Page 101 of The Thirteenth Count

In the solarium, where she walked because walking was ordinary and ordinary was armor, the gardeners were stripping blooms for tomorrow’s arrangements, and no one at all noticed a Rootfolk girl pause by the herb beds with her hands clasped behind her back, or leave with juniper and a sprig of rosemary pressed flat inside her glove, palmed from the High’s own garden, under the High’s own glass.

Thistle, juniper, rosemary, sage, she thought, walking out with her chin at the drilled angle. She had arranged those herbs around a brazier a hundred times while her father shuffled his notes. She knew the order as she knew the song. The blackthorn’s spent. The rest, I’ll bring. And the last of it, I’ll wear.

The summons found her at midday, and it was not one she expected.

Lady Cressida Ravencroft received her in the east parlor with her own maid, her own tea service, dove-grey porcelain carried up the Coil from home, and a smile whose unguarded warmth went into Fern like a splinter.

“Miss Silverbell. Thank you for coming.” Cressida poured herself, waving the maid off, which told Fern more about her than an hour of talk might have. “I’ve wanted to meet you properly since the banquet. You kept getting further away every time I tried.”

“The banquet was… crowded, my lady.”

“The banquet was a menagerie, and we were the exhibits.” It came out light, effortless, and then Cressida heard herself and laughed, a real laugh, embarrassed at its own honesty. “Forgive me. Mother says I say the true thing when I’m nervous. I’ve been nervous for a month.”

Don’t, Fern thought, taking the offered cup. Don’t be like this. Be vain. Be cruel. Give me anything at all to stand behind.

“I’ll confess my motive,” Cressida said. “Tomorrow I am to be Bonded to a man I’ve spoken to four times and move into a mountain I find I cannot get warm in.” Her eyes went briefly to the window, to the black stone and red-tinged light. “My sisters are at home. My friends are at home. You are the only person in this Keep within ten years of my age who isn’t paid to agree with me.” She set down her cup. “I hope we’ll be friends, Miss Silverbell. I think I shall badly need one.”

The tea was very good. Fern made herself drink it.

“You were tutored by him,” Cressida went on, and now the lightness thinned, and underneath it was the actual question, the one she had poured tea and confessed nerves to earn the right to ask. Her hands folded in her lap, deliberate, a woman bracing. “You’ve spent a season in his company. Everyone tells me about the alliance, the houses, the foundation of the valley’s future. No one will tell me about the man.” Her chin came up, and there was steel in her after all, quiet and unpolished and entirely her own. “So I’m asking you, because I think you’ll say the true thing. Is he kind?”

The parlor was warm. The quartet’s eight bars drifted up through the floor. And Fern sat holding dove-grey porcelain across from the woman whose Bonding she was going to destroy in twelve hours, and gave her the one true thing she had:

“Yes,” she said. “He hides it because this house punishes it, but yes. He is kind. He is careful with people who have less power than he does.” She set down the cup before it could tremble. “Whatever happens, my lady, none of it will be a thing he chose to do to you. I’d stake my life on that.”

Cressida studied her, then lowered her gaze to her tea. Whatever she had seen in Fern’s face, she did not name it.

“Thank you,” she said simply. “That’s more than anyone’s given me since the announcement.” She rose, smoothing her skirts, gathering her nerves back into their arrangement. “Then I’ll do my duty with open eyes. It’s the only way I know how to do anything.” At the door, she turned, and the unguarded smile came back one last time. “Come see me after all the fuss, Miss Silverbell.”

Fern curtsied, gave the expected farewell, and found one more reason to hate the mountain.

Lina came at the fifth bell to lay out clothes Fern wasn’t going to wear, and Fern sat her down instead.

“Miss—”

“Hush.” She took the jar of salve from the vanity, lavender and fat, the smell of every kindness this room had ever held, and took Lina’s chapped hands in hers, and began to work it in, thumb by thumb, as it had been done for her on a night she was too hollow to speak. Lina went rigid, then still, then—slowly, watching Fern’s face—quiet in a different way.

“Your hands are a disgrace,” Fern said conversationally. “Lye and cold water. You’ll want gloves.” She worked the salve into the cracked knuckles, not looking up. “Listen to me now, because I’m only going to fuss once. If ever this Keep turns upside down—for any reason, on any night—you know nothing. You hate me. You always hated me; I was vain and demanding and you’ll say so to anyone who asks. And you’ll take Jonas by the hand and go to the laundry court and wait, and a man will come who knows your name, and you’ll do exactly as he says.”

Lina’s breath had gone shallow. “Miss Silverbell⁠—”

“Those are the wages,” Fern said, “for three years of being the only warmth in this entire mountain. Paid in advance.” She pressed the salve jar into Lina’s shining hands and closed the fingers over it, and finally looked up. “You told me once to show them power is something you are. I’m going to, Lina. And you are going to be very far from wherever I’m standing when I do.”

For a moment she thought Lina would break, the dark eyes flooding, her mouth working, and then, instead, Lina did the braver thing. She stood, and smoothed her apron, and put her whole grief away behind the flat servant’s face Fern had taught her, wearing it like armor handed down.

“You were vain and demanding,” Lina said, voice wrecked and level all at once, “and I hated you.” Her chin trembled once. “Mother keep you, Miss.”

She curtsied—full and formal, the curtsy for a lady of a great house—and was gone.

Willem was waiting in the dark of the disused pantry when the seventh bell began to toll, one shoulder against the wall beside the open panel, arms crossed, looking like a man supervising a delivery of turnips.

“Rotation’s green until the third bell after midnight,” he said, without preamble. “The spur is swept. I spent an hour down there this morning pretending to hunt rats, there are no rats, incidentally, which down there I find more unsettling than the alternative.” He handed Cassius a shuttered lantern and Fern a coil of new candles, all business, eyes everywhere but their faces. “Water. Flint. The iron’s oiled. If anyone asks, tonight I saw the pair of you retire early with headaches, separately, in a state of tedious respectability.”

“Willem.” Cassius’ voice was quiet.

“Don’t.” Willem’s jaw worked. For once, the whole performance dropped, the ease, the charm, the liberated apples, and what stood in the pantry was a lean, tired man in his thirties who knew exactly what he was holding the door for. “I had a brother,” he said, to neither of them, to the dark of the passage. “Once. I was one door too late.” His green eyes came up, bright and unblinking. “So I mind doors now. It’s the whole of my philosophy and I won’t be argued with.” He stepped back, clearing the panel’s mouth. “Third bell. Not a minute past. I’ll be here.”

Fern rose on her toes and kissed his cheek, quick and fierce, and had the satisfaction, rare as white smoke, of seeing Willem entirely lost for words.