew the blanket up to his chest and watched him for a little while. The bandages lay where they had. The big hurt had been silenced. The small hurts sat plain on his skin where they were meant to sit, looking honest.
On my way out, the air in the passage felt thin. I set my hand on the stone and took two steps. Then the stone slid from under my palm and the world turned.
A memory rose like a black wave. It came on all sides at once.
Victoria.
I was not Amelia Darkwood. I was Amelia Claire Dallon. My hand was on my sister's skin. I had changed her. I had made her more appealing to me. I had told myself I was helping. I had bent her mind. I had brainwashed her. I had taken the thing I loved and put a leash on it and called it love. The white lamps hurt the eyes. The sharp smell cut the back of my throat. I heard my own breath in my own head. I could feel the marks I had set in her and how I had come to set them. I had done it. I had done it.
Guilty!
Guilty!
Guilty!
GUILTY!
"I'm sorry!" I heard my own voice cry, high and raw, and I did not know if I spoke it in the passage or in that other room. I could not catch my breath. The floor heaved. I reached for a wall and struck it with my head instead. There was a flash and then quiet.
—
I woke in a world that smelled of rush and soft old wool. The light was thin and gray. Dusk sat on the sill with his head tucked and one eye open. When I moved, he lifted his head at once and made a small sound, a question.
My forehead hurt. When I touched it, there was a thick pad of cloth under a strip of linen.
I turned my head and found my mother sleeping beside me on the bed. She had not taken off her gown. She lay on her side with her hand near my arm, as if she had meant to hold me and had fallen asleep before she did. There was a little frown between her brows even in sleep.
"Mother," I said, and touched her sleeve. "Mother."
She started, drew a breath, and sat up. At once her hand went to my cheek, then to the bandage. Her eyes were clear in an instant.
"Thank the Seven," she said, very low.
"What happened?" My voice sounded wrong to me. Dusk clicked his beak once and hopped along the sill.
"You screamed," she said. "The guards heard you and ran. They found you on the floor with your head to the wall. Hobb carried you up. Maester Merlon says you took no worse hurt than a bruise."
"I do not remember." I said it and waited. There was nothing there but the thin ache in my head and a tiredness in my bones. "I came from Father's room and then—nothing."
"You should not have been walking the passage in the dark," she said, and then she sighed. "No. That is not fair. We were all walking the passage in the dark these last days."
She kissed my temple where the bandage did not cover. "Lie still. You will rest."
"Father?" The word came out before I could stop it.
"Your father woke easy," she said. "He is better. His color is good. Maester Merlon stitched him last night and sat with him. By the time the men came back, the worst had passed. This morning, he says the pain has gone from a shout to a whisper."
I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding. Dusk made a soft sound, as if he had felt it leave me.
"Do not move too quick," Mother said, and smoothed my hair as if I were small again.
—
Word went through the hall before the bread was cut. Men smiled into their cups. The scullions set twice the trencher boards. Old Hobb had a grin that made him look like a boy again despite the limp. I saw it and could not help but smile back. Grief sat in the room still—five cloaks folded on five benches by the back wall, five spears stacked for five men—but the air did not lie flat the way it had in the night.
They set a great breaking of fast, as great as Velton could make it. Oats with honey. Two fresh loaves from the town ovens set on the board steaming. Bacon in strips set crisp. A crock of pickled onions. Smoked fish laid silver and brown. The men who had ridden ate first and left room for the women after them, and then the boys slipped to the ends and took theirs in quick mouthfuls.
Father came out with Merlon on one side and Ser Alwyn on the other. He walked. He did not need all the help they offered, but he did not push it away to make a show. The bandage at his temple was clean. The stitches under his sleeve pulled the cloth a little. The line of his mouth was his own again. When he sat, the sound in the hall rose and fell like a single breath and then settled.
"Friends," he said. His voice carried. "We put five good men to the benches last night. We will set their names in the sept this day. Their families will not want. Their tithes will be forgiven for a year, and the store will send barley and fish until next harvest. Where there is a boy old enough to lift a net, there will be a place for him. Where there is not, there will be coin."
A murmur went round the room, a low sound of assent. I saw Hobb nod, and Ser Alwyn's jaw ease a little. Mother had her hands folded and her eyes on Father's face.
"As for the road," Father went on, "we found them. Three. One dead at our first coming. Two more last night. The third turned to the reeds and we lost him at the flats. He will not come here again."
