They halted when the sun stood just past its height, the wheels warm to the touch and the horses' flanks dark with sweat where the harness rubbed. The road south of Velton ran close by the bay for a stretch, then climbed to heath and scrub where the wind came keener off the water. Here the lane widened to a gentle hollow where carts sometimes drew aside to let a lord's train pass. A spring bubbled near the hedge. There was grass enough for the cobs and the pack-horses, a scrap of shade under a leaning elm, and beyond it a drift of low meadow bright with flowers.
"We'll rest for an hour," Forrest said. "No more. Water the horses and feed them."
Ser Alwyn gave the word. Men slipped out of saddles, shook out the stiffness, and set to the tasks they knew. Two boys saw to the buckets. The driver cocked his ear as the wheels cooled and took a stone from the left hind rim, satisfied as a man who had pulled a thorn from his own foot. The carriage lamps were hooded, unlit. A breeze teased at the leather curtains, carrying a clean smell that remembered salt and sun-warmed weeds.
Lady Serys climbed down with a hand to the doorframe, skirts gathered. The wind lifted the loose tendrils of her dark hair. There was color in her cheeks and a light in her eye that made her look younger than she had the day before. She went to the nearest horse and laid a hand on its neck. The big head lowered as if it knew her as well as it knew the bit and the brush.
"You ride with the men," she told Forrest, "and still you forget to drink when the sun is fair."
She passed him the skin without waiting for him to ask. He drank, and when he wiped his mouth she was watching him as if to be sure he'd taken more than a swallow.
"It is an hour," he said, handing it back. "You always said I was a bad patient."
"You are a worse husband if I let you go to Duskendale with your lips cracked and your head light."
He smiled at that, an old smile that had mended more quarrels than he could count. "There is no quarrel here. Only a husband and a wife and an hour too fine to waste. Walk with me."
He nodded to Alwyn and pointed with his chin to the meadow. The knight saw, weighed the distance, looked to the men posted on the rise, and answered with a nod of his own.
"Within sight," he said. "Call if you need me."
"For a stroll, Ser? I will call if the flowers charge," Serys said, wry as ever. Alwyn's mouth twisted in a shadow of a grin he tried to hide with a cough.
They went through the gap in the hedge and into a spread of color that looked almost too bright to come from the stubborn ground of the Crownlands. The blooms stood in clumps and scatterings, not in neat rows. Pink thrift and blue cornflowers. Yellow buttons that caught the eye at once, and small white stars that asked you to look twice before you saw them. There were low purple bells no bigger than the nail of a little finger and taller stalks with heads that trembled when the wind found them.
Serys went among them with the care of a woman who did not wish to break what she admired. She reached to touch a petal and did not pluck it.
"When I was a girl," she said, "there was a patch like this behind my mother's house beyond Rosby's hedges. My sisters and I would bring armfuls home and the house would smell sweet for a day, and then the stems turned foul and we were scolded for the beetles."
"Your mother had her way."
"She did. She told us to leave flowers where they belonged. The bees knew better than we did what to do with them." Serys glanced at him. "I have been thinking of bees a great deal of late."
He knew why. The baby. He reached for her hand and she gave it, fingers warm, the new ring he'd had fashioned last winter cool against his own skin. The bandages under his shirt pulled when he moved too quickly; he did not show it. He could feel the slow strength in him, the easing of heat where heat had no right to be. He had woken to the sense of a fire that had not burned out so much as been smothered neatly. He had thanked his daughter, and forbade the world.
"You are certain," he asked her, low.
Serys's smile was not the laugh of a girl but it was no less bright for that.
"As certain as a woman can be at this early hour. There is a rightness when a seed takes. The body knows. Sometimes it is wrong and the knowledge comes too early and is taken back, but this does not feel like that." A pause, and then she could not help herself, the pride in her voice plain for anyone to hear if they had cared to eavesdrop upon the wind. "It sits well."
He squeezed her hand.
"Then it sits well with me also. This time," he said, "do you have names for me to scowl at before I let you persuade me?"
"Who scowls?" she asked, all false innocence. "You fold like wet cloth when I press you."
"Ah? Do I?"
"You do," she said, and did not let him argue. "If it is a girl—"
"You name her," he said at once. He had thought on it in the night after the stitching, with Merlon's hands gentle near his shoulder and the sound of Amelia's voice echoing in his mind from their talk. "If she is a girl, it is your right. And your pleasure."
"You have grown wise," Serys said, almost solemn. "And generous."
"I am both, and you know it."
Serys looked out over the meadow.
"Ellyn," she said first, testing it. "I have always liked the sound. Or Alyssa, for the sound of the L's together. Jeyne is a good name; there is no pretension in it. Rowenna—no. Too hard for a little mouth. Ysilla? It makes a man look twice at the s when he writes it. I would not make her quarrel with her own name before she can say it. Aelinor is too proud for our house. The great houses hoard their names like their gold."
"Then take one the great do not want," Forrest said. "If it makes you smile when you say it, that is the test."
"Alyssa," Serys said again, and the way she said it told him the test had been passed. "Alyssa Darkwood. That is a good name. It sits in the mouth without fuss."
"For a boy," Forrest said, "I will be dull."
He named what he had been turning over. "Denys, for the line we serve. Or Gawen, which is a name that does not start fights. Edric is plain and solid. Tomas is honest. Denys is best. It tells the Darklyns I remember whose leave we hold."
"You would flatter cousins who never can be pleased," Serys said, but without heat. "Denys is a good name. Though I would have our son stand on his own legs, not always in another man's shadow."
"He will stand," Forrest said. "And if ever a cousin sneers, he can point to the work of his hands, and let the cousin point to the silk of his sleeves. I know which I would rather have when winter comes."
She laughed at that, the low laugh of a woman who shared a jest instead of throwing it.
"So," she said. "Alyssa if she is a girl. Denys if he is a boy. But hear me, my lord. If he comes and I decide when I look at him he is no Denys, I will say so without shame."
"You will say so," Forrest allowed, smiling. "And then you will call him what you like no matter what I have put to parchment."
Serys tugged him a little farther along the edge of the flowers to where the ground rose. The men were in sight, a loose knot of horses and steel. Ser Alwyn stood with one hand on a saddle, talking to the driver, checking the straps on the chests himself. He turned his head and found them in a glance. He did not call out. He did not need to. They were within sight. He could reach them at a run if need be.
"Do you remember," Serys said, sudden as a girl, "that first time? You would not look me in the face long enough to see the color of my eyes."
He could not stop the small groan that came. "Must we tell that tale again? Your mother made it a song."
"She did not sing it well," Serys said, amused. "You were sixteen and you stood in the Dun Fort's market with a coil of rope over your shoulder like any fisher's boy. I thought you a fisher's boy."
"I was a lord's son with a fisher's hands."
"You were a boy," she corrected. "A shy one, with freckles you would not let the sun see. I asked you the price of the rope and you counted it twice before you spoke because I had said your name first. 'Forrest Darkwood,' I said, and you went as red as a beet."
"My hands were dirty," Forrest said, as if that could excuse a stammer. "I thought I would smear your sleeve if I breathed on you."
