Chapter 7: The Lady's Mystery Deepens
A Truth of Scars
We finished eating in a companionable silence as I considered all Jasmin had shared in the evening. Goddesses, deific messengers, missing histories. It was all so far beyond my depth and experience that getting my head around it felt almost an insurmountable effort.
Jasmin seemed to have something eating her attention as well, preventing her either from noticing my distraction or from minding it terribly.
She hadn't really shared a meal with me since I awoke, so I wasn't entirely convinced her methodical pace and silence weren't connected to her nobility, but the expressions she wore spoke to deeper concerns. There was a measure of concern that bled into curiosity, which itself morphed into determination. After a bite, the cycle would reset, following different paths each time.
Every so often, I noticed her tugging at one or the other of her sleeves, pulling it toward her hand where it would get in the way, but I brushed aside the behaviour as the odd quirk of a noblewoman.
As with so much about her, Jasmin's branching tree of considerations sparked something in me, and an image flashed in my mind. The impression of a forest meadow and an otherworldly beauty I was certain I couldn't place. But as quickly as it invaded my senses, the vision disappeared, and I was back on the padded bench with her.
"Roisin?" her voice speaking my name had become somewhat of an anchor for me, and it felt like safety somehow.
"Jasmin?" I had to respond, but I wasn't prepared to interrupt whatever it was she wanted to say.
"Why aren't you more angry with me?"
Looking back, it was a fair question, but I didn't really understand what she meant. If not for Jasmin, I'd likely have been attacked by the next terrible predator that happened to amble through the woods. And even if I managed, somehow, to survive until I regained consciousness, I'd've been immobile out in the middle of a forest. The likelihood of my survival was minimal at best, and yet there I was.
"I'm not sure I understand. You saved me."
Jasmin set down her fork and turned her face toward the ceiling. "I saved you from my own ineptitude. If I'd been more conscientious, Delia would still be here." Her face told me everything I needed to know. She blamed herself far more than she deserved to. "And if I'd ---"
"No. If you weren't doing your job, someone else would be. A different noble like Lady Magenta or ---"
"Magnia," she corrected softly, a smile softening her guilty expression.
"Right. Lady Magenta would've taken me if I hadn't hidden from her carriage on the deimward road. Or if I'd not been running off to hide from my own life when she arrived in town with Briar and Lord Mountainous Ego himself." I considered for a moment before deciding to take it a step further. "And even if you hadn't assigned my father after his conscription, he would've already been taken.
"Not to bruise your ego, Lady Myrtia," she gave me a pained look at my temporary return to her title, but she needed to hear what I was telling her, "but you're not special. None of us are. Not when it comes to her majesty's disgusting and nonsensical war.
"Were you complicit? Maybe. But you're here. Trying to atone for that complicity in some small way. Let yourself accept that atonement is possible, or else the ridiculous choices that led you to me will have been for nothing.
"Am I mad that you confessed and then ran off? Yes," I picked up my fork and stabbed the final tomato on my plate for effect. The metal dug into my palm as I held it tightly between us, almost drawing blood. After a breath, I loosened my grip and waved it about like a royal sceptre. "But I already told you that filling my stomach would be adequate penance for your foolishness. So here we are. Forgiveness, my Lady, isn't yours to refuse. It's mine to give."
I had been planning on shoving the small tomato wholly into my mouth to accentuate my declaration, but the moment I stopped waving it about, Jasmin leaned forward and engulfed it, pulling it off the fork for herself with a dexterous fervour. Her eyes met mine hesitantly, apparently testing the limits of my forgiveness. I nodded lightly and smiled, giving her the permission she apparently sought.
Looking between our plates, I realised she had eaten the last of the tomatoes, and a very childish part of me was jealous, but her joyous expression as she chewed the fruit was enough to calm my irritation. Watching her youthful enjoyment of such a sensuous experience struck me. She looked much younger with that deeply pleasure-filled expression than I had at first thought.
"How old were you," the question started pouring out before I could properly articulate it in my head, "when you assigned my father?"
