“That is absurd. Why would he be ashamed of that?”
“I don’t know, but he is not a brute and for that I am grateful.” I paused and then turned to her, our privacy disappearing as we entered the hall, and said, “I do not think his sergeant a brute either.”
She was silent.
“I’m not prying,” I said.
“You are,” she said, but without rancor. “I accepted his proposal for Maureen. She needs protection. More than I can give. And I think he will do that for us.”
I nodded. “I agree. He does seem… enamored by your beauty.”
She turned to me. “Next winter will be my thirty-ninth.”
“As it will mine. What are you saying? I hope it is not that we are old.”
Helena made a dismissive noise with her tongue and teeth. “No. I am not saying—”
“Well, why do you think he asked you and not Mischa or Catrin?”
She blinked, as if she had not considered it. “Well, how can I know that?”
“If he tells you, please repeat the reason to me.”
She pursed her lips. “You are always watching everyone else and making up ideas.”
“I am a woman of ideas.”
“Oh, yes, we all know that,” she said, waving her hand around the dining hall. But she turned to me with a softness. “Truly, you saved us all in that chapel.”
My response was interrupted by Beryl approaching Catrin and collecting her to have an introductory breakfast with the queen in her chambers.
We ate our meals quietly, all wondering how our first day as Tintarians would go.
One of Zinnia’s women, in her black dress and leather apron, visited our table. She introduced herself and bade Helena and Maureen come with her as she would take them to the throne room to assess how the mural could be restored. As they walked away, I could hear her explaining how Hinnom had a large chamber on his floor of the keep that he used for kingdom business and that he would allow them the throne room and that he was thrilled it was being repainted. A young infantryman arrived to escort Mischa to the army offices. A slender man in cerulean blue came for River and Quinn to guide them to the sea temple to meet with Archpriestess Thalia and begin their scribe duties.
I was alone. I looked around at the vastness of this room, full of people of different rank and circumstance, from commoner to royalty. Again, grateful for the food, thinking I could never forget the jerky and singular meals of our Nyossa journey, I finished every bit of the shellfish creatures on my plate, their name I did not know. At the end of the long table, more women in the keep staff black sat and they eyed me, not with the directness of the Lady Vinia, but with some interest. I gave them a friendly nod and smile and they gave me their own nods and smiles. Their eyes were on my left hand and forearm and the tattoos there. Word and description of Alric’s captive-made-wife had, as River had predicted, likely got out, but I felt no sense of acrimony. They were interested. I gathered that my new husband, while not nobility or a general of any of the three armies, was known in this fortress of sea and rock.
It made me think of my first marriage. I knew what it meant to marry a man of some notoriety. When Thrush, the handsome second son of a wealthy lord of Perpatane, his father’s estate having both a gold and a silver mine, a lord close to our king and influential, showed interest in me, the daughter of a middling priest in Apollon, of no nobility, no wealth, people talked. My parents had been elated. My mother, always concerned with the impropriety of my shapelier figure, rightfully suspected this was part of what had lured in Thrush and had happily had two gowns made that nipped in so tightly at the waist I could not breathe. My father, a pious and preoccupied man, wanted to know my own thoughts on our faith. I was courted not by just one man, but by my own family and community. Friends who had flaunted their engagements and marriages were jealous. Their betrothed and freshly acquired husbands saw me in a new light. Ormond Thrush was ambitious, he knew the best way to attain power and status in Perpatane was to show a fervor of faith. He commented to many after our betrothal that he saw the goodness and piety of our saint in me, that my beauty made him want to pray more, that it inspired his convictions. At nineteen winters, I thought this incredibly romantic. Because Thrush stood only to inherit a sum of coin upon his father’s passing, he, a plotting man, knew what he was about and carved a place for himself in Apollon court. He had served four winters in Perpatane’s army and been decorated. For what, I did not know as our country had not been in any war while I was alive. But he had made friends in high places. And soon, he was regarded as a wise strategist, a wit, a secret-keeper and one to know. Around the time I had left him, he was a regular confidant of the king and his court. It occurred to me, for the first time, to wonder if he lived. Had he been in Eccleston on the scriptorium’s street that day and if he had, was he alive? Had Tintarian infantrymen cut him down? Had my new husband killed my former one?
35. Earth
A tad shocked at my own callousness, having only just thought this nearly a moon after the day of the invasion, I was startled when Cian came into my view. “Oh, good morning, archpriest,” I stuttered.
“Good morning, Edie. And it’s Cian. Please.” He stood next to my table looking down at me in his brown and green robes. His face was pleasant, well proportioned. His hair was similar in color to Mischa’s, that cornsilk blond, but his was straight and neat, combed away from his forehead, his eyes a bright, warm green.
I loved the color green, in all of its shades, the blue of a teal green, the purity of an emerald, the muted hue of sage. I returned his smile.
“Are you finished? If not, I can sit with you. The crab was excellent this morning.”
“Is that what these are? Crab?”
“Yes. They scuttle along the rocks and beaches. Odd animals. But tasty.”
“Oh, very. I have only ever heard of them. I am done, thank you.” I finished my tin cup of water and stacked it and my knife and fork on the plate. “May I ask,” I said, “is this what is done? Zinnia and Beryl never instructed us as to what to do with our plates.”
He waved for me to proceed before him towards one of the corridors. “Yes. Our kitchen staff is extensive. The tables are cleared afterwards, just as they are laid out with our meals in advance. I do not know what your previous life in Eccleston was like, but I have found it liberating to never worry about buying or preparing my own food.”
I turned to him, quizzically. “Yes, it is a luxury.”
