“What has she done, Nath?”
Nath pulled a deep breath and sat quiet a moment.
“There are no words for the worst of it. Rape and beatings were the way of it for so long as I can remember. We heard stories of tortures. Whispers about a crooked faced man who we all saw around the castle, but none of us knew by name. But this past season…” Nath stopped there, tears returning. “She killed so many. Starved us. Sent the soldiers after us. The boys got the same. Something broke in her. After that girl…”
Socair perked. “Girl?”
Nath nodded. “A Low District girl we were forbidden to speak of. Nobles were forbidden to speak of it, even. She meant to rise up against Briste. But Briste had her killed. Tortured and worse before, I’m sure of it. No one spoke her name, but the stories were told. That she destroyed a private store of the Treorai’s by herself. And that she killed a half-dozen guards and spit in Briste’s face.”
The silence in the city made an amount of sense now. Socair turned the situation over in her mind but there was nothing that could be done. Diplomacy was for trade disputes and high-minded political things, not the welfare of another province’s people. At best an awkward tool and at worst a useless one. Deifir could do little, Socair reasoned. Sanctions? A refusal to trade? What would it gain the people if the north still sent goods? And how would the people see it? As an attack on their ability to live. Abhainnbaile would become the enemy Briste used to free herself of blame. Sometimes the best action for a dying tree was to let it rot and plant something new in its place. There was no rushing such things.
Socair sat for a moment in the silence of the room. She looked at Nath, who still fell to tears for brief moments before choking them back.
Socair stood. “Well. It would be a terrible waste of a kidnapping for me to keep you in this room.”
She moved to Práta’s things and found a simple dress that Práta sometimes wore to sleep. Socair handed it to Nath.
“Wear this. We’re going out.”
Nath looked at the dress and up to Socair and back down. She shook her head.
“I… I cannot.”
Socair put a hand on Nath’s head. The girl winced.
“You are allowed to apologize and to cry and to think that you are allowed nothing. But what will have been the point, then, of asking that first thing? Did you summon the courage to escape your life only to live it the same in a different place?”
Nath left Socair’s hand on her head.
“You were a soldier?”
“I will always be. Why?”
“You do not seem like one.”
Socair chuckled. “Words I doubt I will ever hear again. Now, change. There are things you should see. And taste. And hear.”
Nath stood and Socair moved to a seat. The girl undressed slowly and awkwardly. She was nervous that Socair would see her. Socair could guess as much. Nath was covered with scars. Most of them burns. A chunk was gone from her thigh. It looked as though a dog had been at it. She was thinner than Socair had expected. Padding in the uniforms to keep them from seeming starved. It was hardly a surprise that Briste cared so much for appearances. When Nath had slipped the dress over her head, Socair grabbed a coat and wrapped her in it. The clothes were all two sizes too big, but they would do for now.
When they stepped out of the door into the cool light of the morning sun, Nath grabbed tight to Socair’s arm. She was trembling. Socair smiled down at her.
“It’s alright now. Hard as your mind will fight it, it’s the truth.”
Socair could smell food from the square ahead of them and so she walked toward it, slowly to not rush Nath. The first stall they happened across was selling meat on sticks. Lamb. It smelled heavily of spices. Socair asked for four and they were placed in wax paper and handed over. She paid him with a silver and took Nath to a nearby bench.
“Have you had this before? I must admit, I know very little about Fásachbaile food.”
Nath shook her head. “I was raised in the Bastion. We were allowed only scraps. Peelings, rinds of fat, and the like.”
Socair held a stick out to her. “Then we shall experience it together.”
Nath took the meat and stared at it cautiously.
“Nothing will happen if you eat it. Except you will eventually become full.”
Socair took a bite of one of her own pieces of lamb and chewed it a moment before letting out an exasperated breath.
“Haah. So much spice. Is everything in this province covered in it? The meat is good, at least.”
Socair nudged her and Nath leaned close to the meat, her mouth moving to hold back its watering. She took a bite and closed her eyes as she chewed. Tears began to roll down Nath’s face.
“Delicious.”
v
Óraithe
The fire had caused a ruckus in the yard. Sounds of distant arguments and curious murmurs flowed in from every direction. Óraithe did what she could to ignore them by tapping away at the bone in her leg with a light cylinder of rock she’d formed and broken off. The old satyr had laughed at her when she began the practice a week before, calling it foolishness. He’d asked her why, at least.
Cosain had explained it to her years ago, though she forgot the reasons. “The body adapts,” he was fond of saying. She’d tried her best to explain to the satyr but she could not remember it well enough.
“Fighters have denser bones than desk clerks,” she’d said.
“Only if they are born to it,” came the reply.
Nevertheless, she trusted Cosain on matters of the body more than a hippocamp, no matter how versed he might be in Fásach’s Gift. And so she tapped at her bones. Arms, legs, shoulders, collarbone.