Jasmin's expression, still somewhat joyful, took a bittersweet turn. "His name came across my desk a few moons after my tenth birthsun. When I saw he had a wife and daughter -- two, I've since learned -- it struck me as terribly sad. Your age was on the paperwork. Seven years." Her voice cracked around the words. "Just three years younger than me. I had a servant draft an official copy of the document and kept it in my diary as a reminder."
I'd thought her much older than myself. She had been a child. A goddess-cursed child set to the task of an executioner! As a child of only ten years, Jasmin had been forced to be complicit in my father's being taken. How could she possibly blame herself.
"What do you do for fun?"
"Historically?" She looked guiltily at the floor for a moment. "I suppose the same as any noble girl: sign death warrants against names rather than faces, then weep into my pillow until the morning sun warms my neck."
After a beat, she smiled sheepishly, I suppose hoping I'd realise it was a joke. My expression must not have satisfied because she quickly added to it.
"More recently, I went on a grand adventure and found a wounded pauper in the woods whom I have diligently nursed back to full health. A dreadful thing that one. So much attitude in her. Too little respect for the woman who saved her. And nosier than a funereal crow."
Her delivery had been flat until the last couple of sentences, but by the end of it, she was fighting everything in her to not laugh.
"Well, I think she sounds delightful. Perhaps even the best thing that has ever happened to the noble Jasmin Natalia Hawthorne of the queendom's first district." That did it. Jasmin laughed so loudly, so freely, that her dishes clattered to the floor. In spite of the noise, she kept laughing for a while, and I just let myself enjoy her happiness. The emptiness of the house had been so oppressive without Delia's children playing noisily, so I couldn't begrudge Jasmin her moment.
As Jasmin finally recovered, she carried all the dishes to the kitchen, cleaning them before returning to my side.
"It's getting dark, Roisin. Perhaps we should get you to bed?"
"I'd like to try for myself, if you don't mind." My defiance brought another broad smile to Jasmin's face. "But you can help so I don't fall."
She moved in and watched as I tried to push myself from the bench and made no progress. After a bit more effort than was reasonable, I gave her my best 'please help me' look, and she pulled me lightly to my feet, putting only enough weight on my legs to give me practice but not enough to walk unassisted, which was probably for the best, if my arms were any indication.
"I'll hold you most of the way, and catch you if you start to fall."
"Hard not to believe you when you move me about with such ease."
"You don't weigh that much, Roisin."
Step by agonising step, we worked our way to my bedroom door on the far side of the kitchen. A thought occurred to me as we stepped through the door.
"Jasmin," I said softly, "where have you been sleeping?"
It wasn't that I didn't already know. She'd taken to sleeping on the kitchen floor, a fact I'd pieced together when I saw a pillow and blanket rolled up beside the stove earlier in the sun. But I needed her to admit it. To accept that it was foolish.
"Does it really matter?"
"Well I have to assume you're not sleeping in my sister's bed," I asserted, letting a knowing tone creep into my voice. "And I saw no evidence that the family room was disturbed from the night you found me." I gave her my best 'disappointed mother' look before concluding. "Jasmin Natalia Hawthorne, are you sleeping on the floor?"
"So what if I am Roisin, daughter of Omela and Tarant -- which I'm realising carries a lot less weight than a given, goddess, and family name spat at a person. Why did I have to be born noble?"
"Folks around here don't often have goddess names or family names, so you'll have to deal with it," the words weren't meant to hurt. They were just the truth. "And your unwillingness to deny me tells me all I need to know. You are sleeping in my bed tonight. The floor is meant for bandits and unwelcome guests. You are neither."
"But ---"
"I'll have no butts, except yours in this bed."
Jasmin tugged at the hem of her tunic for a few breaths, a childish habit for sure, before sighing, defeated. She helped me into the bed, where something cold brushed against my leg. That's when I remembered the dagger Mrs. Reed had given me. As Jasmin stepped around to the far side, I had to stop her.
"You're not getting into bed wearing sun clothes," it was a good excuse that she couldn't easily brush off, given her insistence on propriety. Even if she did try to brush it off, I would insist. The woman may smell nice, but her clothes were a vastly different story. "If you didn't bring any, you look about Delia's size, so you can go in her bedroom and find nightclothes."
