By her third morning in Telyre, Cassie no longer awoke confused and frightened, unsure of her location. She stirred as tendrils of the sun gently reached into the shadows of her little room and knew exactly where she was. She was in bed, on the second floor of Aldine's home. In the forest town of Telyre. Skylar and Silvana had left her here four days ago. This was her home now.
Out of habit, Cassie began dressing for the day in Skylar's old clothes, but slowly stepped back out of them, remembering the new, proper peasant dress she had to wear. She, Leora, and Aldine—mostly Leora and Aldine—had completed the stitching the night before. The banisè clothes excepted, it was the plainest outfit she had ever worn. The soft olive fabric had no jewels or a single stitch of gold embroidery, the square neckline and natural waist were nothing like the current court fashions (or what court fashion had been half a year ago), and her sister wouldn't have allowed a servant to be seen in it. But it was light and comfortable, the cloth durable, and would not fall apart easily. The banisè clothes were folded carefully and placed under the bed with her other belongings. She would keep them readily available. If she had to run again, she would need clothes that allowed for an easy escape.
When she joined Aldine for an increasingly routine breakfast of bread and sweet fruit preserves, the jovial woman beamed to see her new apparel. It was unclear whether Aldine's cheer was due to excitement over the newness of the outfit or relief that Cassie was finally clothed appropriately, but Cassie took pleasure from the unexpected approval. She even found herself making a twirl at Aldine's prompting, eager to display how well the dress fit, but stopped almost immediately. What if her father could see her now? What if Elisabet could see her? Would it be the obscenely plain dress that would be more upsetting for them, or the mundaneness of her life?
The boredom of her new life could be comforting, but it was at times all-consuming. Having spent her entire life employing any ruse possible to avoid her embroidery, she found it difficult to break the habit. Her remaining in Telyre relied on her being apprenticed to the seamstress, however, which meant resisting the urge to shirk her duties. Cassie was able to persevere through the morning hours, but often by midday the dragging hours of sitting and sewing left her frustrated and restless. Living in the forest had been grueling, but it had also provided infinite outlets for Cassie's irrepressible energy.
She took to prowling the streets once Aldine released her each afternoon, determined to know the streets as well as anyone else. If she had been able to learn the layout of a labyrinthine castle, she could surely find her way around one small village. It was tiny, as settlements go. All of the houses would have fit inside the walls of the king's fortress with room to spare.
The stable, the town square, and the grove of nut trees that had been her first point of entry were her three landmarks. From one of the three, she would radiate out into the town, exploring and mapping until she hit another one. Slowly she began to know her way around. Drawn by the signs of animal life, the first building that Cassie located and recognized had been the wooden stable. A pigsty and chicken coop were nearby, but Cassie far preferred the stable. The five horses that occupied the stalls were docile and gentle workhorses, and once she had grown more comfortable in her new home, Cassie was looking forward to taking one of them for a ride. She had missed riding. Before that, however, she had to better acquaint herself with Telyre.
The open square marked the center of town, where there was always somebody gathered for conversation, business, or the rare arrival of news. It was ringed by shops, many of which were for food. The smell was what had first drawn Cassie there. She never could resist the promising aroma of baking bread. An unused bell tower stood menacing guard over the town fountain, a simple ring with four gargoyle-headed spouts giving off a steady stream of water. There was always a constantly varying hub of chattering townsfolk around the fountain, some come to fetch water, some to socialize. Too many people, too many playing children, too many eyes. Cassie was happy to know where the center of town was, if only to better avoid it.
Using the town square as her point of reference, Cassie next explored the half of town from the center out to the nut groves. In doing so, she met Eugene, the blacksmith, whom she peppered with questions about the kind of work he did and what went into the weapons he made. The soot-stained giant looked intimidating, but he turned out to be soft-spoken and kind, and answered so many of her questions that Cassie no doubt sounded like Leora.
Cassie would have made the same methodical exploration for the other half of Telyre, from the square to the stable, but spending time with the horses was much more interesting. The stable marked the boundary of the town just before the forest restarted. To the right of it lay a pasture where the horses were left to roam and graze on clear days. Cassie preferred to spend her afternoons perched on the pasture fence, petting whichever animal was curious enough to trot over. Within a week she was braving the stable, which always seemed to be empty, and collecting tack to ride one of the mounts. It was possibly the one thing she had missed when living with the Gemmaros—the freedom she felt on the back of a horse.
