Keziah

Impatience’s questions were unkind. He didn’t know it, but Uncle’s obedience didn’t end with control over my body. His orders were scrawled deep into my mind.

The physical control disappeared over time. It was uncomfortable, sometimes terrifying, and always humiliating, but temporary. I could speak again and move my tense muscles if I put all my effort into it. It wore away like the soreness of a bruise.

But what he had done to my mind... He'd spent years weaving a space inside me to hide away his secrets. They existed in my memories, but thinking about them caused a pain that grew the more I thought about them. A pain that turned into agony if I tried to speak them aloud.

I wanted to vomit his secrets out of me like a bad meal.

After having come so close to execution I would do almost anything I could in exchange for my life.

But, I could not spill Uncle’s truths.

When Impatience turned to violence to attain his answers, he underestimated my prior relationship with pain. No matter how deep he dug his armored thumb into my shoulder the words he wanted could not escape Uncle's woven vault.

A shout interrupted Impatience’s next round of questioning. The commander stormed into the great hall yelling, but I hardly listened to the words. My attention wandered to the tingle in my belly as the commander came closer. 

I think I knew he was coming.

Entanglement, the mender had called it. I’d never heard of it before. 

I doubted I was the source of it. I couldn’t weave. I had no aptitude for it, even though my parents were strong weavers. 

The commander must have raced here. His face was only a few shades lighter than his rust-red hair. Sweat on his brow and the smell of the moors wafted in with him. 

The two sparred verbally, growing angrier the more they said. She. She. She. They spoke as if I wasn’t present. 

“Look what you’ve done,” the red commander said, pointing at me.  

I’d prefer he didn’t. I would rather blend into the scenery until they saw me as nothing more than the stones in the walls or the floor. 

“I think she’s had more to worry about today than just me,” Impatience quipped back. No, Remi. That’s what Red called him.  

The two knights stared each other down. 

“Go,” Red said breaking the contest between them. “Send a team to follow after Holwick and keep the riders out until the storm gets here.” 

Red kept his tone even, the temperamental emotion he had shown only a moment ago cooled off or stuffed down deep. He might have even been a bit embarrassed. He kept rubbing at the back of his neck, shifting his gaze to me and quickly looking away again.

“We will stay in the keep tonight, bring the men into the hall, wounded first,” Red continued his orders. “Find some servants or kitchen staff and see if we can get this feast served up to our men and the hearths lit. Keep a detail with them to ensure it’s done without any tricks.” 

“What kind of idiot do you think me to be?” 

“I think you are my right hand that gets done all that must be done,” Red said. “And my friend, that forces sense into me when I have forgotten it.” 

“Too right.” Remi, the impatient knight with the pretty blond hair, was radiant when he smiled. Like a little piece of the sun had taken the shape of a man. “And what will you be doing while I accomplish everything?” 

They were friends. Good friends it seemed. I wanted that. The ability to fight with someone and still love them, to trust that they fought for me even as they disagreed with me.

“I will be having a long overdue conversation with her,” Red said, looking at me. 

Oh. No. I’d rather they go back to fighting.

Impatient Remi had been a lot to deal with already. I didn't need another interrogation. I needed a nap. Better yet, I needed a pocketful of spare change and my horse.

Red offered me his hand raised palm-up, in a gentleman’s invitation. “Can you walk?” 

Maybe it was the tug between us, the entanglement, but his invitation felt genuine. 

Still slow and stiff to move, I stretched out my right hand. It shook in the air, but he took it with great care. Helping me to my feet before I could question why I responded to him with blind trust.

My twisted ankle–the reason I ended up in the chair, to begin with–shouted a reminder of its existence.

Red didn’t let me fall. He swept me off my feet into his arms like a rescued princess from a fable. The invisible woven string tying us together released its tug, like a rope gone slack, when the distance between us disappeared.

“Don’t do anything stupid because I’m not there to watch over you, Cal!” Remi called out as Red walked away with me. 

Red had cleaned himself up since I’d last seen him. The gore-splattered tabard was gone and his armor wiped clean of the worst of it. He smelled of horse, sweat, and other less-discernable but no more pleasant scents. At least, I wasn’t being pressed up against the remains of some poor soul. 

I tried to make myself small as he climbed the stairs. Arms crossed over my chest and tension in my spine so my head wouldn’t rest upon his shoulder. It made every step a reminder of all my aches and pains. 

“Relax, your bones are rattling together louder than my armor.” He spoke in a hushed tone. No more than a whisper, and so close to my ear I could feel his breath.  

It made me warm in the growing darkness and chill. “Sorry.” 

“You don’t have to apologize for being scared,” he said as he topped the last steps to the second floor. “We have had a long day, and I have lost my temper in your presence more than once. It’s not something I do often. So I should be the one to apologize for my conduct.” 

Why would this man apologize to me? Not that he had. He only said he should, but even that was more apologetic than any man I could remember.  

“Which way do I go?” he asked, looking up and down the hall. With no servants about, the torches hadn’t been lit, engulfing the hall in deep shadows.

The room I had been rushed into this morning was the only one I knew. It wasn’t mine and I didn’t relish going back there, but options were limited and the thought of stumbling into the bridal chamber sickened me. I pointed him to it, and he carried me in. He carefully placed me on the stool next to the hearth where the maids had prepared me hours–and a lifetime–ago for the marriage that hadn’t been.  

“Wait here.” 

The hearth had died down to ashes with only a few cherry embers giving off a bit of light. He stoked it with the poker adding fresh tinder and a few logs until the flame was licking over the wood. 

He said nothing as he searched the room; moving back and forth, picking up things here and there. Was he searching for makeshift torture devices? There were plenty to be found among the tools for making a lady look pretty. 

He placed a pitcher, basin, and a few squares of cloth on the table beside me and set a kettle on a hook over the fire. It all made the commander seem positively domestic. I hadn’t expected a noble of high status to be so willing and familiar with the work usually reserved for maids.

Brushing a bit of soot from his hands, Red turned his attention back to me. 

I didn’t care if I looked a mess after being tossed about like a child’s doll, but that look on his face. Like I was a wounded kitten. I didn’t want kindness that came from pity. It was a milk always about to spoil.  

“You look uncomfortable. I promise I will try to be as easy on you as I can,” he said. 

He forced a quick and uneasy smile. I imagined it might be his attempt to ease my nerves. I simply wanted him to tell me what he wanted so we could get this over quickly. Not that I could tell him anything, but waiting frayed at what was left of my composure. 

“Take off your dress,” Red said.  

What? 

I would have asked him directly, but he crossed to the other side of the room and began untying and removing his armor piece by piece. The noise of it would have drowned out my reply. I stared in astonishment as he lost more and more layers of metal. He placed them in a neat and practiced arrangement on the floor. The last to come off was a heavy hauberk he laid over a chair. 

Red turned back to face me, wearing only a cream-colored doublet still damp with sweat and a pair of too-tight chausses that left nothing to the imagination.