"You thought I would not see your hands were clean beneath the fish oil? Fool. They were good hands. Not soft. I liked them. My father had a mind to barter me to a man fifty with teeth like old bones. I did not tell you that then. It would have sent you running."
"I might have stayed."
"You would have stayed," she said quietly. "You stand when it matters. You always did. The world is not kind to girls whose fathers count their worth in coin and barrels. I was lucky. We were lucky. Lesser houses are not much valued when great men play at crowns, but small folk can turn their own keys at times. Rosby did not care enough to forbid it. The Darklyns saw no harm. Your letters were neat. You charmed my mother and sat quiet with my sisters when the rain came and read to them so I could help with the fish. They asked you back themselves, as if I had nothing to do with it."
"I talked of nets and tides," Forrest said. "I do not think your sisters listened."
"They listened," Serys said. "You spoke to them as if they were worth speaking to. That is a gift not many men have."
"It is not a gift," Forrest said, after a moment. "It is a duty."
He looked out to the bay where the water showed between the low hills like a strip of beaten tin.
"I was lucky," he said. "We were both lucky. A great house would have married you to a stranger and married me to a purse. There is peace in being small."
"Peace, and sometimes safety," Serys said. The wind shifted and she drew his arm closer. "And sometimes not. We are small enough to be trampled when big feet fall. We are small enough to be forgotten when coin is counted. Still, I would rather be forgotten than sold."
Forrest kissed the top of her head and breathed her in. Under all the scents of road and horse and salted air there was the cool trace of the soap from that morning.
"We will be careful," he said. "We will walk in with straight backs and leave without leaving our pride behind us. I will eat every cutting remark a cousin serves me and not leave a crumb."
"That is well," Serys said, and then her mouth tightened a little. "We will bring our daughter through this set of eyes and ears and then the next."
He knew that sound. He knew what was coming. He wished to delay it for a moment more. He could not. They were far enough from the men for a few words without a listening ear, and close enough that any man with a bow would be a fool to shoot. There was no time like this for talk that could not be had in a hall.
"You spoke to her," he said. "In the night."
"She came from your chamber, then fell in the passage," Serys answered. "She woke with a bruise and no memory of it. I sat with her. She was not only our Amelia as she slept."
Serys's eyes were steady. "There were words. They were not for me. I will not repeat them to you."
"Then do not," Forrest said, heavier than he meant. "Do not if it will cost her. Do not if it will cost you."
Serys's hand tightened on his arm. "I am glad to see you a coward where she is concerned."
"Call it what you like," Forrest said, and no strength in the world could have kept the truth from his tongue. "It is the name for a father's heart. I will not risk her for a tale told twice."
"The gift grows," Serys said. "She doles it out to herself in crumbs. A cup here, a mouthful there. Soon it will be a loaf whether she will or not. She is careful. She makes the maester's work look as if it is his work. She leaves pain to be believed. She lies. Those are all wise things. But the thing itself is not small."
"I know," Forrest said.
Serys watched a bumblebee shove its way into the throat of a purple flower. "You wish to believe it is only healing. It is not only healing. I can feel the shape of it at the edges when she passes me. It is not a poultice in a girl's hand. It is the shaping of flesh. The old tales say the dragonlords made things in their forges that ask no blacksmith. Flesh that listens to a master. Flesh that is told to be other than it is. You do not like those tales, and neither do I. I will tell you this plain: when she set her hand on Will Moss, the hurt obeyed her. When she put fingers to that knight's leg, it obeyed her. When she stood beside your bed last night, I felt the air listen. And the raven."
Forrest drew air and let it go. "Ravens are clever. Merlon himself said they fix on a person."
"They fix," Serys said. "They do not take bread from a hand and watch for the next bite when a girl clicks her tongue. They do not look at a mirror as if the looking matters to them. They do not hiss at a gust like a cat and then settle when the same girl lays a finger on their breast. Perhaps some do. Not this. Not this way. He is her beast now."
Forrest looked back to the camp. He could see the black shape perched on the carriage roof. It did not preen. It watched. It watched the road, the men, the wind as it moved the grass.
"If that is true," he said, "it says nothing evil of her."
"It says nothing yet," Serys agreed. "But listen to me, my lord. If a girl can set a bone with a thought and still make the stitches look worth their thread, the world will call it a miracle until it decides it is sorcery. When the word sorcery comes, it does not come alone."
"I know." His voice was rough. He had heard the stories of what men did when the words witch and abomination began to roll easily from tongues, when septons wished to teach lessons more than they wished to keep sheep alive, when lords with sickly sons thought of cures that did not come from poppy or prayer. "I would build a wall of hands around her if I could. Let them break their fingers finding her."
"She will not be kept behind walls," Serys said. "She will walk out of them to fetch a man from a field and set his leg right. She will walk into them if there is a person on the other side of the stones who is hurting."
"That is why the world will love her," Forrest said, and it was a prayer. "And why it will destroy her if we let it. I will not let it."
His hand went to the chain at his neck where the small token carved with seven facets lay under his shirt. He did not pull it free. The gesture was habit, not show.
"I think she is touched," he said. "I think the Mother put her hand to our girl when we slept and the Crone looked on. If there is any justice in the world, the Father smiled at her too. I will not hear a septon say otherwise in my hall."
Serys raised his hand and put it to her mouth. She did not kiss his palm. She pressed it there and breathed against it, steady as a woman who had walked beside him in rain and on ice and through summers when the fish did not come in.
"Then we keep our secret," she said. "We will keep it so, as you told her last night. No one knows who does not need to know. No one uses her. No one buys a cure and claims her in that coin. If there is a price, we pay it ourselves."
"Agreed," Forrest said. "If the world comes, it comes to me. I will lie to it and lie again. I will pay and pay again. If men threaten what is mine, I will take that threat to the ground and make it kiss the dirt."
The wind pushed the meadow grasses. Serys turned her face into it and then back to him. "And if she chooses wrong?"
He did not answer at once. There were fears he would name to no man and no god. He named them to his wife, but he would not speak of them again.
"Then I will love her still," he said, and felt the truth tie itself into him as neatly as any stitch Merlon had ever set. "And I will be afraid."
They stood for a time and said nothing because there was nothing more to say. After a while Alwyn lifted a hand to them. Forrest lifted his in answer. He and Serys turned back together, walking through the flowers as if the small heads could hear their footfalls and would be troubled by a careless step. When they reached the hedge, he helped her through the gap though she did not need the help.
As they came into the hollow's shade, Forrest looked to where Amelia sat on the carriage step with her skirts tucked up from the dust, her eyes on her folded hands. Her hair had come loose in the wind and she did not bother to put it right. Dusk was nowhere to be seen. Ser Alwyn stood near with his arms folded and his chin lifted, watching the south. He turned at once when Forrest's shadow fell across the wheel and dipped his head.
"My lord," he said. "We are near ready."
Amelia did not look up. For a moment Forrest thought to go to her and put his hand at her shoulder and say some useless father's thing about keeping her feet under her in the carriage. He did not. Serys touched his arm and the two of them went to the horses and rode on to check the men at the rear.
