Seventh Bride Read online

She sat there awkwardly—did she get up and comfort Sylvie? Would she welcome it? Would she be embarrassed?

  “Hey,” she said softly. “Hey—um—”

  Syvie didn’t hear her.

  “Hey—Sylvie—uh—”

  The cook turned around and sighed. “Oh, hell. Sylvie, I’m sorry.”

  “We must have deserved it,” said Sylvie. “Oh, Maria, we must have! It wouldn’t have been allowed otherwise.”

  “Allowed by who?” asked Maria. “The king? The priest? Ingeth’s picky little god? None of them know what goes on in this house.”

  Sylvie looked around, her white hair hanging in wisps. “Maria, don’t—please don’t yell—”

  The cook’s expression softened, and she put an arm around the other woman. “Hush, Sylvie, don’t cry. I’m in a bad mood because he’s done it again, I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

  Rhea had a pretty good idea that he’s done it again really meant and she’s sitting here at the table. She twisted her fingers together. The silver ring was cold.

  He makes better use of our gifts than we can? What does that mean? What gifts? Is this a magic thing? But what does staring into the mirror and sermonizing have to do with magic?

  For that matter, Ingeth had been sermonizing? This must have been before her terrible throat wound. What had happened to her?

  Sylvie leaned her head against Maria’s large shoulder and sighed. It did not seem like a good time to be asking questions. Rhea took her empty plate into the scullery and left the other wives alone.

  She was halfway through the dirty dishes when the house shook.

  It was not the sickening shaking that had accompanied the falling floor. It was only a little stillness and then the whole building shuddered once, as if someone had walked across its grave. A little dust slipped from the beams overhead and pattered across the clean dishes.

  I’ll have to re-rinse those plates, thought Rhea, annoyed, and then, belatedly, the house shook again.

  Perhaps she was getting used to it. What a vile thought.

  Maria stuck her head in the door and said “Himself’s home. Best be ready.”

  Rhea paused with her hands full of plates. “Should I go to my room and change?”

  The cook snorted. “And then you’ll be waiting and fretting and the dishes will still need to get done. No, best stay busy. He’ll keep you waiting awhile, you know, just so you know he’s in charge.”

  Not, thought Rhea grimly, that I’m likely to forget.

  Maria was right. She had finished the dishes and was pulling off her apron when Ingeth appeared at the kitchen door.

  She jerked her chin at Rhea.

  Rhea glanced at Maria. The cook dipped her head and said “Courage, child. But not too much. He plans to break you, and it’ll go easier for you if you bend.”

  Ingeth glowered. In Rhea’s mind, the bird-golems whispered be bold, be bold, but not too bold…

  She wiped her hands on the sides of her skirt, and wished that she still had the hedgehog with her.

  “Mind the floor,” called Maria. “The clock-wife likes to drop it when Himself’s in residence. Hopes she’ll catch him, but she hasn’t yet.”

  Too bad, thought Rhea.

  She followed Ingeth out of the kitchen.

  They went up the grand staircase. Rhea gripped the polished banister. It was too slippery to be much use as a support, but it was a solid thing in a house where even the floors weren’t particularly solid.

  Ingeth did not pause at the top of the stairs, and Rhea had to scurry after her.

  The carpet here was even thicker and softer than it was outside of Rhea’s bedroom. Their feet made no sound at all.

  There were portraits lining the hallway. She looked up at painted faces that looked down thoughtfully. Some were cruel, some were kind. A few weren’t human. There was one of an eagle wearing a crown, and the eagle’s painted eyes were as thoughtful and intelligent as those of the human man opposite him.

  Be bold, be bold, but not too bold… thought Rhea.

  Ingeth stopped at a door and tapped at it, very lightly. Then she crossed her arms over her breast and stepped back.

  “Enter,” called Lord Crevan through the door.

  Rhea looked at Ingeth, but Ingeth sank her chin to her crossed wrists and did not look at her.

  Rhea gulped, and set her hand to the door.

