“Absolutely not,” says Bryn. “Faris can sleep on the floor, you and Tobek may share the bottom bunk, and I’ll take the top.” Arching an eyebrow, she cuts her meat into tidy portions. “I sleep beneath no man.”
Tobek snorts into his cup, sobering as both Bryn and North give him withering looks. “Sorry,” he mumbles, shoulders hunched over his own plate. Bones litter the side, picked clean of meat.
Bryn shifts with a rustle of skirts. She sits straight where I slouch, prim where I cower. Every time her fork scrapes across the plate, I flinch at the noise.
“I will not allow a woman to sleep on the floor,” says North, reaching for a cup cradled at his feet.
“And I do not share a bed with servants.”
“Aren’t you hungry?” Tobek asks me.
“Are you a transferent too?” I ask to distract him, setting the plate aside.
Tobek looks pleased. “No, only an intuit. Transferents have to touch things before they know whether there’s any magic inside, but I can smell it without being anywhere near it. North taught me how to tell clean from dead.”
Bryn snorts. “So that’s your talent? Smelling magic?”
“Well, I smelled it on you back in Cortheana.”
“You and every hellborne addict out there,” says Bryn, rolling her eyes.
“I’m not an addict,” he says hotly. “And anyway, the hellborne can’t read the course your blood will run. Not like me.”
“You can tell the future?” She quirks an eyebrow, amused.
He stiffens, turns cagey. “For the right price.”
“Of course. You saved my life so you could charge me pennies for my dreams. I suppose you do card tricks as well.”
His hand flies to the front of his vest, to a deck of cards that hangs in the pocket.
“I don’t mind sleeping on the floor,” I say.
“No,” says North.
“I don’t cheat,” Tobek says. “Not anymore.”
“I really don’t mind,” I say.
Bryn’s fork scrapes across her plate. “She’s fine on the floor.”
“I will not argue—”
“My servant,” says Bryn, “my magic, my rules. If we are not absolutely clear on the parameters of our agreement, you are more than welcome to leave us here.”
“Bryn,” I start, embarrassed.
With a slash of silver, her dinner knife cuts across her palm. Crying out, I bend over my knees, biting back tears as I cradle my stinging hand to my chest. North stands, spilling the cup at his feet. His eyes flash with warning, but Bryn clutches her knife, undeterred.
“My servant, my magic, my rules,” she repeats. Then, to me, “And you were told how to address me.”
Humiliated, I scowl at the fire, cradling my hand. “Yes, your majesty.”
“You came looking for us,” Bryn says, standing. “Greed costs, gentlemen. Do I make myself clear?”
Nobody speaks.
Straightening, Bryn throws her chin up. “But a good queen knows when to compromise. Faris can have the bottom bunk.”
“A good queen doesn’t crown herself while her father still breathes,” says North.
“A smart man keeps his mouth shut when his opinion is not requested,” says Bryn.
North inhales deeply, shoulders rolling back. His hands curl into loose fists at his side, the knuckles whitening. “Tobek,” he says, his eyes locked on Bryn; “we’ll sleep outside tonight.”
“The tent has a hole in it,” Tobek protests.
North’s expression doesn’t flicker. “It’s not raining,” he says.
Bryn smiles, dropping into an abbreviated curtsy of acknowledgment before she slips her arm through mine and pulls me to my feet. She keeps her knife, and I wish I had thought to do the same, because she’s terrifying. Head high, she ascends the stairs into the wagon as though it’s already been conquered in the name of Brindaigel.
Once inside, I slide my arm out from hers and put distance between us, balling my sticky hand into the fabric of my skirt.
“There,” she says, unclasping her traveling cloak and letting it drape over a chair. “And now we have privacy and a bed apiece.”
“You could have just asked.”
“That implies equal footing.”
“Your majesty, I strongly suggest you don’t make an enemy of the transferent. He can pull the spells out of your skin and he can thread poison through you just as easily. I saw what he can do—”
“He won’t touch me.” She trails a hand over the apothecary’s chest, opening drawers at random, sifting through the contents. “I’m too valuable to poison and now he understands that.” Finding a roll of bandages, she sets them and her knife on the table. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It may seem cruel to you, what I did, but I’m a woman, Faris, and that often requires more sacrifice than a man. I was born as a redundancy but I intend to be a queen. Not a princess or a consort or an ornament. A queen. Anything less is a waste of my time.”
Bryn surveys the plants above our heads before dragging a chair beneath them, cutting several stalks of comfrey loose.
“What are you doing?” I ask when she jumps down again.
“A little trick Pem taught me,” she says. “It’s called compassion. Take off your coat.”
I hesitate. I’ve grown accustomed to its weight, the extra layer of protection.
Bryn clucks her tongue and begins tugging on the coat until I shrug it off. She throws it over her own cloak and surveys the bloodied mess I’ve become. “Pity about your hair,” she says, sweeping the blond tangles away from my face.
The door swings open and North staggers inside, a bucket of water sloshing in his hands. With a grimace, he lifts it up, out of the stairwell, splashing a wave of water across the floor.
“I thought you might want to wash the smell of piss off of your skin,” he says, his tone acid, eyes on Bryn. “And maybe the blood from under your fingernails.”
Bryn turns and brandishes her hands for demonstration. “It’s my favorite color,” she says.
Nostrils flaring, North slams back outside and Bryn snorts, approaching the bucket. “Come here,” she says, beckoning me toward the water. “You need this more than I do.”
I wet my lips, eyes on the knife. Would she miss it?
Of course she would.
Protocol dictates that she wash first and I take the dirty water left behind, but Bryn is insistent in this new game of sympathy. Dipping a wad of cloth into the water, she straightens and begins to dab at my scraped wrists and cut palm with a light, shivery touch, eyebrows pulled in concentration.
“I can do it myself,” I say, embarrassed. Uneasy. I reach up to take the cloth from her but she pulls back before I can.
“I don’t want your loyalty because a spell demands it, Faris,” says Bryn, rinsing the cloth before she swipes it across my cheeks. Pink-and gray-colored water drips down her arms, darkening the sleeves of her dress. “I need to earn it. A good queen honors the people who fight for her. Who kill for her.” Rocking her weight back, her expression turns hazy, unfocused. “I know this is hard. But nobody conquered anything without losing something along the way.”