She kept her eyes on her work. “Yes,” she said. “I know.”
Before she left, Darid said that he would show her the next time she came how to weave rope herself; he had tried to teach her before, but she’d been hopeless at it. Darid didn’t have time to waste on hopeless tasks so she took the offer as the apology she suspected it was meant to be, and said she would be happy to learn. Then she went down to the baths. This early in the day, they were deserted. No noises came from behind any of the closed doors, and not a single page waited outside the bathing rooms for a courtier. Judah had no page, and clean clothes would have required a trip back upstairs, so she had none of those, either. The steam was scented so strongly with eucalyptus and lavender that her eyes stung. After, she put her dusty dress back on and it smelled like horse and hay, and as she tied the laces she thought, Elly is going to marry Elban.
It hit her like a slap. She felt like one of Theron’s clockwork things, wound to its limit every morning so it would go through the motions all day, spinning and ticking away. Meanwhile, the world burned, and for the thousandth time, she pondered how strange life was, how easy it could be to let your feet carry you through the hours despite the fire.
On her way back upstairs, she met the Seneschal. He was talking to one of the kitchen stewards about wheat: how much the fields inside the Wall could be expected to yield, how much would be consumed, how much would have to be purchased or traded from the provinces, how much all of it would cost. When he saw Judah he did not pause, but held up one finger. She considered ignoring it, but knew she wouldn’t be able to avoid him for long. So she stood, impatiently, until the conversation was over. As the steward slipped past her on his way out, he slashed at the air. Protecting against the evil eye—her eye. Judah slashed back.
The Seneschal appeared not to notice. “This way,” he said, and led her two hallways over to an empty guest room. It was shabby enough that it was probably meant for tradesmen or visiting servants; the cot was narrow, there was no sink or running water and the washstand was chipped. The only window opened onto one of the light shafts. This far down, the light had a long way to travel, and what made it through the window was weak and halfhearted.
“If you’re going to yell at me about Firo,” she said, “don’t bother. Nothing you’ve heard is true.”
He shook his head. “Firo likes beautiful men. Neither word applies to you. While I’m curious about the conversations he’s obviously covering for, I doubt very much that they contain anything I don’t already know. And Firo might be useful to us down the road.”
“I thought I was supposed to stay away from the courtiers.”
“Circumstances have changed. If Lord Gavin marries Lady Amie, she’ll want you dead,” the Seneschal said matter-of-factly. “Marrying you to Firo and sequestering you in Cerrington might not be the worst thing. He’d follow instructions if he were paid well enough, and there’d be little risk of pregnancy.”
Judah recoiled. “There will be no risk of pregnancy. I won’t marry Firo.”
“Perhaps you’d rather be walled into one of the unused towers for the rest of your life, or beheaded.” His consonants were crisp, bitten-off. “Lady Amie doesn’t know about your bond with Lord Gavin, and she can’t find out. Unlike Lady Eleanor, she would have no qualms about using the information to her advantage.” Judah could practically feel the man thinking. It was like standing next to a hot fire. “It would take a lot of money to buy Firo, though. He’s well-connected in his own right, and he wouldn’t go against Elban unless there was quite a lot in it for him. We might be able to blackmail him; they don’t think very well of men with his preferences in the outer provinces. Why is Lord Gavin spending so much time on the training field?”
“He likes hitting things,” Judah said.
The Seneschal slapped her, hard, and the world flashed white. It was more startling than anything. Then came the heat, and only after that the pain, like something rising out of the deep. She put a hand