The Broken Tower--A Novel, page 25
The two men stared at each other. Korsa had been a warrior once, before being brought to this horrid place, and for a moment he could not help but consider that in other circumstances, he could have killed this gray man who stood before him. Easily. Without thinking twice about it.
But then he heard footsteps on the stairs. Liam—who had ostensibly been upstairs tidying in the tower but was more likely standing at the bottom of the stairs listening—came through the stairway door. The skewer of anger in Korsa froze and turned to fear. No, he couldn’t kill the Seneschal. Not while the thirteen-fourteens depended on him.
As if he’d read Korsa’s mind, the Seneschal’s mouth relaxed. He turned to the boy. “Will you please find your companions? I would like to speak to all of you.”
Liam glanced at Korsa, and then went across the hall. In less than a minute, the thirteen-fourteens were filing into the room. The gray man waited until they were each seated on their own cot. Silence fell. The only sounds were the faint clinks of metal on metal from Florence and her box.
“You all seem to like living here, with our Nali friend,” the Seneschal told them. “You seem happy, and I’m glad of it.”
With Florence unconcerned, the three remaining thirteen-fourteens watched the Seneschal warily and said nothing. Korsa stood frozen, afraid to move or speak or do anything that might risk them.
“I wish you could stay here forever,” the Seneschal went on. “But unfortunately, you’re here to do a job. We all must do our jobs, mustn’t we? A factory that didn’t produce wouldn’t last long. Then all its workers would be unemployed, and their families would starve. I am very sorry for the death of your friend, but now it’s time to get back to work. If any of you are unwilling to do that work, please tell me now. We will try to find other work for you.”
“What kind of work?” Ida said.
The Seneschal smiled down at her. Korsa was glad she took it without reaction. “What do you think you can do here? Can you work in the fields, or the kitchen?”
“I probably could,” she said, defiantly.
With her strong arms and the smoldering determination that always burned in her eyes, Korsa would not have been at all surprised. But Liam said, “Quiet, Ida.”
“Everyone must find something they can do,” the Seneschal said. “This place exists because the factory managers saw a need for it, but all who live here must contribute, in one way or another. I would rather see you work here with Korsa, because you all seem happy here. But if he continues to make no progress, I will have to reassign you, whether we like it or not.” He looked at Korsa. “I wish you the best of luck,” he said, and left.
“What was he talking about?” Jesse said, sounding uncertain, when the gray man was gone. “I kept waiting for the threat to come. It sounded like there was a threat coming.”
“It was all a threat.” Korsa sighed. “The other side of the house. It is a—” He stopped. He was unable to say the word to them.
“A brothel,” Ida said, and then, when Korsa looked at her in surprise, “The girls who bring the food always have makeup around their eyes. Like they tried to wash it off, and missed some. Kitchen maids don’t wear makeup.” She gave him a sad smile. “The orphan house is still in the real world, Chief. Why do you think we’re all so humble-looking? It’s because the pretty ones got taken out early.”
“Except Liam,” Jesse said. “And that’s just because they don’t want him having a spell in the middle of—”
Liam gave him a dark look, and the younger boy shut his mouth hastily. But when Ida said, “Some things, you don’t need legs that work for,” they all nodded.
“I hate this city,” Korsa said, grimly.
“Sounds like it’s time to test your mind-herb again,” Liam said.
Korsa shook his head. “You could die. Like Anna.”
There was a long silence. Ida, who was always the speaker of truth when truths needed to be spoken, was the one who broke it. Softly, she said, “How long do you think brothel girls live, Chief?”
When Korsa was their age, he’d thought himself immortal, brazen with the confidence of youth. He hated that these young people were able to speak of their own deaths with such equanimity. He knew they valued their own lives, but he also knew that most of the people they’d been around didn’t, particularly. Their pragmatism horrified him.
“You are all important,” he said. “To me, and to the world. There is more to your value than whether or not you can work a shift in a factory. You are not disposable.”
