Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) Page 4

  Women did not attend petition day. A woman with a grievance sent her nearest male relative to plead her cause, waiting outside in the courtyard where Ersala sometimes served tea and biscuits. All except for Tanra Jille. She would waddle past the clutch of women huddled on the steps without a backward glance or a moment’s hesitation. She walked into the great hall with a somber black burlang draped over her voluptuous figure in a half-hearted effort to hide the bright pattern and low bodice of her normal dress underneath. And as she strode proudly to the steps of the raised dais, Tanra was oblivious to the stares of male peasant and merchant alike. She folded her thick arms over her ample bosom as if she were haggling with a fishmonger rather than asking favors of her lord and master.

  Marta would rather die than miss one of Tanra Jille’s appearances on Petition Day. Her complaints were so much more interesting than anyone else’s.

  “He broke the girl’s jaw, so he did! Then the fellow has the copper to refuse to pay for the damages. I will be having five placas for the table he broke and another six placas for the girl—”

  “Why six placas for the girl?” Rowle had asked, bemused.

  “Well, the child can’t be earning a living for another fortnight, don’t you know? He owes her.”

  “And tell me again, Mistress Jille,” Rowle would ask, fighting a smile, “in exactly what capacity does this poor injured girl earn her living at your establishment? I thought I understood you to say she was a serving wench. Can she not pour ale with a broken jaw?”

  Tanra Jille didn’t blink, just grinned slyly back at Vidor Rowle.

  “Well, a serving wench earns most of her coin in tips, but I wouldn’t expect such a fine lord as yourself to know such things. And what buckie is going to be giving his hard-earned coppers to a girl what can’t even smile at him, I ask ya?”

  “And this girl would reasonably expect to earn six placas in a fortnight, just from tips? That’s a good deal of coin, is it not? Your customers must be very rich or very generous.”

  Tanra Jille winked at him. “Well, she’s a very good serving wench, she is, my lord.”

  Rowle ruled in Tanra’s favor, as he always did. Marta suspected her father admired Tanra Jille as much as she did.

  “As much as I may not agree with the way she makes her living,” she’d overheard her father telling Ersala, “Tanra is an honest woman who takes care of her own. I can’t fault her for that.”

  “She’s lucky to have you take her part,” Ersala remarked flatly. “Yagret Simanous has been trying to shut her down for summers. The merchants despise her.”

  “That’s because she serves better ale than any other tavern in the village,” Rowle had laughed. “Yagret’s concoction is more water than ale and bitter to boot.”

  “And how would you be knowing such things, my husband?”

  “Why, from the complaints of my subjects, dear wife. How else?”

  But the hall was empty now and the hearth a hollow, blackened maw. Even in the coming winter, with fuel so dear, the household would keep to the smaller rooms off the kitchen, which were easier to heat. The hall fires would only be lit on Petitioners’ Day, where the meager warmth would do little against a keel’s worth of cold, dead air and fool no one but the poorest peasants whose homes were even colder. Marta had seen the smug looks on the merchants’ faces as they cupped their jeweled hands before their faces to warm fingers with their own breath. It was this humiliation she dreaded on Petition Day. What good was it to be the vidor’s daughter when everyone knew you froze in winter like the poorest child of a tinker?

  But in Lillitha’s room, it would be warm as toast, no matter how bitterly the winds howled outside. On Lillitha’s bed would be the best goose-down coverlet in the whole household, the cleanest burning olive wood in her hearth grate. Oh, it wasn’t fair!

  The thought of another bitter winter in this house sent a shiver down Marta’s back in spite of the late summer heat. She walked the length of the great hall quickly, turning to the stairs that lead to the bedchambers above.

  Her own chamber was across the hall from her mother and father’s suite. They claimed they had given her this small dark room because it was warmer in the winter, on the opposite side of the house from the winds that blew in from the sea, but Marta was sure they’d chosen this room to punish her. The walls were still washed with the pale rose color of her infant nursery. The room itself was hardly big enough for the tiny wooden bed and a washstand, its mirror cracked and discolored, and a scarred chest of drawers.

