“Excellent,” Darius said. “I’m starving. Let’s eat.”
4
The Wicked Stepmother
The meal was more convivial than I would have expected, for either the act of kindness itself or the sheer relief at being out of pain had served to make Harwin more outgoing than usual. He asked Darius and Dannette where they had traveled and was particularly interested in their expeditions to cities outside Kallenore’s borders. It turned out—I had not known this—that Harwin and his father had pursued commercial ventures in a few neighboring nations but without receiving as much return as they’d hoped, so he was keen to hear their opinion of other markets. Darius didn’t seem to have paid much attention to the possibilities of trade and profit, but Dannette had formed strong opinions, which she was happy to share. I listened, bemused, as she talked about the diamond mines in Liston, the spice routes through Newmirot, and the drought in lower Amlertay that had left the countrymen eager to trade for seed and other staples.
“I do not think I would have learned half so much if I had passed twice as long in any of those places,” I said in an undervoice to Darius.
He was finishing up his second beer, and I held out my glass to silently ask for a refill. I still didn’t like the taste, but I didn’t find it quite so unpleasant, and I did enjoy the way it softened the harder edges of the day. “No, everything that she says comes as quite a surprise to me,” he said airily. “Now, what I noticed while we were in Newmirot was how the women wore their hair, with ribbons braided into it right around their faces. It was so colorful and lovely.”
I felt a moment’s flash of stupid jealousy. “And I suppose all the women in Newmirot were very pretty?” I said.
He smiled and tipped his glass against mine. “All women are pretty in their way,” he said, “but you are the most beautiful of all.”
I laughed, but even that was not enough to earn me more than a glance from Harwin. He didn’t seem to care that I was getting along so well with my fiancé; he just returned his attention to Dannette to ask a question about coin denominations in Amlertay. I took another few large swallows of my beer.
As I had expected, sharing a bedroom with Harwin was even stranger than sharing one with Darius and Dannette. I was always aware that he was on the other side of the room, even though he did not snore, as Darius did, or thrash about, as Dannette continued to do. Merely, I could sense him lying there, disapproving of us all. Well, I would not let Harwin’s presence oppress my spirits. The beer had made me too sleepy to fret for long, anyway, so I closed my eyes and drifted into dreaming.
I woke up once, abruptly, when Dannette uttered an urgent cry of warning. I jerked upright, unable to see anything in the utter darkness. I heard a stir on the other side of the room—Harwin, surely, since Darius’s gentle snores went on uninterrupted.
“What’s wrong?” he asked sharply. I could see a shadow move through the blackness. “Olivia? Was that you?”
“Not me. Dannette,” I replied softly. I could tell by the way she curled in upon herself that she was still sleeping.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“I think she has nightmares. This happened last night, too.”
Now his shadow was beside the bed. I could smell the soap he had used to wash his face and the herbs from Dannette’s salve. “Should we wake her?”
“I think it will just start again when she goes back to sleep.”
I waited for him to say something like, It’s intolerable that you should have your slumbers interrupted in such a way. But, from what I could tell by staring at his silhouette in the darkness, he was merely looking down at Dannette’s restless form. Perhaps his face, if I’d been able to see it, would have been creased with compassion or concern.
“What gives her nightmares?” he asked.
Scandals. Accusations in the dead of night. Secrets. “I don’t know.”
He hesitated a moment. I didn’t need to see his face to be able to imagine his expression: serious, considering, truthful. “I like both of them better than I thought I would,” he said at last. “But they are still strangers about whom you know almost nothing. It was reckless of your father to send you off with them in such a scrambling fashion.”
“Well, you’re here now,” I said flippantly. “You can make sure they don’t harm me or lead me astray.”
“Indeed,” he said, “that is exactly what I mean to do.”
In the morning I felt absolutely dreadful. My head was pounding and my stomach clamped down when I so much as thought about breakfast. For some reason, this seemed to amuse Darius and Dannette. “Too much beer the night before makes the dawn a grievous chore,” Darius chanted. I gave him a heavy look of condemnation from eyes that felt scratchy and hot. His stupid little verse didn’t even make sense.
“I don’t think I can move,” I said, still sprawled on the bed after the other three had washed and dressed. “Let’s stay here another day.”
“You’ll feel just as bad lying here as you will sitting in the wagon, so you may as well travel on,” Darius said, with rather less sympathy than I’d hoped for. “Come on. Dannette will help you get dressed while Harwin and I go down and order a meal.”
I allowed Dannette to cajole me into a loose fitting gown, and then she combed out my hair and put it in a simple braid. I was horrified at my image in the mirror, my face pale, my eyes shot with red. “I’m ruined!” I cried.
Dannette laughed. “You’ll be fine later today and show no ill effects at all by tomorrow,” she said. “That’s because you’re twenty-one. If you drink a pitcher of beer every night until you turn fifty, well, that’s another story.”
I met her eyes in the mirror. She looked perfectly rested and cheerful as always. She’d put her own ginger blond hair back in a bun, a careless style that looked good on her since it accentuated her high cheekbones. This morning she had added small gold earrings to her ensemble, or maybe I saw them only because her hair was pulled back. I wondered if she was trying to improve her appearance in subtle ways to attract Harwin’s attention.
“Why do you cry out in the middle of the night?” I asked abruptly.
“Do I?” she said. “I’m sorry. Does it keep you awake?”
“Yes, and it kept Harwin awake last night, too,” I said, watching her closely.
She turned away from the mirror. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I will try to muffle my sounds.”
I stood up and turned to watch her as she put the last of her clothes in her bag. “But why are you so upset? What are you dreaming about?”
She merely continued to fold her skirt, carefully lining up the pleats. “Things I cannot remember in the morning,” she said.
Clearly, she was going to give me no better answer. I made a little snort of irritation, hoisted my own bag over my shoulder, spared a moment to be vexed that neither Darius nor Harwin had thought to carry it downstairs for me, and left the room. Dannette came behind me, no longer smiling.
“Let’s throw our things in the wagon before sitting down to breakfast,” she suggested, so I followed her out into the innyard.
The wagon was already in place and a groom was leading the horses up to be hitched. Ours was not the only vehicle in the yard; I saw half a dozen gigs and carts lined up, waiting for their owners to down a hasty breakfast. My attention was caught by a particularly fine black carriage pulled by a matched team. I had a moment of intense longing. Oh, if only I could travel in that, how much more tolerable this expedition would be!