He didn’t know what he’d planned to say next. But before he could figure it out, Korsa felt a light touch on his arm. He turned and saw Florence standing next to him. Florence hated to be touched, and she never touched others. She would occasionally suffer one of the other girls to brush and braid her hair, if they cornered her and insisted very gently, but even then they were careful only to touch her hair, and not even to let their fingers brush the tips of her ears.
But now here she was, hand on his upper arm, wide blue eyes staring up at him. Her mouth, her jaw, her eyebrows were as affectless as always, but the piercing stare was new, and different. He could feel the warmth of her hand through his shirt. He could smell the residue of the oily metal on her fingers.
“I guess you have a volunteer,” Liam said, awestruck, and Florence kept her hand exactly where it was, and there was nothing but silence for a while.
FOURTEEN
Angen’s wife, Lady Yana, was tall for a Tiernan woman, and raw-boned despite being extremely pregnant. She had beautiful hair, thick waves of warm burnished gold, but her eyes were nervous and there was a dour set to her mouth. Like many extremely pregnant women, she was miserable and peevish, but Elly suspected that she would have been miserable and peevish even without the discomfort of the child growing inside her. Whenever Yana looked at Elly, she either held her head high, like the haughtiest of courtiers, or low, like a dog about to attack. When she spoke, her jaw clenched.
And Elly belonged to her. Angen had given her to his wife as a gift, after Gavin was dragged down to the prison beneath the keep. “You’ve never been a lady’s maid before,” he told Elly, “but I’m sure Lady Yana can train you.” And with a sweep of his soft, loathsome hand, Elly had been dragged away, too. She’d been given a plain servant’s dress to wear, and had her hair braided in the dreaded handle at the back of her head. Yana did it herself, and, as the saying went, made sure it was tight enough to hang by. Elly’s scalp hurt all the time, now.
Figure out a way to survive the day, wake up tomorrow, and do it again: wisdom passed on to Elly by her grandmother, who had once lived in the rooms where Yana slept. Now the air there rang with recriminations and criticism, as Yana barked gleefully at Elly to brush her dress, arrange her hairpins, fetch her water, and straighten her bedclothes. Elly didn’t seem to be able to do any of it properly, but she moved as quickly as she could and tried to keep her wits about her despite the constant sniping. Going to bed, at this stage of Yana’s pregnancy, was a complex affair involving an elaborate construction of pillows and cushions and as Elly arranged and rearranged them at Yana’s orders, she made herself look again and again at the woman’s swollen ankles and stiff fingers and remind herself that this woman was uncomfortable, and unhappy, and married to Angen.
Finally, Yana settled back in bed and demanded tea. Elly gladly went to fetch it from the women’s salon. Her feet had known the way since childhood, but the familiarity was uncomfortable. It only grew worse when she arrived at the salon itself. Traditionally, the salon was the only place the women of the house held any sway at all. When Elly’s mother had been Lady of Tiernan, it had been lovely and full of light. Elly remembered being taught to sew there, the feel of the linen beneath her fingers, the smell of the lavender in the candles. All of that was gone, now. The gracious sofas and armchairs were crowded awkwardly together, to fit in as much other, less comfortable seating as possible. The room smelled not of lavender but of black dye and stale breath.
Squeezed into one corner was a small tea table, and squeezed in next to that, arranging a tidy tray next to the samovar, was Eduard’s maid, Moira. She turned when Elly came in, and smiled. “Lady Eleanor,” she said, with a warm smile. “Come see how Lady Yana takes her tea.”
Gratefully, Elly went and saw. With a very precise amount of honey, apparently, and a few drops of valerian, to help her sleep. And a fine saucer holding one piece of the dry cracker that Tiernan shepherds carried with them on long grazes. “In case her stomach bothers her at night,” Moira explained. “But it must be a perfectly unbroken piece, and it must be laid perfectly straight. See?”
The girl was so sensible and kind that Elly, exhausted and more frazzled than she wanted to admit, felt her eyes prick with tears. “You,” she said, “are officially my favorite person in Tiernan. How can I possibly thank you for all of this?”