  The room inside was paneled in dark wood. It was so dim that Rhea could barely make out any shapes. Presumably there was furniture, and it was not simply an empty room. The carpet muffled her footsteps.

  There was a single narrow window on the right-hand wall, and in the beam of light it cast, a reading stand with a heavy book on it. Lord Crevan stood in front of the book, turning the pages one by one.

  “Rhea,” he said, looking up.

  “Milord,” said Rhea, and managed a curtsey this time.

  He smiled. She didn’t like the look of it. It was the same smile he had worn when the spark had jumped from his hand to hers, the smug smile of a man who believes that he is the smartest person in the room, and who had just done something unspeakably clever.

  Well. Perhaps he had.

  “What do you think of my house, Miss Rhea?”

  She did not like the ‘Miss.’ It had mockery in it.

  “It is very large,” she said.

  “And what do you think of my wives?” he asked.

  Well.

  There it was.

  Apparently they were not going to dance around the topic at all.

  Rhea bit back her anger. It was easy, because under and over and shot through the anger was fear. She had only to summon up her father’s face and think of the mill.

  Lord Crevan had already taken her away from her family. She would be damned if he got an excuse to take the mill away as well.

  “Maria and Sylvie have been very welcoming,” she said quietly.

  The skin around his eyes tightened, just a little. If she had not been staring at his face, she might have missed it. “Good,” he said. “Very good! I want you to feel at home here.”

  Was it her imagination, or did he sound the tiniest bit disappointed?

  They faced each other in silence. He turned a page of the book on the stand, without looking down at it, then another.

  Eventually, because someone had to say something, Rhea said, “Thank you for inviting me.”

  “Naturally.”

  “When may I return home, milord?”

  His smug smile returned and settled. “Are you so eager to leave, Miss Rhea?”

  “My family will miss me,” said Rhea, which was undoubtedly true.

  “Ah…” He steepled his fingers. “And yet they have had you your entire life—what is it, fourteen years?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “As long as that? Well, then. But I have had you only a day. They will have to get on without you a little longer.”

  Rhea dropped her gaze to hide her disappointment. She had not expected to go home. Truly she hadn’t. But it still felt as if he had set his boot in the middle of her chest and pushed.

  When she looked again, he had turned partly away and was reading through the book. “There is something you might do for me, while you are here,” he said.

  “Milord?”

  “There is a place in the woods. Follow the path out through the gardens and the old orchard, and at the end of it is a clearing with a pool and a…ah…scarecrow.” He did not look up. “Give the scarecrow a drink from the pool, then return.”

  “A scarecrow that drinks water, milord?”

  He smiled down at the book.

  “Leave at moonrise,” he said after a moment. “Return before dawn, or you will have failed.”

  “Failed, milord?” Rhea concentrated on keeping her voice even.

  Failed? If I don’t come back before dawn? Failed how? Is this magic, or is he simply mad?

  “Failed,” said Lord Crevan. “And there is a price for failure, Miss Rhea. Come ba
ck before dawn, or else I’ll marry you.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Rhea went down to the kitchen, feeling drained.

  She had to find her way back alone. Ingeth had still been standing outside the door, her arms crossed. Rhea started to ask the way back to her rooms, and Ingeth gave her a look of such intense loathing that it struck her like a physical blow.

  She was too tired to deal with it now. She turned away and walked back up the hallway, feeling Ingeth’s stare on the back of her neck.

  The stairway down was at the end of the hall. Presumably her own room was somewhere else in the house, but she wasn’t sure how to get there. The kitchen was half familiar.

  Maria turned as she came through the door, took one look at her, and hooked a chair out with her foot. “Sit down, child. You’re looking rough.”

  Rough. Yes. Rough describes it well. She felt as worn as a rutted road.

  Rhea sat. Maria brought her a mug of tea without being asked and a jar of honey. Rhea drizzled honey into the tea, watching the thin thread of amber cross and re-cross itself, before sinking into the depths of the mug.

  It seemed very important. If she was looking at the honey, she was not thinking about other things.

