Yes. And then?
Where would she go, and to whom? Back to Harkana, to Seth and his family, to poverty and desperation and disgrace? To Blackrock, to be a laundress or a scullion, a shepherdess? To the Hornring, to sit and wait for another husband? No. Each day she considered her situation and made the same decision.
Kepi shut the door.
She returned to her bed, thinking again of how small she had felt beside Dagrun on their wedding night, how she had told him her secret. He had left her alone then. I will not take what is not given freely. She was the queen of the Ferens, wedded to Dagrun. His wife, but not yet his woman. Just like Merit, if she believed him. He had never bedded her sister, he’d sworn. And now Kepi didn’t know whether she wanted him to be telling the truth or not.
She had believed him to be a liar. The girls who dressed her had said that he was a violent man, but he had been gentle that night. Not the man she had expected him to be. So much of what she had thought of him was based on rumor and presumption. A week had passed since that night and she had hardly seen him.
Why was she still in Feren if the door was unlocked? What was keeping her there?
It seemed impossible, all of it.
A knock startled her. It was Dalla, her servant, bustling into her room wearing a brown cloth draped around her waist. “Good morning, mistress,” she said, looking at the floor, as a good servant should, to protect her mistress’s modesty. “Did you sleep well?”
Kepi shrugged. “Lift your eyes from the floor, Dalla, and tell me why you’re here.”
The girl composed herself. “Yes, yes, of course. Forgive me.” Over one arm Dalla had a new dress, a woolen gown for Kepi. “The king sent this for you. Pretty—isn’t it? He asked that you dress and meet him outside of his chamber.”
Kepi took the gown and ran her fingers over the wool, fine and soft but plain, as all Feren clothes were.
“The king had it made for you. Picked out the cloth himself.”
Kepi doubted that, but she let Dalla dress her anyway. With the girl’s help, she combed her short hair and dressed quickly, tugging the fabric into place. At least this one covered her breasts. She did not like gowns, even for daily use; they flowed around her ankles, threatening to trip her, making her feel foolish and clumsy and frail. In Harwen, she had usually worn an old set of sparring clothes left behind by one of her father’s footmen, or a simple tunic and breeches. But a queen of Feren, even a reluctant one, would have to make an effort to look presentable or risk more trouble than she wanted. Kepi groaned—another bit of herself she had to give up if she were going to stay here.
She was tripping down the passageway, trying to free her feet from a bit of wool, when she caught sight of Seth coming up the stairs from below. She tried to hurry past him, but he blocked her path. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Are they treating you well?”
“I am their queen,” she said simply. Her heart ached at the sight of him, as she realized whatever love she had once felt for him had fled when he betrayed her. “Excuse me, I have somewhere to be.”
“Wait,” he said, catching her arm. She looked down at his fingers wrapped around her wrist as if not quite believing what she was seeing. He blushed and took his hand away.
“Is there something you need, Seth?”
He leaned close to her, putting his mouth on her ear. “I’ve got somethin’ planned for us,” he said. “There was a battle in the south, at Catal. People here are angry about what happened. They want to help us. The master physician, Gallach, is one of them. He offered me work and he gave me access to his herbs.”
“That’s nice,” she said, cutting him short, not wanting to hear any more, but Seth persisted.
“I have an idea,” he said. “Wait here.” Before she could tell him she did not want to listen to whatever it was he had planned, that she no longer thought of him as highly as she once did, he disappeared back down the stairwell, into the darkness.
Kepi looked around nervously. What if someone had seen them? Whispering in her ear like that—it was too familiar, too intimate.
“Kepi.” A voice startled her. She turned, seeing Dagrun come out of a room at the end of the hallway, looking bathed and shaven. Fresh.
She glanced down into the dark well of the staircase where Seth had disappeared, hoping he would stay down there. When he did not return, she squared her shoulders to face her husband and walked toward his outstretched hand. He reached to put his arm around her shoulders, but she shied from his touch. He only smiled and led her through the doorway to the courtyard, where the noise of sawing and hammering was even louder than it had been in her chamber.
“Morning,” he said. “I hope the noise did not trouble you last night.”
She tried on a bit of a smile, but it felt crooked on her face, awkward. “A little. I thought it was a storm. I thought I was dreaming.” She felt warm inside.
“Did you dream morning meal?” he asked.
“No, I’m not hungry,” she said quickly, then added, “thank you, though.”
She followed him down a single narrow staircase to the courtyard outside, where the workmen were erecting the Queen’s Chamber, which would be her home in Caer Rifka. Workmen sawed and chiseled the tough gray wood. From the width of the cornices, they were crafting a chamber larger than the Harkan King’s Hall, and more finely made. Woodcarvers used hand tools to chisel elaborate forms into the stony wood, blackthorn nuts and needles, and—she noticed it now—the Tree of Feren, entwined with the Harkan ram’s horns. She felt a quick stab of homesickness and tamped it down again. Is this all for me? she wondered, even though she knew the answer.
Surrounding the Queen’s Chamber on all sides sat temporary workshops where workmen crafted furniture and fittings: bedposts, chests, cunning little stools like the one in her bedchamber but more beautiful and intricate. Enough for an army, she thought, not just a girl from Harkana with scabby knees.
Dagrun pointed to a set of large wooden panels and told her these would be the doors to her chamber. He indicated a set of chairs, and a stack of wooden plates. He took a delicately carved stool and placed it before her. He said all of these things were cut from his birth tree, and would be the most precious items of the house. Kepi sat on the stool, her hands woven into the folds of her dress.
Dagrun knelt, taking one of the sculptor’s tools and tracing the outlines of the new chamber: here were the outer and inner halls, a bedroom, a cellar, a shrine to Llyr. “What do you think?” he asked, with such earnestness that Kepi threw him a suspicious look.
“I oversaw the work, approved the composition of the rooms and their elements. But it’s not too late to make alterations.”
She composed herself once more. “It’s fine. I mean … it’s beautiful really.”