She liked the quiet, liked the sunlight. She especially liked the animals. The cat that kept the horses company and the stable free of mice even deigned to approach her—but not until her fourth visit. He allowed Cassie to rub his head until he purred and stretched. In his comfort, he almost rolled off the wall and then sneezed and slunk away, pretending nothing had happened. At nearly every subsequent visit of Cassie's to the stable, she would find the cat on an adjacent stall door or fence rail, studiously ignoring her.
With as much time as she spent at the boundary of the town, it didn't take her long to break Silvana's rule to stay out of the forest.
It really wasn't her fault, she reasoned. Skylar and Silvana had failed to mention how difficult it could be to live limited to the confines of a village. Just past the stable were the trees, and in the middle of the day when the wind was blowing the sunbaked dirt of the streets into eyes and lungs, the leaves beckoned cool and refreshing. A path of riotous lilies led to the trees and spread deep into the forest, their varied hues idyllic against the peaceful green of the forest. And besides, she wasn't really violating the ordinance against venturing into the woods—the trees at the edge of Telyre weren't nearly thick enough to be part of the actual forest. In fact, the lilies were thicker than the greenery.
Each time she ventured a little farther into the cool green canopy, and it wasn't long before Cassie discovered the meadow. It wasn't much of a meadow, just a small pocket of wildflowers protected from the rest of the forest by a circling of beech trees. Upon finding it, Cassie popped her head into the clearing, checked for danger, then allowed herself to investigate more thoroughly. Flat ground, excellent for footwork. A good spot for practicing swordplay. A few trees with worthwhile vantage points—and the flowers weren't a bad touch. Yes, this would do quite nicely. Small and peaceful, the meadow became her refuge above even the horse paddock. It was the one place she was safe enough to continue her training.
On her third trip to her meadow, Cassie did nothing. No practicing with her knife, no tree climbing. She sat.
Finally, solitude. She had been looking forward to the moment all day. The absence of human voices was an instant balm. How she missed the hours upon hours she had spent with Silvana, cooking, hunting, mending, without a single word needed in the quiet that is not quiet of industry.
Cassie spotted a robin hopping back and forth on a nearby branch. He seemed to be considering her, wondering if she was a threat. Cassie whistled a few notes at him, trying to encourage him to trust her. Ultimately, he settled for hunting for delicacies in the dirt nearby, occasionally chirping to remind her that it was a beautiful day.
And it was a nice day, the air lacking a certain bite it had had lately as they neared winter. The sun was warm, the breeze was kind, and out here she did not have to worry about her stupid hair covering or her stupid braids. Solitude had many perks. Slowly, relishing the sensation, Cassie pulled off her scarf and unwound the braids from around her head, letting them fall down her back instead. She ran her fingers through the braids and along her scalp, the gentle massage relaxing her. The ends of her braids brushed the flowers, warming under the sunshine, pleased to be free.
A flash of yellow at the far end of the meadow caught her eye. Heart pounding, Cassie stared at the leaves, trying to pierce their hidden gloom. Not here. She could not have been found here so quickly. There weren't supposed to be any bandits around—
Inquisitive eyes and a tiny frame peeped at her again. A frame much too small to belong to a bandit.
Taking a deep breath to wash away her burst of panic, Cassie now found herself irked. She had come out here to get away from the villagers, yet they continued to plague her.
"What do you want?" she called to Leora, letting her irritation bleed through. Normally she enjoyed seeing the girl, especially when her ceaseless conversation helped the interminable hours sewing pass more quickly. Just not out in her meadow, where she came to be alone.
Caught out, Leora hesitantly emerged from behind the tree. "I don't want to scare it off," she said, watching the bird.
Well, if the bird did fly off, that should teach her to follow Cassie when she wanted solitude. Then maybe she would get some peace.
Cassie shrugged as Leora cautiously approached and squatted down to watch the bird's activity. Charmed by her interest, the robin cocked its head at her and chittered.