She looked down at herself then back at me, apparently questioning my meaning.
"You, dear Jasmin, are much better blessed by some goddess or other, than I am." I begged anyone who could hear me that she would take it as the compliment I intended, beside the obvious ploy to have an extra moment to sort the dagger situation.
Jasmin gave in and left the room, giving me time enough to slip the dagger into my pillow cover and reorient myself before she returned. When she did so, her arms were wrapped a bit too tightly around a bundled garment. Why she hadn't simply dressed before returning, I couldn't say, but I wasn't angry over it.
She stood, helpless, for several seconds before whining, "Please don't watch."
I complied without a fuss. Demanding her presence in bed was about pragmatism and comfort, not about some sexual deviance. And demanding the nightclothes was very much the same. Had she not begged me to give her privacy, I wouldn't have turned down a show, but I wasn't trying to make her uncomfortable.
The sounds of cloth moving about and Jasmin fussing over the whole effort proceeded for almost five minutes, after which I felt a slight draft and a shift to the bed as she joined me. A faint scent of Queen's Heart somehow still clung to her, carried to me by the rush of air.
I worked to roll myself over, turning to face her. As I did, she seemed to recoil, pressing her hands hard against her collar, and I noticed something I hadn't before. Jasmin wore cloth wraps from her wrist to her elbow on both arms. She seemed to have stopped breathing as she held the tension. Holding her gaze, I looked from her wrists to her eyes several times without a word, she finally exhaled.
A tentative breath, then another, passed between us before she fully and finally relaxed, moving her hands down in shamed surrender. In a near uniform line across her collar were several long-healed scars, mirroring the fresh ones I'd been given the night of the attack.
"I'll not demand you talk, but when you're ready I'd love to hear about whatever happened there," my words aligned with my hand gently sliding across the line of long-healed punctures and coming to rest on the cloth wraps.
"Maybe," she didn't frown when she said it, but there was a melancholy in her tone. "Now, go to sleep, Roisin, daughter of Omela and Tarant."
"Goodnight, Jasmin." As sleep worked to claim me, the faint memory of a gentle lullaby helped ease my mind into dreams.
Kindling Kinship
The next sevensun was spent building somewhat of a pattern between Jasmin and me. I've always been somewhat of an early riser due to, well, my history. The moment light began streaming into the window, I'd start to awaken. Feeling me stir, Jasmin would grumpily roll over and try her level best to return to sleep, failing miserably. Then she would help me out of the bed to properly start our sun.
Breakfast was a slowly improving egg -- eventually eggs -- and toast accompanied by a fruit I'd never seen before. It was bright red like a tomato, but unlike a tomato it was covered in little pocks that Jasmin insisted were seeds. She called it an ero fruit, suggesting it was well-known outside the second district.
I told her she better not be overpaying the grocer for them.
After breakfast, we began our work toward getting me back to healthy. First it was just from one end of the house to the other. A couple of suns in, she took me outside. By the end of the fifth sun, we were walking all the way to the grocer's shop together. Of course, the first time she had to carry me back because I was exhausted from the monumental effort, but it was still progress. Everyone seemed pleased to see me about Powell's Square again. I almost fainted from the sheer volume of positive attention.
Eventually, Jasmin stopped working me to the bone and walked me back to the house, where she would cook lunch, at least for the first few suns. Once I could successfully stand in one place long enough, I pushed her aside and showed her the real reason Delia let me stay in her house for the previous fifteen years.
I didn't cook every sun when I was growing up, but my father was a busy man – with what exactly, I was never sure – so learning to cook was a survival tactic as much as it was an escape. And what better escape for a five-year-old whose father was off doing who-knows-what than playing with fire, knives, and unstable standing platforms.
And without adult supervision, I had to figure out what worked all on my own.
The eve of the fourth sun, I pushed Jasmin into a chair – though I'm fairly certain she simply let me do that – and began awkwardly milling about the kitchen.
"So far, Jasmin, you've done admirably in preparing our meals," goading her was entirely too easy, and it was one of my favourite games to play, "at least, for a noblewoman. But you seem to be missing a certain 'survivalist flare' in the meals you serve that would take things to the next level."