  She pulled another frock from the chest and examined it for stains. When she was satisfied it would do, she flung it aside and stripped down to her frayed and dingy shift.

  She paused for a moment to admire herself in the mirror, standing on tiptoe to check for further evidence that her breasts were indeed developing nicely. She wished her mother would relent and give her her first corset before next year, for she was sure it would lend an added curve to her bosom. One day, Marta promised herself, she would have a full-length mirror, one that wasn’t cracked or stained. How could a girl know what she looked like without a proper mirror?

  She sighed and slipped the fresh dress over her head, smoothing the skirts into place and buttoning the collar. Childishly cut without a real bodice, it hung shapeless over her breasts and hips. But then that was the reason she’d chosen it, wasn’t it? Let Mother and Yanna whisper whatever they might in Rowle’s ear about their youngest running wild through the village; he would see only his little girl, his sweet calla Marta who still sat on his knee and kissed his cheeks, dressed demurely in faded blue cotta.

  Of course, she hated the dress. It made her look like a child. But a child she must appear until her father said otherwise.

  She pulled a comb through her curls, gritting her teeth as her scalp protested. She took a blue silk ribbon—one of only three she possessed, and this one had been stolen from Lillitha—and tied back her hair, allowing one curl to escape for her vanity’s sake.

  A commotion arose in the courtyard filled with the barks of dogs and the cries of small children. A booming, masculine voice cut through the tumult and Marta knew her father was home.

  She practiced her smile just once in the mirror before racing down the stairs to the kitchen.

  “Your father must have just ridden in,” Tesla informed her as she entered the kitchen. “Your mother’s gone to greet him.”

  “I know.” Marta stuck a finger in a bowl of warm kanard and lifted it to her mouth. “I thought you might need some help. He’s early.”

  The House Kirrisian cook was a gaunt, sunken-eyed widow with little patience for Marta, who rarely condescended to speak to her unless she was wheedling seconds. She was up to her elbows in radishes, charoot and onions, chopping with a skilled savagery born of too much work and too little time.

  Tesla’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. She snorted as she waved her knife at Marta. “If you’re wanting to help, then I’ll thank you to be keeping your dirty fingers out of the kanard and go stir that pot on the fire. Be sure to scrape the bottom or it’ll stick.”

  “I know how to stir a pot, Tesla,” Marta said haughtily.

  “Really?” Tesla’s voice arched. “Well, that’s a trick you didn’t learn in my kitchen, I dare say.”

  “It’s not your kitchen,” Marta bridled, moving the ladle around in the pot with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “I’ll thank you to remember that.”

  “Please, spare me your airs, child. I’ve no time to curtsey.”

  Marta was about to stick out her tongue when her father appeared in the doorway.

  Rowle was tall compared to most men of Kirrisian, almost six feet. Large boned and thickly muscled, he was lean and wizened, his skin red-tinged and leathery from sun and wind. His was an intelligent face with quick eyes darting beneath bushy gray brows, the top of his bald head shining. The air of command sat easily on his shoulders the way lesser men might wear a cloak. Marta thought no man in the entire realm as handsome a
s her own father.

  “And what a pleasing picture this is to return home to!” Rowle laughed, his voice filling the room. “My calla Marta tending the home fires like a proper little wife!”

  “Father!” Marta flew into his open arms, snuggling her face against his riding cloak and inhaling the glorious mingled scents of horses and ale and open air. “I’m so glad you’re home!”

  “What a good girl you are to greet your old father so warmly!” Rowle took her hands as he stepped away, looking her over with approval. “By Oman’s beard, child, but you’ve grown another inch since I left!’

  Marta giggled. “I have not! You’ve only been away a fortnight!”

  “Aye, don’t disagree with me, daughter,” he warned with a twinkle in his eye. “You’re growing into a fine young woman. Tis proud I am to see you here helping our good Tesla—”

  Tesla snorted again, causing Marta’s eyes to roll menacingly in the old woman’s direction. Rowle turned his attention to the pot on the hearth.

