“Harlowe’s home to give birth, my lady,” I say. Cautiously, I approach her, stepping around cushions.
She scrutinizes me without speaking, her hands folded in her lap. Maybe she’s spent the entire day just staring out the window. Anger pricks at me. She’s lived more years than half of Crofton put together—years paid for by land taxes like the collector bled from my father yesterday—and this is how she spends them? Staring out a window at the frozen lawns of Everless?
“Is that chamomile?” She’s eyeing the carafe of tea on the tray. “Harlowe knows I don’t drink it. Chamomile is bad luck, you know.”
I’ve no idea. “No, ma’am,” I say. “We’ve brewed it for you especially.”
Her jaw moves, as if she’s chewing, before she speaks. “What news do you bring?”
“N-news, my lady?”
“Useless girl,” she spits, waving her hand as if to bat away a fly. “How long until the Queen arrives?”
“Two days, my lady,” I answer, having heard the frantic staff below flutter about the date. One month so the Queen and Lady Gold can make preparations for the wedding, and then Roan will be married on the eve of our spring. I remind myself that I have no claim on Roan, none at all.
“And the girl? Roan’s girl?”
“She’ll arrive with the Queen, my lady.” Roan’s girl. My chest tightens at her words. I feel my face heat, and hope Lady Sida won’t notice it.
“None of the other children Her Majesty has adopted have lived long enough to take the throne, have they? What makes Roan think this girl will be different?” she mutters, returning her gaze to the window.
I hesitate, unsure if I should ignore her mutterings or respond. It’s true that the Queen’s adopted before. By historical accounts, one child died of the plague that swept through decades ago. Another in a raid in the palace. Another by drowning. All before I was born. I don’t care much for royal lineage, or for anything to do with the palace—Papa always said that history and stories can’t buy bread—but I am interested in the hint of accusation behind the elder Gerling’s words: that the Queen will never die and never pass on her throne. Feeling brave, I tell her, “But the Queen named Ina Gold her heir, my lady.”
Lady Sida narrows her eyes at me, a smile spreading like oil over her features. “I say she eats their hearts to stay young.”
Her words hang in the air. I’ve no real love for the Queen, but the wild accusation still makes my skin itch, like it’s anticipating a blow. It smacks of madness, though Lady Sida does not seem mad—she’s old, but her voice is firm, her mind intact. She’s taunting me. Hinton was right to be afraid. As swiftly as possible, I set the tray down on the stand next to her and wait to be dismissed.
But then she does something that chills me even more.
She produces something glittering from her breast pocket. It takes me a moment to realize that it’s a year-coin, almost as wide as my palm and shining gold. A year of life. It takes everything in me to stop myself from seizing it from her withered hand and running back to the cottage. To Papa.
I wonder how far I would get before Ivan caught up.
“Stir this in,” she says impatiently. “Hurry, before the tea gets cold.”
Hesitantly, I reach out. My hand trembles as I take the coin—the pulse in my own fingers feels as if it’s coming from within the coin, all the life this little thing could give me. Give Papa.
All the life it’s already cost someone else.
But the coin, so heavy and permanent in my hand, dissolves like honey when I slip it into the cup of tea. Lady Sida purses her weathered lips to the cup and takes a long, leisurely sip. I don’t think I imagine the color that flows back into her cheeks.
Not waiting to be dismissed, I curtsy before hurrying from the room, rattled by the image of the old woman’s throat moving as the year entered her blood. Now, more than ever, the quickening of my heart at the mention of Roan’s name feels like a betrayal—of myself, of Crofton, of Papa. How can I still hold feelings for Roan, who comes from a family who treats a year of life like a cube of sugar? Whose family has destroyed mine, and so many others?
5
By the time I fall into my bottom bunk that night, my limbs are heavy with exhaustion. But whenever I close my eyes, I see Lady Sida’s papery face, her strange words keeping me awake. Some are foolish enough to whisper rumors about the Queen, always under their breaths—but I didn’t expect the same from a Gerling.
And yet . . . Sida’s words don’t seem so absurd, now that I’m turning them over in my mind. To think she was gifted life from the Sorceress is more absurd. I never cared much to think about the Queen, not when Papa and I busied ourselves surviving. But—
“Jules,” a voice whispers. Alia is hanging over the side of her top bunk a few yards away. Even in the dark, I can see her eyes are wide with fear, though she already looks exhausted from a day in the laundry, where she’s been assigned.
“A boy told me that the Alchemist does roam this forest,” she says. “He said he lived here once. He said—”
But her bunkmate, an older seamstress, hushes her gently.
“Dear, if I tell you the real story, will you stop chattering and let me sleep?” The woman has a hint of mischief in her voice, but not malice. Alia nods. The woman smiles and gives me a knowing glance.
“No one knows where they came from—two children who wandered Sempera together, before blood-iron, never parting and never growing old. The Alchemist turned earth into lead and lead into gold. The Sorceress made flowers bloom in winter.”
I smile to myself, thinking of how Amma would grumble if she knew Alia were staying up late to hear fairy tales. It’s hard to believe that there was a world before blood-iron. Worse, there’s no use in it, while we’re trapped with what we have. But listening to the seamstress speak, I find myself missing that world, if it ever existed.
“But the Alchemist—who lived at this estate, like your friend said—grew jealous. So he imprisoned them here and demanded they discover a way to make him immortal as he’d seen the Sorceress do with flowers and trees.”
She’s a wonderful storyteller, and her tale sweeps me away like a song. Papa and I left our books behind when we were chased from Everless, and he hasn’t bothered to hide his contempt for stories since then. You can’t afford to have your head in the clouds, he told me once, after I’d begged to hear one on my cold cot in Crofton. I never asked again.
“It was deep in his forest estate that the Sorceress, locked in a tiny chamber with only crude tools, wove time into blood, and the Alchemist found a way to bind blood to iron, so that the lord could steal time from his subjects and eat it himself.” Others in the room are listening now. Though I can’t see it, I can feel it. “For a time, the lord was satisfied. But soon, he saw his eyes growing colorless and his memory slipping. Death crawled into his frame. Full of rage, he demanded they find a way for him to live forever.”