"Hello," Leora whispered, the quietest Cassie had ever heard her. "You're a pretty bird." It resumed its hunt for food on the ground, making Leora giggle. "I'm going to call you Redding," she said to it. "Do animals understand us, do you think?" she asked Cassie without taking her eyes from the bird.
In Cassie's experience, conversation with animals was often more rewarding than that with people. "Better than you understand yourself, sometimes." She had always gotten along better with animals than with people—probably because animals could not talk and did not judge Cassie for what she said.
"I think so, too," Leora said, smiling up at Cassie. "The mouser in the stables has this way of looking at you, like he's the person and you're the cat, but Mama says that's just how all cats are."
"Your mama is right," Cassie said, leaning closer as though they shared a secret. "Cats are the kindest snobs you will ever know."
Leora's gaze shifted slightly, noticing her braids for the first time. Cassie froze, bracing herself, but the child merely brightened. "You have hair like Lily!"
"Who's Lily?"
"She does something with the berries," Leora answered, reaching out for one of the long, thin braids. "And she's beautiful. Everyone wants to marry her." The plait could twist all the way around her small wrist several times. "Except Wynne," she added distractedly. "Wynne and Robert want to marry each other, but we have to pretend like nobody knows until they tell each other."
"You sure know a lot about what goes on in town." Cassie wrestled a smile back. She did not want Leora to think she was patronizing her.
"I've lived here my whole life," Leora explained earnestly.
"That's a long time," Cassie allowed.
"Eight years," Leora said, helpfully settling the question of her age. "And George and Thomas kind of look like you, too. But they just keep their hair all shaved and boring."
If Cassie did stop covering her hair, it might not make people stare. Good to know, for when she stopped being such a spineless coward.
"The braids help keep it out of the way," Cassie said.
"That's what George said about shaving it!" Leora's dramatic hand gestures gave Cassie the impression this was a conversation she had had multiple times with the poor George. "He should do braids like you!"
"My father made me do the braids," Cassie found herself saying. "So he wouldn't have to see my hair." So she wouldn't not unleash her curse on anyone, he had said. Although, if Silvana and Skylar were right, he would not have wanted to see it as a reminder of—no. They were not right. It had also served as a visual reminder to everyone else at court to give her a wide berth. Made sure they did not come close enough to see the bruising, or to brush against the curse.
"My mother braids my hair sometimes, but it always falls out." For emphasis, Leora shook her blonde nest of short curls. "She doesn't talk about my father much, but she says when I was tiny, he went off to kill a whole army of evil Citaken soldiers, only he got killed instead, and she always gets sad at that part. So now I don't have a father. Mama says that King Charles probably killed him personally, because he was so brave."
She chattered on self-sufficiently while rearranging Cassie's hair, requiring no prompting. Did all peasants talk this much? In the last five minutes, enough words had poured out of the girl's mouth to fill one of Skylar's musty books.
She was a fatherless child. For all the war strategizing that she had tried eavesdropping on and contributing to, Cassie had never thought about the families that soldiers might be leaving behind. How many other Esren children had lost fathers, like Leora? Too many to count, surely.
"What time does your mother want you home today?" Cassie asked when Leora paused for breath.
Leora glanced up at the sky and scowled. "Sunset," she grumbled.
They still had some time, but the shadows were lengthening. Cassie knew enough of the forest to know that she did not want Leora out here after the sun went down.
They stood and shook the leaves from their skirts. Cassie wrapped her braids around her head again before replacing the scarf and leading Leora from the meadow.
She was startled when she felt an unexpected warmth in her hand. The air was growing chilly, so what—?
Looking down, she saw that Leora had slipped her own hand into Cassie's without a second thought. "I saw you feeding the grey stallion some treats yesterday," she said, looking ahead through the leaves. "Can you ride him? Can you teach me? I can't even pick up the saddles by myself yet."
"Do you spend a lot of time near the stables?" Cassie asked, a prick of worry worming into her. "If a horse gets spooked, you could be in a lot of danger."
"Only when one of the boys dares me to touch the stallion," Leora said dismissively. "He'd tried it already and he tried to bite them. He said that if a boy couldn't do it, then there was no way I could, since I'm just a girl, so I went in his stall and he let me pet him. I knew he would let me, because James lets me give the horses little treats, and I had already given him one and he let me rub his nose. Then I pushed Ulrid—that's the boy—because he called me a girl, and he fell in a pile of manure, and he tried to push me, but..." The stream of words did not pause for the entirety of their walk back to the village.