—
A butterfly landed on my hand as if my hand were a leaf. Its feet were light and curious. The wings beat twice and then folded. I held still. The colors were the simple kind—brown stroke on lighter brown, a little eye near the edge of the wing that looked like it was looking without knowing what it saw. The body was narrow. Its breath went in a way that tickled the web between my fingers.
I thought of the dreams, and of water that rose where it should not, and of a girl who stood with insects clinging to her like a storm. Then I let the dreams go the way a hand lets sand go, and only the butterfly was left.
I breathed and narrowed the world. It is not all at once, the way I do it. It is a reaching and a listening. It is the setting aside of what the eyes call plain and the taking up of what sits behind the plain. The small works under the wing presented themselves like men who have come when you clap your hands. The breath went in and out. The blood—thin, fit for a small heart—moved because there was food for it and because the air carried what it needed to the place where it is used. Those are rules, and the body keeps to them unless it is told otherwise.
I told a different rule. I set panes in the wing that would drink light and pass it into the body. I strengthened the little lines that bring and bear away. I made the bringing steady where it had been a trickle. I told small works to mend without stopping in the quiet hours and not to mark too fine when they did, so that a tear in a wing could be set without a scar that would catch the wind and pull wrong. I trimmed away the places where age lays its hand when it should not. I set a measure so the body would not take more than it should from itself even in a long winter or under a hedge where there is no flower. If no foot crushed it, if no bird ate it, if no frost took it unawares, this one would not end.
A butterfly that lived forever, drinking the sunlight.
The wings changed. The brown bled to green from the veins outward. It came like a stain in clean water. It was a bright green, not the green of a leaf with dust on it, but clear. The butterfly held still while it happened. Its body knew me. A warmth went under my hand where it sat and I felt the heat of the light the wings took in, and in the next breath I did not feel it because it had gone where it belonged.
"Go," I said, and lifted my hand. The wings opened. The green caught what sun there was and shone. It went up in a clean line and turned once and again, as if thinking that it wanted to see the sky from another angle, and then it took the wind and was only a bright stitch against blue.
"Strange," Ser Alwyn said. His voice came from my left, closer than I had thought he was. "Did you see that?"
I kept my eyes on the empty air where the butterfly had been, the better to teach my mouth not to do something foolish. "See what?"
"A green one. A green butterfly," His eyes swept the meadow, the hedges, the sky, as if he could drag it back by glaring. "Wings green as a hedge in high summer. I have been on half the roads between here and Maidenpool and I have never seen the like. Have you?"
"No," I said, and shook my head once. I felt the lie in my throat. He had never seen the like. No one had.
He grunted.
"Huh." He stood for a moment more and then looked south again, putting it away. The road, and the men, and what might come from the next bend mattered more than a strange thing with wings. I admired him for that. A strange thing with wings could fill a head and make men blind to a spear-point in the next hedge.
I smoothed my skirt where a wrinkle had set wrong and looked at the ground so that I would not look at my father as he came up from the far side of the horses with my mother. He did not need to see my face. I had promised to keep my back straight and my eyes level. He had asked a child's promise of a child, but I was no child now. The promise still held.
"Up," the driver called, cheerful where others would hide their strain. The men put their shoulders to the rear and steadied the coaches as the wheels took the first ruts. I climbed and settled. The leather curtain lifted for a moment as the wind tried to come in and then fell again. The basket at my feet slid and I hooked it with my boot before it went farther. Bread and cold fish and an apple. I was not hungry.
Dusk was not on the carriage roof any longer. I did not need to look for him. I knew the shape of him now the way I knew the shape of my own breathing. He was close by and he was at work. The work was not mine, not entirely. I had set small changes in him and told new rules and watched to see if he would take to them. He had. He had made them more his than mine. There was danger in that and there was pride. Both felt the same if I did not look too closely.
The driver clicked his tongue and the cobs leaned into the straps. The carriage moved and the road opened and the air went cool on my cheeks.
—
Dusk
Hunger. The bright hunger that sharpens the eye. There was a thing that ran. It ran wrong, with a tail that curled. It went along the hedge where the stones broke the grass. Its feet clicked on one stone and slid on moss and found the next. It thought to go from shade to shade and be unseen.
He saw it. He had always seen such things. This seeing was better. The eye found the flick, the ear caught the small scrape, the air brought a scent into the hole above his tongue that did not live there before. His head tilted. The new piece in him slid and woke. The tongue behind his tongue tasted what the air carried and said, there. It said that way. He followed his new senses.
He dropped from the limb and struck the ground in a run. His feet were made for perching. They took to the ground well enough. The wings tucked and he used them nearer the way a beast used its forelegs. The feathers flexed as he placed them and the bend became kin to folded wrists. They held. It gave him more speed on the ground than a bird had any right to have.
The thing went up the hedge. It tried for a low branch and missed and went for a root and found it. Its side showed and hid. It squealed once, a thin sound. He did not make a noise in answer. There was no reason to. He tasted the air again. The tongue in his throat uncoiled past his beak and coiled again. It was a coil that wanted to spring.
The ground fell away in a shallow dip. The thing ran across it, up to the next hedge. He followed, steps even. The men with the irons were behind him in a clump with the big beasts. They were loud. They did not look down into the dip. The mistress who gave him these gifts was in the box on wheels. She was watching the air, not the ground.
The thing went up a root and across a stone and made a leap. The leap was short. It had misjudged the slick on the stone. Its claws scrabbled. It swung once and gained nothing. It squealed again, louder.
Dusk sprang. The wings gave him a push. His feet landed in the leaves that had gathered under the hedge and sent a small dry sound up. The thing turned its head toward him in a twitch that showed its teeth and made its eyes big. It gathered itself to leap again, and he struck.
The new tongue shot from his beak in a straight line. The spike at its tip went where it was told. There was a small hard place under the fur above the eye and a space below. He had learned that in the first days when he had hunted beetles and snails and a mouse that did not know enough to run. The spike found the space, pushed through without catching, and the coil behind it hit with weight. The thing's head jerked once and then did not move. Its body went still. He felt the change through the length of the tongue, a slack that told him the work was done.
He pulled the coil back. The spike withdrew clean. The body did not kick. It did not bleed much. The fur along the head parted in a neat line and lay back. He stepped forward and touched the thing with a foot. It did not move. He tilted his head the other way. There was no breath. It was finished.
He set the hook of his beak into the hide behind the neck and pulled it once to see how it would lift. It was small. He could carry it. He looked up to the limb he had dropped from and judged the climb. The men were still loud. The big beasts stamped. One snorted and tossed its head. The mistress was still in the box.
He took the squirrel in his beak and backed a step and leapt. The wings opened and caught air and brought him to the limb. He set the kill there. For a moment he stood with one foot on the branch and one foot on the body and felt the weight of it against his toes and the wood underfoot. The fork was good. It would hold a meal.
He stabbed once where he had struck before and the skin gave more easily. He took a bite. It was warm. There was iron on his tongue. He ate neatly. He did not tear what he did not want. He took only what he wished now. There would be more hunger later. The coil rested in him again and did not itch. The girl had told his body to make it so. The body had listened. It worked. It pleased him the way a full crop pleases a young bird at dusk.
