The Fate of the Tearling (The Queen of the Tearling #3)(11)
“That leaves Queenie, doesn’t it?” Arliss asked. He had remained at the table during the fight, which surprised Aisa; she would have thought that Arliss would be the first to collect bets. “What’s to be done?”
“We’re going to get her,” the Mace replied. “But she would kill me if I left the kingdom to fall apart behind us. Some triage is needed.”
Aisa felt a light touch on her arm, turned, and found Coryn examining her knife wounds.
“Ugly, m’girl, but not too deep. Get your sleeve out of the way and I’ll stitch these up.”
She tore the remaining fabric from her sleeve.
“That was a good fight you made of it, hellcat,” the Mace remarked. “But you allowed him to put you off balance.”
“I know it,” Aisa replied, gritting her teeth as Coryn began to disinfect her wounds. “He was faster than me.”
“The awkwardness of youth. It won’t last forever.”
Even another day seemed too long to Aisa. She felt herself caught in a terrible middle ground: too old to be a child, too young to be an adult. She longed to work as a grown-up, to perform a job and earn money, to be responsible for herself. She was learning to fight, but many of the Guard’s lessons were not taught but absorbed: how to conduct herself in public, how to think of the Guard before herself, and the Queen above all. These were lessons in maturity, and Aisa took them as such. Yet there were still times when she wanted to run to Maman, to lay her head against Maman’s shoulder and have Maman comfort her, just as she had when Aisa was a hunted child.
I can’t have it both ways.
Coryn’s needle pierced the flesh of her forearm, and she took a deep breath. No one in the Guard talked about these things, but she knew, somehow, that how one dealt with injury was just as important as how one performed in a fight. Looking for distraction, she asked, “What does cast out mean?”
“What?”
“Those Caden. You said they were cast out.”
“So they were, six years ago. They cost the guild a great profit and got thrown out as a result.”
“Ai!” Aisa yelped. Coryn’s needle had touched a nerve of some kind. “What did they do wrong?”
“There was a young noblewoman, Lady Cross. Lord Tare had an eye for her—and for her family lands as well—but Lady Cross had a secret engagement with a young man in the Almont, a poor tenant farmer, and she refused Lord Tare at every turn. So Lord Tare abducted her, took her to his castle on the southern end of the Reddick, and locked her in the tower. He swore that she would stay there until she agreed to marry him.”
“Marriage is stupid,” Aisa snapped, gritting her teeth as Coryn pulled the thread tight. “You’ll never catch me getting married.”
“Of course not,” the Mace replied with a chuckle. “But Lady Cross, not being a warrior, did want to marry, and she wanted to marry her young man. She sat in Lord Tare’s castle for two months and wouldn’t budge an inch. So then Lord Tare had the excellent idea of cutting off her food.”
“He starved her to get her to marry him?” Aisa grimaced. “Why didn’t she just marry him and run away?”
“There’s no divorce in God’s Church, child. A husband always has the right to drag his wife back home.”
Da had done that, Aisa remembered. Several times during her childhood, Maman had made them pack their few belongings and steal away, but the journey always ended up back at home with Da.
“Then what?”
“Well, Lady Cross was wasting away, still refusing to budge. It became quite a matter of contention in the kingdom.”
“Didn’t her fiancé do anything?”
“There wasn’t much he could do. He had offered Tare the few pounds he had. Lady Cross’s family tried to ransom her as well, with no luck. Lord Tare was in the grip of something by then, you see; his pride had become wrapped up in making the woman submit. Many nobles applied to the Regent on Lady Cross’s behalf, but the Regent refused to send in the Tear army for what he deemed a domestic matter. Finally, when it was clear that Lady Cross would die in that tower before anything changed, the Crosses pooled their money and hired the Caden to get her out.”
“And did they?” Aisa asked. She found herself enchanted; it was like listening to one of Maman’s fairy tales.
“Yes, and a slick piece of business it was too,” Elston chimed in. “James posed as the lady’s cousin, come to beg her to relent, and Christopher and Daniel his two retainers. They met with the lady for an hour, and when they came out, she agreed to marry Lord Tare. He was overjoyed, and arranged the wedding for the very next week.”
A feint, Aisa thought. Sometimes she thought that all of life could be reduced to the fight.
“In the week before the wedding, Lord Tare kept Lady Cross under heavy guard, but the entire kingdom thought she had truly given in. The Captain, here, insisted that she had not”—Elston saluted the Mace with two of his fingers—“but the rest of us were fooled, and we thought no less of Lady Cross for it. Starvation is a terrible death.”
“Then what?” Aisa asked. Coryn had gone to work on her bicep now, but she barely noticed.
“The day of the wedding, and Lady Cross was dressed and in her best. The Arvath sent the local bishop to perform the ceremony. Lord Tare invited half the kingdom to witness his triumph, and the church was stuffed with his guards and guests. The Crosses refused to attend, but the rest of the nobility were there, even the Regent himself. Lady Cross went up to the altar and followed the bishop through the ceremony, every word, two hours of it, until they were married.”