She said nothing as the guards brusquely bound my hands to a wooden post and ripped my shirt down the back.
She said nothing as they made Yannec deal me thirteen bloody lashes. She said nothing as Joniza pled for mercy, voice rising above my screams. She said nothing when that mercy was granted, sparing me the final seven, even as Count von Hirsching grumbled about spoiling their supper.
And when Gisele appeared in the kitchen after, where I’d been laid facedown on a rough wooden table like the final course, she said nothing.
Yannec was busy plating custards, shamefaced, and Joniza had gone to fetch the local hedgewitch to see to my wounds. Joniza knew a thing or two about herbs, but this was beyond her. Where she came from, they did not whip children.
The hedgewitch would cost her a month’s wages, but she hadn’t hesitated. All I could think in my haze of pain was that I would need to pay her back, and I didn’t know how.
Gisele’s eyes were wet and glittering as she slipped through the doorway. I wanted to ask her why she hadn’t said anything. Why she hadn’t said Irmgard was lying. Why she hadn’t stopped Irmgard sooner.
Why Irmgard’s tears mattered more than the blood on my back.
But I knew Gisele. She didn’t have answers for any of that.
So all she did was stumble in, set something on the table beside me, and then rush out, red-faced and choking back tears. When I turned my head, I saw a dab of bright silver gleaming on the wood: a single white penny.
I closed my eyes.
It would help pay for the hedgewitch, at least.
“Suppose you’ll have to do better the next time you try to make a bit of coin,” Yannec finally mumbled.
I let the grain of the wood push into my face. Anything to distract from the searing fire of the welts on my back. “I didn’t steal the ring,” I whispered, voice ragged from weeping. “She was lying. She told me it was a gift.”
Yannec hissed as a custard threatened to slide off its plate. “Then you won’t fall for that again. But here’s a word to the wise, girl. The world’s full of nobles like that. You can play by their rules all you like, but they’ll still find a way to beat you down and call you a thief. Even the little Miss Gisele. It’s just a matter of time.”
I didn’t say anything. It had all been enough, once.
I’d thought I could be Gisele’s maid, her friend, maybe for the rest of our lives. She’d marry another noble, and I’d run her household and maybe find a handsome groomsman or the like, and we would be like—like family, and that would be enough.
Yannec sighed and set the plate down. Then he walked over and patted my sweat-stiff hair, brief and rough, more to comfort himself than me.
“What I’m saying is, you’re going to be whipped again,Rohtpfenni. If not whipped, then robbed, blinded, whatever they feel like doing, whether you steal from them or not. That’s the way of the world. All you can do is make it worth it. Next time they knock you down, make sure it’s not for one lousy ring, but a pocket full of gold.”
At midnight, Death and Fortune came to me.
They told me I had turned thirteen, and so it was time for me to choose one of them over the other.
They told me one would claim me as a servant.
They said nothing of claiming me as a daughter.
They had nothing to say about the fresh welts on my back, or how I’dfloweredinto my monthly bleeding, or even the black eye from Dame von Falbirg. Gods don’t care about such things, you see. Not even godmothers.
I did not want to stay at Castle Falbirg. I was terrified Yannec was right, that Gisele would let me be hurt again, that one day she might even bring down the whip herself.
But far more dreadful was the idea of serving Death or Fortune, and waiting for the day one of them reached for the lash.
They couldn’t even offer a white penny after.
So I told Death and Fortuneno.
And I started thinking of pockets full of gold.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A WeightOff theChest
