Ena of Ilbrea: The Four Book Saga

Chapter 5

5

The ink stained my fingers, leaving them a bright blue. The color was pretty, I’d done my job well, but against the dull brown of the workshop, the hue seemed obscene. There was nothing in Harane to match the pigment’s brightness.

But Lily had asked me to make the color, preparing for the merchants who would come all the way down from the capital, Ilara, seeking inks as summer neared.

It should have been Lily inside grinding up leaves and berries to make the inks that were her living, but she was too busy with her other work. Work that would see her hanged by the soldiers.

A cough had swept through the village, and no one in Harane could afford the gold demanded by the Guilds’ healer. It was left to Lily to see to the children so far gone with fever they couldn’t hold their heads up anymore.

She’d sneak her herbs into the houses of the desperate, treating the ill with whatever she could grow in her garden and the things I could forage in the woods. Lily rarely brought me with her when she tended to the sick and wounded. Only when there was something she wanted me to learn, or too many desperate people for her to handle on her own. I don’t know if she kept me away out of fear or mercy, but either way, it ended up the same.

Lily would leave a written list of inks for me to blend and give spoken orders of what tonics and salves she needed made. I’d sit in the house, letting it fill with enough steam to clog my lungs as I made vials of ink in one set of bowls and healing things in another, all on the one worn, wooden table. I think Lily believed any Guilded soldier sent to her home wouldn’t have the sense to know which flowers had been chosen for their ability to fight fever and which had been selected for their pigment. She was probably right.

Whatever her reasoning might have been, the rains hadn’t stopped in the three days since I’d left my brother in the forest, and I was trapped with a mortar and pestle, grinding sweet smelling leaves until I couldn’t move my fingers anymore as the storm finally drifted east over the mountains.

I left the pulpy mixture of the ink to sit. It would be hours before the stuff would be ready to be carefully strained and then poured into a glass jar to be sold.

Sun peeked in through the windows as I moved on to grinding roots for Lily’s remedies. The pungent smell tickled my nose as I worked my way through one knot and then another.

A tap on the door, so light I almost thought the rain had come back, pulled me out of the monotonous motion. I froze with the pestle still in my hand, listening for sounds outside.

The tapping came again.

I gave a quiet curse before calling, “Lily’s out, but I’ll be with you in one moment,” as I pulled down the tray that hid under the tabletop. I set the roots, leaves, mortar and pestle, and vial of oil on the tray and fixed it back under the table as quickly as I could without risking any noise.

I untied the top of my bodice, shaking the laces loose and grabbing both strings in one hand as I opened the door.

“So sorry.” I tied my bodice closed over my shift. “I must have drifted off.”

I looked up to find, not a soldier come to drag me out for whipping, but Karin, who gave me a scathing look as she slipped past into the workshop.

“Fell asleep?” Karin circled the long table where I’d hidden the tray before peeping through the curtain that blocked off the bit of the first floor where Lily slept.

“The storm made me sleepy.” I ran my fingers through my hair, leaving smudges of blue behind that would drive me mad trying to wash out later.

“And there’s no one else here?” Karin’s eyes twinkled as she stopped at the ladder that led to the loft where I slept. “No one who might make you forget to work?”

If I hadn’t known Karin since before either of us could walk, I would have grabbed her skirts and torn her from the ladder as she climbed up like she owned the chivving shop. But Karin meant no harm, and stopping her search would only make the rumors that I’d had a man in the house keeping me from answering the door fly through the village faster.

I could have told her the truth. I had been busy working on illegal remedies for Lily and was afraid a soldier had come to the door. And I’d rather be accused of sleeping on the job than hanged for helping an unguilded healer offer remedies. But then Karin would be obligated to turn me in or risk punishment from the soldiers herself.

I leaned against the table, tracing the outline of a purple ink stain, listening to the sounds of Karin checking under my cot and opening my trunk that wouldn’t have been large enough to hide Cal anyway.

“You really are the most boring person who’s ever lived.” Karin carefully lifted her skirts to come back down the ladder.

“I’m sure I am.” I took a box of charcoal and dumped a few bits into a fresh mortar. “So you might as well scoot back to more interesting company and leave me to my work.”

“Don’t you dare start on something that’s going to make so much of a mess.” Karin snatched the charcoal-filled mortar out of my reach. She stared at me, a glimmer of delight playing in the corners of her eyes.

I knew she wanted me to ask why she’d come and what I’d need clean hands for. The bit of obstinance that curled in my stomach wasn’t as strong as the part of me that wanted something interesting to be happening after all the rain. Even if it was only Handor and Shilv fighting over whose sheep were harassing whose again.

“What is it, you fairy of a biddy?”

