But just as there was no speaking, there was no way to stop thinking about it. There was no moment, waking or sleeping, when it was not burning in Marra’s brain. She choked down dry toast and dreamed about the marks on Kania’s arms, and the only mercy was that everyone took her horror for grief.
Her niece’s coffin was interred in the crypts below the palace. All Marra could remember was great iron doors opening, then a procession through a maze of cold stone corridors. She walked behind Kania with her hands tucked into her sleeves and watched Vorling’s face and realized that she had never hated before now. This must be what this new feeling was. It took up so much space in her chest that she did not know if she could breathe around it.
When she and her mother left the Northern Kingdom, relief took her so strongly that it felt like joy, as if she might fling herself out of the carriage and dance in the road. I cannot be relieved. Kania is still trapped. I was never the one in danger. I do not deserve to feel this way. But she felt it anyway and the shame of it struck her in waves, but when they ebbed, the wild joy of being away from Vorling’s palace was still there.
She stayed only one night in her father’s palace. Her old room was still kept for her. Even a small, poor kingdom can usually afford to keep a princess’s room for her. It was much too young, filled with stuffed toys, and Marra was thirty years old now. But I can hardly ask them to change it, for a room I use one night in a decade. That would be wasteful. The abbess would have looked down her nose at the extravagance, which might have gone to feed the poor, and the Sister Apothecary would have shaken her head and laughed.
There was one thing that she could do, though, in her father’s house, and one thing only. Marra took her courage in both hands. It had not occurred to her that living as a nun might have robbed her of bravery, and yet facing her mother seemed far more alarming than it ever had when she was a child. She was too aware that the other woman was the queen first and her mother second, and that Marra herself was a small, insignificant piece in the game.
“I need to talk to you,” she said, when her mother looked up at her. “Uh, Your Majesty. Mother. Please.”
Well, that was even worse than I expected, she thought. She had never been terribly clever with words, but apparently she had lost what little skill she’d ever possessed.
A line formed between the queen’s eyebrows. “Leave us,” she commanded the waiting women, and they filed out, glancing curiously back over their shoulders.
“Kania’s in trouble,” said Marra, as soon as the door closed behind them.
The queen cocked her head to one side. “How so?”
“It’s the prince.” Marra swallowed. Her throat felt very dry. She’s listening—that’s something. “Prince Vorling. She’s scared. She’s very scared. I think … I’m pretty sure…”
She could not say the words. They were right there in her head. He’s hurting her. And yet she couldn’t seem to get them out. I can’t say it. Why can’t I say it?
It felt as if she were about to say something horrible and shameful. Her throat wanted to close up, to prevent her from saying such awful things, even if they were true, even if it wasn’t Kania’s fault, it was Vorling, but for some reason even just saying the words seemed impossible. She swallowed. Her face felt hot.
Say it. Say it. She thought of the line of violet fingerprints again and tried to focus. Why was this so hard? Kania hadn’t asked for her help, but she had to get the words out. Their mother would fix it. The queen fixed things—it was why their father had married her. She understood politics and expediency and she would fix it somehow.
“He’s … he’s doing…” Marra took a deep breath. Say it. You have to say it. “He’s hurting her. There were marks. We have to get her away.”
“Ah,” said the queen.
Does she believe me? What if she doesn’t believe me? All the memories of childhood reared up in her head, all the childish lies, Kania saying that she was just jealous because she didn’t have a prince … Oh, Lady of Grackles! What do I do? Do I drag her back to the Northern Kingdom and show her Kania’s arm with the marks?
The thought was absolutely shattering. She watched as the queen bent her head over the bit of embroidery in her hands. Marra could identify the stitch from where she stood, a cranefly knot, and thought that she would have done it better and more neatly. That gave her a tiny shred of courage, that she was more skilled at something than the queen, and she had so little courage left.
“Prince Vorling is a monster,” said the queen crisply. “He is undoubtedly hurting her in all manner of ways, although he has learned not to do anything that might cause a miscarriage. We shall hope the next child is a son, so that your sister has some chance of retiring from his immediate attention.”
Marra’s mouth hung open, but there were no words in her throat. But he won’t let her go. He’ll kill her, then.
“Until she has a son, however, she is at his mercy. And so are we.”
“But…” croaked Marra.
The queen yanked the needle through the fabric with an impatient flick. “Think, Marra! We are a very small kingdom and his knife is at our throat. If the protection of the Northern Kingdom is withdrawn, then the Southern Kingdom marches on us to seize our harbor.”
“But … but they didn’t before…” Marra felt as if she were stumbling through the steps of a dance that was far more intricate than she had believed.
“They did not, because the Northern Kingdom would have stopped them. If not for our sakes, so that the South did not control the harbor. But if the Northern Kingdom let it be publically known that we had fallen out of favor and they were no longer interested in defending us, then we will have Southern troops surrounding the castle in a fortnight.”
Marra tried to imagine the fields around the castle sprouting with tents and swords and pikes and could not.
Another stab of the needle into the cloth. The stitch would be too tight and would pucker the fabric. “Or,” said her mother, “if we defy Vorling before he has an heir that might conceivably inherit our throne, he well might decide to march on us himself and raze this entire city to the ground in a single bloody day.”
Marra swallowed. “But Kania…”
“Is threading a very dangerous needle right now. Did she ask you to get her out?”
“No…” Marra felt as if she were standing a few paces behind herself, completely outside the world that could be so strange and cruel and complicated. “No, I … no.”
The queen nodded.
She wanted to say so much more. She wanted to say that Kania thought that a son would be the death of her, but maybe Kania was wrong or perhaps the queen was wrong or perhaps everyone was wrong and nothing could be made right. But another thought was beating at her skull like a moth against a windowpane.
“Did you know?” asked Marra. “Before?”
“I knew that he had questionable appetites,” said the queen. There was nothing in her face or her tone that asked forgiveness. “I had hoped he was wise enough to keep them quiet. I did not think he would be fool enough to torment his wife to miscarriage and death.” She shook her head, her lips a grim line.
Death? But … It took far too long before it finally occurred to Marra that her mother was talking about Damia, not Kania.
Oh.
Oh.
So he did kill her.
And Mother knew.
She did not know how to feel. It was too huge, too strange. She did not know if she wanted to weep or rage or throw herself from the castle wall. There was nothing in her heart or her history that told her what to do with this new knowledge. It was too big. She had to shove it aside and focus on Kania or else she would be lost completely.
“We could get her away,” said Marra hopelessly. “She could come and stay with me. Take orders with the sisters. He couldn’t get her, then.”
“Marra,” said the queen, her voice softening. “Marra, love, do you think a man who tortures his wife and would wipe out a kingdom on a whim would be stopped by an abbey’s walls?”