These engagements at court had long since begun to bore Cara. She endured them for the sake of appearance, but yawned inwardly at the thought of yet another meeting with unrefined provincial aristocrats sporting last year's fashions. Of course, imperial courtiers had to maintain links with their country cousins. After all, they donated much to the Emperor's coffers, guaranteeing the lavish lifestyle that the Colvé elite now enjoyed. Yet somehow, these outlanders cheapened the place with their talk of tithes, of farming and worse of all, of trade.
There were, however, always a few gems scattered about the dunghill. And she believed she had just spotted two of them. An overly-protective mother and her daughter ─ a charming study in youthful innocence ─ were now heading cautiously in her direction. Both bore the tanned complexions of the lower-ranking nobility, but the elegant simplicity of their gowns and their modish way of letting down their hair indicated a more refined taste and above all, money.
She smiled politely as the mother introduced her daughter ‒ such a docile girl with her light brown wavy locks and soulful blue eyes.
"It is Emila's first visit to the imperial court," the mother explained proudly. "And we are expecting a great deal from her."
Cara assumed an expression of polite condescension, inclining her head to one side as she gave the impression of listening intently. The girl was indeed endearing as she stood beside her mother, no doubt awe-struck at meeting such a famed personality of the court. Necessary to be careful, Cara told herself. She had learned, from bitter experience, which young men and women it was safe to take under her wing ‒ and eventually into her bed. The threat of blackmail had sometimes dogged her steps after such affairs. But a quiet, pretty ingénue? A girl whose family would no doubt pull any number of strings if it meant arranging a profitable marriage in the future? That was a different matter.
The mother droned on. Cara latched on to snippets of information which sounded as if they might be exploited later. "Estates in the West," "money from timber and quarrying," "very distant relatives of the Emperor." And then, finally, the request. She knew that it would come eventually.
"It would really be an honour for her to be instructed by someone of such knowledge and influence as yourself. Emila is a bright young girl but untutored in the ways of the court." The mother's eyes were pleading ever so slightly. She couldn't be so old, Cara thought. Her greying hair belied a face still fresh, eyes which shone with vigour. Must be all that clean country living.
The flattery, the insinuation, the fawning: it was all so unnecessary, had but the mother known. Cara would have made the offer herself, she thought, her eyes tracing the outline of Emila's svelte young body.
"My dear woman," she patted the mother's arm, her body language intentionally patronising. "You need trouble yourself no further. I can see that Emila presents the most perfect specimen of a future courtier I have yet to meet. I would be delighted to advise her. We may begin tomorrow."
"Oh, thank you, Lady Cara. Do you hear, Emila? We'll make a lady of you yet."
Emila offered them both her doe-like, innocent smile. "My thanks, Lady Cara. I am impatient to begin."
***
"You'd better get up." Magda was shaking Hal roughly. "Garth's awake, and he's got a hangover."
Hal groaned as she picked herself up from the cold floor of the kitchen. Her head felt foggy and unclear, her eyes sore with tiredness. The scullery maid handed her a piece of stale bread and a cup of water to wash it down. "Best get working," she warned.
Under Magda's direction, the duellist began the day's chores: lighting the fire in the grate, fetching water from the well in the courtyard, unpacking trays of fruit and vegetables which had been brought down to the kitchen. This, she decided, must be the most hellish existence imaginable. She tried to imagine how Magda must feel, with the prospect of such a life stretching out over days, months, years. To wake, to work, eventually to snatch a few hours' sleep or a crust of bread, and then to work again. If it were possible, she decided, she would persuade the girl to come with her when she left.
"Do you ever get a chance to leave this place?" Hal asked Magda, as she helped her carry a tray of fruit into the kitchen.
"Hardly ever. Normally Garth goes into town himself for anything that might be needed. If he's very out of sorts, then he sends one of us. But never alone ‒ always with a page. He wouldn't trust us to come back. Why do you want to know? Spying again are you?" They set down the tray and returned for another.
"Maybe," Hal winked at her.
"We're not allowed to leave the fort, if that's what you're thinking. We kitchen workers need Garth's approval before we can even leave the kitchen."
They had just set down the last tray of fruit and were about to unpack it when a figure appeared at the door. Everyone in the kitchen froze as if transformed to ice. Hal turned, her heart thumping against her ribcage. Meracad stood on the threshold.
Garth roused himself from his hangover, clawing at the wall for support as he stood, his yellow eyes blinking against the morning light. "Lady," his voice dripped venom. "This is an unexpected honour."
Meracad was once more wearing her mask of cold dispassion – if it were a facade. "Master Garth! I trust that the preparations for this evening's meal are going well. We expect it to excel even last night's culinary feat."
Garth nodded but his eyes betrayed his fury. "Of course, Lady. Everything, I'm sure, will be to your satisfaction."
