Chapter 370 - 370: If She Still Looks

Erna marked false panels until her chalk ran down to a nub.

Three on the annex floor, one in the linen passage, two more behind banner hooks that Calden had sworn were decorative.

Cynthia kept Blade answering in long, ugly sentences about tax, about the three soldiers in the infirmary, about the exact wording he had used when he evaded Marquis Gousel, and every time the lining tried to slip in a courtesy she made him start the sentence over.

The courier sat.

He asked nothing for almost an hour.

Then he asked, carefully, as if testing a tooth,

"Does Lord Rigel's study at home face the inner court or the training yard, I only ask because I think I already know and I would rather be hit again than know it."

Calden hit him.

The courier looked grateful.

Rigel did not go to sleep.

He stood over the packet and Balzac's letter until the lamp smoked, and the merchant in the wall did not speak again, which meant the useful mouth had already gone somewhere else.

Gousel mansion was two nights' hard riding and a closed gate, and Dolly still opened the small side door when a man said he had paper from the young master.

She saw the seal.

She saw the tired merchant face.

She did not see a cart.

"It is late, if you have a letter I will take it to the steward, you will wait in the outer hall, you will not wander, the house is not taking guests off the road this week."

The man smiled with just enough apology.

"Of course, I would not dream of wandering, I only need the words put where they belong, he was very particular, he said the little one should hear it from someone standing in the same room, not from paper, paper makes her stare at toys."

Dolly's hand tightened on the door.

"You will wait."

She left him under a lamp and went anyway, because a seal was a seal, and because Rigel's particularity was a thing she had already learned to obey in rooms she did not like to remember.

Miena was awake.

Siena was awake beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched, because that was the only arrangement Siena trusted since the collar.

The blue glass bird sat on the side table.

Miena had not been holding it.

She had been looking at it the way a person looks at a door they are not allowed to open.

Dolly kept her voice even.

"A messenger, he has the house seal on his mouth if not yet on my table, he says Lord Rigel wants words spoken in the room, I do not like it, I am telling you before I like it, if either of you feels the collar pull you will say so before you nod."

Siena stood at once.

"She does not hear him from a stranger, she does not hear him at all tonight, you can put the man in a shed and wait for morning."

The pull came anyway.

Not a shout.

A stitch.

Miena's hand rose off her own knee without her picking it up, and her mouth opened on a yes she had not approved.

"I can hear him," she said, and the horror in it was that she sounded almost relieved, "he says I should pick up the bird, he says if I still look at it I am being good, he says Siena should watch so she understands I am not being taken away."

Siena grabbed her wrist.

"That is not him, look at me, Miena, he does not send merchants to tuck you in, he comes and ruins a room himself, this is the other thing, fight it, you know the difference, you knew it in that chamber when he smiled."

Miena picked up the bird.

The glass wings caught the lamp and threw a cheap blue across her throat, where the black collar sat dull and finished.

"He says put it down and come here, he says kneel the way I did when I was happy, he says use my mouth first because the journey stored it up, he says you can hate him while I do it, that part sounds like him, that is why I cannot tell."

Dolly had a knife in her sleeve and did not draw it yet, because a knife on a collared girl in this house had rules, and the rules had been written by the same boy the stitch was wearing.

"Miena, you will sit, you will not kneel, if the voice wants kneeling it can come stand in front of me and say it with a face."

The voice did not come.

It only pressed.

Miena went to her knees on the rug anyway, bird set aside with a care that made Siena make a sound like being cut, and Miena's hands, shaking, still knowing, went to the front of her own nightclothes first, opening what she had been told to offer as if the merchant in the outer hall needed a rehearsal.

"I know I am doing it," she whispered, crying while her fingers worked, "I know I am saying it like I want it, I know the difference and I still have to make my mouth ready, Siena, do not touch me, he said if you touch me I have to tell you to stop, I do not want to tell you to stop."

Siena touched her anyway, hauled at her shoulders, and Miena's voice came out obedient and ruined,

"Stop, onee-san, I want this most, I want to be ready when Master arrives, I want you to watch so we are not separated."

Dolly crossed the room, caught Miena's chin, and spoke into the girl's face like she could reach the stitch by insult.

"If you are using his cadence you should know I was told to treat kindness as an attack, so this is me attacking, you will stand, you will drop the act of wanting it, and if you cannot, I will bind your hands before you can finish the performance."

For a second the collar and Dolly pulled opposite ways.

Miena stood.

Half.

Then she folded again, cheek against Dolly's skirt, mouth open on a command that had turned sexual because that was the language the formula had been fed in a dark room with a sister watching.

Siena hit the side table hard enough to knock the bird to the floor.

It did not break.

It rolled, cheap and bright, under the bed, out of Miena's sight.

The pull hiccuped.

Miena gasped as if someone had taken a name out of her mouth.

Far down the hall, the merchant in the outer lamp-light said, pleasantly, to no one who had stayed with him,

"Ah, she looked away, good, then we do it without the toy, toys make them brave."

Dolly heard that, left Miena in Siena's arms, and went for the side door at a run.

The outer hall was empty.

The lamp was still lit.

On the bench where a tired man should have been sitting there was only a pale smear, flour-sweet, and a strip of cloth that had never been a letter, only the idea of a seal pressed into fabric until a maid would open a door for it.