“It is a beautiful piece of art.”
My body made the motion of jumping in surprise, but I was too weighed down by the iron in my dress for the leap to be truly fulfilled.I turned, pressing my hands against my rapidly beating heart.The broken-nosed man, the one from Grainkeeper Waldmire’s company, was studying a sculpture a little further down the hall.He must not have gone on the hunt with the others.
He smirked, lifting his hands in a show of harmlessness.
This did nothing to ease me.I’d not known he was there for many moments, and a goldkeeper ought always know when someone is there.
“Gentlewoman,” he said, nodding.
“Gentlesir,” I said out of politeness.The title wasn’t officially afforded to him because he wasn’t a member of the orders.I could tell by his torque—it was the silver colour of someone sworn to a grainkeeper.
He approached, standing a little too close, his shoulder nearly touching mine, his hands clasped in front of him as he turned to face the painting.For obvious reasons, a goldkeeper wasn’t to be alone with strangers.I was frightened by the closeness but also confused.He had a scent to him, a warm, rich scent that made me want to press my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
“The Battle of Lanathein,” he said, nodding a second time, more to the painting than to me.
He spoke the same language I did, but not as if he were born to it.Having only heard a few accents before, all from the mid-north of the Isle, which were higher-pitched and nasal in tone, I had no idea what to make of the tint to his words.
I knew I ought to leave his side, to create some polite excuse and run to temple—I was risking thievery, was I not?The greatest crime of my order.But I did not do as I ought to.
I folded my hands pleasantly and said, “How do you know this?”
When I was younger, and not as bound by the formalities of my order, my father permitted me to attend to guests in the gallery and ask them about the painting as he knew I had a particular affinity for it.No one ever knew anything about it.
“In my country,” the broken-nosed man said.“Everyone knows this.”
“Your country?”
“Targos.It’s very far south from here, Gentlewoman.Even if you were to travel by ship, it would take you a full season.”
Again, I went against prescription, this time in a childish, innocent way.I’d never heard of his country.“How did you come to be in a grainkeeper’s company?”
“It’s a long story.The kind of story tame gentlewomen such as yourself don’t like to hear.”He looked at me as he said that, his gleeful eyes appearing black in the dim of the gallery.“But who’s to say?Maybe you’ll wed Loric, and I can tell you one day.”He turned his attention back to the painting.“The sands of Lanathein stretch on for more than a dozen times the territory your father keeps, with no water to be seen.More than half the warriors in these armies died before they reached the battle.”
“What were they fighting for?Surely not the land—what could they do with it?”I only understood land in terms of grain, gold, sheep, and water.
He smiled.“They fought for the gods—or rather, they each thought they’d found the one true god, from which all other gods stem.The god of the sun—” he pointed to the sun on one man’s shield.“Against the god of truth.”He gestured to an eye on another’s chest.“They have been sworn enemies since the beginning of time.”
I was mesmerized.“Who won?”
He grinned.I think he’d been baiting this question out of me.“You can say the god of truth won because his soldiers were left standing at the end of the fray.But you can also say the sun god won because all the surviving warriors went mad from the heat.”
There is a shivery feeling I think all people get when confronted with truth.I had that feeling then.I said—it was troublesome of me, but still, I said, “In Targos, do they worship one of these gods?”
His eyes shot to mine.Radiant and daring.And there was a long silence.We had gone against prescription in several ways already, but speaking aloud any implication of his connection to unbelievers was another depth of risk.I understood by his expression that he was waiting—eagerly—to see if I would ask again, having thought about the repercussions.It was dangerous for him, being associated with heretics, and for me, simply knowing about it.
My cheeks burned, and I stayed quiet.
He smirked.“I know better than to speak of such things here in this land.”
I wanted to say, “I will not tell, sir.I promise,” but I didn’t.The fear in me was too great, and his expression had changed.At first, I thought it was disappointment, but it was more than that.He looked at me the way my father had once looked at his speckled grey mare, the one that had broken a leg and was about to be killed.
It was a few hours later that the portcullis screeched, and my father returned with the rest of the party he’d gone hunting with.
Dayne hopped off his horse without a word, avoiding my eyes as he walked inside, ignoring all the appropriate courtesies.
It’s decided then,I realized.
I was to be a wife.
