“I do,” he said without rancor. “I did. It wasn’t enough. It has never been enough, and it never will be. It took me far too long to realize, but now I know – I don’t think he ever meant me to be free. Someone from my background – it was always a castle in the sky. A trap. And I took the bait.”
“It’s why you do charity instead,” she realized. “But…it isn’t charity, is it? Not if you’re getting paid.”
He turned his amber eyes upon her, somber but wary.
“Sabina told me,” she admitted.
Half a smile turned his lips. “You asked about me?”
“She brought it up,” Anya protested, warming. “She wouldn’t stop going on about the damned gloves.”
“She knows I wouldn’t give them up for just anyone.”
There was a quality to his voice that hadn’t been there before; one that made her heart speed. Anya flexed her fingers and put her chin on her knees.
“What has the witch asked you to do, Anya?” Though his voice was still gentle, his words carried a slick edge. “What is the penalty for your disobedience, that you obey someone you so clearly despise?”
“If I do this thing for her,” she said carefully, “I will be free.”
“And so it is for me. Free of the king. Free of…”
“Free of the game,” she finished.
“Free of…spite.”
“None of us will ever be free of that.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to be freeof, I want to be freeto. Free to paint because it pleases me, to eat for pleasure and not to become a more perfect machine. To fail without an axe over my head. To–”
“To what?” she whispered.
“Tolive. To breathe. To rest. To help others do the same. I know you won’t believe me, but I did not enter this profession with hopes of riches, nor of aiding Edgard’s cruelty.”
The words ripped out of her. “It isn’t right. So you make peace with it. We hurt each other. We help when we can. It’s the way of the world.”
“Yes, I keep hearing that. But it shouldn’t be.”
“Shouldorshouldn’tdoesn’t matter when you need your next meal or a respite from the cold.” Emotion closed her throat. “It doesn’t matter whenshould but can’tis all you know, whenshouldn’t but mustmeans another sunrise.”
“I need more than that,” he said, shaking his head. “I need more than should or shouldn’t. I need more than life or death. We all do. Even you. You especially.”
She barely registered his last words, still reeling with emotion – too many emotions to name. “You ask for too much.”
“You’re right. I do. I ask for life itself. Bread and beauty. Comfort. Love.” Her breath hitched. “I ask for the priceless. I demand it.”
She laughed, exasperated – with him, with the world, both of them immovable, both of them treacherous. “Far better to demand what you can earn for yourself.”
“The way of the world,” he echoed ironically. “To use and be used. To use it all up.”
“Tosurvive,” she said, facing him. His gaze scrutinized, seared, and she turned away.
“If I do this,” he said slowly. “For the king. He’ll live forever. Then nothing would ever change.”
“No,” she agreed, thinking of her own contract and its arbiter.
“Nothing,” he amended, “for the women he hurts, or the soldiers thrown to his next war, or even for the other scribes. But it would change for me.”
“Yes,” she agreed, thinking of her own freedom.
