A grudging humor came into the Seneschal’s eyes. “Neither. He has merely offered to accept you back, if you want to go.”
She sat back and wiped her hands on her apron. “Is it really my choice?”
“It is. May I make a suggestion?”
“Is there any way I can stop you?”
“Don’t refuse immediately. Consider the offer. You might not relish the idea of life in Tiernan, but at least you know what it’ll be like.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I know what life here is like. Unless you’re not planning on keeping us here indefinitely, perched on the edge of starvation.”
“Nothing is indefinite,” he said. “Take my advice. Consider your options.”
Then he left. Eleanor squeezed the rest of the water out of the yarn, then laid it out to dry, winding the damp, dull-colored strand into parallel ranks like soldiers in formation. Her brother. Angen of Tiernan. He would surely be married by now, possibly for the second or third time. There would be children. She wondered if any of them were girls, and pitied them if they were.
* * *
“Judah’s gone up to the tower,” Theron said.
Elly was boiling oats for dinner. The heat on the stove was uneven and she had to stir the pot constantly or risk it burning. As Theron spoke, all at once the porridge thickened. Quickly, she took it off the stove. “What tower?”
“The one above the workshop.”
Impossible. Salt; a handful of wild onion. She wished she had pepper. There’d been a cheese she’d used to like, its thick rind studded with whole peppercorns. The pepper permeated the creamy inside, giving each bite had a satisfying sting. She missed that cheese.
Wait.
Theron was already wandering away, his flitting moth of a mind having found another light. She grabbed his arm. “Tell me again, Theron.”
“Judah went up to the tower above the workshop.”
Creeping doubt began to fill her. “But the stairs are broken.”
“Not for me.” His cloudy blue eyes slid away from her. “And not for Judah. I’m not sure about you or Gavin.”
What did you do now, Gavin? she thought wearily. She had so much to do. She always had so much to do.
* * *
Gavin was in Elban’s study with a bottle of wine. He sprang up when the door opened, his face earnest and exposed in a way it rarely was; but, seeing her, his mask slammed down. The Grand High Lord, thwarted by his stubborn Lady-that-should-have-been, proudly hurt by her lack of consideration for his feelings. “What do you want?” he said curtly. Four long scratches marred his cheek, one crusted with blood.
“If Judah did that to your face,” Elly said, “you deserved it.”
“Did I?” he said.
“You lied to her about the stableman. All this time she’s been thinking she killed him, and now Theron says she’s gone to the tower above the workshop, so what happened?”
For a moment, guilt drew his mouth tight, but when he spoke his voice was petulant and cross. “That’s nonsense. There’s nothing in the tower above the workshop.”
“According to Theron, Judah is, and I trust him more than I trust you,” she said.
His brow furrowed. “She’s really up there?”
“Yes. Why did you lie to her about the stableman?”
“I was angry,” he said, his voice colored with a mix of contrition and frustration. Yet another thing gone wrong for him, another obstacle in the way of the young lord’s happiness. “What does it matter? I’ll go up and bring her down. That’s what you came here to tell me to do, isn’t it?”
It was. It had been. But then he’d said, What does it matter, and it did matter. It mattered very much. If he couldn’t see that, she couldn’t blame Judah for leaving. “Wrong,” she said. “I came here to find out what you’d done. And to tell you to leave her alone.” Then she walked out of the room and left him there. She hated that room, anyway. It smelled like Elban and misery.
* * *
Theron helped her with the sheep. They ate porridge in silence and Elly wound the newly-dried yarn. When the fire burned low she banked the coals, so she wouldn’t have to use one of her few precious matches to relight it the next morning, and retired to her bedroom. It would have been warmer to sleep in the parlor with Theron. But she liked to have two doors between her room and Gavin’s, these days. In her big, cold, stale-smelling bed, she worried about Judah,