The maid comes forward and takes Raina from my arms. Immediately the child begins to wail, face red and scrunched. I reach out to take her back, but the maid moves away. We stare at each other, and I feel heat creeping up my neck. The princess continues to cry, and the sobs turn to something else, like she can sense my anger.
‘She doesn’t want you to hold her,’ I tell the maid.
‘How do you know what she wants?’ She looks at me, afraid and disgusted. Her mouth is turned down in revulsion, and she recoils.
A loose strand of hair curls its way down the nape of the maid’s neck. I watch Raina scrabble at the air, thrashing in her distress. She finds the hair and yanks, pulling the maid’s head taut at an awkward angle. The maid yells out, almost dropping the princess.
‘I’m here, darling,’ I say, grabbing Raina and prying the chunk of ripped hair from her fingers.
‘That little—’ the maid begins and stops herself abruptly. She’s frozen in shock, and I purse my lips to keep from yelling.
‘What were you going to call the royal princess?’ I ask the maid.
‘I – I won’t disturb you again, Priestess Hanan,’ the maid says, her lip practically curling as she says my title.
As I hold Raina, I stroke the soft fuzz on her cheek. She will grow to be as cold and hard as her mother. But with a different whisper in her ear, she could be something else. More than a queen. And I would be her right hand. Beyond our little treacheries. What if I could break open the dam and start the flood?
chapter forty-two
ris
I scramble out ofbed when I hear the clashing of metal breaking through the calm of dawn. I hastily dress and follow the sound up to the deck, where Isagani and Finlyr are practising bladework.
‘You’re light-footed, but your defensive stances need work,’ Finlyr says, parrying with his sword.
Isagani has slipped my dagger at some point and wields it now, tossing it and catching it like a spectacle.
‘Don’t lose a finger,’ I say, narrowly avoiding the dagger as it lands blade down in the deck.
Isagani smiles sheepishly and bends to work it out of the wooden boards.
‘Joining the swordplay lesson?’
‘Why would I need that?’ I say, folding my arms. ‘I only came up because I heard fighting. I thought we were in trouble.’
‘And if we were, what would you do?’
I hold up an arm and flex a bicep.
Finlyr smiles and gives an impressed nod. ‘So you’ll be great at wielding this,’ he says, handing me the sword. ‘Swing like you’re chopping wood.’
The heft of the metal in my hands feels reassuring, and I sweep in wide arcs. I can feel my own strength, but this is a new way of moving, another method of inhabiting my body.
‘You need to raise your elbow, like this,’ Isagani mimes, lunging forward and stabbing some imagined enemy.
They have flourish, raising their free arm with panache. They are ever-shifting, always liquid.
‘Bend your knees. It will ground you for blocking and dodging,’ Finlyr says.
‘How?’ I ask, voice tired and churlish.
He moves closer, behind me, gripping the pommel of the sword and bending his knees into the crook of mine. It’s a strange sensation. At first I buckle a little, and then I sit into it.
‘Your movements should be controlled and slow. You only need to use a little bit of force, encourage the blade.’
Isagani moves away as Finlyr adjusts my posture. They stand at the edge of the deck, fiddling with the mounted bows on the aftcastle.
‘Don’t touch that unless you aim to shoot,’ Finlyr insists when he sees what they’re doing.