Cassie smiled to herself. She had a friend.
***
"Thank you for bringing the black. George needs a patch in the knee of his breeches, and my stock is that low!"
When she was hovering on the inside of the sewing room doorway, Cassie could just make out the conversation at the front door. With a wall between her ears and the voices, it took concentration, but her hearing was finely honed for the art of eavesdropping from years of boredom.
"Of course," a gentle voice said in reply. "I would have sent Leora, but I was afraid the wool would be too heavy for her. She's quite put out with me for making her stay home and stir the dye."
Leora's mother? It must be. Cassie leaned as far as she dared to peek around the doorway. She could just barely see the top of a blonde head behind Aldine, but that told her nothing. The wisps of gold could belong to anyone.
Aldine laughed. "I don't doubt it! I can barely keep her away even when she has no excuse to show up!"
"I know," the stranger sighed. "I wish I could do something about it, but she just disappears most mornings before I wake."
"I enjoy the help, Almana." Cassie's ears flamed red. They needed Leora's help most of the time to fix the sewing disasters that Cassie inadvertently created. "She makes the room brighter, that girl of yours."
"She does that," the woman said. Cassie didn't need to see the speaker to know that she was smiling. "She's always been a gift of sunshine."
The tenderness in the woman's words almost made Cassie choke on sudden tears, and she wasn't even in the same room. It was the voice of motherhood echoing over the centuries; a voice that Cassie could hear in her dimmest memories, crooning a lullaby through her dreams.
"And we all love her for it," Aldine murmured.
There was a rustling and a quiet "oompf" from Aldine: a heavy parcel of fabric being handed over.
"I should get back. Young children are forever finding new ways to get into trouble," the faceless woman said. "I do look forward to working the harvest together again. Shouldn't be long now, I believe."
"Yes," Aldine assented. "Robert says that the berries are ripening well. Just a few more weeks left."
"Excellent," the woman Aldine had called Almana murmured. "I hope that the soldiers can wait that long. Oh—don't forget to bring the new one."
The new what? Cloth? Tool? Person? Me.
"Of course not. I thank you again for your trouble."
It sounded like the conversation was ending, which meant that Aldine would soon return to the sewing room. Cassie thumped back into her chair as quietly as she could, studiously poking the cloth with her needle. It would not do to get caught listening at doorways.
"No trouble at all. Farewell, Aldine."
The door closed, and the woman was gone. Aldine bustled back into the large room where Cassie was making a bad pretense of sewing. The seamstress put down a large stack of black wool and, selecting a single layer, began measuring for the patch with skilled fingers.
Cassie looked up. What had that woman meant about bringing "the new one"? It was her, right? Were the townspeople gossiping about her? If she asked Aldine, would the woman reply honestly?
"Aldine..." she began.
"Hm?" The seamstress didn't even glance up from her scissors.
Instead of asking what the villagers were saying about her, however, Cassie's tongue voiced a question that had been a point of curiosity since she'd met the seamstress: "What debt did you owe to Skylar and Silvana?" What could such a calm, warm-natured person owe to the Gemmaros?
"What?" Now Aldine did look up, her hands finally still. Had she offended the woman?
Since Aldine didn't look like she was about to answer the question, Cassie had to fill the silence. She stumbled her way into an apology.
"I just—I wondered why that meant you had to take me in, and it's not—I'm sorry. I did not intend to offend you."
"You didn't." Finally Aldine smiled, breaking the tension. "It is not an offensive question, Cassie. Simply one I was unprepared for. Did Silvana and Skylar tell you nothing about the woman they were sending you to live with?"
"Not particularly," Cassie admitted. "Silvana asked if I could sew—" she smiled mockingly at her tangled threadwork—"and as we traveled here, she said that you were kind and I would be safe here."
"How very like her," Aldine said, sighing. "Succinct to the point of confusion."
Yes, that described Silvana perfectly. The woman was a short-spoken enigma.
Aldine sat across from Cassie at the table and pinned George's patch in place. "I owed them a life debt," she said. "My own."