He heard the mistress's voice behind the rumble of wheels. She was not calling him. He did not go. He would go when she called. He would go with his head up and his crop not too full and the thing she wanted in his beak if she wanted a thing. He did not think much about wanting except for hunger and the wish to be where she was. That was enough.
He ate another bite and then another. The men on the road moved, and the box moved with them, and the hedge shook in a shift of wind. He did not look at any of it longer than a glance. He had food. He had shade. He had the work she had given him. That was all. He tucked his wings and kept to his meal. The spike at the end of the tongue rested against the back of his throat like a tooth that sat too far back. It felt right there. He made a small sound only he could hear. Then he put his beak down again and the world narrowed to meat.
Amelia
The road bent inland and the town rose out of the low hills all at once. Duskendale's walls were old stone with new work atop them—patches where mortar still showed white between darker blocks. The harbor lay beyond, snug in its crescent. Masts stood in ranks like bare trees. The smell reached us before the gate: tar, fish, old rope, and the faint sweet of malt from a brewer's yard. Bells from the sept carried thin in the wind.
The bay road climbed to a barbican with teeth that could be dropped. Men in black-and-grey stood above with spears. Banners worked the air along the parapet—dark shapes on pale fields that needed no telling. The gate captain hailed, saw who we were, and waved us on. Our driver lifted a hand. The wheels creaked over worn grooves where a thousand carts had walked before us.
Inside the walls the streets pinched and opened by turns. Houses stood close, three and four stories in places, with jettying beams and shutters painted with careful hands. A tanner's yard stank along a side lane. Above it, a coppersmith's hammer counted time. Women in plain cloaks took baskets to market and boys ran ahead of them with strings of small fish knocking their legs. A sept stood with its whitewashed face toward a square, the doors open, candles guttering behind. There were painted boards over some doors—combs and pins, needles, barrels. A guildhall showed a pressed sheaf worked in green glass. Men in half-armor moved at a measured pace, helms under arms. No one shouted. No one waved. They looked and did not look long.
The Dun Fort kept the harbor at its feet and the town at its back. Its walls were thicker, its towers broader, with slitted eyes taking the light. The stones had a sea stain along the lower courses where storms reached higher than they ought. The gates stood thrown for us. The yard inside was paved and clean, swept to the corners. The smell of the sea came and went.
We climbed out before the hall. Ser Alwyn swung down too and gave the yard a long eye. Mother's face was already smoothed. She set her fingers at my back for the first steps and then took them away. I kept my shoulders even. Dusk was somewhere above, near enough that I felt him, not near enough to make trouble.
They were waiting under the lintel. Lord Gunthor Darklyn wore a dark surcoat sewn with a border of pale stitching. He was broad in the chest, thick in the wrists, with color high on his cheeks and a mouth made for laughter as well as scorn. At his side stood Lady Meredyth, fine-boned and straight, her hair bound and veiled. A man older than both—grey beard cut short, one shoulder a touch lower than the other—held himself a half-step behind the lady and watched everything: Lord Steffon Darklyn, Lord Gunthor's uncle. Three children leaned out from behind their mother's skirts and from behind Lord Steffon's knee—one boy not far from my own height, a little girl with a ribbon that would not stay tied, and a smaller boy with a thumb in his mouth and big eyes.
Our driver called our names in the yard and the names went up the stone like a thrown pebble. Lord Gunthor came forward himself, not waiting for a herald.
"Lord Forrest," he said, his voice easy and full. "Lady Serys. Welcome to Duskendale. We have long wanted you in our hall."
We went down to our knees and rose as counseled. Mother's curtsy had not a hair out of place. I kept my eyes level.
"My lord," I said as we had practiced, and, "My lady," to Meredyth. My tongue did not trip.
"Little Darkwood," Lord Gunthor said, pleased. "So straight. So solemn. Have we no smiles in Velton?"
He bent and, before I could think what to do with my hands, he lifted me as if I were lighter than I am. His arms were hard as bars. I smelled good soap and old leather and something sick under both.
He held me in the crook of an elbow and grinned up at my mother like a boy caught stealing cakes. "Forgive me, Lady Serys. I am a fool for children. They remind me the gods have not yet given up on us."
Mother's mouth softened by a finger's width. "So long as you give her back, my lord, before you teach her to jump the hall tables."
Lord Gunthor laughed and the sound filled the yard. His breath was clean and strong; the rot was elsewhere. I reached. There were many small wrongnesses at once. A tooth far back and low sat crowded and angry, a wisdom too late for a jaw already set. It had made a place under the gum where food went and stayed; the flesh there swelled. Each day it hurt him, and he ground his temper down on it. A heaviness in the blood. The start of a stone in the water. A wetness along a lung where old colds had left their mark. A coil in the gut that was not yet a trouble but would be. All beginnings. The tooth bit hardest.
He set me down with care. The ache of him stayed in my hand a moment longer than the weight of me had stayed in his.
"Forgive me," he said again, still smiling. "I have three within and none of them stay still long enough to be held."
Lady Meredyth stepped forward and took Mother's hands.
"We are glad you came," she said. Her voice was even and cool, but she squeezed once before she let go. "The road is not kind this season."
"It is kinder with good men set along it," Mother said. "You keep a clean yard."
"A lord's pride," Lady Meredyth said, and inclined her head.
Lord Steffon came to me then, and bowed as to a lady grown. His hair was white as wool where it showed back of his ears.
"Lady Amelia. I am Steffon Darklyn, your lord's uncle. I am tasked with keeping little feet from the kitchen stairs." His eyes were quick and mild both. "Might I entrust ours to your company for an hour while their father steals your parents for talk no child needs to hear?"
The three had crept close. The boy at the front had dark hair cut short and honest ears that went red at the tips when he stared.
"I am Alyn," he said. "I'm seven. That's my sister, Ysilla. She'll say she's six, but she's five. And Tomas is three, but he's not a baby."
The little one pulled his thumb out as if to prove it and then put it back.
Ysilla curtsied a wobbly curtsy and peered at my dress. "Do you have a ship in Velton? A real one? With a sail?"
"We have many," I said. "Not so wide as yours, but they go out and back all the same. We have a watch fire too, on a little rise, and men take turns with it at night."
"Do you have hawks?" Alyn asked at once, which was very like a boy.
"We have gulls, which are braver than hawks," I said. "They will take bread from your hand and scold you if you do not give it quick enough."
He grinned, caught between envy and disbelief. Lord Steffon's mouth tipped in amusement.
"Go on," Gunthor told his uncle, "and keep them from the cellars."
He turned to my parents again. "Come. The air bites. We will speak in my solar."
The grown folk moved toward the steps. Lady Meredyth glanced back and gave her husband's sleeve a small tug to slow him so she might say a word to Serys as they went. I watched them go until Lord Steffon touched my sleeve with two fingers.
"Tell them of the sea," he said, low and kind. "Tell them what they do not have."
We found a bench under the lee of the wall where the wind did not come. Alyn sat at once, knees forward, hands on them, trying to look grave and failing. Ysilla stood too close and stared into my face as if she could find there each thing I might say before I said it. Tomas climbed up by his sister's hem, tugging without malice.
"What is Velton like?" Ysilla demanded.
