Idony’s brows aren’t so speaking as Hana’s; the Bronze Judge’s curiosity about ‘body-language’ has her seeing for the first time how the weakness of her voice has made their friend so much better at being understood without words. Idony is better at hiding than showing, but being pretty and blonde and delicate doesn’t mean she can’t glare full fierce. If it weren’t for the hitch in her greeting, the way her pale skin makes the redness of her eyes stand out, you’d never know she was aught but furious.
“Swiftly, now.” A pantry box is thrust into her hands. “Best we’re away without coming to notice.”
With Idony watching the corner, Emilia swaps soft, thick wool for a servant’s undyed hemp. The shadow of the box’s lid over the indigo cloth – still rich and dark even after so many years – tints it dark as a clouded night.
“I – what are you doing here, Ida? Won’t your mother – ?”
“Hush. Tom and his bootlicks scattered like bugs under a flipped stone once Militiaman Gordan brought you up, but we shouldn’t dally.”
In servant garb, hoods up and heads down, they aren’t spared a second glance as they pass through the gate. True to Idony’s word, there’s no ambush set at the bottom of the switchback path, but the mill is barely a stone’s throw distant. They set a quick pace; nobody bothers a serving-girl bustling along with provisions in hand.
Where they can, they take back paths and cut-throughs. It’s only proper to avoid getting in the way of the preparations; if it keeps them out of sight and out of mind, so much the better. At times they’re forced to ford the crowds – the Meltwater may run low in summer, but even a bare riverbed is treacherous with bog, quicksand, and mudfish.
Emilia is too young to remember a time when the ruined bridge was more than the tumbled, jagged stones left in the wake of the summer her elders speak of only as the Drowning Rains. Mason Boian, education cut short, is not so skilled as his late master. Whether it’s the knack or the knowing he lacks, he can’t ward against a river’s flow.
Of the two bridges that remain, one is at the topmost edge of the village, connecting the market square to the great barn and the main granaries. It’s wide and flat and sturdy and so far out of the way that market days are near enough the only time anyone but Herders and wildsmen use it. The other, in the shadow of the Scarwall, is near constantly trod – crafters going about their business, ‘prentices making collections and deliveries, Militiamen on patrol.
Most days, even Emilia uses the wall bridge, though her Ma’s house is close to the commonwilds. Today, there’s no errands to run that would take them to both sides of the village, so Idony brings her up to the market bridge. Arming-cloth tents stretch across the square, ready to succour any Militiaman who might suffer injury in fighting a delaying action while the village uproots itself – or, should they fail, any villager struck down as a result.
The tents aren’t so densely embroidered as a Militiaman’s arming doublet; arming-cloth is strong while it lasts, but an Embroiderer is no heartland alchemist. If there’s a way to lend fortitude to linen that doesn’t burn it out in a handful of seasons, there’s not one of them who knows it. As a woman’s craft, and a tricky one, they plain don’t have enough Embroiderers to keep up with spans and spans of tentcloth every season; some protection is better than none, so the wardoffs are sewn sparing enough to last.
Even so, this much of it together draws a flow of magic that whispers needles across her skin. If she’d not met the Bronze Judge, felt the magic pour off him near choking-thick, it might have given her as much pause as it does most of the rest of the village.
Idony lowers her head, sets her shoulders, and heaves to with goathog stubbornness. Emilia slows her pace, just a touch, to match.
Once they round the granaries – close to empty, now, with every aurochs grown enough for a Carter’s use set to hauling provisions – her Ma’s house comes into view. Set against a sheer jut of ridgeslope, it hasn’t so much of a garden as most homes, but that’s never been a trouble. Midwife Ziva always moved slow and careful, closer to becoming Old Ziva than she liked to admit, and Emilia spends much of her time a-forage. It’s a fine trade for the calm and quiet. No small boon, too, is that Young Tom can’t never come up here – he’s no reason to be passing by the way he would if she lived nearer to the market square, the workshops, the manor. Even he couldn’t brush off coming to a girl’s house uninvited.
