Nettle & Bone(54)

“She was so beautiful,” said Marra. “And so kind.”

He squeezed her hands tightly. She took a deep breath, wondering if she was going to cry again. No, it seemed not. The pain had softened over the years, the edges worn down by time. She gazed dry-eyed at their hands. Her left hand had never quite recovered from spinning the nettle thread. One of the knuckles was more swollen than the others, and there was a numb band along the side of her little finger.

“After the second or third inn, I felt like I knew too much,” Fenris said. “You know hardly anything about me, and I had heard so much about you and your family.” He took a deep breath. “So. Yes. I slept in a fairy fort. There was a battle, you see. One clan overthrew another. It happens, though the Fathers try to keep it from coming to that. The clan that was destroyed had been fostering a young lad as a squire, and the lady of the conquering clan said that her people would not make war on children, so he was spared by her command. He was handed over to us, who served the Fathers. He could not have been more than thirteen, and a young thirteen at that. His voice was as high as a novice nun’s.”

“Fenris,” said Marra, looking up at him, “you don’t have to tell me this.”

“I know. I want to. Then we’ll be even and…” He smiled down at her, with an edge of pain that cut her heart. “And I find that it’s important to me that we be even.” Marra bowed her head. The edge of one of his thumbnails had a nick in it. She could feel the heat of his skin across hers, crossing the numb band of skin, heat and then vague pressure and then heat again.

“So. This squire was afraid to go home. Afraid that his father would think that he had failed by being captured alive. By not dying like a hero.” Fenris’s lip curled. “I spent a week convincing him that his father would be so glad that his son was alive that there would be no talk of failure. I could see myself in him. I had been his age once and terrified of failing to live up to my father’s example. And I saw myself so clearly that I did not see him at all.”

She had a sense of the story to come and she did not want to hear it, as if not hearing the words could erase them. “Fenris…”

“You brought me out of the goblin market, and I fear this tale is a part of me. It follows wherever I go.” Marra was not certain if that was bitterness or duty speaking, or perhaps both. Duty and love and hate are complicated …

“I thought there was something odd when we delivered him to his father. ‘Hiding behind a woman’s skirts?’ the lord said. It was odd, and the manner he said it was odd. But I had duties and I went about them and left the son with the father. But it nagged at me.”

“And?” said Marra, who knew her duty as the listener.

“And a week later, I returned. I could not get the way that the father had spoken out of my head, or the look in his eye. It wasn’t right for a father. I don’t have children, so far as I know, but that look…” He shook his head. “I went back. But I waited too long, fool that I am.”

“He was dead,” said Marra. She wondered if the Sister Apothecary felt this way when someone told her of an ailment that she had diagnosed from the first word.

“Flogged to death. His father had branded him a traitor and a coward. He was hanging by his wrists from a pole in the courtyard. I cut him down myself.” His voice was flat and utterly emotionless. Marra was reminded of Kania prepared to marry her prince, the same flatness. This is happening and I am part of it but that is all. “He had taken at least a day to die.”

“I’m sorry,” said Marra, feeling the inadequacy of the words. She turned her hands to squeeze his, and he looked down at them, seeming almost puzzled.

“And that is why I could not kill myself, after I had killed his father and his guards. I would not shame that young man’s memory any further.”

“You were right to kill his father,” said Marra fiercely. “That wasn’t wrong.”

“Everything else I did was wrong,” said Fenris, “from first to last.” He sighed. “I failed to listen and failed to understand, and a child died a tortured death of my failures. Because my father was a good man, and I was so full of my own foolishness that I could not see why this boy was frightened.”

“My father is a good man, too,” said Marra. “That’s probably why it took me so long to see what was happening to Kania. I knew something was wrong but I suspected all the wrong things. I knew she was pregnant too often, but I never knew why.” She tugged at her hands and he released her immediately. “And my mother was my mother, and I knew she loved me, so it took me a long time to realize that she would also move me as a game piece to save the kingdom.”

Fenris nodded. “Sometimes that was my job as a servant of the Fathers,” he said. “To move people and alliances like pieces on a board. It would have been much harder if I had loved them.”

Marra exhaled. Had it been hard for her mother? She wanted to believe that it had been. Life would be easier. But that was her sorrow and Fenris had his own. “You’re stronger than I am,” she said. “You did it all yourself. I couldn’t stop Vorling. I had to go find someone powerful who could. I’m scared all the time and don’t tell me that courage is going forward when you’re scared because it’s not like that. I was scared of the carriages and the people at the inns. The only thing I did right was find the dust-wife.”