  Sylvie cleared her throat. Rhea hadn’t noticed her. The blind woman stood in the doorway from the garden, holding the doorframe. “Maria?” she asked quietly.

  “I’m here,” said Maria. “It’s only Rhea. She’s come from an audience with Himself and she’s a bit shook up is all.”

  “Oh,” said Sylvie. She hovered in the doorway, then walked, setting her feet carefully, to the table and her chair. “My bouquet was lovely,” she said, turning her head in Rhea’s direction. “I didn’t guess the chickweed at all. I never thought of it.”

  “It’s a weed, mostly,” said Rhea, who would much rather think of chickweed than of husbands. “You have to pull it up by the handfuls in the garden back home, and afterwards your hands smell…green. I don’t know how to describe it.”

  Sylvie nodded. “Like spring,” she said. “Before any of the flowers do anything, and everything is just leaves and stems.” She folded her hands neatly on the table in front of her. “Though it’s autumn now.”

  Rhea nodded, and then remembered that Sylvie couldn’t see it, and said “Yes.”

  She took a drink of the mug of tea. She had added too much honey, but she drank it anyway.

  Maria sat down in her own chair and thumped her elbows onto the table. “All right,” she said. “What did Himself want?”

  Rhea stared into her tea, and felt her ability to pretend that the conversation with Lord Crevan had never happened slipping away.

  I’m not going to cry. Crying is stupid. I cried already on the road. I don’t want to cry in front of Sylvie and Maria.

  “I have to go out tonight,” she said. “To find a scarecrow and give it a drink of water.”

  Maria’s lip curled. “Scarecrow. Is that what she is now?”

  Sylvie made a restless motion, her hands fluttered against the scarred wood of the table.

  Maria glanced at her and exhaled. “Very well. If that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is.”

  Rhea was reminded, suddenly, of her mother and aunt trying to build their net of words around the indecency of her visit to Lord Crevan.

  She wanted to yell, “What is going on here?!” because it was obvious that something was. Nobody sent you out in the middle of the night to give a scarecrow a drink of water. It was insane.

  It was as insane as walking along a white road and meeting bird-golems that whispered to you in hollow voices. It was as insane as a tile floor that dropped out from under you at midnight.

  It was as insane as a miller’s daughter marrying a lord who might also be a sorcerer.

  She looked at Maria, who had been a witch. Maria would know what was going on.

  She opened her mouth to demand answers, and Maria locked gazes with her and shook her head, her lips pressed flat together.

  Rhea did not want to be silenced, but Maria flicked her eyes to the ceiling, in the general direction of Crevan’s study, then back down to Rhea. She shook her head again.

  Rhea closed her mouth.

  Sylvie, who could undoubtedly feel the tension, plucked at the table again. “She wasn’t bad looking,” she murmured. “Her hair was nice.”

  “Hush, Sylvie.”

  Rhea finished her tea.

  “You’ll find the road easy enough,” said Maria. “It’s returning that’s the tricky part. What time are you to leave?”

  “Moonrise,” said Rhea.

  “Aye. Himself is fond of moonrise.” She pushed herself to her feet. “All right, then. You should take a nap. It’ll be a long night, and moonrise will come sooner than you think.”

  Rhea slept.

  She wouldn’t have thought that she’d be able to, but she did. The sheets were cool, and she drifted first into a vague half-sleep, full of white walls and silence, and then into dreaming.

  It was after dark when Ingeth knocked on the door.

  The other woman’s scarred face was a shock to Rhea’s sleep-mazed eyes. She woke up in a hurry. “I—wait—oh. Yes. Let me get my shoes on.”

  Ingeth glared through her, then turned on her heel and stalked away.

  Rhea hurried after her, with the back of one shoe still crumpled up under her foot. The garden was bathed in starlight, but the moon was not yet up. She flopped down in a chair to fix her shoe.

  “There you are,” said Maria, elbow deep in bread dough. “I sent Ingeth to wake you. You’ll need a meal before you go out.”

  Out. Yes. Into the woods. At night.