Her brows raised, almost erasing her forehead below the short bits of hair that hung down toward her eyes. "Survivalist? As in, vagabond?" She made a faux disgusted face. "Are you going to show me seventeen creative ways I would never think to use prawn mice in the kitchen?"
"Don't be absurd," I laughed at her returned silliness before adopting a harshly severe expression. "No one cooks with prawn mice after the incident."
Her own expression was immediately and intensely concerned. When I didn't show any signs of humour, she got up, knocking her chair over, and pulled herself close to my side. "Wait. You're not serious are you? What was the incident?"
"You're right," I relaxed, but I looped my arm in hers to keep her near, "I'm not being serious. I'm not kidding that no one cooks with prawn mice, but it's not the result of some mystery. They just don't taste good. It's like chewing on death and sadness mixed with a deep longing for flesh. Everyone gets desperate sometimes, but they only get desperate once."
Jasmin didn't try to pull away any more than her face to properly take me in. Her eyes were wider than the field rodents we'd just been discussing. "Don't tell me you've eaten one? That's horrible news. Now I can never kiss you without thinking of you having mice in your mouth."
"Were you thinking about kissing me, Jasmin?"
That did cause her to pull away as a full-body blush spread across all her exposed skin. "Even if I were considering such a salacious action, it can never happen now that I know you've eaten rats."
"Hold your horse, there princess —"
"Not a princess. Not technically."
My jaw dropped. "What do you mean 'technically'? Wait. We'll circle back to that, princess. But first. They're mice, not rats. And I've never eaten them. But even if I had, it's no different than eating musk frogs or slime pigeons or whatever ridiculous creatures they eat at the palaces in the first district." It was Jasmin's jaw that went slack then. I took the opportunity to slide a raw carrot between her teeth and gently push her mouth closed around it. "I know. Nobody eats slime pigeons. They carry disease."
As she chewed the carrot, Jasmin's face went through several different iterations of offended, pleased, confused, and irate, eventually settling into contentedness. "What exactly did you just put in my mouth, Roisin?"
"Have you never had a carrot before? No wonder your cooking is so —" I stopped before I finished the thought, realising it might hurt Jasmin if I said that the food she cooked was flat, kind of boring, and extremely repetitive. It wasn't bad, exactly. It just didn't have any depth. "Go sit back down or set the table or whatever it is you do to keep those arms so incredibly strong. When I'm done with you, your entire life will be different."
"Not that I disbelieve your confidence is justified," Jasmin said as she moved back to her spot across the room, "but my life has already changed so much I can't imagine how you'd make much difference."
I stuck out my tongue at her before turning back to the stove. The work of the knife as I deftly sliced meat and vegetables was a dance my hands remembered easily, even as my legs struggled under my weight.
After fifteen minutes of exact prep work and thirty minutes of careful searing, sautéing, and stirring, I plated what was approximately a stovetop mutton roast with pan fried vegetables and soda bread. When she saw it, Jasmin's whole expression shifted to something resembling an intense admiration. Her gaze flickered between my face and the food so quickly I was worried she might have a medical condition.
I took a seat directly next to Jasmin, setting both plates on the table. After two bites, Jasmin set down her utensils and turned toward me. Her severe expression set me on edge, worrying me that I had oversold my skills.
"Roisin." The word was even more serious than her expression.
"Jasmin?" I was fully accustomed to this exchange, and it appeared she was as well.
"It is with a heavy heart that I must submit a formal apology for my previous comment." A smile very quickly worked its way back to her lips. "This is the best food I've eaten in almost two moons, and it's better than almost anything I've eaten since I became the Lady Myrtia."
"Even better than the slime pigeons?"
She didn't respond. Instead, she gently nudged my shoulder and returned to eating. Unlike most meals we had eaten silently, this one was wordless because of the food, not the circumstance. Both of us understood that a good meal meant more than hollow words we might say.
When both our plates were empty, she levelled an almost demanding gaze at me.
"So long as you have breath in your body and the energy to do so, you are cooking supper for us from now on. Is that understood?"
"Nothing in Lafleur would make me happier, my lady."