  “Lamb stew, if my nose does not deceive me! Darlin’ Tesla, it’ll be a feast fit for a king, by the smell of it.” Rowle reached a huge arm around the cook’s waist and squeezed, bringing a rare smile to Tesla’s grim face.

  “Nonsense,” she said, blushing to her hairline. “Barely fit for a vidor, but we’ll make due. No one goes to bed hungry tonight, my lord Rowle.”

  Aye, there’ll be time enough for hunger this winter, Rowle thought to himself, aiming a small prayer towards Oman’s Isle that this year would not be so harsh.

  In summer, the fields and the boats yielded enough to keep them eating regularly, but after the first killing frosts, the household diet dwindled. By spring, there was not much left in the pantries but charoots, dried mushrooms and shooma grain for gruel and hard bread. There was always the sheep herd, but slaughtering a sheep in winter was hardly worth the trouble, so skinny and tough they were. Besides, a dead mid-winter sheep was one whose coat would yield far less wool than a sheep left alive until spring sheering; nor could a dead sheep breed and yield more sheep. Fresh food was limited to any fish that Ry and Cal brought in and the winter storms made fishing chancy at best. Last winter, two of the goats they depended on for milk had frozen to death and the gruel had been reduced to nothing but water and tasteless grain.

  If we can just hang on another two summers. Until Lillitha reaches her sixteen summer in time for her offering at the Single Moon. Please, Oman. Let her be the Chosen One—

  Shamed overwhelmed him; how had he been reduced to this? His was a noble name, his lineage one of the highest and most prized in all of the Realm, traced back as far as Martel the Warrior, who fought at Belah’s side. Offering his eldest daughter to Oman was a duty and a privilege. So why did he feel like some tavern scully hoping to sell his daughter for a good price?

  Marta peered up into his face and saw the shadow flickering over his features. He cupped her face in his large hands and kissed her gently on the forehead.

  “Go and call your sister in to supper, Marta.”

  When she looked up into his eyes, Marta wondered at the sadness she saw there. It puzzled her, but she forgot it even before she reached the stairs.

  Chapter 3: The Grail of the Dead

  They stood as Yannamarie entered the room, gliding soundlessly. It spooked Marta, how quietly the woman could move.

  The cadia stepped to one side and waited, hands clasped and eyes straight ahead, as her charge stepped into the small hall with tiny, unhurried steps just as Yanna had taught her. Lillitha halted before her father, bowing deeply as he took her proffered hands and brought them to his lips.

  “My Lilli,” Rowle sighed, his blue eyes crinkling into lines long ago etched there by the sea and the open fields. “How is it possible for a child of mine to be so pretty?”

  “Welcome home, father.” Was this her voice, so careful and polite? She fought the urge to jump into his arms, longing to feel the rough stubble of his beard against her cheek. “I’ve missed you so. I trust your trip went well?”

  He squeezed her hands tightly before letting them go, as if he read her thoughts and understood why she could not embrace him, just as he could do more than hold her hands.

  “Well enough, daughter. A long ride to be sure.”

  He winked at her, folding her arm into his and escorting her to the end of the table. Only when Lillitha was settled, with Yanna to her right, did everyone sit down again.

  Rowle occupied the head of the table. To his left sat Marta, then Ersala. Opposite Ersala sat Paul, eleven summers-old, all elbows and knees, squirming as if he might shoot out of his chair at any minute. Between Paul and Rowle there was an empty chair, the place set with a metal trough and a goblet unlike the simple wooden cups from which the rest of the family drank. It was the Grail of the Dead.

  Ersala filled the grail from a jug while the rest of them bowed their heads. She spoke in the ancient tongue of the Omani:

  “Let this cup stand in memory, that the blessings of remembrance fall gently upon this house.”

  “Mother Leah, hear our prayers,” came the ensemble response.

  And then the silence shattered.