Skylar had mentioned these life debts before, the first time they had gone to Telyre. "They saved your life?"
"I was foolish," Aldine admitted, the color rising in her cheeks. Threading a needle, she set to work attaching the patch. "I was trying to help Almana. A few years ago, she needed pigment for blue dye, and there was none left to trade. All of the cornflowers had been harvested for medicine for the front. I'd heard there were some still growing to the west." She kept her eyes on her work as she spoke, the needle weaving in and out deftly. "I went too far into the forest alone, and was attacked by a boar. Skylar and Silvana were hunting nearby and were drawn by the noise."
Cassie couldn't stop herself from staring at the scar that poked out of the seamstress' neckline. So that was how she'd gotten it. A boar attack. Just like Skylar. Cassie repressed her shudder, marveling at Aldine's calm. A faint line between her brows was the only hint that the incident had been anything worse than a bug bite.
"Silvana claims she only killed the boar for the meat," Aldine said with a smile. "But they also treated my wounds and brought me home. I would have died without their help. When I was recovering, I swore to repay them. They accepted the oath, but I did not see them again—until they brought you here."
It had been all she asked when they walked in the door, Cassie recalled—if they had come to collect on the debt. "You sounded afraid when they arrived."
"A life is a dangerous thing to owe."
"They wouldn't have shown up and killed you." For lack of anything to do, Cassie stood and collected a knot of spools of thread and set to separating them.
"It's been done before," Aldine said, turning the fabric she worked on. "A banisè owed one had his debtor turn himself in in the banisè's place."
It must have weighed heavily on Aldine, knowing she owed two dangerous banisè her life, and they could collect at any time, in any way they liked.
"But instead it was me." That had been the price Skylar and Silvana had demanded, the valuable debt they had cleared for the sake of her safety: that Aldine take Cassie on as her apprentice and give her a home.
"A life takes many different forms."
She had given Cassie a new life, when all Cassie had ever done was endanger Skylar and Silvana's. "They saved my life too many times," Cassie admitted quietly. A few spools came free and she stacked them neatly to the side. "I offered to repay them, but Silvana kept refusing."
Aldine shrugged, snipping her thread off. "Perhaps she was in a good mood when she saved you."
"No, she was livid that first time," Cassie said. She could still remember the way Silvana snarled at her, like it was her fault the bandits had found her. "But then, she was more concerned with Longheirce than with making—"
Halting in the middle of folding up the trousers, Aldine looked up, eyes lit with interest. "So it's true?"
"What?"
Had the people of Telyre been gossiping about her? They were no better than the blasted courtiers. With a sudden acuteness, Cassie felt the loss of her life with Skylar and Silvana. The two banisè had never asked her questions about her life before they had rescued her. Although the price was that she could not ask them about their past either, they had respected her privacy, and given her a peaceful life.
"Nothing—I—ah, I may have heard that you faced Longheirce in the forest?" Aldine covered up her nosiness by pretending to examine the threads Cassie was unraveling.
"I did," Cassie said slowly. "And now he seems to have made it his mission to hunt me down for it."
"The bandits don't forgive," Aldine murmured, shaking her head over her work.
"Few people do." Certainly Cassie had never known the person who could.
Aldine drew breath to say something else, but she was interrupted by a shout at the door.
"Aldine!" an unfamiliar man's voice boomed.
"Busy day for visitors," Cassie remarked. This time she was grateful for the interruption. She didn't want to answer questions about the past, even for Aldine. It would put them both in danger.
"This won't be the last," Aldine said. "I'm still expecting Leora to sneak out and appear at the door any time."
Cassie laughed as Aldine rose and went to the door. It was unusual for a day to go by without the child coming to the seamstress' home.
"Henry!" Aldine said at the front door. She didn't sound upset, but neither was she pleased. "What—"
"Is she here?" the man demanded. "I was sent to speak to her. Oh, yes, hello Aldine."
Cassie heard heavy footsteps, and then Aldine showed a squat, heavyset man into the sewing room. His light hair was plastered flat over his wide forehead and the set of his shoulders, combined with his narrow brown eyes, gave him the bearing of a man altogether too proud of a position of middling authority.
"This is Henry," Aldine introduced him. "The song master. Henry, this is Cassie, my apprentice."
