Ena of Ilbrea: The Four Book Saga

Chapter 6

6

It took more than an hour for Karin to paint her face to a marriageable hue, riffle through the few clothes I owned to choose what she wanted me to wear, and give up on the idea of her painting my cheeks as well.

She’d just finished tightening the laces on my bodice to display enough of my breasts to be considered obscene, when Lily stepped in through the garden door, basket over her arm and mud clinging to her boots.

Lily stared from Karin to me. “So, you’ve already heard the joyous news.”

“I told her.” Karin gave my bodice laces one more tug. “Had to get her ready for the wedding, didn’t I?”

“What’s to be gotten ready for?” Lily set her basket on the table. “Put your breasts away, Ena. You’re pretty enough to get into plenty of trouble without two beacons poking out the front of your dress.”

“They’re not poking out.” I glanced down, making sure there wasn’t more showing than I’d thought.

Lily unloaded the goods from her basket. “There is a fine line between the kind of beauty gods bless you with, and the kind given by the shadows to bring trouble into your life. You, Ena Ryeland, are balancing on the edge of beauty becoming a curse. So, tuck your t**s back in your top before someone you don’t fancy decides they have a right to the body you were born with.”

“Yes, Lily.” My face burned red.

Karin slapped my hands away as I tried to loosen my bodice. She grabbed the pale blue fabric of my shift instead, giving it a tug to cover more of my chest.

“Help me get these things put away so we don’t miss the wedding.” Lily went to her bedroom, leaving a trail of muddy boot prints behind. “We need to bring something for the bride and groom. I would say they should be gifted a lick of common sense, but it seems they threw that away five months ago when a roll in the hay seemed worth risking a life for.”

Karin turned to me, her eyebrows creeping up her forehead. “I’ll see you there,” she mouthed before dodging out the door.

“Is that girl gone?” Lily asked.

“Yes, Lily.” I examined the goods Lily had brought home with her. A fair number of eggs, two loaves of seed bread, a bottle of chamb, and a skein of thick spun wool. “You saw that many today?”

“Bad stomach, an awful cough, and had to stitch up the side of Les’s head.”

“What happened to Les’s head?” I tucked the eggs into the shallow basket by the iron stove and wrapped the bread in a cloth.

“If you ask Les, he knocked his head in the barn.” Lily stalked back out of her bedroom, a clean dress on, mud still clinging to her boots. “If you look at the manic glint in his wife’s eyes, she finally got sick of the slitch and smacked him upside the head hard enough to draw blood.”

“What did Les do to make her so mad?”

“Damned if I know what he’s done this time.” Lily pumped the sink to scrub her hands. “That boy was born stupid, and he didn’t get much better once he learned to talk.”

“Fair enough.” I took over pumping the giant metal handle.

Lily methodically washed the skin around her nails in the cold water. “The map maker’s party is coming through. Should be here tomorrow from the sounds of it.”

“Karin said as much.”

“Map makers always come with a pack of soldiers. Who knows how big the company will be?”

“Either way, they should be through pretty quick.” I passed Lily a cloth to dry her hands on. “They aren’t coming to Harane on purpose. They’re only taking the mountain road to get someplace else.”

Lily nodded silently for a moment. “I don’t want you in the village tomorrow. Head out to the mountains in the morning.”

“It’s been raining for days. There won’t be anything for me to bring back but mud.”

“Then bring back some mud.” Lily took my face in her hands. “I don’t want you around when the paun come through. I won’t have it on my head when that pretty face of yours becomes a curse.”

A knot of something like dread closed around my stomach. “I’ll just stay inside and out of sight.”

“You’ll get to the mountains and thank me for it.” She squeezed my face tighter.

I stared into her steel gray eyes.

“Do you hear me, girl?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” She let go of my face. “Now, what in this chivving mess should we give the idiots getting married this afternoon?”

“Something for a chest rattle.” I pulled up the loose floorboard that housed all of Lily’s illegal goods. “If Karin is right, Henry will need it in a few days if he doesn’t already.”

“Fine. Give it to his mother so the fool doesn’t go losing it.”

“Yes, Lily.” I pulled out one of the little wooden boxes that held the thick paste.

“Out you get then.” Lily grabbed the broom from near the woodstove. “Go celebrate the panic caused by young lust.”

I managed to pull my coat on before she spoke again.

“And let this be a lesson to you, Ena. Give yourself to a man with no sense, and you’ll end up getting married on a godsforsaken muddy day to a fool who no longer owns a horse.”

I darted out the door before Lily could say anything else. I cared for the old lady, even if she was harsh and a little strange. She swore worse than a Guilded sailor just as easily as she whispered comfort to the dying.

No one in Harane could blame Lily for her rough edges. Nigh on all of us owed our lives to her for something or other, and the few who’d been lucky enough never to need Lily’s help would have been awfully lonely living at the foot of the mountains with the rest of us dead.

Mud soaked my boots before I’d made it through the garden and to the road. I lifted my hem as I leapt over the worst of the puddles, though I knew there was no hope of my skirt making it through the day unscathed.

