The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)(63)

Chapter Sixteen

Looking Away





Genny had a razor-sharp edge on four of the silver coins. The key was a bigger issue. It made more noise when she scraped it, and the metal was much harder. She also couldn’t grind it just anywhere as she did with the coins. Those she scraped across the floor, and then covered the marks with the straw. The key, she had to file down carefully. Genny needed to grind away all the teeth except the top one. That meant she could only use rocks that protruded, providing an adequate edge. The rocks comprising the floor were flush and smooth. She was instead forced to scrape it against one of three stones that jutted far enough out from the wall. Luckily all three were hard and abrasive. And with nothing else to do, Genny managed to reduce her trunk key into little more than a cylindrical barrel with a single tooth at the end like a tiny, mouse-sized hoe.

After nearly two weeks, the key was close to done, and so were Genny’s fingers. They throbbed, and her knuckles were a series of abrasions, two of which had scabs. Taking a break, she hid the key in the wall crevice. Then she lay down on the straw and sucked on her fingertips, staring at the ceiling. The underside was plaster. Parts of it had been painted. Most had faded; other sections had chipped and fallen. An old bird’s nest was in one corner. She wondered how a bird had gotten in, then realized the door must be new.

Why am I still here? Why hasn’t Leo agreed to the demands? Even if her life wasn’t in jeopardy, what Mercator was asking made sense.

If the situation were reversed, she would have traded the duchy for Leo.

So why hasn’t he?

Genny knew why. The answer to that question was too obvious, sort of like standing in a lush field and wondering about the color of grass. All she needed to do was look down, but Genny didn’t want to. All her life she had looked, forced herself to see what others refused to accept. How much easier it would have been to welcome her role as a dutiful daughter, to blind herself to the facts and pretend everything was fine.

After her mother’s death, her father gave up. Because he was a whiskey distiller, everyone expected Gabriel Winter to resign from life by becoming a drunk. Everyone thought he’d crawl into one of his casks, but that just showed how little they knew him. Her father didn’t drink, never had. Even when he taste-tested, he spat. But there was more than one way to withdraw, and a man didn’t need to be a drunk to become mean. People made excuses for him. Some even lied. And there were those who came right out and said that her life would be easier if she looked away.

“Get married,” they told her. “Find a man and make a new home.” But Genny knew that wasn’t in her future, not back then. Even as a young girl, she knew spinsterhood was all but certain. Instead, Genny ignored all the advice. She looked, she saw, and she accepted the way things were—and then she decided to change them.

With the general abdication of her father, Genny took the reins of the business and rebuilt it. In less than a decade, Winter’s Whiskey went from a cheap black-market product to a posh commodity. A few hidden stills that ran on stolen grain became the largest warehouse and distillery in the world, buying thousands of pounds of rye, oats, and barley. Genny even went so far as to purchase rights to farms from Count Simon, an unprecedented act since only royals controlled land. That could only happen in Colnora, which had always had its own rules. As long as the money flowed, the crown looked away. Genny made a habit of ignoring traditions, of pushing the boundaries that others observed but she saw as too limiting. With a loud mouth, a refusal to accept restrictions, an irritating habit of being right, and absolutely no concern as to what others thought of her, she ran naked and laughed at the fools who raced her in long robes. Success proved she was right, and that was all she needed.

This was the one lie she told herself. The only reality she chose not to look away from.

Genny convinced herself that saving her father would be enough. That and beating all those arrogant merchants who called her names. Hatred was another form of admiration, she concluded, and wealth was the measure of worth. The deception was hardly a choice. Love wasn’t a commodity she could buy. Her blind eye was a simple matter of finding contentment within the bounds of the possible.

Then one day, a man, a duke, a short, portly, balding eastern noble smiled at her; and just like that, what was possible changed.

The situation was made unbearable because she genuinely liked him. Leo wasn’t handsome or dashing; he was awkward and often silly. But when she was in the room, his eyes never left her. Many suggested he only pretended to care to get at her money. Her own father had told her that—he smashed a window with his bare hand, lacerating his fingers in the process to ensure she heard him. She did. Genny heard all of them, but for once, for the first time in her life, she chose to look away—to believe in a dream. She rationalized that her money, which was considerable, wasn’t enough to make a dent in the coffers of a kingdom. The Duke of Rochelle made more in taxes on any given month than Winter’s Whiskey did in a year. He’s not marrying me for my money, she had assured herself. And in a way, that was true, which was why it was so easy to believe. In doing so, she understood what she never had before—why people decided to lie to themselves. Genny wanted to be loved, to be wanted, desired, cherished, not because of what she was capable of, but because of who she was, what she was. This was something she’d never dared dream of before, and Leo Hargrave was holding it out to her, begging Genny to take it.