“I’ll come with you,” Amron said.
“No, please, I’m sorry I interrupted your dinner.” Her cheeks burned under the weight of so many eyes. “I’m capable of taking a walk on my own.”
She fled the hall before he had the time to stop her. The corridors were cold and deserted, but she knew where she’d find more people, the people who hadn’t been invited to sit at the table with the prince. The women of the fort.
The kitchen was a badly lit place in the bowels of the castle, with a low, vaulted ceiling, long shadows, and the enduring stench of boiled cabbages and old grease, but it was blissfully warm. A dozen women moved around it, scrubbing the pots, eating, feeding small, squirming children. They all froze when she walked in.
“Good evening,” she said, hoping that the shadows hid her intense discomfort. The few women in Syr were used to her presence, they’d known her since she was a girl. Here, she was the lord’s daughter, the prince’s wife, a highborn intruder. “Please, carry on,” she said, but they remained still, staring at her.
The awkward moment was threatening to stretch into eternity when one woman, gray-haired, gaunt, gathered the courage to address her. “Is there anything you need, m’lady? Can we help you?”
Melia shook her head. “I don’t need anything. I just.…May I sit with you? I’m tired of being surrounded by men all the time.”
There were blank stares and there were smirks, but no one objected. She found a free spot on the bench at the corner of the long table. Someone poured her a mug of beer; she wrapped her hands around it to stop them from shaking and watched the woman sitting across from her feed a small boy with morsels of bread soaked in milk.
“How old is he?” Melia asked.
“Sixteen months, m’lady.”
The other women had gone back to their tasks. Melia sipped the beer, trying to look casual. “And you live here with him?”
“Yes.”
The boy seemed healthy and well-fed, but the young woman looked haggard.
“And the boy’s father? Is he garrisoned here?”
“Dead,” the young woman said, not lifting her eyes from her child.
Loss was something Melia could understand, something they shared. But the young woman remained focused on her son, unwilling to look at Melia.
“Half of us are widows here, m’lady, and the other half are waiting for the axe to fall.” An older woman with a plate full of something hot and unappealing sat beside Melia. “Those who have family to go to when their husband is killed, leave. Those who don’t, stay here and find another man to take care of them. There’s a shortage of women, I’m sure you noticed, m’lady.”
Melia stared at the woman in awe. She looked shriveled and hard like a smoked fish.
“He was Danka’s first, so she’s still grieving.” The woman nodded towards the young mother. “I’m on my fourth now.”
Melia swallowed another sip of beer. “And do you hate the Seragians for killing them?”
“The Seragians?” the woman asked, and several heads turned to them. “What do they have to do with us?”
“I thought…” Melia paused, unsure. “Seragians and Elmarrans, we fight each other, don’t we?”
That caused a few snickers around the table.
“M’lady, there’s just the garrison men and the bandits here,” a fair-skinned woman that didn’t even look like a Southerner said. “The men choose their path and we follow them.”
“But…the border?” Melia stammered and provoked some deepchuckling.
“We all have family on both sides of the border,” another woman said.
“I was born on the other side.”
“I have a sister married there.”
Melia sat in silence, feeling outrageously dumb, while the women’s words battered her beliefs. When she couldn’t tolerate it any longer, she rose. “Thank you for your company,” she said. “I must go before my husband comes looking for me.”
• • •
