Nettle & Bone(14)

“Oh, that,” said the Sister. “Yes. I’ve often thought so. Cows have a much better time of it. Goats and sheep, too. Granted the legs are a bit harder to untangle, but it’s not half the mess of humans.”

“I won’t do it,” said Marra.

“Nobody’s asking you to,” said the Sister. She paused. Marra was fairly certain that the Sister knew exactly who and what she was, and who her parents were, and was trying to find a way to phrase her next sentence. “Well, not at the moment, anyway. And if someone should … ah … well. There are ways.”

Run away. Ruin yourself. Whatever it takes. Don’t let her drag you into this hell along with us.

Marra licked her lips. Had they used a birthing hook on Kania, for the child who had gone much too long without being born?

“Ways?”

The Sister glanced around, as if someone might really be eavesdropping in a remote hedgerow in the hour before dawn. “Ways,” she said. “Herbs, mostly. Sponges soaked in lemon juice. None of them work perfectly, and anyone who says they do is lying to you. Most of them are dangerous. Sometimes everyone dies anyway, and there’s nothing to be done. But there are things that can make pregnancy less likely.”

Marra’s heart leapt. Could she find out? Could she tell Kania? The entire point of queens and princesses was to act as broodmares for royalty, but if there were ways to prevent it …

“I want to know,” she said. “All of them.”

The Sister Apothecary sighed. “It can be done,” she said. “But not tonight.”



* * *



The Sister was as good as her word. It was all rather abstract at the moment for Marra, but she memorized the methods and even brewed an entire vial of extract, with the Sister standing over her to make certain she did it correctly.

“You care very much about this,” said the Sister.

Marra shrugged. She did not want to care. She did not want to think that her time in the convent might come to an end, that she would be dragged back out onto the game board with all the other pawns and princes.

But if I am, I will not go unarmed. I won’t. I have to learn. And maybe I can tell Kania. She had already seen women wearing themselves out from too much bearing.

There was a letter in her room now, another polite, correct letter from her mother, and at the end, her mother had written that Kania was pregnant again.

This is too much. Surely it is too much. She is wearing herself out to bear an heir, and if she dies …

Marra told herself that it was fear for her sister that drove her on, not fear for herself. She clamped down on the traitorous little whisper that said that she would have to take her sister’s place as broodmare to the prince.

I will not. I will not. But it will not come to that. I will learn …





Chapter 5


In the spring of Marra’s fifteenth year at the convent, a fever went through the kingdom. It laid Marra low for many days, and when she struggled to her feet at last, it was to discover that the abbess was near death. For nearly a week, it was touch and go. Because she had recovered, Marra was allowed to tend to the older woman. In truth, there was not much to be done except to sit in the room and practice her needlework and listen to the rattle of breathing that would not quite be still.

The abbess recovered, but there was white in her iron-gray hair, and she moved more cautiously than she had done. She needed a cane to go up stairs and it clearly infuriated her. The abbess had never been patient with her own weakness.

Marra herself recovered well, though there were days when she only dozed at the window and could not will herself to move. Even the view from the window reminded her of plague. They lost two novices, and the old man who sold goat milk was replaced by his son, who told them quietly that his father would not be coming back.

She was gazing out the window, not quite awake, thinking long unraveling thoughts, when there was a tap on the door and the Sister Apothecary was waiting.

“It’s bad news,” she said, holding out a letter. “The abbess asked me to bring it to you. She would have done it but she can’t handle the stairs. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not good.”

Marra broke the seal. If the Sister said something else, she didn’t hear. Her heart was pounding too hard in her ears. If the abbess had been informed of the contents, then it must be bad; it must be …

I regret to inform you that the fever took your niece, Virian. The funeral will be held as soon as the family can travel to the Northern Kingdom. If you are well enough to travel, a carriage will be sent to fetch you.

“Oh,” said Marra. She was horrified to find that the sensation she felt was relief. It was not her mother, not her sister, not her father. Her heart ached for Kania’s grief, but part of her said, It is only a child you saw for a few minutes at her christening and never again, and she hated herself for feeling that way, but the loss was at a remove and her love was an abstract love, not one born of close familiarity.

“My niece,” she said, realizing that the Sister was waiting for an answer. “My niece has died of the fever. There’s a funeral. I have to go. I … someone should be told … I don’t know what I do next, but they’re supposed to come and fetch me…”

Someone did. Two days later, she was in a carriage traveling north. The horses were black, the bridles were black, the coachman clad in charcoal gray. The Northern Kingdom was showing off its wealth again, and Marra found herself crying, not for her niece but for Damia. Late again, she thought. That was so many years ago. You’re being slow again, only mourning now. Probably you’ll actually get around to crying for your niece in a decade or so. Which was comforting, in a foolish way, because maybe that meant that she was not a complete monster. She had been wondering since her first instinctive relief.