"It smells of salt and fish when the tide is wrong," I said. "And of smoke on cold mornings even in summer, when men light for their breakfast. The hall sits above the beach. The mackerel run when the moon is thin. In winter the sea throws logs up on the shingle and women carry them home on their heads. Sometimes a net tears and my father gives twine from the stores to mend it, and sometimes a man says a hedge has crept and another says no, a sheep has, and then Ser Alwyn and Hobb walk the bounds at noon and tell them what they saw."
"What happens when men lie?" Alyn asked, careful with the question the way a boy is when he is trying to find the edge of a thing.
"They do not lie twice in the same way," I said. "Our stocks sit before the sept. The septa says it is good for pride to sit there and remember other people walk the lane."
Ysilla's eyes got wider. "You put men in the stocks? Real men?"
"Real men," I said. "And a boy who threw stones at the sept steps had to scrub them with a brush until his arms shook."
I made my voice a shade more stern and saw Lord Steffon's eyes soften at the sound of it. "My mother spoke to him herself."
We spoke of the water meadows and the sluice when it sticks, of watching the wind for blight and the way the sea can look like hammered tin when the sun sits wrong. They asked how far the watch fire can be seen. They asked if Old Nan was truly old. They asked if a fishwife could really wallop a man with a broom if he stole her pail and if my father laughed when he heard such a tale. They had not walked the lanes of their own town; they had not seen the salt sheds at dawn; they had not stood in a doorway and watched men carry a friend under a cloak. I told the stories with care, leaving out the worst. Lord Steffon watched me as if each word were a coin and he wished to know its weight.
When Tomas pulled at my skirt again, I showed him how to tie a thumb-knot in a bit of string so that it would not pull free too quick. He frowned over it and did it twice, and when it worked he forgot to be solemn and clapped his small hands very softly. Ysilla's ribbon came loose and I tied it for her and she did not say thank you but pressed her cheek to my sleeve for a heartbeat before she hopped away again.
A shadow crossed the yard. I looked up; a black shape cut a circle above the hall roof and then turned away. I did not need to see him to know him. He kept his distance as he ought.
Lord Steffon saw me look.
"A bird?" he asked.
"A raven," I said, and kept my voice plain. "They love high places."
"So they do," he said, and did not say more.
A girl in dark livery came then with a tray and cups of watered wine. The cups were tin. Ysilla drank as if it were a game, small sips, eyes over the rim on me. Alyn spilled a little and pretended he had meant to test the measure of a cup when filled to its skirt. Lord Steffon offered the tray to me first as if I were older than I am, and I took it with both hands as if I were older than I am, and then gave it back the same way.
When they had drunk and their questions slowed, Lord Steffon rose.
"We have taken enough of our lady's breath," he said to the children. "Now we shall take ours walking the yard so we do not tumble from our chairs at supper."
He offered me a hand up and I took it. "My thanks to you, Lady Amelia."
"Velton is very small," I said, because it felt necessary.
"All the more reason to look close," he said, and smiled.
He took the children by glances and sent them before us, Alyn proud to lead, Ysilla taking two steps for each one step and making a show of it, Tomas marching like a very tiny soldier. They were very careful with their feet when they passed the men at arms. As we walked, the hall doors shut on a draft and voices within.
—
Forrest
Lord Gunthor's solar held the sea in its window. The shutters were thrown wide and a salt air moved the papers on the table. There were ledgers stacked in three neat piles, a map set under a strip of horn, and a carved box with a cracked corner. A tall chair sat by the hearth and two lower besides. A great sword hung above the mantel, not polished to show but well-oiled to serve.
Gunthor waved us to seats and took the high chair without apology. He poured wine himself and did not wait for a servant. The cup he handed Serys was steady. His own teeth showed when he grinned and I saw him choose his side for the biting.
"First—my thanks," he said, raising his cup. "For coming so quick on short word. I am fond of words on paper, Lord Forrest, but some things ask for eyes and breath."
He drank.
"We were glad to be asked," Serys said. "We say often we will come and we do not. It is well to keep a promise while it is still warm."
"Good," he said, and his look went to her and then to me. "I'll speak plain. Children are a lord's treasure. Ships rot, walls crack, coin comes and goes. A child is the one thing a house makes that outlives stone if the gods are kind. You keep your girl by your side in Velton and teach her men's faces and poor lists and where to put the twine. I heard of it from more than one tongue. That is a thing done right."
Serys's fingers rested on the rim of her cup. A small color rose in her cheek. "You are kind, my lord. Your own are well mannered and sound. A credit to you. Their uncle keeps good watch."
Gunthor barked a laugh, head back. "They are my pride and my torment both. Meredyth, tell them."
Lady Meredyth's mouth softened.
"They are our pride," she said, and touched the back of his hand.
He took the touch and then set the cup aside. The humor in him sat down. He had the look of a man who turns a knife to see which edge is sharpest.
"You must wonder why I sent for you," he said. "There are always a dozen reasons. There is talk of the Stepstones and men styling themselves kings where they should not. There are levies and ships and tolls to be tallied. I can speak of any of those until a man sleeps. That is not why you came."
"I thought as much," Forrest said, because Lord Gunthor had asked for plainness and he had never liked dancing when the floor was crowded.
He nodded once, pleased. "We had arranged something of profit to the house. I have cousins, but I do not breed with cousins when I can avoid it. I thought to tie my eldest to Lord Martyn Darke's daughter. Darke holds good land not far, and I have always kept his counsel in our hall. The child is a sweet one. They say her laughter turns men soft. It is a foolish thing to say and true besides. It is good to set a gentle girl in a hard house to teach boys to put their hands down when it serves nothing to lift them."
His mouth went hard. Something painful nagged him. He swallowed it.
"She took a fever," Lady Meredyth said, quiet as a woman speaking of a bruise on her own arm. "Three weeks ago. It went hot and low. It did not leave. The maester there bled her once and then not again. They sent for a septa. Martyn sent word—he sends word to us in such things. We are their friends. He writes that she does not wake, or else wakes to cry and cannot say why. She has not kept food properly since the second day. There is a look to her that women know. It does not bode well."
Serys put her hand down on the table as if she must keep it from shaking.
"I am sorry," she said. "I wish I had a word that meant more than that."
"There is no word," Gunthor said, and his jaw worked. He wore sorrow poorly; it made a stranger of his face. "The gods do what they do and men make what order they can from the pieces. I had planned a wedding at some point in the future, when the both of them are old enough. I had planned a feast and the sending of girls between houses with braids tied together and all the foolish things that please mothers and teach boys the value of laughter. Plans are nothing when a girl cannot lift her head."
Forrest saw the turn then and did not speak. The sea made a low sound against the outer walls. Men were shouting somewhere in the yard but not in fear.
Gunthor looked to me and then away, to Serys, and then back. He had the sense to be ashamed of what came next; he did not have the power to keep his mouth closed on it.
"It is wicked to speak of one thing while another still breathes," he said, "but a lord who will not look to the next step breaks his toe on the stair. I had meant to set Alyn's hand in Darke's child's hand. If the gods take her—and I pray yet that they do not—then I will not see the chance lost for both our houses."
He drew breath. Some phantom paid bit him again. He paused a heartbeat for it and then spoke over it.
