The Factor nodded to Mistress Tirelle in the shadows behind me. He stepped to his coach, then turned back to finally meet my eyes.
My tears had been whisked away by the wind. In their place, a stinging tremble remained, which I knew would show as a redness should he choose to reach toward me and spread my eyelids back for inspection. Within, I was torn between anger and deep embarrassment. I had been masterfully trained to conceal both emotions, and so I did. I pretended the shivering in my body was the wind’s chill.
As he looked at me, I returned the stare. Something in his gaze made me think of the lifeless gray eye of the ocean leviathan that had nearly taken my life off the shores of my home.
Here was the root of his power, or at least a lens to peer within it. The Factor’s soulless eyes were no more alive than the sea monster’s had been-filmy, quiescent. Dead.
My teeth ached as my breath shuddered in my chest. The Factor didn’t seem to breathe at all, something I realized only when I saw him inhale.
“Emerald,” he said, clearly and distinctly.
Then he was gone in a swirl of horses and men and clattering weapons. Even blindfolded, the guards circled with a strange precision, yipping and whistling to mark their places and guide their mounts. They moved like water gyring down a drain. Some men went through the gate first with weapons high. The carriage followed, then the rest of the men.
In a moment, they were gone as if they’d never been present. Only a few mounds of steaming dung marked the passage of the soldiers and their horses. That and the turmoil within my heart.
After a while, Mistress Tirelle waddled out to me. I heard her steps stumping on the cobbles of the courtyard before she rounded the pomegranate tree to look me over. Her face was bent into her almost-smile. She appeared nearly pleased.
“Well, Emerald, you passed.”
“Emerald.” I tried the word in my mouth as if it were a name. Girl had been a name that meant nothing, a description only. He had named me Emerald to mark me as a precious possession, no more.
In the language of my birth, I did not know the word for emerald. I determined that I would use that tongue to call myself Green. That was as close as I could come, and it was a word that belonged to me rather than to these maggot people. The Factor’s precious belongings I would mock with the profane infection of my own tongue.
This was also the greatest change that had come upon me since Federo had met my father at the edge of the rice paddies. I looked into Mistress Tirelle’s eyes and found all unexpected a strange species of sympathy there. “What becomes of me now?”
Her face wrinkled in thought a moment. Surely she knew the answer, and was just picking through the secrets she thought might be fit to tell me now that I had a name and standing in the Factor’s dead, dead eyes.
“That depends on whether the Duke fancies a new consort within the next two years or so.” She poked me in the chest. Her rough nail snagged at my bare skin. “Otherwise you’ll fetch a spice trader’s ransom anywhere along the Stone Coast.”
Those words chilled my already heavy heart so much, I could not hide the shiver that crawled along my spine. Somehow I had thought myself in waiting for the Factor, or a great house here in Copper Downs. I had long known that this blue-walled house manufactured women fit for thrones, but I’d never fully considered what it meant to me, for who I was. For what the Dancing Mistress had once described as the power I might someday hope to grasp hold of.
Federo had not bought me for the Factor. Not for the man, at any rate. Federo had bought me for a market. Meat with two legs and deep eyes and a face and body on which he’d wagered years and untold wealth in hopes I would grow to beauty. Salable, brokerable beauty.
Federo had bought me for meat, and my father had sold me for a whore.
Words, I told myself. These were all words. The maggot people of the Stone Coast lived and died by their words. I’d known this from the first. “Emerald” marked me as a jewel in the Factor’s case. Nothing more, nothing less.
I blinked away the sting of some new emotion I could not yet put a name to, and followed Mistress Tirelle back to the rooms that boxed my life.
There were no lessons that day. No Mistresses, no practicing, no drills or dances or calligraphy or punishment or anything. This was the first idle time I’d experienced in all the years since I’d come to the Pomegranate Court.
I sat before the hearth in the downstairs sitting room and wandered through my memories. Endurance, the frogs in their ditches, my grandmother’s face, her bells still jingling with every step of the ox. I turned the imaginary silk over in my mind, counting the days.
Nothing helped. I was overwhelmed by the bitterness in finally reaching a true understanding of what I’d known all along: I was nothing. No person lived behind Girl, Emerald, Green-whoever I might pretend to be.
I found myself wishing my instructresses had come. The snappish ill will of Mistress Leonie would have given me some focus for the rising of my discontent. Mistress Danae would have distracted me. The Dancing Mistress would have set me through paces to draw the energy forth.
Of course, I could step to the practice room or pick up a book or sit myself before the spinet. I did not need a Mistress to tell me to do those things. It was just that nothing mattered.
In time, I noticed the shadows had moved across the floor. A plate was laid next to me, with slices of bread and cheese upon it. Mistress Tirelle had come, then. Did we speak? I wondered.
I could not see how that mattered.
Darkness eventually stole into the room. No one had eaten the bread or cheese. Both had gone stale. My bladder finally moved me from the chair. I stumbled out to find a chamber pot.
Mistress Tirelle sat before the door. She was almost lost within the shadows.
“Emerald.” Her voice was soft. “Tomorrow your days begin again as always.”
“I think not.” I did not bother to ask permission to speak. If she wished to take after me with her stupid tube, I would feed her the sand, and follow it with the silk.
“Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed.” I pushed past her to spend a little time alone in the privy.
I emerged with my hunger reawakened to find Mistress Tirelle awaiting me. She seemed almost sad in the darkening shadows of evening.
“When a candidate is given a name by the Factor, that is the signal honor which declares he has found her fit.”
“Who is he to find me fit?” Rage crept into my voice.
“He is master to us all, and answers only to the Duke.” Her own voice hardened. “Sit down and listen.”
Almost a decade’s worth of habit sat me down quickly enough.
“The Duke is all in this city. We are not permitted to instruct the candidates in the recent history of our times, but you will learn.” She glanced around, then back at me. “His eyes and ears are everywhere. He was on the throne long before my grandmother was born, and he will be on the throne long after my grandchildren grow old.”
I was briefly distracted by the thought of Mistress Tirelle having children and grandchildren. The flare of interest died within the gloom of my thoughts as quickly as it had risen.
“He is everything to us, forever,” she went on. “To be raised up as his consort is an honor beyond measure. The daughters of the greatest houses would cheerfully slay their lovers and their chambermaids alike to stand where you do today.”
I will trade them freely without the need for murder, I thought.
“So you listen, little Emerald. We have a year or two left with you at most. If that. Once your flow begins, you will be beddable. At the price you command, you will be bedded. Spread wide and smile sweetly, and your life will be very good for decades to come. Turn your shoulder and raise that pride I’ve never been able to erase from your spirit, and you can still be cut and turned out like any servant girl who fails to give satisfaction.”