Seventh Bride (18 page)

“He can do that?” she asked.

Maria shrugged. “Maybe. If he can take someone’s death or someone’s will, what can’t he do?”
 

Rhea put her face in her hands. She did not feel young. She felt about a thousand years old, and Maria, who was three or four times her age, did not seem to have any answers for her.
 

“He doesn’t usually
keep
the gifts, you understand,” said Maria. “He kept mine, though.” There was a perverse pride in her voice at that. “Without mine, he’d not have half the power he does, to keep the house bent to his bidding. And all those golems—he makes those with my magic. I could do it, too, but I was a defter hand with the needle and I never did it to a
living
thing.”
 

She shook herself. “He gave the rest away—or traded them, anyway. A lot of fingers in a lot of pies.”

“Gave them away?” asked Rhea, even more confused. “How do you give away somebody’s
sight?”
 

“Magic,” said Maria. “As it happens, I know that one, for she came in here in a hood and jesses. He gave Sylvie’s sight to the Eagle-King’s daughter, hatched blind from the egg.”
 

Rhea blinked a few times.
 

I’m hearing things. I was hit harder than I thought. It’ll be the ghosts of birds next.
 

“Eagle-King,” she said.

“From the farthest west. Turns out Eagles won’t let you inherit if you’re blind. Himself offered to fix her up, so he married Sylvie and traded her sight away a few months later.”

Rhea fisted her hands in her hair.
 

If hedgehogs can summon slugs to save me and bears can be familiars and Crevan can exist at all, I suppose there can be Eagle-Kings. Dear Lady of Stones.
 

“And Ingeth’s voice?” she asked dully.

“I don’t know that one.” Maria shook her head. “Nor who he gave the clock-wife’s death to, nor Lady Elegan’s life. I imagine he killed a rival of his, or someone powerful.” She paused, tapping a finger against her lips. “A great lord in the city had a daughter who was deathly ill, though, about the time the Lady died. Even the boy who delivers the food was full of the news. She made an amazing recovery they said, almost magic. But I’ve got no proof. People die and don’t die all the time. Might be coincidence. Still, there’s enough witchblood left in me to get the wind up.”
 

“What about the golem-wife?”
 

Maria poured more tea. “Was a young man here, a few years back. Nice young fellow, but no spine at all. Not even enough to question that a sorcerer’s household was a handful of women, no more.” She gazed over the rim of the cup at Rhea. “Set upon by his relations, he was, and him a prince of some far land. Himself married poor Hester a fortnight later, and took her will within the week. And the prince goes back to his own country with his jaw square and a flame in his heart. He didn’t get that courage out of a bottle.”

Rhea pushed her tea away. “So he’ll take something from me, and give it away,” she said. She didn’t know why that would make her feel worse, but somehow it did. It was one thing to have someone steal something you valued, but to have them steal it and hold it so cheaply that they gave it away.... “He just—just figures someone else should have it.”

 
“Oh, aye,” said Maria. “Figures himself a great humanitarian. He’s helping the goodly and the great, and what are we, after all?”

“And the clock-wife—”

“Hello, Ingeth,” said Maria, too loudly. “I see you skulking by the door. Come in, if you want something to drink.”

Ingeth came in. She had her wrists drawn up against her chest and would not look at Rhea.
 

“Himself’s gone,” said Maria. “You know it better than I do. You can come sit in here if you want, instead of dancing attendance.”

Ingeth took a few steps. She looked like some strange praying mantis, not like a person.
 

Pity and rage warred on Rhea’s tongue, and in the end, she wasn’t sure which had won. “You brought Sylvie to the well. Why would you
do
that?”
 

She expected a glower, but instead Ingeth snatched the mug of tea and hurried out the door.
 

“Easy now,” said Maria. “I make no excuses for Ingeth, but don’t lose sight of the real enemy.”
 

 
“The task was to kill Sylvie,” said Rhea. “Ingeth brought her out there. I was supposed to kill her.” The world seemed to spin as she said it. Perhaps it was only her bruised skull.