"I would have your daughter betrothed to my eldest son, if the girl from House Darke dies."
AN: Chapter 9 is out on Patreon!
Forrest
The guest chambers the Darklyns had given them looked east over the harbor roofs. The windows were latched against the wind. A brazier held the heat, no more. The room smelled of oil and old stone. Serys sat on the bench by the window with her hands in her lap. Forrest stood a time and then eased himself to the chair, careful of the stitches. The bandage pulled when he breathed too deep. He did not let it show.
"They will press us before supper," Serys said, eyes on the latch. "If not with words, with looks."
"They pressed us already," Forrest answered. "He would tie Alyn and our girl with a string held at this table."
He rubbed at the line of his jaw. "It is not the worst rope a man can take in hand."
Serys turned to him. "You will say that and then you will choke on it."
"I choke on waste more." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. The chair creaked under him. "Listen. A tie to the Dun Fort is coin in a poor year. Fewer tolls at the gate. First call on the quay when the herring run heavy. A right to stand a salt shed inside the walls. Men look at us different when our girl is named in this hall. Rosby speaks softer. Stokeworth thinks twice. If the Stepstones keep boiling and levies go out, a word from here will put our lads to lighter duty and send them home again. That is wheat in the bin next winter. That is roofs mended and twine bought without me counting the last teen-sticks."
"And you would buy it with her." Serys's voice was even. "With our daughter."
He closed his eyes a breath. "I would buy it with a betrothal for a child who does not yet bleed. Words on parchment. Years between. And we would bind her to a boy I do not dislike, in a house I have known all my life. It is hardly a death sentence."
Serys's mouth thinned. "Words on parchment become iron when men wake and find they like the weight. The years go like geese on a strong wind. You know this."
"I do." He looked up, and met her. "And yet, I am lord of House Darkwood. My first duty is to my people and to my House. If I put our name in a better place, the people eat more. That is what a lord is for. A lord is a shepherd of the people."
"And a father?" she asked. "What is a father for?"
He flinched. "A father wants his girl to take a man because she smiles when he comes through a door and because he listens when she speaks. Not because it fattens a storehouse. Gods, I want her to marry someone she loves–not be caught up in politics."
"There is our measure," Serys said. She rose, crossed to him, and set a hand at his shoulder where the cloth pulled. He could feel the heat of her palm through the shirt. "I want what we had, or something near it. A small house and a choice made between two people. Not a feast where men count barrels and names the way they count spears. Let the great houses marry like that. We are not great. We don't have to be."
"I remember," he said, quiet. "You at the rope stall. Your mother pretending she did not see me stammer. If someone had told me then I could trade coin against that… I would have thrown their purse in the bay."
"Then do not throw our girl," Serys said.
He let out a long breath. The stitches tugged. He did not curse. "Gunthor's offer still rests on a grave that is not dug. If the gods spare the Darke child, there is no talk. If the gods take her—"
He stopped. The words would not shape his mouth. "I… do not know. Love and duty are at war within me."
"If the gods take her," Serys finished, soft, "we will do nothing. Say it."
He stared at the brazier and saw only the light of it. After a moment he said, "We will do nothing. Not on the heels of that. I will not feed my house on another child's bones. Seven save me, I find I want the Darke girl to live. I did not know I would feel that."
Serys's hand slid to the back of his neck and left it there.
"Good," she said. "I do too."
He laughed, a hard, short sound.
"A poor lord I make. Gunthor's proposition makes sense, and still—" He shook his head. "If years go by and both children ask it with open eyes, we can sit here and talk again. Not before."
"Not before," Serys said. She bent and kissed the strip of skin not covered by cloth and linen. "And if Gunthor presses, you will eat your pride and say no with a smile."
"I will eat stones, if that is what it takes," he said. "I will not stomach the other."
She smiled then, a quick thing that went as fast as it came. "You are wiser than you were at the rope stall."
"I am older," he said, and tried for a smile of his own. "That is all the wisdom a man needs."
From below in the yard came the sound of practice swords clacking, and the sea beyond that. Serys settled back to the bench. Forrest sat and listened to both sounds until he could not hear his own blood in his ear. And then, his eyes widened. "What if we… what if we asked Amelia to "pray" for the girl?"
—
Lord Gunthor
The tooth had started as a nuisance and become a war. It pressed at the back of his jaw as if a man were wedged there with a boot. Every swallow gave it a reason to bite. Each word scraped over it. Gunthor bore it as he bore other things: badly at first, then with a hard face and a worse temper. The maester had scraped and washed and poulticed. The tooth did as it liked. Removing it was impossible, buried as it was in bone and flesh too deep to reach with any tool.
He stood in the library because sitting made the ache worse–laying down was somehow even worse than sitting. The room held shelves of dark wood crowded with rolls and bound books. The window glare turned the copper clasps to pale fire. He had laid out the pieces he wanted on the long table: a line of names in a clerk's neat hand, a brittle chart with ink so thin a wet breath might blot it, a small coffer of seals. His thumb found the edge of the coffer out of habit and worried at the crack in its corner.
"Darklyn, cadet branches," he said to himself aloud, to keep the ache from owning his thoughts. His uncle would have had the names by heart. Gunthor trusted the paper. He traced the line with a forefinger. "Here. Lukan."
Lukan Darklyn, writ in a clerk's crabbed script ten turns old, with a note after: bastard of Denys made true by sept and seal. A thin line ran from Lukan's name to Velton—new work on the bay, and from there no branch turned back toward Duskendale. The marriages marked in different inks spoke of fisher folk and small holders and girls from the market at Maidenpool; men from the quarries north, a merchant's daughter from the bay road, a brewer's niece. Not once had the Darkwoods wed back into Darklyn stock, not even into Stokeworth or Rosby in the lean years.
"It would not hurt you to come home," he whispered. "Just once in ten."
He remembered Forrest as a long-limbed boy with a coil of rope over his shoulder and the stubborn look of lads who think they know what honest work is and prove it. A good pair of hands. A quiet tongue. When they fostered him, he had taken to the muster yard like any lad and to the counting room better than most. Nothing spectacular, but he had a good head on his shoulders and was accustomed to hard work. A lord's son with a fisher's back, the old captain had called him. He had not forgotten it.
There was a knock. The castle maester set a goblet on the table and bowed his head. The wine was the deep kind, cut cloudy with a measure of white. "Half the poppy, my lord, as you asked. Enough to take the edge. Not enough to have you dozing in the counting."
Gunthor grunted. He took the cup and held it against his lip without drinking. The smell of the wine sat wrong with him until the tooth made him forget to care. He swallowed. The ache eased a degree. It did not leave.
"Uncle Steffon says the Darkwood girl has a head on her shoulders," Gunthor said, not looking up from the names. "He watches children like other men watch horses. If he says she will make a good lady, I listen."
"She addressed Lord Steffon like a proper lady," the maester said. "And she did not spill her cup."
Gunthor sipped again, set the cup down, and put his finger once more to Lukan's line. "Alyn is taken with her. Not in the way that heats a man's face. He is seven. He follows what seems worth following. He liked the way she spoke of a fishwife's broom as if it were a mace."