"Excellent." She glanced round the room. "You know, I'm a little hungry. I would appreciate it if you had one of your girls bring me up some breakfast." Her eyes fell on Hal, who swallowed hard, wrestling with her own body as it shook uncontrollably.
"You, girl, you were waiting on table last night, I recall."
"I was, Lady." Their first words since that day in her house on Riverside before their world had caved in around them.
"Well, bring me up some breakfast and be quick about it, if you would." With that, she swept from the room.
The kitchen workers maintained a tactful silence and then returned returning to their preparations, murmuring to each other, some casting sly looks at both Hal and Garth. The kitchen master stood, fists coiled, his round head flushed and glowing, snorting rather than breathing. Then he seized a large knife and drove it, point first, into the table, embedding the blade deeper in the wood as he streamed out a torrent of curses: "That snob, that over-bearing, city-bred bitch. 'Excel last night's culinary feat?'" he mimicked Meracad's Colvé accent. "I'll poison the cow if I get the chance. She wants breakfast brought up to her now, does she? Well, I'll give her breakfast."
He began to throw food on a tray: fruit, bread, whatever came to hand. Then, having filled a jug with water, he spat in it and turned to Hal. "Well, you heard the lady!" The last word was stressed with irony. "Get up there, and if I find you spending too long about it, believe me, you'll regret it."
The menace in his growl should have been warning enough, but Hal was on edge now, her senses heightened, her heart racing with the prospect of seeing Meracad again. Drunk on her own emotions, she moved to pick up the tray. "I take it, Sir, that you dislike the lady?"
With startling speed, Garth leapt around the table, pulled the knife out of the wood, and before Hal could take stock of what was happening, had pressed it against her throat. His face was so close to her own that she smelt the sickening stench of rancid alcohol on his breath.
"I'll finish you," his voice was low, quiet now, and he stared at her through jaundiced, red-rimmed eyes. "If you ever speak to me like that again," the blade dug into her skin. "I swear to the ancestors themselves, I'll cut you into little pieces."
The others looked on in silence, too horrified to move. Garth maintained the pressure on the knife, and for a few tense moments Hal believed that he would carry out his threat. He was clearly capable of doing so, and Nérac would hardly wail over the death of one obscure kitchen worker. But suddenly the blade was gone. She put her hand to her neck, tracing the faintest of scratches just below her neck. Then, attempting to steady her hands, she reached down for the tray. "Which way, if I might ask?" So close and her quest would have finished on the rusty point of Garth's knife. She cursed herself for a fool.
"Along the corridor to the end, and then up the stairs to the right, before you reach the great hall. It's at the top." It was Magda who had spoken. Hal looked up and noticed with relief that Garth had gone.
"Well, you put him in a good mood," Magda said drily. "He'll be off to drink away his hangover now."
Hal said nothing in reply, but took the jug and poured its fouled contents out of the door. Then she refilled it with fresh water, took up the tray and headed from the kitchen.
A draft filtered along the corridor, chill air wafting from the great hall. Hal leant against the wall, her head resting against its cool stone-work, trying to gather her thoughts. The sooner this was all over, the better. Forcing herself upright, she followed the corridor until it reached a winding, narrow staircase which fed through to the floor above. At the top of the stairs was a cramped antechamber, tapestries clinging to its walls, the floor strewn with fresh rushes. She found herself staring at the door, now paralysed, as if standing on the shores of Brennac and willing herself to dive in. Drawing in a deep breath, she raised her hand to knock, but the door suddenly swung open and light from an outer window shone into the darkness of the stair well. Meracad stood in the doorway, eclipsing the light, her face shrouded in darkness.
"Well, come on, girl, don't hover around out there!" Her voice seemed to belong to someone else ─ to a courtier, to a stranger. Hal shuddered. Perhaps this had all been a mistake. One terrible mistake. Her eyes half-closed, she entered the room and Meracad closed the door quietly behind her. She bent down to set the food on the table and turned round. And as she did so, Meracad seized her arms, pushing her backwards and forcing her against the wall. Instinctively, with a flooding sense of relief, of joy, she sought out Meracad's lips. The intensity of their kiss almost forced her to her knees.
They parted, staring at each other, Meracad's eyes now round and wild, Hal gasping for breath as if she were suffocating.
"I thought you were dead!" Meracad whispered at last.
"Your father almost saw to that."
"What?" Not even waiting for an answer, she kissed Hal again, leaving the duellist breathless. They broke apart.
"It doesn't matter now." Hal still felt as if her knees would give out beneath her. "There's no time. We're getting out of here. We're going home."
Meracad's face crumpled in despair and she sank down on the bed. "Oh, Hal, where is home, now? Do you not think that I would have run, if it had been possible? "
"I have somewhere for us to go. It's safe, trust me."
"And what are we going to do? Just walk out of here?"
"That's exactly what we'll do."