  “Marta, put that down this instance! Will you never learn?”

  “But Mother—”

  “Don’t ‘mother’ me—.” Ersala took the biscuit from Marta’s hand and returned it to the platter, then handed the platter to Yannamarie even as Marta howled in sudden pain. “Paul, don’t kick your sister again! Have you washed your hands?”

  Yanna plucked two biscuits from the platter, laying one in her trough and the other on Lillitha’s. It was customary that the consecratia be served first, then the rest of the family, beginning with the men, according to seniority, then finally to the women, again according to age.

  “But I always get the smallest,” Marta grumbled. “I hate being last.”

  Yanna’s sharp, thin eyebrow arched in Marta’s direction, her lips stretching in an expression that might have been pity, scorn or amusement. It was impossible to tell, but it galled Marta just the same. She wished it were permissible to stick one’s tongue out at a cadia.

  Rowle reached out to pat Marta’s hand and chuckled. “There are biscuits aplenty tonight, calla Marta. Tesla’s cooked enough to fill even your stomach. Bottomless though it seems.”

  Ersala shot a warning glance at her youngest daughter, then smiled wanly at Rowle. “Your business, my husband? I trust all went well?”

  “Well indeed, wife.”

  Rowle spoke of his trip to the far southwestern border of Kirrisian and the farmers there who had invented a new instrument for sheering sheep. “Quite impressive it is. We’ll try it out ourselves come spring.”

  Marta’s mind wandered; she had little interest in sheep; they were smelly, dirty things so stupid they could drown in a rain puddle. Instead she nibbled on her biscuit and watched the bowls and baskets make their way around the table.

  “No, not so much, Yannamarie,” her sister was whispering. “I’m not so hungry, really.”

  The cadia paid her no heed. Lillitha blushed—a hopeless habit she would never outgrow—as she caught Marta’s baleful eyes staring at her trough.

  “And things here? All was peaceful, I trust?” Rowle took the bowl from Yannamarie and ladled the steaming stew onto his own trough. He did not mention the two executions he’d presided over, the real reason for his trip. The deaths, though deserved, weighed heavily on his heart; he would talk with Ersala later in the privacy of their bedchamber. As always, she would remind him of the service he did in protecting his people. Her words, sensible and true, would ease his burden.

  “Father, can I go with you on your next journey?”

  “Paul, don’t talk with your mouth full,” Ersala sighed. “And you are too young to even ask such a thing.”

  “Now, wife, the boy is eager to see and learn, aren’t you, Paul? Perhaps next summer we will take a short journey together. If your mother agrees, of course.”

>   “I’m not so very young,” the boy disagreed. Unlike his sister Marta, Paul did not whine, only stated his case with his mother’s pragmatic reliance on fact. “I am more than eleven summers now. Jonil was only ten when you first took him with you.”

  “And look how well he turned out,” Marta muttered, low enough that only Paul could hear her. Or so she thought. Yannamarie’s dark eyes cut towards her, the cadia’s face still frozen in that unreadable mask.

  “What did you say, girl?” Ersala demanded sharply.

  Marta knew her mother hadn’t caught her words clearly; if she had, Marta would be on the floor from one of Ersala’s blows.

  “I said, will you please hurry and pass the stew before I faint from hunger, muma.”

  That was a cruel remark, young Marta—

  Marta jerked toward the source of the voice but the cadia’s lips were still and unmoving as she returned Marta’s stare.

  Will you never learn charity for the wounds of others?

  The voice rolling in her head had to be a cadian trick. How dare she? Marta’s eyes flashed fury at the silent, black-robed woman, then flickered around the other faces at the table.

  No, they can’t hear me. I’m speaking only to the one that needs correction. Do you not know how much your parents still grieve for your lost brother?

  Marta felt the anger building inside her. A buzzing heat seemed to push at the top of her skull. The words were silent and yet they seemed to scream, taking their substance from the fever that fought to be free: Get out of my head, you witch!

  Yanna flinched, and then a small smile played at the corners of her mouth.