Thorn (13 page)

But when I open my mouth, different words slip out. “Let me go.”

Kestrin arches an eyebrow, but I see something in his eyes shift.
Pity
? “My father offered you a chance to return to your home,” he says, willfully misunderstanding me.

I shake my head, making myself answer. “There is nothing for me there. My—family would be upset if I returned.” At least my voice is stronger now.

“Lord Daerilin doted upon his daughter.”

For a moment I am at a loss, and then I almost laugh. “At court. Every person is different alone with their family.” It is a truth I have long known; Valka’s trousseau stands witness to Daerilin’s rejection of her. “He has wished to be rid of me for years, since I was sent home from the Hall in disgrace.”

Kestrin leans back in his chair, thinking, his arms crossed over his chest. In the lamplight he cuts a dark and imposing figure.

“Tell me how you wrote that letter,” Kestrin says again. The words settle around me. I know he will not let me leave until he is satisfied with my answer. Yet I would not lie to him. There is a way, I think, to explain the letter without telling the full truth. He meets my gaze, waiting, and into the silence I begin to speak.

“There was a time, Your Highness, when you might have considered the princess and I inseparable. We grew up together, took our lessons together. We learned to write similarly, and I often wrote letters for Her Highness, only bothering to show them to her before sending them. I learned her signature to simplify matters.

“Despite our disagreements before and during the journey, I still owed her a favor. I agreed to write the letter for her, since she felt unable to write it herself.” For the space of a breath, I think he believes me.

“You are lying.” My heart jumps a beat. He continues, “The princess had few friends growing up. She never had a long-time friend as you claim to be.”

His words are accurate—but they do not sound like Valka’s. She was never lonely. Friends and family had always surrounded her—both at the Hall and her own home. No doubt that is the truth she would have spoken of.

“Did she tell you that?” I ask.

“No,” he admits.

“Then how do you know?”

“I have my sources,” he responds enigmatically. The words make me want to laugh, for they remind me of children keeping secrets from each other: I know something you don’t.

“Perhaps your sources erred,” I suggest, half-amused.

He looks at me sharply. “They could not have.”

“Your Highness, you have seen enough of the world to know that there is never only one truth, one side of a story. Perhaps your sources are true; I do not doubt they faithfully reported what they understood. But perhaps I am also telling you some part of the truth. To say that your sources lied, or that I do now, is to claim knowledge of the unknown.

“The princess and I spent our childhood together at the Hall. Your sources can verify that. We shared our tutor. How your sources have interpreted our friendship beyond that I cannot guess, but you must remember it is only their interpretation. That we had a disagreement no one will deny; perhaps you will understand that we have now made a certain peace between ourselves.”

“After she banished you to a life of hard labor.”

I wince and then catch myself. Kestrin gives me a sad smile. “There is another thing I do not understand,” he says.

I wait.

“Why did you use her script just now?”

For a long moment I can only stare, like a hare watching the falcon’s descent. Then I stammer, “I did not think.”

He turns his gaze away, quiet. “Be more careful in the future, lady,” he finally warns me. “I doubt the princess will like how lightly you use her script.”

I feel myself hunch down, afraid suddenly that he might tell Valka himself. Afraid that he will ask other questions of me, keep asking until I have tied my story in knots.

“Go,” he says with a wave of his hand. “My quad will see you home.”

I leave before he changes his mind.

***

The following morning, I tell Falada about my interview with Kestrin. His response is just what I expect.

“You told him you were her closest friend? Are you mad?”

“It was the closest I could get to the truth.” I pause to brush a piece of straw from my skirts, glancing down West Road.

“The truth! You call that truth?”

“Until the journey, the princess and I were inseparable,” I point out. “I certainly wrote everything for her and signed her name. And Valka and I shared our tutors, though she was more my brother’s friend than mine.”

“Sometimes,” Falada tells me, “half a truth does more damage than any lie.”

“I didn’t want to lie, Falada, and I had to say something. What else could I tell him?”

“That you could not speak of it—that if he wanted an answer he should ask that woman.”

“He wouldn’t have let me be. I had to tell him something.” I hesitate, then admit, “And I owe it to him to make him suspicious of the two of us. If he doubts my story even a little, he will doubt her too.”

Falada shakes his head. “If you want to help him, then regain your position.”

“Enough,” I say, throwing up my hands.

“What good will it do him to learn that you and Valka were hardly friends—which he will, once he looks into the matter. He’ll think less of you, not her.”

Kestrin hadn’t believed all my story, but I’m not sure that he held that against me. He had let me go. “He will question both of us,” I say. “So long as he questions her, I don’t mind what he thinks of me. Please, Falada, let it be.”

Falada’s hooves kick up puffs of dust that hang in the still morning air. Finally, as we near the flock, he asks, “What will you do about the cloak?”

“Hide it. I put it at the bottom of Valka’s trunk last night. I’ll find somewhere safer for it later. Mother will write back saying she doesn’t have it, that I wore it when I left. Valka will have to say she lost it and that will be that.”

“It would be better if you got it to her somehow,” Falada says worriedly.

“How? She’ll never admit that she overlooked it or accidentally misplaced it. The only other way is to send it to her, and I can’t replicate a courier from my mother.”

“Then get rid of it. Don’t keep it,” Falada urges me. “If anyone finds it, you’ll have a much harder time explaining yourself than you did yesterday.”

“I know.” I chew my lip. “I can’t sell it; people will remember me too well. I can’t return it to her. I’ll have to figure out something else.”

“Yes,” Falada agrees, and then we are too close to Corbé to speak.

