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Náli took a few long pulls from the skin, wiped his mouth, and went to join her. Einrih dropped his cloak around his shoulders as he passed.
“What are you doing out here?” Náli asked. She fell into step beside him and they headed down the narrow, trampled snow path that ran the perimeter of the garden, such as it was. Mostly it was old lava formations, rather than plants. “How did you escape my mother’s clutches?”
“That isn’t a kind thing to say about one’s mother,” she admonished, and then, with a more jocular air: “How did you? Lady Serafina was quite apologetic about you not being at luncheon.”
He grimaced, imagining. “I slipped out through the kitchens, early, and haven’t been back inside since.” His stomach growled, as if to prove the point.
Brigida chuckled. “That’ll do it.” She let out a deep breath, and a bit of her “nice young lady” front gave way to a more normal tone. “I’m sorry about all of this. I know you don’t want to play host.”
“Why are you apologizing? It wasn’t your idea.” He paused, and sent her a look. “It wasn’t, was it? Because if you helped her orchestrate this thing…”
She chuckled again, briefly, before her brow furrowed. She stared off at the path ahead, its benches lined with strange, snow-dusted black shapes that looked almost like men on horseback. “I know you don’t like it. A house full of ladies and all these functions.”
“Well, you’re right about the functions. I loathe those. But I don’t mind ladies. Not at all. I only mind being told to select one as if I’ve gone to market to buy a sow.”
She didn’t respond, and he realized how his words must have sounded to her. A sideways glance proved that her lips had pressed tight together, gaze downcast, hands knitted.
“My apologies,” he said, stiffly. Sorry wasn’t a normal part of his vocabulary. “I didn’t mean to imply–”
She turned toward him, and her expression brought him up short; the quiet, furious flash in her eyes, the soft blue-green of seawater touched with anger. “I may not be as lofty as the Corpse Lord.”
He cringed.
“But I don’t think so poorly of myself to assume I’m a sow.” A notch formed between her dark brows.
“I–” he stared.
She interrupted, pressing forward with a quiet resolve. “Furthermore, while I do like you, Náli, please don’t assume that I am overly impressed with you, nor do I fashion myself in love with you.” Her gaze made a ruthless trip down his body and back up to his face, further evidencing that scant half-inch of height advantage she had over him. It couldn’t have been more different from the way Mattias had devoured him with his eyes last night. “Should I take a husband,” she went on, “I’d prefer him to be a bit – older.” The taller was heavily implied.
Náli didn’t want to marry her, or anyone, but it still stung a little, in the way of all insults. “Well. I appreciate your honesty.”
But she wasn’t done, apparently. “Some of your prospects in there” – she gestured over her shoulder toward the Keep – “want nothing more than to find a landed, moneyed husband. Your looks are a lovely bonus. But I – while I like you – want to marry for love, and not for like. For true feeling, and not for an alliance, or for future financial security.”
Náli blinked at her. “Then…why are you here?”
Here her resolve failed. Her expression crumpled and she faced away, shoulders drawing up beneath her cloak. “It was my aunt’s idea. My father isn’t a young man, and the war has slowed commerce. She worries that, without a husband of some means, I won’t be able to hold our family’s seat on the coast alone.”
“Ah.”
“Father has brought me up to take over once he’s – gone.” She faltered, voice catching. The prospect of his passing was obviously painful for her. “But if trade doesn’t begin as it should in spring, if we…”
“I understand.”
She sighed, and glanced at him, attempting a smile. “And so we are in the same boat, it seems. Encouraged by our betters to wed for the good of forces beyond our control.”
“Your betters, perhaps. I won’t call my mother that.”
A startled laugh transformed her face, and eased the visible tension across her shoulders. “What a terrible thing to say.”
“She’s a terrible person.”
Brigida squelched her next laugh in her palm, gaze dancing again.
Náli breathed an internal sigh of relief.
They reached the garden wall, dark, porous magma stone with three shallow steps built at the bottom so you could climb up and gaze over its steepled top.
The lava fields stretched below, a downward-sloping landscape of black troughs and snow-capped hillocks. The Fault Lands’ sheep grazed its expanse, burrowing beneath the snow with their muzzles to find the first, tender shoots of spring grass beneath. Gray on gray on gray, from the white of the unsullied snow, to the black of the dried magma, to the muddied coats of the sheep. A bleak landscape, smoke curling from the underground vents, the constant haze of ash washing the sun to something insubstantial and joyless.