He smiled despite the ache and let it go. "I would bring the Darkwoods back into the fold. They should not stand so far from the names that made them. We are not so rich in kin we can spare any."
"You would have them closer," the maester said.
"I would," Gunthor said. He traced the names forward and back, then stopped his hand with a flat palm. "And yet I plan the thing on the breath of a girl who is not dead. The gods make fools of lords, and lords make beasts of themselves willingly."
"The gods will do what they will," the maester said. "A lord has to do what keeps roofs whole."
Gunthor made a sound that might have been a laugh if he had had more sleep. "Say it plainer. You would say hope is a sin and also a tool."
"I would say you should drink before the wine goes warm," the maester said. "And write your letter after."
Gunthor drank. The pain went down a stair or two, not more. He looked at the map under the strip of horn and saw where Darke lay, a ride and a day. "Send a man to Martyn. A good one. With broth and kind words. And men to watch the road if he asks it. Tell him I will come if I am welcome. Tell him nothing else."
"Yes, my lord."
The maester went out. Gunthor stood with the ache and the paper and the slow creep of the poppy in his blood. He put a hand to his jaw and pressed until the tooth answered back. He told himself he was making a place for his son, and for the house, and for small folk whose names would never sit on any chart. He told himself the girl from Darke had been failing three weeks. He told himself many things.
In the quiet at the end of those words, he wished her gone.
He closed his eyes against the wish and drank the last of the cup.
—
Maester Merlon
They had given Merlon a small chamber near the inner yard for his work. The window looked on a gutter running off a slate roof. A boy stood just inside the door with a cap in his hands and dirt to his elbows. He had a jar no bigger than a man's fist with a square of oiled cloth tied over its mouth.
"Found it, Maester," the boy said. "Near the fish market. It flew into my sister's hair."
"Flew," Merlon repeated. He took the jar, set it on the table, and loosened the cord.
The thing inside clung to the glass a moment and then to the cloth when he lifted it aside. It was no longer than the last joint of his thumb. The body was spare. The legs were fine as wire. When it moved, it moved right. He saw fangs. He saw the plate where the eyes sat. He saw the thin abdomen shift.
He also saw wings. Clear. Delicate. Set where no wings should be set. They trembled once and held. There were small holes along the side of the body where no holes should be.
Merlon did not touch it. He bent until his breath fogged the glass, then pulled back and watched it through the thin veil of his own air. He did not like the word that rose to his tongue. He did not say it.
"What is it?" the boy asked, trying not to come nearer and failing.
Merlon tied the cloth down again with slow fingers, tight but not too tight.
"It is an insect," he said. "A small one."
The boy blinked.
"A spider with wings."
"Never seen one before."
"That might be because they don't exist."
Father and Mother called me to the bench by the window as the lamps were being trimmed. The harbor lay dim and the wind pushed the shutters. Father sat slowly, careful of the stitches. Mother kept her hands folded on her lap and looked at me with uncertainty.
"We will speak plain," Father said. "Lord Gunthor would tie you to his boy, Alyn. It is not yet a betrothal, but he has the string in his hand and means to keep it there."
Mother glanced at him and then at me.
"You know why such strings are useful," she said. "They ease tolls. They ease talk. They elevate our House to new heights."
"I know," I said.
Father rubbed his jaw once and let his hand fall. "I could make a long account of what it would buy for Velton. I will not. You have heard enough of tallies."
"And yet," Mother said, softly, "we are not barrels and rope."
"No," Father said. He looked at me and did not look away. "If the Darke girl dies—and the gods keep her—we will be pressed. I will smile and say no. I will eat stones before I feed my house on a fresh grave."
I felt something in my chest ease at that and did not let it show on my face. Betrothal meant marriage, like the stories of knights and ladies.
I did not like those stories.
"And if she lives," Mother said, "this talk may stop before it starts. We spoke of asking you to pray."
I knew what they were asking before they asked it. I looked down at my hands. They were clean. The nails were blunt. There was a small red line where I had caught my skin on a basket edge two days past. I did not care much for strings or marriage talk. I did not have a hunger for it or a fear of it. It was a box the world made for girls and then called it choice. If I had to walk into a box one day, I would do it because I wished to, not because a cousin at the Dun Fort counted it useful.
"I do not love or hate the thought of a match," I said. "If it comes when I am grown and I want it, I will take it. If it comes as a rope, I will not. For now, I do not care for talk of it."
Father's mouth twitched like a man caught between two answers. Mother's hands tightened and eased.
"But," I said, and let the word sit, "I will go to the Darke girl. If it eases you, I will pray. If it eases the house, I will pray. If she lives, then that is right besides."
Father shut his eyes for a heartbeat. When he opened them there was a shine there that was not from the lamp.
"We will keep you safe," he said. "We will keep the secret, as we swore."
Mother leaned and kissed my hair. "You will do as little as will serve and no more. You will leave the maester something to point at that is not a miracle."
"I will," I said.
"Dusk stays high," Mother added. "Not on a roof. Not on a sill. Not in a hall."
"High," I said.
We sat with the wind for a while, and then the bell for the evening meal rang and the sound went up through the stone.
—
We came to the Darke manse on the morrow by the south lane where the houses looked inward on their own courtyards. Lord Gunthor and Lady Meredyth met us at the Dun Fort gate with a servant carrying a basket and a small coffer. Gunthor was easy in his words with my father, and not so easy in his eyes. His mouth smiled and his jaw did not.
"Small tokens," Lady Meredyth said when Mother looked at the basket. "Honeyed almonds. A little candied citron. Cut linen and a length of soft wool. A vial of rosewater. Things that are pleasant to sickbeds whether they help or no."
Mother thanked her as if she had set gold on the scale. We walked on. Ser Tolan kept three paces back and to my left with his hand loose on the hilt. I felt better with him there and did not look to show it.
The Darke house sat snug behind a whitewashed wall. A lemon tree grew in a tub that had seen better years. The door opened before we reached it. Lord Martyn Darke himself stood there with his wife. He was narrow of face, his hair going thin, his eyes red at the rims. His lady wore plain dark wool and a look that had been rubbed down by nights.
"Lord Gunthor," Martyn said. "Lady Meredyth. You honor my house. Lord Forrest. Lady Serys."
He said our names with care. He saw me last. "This is your daughter."
He tried to smile at me and did not reach it. I bowed my head as if I were ten years older. "My lord."
There were words in the receiving room. They were soft and careful. Men said the gods were kind and would be kinder. Women said the air felt fairer to-day. Gunthor set the coffer down and Lady Meredyth named each thing so the maid might know where to put it. Lord Martyn asked after the road and Father told him the watch was doubled. We drank watered wine that had sat too near a window and had gone a little warm. The smell of herbs came from the back of the house.
"Maester Colyan sits with her," Lady Maelle Darke said at last, as if the words hurt her teeth. "She sleeps, or else she wakes to cry. She has not kept anything proper for days. He will not let me touch her for fear I bring her hot. He says it is a fever of a strange kind."
"We ask your pardon," Father said, and his voice had the same gentleness it had when he told a fisherman there would be twine. "Our daughter would say a prayer by the bed, if you allow it."
Lord Martyn blinked once. His mouth opened and shut.