The cook’s breath hissed in between her teeth. “I might have known,” she said. “Bitch. Not you; Ingeth. How dare she? Taking Sylvie out in the middle of the night!”

It seemed to Rhea that Maria was angry about the wrong thing. “But Maria, I was supposed to
kill
her!”
 

Maria rolled her eyes and poured out another cup. “Which you had no chance of doing. Even Himself knew that, and he doesn’t know half as much about human hearts as he thinks he does.”
 

 
Rhea took a long slug of tea, not sure if she should be angry or not. Fortunately Maria was angry enough for both of them.
 

“Sylvie could have caught her death out there. She’s not well. She was never strong, but he shattered her health when he took her eyes. She’s not even thirty, you know.”

Rhea hadn’t known. Sylvie’s fragility seemed more akin to someone very old. Perhaps it was the paleness of her hair. Only the very old had hair that color, in Rhea’s experience.
 

“I do my best to take care of her, but there’s only so much to be done. It’s hard when he takes things.”

“How bad is it?” Rhea asked.

Maria exhaled. “Bad enough,” she admitted. “I nearly died. A witch’s magic is like a witch’s skin. Ripping it all off at once would kill most people. Sylvie’s health broke. You’ve seen Hester—the golem-wife.” She turned her mug in her hands, worrying at a chip on the handle with her thumb. “He’s gotten better at it. Ingeth was—pretty horrible, with her throat laid open like that, but she healed up fast.”

Rhea had been thinking of the marriage to Crevan as something horrible and possibly fatal. It had not occurred to her that it would also be excruciating. She bent her neck and set her forehead against the scarred wood of the table.

“I can’t run,” she said miserably. “I tried. The white road—it’s full of monsters. Devils. I don’t know what.”
 

Maria nodded. “Most sorcerers have them,” she said. “Things they called up when they were young and foolish, and couldn’t send back to wherever they came from. They put them somewhere, but the beasts are always hungry, and they’ll kill the sorcerer if they can.” She pursed her lips. “Himself’s cleverer than most,” she admitted. “You can get to this manor any number of ways, but all roads
out
of here lead to the white road, unless he sets it different. He took his failures and made them prison guards. There’s no running for us. But you know that already.”

Rhea nodded. “If it was just me, I’d ruin the wedding. Yell “No!” when the priest asks if I’ll marry this man. But he’s threatening my parents. He’ll kill them—take the mill—turn them out—oh, Maria, I can’t!”

She began to cry, wretchedly, feeling as helpless as Sylvie.
 

Maria put a hand on her shoulder. After a few minutes, Rhea stopped.

If I have learned anything in this last week, it’s that crying doesn’t seem to help at all.
 

“Better?” asked Maria conversationally.

“A little.”

“You’re willing to kill him?” Her tone didn’t change, still light, two women discussing nothing in particular.
 

“In a heartbeat,” said Rhea, and laughed painfully. “For all the good it does me. I couldn’t even stab him properly.”

“I wasn’t sure,” said Maria quietly. “There’s them as wouldn’t, not even to save their own lives. And I didn’t dare ask while he was here, unless the floor was falling.” She took a deep breath.
 
“We’ll only get one chance, I expect.”

Rhea looked up. “One chance?”

“There’s one who can help us,” said Maria. “The clock-wife’s no friend of his. She was never quite human, as near as I can tell, and it took most of the magic he stole to bind her into the clock.” She snorted. “Hoping to pull her power as well, I expect, but she was too much for him. In the end, her death was the only thing he could wrestle away from her.”

A tile rattled in the next room, as if in acknowledgement.
 

“Into the clock you’ll go, then,” said Maria, nodding.

“Now?” asked Rhea. Her head was aching, but how long a window would they have? “All right.” She tried to stand.

Maria pushed her back down. “No, not now child. We’ll wait until he returns. It does no good to release her
now.
We’ll have her mad and rampaging and bringing the whole house down on us, and for what? He’ll still be out there, and your parents may not fare well. Nor Sylvie’s, for that matter—oh yes, he’s got that hold over her as well.”
 

