She patted me on the shoulder and walked out to leave me alone in the darkness, contemplating the price and purpose of my beauty.
The next months went by in an uneasy peace. My lessons continued, but they were more for practice than for further education. The Factor did not return, which suited me just fine. Neither did Federo visit in that period. My feelings about his absence were more ambiguous.
He’d taken me away once. In quiet moments, I found myself daydreaming that he might take me away again. Given that Federo was the Factor’s man through and through, I knew those for hollow, girlish hopes.
It was the name Emerald that stuck in my ears like a needle in my finger. Every time Mistress Tirelle uttered that word, my blood ran hot. By then, I was old enough to have a care for how well I could conceal my feelings, at least most of the time, but she must have seen the anger.
What was different now was that my tormentor turned away more often than not.
It finally dawned on me that she was finished with me. We awaited only the onset of my flow, or the whim of the Factor and his master the Duke, for me to leave the Pomegranate Court and some other girl-child to arrive through that barred gate.
That thought brought a special terror of its own. A part of me wanted to stay here in the hated center of my universe.
Was I safer within these walls or without?
The answer, of course, was that I was safe nowhere at all.
Even the Dancing Mistress seemed to be marking time with me. We ran familiar routes, worked on the same flips and falls and kick-steps as always. She was no better than Mistress Tirelle in her waiting.
“I don’t want my name,” I told her one night as we ran the Eggcorn Gallery, well west of the Factor’s house. I hated the truculence in my voice, but somehow couldn’t change the tone.
“Girl.” Her voice carried a tired weight. “A name is like a mask. You can wear it for a day, a season, or a lifetime, then put it aside at need.”
In truth, she had not once referred to me as Emerald since the day the Factor had dubbed me so. Somehow that didn’t make me feel better.
“What do you know of names?” I demanded angrily. “You don’t even have one.”
The Dancing Mistress broke her stride. Her eyes were black-shadowed from the faint glow of the coldfire in my hand as she stared at me. In that moment, I knew I had pushed her too hard, as I had done a few years ago over the matter of Federo. I was suddenly desperate that she not leave me now as she had then.
“I am not your enemy, Girl.” I could almost hear her claws flexing. “You might do me the courtesy of recalling that.”
Bowing my head in the dark, I forced an apology between my teeth. “I am sorry, Mistress. Everything since the Factor’s visit has been too out of sorts.”
She turned and resumed her run. I sprinted after, stumbling in my first steps at a strange twinge in my groin. I was not in the habit of faltering, but pride kept me from saying anything. I supposed anger kept her from answering.
That, and she knew well enough what was happening to me. Teaching girls was her business, after all, and every girl becomes a woman in her time.
Far too soon, my monthlies came upon me. The twinges in my back had been a warning, recurring at irregular intervals for a number of weeks. One day cooking with Mistress Tirelle in the great kitchen-we were working over a brawn terrine-my stomach seemed to flip over on me. Without any warning, I bent double and spewed my breakfast on the tiled floor.
Instead of raising her hand to me, Mistress Tirelle smiled and sent me to clean myself. When I lay down afterwards, my nausea returned. I had to work to hold my stomach behind my teeth.
In time, I was forced to roll to my knees on the cold floor, spewing. My mouth stung; I loosed a bit of my bladder. This disgusted me until at a furtive touch I realized there was blood trickling down there.
Mistress Cherlise will be proud of me now, I thought. I am beddable at last. I tried to ignore what this would mean for me in the Duke’s eyes.
Soon enough, Mistress Tirelle brought me cool water and cloths.
I had never seen her beam so.
That night I stared out my door at the moonlight. The yard of the Pomegranate Court was silvered like a jewelsmith’s dream. I was to be Emerald, a jewel in the Duke’s box, placed in a glorious setting to be admired for twoscore seasons before being allowed to fade to some tower apartment with a few aging servants.
The histories Mistress Danae had given me to read were clear enough concerning the fate of unwanted wives and lemans, especially those of low birth.
All that time between now and that end would be only a blink of an eye, once it had passed. There would be nothing for me. Nothing.
The moonlight was beautiful, but I resolved that I would not be a jewel. No Emerald, I, to be sold in the market of women at the Duke’s command.
I wondered what it was that Endurance would have done. The question was beyond pointless. The ox was property. Papa could drive him or slit his throat and have him dressed for meat.
They could slit my throat, too. Mistress Tirelle had made that threat to me often enough, though I suppose she meant more to notch my ears or fork my tongue when she said I could be cut and turned out.
What market is there for great ladies of ruined beauty and broken spirit?
I did not care. They would never render me into such a beautiful array of meat. I was more than these people, better than them. Even the kind ones, such as Mistress Cherlise, were molding me to the Factor’s will. I was merely a thing to any of them, a means to advance a purpose. My allies, the Dancing Mistress and Federo, wanted me for their own purposes only instead of the Factor’s. Whatever petty plot occupied their hours was no concern of mine.
There was no way I would be a toy for the ageless Duke, used for a few decades then tossed aside. The daughters of the great houses could have him.
I slipped from my bed and down to the great kitchen. There I had learned to cook with saffron and vanilla and other spices worth far more than their weight in gold. What would we have had at home, Papa and I? A little salt, and some dried peppers from bushes that grew at the edge of the trees. Salt we had here as well, along with parsley and other common pot herbs.
We also had a drawer full of knives.
Much of what had been kept from me early on had been added in the growth of trust. The strange trust between master and slave, jailor and prisoner; but still it was a species of trust that had stood between me and Mistress Tirelle.
I found the small, sharp cutter I normally used to separate meat from bone. The blade was already well honed. No need to risk a noise to set an edge now. Instead I went outside to sit beneath the pomegranate tree in the failing moonlight and stare at the blade I had taken up in my hand.
The Factor had named me Emerald. Marked by beauty, trained to grace. Certainly this blue-walled prison was far more comfortable than the hut of my youth. “I miss my belled silk and my father’s white ox,” I whispered to the blade. There was so much that I longed for-the water snakes and the hot winds and the silly lizards pushing themselves always closer to the brassy sun with their forelegs, as if they could ever reach its heavy fire.
Miss those though I might, I could no more throw away my years of training here in the Factor’s house than I could throw away time itself. Federo had taken me away from what was mine, while the Factor had made me into a creature of the Duke of Copper Downs.
I was no ox, nor carriage, nor cart horse. I was no animal nor thing. I could escape this place easily enough by climbing the walls as the Dancing Mistress had shown me, but I was valuable. My grace and beauty and training were the work of years by dozens of women in the Factor’s employ. They would hunt for me, and they would find me. Doubtless his blindfolded guards could ride across the leagues to wherever I hid. Doubtless the Duke would ask after his new-grown playpretty, and the entire city of Copper Downs would try to make an answer.