In full summer bloom, marjoram and arnica and lavender and every other herb you can grow in the lower valley weave a tapestry of colour. Emilia always lingers on the comfrey. Her first knowledge of her Ma as more than just the woman who bore her was when Midwife Ziva started her on the garden. She’d clutched onto two thin, leathery fingers with the whole of her hand as she was led out to the rough-hewn stone bench that still sits in its corner today.
Her Ma, she’d been told, had loved comfrey – not for its use to an Apothecary, but the beauty of its flowers. ‘Like the skirts of a heartlander gown’. Midwife Ziva’s whole face had scrunched like crumpled paper around her smile.
Comfrey can come in all sorts of colours: Emilia’s bred good blues, reds, pinks, and purples, an understated sort of maroon, and has hope for her newest try at an orange. All of them come from this delicately shaded bed, cloud-white blushing into bright, strong pink like first light’s rising glow. She’s not never been able to keep that in a daughter line.
When the weather allows, Emilia brings out her books and her drawing table and sits on the stone bench by the comfrey, in the shade of the laurel tree. Midwife Ziva had taught Emilia to read here, cradled in her lap. She’d spent tens, hundreds of degrees of the Sun running her finger just above the paper (‘take good care of your books, and they’ll outlive you’) and sounding out the words until Emilia could follow along. Uncle had once helped her wrangle the kitchen trestle out, when she was big enough, and they’d sat with her tucked under his arm as he took her through his accounts. They went through three pots of tisane before they were done, and she’s never since smelled wisemint without thinking of Uncle.
Idony’s touch on her elbow is gentle, but it still sends a jolt right through her. “Emi, please – I’m sorry, truly, but we haven’t the time to spare.”
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She knows; her Ma’s with the Sun, and beyond mortal waiting. It’s no shame or disrespect to focus on the now. But even Idony’s clear sympathy can’t salve the hurt of being pulled three ways at once. The cradle of the past is behind her, however she longs for it. The present has swept her up, rushing, flooding. And the Bronze Judge’s shadow casts the future into uncertainty.
Any proper building has a hearthroom. Good stone walls, wardoffs chiselled into every block, rooted down to the bones of the mountains. A properly built hearth, consecrated to the Sun, can take up a flame’s warmth and spread it all throughout the masonry; hemmed in by the Stonespines and the Scar, the saving on firewood is a blessing.
Though women keep to the home where men have workshops set aside, it’s always good sense to work your craft in the hearthroom. Doubly so if you’re teaching younger ‘prentices, whose mistakes can often throw out a snarl of misshapen magic. The stability of stone can make a difference.
Without a craft to earn title by, Emilia’s hearthroom is thick with ink and memories. In one corner, there’s a small table, unfinished, with a terrible wobble. She likes it better for sketching on than the kitchen trestle; she can move it around, the legs are easy enough to wedge, and it’s nice not having to worry about inkstone dust in her food.
Uneven shelves bargained, traded, or rescued from ‘prentice carpentry are piled high with books, with boxes of loose sheaves, with mementos – gifts from Uncle, her copies of the tale-chants Oliga tells by firelight, the thin and frayed kerchief Idony and Hana made for her in their younger days. On the one shelf that stands full square, behind the only set of cabinet doors, there’s a wax-sealed box: her sketches of comfrey flowers and her Ma’s cloak, the childish scrawling that’s as close as she ever got to Midwife Ziva’s face, studies of Uncle from every time he’s come to visit.
It’s not often Emilia has the means to make coloured ink. Common inkstone won’t do aught but black. Even in the heartland it’s dear, so Uncle only rarely brings her any. Making ink that’ll hold dye takes a special sort of moss, boiled down into a syrupy resin. It only grows deep into the upper valley and near five years after figuring out what it’s good for she still can’t say surely what it likes and what will kill it.
Coloured ink is for precious things, but it’s no inkpot hidden beneath those sheaves. Under the false bottom is a silver wire brooch she daren’t ever wear out.
She never had the courage to ask, when Midwife Ziva was alive, what it meant to her. Who it meant to her. Not when she held it with all the care she gave to newborns, staring into the hearth with empty, hollow eyes.
Once every few seasons, if the Moon is dark and the Stars are bright, Emilia brings it out, and looks at her reflection in its polished indigo riverstone, and wonders.