With each passing day, I learn a little more of Menaiya: that the quads stationed at the city gates never grow lax, continuously drilling and practicing; that the bakers’ boys bring their goods out into the street, crying their wares as they walk beneath buildings; that the children are often playing, but their clothes are ragged and they seldom wear shoes. From Laurel and Violet, I learn the words of our meals: bread, porridge, nutmeg, water. From Joa, who sometimes meets me when I bring Falada in, I learn to speak of the stables: harness, lead rope, saddle. I practice them during the day as I watch the geese, Falada murmuring corrections and helping me with phrases I do not know how to ask for.

The hostlers listen to me patiently when I do ask, pointing to different objects, and they speak carefully that I might hear each inflection, each accent. I am surprised at the time they take, even Ash and Oak, listening to me, making me repeat a word until I have it right. How can it benefit them to help me, to offer in their own carefully distant way some form of friendship and comfort? For I know that my story must have been publicly canvassed, passed around the dinner table until it grew stale with the telling.

"They like you," Falada notes one evening after Joa has stopped by.

I pause, currycomb in hand. "Why would they?"

"Same reason I do." I have begun to recognize certain expressions in his eyes, the way they settle around his mouth—now I see humor twinkling from his eye.

"They see me as the last hope for humanity?" I quip, sliding the comb through his coat.

He gives a soft huff, a horse laugh, and returns, "Perhaps not that. But you are quiet and easy to get along with, and you do not shirk your duties."

"Being a goose girl is not all that rigorous."

"You carry it off with great aplomb. Not every high-born lady would sing ballads while raking goose dung."

"Hmm." I return the currycomb to the bucket of brushes, bending to hide my blush. It had not occurred to me that anyone would hear my singing, or that it might be discussed to the point that Falada should hear of it in the stables. It had seemed only natural, after a few days, to sing as I worked. I would never make a minstrel—Valka’s voice is too uncertain for that—but I still enjoy a short ballad by myself. My own voice, which I remember now as faintly as an echo, was too husky for most songs. So, either way, it is a good thing I was not born to a musical profession.

After a moment or two of rooting around in the bucket, I come up with a hoof pick. Falada cooperatively lifts a hoof, and I start working the day's rocks and muck out.

"I want to walk around the city," I tell him. "At home there was only the village below the Hall. I can't imagine what such a number of people would find to do in one place. Would you like to come with me?" I set his hoof down and straighten, stretching my back. "I'm not sure I want to go alone."

"Certainly," Falada says.

I kneel, reaching for the next hoof. "Tomorrow?"

"I don't believe I have any other pressing engagements," he says wryly. I rest my head against his leg and laugh.

***

We start up West Road towards the palace, but I haven’t much interest in walking the same—the only—road I know, and strike off on a side road almost at once. To my surprise, the streets are full of life despite the nearing dusk: children shout and chase each other, women meet in doorways and on corners, men shoulder their way into taverns. The alleys we follow break off the main road to twist and turn between ancient stone and brick buildings. Wide doorways glowing with lantern light invite customers into shops selling everything from baskets to knives to cloth.

“It’s so strange,” I murmur to Falada as the alley we follow takes a sharp left turn, proceeds down a set of wide, cobbled stairs, and then turns right before intersecting with another alley. “I always thought of roads as straight. Or curved. But not,” I wave my hand as the alley appears to take another turn leading us back in the direction we came, “not like this.”

Thankfully, between Falada’s memory and mine, we find our way back out again before darkness descends. Just off West Road, tucked behind a building and facing into a narrow alley, I find what I had not realized I was seeking: a temple. It is a quaint thing, no larger than my room in the stables. A simple arch in the wall acts as a doorway, with a mat beside it for worshippers to leave their shoes. Best of all, it is barely a five minute walk from the stables. I follow Falada home, my steps light.

That evening, tired from the long walk, I linger in the stable common room after dinner, and discover that my fellow hostlers spend the evenings together as well. They pull out the boys’ sleeping mats—normally rolled and stored in a cabinet—throw out a few cushions, and settle on the floor. Violet calls me over to sit beside her as I hesitate by the table, putting a saddle blanket with an unraveling hem in my hands for repair. The others all settle with their own small tasks, and take up their conversation once more.

So, over the polishing and repairing of tack, I listen to the discussion of each day’s events, the newest rumors, the happenings in the city and the court. Every night as I lie in my room, I think through what I have heard, and day by day, night by night, I begin to understand more, begin to piece together Menay. The words I do not understand I commit to memory and ask Falada about as we walk to and from the pasture; he translates most of them easily, teaching me their use and helping me to understand the basic rules of Menaiyan grammar.

In addition to language, I learn what kind of people I live with. Oak, of all of the hostlers, is the shyest, sitting in the furthest corner of the room bent over his work and only offering occasional tidbits to the conversation, his deep voice booming up from the darkness. Ash, tall and lithe to his elder brother’s barrel-chest, does everything with quick, sure strokes; his laughter flashes through the room, his words, in all matters, are given at once and affirmed continually thereafter. Rowan is the youngest of the brothers, still in his final growth, his elbows sharp and likely to knock against things, his crow’s nest hair throwing a tangle of shadows over his earnest face.

In comparison, Violet shines as a jewel in their care, her gentle brown eyes clear and untroubled, glowing with a light that softens her features and is reflected in the way her hands flicker across her skirt when she is upset, in the way a gentle touch and soft word to a troubled mare will soothe away anxiety. Laurel, I learn, is also a relation of sorts: their aunt by a degree or two of separation. She watches over them as a mother eagle over her nestlings. She rarely flexes her wings, a sharp look enough to quell Ash’s protestations, or Oak’s hesitant suggestion of an idea she disapproves.