The Bitter Kingdom
Page 8“Just so. This stew is terrible.”
“They’ve watered it down,” Mara says, her nose wrinkling. “And the turnips are old. Maybe moldy.”
It’s obviously no great revelation to my companions, but my mind whirls with ramifications. Mixed people. Why had this possibility never occurred to me before? “Do our people intermarry, then?” I ask.
“Sometimes,” Storm says. “In the free villages. Such a marriage would never be sanctioned in Invierne, though.”
“In the village we come from,” Mara says, with a chin lift indicating Belén, “there was talk of a marriage to an Invierno trader, generations ago, before the border skirmishes got ugly. But I never thought it was true.”
“Interesting.” I finally take a bite of my stew, and Mara is correct—they’ve watered it down so much it might as well be soup.
“What are you thinking, Elisa?” Belén asks with a narrowed eye.
“Don’t you think it’s odd that, in spite of my royal education, no one ever told me about mules?”
He shrugs. “Maybe they didn’t want you to know how similar Inviernos actually are to us. Painting the enemy as being as inhuman as possible is a great way to win a war.”
I choke down a chunk of potato, hardly tasting it. “Maybe,” I say. “But I want to talk to that girl again.”
The bearded men at the table across from us eye us warily as we’re scraping the last of our stew from our bowls. I’m relieved when Mula returns. “Your rooms are ready,” she says. “I will show you.”
We follow her through the common room to the back stairs. As she steps up, the bottoms of her bare feet flash bright blue, and I’m so startled I almost stumble.
“Slave mark,” Mara whispers.
I frown. Joya d’Arena has not allowed slavery for centuries. My home country of Orovalle never allowed it.
“Here,” says the girl. She opens a door to reveal a small room with two cots. A table rests against the wall between them. On it are a clay pitcher and a half-melted candle, lit from above by a single window too high to look out of. “Your other room is across the hall,” she adds.
“Thank you,” I say, and I hand her a copper coin, which she shoves into her mouth.
I want to ask her some questions, but I’m not sure where to start or what to say, so I’m glad when she lingers, her eyes roving over our packs. “What’s in there?” she says around her mouthful of coin.
“Just supplies,” I say.
“Orlín says you’re traders.”
“Orlín?”
“So what are you trading?”
Mara steps forward, eyes narrowed. “Did Orlín put you up to asking?”
The girl’s golden eyes shift left, but she nods once, sharply.
My disarming smile is wasted on her, since she will not meet anyone’s gaze. “You may tell Orlín that we have some spices,” I say. “Just marjoram and sage. But if it trades well, we’ll come back with more.” The lie sits easy in my mouth. When did I become so comfortable with deception?
She nods and turns to slip out the door, but she pauses, her tiny hand on the frame. “He says you’re fine lords and ladies,” she says over her shoulder. “He has a very bad want for seeing inside those packs. But don’t say I told.” And she scurries away in a flash of bright blue.
I sigh after her. “I guess we should all stay in the same room tonight. And rotate watches.”
“By your leave,” Storm says, “I’d like to find a barber to trim this loathsome black from my hair.”
I grin, but my amusement is fleeting. “Will you make some inquiries, too? Find out if—when—Franco’s party passed through? And I’d love to know if anyone remembers a prisoner, and . . . and what state he was in.”
“Of course, Majesty.”
“I’m going to see if I can trade for some tack,” Belén says. “Our horses do well enough bareback, but past the timberline, our path is going to be very steep and I’d rather have saddles.”
“Thank you, Belén.”
“Will you and Mara be all right by yourselves?”
Mara and I exchange a look of mutual longing. “Oh, yes,” I say firmly. “Mara and I are going to order baths.”
Mara and I sit on the cot, clad only in our spare blouses while our regular clothes are with a laundress. She combs my damp hair, and the slight tug on my scalp is so familiar, so comforting. With my eyes closed, I can almost imagine that Ximena is the one working through my hair, that I didn’t have to send her away after all.
I open my eyes. It was an inevitable decision, and it won’t do me any good to wallow in regret.
“How is your head?” I ask Mara. The bruise above her brow is no longer swollen, but the color has turned the sickly yellow of urine. I’m hoping it’s a good sign.
“Better,” she says. “I don’t get dizzy anymore.”
“Belén was very concerned for you. He didn’t leave your side once while you were drifting in and out of consciousness.”
She freezes, and I wince as the teeth of the comb dig into my scalp with the weight of her hand. After too long a pause, she says, “Oh?”
I hide a smile. “Yes. The way he looked at you . . . you are dear to him, Mara.”
She resumes combing, but her strokes are rhythmic and thoughtless. She combs the same section of hair over and over again. “Maybe . . .” she says. “Maybe I’m dear to him like a sister. We’ve become friends again.”
It’s hard not to laugh. “You know how you always tell me I’m pathetically ignorant in matters of love?”
She pulls my hair back and begins to separate it for braiding. “Well, it’s true. You were the last person to realize Hector was in love with you.”
“Yes, well, everyone is ignorant when it comes to their own life and love.”
“You think so?”
“I think . . .” I struggle to find the exact words. “I think sometimes when we find love we pretend it away, or ignore it, or tell ourselves we’re imagining it. Because it’s the most painful kind of hope there is. It can be ripped away so easily. By indifference. By death. By . . . the need for a political marriage. Or maybe that last one is just me.”
Her fingers move from habit, and I wish we were back in my suite, sitting in front of the vanity mirror so I could see her face. “You think I’m pretending away my hope?” she says in a small voice. “Because it might hurt too much?”
“I don’t know. But that’s what I did with Hector. Even though part of me knew I loved him.”
