She was still standing too far back from herself, trapped in amber. She watched herself bow her head and say, “No. Of course not.”
The fury rising inside her was doused at once. Her mother had known, and she had also known that there was nothing she could do. It was too late. Perhaps it had been too late since Vorling came courting Damia, many years before.
Don’t let her drag you into this hell along with us, Kania had said, her eyes dull with agony, clutching at her sister’s robes. Run away.
The knowledge bloomed inside her like blood soaking through a bandage. Prince Vorling had picked a tiny, vulnerable kingdom who could not fight back. He had done it deliberately. He had married their daughters, knowing that he could torment them at a whim, and they would have to take whatever he gave, to keep their people safe.
… Oh.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” said the queen. “Don’t talk to anyone about this. If word gets back to the prince, it will go badly for your sister.” She set her embroidery aside. “I don’t talk about it, either, for the same reason.”
“Will she be all right?” asked Marra. She knew that the answer was no, but she wanted the queen to comfort her, to tell her that everything would come out for the best, the way that she had when Marra was very young.
“She’s managed this long,” said the queen. “She is riding a dragon, and all of us in the kingdom are riding along with her.”
Chapter 6
Marra had spent fifteen years in the convent all told. Half her life, barring a few months. She could embroider and sew and knit, and she knew, perhaps, a little more of politics than an ordinary nun might. But she could do nothing to save her sister.
She had thought that returning to the familiar routine of the convent would soothe her, but it did not. Days after her return from the Northern Kingdom, Marra still could not settle. She went back and forth, her fingers itching with inactivity, unable to bear the stillness of the convent. What could she do? She had to help Kania, but she could not, but she had to but she could not but …
“Are you in love or pregnant?” asked the Sister Apothecary.
“Neither,” said Marra, somewhat horrified.
“Don’t look so appalled. You’re as jittery as a grasshopper, and those are the two ailments I know of that start that way.”
“No,” said Marra. She trusted the Sister Apothecary a great deal, but she remembered what the queen had said about word getting back to the prince … “No. I’m worried about my sister. She’s … she’s had a lot of pregnancies. Very quickly. And she lost a few and … you know.”
“I know,” said the Sister Apothecary heavily. “I see it all the time. ‘One child, one tooth,’ as the peasant women say, and half these poor women have no teeth left to spare. They wear themselves out bearing. But your sister is a princess, and princesses get better care than the rest of us. She is in good hands.”
It’s the prince’s hands I worry about. Pinching and grabbing and bruising … She remembered the line of violet fingerprints on Kania’s wrist.
“I have to do something,” she muttered, pacing back and forth, worrying at her own wrists with her fingers.
“It’s not yours to fix,” said the Sister Apothecary. “You think I wouldn’t stop women from catching pregnant until they die? But you don’t get that choice. You can’t go around kicking their husbands out of bed. I can mix up bushels of special tea, but I can’t force them to drink it.”
Marra stared down at her hands. “I have to do something,” she said.
“Good luck,” said the Sister Apothecary, saluting her with a glass of cordial. “If you find a way, let me know.”
* * *
Days stretched into weeks, while Marra fretted and dug her nails into her skin. The abbess was worried, but the Sister Apothecary mixed up a salve for her scratches and simply said, “You’re kicking against the world, that’s all.”
This was true, so far as it went, but Marra resented it. It was the sort of thing you were supposed to get out of the way when you were sixteen, not thirty. I have always been slow for my age, but this is too much.
Weeks became a month, then another month, then another, while Marra did nothing but pace and worry and feel increasingly useless. I should do something. I should be able to do something. I should be able to fix this somehow.
She could not think of a way. It was a job for heroes, perhaps, and Marra did not know how to be a hero. She lay awake at night, chasing phantoms behind her eyes, reliving the moments in the chapel over and over, the moments with her mother over and over. She made dramatic plans in the darkness and discarded them in daylight. She would go and ask for an audience with Vorling and stab him. (No, the guards would stop her.) She would attempt to seduce Vorling on condition of the guards being sent away and then stab him. (She was nearly a nun—what did she know of seduction?) She would take plants from the Sister Apothecary’s store and poison him. (How would she even get close to his food?) She would … she would …
Apparently she would do nothing. Every course of action ended with Marra dead and her sister or her kingdom destroyed. The plans played out in her head night after night, all of them useless.
Worthless plans. Worthless Marra. What good am I to anyone?
It occurred to her that Kania’s pregnancy was well advanced by now. If she’s showing, maybe she’s safe. She said he leaves her alone when she’s pregnant. Mostly. She thought of her sister’s clothes, the way that she had seemed to be showing so very early. It did happen that way, sometimes, but Kania was no fool, and perhaps her dressmakers had cut her clothing so that her pregnancy was obvious.
Assuming she hasn’t lost this one, too.
But it was not the baby that she lost next. Instead the word came down, not from letters but from gossip, that the king had died and Prince Vorling was now King Vorling of the North.
Is this better?
Is this worse?
Are more people watching him?
But he is the king and no one can stop him now.
She had no answers. She did not know whether this was good or bad or terrible, whether Kania had been thrown a lifeline or given a death sentence. She could not even get her mind around it. King Vorling made no sense. He was still Prince Vorling in her head. She remembered that flash of rage when Kania had asked to hold a vigil for her daughter. How could a man like that be a king and hold a whole kingdom at his fingertips?
She took to weeding the garden with savage intensity, ripping out dock and plantain and rabbit tobacco, her teeth grinding in her jaw.
If I were a man, I would fight him.
If she were a man, no one would force Kania to try to bear child after child. If I were a man, I would not be the next in line to be married if he kills her. If we were men … She stared at her fingers curled in the dirt. It did not matter. They were not and the history of the world was written in women’s wombs and women’s blood and she would never be allowed to change it.
Rage shivered through her, a rage that seemed like it could topple the halls of heaven, then vanished under the knowledge of her own helplessness. Rage was only useful if you were allowed to do anything with it.
She was still staring at her hands when she heard two of the lay sisters talking. “I don’t know what to do,” said one. “I’m out of ideas.”
“Go to the dust-wife,” advised the other. “She knows things.”
“What sort of things?”
“You know. Magic.”
Marra looked up sharply. Too sharply as it turned out. They saw her and moved away hurriedly, lowering their voices, but the seed was planted.