I stared at her, hot tears pooling in my eyes.
Her entire face softened.“Oh, goodness.Don’t take me so seriously.Please, Gentlewoman.I’m a miller’s daughter.I just happen to be here in the palace, eating the meals you have refused, because my man rowed with Fell back when Fell was still rowing, and that’s how he knows me.He knew I spoke your language, so fetched me for your sake.”
“I have done nothing wrong,” I said, tears threatening to come out once again.
Her lips fought against the very visible urge to curl into a smile.“We shall leave aside the plight of the Islish people and accept that as truth for today, Gentlewoman.”She sighed.“Make your supplications to The Bard King when you see him next.I cannot speak to his mind, only that people say he is very clever.He has demanded you recover.Healers have been called from all over the country.The entire city has been tasked with burning herbs and chanting.”
Perhaps he knows I must be returned, I thought.I couldn’t imagine what the order would do if not just gold were missing, but an entire goldkeeper.
“Now, turn your head.Let me finish, please.If you could see your own appearance, you would be crying for a wholly different reason.I was supposed to call The Bard King the moment you were speaking sense, but I will keep quiet long enough for you to become presentable.”
She moved a little up my hair, and though she held my hair gently, the tugging began to itch my scalp.How long had it been since I’d brushed it?The morning I set out for Loric’s kepen.Many days of travel and then the attack and the boat, and however long I’d been ill… “I’ve surely missed my wedding,” I said.
She chirped.Like a bird.
Naturally, I was appalled.
She seemed to enjoy my reaction.“Please, stop being so funny, or I will laugh at you, and I can sense you wouldn’t take that well.”
I sat very still, hoping she would finish with my hair quickly.She was too close to my back.My skin tingled and urged me to move away.The king is likely sensible, I told myself.He is a king after all.He only seemed wild because of my fever.I will explain I must go home.No!I will ask sweetly.I will cry if it seems that will help.I knew crying would be easy given how overwhelmed I was.But I also knew crying didn’t always help.Dayne had always been swayed by my tears.My father, too.Other people I had known, not so much.
“I will need a moment to dress before seeing the king,” I said, gaining a little steadiness in my heart.He said there had been an error.A king will surely want to remedy an error.I needed to be back in my gown, guarding Loric’s gold, and ready to leave the moment I was able to.
“If I were you, I would wear what The Bard King provided,” she said as she used the comb to create a straight part down the middle of my hair.“Best not to refuse his gifts.”
There was sense in what she said, I knew, but I didn’t want to leave my gown hidden in the wall.Dania had known where it was.It was possible other people did too.
A man’s head appeared in the door as he uttered a few throaty words.Around his forehead was a beaded red cloth.
Dania hissed at the man like she were a snake, flicking her wrist in a way that told him to leave.He laughed and did as she bid and the little steadiness I’d found dissolved.Once again, I realized I was in a foreign place where people did animal things, and men laughed at behaviour that would earn… I didn’t even know what would happen to me if I were to flick someone away back home.It wouldn’t be good.
The man gargled words from outside the open door, and Dania gargled back, both of them laughing.
“He says the king is coming.I’ve told him to slow the man down.You are almost ready.He exclaims—it does not translate—he is torn between love for his king and the desire to obey me and earn my affection.”
The man giggled outside and gargled more words which had Dania in a fit of laughter, leaving me wondering if my fever had been caught by the pair of them.
I was uneasy because the man was just outside the door.Perhaps the king had lent me a guard.But perhaps he also had someone waiting for the right moment to steal Loric’s gold.I didn’t allow myself to wonder if he was there to keep me in.
The king entered, and again I was struck by how observant he felt—the clarity of his narrow, blue eyes, how quickly they darted throughout the room.I lowered myself—slowly and with poise—onto my knees on the floor and then lowered my head, touching my forehead to the slightly tilting rug.
“Gentlewoman, I am flattered, but there is no need for this kind of performance.You are a guest in my home.I would like you to be comfortable.”
“I could be made comfortable by knowing what is to become of me,” I said, my face still pressed against the rug.It was unbearably hot in the room.The warmth of my breath against the carpet was sickening.
“I would like to see your face,” he said.His voice was denser than other voices—I could almost feel it in my bones.I felt him crouch near me.
Slowly, I raised my gaze.My first fully sober look at the man and his first proper look at me, without the derangement of fever altering my expression or posture.Up close, I saw there were streaks of yellow in his eyes.This was what made them seem to glow.
“You look and sound better,” he said.“How do you feel?”
“Warm,” I said.“Warm and afraid.”
His eyes suddenly lit from within, full of so much passion, so much interest, that he almost seemed angry and wild.He said, “You cannot be as placid as you act.No one could.”
Some believed King Arik had the gift of prophecy.Perhaps he cursed me with those words.Or maybe he saw in me something that no one had ever seen before.Maybe he was simply saying what he thought would create his desired reaction within me.Regardless, it sparked the smallest fragment of hope within me.The idea that I could be fortified, that something extra could be hiding inside me that I didn’t know about.
“Gentlewoman, I would like to tell you a story if I could.It is Norsern so… probably more gruesome than the tales you are used to, but I think it is of import.”