Meracad's laugh was high-pitched, bitter. "Every night I relived our time together in Colvé, again and again. Every day the same thoughts filled my mind. But I told myself that it was all over: that I would never see you again. I was convinced my father must have had you killed. There was no hope after that."
Hal hung her head, staring down at her feet. What could have possessed her to stay in Colvé a moment longer than was necessary? Why had she answered Cara's challenge? What had that duel delivered other than more pain, more tragedy, more time away from Meracad? "We're getting out of here and we're walking out," she said at last.
"You're unbelievable. But I'd sooner die beside you than remain here."
Leaning down, Hal covered Meracad's hands with her own. "Does he love you?"
Meracad shook her head. "How could he? I'm just the clause in a contract. Of course, once that clause is removed, the contract is broken. And then we'll have both Nérac and my father to contend with."
Hal kissed her again. "We'll manage."
"You seem confident."
"I'm not ‒ just desperate. Come down to the kitchen again tomorrow morning. Ask for me as you did today. We're getting out of here. Tomorrow."
She stood up straight and glanced about the room. It was plain, unadorned, as if Meracad had never really settled here: just a simple bed at its centre, a chair and dressing table, a few old musty tapestries covering the stone work. That was when she realised that Meracad had never meant to stay. She had always been waiting...waiting all this time, for Hal to return.
Meracad rose, and Hal flung her arms around her once more, pulling her close, revelling in the warm scent of her body. She ran her hands over the girl's hair, sensing its silken quality beneath her fingertips. Then, cupping Meracad's face in her hands once more, she kissed her.
"Go, now, Hal. I'll be waiting for you," Meracad whispered.
Reluctantly, she nodded and then opened the door.
"Thank you, girl. You may leave now." Meracad spoke with deliberate volume this time, her voice chill, arrogant.
"My Lady," Hal murmured as she descended the stairs, her incendiary heart on the verge of explosion.
***
Hal was relieved to note Garth's absence as she re-entered the kitchen. She had no wish to draw attention to herself, and so headed straight for the work bench and resumed her chores.
"It's her, isn't it? You know her, don't you?" Magda was unable to disguise her curiosity.
Hal gritted her teeth and said nothing, her head now dizzy with their kisses, with the thought of Meracad waiting up there for her, with dreams of their escape.
"I knew it. You're from Colvé, aren't you? Were you her friend there?"
"Your questions will be the death of you. Better not know."
Magda frowned, disappointed, but continued with her tasks and said no more. After a while, Hal was assailed by guilt. Magda had helped her since her arrival and she had even been punished with extra work on that account. She glanced at her from the corner of her eye.
"I don't intend to be here much longer, Magda." She never raised her eyes from her work as she whispered. "And I can take you with me. It's a risk, I don't deny it. We might not make it out alive. But I can see you're a brave girl."
Magda sighed. "I told you, I can't leave. If I do, my family will suffer."
"I can offer them a place – shelter – to the end of their days if need be."
The kitchen girl shook her head, hunched over her work in sadness. "Thanks, Orla. But – I can't risk it. My place is here."
"Well, just remember what I said. If you, or if your family are in need, come to Hannac fortress – the last in the chain of the Eagles' Nests. Ask for Hal."
"Is that your real name?"
She nodded but could say no more. The cellar door swung open and Garth reeled into the kitchen, his eyes already cast in an unsteady squint. It took him some time to focus before his gaze settled on Hal.
"You!" he growled.
"Me, Sir?" She peered up at him, round-eyed and innocent. Now she knew better than to goad him. But the prospect of escape had made her reckless.
"Yes, you. I thought I told you to be quick up there."
"I gave the lady her breakfast as you ordered, Sir."
He leered at her. "Likes your company, does she?" A flicker of barbarous humour entered his eyes. "Maybe I ought to let the master know that his wife keeps company with kitchen workers?"
The false bravado deserted her. "I am sure, Sir, that it was just a whim of the lady's."
"We'll see," Garth scoffed.
The day continued in the same monotonous fashion as the previous one: the preparation of food, kneading of dough and boiling of water were all done in semi-silence. Exhaustion crept up on Hal. Her nervous energy seemed to desert her and it was all she could do to stay awake, as she sagged over the table, her hands frozen to the bone, her shoulders and back aching. When Garth left to quench his thirst she stole a little food, and allowed herself to rest. But when the kitchen door swung open, she pinched herself awake and continued.
As the evening drew to a close, and Garth finally drank himself into a stupor, she fought back the waves of tiredness and crept about the kitchen. The other servants were sleeping in their positions beneath tables or by the hearth. Hal eased open cupboard doors before she had found what she needed: the russet and gold of some pages' tabards folded on a shelf. Pulling one out, she hid it under the workbench beneath some sacking. Then she lay down by the fire, and drifted into sleep.