He looked to Alwyn. "We will keep the watch doubled for a time."
"Aye, m'lord," Alwyn said.
Father drew breath, turned his head, and looked down the board to where a man in a clean tunic sat with his hands on his knees.
"Ser Tolan," he said.
The hedge knight rose. He had washed. His hair lay smooth. The limp was small. He held himself as straight as his leg would let him and did not make more of the pain than a set jaw.
"You asked to speak an oath the other day," Father said. "My daughter tells me you asked to give it to her."
Ser Tolan's gaze flicked to me and back to Father.
"Aye, my lord," he said. His voice was rough yet, but steady. "If it please you."
"It pleases me," Father said. "But not to my daughter alone. You will be her sworn shield, and mine, and my lady's, and stand for House Darkwood. You will keep your first care for my girl as we all do. You will answer to me in war and in peace. Do you take it so?"
"I do, my lord."
"Then speak."
Ser Tolan went to one knee before the dais. He set his good hand to his sword and his other to his heart and bowed his head. When he spoke, he spoke as if the words were a blade and must be kept clean.
"By the Seven who are one, by my honor as a knight, by my life and my sword, I, Ser Tolan of no great house, do swear to guard the Lady Amelia of House Darkwood, and to keep safe Lord Forrest and Lady Serys and their people. I will stand before her in peril, I will rise when she falls, I will not leave her while I can draw breath. I will take no coin to set me from this oath, and I will hold no love above it. So I swear."
"Rise," Father said.
Tolan stood. Father put out his hand and set it on the knight's shoulder, careful of the stitches.
"We are not a rich house," he said. "We have what we need and sometimes a little more. You shall have land from us all the same. Two strips by the south ditch where the meadow lies dry enough in summer, and the right to set a cottage by the willow there. You will have two willing men from among our crofters to help you set it up and keep a share. The store will send you seed and a piglet at spring. You will have a place in my hall and at my table, and a bed near my daughter's chamber when we are at Velton. Do you accept it?"
"I do, my lord." Ser Tolan's mouth trembled then steadied. He bowed to Father, then to Mother, then to me.
"My lady," he said to me, low. "I am your man."
I did not trust my voice. I stood and set my hand to his for a heartbeat and then let it fall.
"Eat," Father said then, and he smiled, a true smile that showed the lines at the corners of his eyes. "We have men to mourn and a road made safe enough to travel. We will take our grief with bread in our bellies."
Merlon watched all of it with his tablet near his hand and his mouth in a line that could have been worry or thought. When Father turned his head too quickly, Merlon's gaze went to the stitches and then to Father's eyes. He wrote something down and then said nothing.
After, when the cups were low and the fish bones piled, the men carried the cloaked forms to the sept and the candles went up. I did not bring Dusk through that door. We stood with the wives and mothers and brothers while the septa spoke over the coverings and set the names in her book. There were no loud sounds, only the soft ones. When we left, the wind had a salt to it and the banners moved on the palisade.
Two days passed without the kind of news that makes a hall hush. The fields kept to their business. The wind turned from the sea and did what it could for Eddic Parren's barley. Merlon walked his circuit twice each day and wrote at night. Ser Tolan found his footing and stood a watch at my door by evening and the yard gate by noon, his hand easy on the hilt and his eyes on the lanes. Mother kept me at courtesies until my knees ached and my voice would say "my lord" without tangling. Hobb limped and scolded and smiled at children when he thought no one saw him. Dusk brought me a bent nail from the yard and three bright pebbles from the path and would not be told he had done wrong.
On the third morning the carriage stood in the yard with its wheels greased and the cushions shaken and a basket of bread and cold fish set under the seat. The cobs were harnessed. The sky was high and pale and the air had a clean edge to it. Men strapped the last of the chests behind and Mother checked the ties herself. Father kissed her and spoke into her ear and then he took my hand.
"Duskendale," he said. "Keep your back straight and your eyes level. Mind your mother."
"I will," I said.
He looked past me then, toward the hall, and his gaze softened in a way that told me he saw more than he said.
"Go on, my lady." he told me.
We climbed in. The driver clicked his tongue. The wheels took the rut at the gate and the road opened south, the bay on our left, the hedges on our right, and Duskendale beyond the bend of the land. I sat beside Mother with my hands folded and the basket at my feet, and the sound of the sea kept us company as we went.