Rhea paused.
Mad and rampaging
did not sound promising. “Is she going to be very angry?”

“She’s been trapped inside a clock, on the far side of time, where instants drag for eternities and she cannot even die because her own
death
was stolen from her. At a guess, she’s pretty pissed, aye.”
 

Rhea swallowed. “Is she going to listen to me?”

Maria swirled her tea and gazed at the ceiling—not as she did when Crevan was in his study, but in a way that said she was avoiding Rhea’s eyes.

“Maria…”

The former witch sighed. “There’s a good chance she’ll kill you. I don’t know how much awareness she has of what’s going on out here. You may have to convince her you’re no friend of Himself. Or she may know all about what’s going on, and you’ll just have to give her the opening. Even I don’t know what goes on inside that clock.”
 

“How come you don’t go in and release her?” asked Rhea. “Why me?”
 

Thinking,
Why haven’t you gone in yourself?

Why haven’t you sent Sylvie? Or the golem-wife, who you said was so strong- willed?

Was Maria risking her for something that she didn’t dare do herself?
 

She can be ruthless if she has to
, Sylvie had said.
 

Maria smiled faintly. “Because you might stand a chance. Things keep coming to your aid. And I don’t go myself, because someone has to stand out here and hold the way.”
 

The week dragged on and yet it was over all too quickly. Each hour seemed to last for a thousand years, and then Rhea would find herself at the end of the day, unable to remember anything but flashes—
I did laundry, I weeded the flower bed, yes, I remember, but what else did I do and how is a whole day gone?

And another day would be over, and her wedding would move a little bit closer. And if Maria was correct, the end of her youth moved a little bit closer as well.

And here I was afraid he wanted a child...instead he’s just going to suck the youth out of me.
 

I wonder if I’ll die.
 

Would she suddenly find herself ninety years old? Or merely the same age as Crevan was now? Would Crevan become fifteen?
 

That can’t be right. All his noble friends would notice.
 

She could not stop picturing herself as an old woman, hair whiter than Sylvie’s, stooped over a cane. She stopped whenever she caught herself doing it, but the image kept creeping back into her mind.
 

It did not help that she had little to do but think. She spent hours sitting with her back to the clock. Maria had suggested it. If the floor had not fallen, she likely would have slept there as well.

“Cuddle up to it,” said Maria. “Give her a chance to notice you.”
 

“It’s a clock, not a kitten,” said Rhea. “It’s hard to cuddle with a clock.”
 

“She was a bit cat-like,” said Maria thoughtfully, stirring the sauce for the evening’s meal. “Mostly around the eyes. Not like a house cat, though. Or it may have been lizard-like, now that I think of it...”

Rhea stared at her.

“Don’t give me that look, child, I told you she wasn’t human.”

“What was she?” asked Rhea faintly, wondering why she was even bothering to be surprised.

“Hell if I know. Something old. Something that liked flattery.” She tasted the sauce and frowned. “Needs more salt.”

“Where did she come from?”

“Up Sylvie’s way, I think,” said Maria, drying her hands on her apron. “Their lands aren’t as settled as ours, and things come up from under the ice sometimes.”

Sylvie, sitting at the table, nodded. She was rubbing beans between her fingers, separating out the small ones and the occasional pebbles. “There was a glacier not far from my town,” she said. “Sometimes when the ice retreats in summer, things would melt out. You had to block the doors at night. They were always hungry.”
 

Rhea blinked. “That sounds…unpleasant?”

Maria laughed. Sylvie considered, as she slid beans across the table. “Not really? You get used to things. It was just something you did in summer—barring the door and putting wunderclutter on the door to confuse them.”
 

Ingeth stood in the doorway. It seemed to Rhea that the voiceless woman was often lurking around the edges these days, just within earshot.

In her more charitable moments, she wondered if Ingeth was attracted to their laughter. The rest of the time, she just figured the other woman was spying.
 

And why are we laughing, anyway? Like rats trapped in a hole, telling stories until the cat gets home again?

She knew the answer to that one, at least.
What other choice do we have? It will not get any less horrible if we spend all our time weeping…