  Rhea’s stomach knotted up. She dragged her finger around the back of her shoe, flipping the leather up. “Oh. I suppose that’s a good idea.”

  I did it once before. I was fine. I had a hedgehog. I’ll be fine this time.

  “It’s a very good idea,” said Maria. “It’ll be bad enough without being hungry, I expect.”

  This was not precisely encouraging.

  “What’s going to happen?” asked Rhea.

  “I was a witch, not a fortune teller,” said Maria testily. “No one knows what’s going to happen.”

  She slid a plate of potatoes in front of Rhea, then went back to the dough. Potatoes seemed to be Maria’s default food. Fortunately, Rhea was fond of them.

  She wasn’t exactly hungry, but she took a bite anyway.

  Sylvie was not at the table. Rhea looked over her shoulder to make sure Ingeth was gone.

  “Maria?”

  “Mm?”

  “Why does Ingeth hate me?”

  Maria let out a bark of laughter. “She was the last wife. Voice like an angel, and what did she ever use it for, but picking and picking and telling us that we had led our lord to wickedness? She thought she’d had the saving of him, with her sermons and her righteousness, and then she got here and found he had five other wives and only one in the ground.”

  Rhea could spare a certain amount of sympathy for Ingeth’s surprise. “She didn’t know?”

  “No more than the rest of us. Well, not me. I was the first wife.” She slammed her fist into the dough, perhaps with a little more force than needed. “Hard for someone like Ingeth to admit that they were wrong. Or maybe she’s mad at her god for not saving her. I don’t know. It’s quieter now, thank the saints.”

  “What happened to her?” asked Rhea quietly.

  Maria looked up at the ceiling, then down at Rhea.

  I should have asked before. Oh, it was stupid not to ask when I first got here. They were talking freely then. I was tired and scared and upset and that’s still no excuse. She can’t talk with Lord Crevan here, it’s obvious.

  Lady of Stones, why was I so stupid?

  In a very small voice, Rhea said “He said that if I wasn’t back before dawn, he’d marry me.”

  Maria nodded. She came over and took the half-eaten plate of potatoes away. When her lips were very ne
ar Rhea’s ear, she murmured, “I can’t say much. But I’d be back by dawn, if I were you.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When the edge of the moon slithered over the top of the wood, Rhea stepped into the garden. The path continued through the arch, into the overgrown garden, then into the orchard, and then…well, hopefully to the scarecrow.

  The scarecrow that could drink.

  She took a deep breath to settle herself. The air smelled of dead leaves and frost.

  Rhea made three steps, and then a shadow waddled into the path.

  The hedgehog sat up in front of her.

  “Hedgehogs are not this concerned with humans,” Rhea told it firmly, as a wave of relief washed through her like a cool tide.

  The hedgehog shrugged, and put its paws in the air to be picked up.

  She settled it in her pocket, where it rolled around until it found a comfortable position. “Were the slugs in the garden good?” she asked it.

  It poked its nose over the pocket edge and nodded approvingly. Apparently, they had been high-quality slugs.

  She told the hedgehog about her errand as she walked out of the garden. The path was pale in the moonlight, but not the bone-colored expanse of the white road. When shadows fell over it, they lay like ordinary shadows.

  The orchard was heavy and overgrown. Weeds turned to brambles and grew up the trunks of apple trees, which bent branches down to meet them. The path became narrower, but it was still six paces across and mostly straight.

  This isn’t so bad. If this is all there is, I shouldn’t have any trouble getting home by dawn.

  The fallen leaves cluttered the edge, but left the center of the path clear.

  Rhea looked over her shoulder. She had no sense of anything following her—not the way that she had on the white road—but she didn’t trust her senses. She looked down at the hedgehog.

  Its tiny paws were tense, but it did not seem afraid.

  They had been walking no more than fifteen or twenty minutes when the dense tangle swept away on either side, and Rhea stepped into a clearing.

  The moon streamed down on grass-choked paving stones. The gaps where stones were missing were scabbed with weeds.