The peasant man bowed perfunctorily. Cassie was not going to bother to rise and greet him. He looked much too unpleasant and sounded altogether too rude to waste the effort. She barely inclined her head in greeting.
"What can I help you with, Hen—Henry, is it?" she said, looking to Aldine for confirmation rather than the man himself. Knowing it would rankle him and being glad of it, for the way he had spoken to Aldine and wedged himself into her home without invitation.
Now more than ever Cassie wished that she had learned her father's trick for looking down on people while sitting. Being seated on a well-elevated chair, that trick of all short people in power, probably helped. She would have to make do in a seamstress' chair.
"Winford, the stable master, sent me to talk with you," he said.
Cassie put her cloth down. "Is something wrong?"
Henry cleared his throat. "He says you've been taking horses out for rides?"
Was she being reprimanded for taking an occasional ride? "They need the exercise," she said. "And it's only around the paddock. The horses are in no danger with me." She was not going to apologize. She had done no harm.
"Yes, he says that you've been surprisingly responsible about putting them back and brushing them down afterwards."
She knew how to take care of a horse. Why was this worth a conversation?
"But it would be best if you help out more in the stable if you're going to use the horses so much." The man's chest puffed out slightly. "I thought it would be fair that you do the evening chores, in return for the recreational riding."
"You expect me to—" Cassie began hotly, but Aldine interrupted her.
"That sounds perfectly reasonable," the older woman said smoothly, shooting Cassie a silent reprimand. "What a clever idea, Henry."
Gratified, the large man shifted his weight. "Well, Winford did help suggest it," he admitted.
"It's a good solution you two have come up with."
Cassie was still too incensed to speak without insulting one or all of them. The nerve of these peasants, barging into her life and insisting that she do their chores for them, instead of doing their jobs properly! She wasn't going to be taken advantage of like this.
His mission complete, the song master continued looking at his feet. Not a brilliant conversationalist. Seeking to break the tension, Aldine extended a hand to indicate the kitchen.
"Will you take a tart?" she offered. "Wynne just sent some over for her apron, and—"
"No, thank you. I must be going," he said quickly. "There's less work for me to do with Sarita helping out, but Thomas said that he could use me this afternoon." Without another word, he clomped his way back out of the house.
Cassie waited until she heard the door click shut before she turned to Aldine.
"I won't do it," she said immediately. "It is ridiculous of them to even suggest it."
Aldine raised her eyebrows mildly. "I don't see the harm in it."
Cassie let her frustration show. "Just because I want to take a ride once in a while, I get punished?"
Aldine took her seat again and gently touched Cassie's hand. "If you're embarrassed about not knowing what to do, I'm sure that the stable master would help you for a few days," she said, as though that were the only problem. "I would do it, but as you can see—" she spread her arms wide to encompass the dusty room that clearly lay dormant most days—"I really have too much to do already."
She succeeded in drawing a chuckle out of Cassie with that, gently easing her out of her instinctive anger.
"Caring for horses is one of the few skills I do have," Cassie admitted. "At home I always—well, I liked to care for my horse myself."
Cassie was proud of this much. For once, she wouldn't have to ask someone else for help. But still, being relegated to a stable hand...it was demeaning.
Aldine clapped her hands together. "Excellent. You will be a wonderful asset for the town's horses." Cassie tried to protest again, but the seamstress had moved on. "It's decided," Aldine said loudly. "In the mornings you will help me, and in the evenings, you work in the stable. That should satisfy everyone."
***
The arrangement worked well. Aldine tried to teach her better sewing skills in the mornings or send her on errands and as dusk fell, Cassie would make her way to the stable to collect the horses from pasture and settle them in for the night. She supposed that the stable master, whoever this Winford was, found her work satisfactory, because he never came and told her otherwise. They stayed out of each other's ways, and that was good enough for her.
And between the two sets of chores, her afternoons were her own. Sometimes she would go for a short ride, but more often she would slip away from town to be with Leora in the meadow. Leora, who turned out to be as eager to listen as she was to talk, quickly had Cassie telling her the old tales that she had absorbed from years of songs and recitations at banquets. It helped to mitigate the unending frustration with her impossible stitchery, and gave her something to look forward to each day. There was little else for her to anticipate in Telyre.