Moira grinned, and Elly almost gasped. Moira’s smile was Elly’s mother’s smile, exactly. And now that she looked for it she could see something of Eduard around Moira’s cheekbones, and the shape of her eyes. Or did she see it because she was looking for it? “You’re welcome, Lady Eleanor,” the girl said.
“Elly’s fine,” she said, and took the tray down to Yana.
Who promptly found fault with the temperature of the tea, the placement of the tray, and the speed with which the whole thing had been brought. “You aren’t much of a maid. But we’ll train the high-and-mighty out of you, Lady Highfall,” she said, and waved her hand. “That’s all.”
In her own little closet of a room, Elly fell gratefully into bed, not bothering to undress. There was no door. Judah had slept in a closet like this throughout their childhood. Elly was heartstruck by how lonely that must have been, to sleep in a tiny afterthought of a room that didn’t even warrant a door. But Judah almost never actually slept in that room, had she? She’d slept in the big room, with Elly, and how Elly missed her. She missed Judah’s warm feet pressed on hers, the way Judah always woke with her head buried under the pillow. How happy they’d all been, even in the worst of times. How stupidly, unknowingly happy. Because they’d had each other, hadn’t they? And now they didn’t even have that.
When she closed her eyes, all she could hear were the sounds of fists and boots hitting Gavin’s flesh.
* * *
Moira shook Elly awake in the morning, a finger laid to her lips. Silently, she walked Elly through everything that needed to be done before Yana awoke. There was the fire to be stoked, the hairbrush and pins to be laid out in perfectly straight lines on the porcelain tray on the dressing table, fresh clothes to be taken from the press. All in absolute silence and stocking feet. Then Moira cocked her head, and the two of them headed toward the cramped salon, where breakfast was being laid out by other serving girls. Of course there was a specific way that Lady Yana liked her breakfast arranged. Of course she had a lengthy list of preferences. One piece of toasted bread, a boiled egg. No butter, no salt. Elly tried to remember, but she found herself distracted by the women filing into the room. Completely unlike the ladies floating gracefully into the salon in Elly’s memory, these women, while well-dressed enough, trudged into the salon like workers onto a factory floor. Not that Elly had ever been on a factory floor, but the tired resignation in the women’s eyes and the joyless exhaustion with which they trudged to their seats couldn’t have been much different.
“I’m sorry, Moira,” Elly said, interrupting as Moira explained exactly how Lady Yana liked her toast. “But what’s happening here?”
Moira cast a puzzled look over her shoulder at the women. “What do you mean, Lady—sorry. What do you mean, Elly?”
Elly appreciated that the girl had remembered. “I mean, why are they acting like they’re sitting down to work?”
“They are sitting down to work,” Moira said, as if Elly were a bit stupid. “How else should they look?” The courtyard bell rang. Quickly, Moira picked up the tray and pressed it into Elly’s hands. “You need to hurry. Lady Yana will be angry.”
But Lady Yana was already angry. “You’re late,” she snapped, as Elly laid the tray down next to the bed.
“I’m sorry.” Elly picked up the teacup to hand it to the woman.
Something black lashed out from under the bedclothes, and struck the back of Elly’s hand with such a fierce sting that at first, she thought she’d been bitten by a snake, and yelped. The teacup clattered to the floor, greenish liquid splattering over the sheets.
Lady Yana bared her teeth in something like a smile, and held up a small riding crop with a knotted bit at the end. “Mind your duties,” she said, “or the next one will be across your face. Not that you can get any uglier, with that scar of yours.”
Elly was stunned into silence. She gripped her searing hand firmly in her uninjured one and stared at the woman in the bed. Noticed how the crop trembled slightly, and wondered if anyone had ever pointed out to the woman that it was easier not to be cruel. “Yes, Lady Yana,” she finally managed to say, barely able to hear herself, and began to clean up the mess. A purple welt was rising on the back of her right hand. In her mind, she heard the thud of boot against flesh.
This was not going to work.
