had been on her mind for the entire conversation, “who was the courtier sitting next to you tonight?”
Oh, but think of the rumors. Judah remembered the nastiness in the corridor and suppressed a shudder. “No idea. Why?”
“He was watching you,” Elly said merrily. “And he left at the same time you did. I think that’s why Gavin was so desperate to know where you were. He thought you had a new friend.”
Judah grimaced. “Blech.”
“It’s nice to have friends.” Elly’s voice was gently mocking, but Judah couldn’t tell if she was making fun of Gavin, or the courtier, or Judah herself. Pulling her shawl more tightly around her, Elly said, “Well, my face hurts from smiling. I’m going to bed.”
“I’ll stay out a while longer.”
“Don’t bother waiting up for Gavin. When I left he was surrounded by courtiers.” Elly lifted a hand in a wave, then went inside.
The scratch came again. More insistently this time. Down in the great hall, Gavin was drawing a fingernail against the blue-veined skin on the inside of his wrist, a complicated swirl that meant, simultaneously, Where did you go? and Are you okay? and Can I stop worrying about you?
Judah sighed, pulled up her own sleeve, and scratched. Fine. Home. Bored.
The response came almost immediately. Good. Stuck here. See you later.
Once, she would have waited for him. Once, he could have been counted on to come back before dawn. The terrace was quiet and peaceful, and she couldn’t quite shake the memory of the Wilmerian’s voice.
They say you’re witchborn. They say you stole Lady Clorin’s soul.
* * *
She’d been carried into the House in a midwife’s basket. Lady Clorin had been laboring with Gavin for three days, and the midwife was supposed to be the best. The maid who recommended her said she brought special skills, unsurpassed. And Clorin had survived, so maybe the midwife did bring special skills, but she’d also brought the newborn Judah, wrapped in an old piece of toweling and still wet with blood. Lady Clorin had lost five babies by the time she’d had Gavin—two dead in their cradles, one born dead, and two more not even making it that far—and she was softhearted. She’d asked the midwife what would become of the tiny baby girl.
The midwife shrugged. “Nobody wants girls. Might be able to find a brothel to take her in. Otherwise, the Brake.”
Clorin told the old woman to leave the baby with her instead. The Seneschal saw no harm in it. Elban didn’t care, so the Lady of the City was allowed to keep the new baby as if it were a kitten. Judah and Gavin slept in the same crib, fed from the same nurses, played with the same toys. Even when Judah’s hair turned its disturbing garnet color and her infant-blue eyes deepened to black, Clorin delighted in her two babies. Judah couldn’t remember who’d told her that, but she had the distinct impression that it was true.
When Judah and Gavin were barely two, Theron had been born, and Clorin had died of it. This, nobody had ever talked to her about, but Judah suspected that probably, by the time Theron came along, Elban and the Seneschal had realized they’d made a mistake. She suspected that was probably why Theron had come along, when by all reports Clorin was frail even before Gavin, and never fully recovered from his birth. Nobody would have considered it strange that two infants who slept in the same crib would share the same illnesses, but the books Judah had read on the subject suggested that well before two, babies could walk, and fall down, and bump into things. Well before two, then, someone would have noticed that when Judah fell down, Gavin’s knee bruised, too. She wondered, sometimes, how they must have confirmed it: had they snatched her from Clorin’s arms and put her in a snowbank to see if Gavin shivered? Had Clorin watched as they cut Judah’s tiny heel to see if Gavin bled? She wondered also about the nurse who’d been keen enough to notice (because it would have had to be a nurse; nobody else would have spent enough time with them): who she was, how long she’d been allowed to live. If they’d killed her quickly, or if she was among those silent members of the House staff who’d had their tongues cut out for convenience’s sake, creeping about doing tasks that didn’t require speech.
She rarely indulged in such thoughts. There was no point. Years