"A prayer," he said, as if he were testing the weight of it. "Of course."
He led us back himself. The passage was dim and smelled of old smoke and lavender. The girl's chamber stood at the turn. It was close and warm. The shutters were drawn and the light that came in was thin. A brace of candles burned. The bedstead held a pale shape under a light coverlet. A man with a maester's chain sat at the foot with a book and a small jar and a cloth, and his face wore the careful blank of a man who had told himself he knew what he was about and then watched his remedies fail.
He rose and bowed to Lord Gunthor and then to Lord Martyn.
"My lords. Lady." His eyes touched me and moved on. "The fever sits as before. It waxes and wanes. The appetite is away. The tongue shows cracks. The cheeks are flushed under the skin. The urine darkens. The spleen seems—"
He stopped. "It is a strange heat."
"This is Lord Forrest's daughter," Gunthor said. He did not smile when he said it. "She will say a prayer. If you please, Maester, give her the space she needs."
Maester Colyan hesitated.
"It is not wise to have many near the bed," he said, cautious. "I would not have the fever catch from skin to skin."
"It is not that kind," I said, and made my voice mild. "I will keep my hands to myself."
He stepped aside with a look that said he did not believe me and did not care to say so.
I went to the bed and knelt. The girl was a little older than I was. She had hair the color of dark straw and it lay damp on the pillow. Her lips were dry. There were small sores at the corners of her mouth, poorly hidden with salve. A faint rash lay across the bridge of her nose and out over both cheeks in a shape I knew and did not name. Her hands lay above the coverlet. They were thin. The nails showed pale moons.
I bowed my head as if I were praying and set my hand where the blanket brushed her wrist.
I breathed and let the room fall away. The wrongness was not a stranger from without. It was a riot within. Her own blood had been told to strike at her. The marks ran in the marrow and in the places that make the rules for what is self and what is not. There were small workers who should have kept to watch and instead had gone to pillage. They bit at skin and joint and kidney and the lining of the chest. It cracked the lips and set the mouth to sores. It raised heat and stole hunger and thinned the blood.
An unbidden memory arose in my head, carrying a name I did not know from a mind that wasn't my own. Lupus.
I took it in my hands and undid it. I cut the command in two and then in four and sent each piece to the dark. I called the guards back to their posts and made them stand there. I told the marrow what to make and what to throw away. I eased the net that had been laid over the filters of the blood so they would not leak. I put out the small fires where the lining met the ribs. I did it gently and not all at once. I left the weakness where it looked honest. I left the heat to fall by degrees and not like a stone dropped in a well. I left the sores as they were. I let the breath go easy.
The prayer took the time it needed. Behind me someone shifted their foot. The chain at the maester's throat clicked once.
When I opened my eyes, her chest moved as it should. The red under the skin had gone to a normal flush. The pulse under my fingers no longer ran in a fright. She was not well, not yet. The body had been punished and would need rest to set it right. But the knife that had been turned inward was in my hand now and not in her.
I made the sign of the Mother and of the Crone and folded my hands.
"Seven keep you," I said, soft as if to myself.
Her eyes opened.
They were grey, clearer than the light in the room. She looked at me as if I had come to wake her at dawn for a walk. She licked her split lip and winced and then breathed out through her nose.
"I'm hungry," she said, as if it were a riddle and she had found the answer.
There was a small sound at the foot of the bed. Maester Colyan made it. He had a hand on the book and his knuckles had gone white.
"She has not said that in three weeks," he said, and it was not a whisper but it was close. "We have had to force broth. She retched it up. She would not swallow."
He took a step toward the bed and caught himself and looked at me as if I had thrown a stone in a still pool and frightened him with the rings.
"The Seven work in their own ways," I said. I kept my face plain. "May I give her a sip?"
He nodded as if his neck had rusted and it hurt him to move it. I took the cup on the table and held it to her mouth. She took a swallow and then another. She coughed once and then the water seemed to sit where water should sit.
"More," she said.
"Slow," I told her, and she obeyed, which told me the worst of the madness in her blood had quieted. I set the cup down.
Maester Colyan made the sign of the Seven in the air without meaning to and then went to the door like a man coming back from far off. He flung it open.
"My lord—" he called, voice up, "—my lady—come."
The hall brought voices and shoes on stone. Lord Martyn came first and then Lady Maelle. Gunthor and Lady Meredyth stood behind them and Father and Mother a step further. The room filled and then held still.
"Jeyne," Lady Maelle said, and the name broke on her tongue. She came to the bed and put both hands on the coverlet and did not touch her daughter because she had been told not to. "Jeyne, my heart."
"I'm hungry," the girl said again, apologetic, and tried to smile and could not for the cracked lip. "I am sorry, mother. I am very hungry."
Lady Maelle made a sound I had heard once when a woman in Velton thought her baby had drowned and found that he had not. Lord Martyn set a hand on the bedpost and bowed his head and then lifted it and took the risk and laid his palm on his daughter's hair and he wept and did not hide it.
Maester Colyan said, "Slow. Broth first. No solid food."
Gunthor said nothing. His mouth did not smile. His eyes went from the girl to me and then to the floor and there was a look there for the space of a breath that would have shamed a better man. Lady Meredyth's fingers tightened on his sleeve and then eased.
Mother's hand found my shoulder. It steadied me more than I would have admitted. Father stood with his jaw set and his eyes soft. He did not look at Gunthor.
"Who prayed?" Lord Martyn asked then, because he needed something to point at and something to thank. He looked to the maester and then to the septa's corner where a small icon stood and then to the people in the doorway. His gaze found me last. "Your prayer did this?"
"I did," I said. "A small prayer."
Maester Colyan turned his head toward me as if someone had tugged it on a string.
"The child knelt," he said, to the room. "She spoke. I warned her from touching. She did not heed me. She prayed. Then the girl asked for food."
"The Seven," Lady Maelle said, fervent. "The Seven heard you."
Lord Martyn crossed himself and then bowed to me, which was not a thing a lord needed to do to a small lady from a lesser house. His eyes were wet and hard both.
"Lady Amelia," he said. "If I live a hundred years I will not forget this hour. You are—"
He swallowed. "You must be blessed."
"Blessed by the Seven," Lady Maelle said, and the words filled the room. "Blessed. The Mother's hand is on you, child."
Their eyes turned to me together, and then the others' eyes followed. Maester Colyan looked as if his world had slipped half an inch and he did not know where his feet were. Lady Meredyth's gaze was kind and searching. Father's chin lifted a hair. Mother's hand tightened and warned. Gunthor's mouth had no shape at all.
"The Seven work in their own ways," I said again, and kept my eyes level.
Lady Maelle kissed her daughter's hair and began to cry in earnest. Lord Martyn said my name again and could not say anything after it. The maester moved on the habit of his years and went to the brazier to warm a little broth. Gunthor stood still.
All at once it was as if I stood in the center of a square on a market day with everyone come out to see the fool. The heat of the candles seemed too much. I remembered to breathe. I remembered to bow my head a little without lowering my eyes. I remembered to fold my hands.
"Seven keep you," I said to the girl, to the room, to the story we had made, and I let the silence hold the rest.