She plunks down beside me on the cot and lets her face fall into her hands. “I’m afraid,” she whispers into her palms.
“Belén adores you. I’m sure of it.”
“Not of that.” She raises her face, and I have to remind myself that the rippled scar pushing one eyelid down—a gift from her abusive father—always makes her appear sadder than she is. “I could not bear it, to fall in love again, only to have him die.”
“Don’t you ever think of Humberto?” she counters. “Surely losing him so suddenly makes you . . . wary.”
“I think of him often,” I say softly. “Though less than I used to.”
“You loved him.” Her voice is almost accusing.
“I did. It was different, though. I loved Alejandro too, in a small way. I seem to have great capacity for it. Alejandro was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. But Humberto was the kindest, a different kind of beautiful.”
“And Hector?”
I take a deep breath, for talking about him is both wondrous and painful. “Hector is my friend. I trust him in everything, always. But when I’m with him, it’s like my blood is on fire. And now that I understand you can love someone in different ways at once, I’ll never want less.”
She sighs. “Julio was my friend. And Belén was my fire. But now . . .”
“Now Belén is becoming a friend too.” I shake my head in mock despair. “A deadly combination.”
A little grin sneaks onto her face. “We are doomed, Elisa.”
“Indeed, I think we are.”
She starts to giggle, and then she’s laughing so hard that tears leak from her eyes.
“What, by God’s righteous right hand, is so funny?”
“You!” She gasps between breaths. “Giving me advice on love!”
And it hardly makes sense, but laughter pours out of me like a stream too long dammed, and then we’re hugging on the cot, both of us breathless, until she suddenly sobers and says, “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Elisa.” But the moment it leaves her mouth, she stiffens and pulls her arms away. “I’m sorry. That’s not appropriate. I would never presume—”
“And you’re mine,” I say truthfully. There’s a hole inside me that she fills, something I wouldn’t get from being queen or winning a war or even being with Hector.
“You’re the sister I never had,” she adds.
“And you’re the sister I always wish I had.”
She barks a laugh. “Someday you’ll have to tell me all about Princess Alodia and why things are so difficult between you.”
I nod, my thoughts suddenly far away. “When I figure it out,” I murmur, “you’ll be the first to know.”
9
I braid Mara’s hair for a change, and I have just finished when Storm returns with close-cropped hair the color of corn silk and a new swagger. He stands tall, his head high, the cowl of his cloak thrown back for the first time in weeks. The shorter cut brings out the planes of his face, giving his cheeks and jaw a more chiseled nature. Were he not so preternaturally tall and oddly colored, he would be almost handsome.
He catches Mara and me staring and rubs his hair, frowning. “It will grow back,” he assures us. “By the time we reach Invierne, it will be less shameful.”
“I’m relieved to hear that your vanity has weathered this egregious trial unscathed.”
“Thank y— Oh. Sarcasm again.”
“Actually,” Mara says, “I was staring because it seems whiter than it used to be. Maybe I got used to the dye.”
Mara and I exchange a perplexed look. “This is a good thing?” I venture. “To have whiter hair?”
“It’s a mark of magic. The oldest, most powerful animagi have the lightest hair. It’s the one thing that has given me hope, made me think that maybe I could still learn to call the zafira. Because in spite of my continued failure . . .” He lifts his chin. “My hair does bear the mark of one who is learning the art.”
I touch my thick sleeping braid. My hair has been as black as night for most of my life—until the sun leached the color from strands around my face, leaving them a washed-out red. But maybe it wasn’t the sun. Maybe it was my Godstone. Will my hair be as ghostly pale as Storm’s someday?
“I asked about Lord Hector,” he says.
Mara and I straighten so fast our shoulders knock.
“What?” I demand. “What did you hear?”
Storm settles on the floor and crosses his long legs. “A group came through. Large, well armed. A mix of Joyans and Inviernos, though the Inviernos were all dark of skin and hair. The barber told me they mistook the Inviernos for mules at first, because of their coloring. Most of them made camp just out of sight. Only a few entered the village to trade for supplies.”
“When? When did they come through?”
“Less than a week ago.”
We are closer than I realized. “And did your barber notice a prisoner among them?”
“He did not.”
My shoulders slump.
“But I asked the glass merchant outside the inn, and she remembers him distinctly. One of the men traveling with Franco is a cousin of hers, so she spent time in their camp, trading information and news for him to take back to their family in Invierne.”
“And how . . . ? Is he . . . ?”
Storm gazes at me with uncharacteristic sympathy. “She said he was beaten badly.”
“Oh!” I reach out and find Mara’s hand. She clasps mine tight.
“She said he is pale and sick. His skin was as white as an Invierno’s.”
I nod, because the lump in my throat makes it impossible to speak. Hector is strong. I know it well. He will do his best to survive. But when I finally find my voice, it’s to say, “I will destroy Franco. Utterly destroy him.”
“I anticipate that eagerly,” Storm says.
I give him a sharp look. “Oh?” Though he harbors little loyalty to those of his homeland, I’ve never heard such resentment in his voice before.
“Franco is an unrighteous man,” he says firmly. “My uncle, once in line for a position in the Deciregi, was killed under mysterious circumstances. My family has long suspected Franco, though we cannot be sure.”
“You sound sure.”
He shrugs.
The sun is low enough that Mara lights the candle on the small table. I should try to sleep. We need all the rest we can get. But now that I know Hector is so close, I’m twitchy with the possibility that we could catch him before he reaches Invierne. Maybe we won’t need to enter enemy territory after all. It’s a long shot. I will have to push us even harder than before.