only Elly, she let herself wince, and close her eyes.
* * *
After Clorin died, they’d discussed sending Judah away—the Seneschal had told her so—but putting her in someone else’s care was too uncertain, and Gavin cried and refused to eat when separated from her. Nobody ever mentioned if Judah had cried, too. But every winter, as soon as the first deep snow fell, they’d make her sit naked on a snowbank. She still remembered the feel of snow packed between her toes, of snowflakes hitting her bare shoulders. Watching through the glass-paned terrace doors as Gavin, inside by the fire, grew listless and blue.
They—Elban and the Seneschal—worried that someone might use her to hurt Gavin. Every choice made for them was made with that possibility in mind. At six years old, they’d never had a tutor, for fear of what their young tongues would let slip; other than Elban and the Seneschal, they saw only their illiterate nurses (who were sequestered from the rest of the staff, and who had a disturbing tendency to vanish after a year or so) and Theron. Who was only a second son, anyway, and with his cough that came and went, came and went, nobody had really expected him to survive his childhood. Judah supposed that if Theron had been as strong, handsome and charming as Gavin, she and Elban’s older son would probably have suffered a tragic illness early on, and been mourned throughout the kingdom.
But Theron was Theron, shy and thin and not at all Lord of the City material, so Gavin and Judah lived. When Elban wasn’t campaigning, the Lord even took a tiny bit of interest in his heir; he’d let the boy join him on guard inspection, or in the council chamber, or at executions. After Gavin’s seventh birthday, Elban and the Seneschal scoured the distant—and less powerful—courtier families for the boy’s future bride. Eventually they found her in Tiernan, a remote district known primarily for its sheep and secondarily for its blackwork embroidery; the girl’s family was wealthy enough to be respectable, but poor enough to be glad of the bride-price, and willing to accept with it the condition that they’d never see the girl again. The child herself, the Seneschal had told Gavin on that long-ago afternoon, was pretty and obedient; smart enough to read and write, but not smart enough to be troublesome. Later, it made Judah laugh, all the ways that Elban and the Seneschal had misjudged Elly.
The marriage had been arranged earlier than usual, so that the bond between the two children would have time to strengthen, and any other bonds the girl came with had time to weaken. When hurting the Lord of the City was as easy as pushing Judah down the stairs, these things could not be left to chance. Even so—the Seneschal had explained—the secret must be kept. Judah and Gavin must learn to keep it.
They’d been eight. It was the first time Judah had ever been allowed in Elban’s study. In her memory it was all warm yellow light from the oil lamps, shelves filled with books and strange weapons taken as trophies, and massive furniture that made Judah feel tiny. Elban himself, his white hair tied back like a magus and his eyes glittering in the lamplight, had held a glass of wine in his hand, the liquid a deep beautiful red like an overripe strawberry, like Judah’s hair. He hadn’t done anything but watch. It was Arkady who had brought the knives and the brands and the acid, and he and the Seneschal who had used them on her. Always her. The person who wasn’t directly hurt healed faster and scarred less, and they wanted Gavin to stay perfect. He had tried to be perfect. He had tried to be brave, in the presence of his father. But even he had cried before long, and begged and pleaded.
We’ll stop when you can keep quiet, the Seneschal had said. You must learn to be quiet.
When Judah passed out, they revived her and started again.
She didn’t know how long they spent in the study, if it was three nights or thirty. She remembered being forced to eat, to drink water. She remembered the Seneschal leaning over her, holding smelling salts beneath her nose. Saying, not entirely unkindly: The only way out is through. You must learn to do this.
She remembered the way Gavin had screamed when they hurt her. She remembered how she’d hated him for it: she remembered