didn’t choose to be what I am. One moment I was fighting with my father and daydreaming about running far away. The next moment, I was a horse, and literally running far away. Ever since, if the sun is up, I’m a horse. And if the sun is down, I’m a man. If it is a gift, I do not deserve it. If it is a curse, I do not deserve it.”
He took a sip of his water and then continued. “Evil will exist among E∂ians, just as goodness will exist among Verities. I believe E∂ians deserve protection from persecution. The scales need to be righted in the direction of equality. And if it were the other way around, and Verities were persecuted, I would still fight for equality. Not dominance. Dominance leads to tyranny.”
There was silence in the room for a long time.
“I did not know your feelings about the subject matter ran so deep, G,” Jane said.
She had called him G. That had to be a good sign if there ever was one. And her full lips were curved up ever so slightly.
“I didn’t know I felt so strongly about it, either,” he said. And that was the truth.
She glanced away demurely. “Perhaps if you didn’t waste away your human hours on drinking and whoring, you’d discover more things to give a shilling’s worth of thought about.”
G put his hand to his forehead and rubbed hard. He thought again about telling her he was a poet. But when he lowered his hand, he saw that she was smiling. Then she smiled wider. And her red hair, which moments before had looked like a den of scarlet snakes wrangled together in a prudish bun, now resembled beams of sunbursts around a fiery center. She was radiant.
“Do you know how I think we should spend the first night of our honeymoon?” she said in a soft, low voice.
For the first time since the announcement of their betrothal, G knew exactly how he wanted to spend the night. A pit of anxiety and anticipation formed in his stomach. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Her eyes got brighter, if that was possible. “I think we should raid our food cupboards and take some smoked meat down to the peasants who were attacked earlier!”
G worked hard to keep his face from falling. “My lady, you read my mind,” he said, grateful that his lady could not read minds.
In addition to the meat, dried fruit, and hard-rind cheese from the larder, G and Jane also gathered up an assortment of herbs, strips of linens, and tea leaves.
As Jane put it, “Yarrow tea helps with the pain. I learned that from reading The Proper Treatment of Wounds on the Battlefield During the War of the Roses: A History.”
G watched in awe as she used a pestle and mortar to grind three different herbs and two spices. She then removed an innocuous-looking wooden slat from the wall in the corner of the larder, reached inside, and produced a corked bottle.
“Is that liquor, my lady?” G raised one eyebrow.
“I messaged ahead and had the servants hide it,” she said as if she believed strong marriages started out by hiding the liquor. She’d probably read it in a book somewhere.
G didn’t know whether to be impressed or really, really annoyed. Either way, he agreed that now was a great time for a drink. Except Jane poured a couple of ounces of the stuff into the mortar and then re-corked the bottle and returned it to its hiding place.
G made a mental note of where the wooden slat was.
She mixed the liquor with the powder and then poured it into a jar and sealed it shut. “They can let this tincture steep for eight days, and then it will help with those wounds that are difficult to heal.”
G nodded, understanding very little of what she had just said. They had dressed in their plainest clothing, and now they draped their most mundane cloaks around their shoulders, so as not to appear highborn. G wrapped their supplies in a sheet and hoisted it over his shoulder.
“Shall we?” he said.
Jane lit a lantern and held it high. “We shall.”
They didn’t want to bother the servants or the coachman with details, which made what they were about to do seem slightly illicit and possibly the most exciting thing either of them had done.
G told only the stable boy of their plan, so that he could help prepare a simple horse and wagon. Jane