on her own face, too. Fighting him was hard. She could feel the emptiness inside him, yawning like hunger. He was weak, hurting. He needed her. She could help him. Nobody else could. It would be the easiest thing in the world. It would be like falling asleep. She was so tired.
Then she was up on her feet. Standing over him. “No,” she said.
His fists clenched. His head dropped. The void inside her ached and it would be so simple to fill it, but then there would be nothing, she would be nothing. She would never be apart from him. She could not be near him. There was no choice, except to flee.
And so Judah fled. She didn’t know where she was going. She only knew that she was going away.
Chapter Sixteen
When Eleanor was a child, somebody told her a story about a woman who unraveled her husband’s wool scarf to knit socks for her children. There had been some twist that she couldn’t remember; somehow it had been funny, that she was unraveling the scarf. Eleanor had loved the story about the charming mother who made socks for all of her happy children. Her own mother had been wary and grim and watchful, and as Lady of Tiernan, she hadn’t knitted. Embroidered, yes, the famous Tiernan blackwork; miles of that, and the occasional piece of tatted lace. But knitting was for peasants and shepherds and people who were concerned about staying warm. The mere sight of a pair of knitting needles in her mother’s hands would send her father into a frenzy, No wife of mine, and all that. It had been Eleanor’s grandmother who had taught her to knit, hidden away with the old people and children where her father couldn’t see. Knitting was secret, illicit. Arcane.
The knowledge had turned out to be useful, along with several bits about sheep that Eleanor never thought she’d need. The coup had happened at the beginning of summer and their winter clothes, in storage, had been taken. Now the weather was growing cold. Theron made needles for her, and she’d started to unravel an old knitted blanket she’d found under the quilts in her linen chest. She couldn’t get the story of the mother and the scarf and the socks out of her head, but the actual work soon lost its charm. The washing and untangling and laying-out-to-dry was awkward and tedious, and too often the strand broke in her hands as she wound it. But when winter came they would need warm feet and warm hands, and to get warm feet and warm hands they would need socks and mittens. Sweaters, maybe. She’d never made anything but doll scarves. She hoped there was a book in the Lady’s Library.
Wake up each day and figure out how to survive it: that was something else her grandmother had taught her.
She was swishing a mess of dirty yarn in the washtub on the terrace, as far from the edge as possible, when the Seneschal emerged from the parlor and told her that her father was dead. There was a bench on the terrace, but the Seneschal remained standing. He was an oddly formal man, even now, and would not sit without being invited. “It happened around the same time Elban died,” he said. “The message just came through. I’m sorry for your loss, Eleanor.”
“Are you?” she said. She had never particularly cared about being called lady; when the magus called her Eleanor, it was just her name. But every time the Seneschal did it, she felt like he was relieving himself in front of her. “I’m not. I haven’t seen the man in fourteen years. Who’s ruling Tiernan?”
“Your oldest brother, Angen.”
Her oldest surviving brother. The actual oldest, Millar, had been thrown from his horse when Eleanor was four. The paper in the Seneschal’s hand was battered, but she recognized the white wax seal: a ram’s head, lowered to charge. “There was a second message, as well,” he said. “A newer one. Angen has asked me to extend to you an invitation to return, given the circumstances.”
“The circumstances?” She pulled two handfuls of sodden wool from the dingy water.
“You were contracted to marry the Lord of the City. Now there is no Lord of the City. You have no children with Gavin. Nothing holds you here.”
The wool had to be wrapped in an old towel and squeezed gently. “What about the money Elban paid for me? Is Angen giving it back? Or are you