* * *
The next few days passed in much the same way. Yana waved the crop around a good bit but seemed somehow both panicked and elated about actually using it, as if she couldn’t quite believe she had been given the power to hurt another person. However nasty Yana might be, Elly suspected she’d spent a good bit of time on the other end of the cruelty. Elly tried to think of her that way, as a woman ill-treated, rather than a monster. If she were a better person, she would be able to think of the tasks she did for Yana as gifts, not chores.
But she could practically hear Judah in her head: Nobody is that good a person.
The worst part was that things Yana wanted were quite small, and Yana would not have had to be nasty to get Elly to do them for her. She wanted tea three times a day. She wanted pillows for her swollen feet. She wanted water, endless glasses of it, with a touch of the coriander syrup that Elly remembered her mother giving Elly herself when she was ill. The smell of it was powerfully nostalgic, especially standing in Yana’s room, next to Yana’s bed. That bed, Elly realized, had been her own mother’s bed, and her grandmother’s before that. She had spent many an hour lying in that bed, running her fingers over the edges of the carved wooden leaves on the headboard.
The only other familiar object in the room was a piece of blackwork embroidery, hung on the wall in a dark corner. A single sprig of cornflower. Elly herself had made it, and she remembered being terribly proud of it. Now she saw that it was wobbly and uneven, like a cornflower viewed through water. Once upon a time it had hung over her mother’s dressing table. It still hung in the same place, now half-obscured by a wardrobe. Elly was careful never to look at it, lest Yana notice. But whenever Yana harped at her until the words blurred into a single knifelike edge, she could feel it there, like a glowing coal. Elly had embroidered that cornflower with the feel of Angen’s hands still on her, his laughter still in her ears. And she’d been willing to sew anything to keep from being sent outside for fresh air, because outside was where he and her other brothers were. The salon had been a refuge, then. Not a prison.
And not a factory. Not a place where the women of the house were expected to produce a certain amount of embroidery per day, or be scolded by Yana. The younger women, like Moira, were kept busy taking care of the house. Except for Elly, the older women worked in the salon, because they were the only ones who could still produce the blackwork. A few of the older women remembered Elly as a child, but the only one Elly remembered was named Margaret, called Peggy. Peggy was some female relative of Elly’s, nothing as direct as an aunt. They tried to figure it out, one afternoon, but Peg had never been exactly sure what Elly’s mother had been to her, and they soon gave it up, laughing.
Elly remembered a few girl cousins, back from the days before she’d been sent away. She asked about them, and Peg’s lips pressed together. Mildly, though, she said, “After your father made such a good deal selling you off, he went through the rest of the girls your age fair quick. So they’re married off, and away, most of them. Quite a few died. Childbirth, mostly.”
“I’d be surprised he doesn’t have a new match in mind for you, Lady Highfall. A good deal, to sell the same goods twice,” one of the other women said. There was a note in her tone that Elly didn’t like, any more than she liked the Lady Highfall nickname. Almost jubilant, as if Elly had been caught in the act of something. Peg glared at the other woman, who shut up immediately.
Elly said nothing, but bent over her blackwork despite the way it made her braided handle pull at her scalp. Inside, her head was whirling. Survive this day, survive the next one. From where she sat, Elly could see the exact window her grandmother had been sitting by when she’d given her that advice, so many years ago. But for the first time, Elly wasn’t sure it was the right advice. Sorry, Gran. Elly wanted to do more than survive.
Yana, always exhausted, went to sleep early. Elly was supposed to sit by her, in case she woke and needed anything, but Yana had barely been asleep an hour when Moira appeared and told Elly in a barely-audible whisper that Eduard was waiting for her in the corridor. So Elly put the pillowcase she was mending aside and left the room with only the barest glance at Yana, asleep in Elly’s mother’s bed.
“Hello, Eleanor,” Eduard said, in the corridor. “Come for a walk with me?”
“It’s dark out,” Elly said, bluntly, “and I need to be here in case Lady Yana wakes up.”
Eduard looked at Moira, who scrunched her nose but said, “I’ll sit by her.”
