“Radimar?” she mouthed and plunged into the crowd, uncaring that her lunch had fallen from her hand, forgotten, or that her hood had slid farther back, revealing more of her face to a growing number of stares.
He had already disappeared into the crowd, where even his hair didn’t distinguish him amidst the press of so many people. The sucking mud slowed her down, and she feared dropping her precious parchments in her satchel or worse, losing her footing and being trampled. Such a thing had happened more than once during a Delyalda festival. She gave up after a few more futile attempts to spot the red hair and retreated from the mob for the sanctuary of the Archives. She came across Sodrin while crossing the bailey.
“What happened to you? You look like you’ve been dancing in the pig sty.”
Jahna glanced down to see what inspired his rude remark. Mud caked her dress from knee to hem and lay so thick on her boots, she no longer saw the straps. She was a mess. “I stopped at the market to buy something to eat. It’s a mud pit there.”
“I hope whatever you ate was delicious enough to make it worth it. Go wait over there.” Sodrin pointed to bench occupied by a cage full of chickens. “I’ll go to the Archives and ask one of the scribes to bring you a pair of shoes from your room.”
He soon returned with a clean pair of shoes and a towel. Jahna carefully folded back the first layer of her filthy skirt while Sodrin used the towel to unwrap and remove her mud-slathered boots.
“Sodrin, I think I saw Radimar Velus at the market.”
Sodrin glanced up from his task, eyebrows lifted in a surprised arch. “Are you sure?”
She shook her head. “No. It was just a glimpse as he stood up from a barber’s chair. I never saw his face, but you couldn’t miss the hair.” Or the shoulders. Or the back and long legs.
She expected Sodrin to chastise her for being overly fanciful and reminding her that there were other men with red hair roaming the capital. Instead, he tossed aside one of her muddy boots and set to work on unstrapping the other one, his features contemplative.
“It might be him. I sent a missive to Ilinfan months ago inviting him to the wedding. I never got a reply and didn’t expect to. Last I heard, he was in the Lobak Valley supporting the Nazim monks in their fight against the warlord Chamtivos.” He glanced up at Jahna, hope in his eyes.
A giddy rush of euphoria enveloped her, and she ruthlessly crushed it. Except for a letter of sympathy over her father’s untimely death two years after Radimar returned to Ilinfan, neither she nor Sodrin had seen or heard from the swordmaster in nearly a decade. He still haunted her dreams, and her lips sometimes throbbed at the memory of his kiss, but she had resigned herself to never seeing him again. Even if, by some slim chance, it was Radimar she’d glimpsed in the market, any reunion between them now would be painfully awkward.
A sudden thought occurred to her. “Wait. You invited him to the wedding? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sodrin set aside the second muddy boot, dropped the ruined towel on top of it and stood. He handed Jahna her shoe. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think you’d care.”
That startled her. “Why would you think such a thing?”
He shrugged. “You never spoke of him after he left us and didn’t seem interested when I did. It was as if he no longer existed to you.”
Dismayed at the idea she’d done such a good job of hiding her despair that her brother perceived it as disinterest, Jahna sighed. “I never meant to give that impression. Of course I care. He was a member of our family for three years.” And I was in love with him.
“I have another function to attend this afternoon, probably another roasting by Manarys’s father. I haven’t even married his daughter yet and he’s already threatened at least twice to kill me if I upset her in any way. I can meet you afterwards to see if we can find your mystery redhead.”
Jahna giggled and reached out to pat him on the cheek. Her brother had matured into an admirable man who had ably taken control of the Uhlfrida estate once their father died. He was now Lord Uhlfrida, and both the title and the wealth that came with it had attracted the interest of the powerful Duron clan’s patriarch. He might threaten Sodrin at every gathering, but Jahna suspected it was mostly bluster. The Durons were directly related to the king. They could choose any candidate for a union with one of their daughters. Sodrin was a coveted catch on many levels, and everyone knew it.
“He won’t kill you, Sodrin.”
“Maim me then.”
“That either.” She laced her shoes and stood, careful to keep her muddy hem from smearing their tops. “I have to take these parchments to the Archives for transcribing. You’ll have to hunt alone, or better yet, just wait. If it’s Radimar, he’ll come to you when he’s settled in. I’m sure he’s as eager to see you as you are to see him after all this time.”
“You as well,” Sodrin said.
Jahna only smiled, hoisted her satchel onto her shoulder and thanked her brother for both the help and the offer to get her boots cleaned and returned to her by the following day.
She spent the remainder of the day at her desk, alongside two other amanuenses, copying the pages of her notes from the meeting with Serovek Pangion. The steady scratching of busy quills were sometimes interrupted by quick inhalations or low-voiced exclamations as her helpers came across some of the margrave’s more gruesome descriptions of the ravages inflicted by the galla on the unfortunate Kai people of Bast-Haradis.
While the work of transcribing often fell to the first and second-year apprentices, Jahna was happy to ply her hand to copying these notes. Her copy would go to Dame Stalt for review while the others would be stored away as extras in case something happened to the original or the primary copy. It was tedious work, but she welcomed the distraction. It offered a means by which her mind didn’t dwell on the possibility that Radimar Velus roamed the palace grounds or that she might meet him again after all this time.
She took supper with the dames and her fellow scribes at the Archives, preferring the more sedate and friendly atmosphere than that offered in the adjacent palace with its nobles vying for the king’s attention or the admiration of another man’s wife or woman’s husband. Sodrin thrived in that chaos; Jahna didn’t. Here, among those familiar to her and used to her appearance, she could enjoy a good meal and equally good conversation.
Still, a restlessness plagued her, and she was eager for the meal to end so she could escape into the bailey where the Delyalda dances had already started. As always, she stood on the outskirts and watched or escaped to the forgotten garden to listen to the music in rapt solitude.