Emilia keeps her house in order. She’s not quite proud of it – it’s the sort of skill a girl is expected to have, to talk about and show off to future husbands, so she never breathes a word – but she likes knowing where everything is and that it’s properly kept.
Today, her hearthroom is a mess, carpeted like underbrush with every book from her shelves whose title you could think had something to do with dragons.
Oliga’s pulled her reading table over to the window-nook, letting the Sun’s light stream over her. Emilia had done her best to make readers of her friends through their disinterest; she thinks Oliga might have come to love it as she does, if not for her friend’s awfully poor eyes.
Idony reads near as well as Emilia despite her lack of practice; she simply doesn’t never care to. Or, almost never – her favourite cushion is in the middle of the floor, with a stack of books on one side and two on the other and two volumes open in front.
The floorboards overhead rumble with the paper-scrunching impact of what Emilia tells herself very firmly can’t be an entire shelf of books. Boots clatter on wood as Hana scrambles to the ladder.
Before she’s even closed the door behind her, she’s the centre of attention. The hurt and relief fighting across her friends’ faces makes it hard to meet their eyes. She knows before even opening her mouth that her voice is going to fight her as hard as it ever has or harder.
She breathes through it, and starts explaining.
“Moon’s light, Emilia, have you finally taken leave of all your senses?” Oliga’s hands shake; she seems to collapse more than sit, as if the chair only happened to be behind her when her legs gave out. “You really went and – please tell me you only found the scale, the dragon shed it like a, a snake –” Idony bursts into giggles, too high-pitched. Oliga shakes her head. “No, no, of course not. You’ve never told a lie in your life, not a real one, even when it got you hurt. Sun and Stars, you should have left with Enryk years ago.”
She’s heard and overheard that more often than she cares to count. Even knowing her friend means it differently to most who say so doesn’t stop it hurting. “You know why I couldn’t, Oli.”
“I know why you wouldn’t.”
“And look how well it turned out! Doesn’t every little girl dream of being a rich and idle noble daughter?” Idony’s smile is bright and pure, as pretty as her Sungold locks. It’s the smile that means the gutting-knife is about to come out. “And now, lo! Our dear Emilia will while away her days reading the rarest of tomes, making sketches for her almanac of all the priceless art in her dragon’s hoard.”
“Ida –”
“Why, surely there was no need to spare a thought for three humble girls, peasants ‘prenticed to peasant elders, left behind without even a letter to know the manner of your death –”
“Ida!” She wraps her arms as tight as she can around her friend’s slim shoulders. Idony is the cleverest of them, as wilful as Emilia in her own way but so, so much better at hiding it. She has to be. For all her sharp edges, she’s awful easy to hurt. Made of beautiful, brittle sculpture-glass, what can she do but hide as she can and attack when she can’t?
Tucking her face into Emilia’s neck, Idony falls silent. She’ll neither recant nor apologise, that’s not her way, but nor will she try to force a mask right back on. There was a time she’d hide her pain away, try to bear it all herself; that she’s willing to lean on them, now, is enough.
Oliga sighs as she reaches over to rub Idony’s back. “What are you thinking’ll happen, Emi? That the dragon will keep its word to you any longer’n pleases it? That it’ll fly down from the mountains and make you its Magistrate and all’s well as ends well? That the Peace King will ride all the way out across the Scar to treat with it, instead of the War King with all his Knights and alchemists?”
She fights a swallow around the thickness in her throat. “Well. If he doesn’t keep his word – you know my mind. I can’t see how it’d be worse’n Young Tom. And if he does –”
Finally, blessedly, it all comes pouring out of her. The size of him, the dragonfire, the magic mantled over him like a feasting falcon’s wings. His patience, his offers of shelter and teaching and maybe even making a deal to hoard her. His call to parley. The Magistrate thinking himself so clever he can play a scar-lord against a dragon and find profit in it.
The Bronze Judge wants to send a missive to the heartland, to seek audience with the high nobles and the Camlan Kings. To make deals with them. He wants her to maybe help with it, a peasant girl who has to bow her head and speak lowly before a landless grasper like the Magistrate.
Even on her word, her friends hardly believe her. She can’t blame them.