“Only the best, most delightful news.” Karin took my shoulders, steering me to the pump sink in the corner. She worked the handle while she spoke. “Well, after word came south on the road that the map makers with a load of their soldiers were coming our way―”

“What?” I froze, a brick of harsh soap clutched in my hand.

“There’s a whole pack of Guilded heading our way. How have you not heard?”

“I’ve been inside working.” I scrubbed at the blue and black on my hands. “Some of us have things we actually have to get done.”

“You should admit the real problem is you never bothering to talk to people besides Cal and Lily. You should try making friends, Ena. It would be good for you.”

“Yes, fine.” I snatched the pot of oily cream from the shelf. “What about the soldiers?”

“Right.” Karin leaned in. “So, word comes down the road that there’s a whole caravan of paun Guilded headed our way. Cal’s parents are head over heels planning to have all the fancy folks at the tavern, the farmers have started trying to hide their stock so it can’t be counted, and”―she paused, near shuddering with glee―“Henry Tilly took his horse and disappeared for two days.”

“What?” I wiped the cream and the rest of the color from my fingers with a rag. “Did the soldiers get him?”

“No.” Karin laughed. “He rode north, all the way to Nantic.”

“Toward the paun caravan? Who in their right mind would do such a thing?”

Karin took my elbow and led me to a seat at the table. She pushed aside the curtain to Lily’s room and snatched up Lily’s hairbrush.

“Nantic is a much bigger place than Harane.” Karin shook my hair free from its braid. “So many things to offer that we don’t have in our tiny little village.”

“Like people who tell stories that actually make sense?”

Karin dragged the brush roughly through my hair in retaliation. “Like a scribe.”

“What?”

“A Guilded scribe. One who can offer all the official forms the Guilds force us to use for every little thing we do. Like buying land, being buried…getting married.”

“Henry is getting married?” I spun around wide-eyed. “To you?”

“Oh gods no, not me!” Karin screwed up her face. “I’d never marry him. His left eye’s bigger than his right.”

“Who is he marrying then?” I knelt on the chair, gripping the back.

“Malda!” Karin clapped a hand over her mouth.

“What?”

“Henry found out the soldiers, and map makers, and entire fleet of paun were on their way and raced through the night all thirty miles up to Nantic to get marriage papers from the Guilds’ scribe.” Karin twirled the brush through the air. “And do you know why?”

“Love, I suppose.”

“She’s pregnant. That little mouse Malda is pregnant and more than just a little. Gods, now that I know, it’s impossible not to see how her belly’s grown.”

“Henry’s a slitching fool.” I dragged my fingers through my hair.

Karin grabbed my shoulders, making me face front in the chair again.

“A fool he is,” Karin said, “but at least he cares for Malda enough not to risk the paun catching her pregnant without a husband. If those soldiers found her out, she’d be taken and sent to give birth on Ian Ayres in the middle of the sea. No one ever comes back from that place.”

A chill shook my spine, but Karin kept talking.

“Henry brought coin to Nantic to pay the scribe, but the scribe told him he’d have to wait seven months for marriage papers.”

“Seven months?” I tried to turn again, but Karin whacked me on the head with the brush.

“By which time there will be a new little screaming Henry or Malda in this world. Henry had to give the scribe his horse to get the papers and spent the last two days trudging back through the rain.”

“Is he all right?” My eyes darted toward the tray hidden under the table. That long in the cold rain, and it was only a matter of time before Lily had to darken his door.

“He’s in the tavern right now having a warm frie to cheer him for his wedding this afternoon.” Karin twisted my hair. “They’re laying hay out in the square to make a space for it. The whole thing will be done long before the sun sets, so Malda will be a married woman before the Guilds can set eyes on her ever-expanding belly.”

“This afternoon? Today?” I asked.

“Yes, Ena. That is how days usually go. The whole village will be turning up for this wedding, so you need to look like a proper lady, and I need just a little bit of your magic to give me a wonderful spring blush.” Karin scraped my scalp with pins.

“What for? Even if they put down enough hay to feed the horses for a season, we’ll all still end up covered in mud.”

“Because,” Karin said, stepping in front of me and pointing a finger at my nose, “nothing makes a man consider the fact that marriage is inevitable more than a wedding. Henry panicking could be our chance to snatch a prize worth having.”

Heat shot up to my cheeks.

“No.” I stood, not meeting Karin’s eyes as I stalked to the corner where the few small tubs of powders and paints for women’s faces were kept. “You dab as much pink on your cheeks as you like, but I’ll have none of it on me. I’m too young to be worrying about marriage.”

“But is Cal?” That awful twinkle sprang back into Karin’s eyes.

“Paint your face, you wretch.” I tossed her a tin.