The air in the village tasted different than it had a few days ago, and not just from the rain. The stink of despair had fled, replaced by a dancing breeze of hope.

It was true enough that Henry and Malda were only getting married to escape the wrath of the Guilds. If the lords far away in Ilara hadn’t passed a law banning children being born outside marriage, then Shilv wouldn’t have been carrying hay to the square.

Malda wouldn’t have had to fear being snatched up by soldiers, loaded onto a ship, and sent out to the isle of Ian Ayres to give birth. Henry wouldn’t have had to give up his horse. I wouldn’t have been dodging puddles with salve in my coat pocket. And the whole village would have had endless hours of entertainment for the next few months wondering if Malda was carrying a child or had only taken too strongly to sweet summer cakes.

But the Guilds ruled Ilbrea with their shining, golden fist. If they said women carrying babies out of wedlock were to be taken, there was nothing we could do to fight the paun. Just like we couldn’t stop them from whipping Aaron to death. In the whole land of Ilbrea, there was nothing unguilded rotta like us could do but try and avoid the Guilds’ notice and hope they weren’t bored enough to come after us anyway.

I’d gotten so lost in wondering what would have happened to Malda and her baby if Henry hadn’t had a horse to offer, I walked right past the tavern.

“Ena!” Cal called out the kitchen window, waving a flour-covered rag, which left a puff of white floating in the air.

“Don’t hang out the window,” Cal’s father shouted. “If you want to talk to the girl, bring her inside like a civilized man.”

Cal bit back his smile. “Miss Ryeland, would you grace us with your presence in our humble kitchen?”

“Why thank you.” I gave as deep a curtsy as I could manage without sinking my hem deep into the mud and headed back up the street to the tavern door.

Harane didn’t have many businesses that would interest travelers, and everything that might appeal, aside from Lily’s ink shop, had been packed into the very center of the village. The tavern, cobbler, stables, tannery, and smith had all been built close together with narrow alleys running between them, as though whoever had laid the foundations had thought Harane would become a town or even a city someday.

That person had been wrong.

Harane was nothing but a tract of fertile farmland situated thirty miles south of Nantic and twenty-nine miles north of Hareford on the Guild-approved road that ran as close to the mountains as travelers dared to get. The only reason the tavern managed to fill its aged, wooden tables every night was the travelers who needed a place to stop between Nantic and Hareford, and the village men, like Les, who were too afraid of their wives to go home.

The tables in the tavern only had a smattering of people since the travelers hadn’t arrived for the night and the village folk were getting ready for the surprise wedding.

“Ena.” Cal waved me in through the kitchen door.

The scent of baking pastries, roasting meat, and fresh poured frie warmed my face before I even neared the wide fireplace and big iron oven.

“I take it you heard?” Cal raised an eyebrow at my hair.

I ran my fingers along the delicate twists Karin promised would win me a husband, blushing to the roots of my hair as I met Cal’s gaze. “Karin insisted.”

“Careful of the hot.” Cal’s mother pulled a tray of sweet rolls from the oven. The tops had been crusted to a shining brown.

“Those are beautiful.” I leaned in to sniff. “I didn’t think you’d spend the time on a last minute wedding.”

Cal’s mother tsked. “I’m making three loaves of bread for the wedding. One for each of them.”

I coughed a laugh.

“The rolls are for the Guilded coming through,” she said. “I only hope it’s true they’re coming tomorrow. If not, the lot will go stale. But if I wait to start until they arrive, I won’t be able to make enough to sell.” She worried her wrinkled lips together. “I’ve already had the rooms upstairs cleaned, and Cal’s pulled fresh barrels of frie and chamb. I only hope it’s enough.”

“Does it matter?” I leaned against the edge of the table. “It’s a caravan of paun. If you don’t have enough for them, they’ll just have to stay in their camp where they belong and move on south all the faster.”

“We need their business,” Cal’s father said. “A day with the caravan will be more coin than we’ll see for the rest of the summer. The gods smiled on us when they sent the map makers down the mountain road.”

“Right.” I felt my mouth curve into a smile even as a horrible cold tingled down my neck and surrounded the dread in my stomach. “I’m very happy for you.”

“Is there anything else you need me for?” Cal asked.

“Go.” His mother shooed him toward the door. “But if anyone dares say something snide about your father and me not coming to the square, tell them not to darken the tavern door for a month. I don’t care how thirsty they are for frie.”

“Yes, mother.” Cal kissed his mother’s cheek and took a basket from near the stove.

“Someday soon, there will be a wedding worth leaving work undone for,” Cal’s mother said. “This is not that day.”

I bit my lips together and let Cal put a hand on my waist, guiding me back out into the main room of the tavern.

“Honestly,” Cal said in a low voice as soon as the kitchen door shut behind us, “it’s probably better my parents not come.”

“Why?” I whispered.

“Poor Henry has to stand in front of everyone, with the whole village knowing full well what a slitch he was to let Malda hang for so long. Imagine adding my mother’s glare to that weight.”

I laughed, and the cold and dread around my stomach vanished with a tiny pop of joy.