dare she think of Darid as lucky and herself as unlucky? Darid, who was buried somewhere in the very midden yard where their squash grew, who had died suffering, and done it for her. Her mother was buried there, too, somewhere deep in the layers of vegetable peelings and fireplace ashes—but she had seen Darid, held his hand, known his smell. If he could see her now, he would laugh at her, at the slipshod, half-capable way she did her chores.
No. Darid wouldn’t laugh at her. He would be proud of her.
They didn’t spike his head. I did that much for you.
It had seemed a hollow gesture at the time. But three spiked skulls still stared over the kitchen yard, and every morning, while Judah gathered eggs under their empty eyes, she was resentfully grateful that none of them were Darid’s.
As she moved from chore to chore she often found herself in places that had once been enemy territory. The grand foyer, the council chamber, the solarium: all empty and echoing, the life that had been lived there as faraway as an old story. Sometimes she dreamed that she was a ghost, that she’d slipped an hour ahead or an hour behind the rest of the world: she could feel the life that had been, hemming her in on all sides, but she couldn’t see it or catch up or get further away and she didn’t know which she’d choose, if she’d been able. Worse still were the bleak moments when she found herself at some mundane task that she’d done in exactly the same way the day before and would do in exactly the same way the next day—filling waterskin after waterskin at the edge of the aquifer, for instance, cold hands in the dark water and only the light of her lantern in all of the huge damp blackness yawning around her, knowing with all her being that she couldn’t, she simply could not, load those skins onto her back and make the long, brutal trek upstairs under the weight of them. It was impossible. She would scream. She would lose her mind. She would do it anyway. Moments like that came a dozen times a day, moments when she considered whatever she had to do, thought, I can’t, and then did. Instead of making her feel triumphant it made her exhausted and angry and frustrated.
The first time the magus had tapped on the open parlor door, a few days after they’d been freed, she was glad to see him. His was a different face to look at, and nothing about him made her feel guilty. “The Seneschal sent me to make sure you’re all still healthy. And I brought food,” he added.
But it wasn’t just food, it was good food: butter and ripe cheese and bread, real bread, yeasty and crusty and sometimes even still warm. And candy. Dear gods, the candy. Of all the things Judah missed, she craved sugar the most: not soap or meat or even coffee but sweets, cream cakes and fruit tarts and smooth chocolates with bursts of liqueur in the middle that exploded like kisses in her mouth. She could stand the grime that covered every surface, the clothes that never quite felt clean and the constant feeling of being slightly colder than she’d like to be; she could even stand the drudgery (or had so far) but the idea that she might never again taste caramel made her want to burn down the world. That first time, he’d brought candied orange peel. Not even one of her favorites but the feel of the sparkling crust of sugar on her tongue had nearly made her cry. She’d intended to save some for the others but she’d eaten every bite, her throat aching with unshed tears.
He came every week after that, and proposed an exchange of goods for services: he would bring them food if they would let him check in on them. And maybe, he suggested, Judah could show him the House. Despite all the time he’d spent inside the Wall since Arkady’s death, treating courtiers and the four of them, he knew only the corridors, their parlor, the Seneschal’s office, and a few of the guest rooms.
“That’s funny,” she said. “I always had the impression that Arkady had to be forcibly removed from the premises.”
With a sourness that she wasn’t accustomed to in him, he said, “I’m not Arkady.”
So she took him everywhere: the deserted solarium and the council chamber,