The Belandria Tarot

Chapter 3: Eight Of Swords

Marriette wandered through the market. The sun shone warm after the cold spring rain, but she still kept the hood of her cloak up. Marriette's hair was an unremarkable brown, and no poets were going to sing the praises of her beauty. Her father paraded her around enough that even here a servant from another great House might recognize her. If word got back to him, he'd be furious.

After all, Art had. He was so kind to her. His strong hugs and gentle smile brought a different warmth to her face. The market's bustle was so different from the austere elegance of her father's home. She breathed in the scents and sounds of the city as it enjoyed the return of warmth. Even the fecund smell from the pens of the animals couldn't crush her mood.

Marriette didn't manage to escape her father often, and the punishment was dire, but she couldn't sit ladylike in her cold, shadowed room. The stolen servant's dress was much freer and more comfortable than any of her fine gowns. She walked through the market with an easy stride that would have turned her father's face dark with anger. The thought of him made Marriette shorten her walk to something more refined, then she gritted her teeth and lengthened it again. He might be the most important person in Bellandria next to the king, but she wasn't going to let him push her around anymore.

A cloud covered the sun as she strode out again, and the sudden dimness and coolness made her father seem near. Marriette's heart pounded. Foolishness, but her mood was spoiled. Even when he wasn't there to control every part of her life, her father made her life miserable. Her face crumpled and tears leaked out of her eyes.

"Stupid girl," she said to herself, "pull yourself together. You are not going to disgrace the deLanguiers by crying in a common market." The cold, uncaring voice of her father in her head dried up the tears and lifted her head. All he ever worried about was his importance, and the possibility of another House taking his position.

As much as she loved the experience of being free and unchaperoned in the market, Marriette couldn't ignore the effect she had on the people around her. They watched her from the corner of their eyes. In spite of her rough dress and cloak, they made it obvious that she didn't belong. Though she had no basket to carry purchases, she stopped and looked at the stalls and displays. She didn't talk to the people behind them, not knowing what to say. The crowd flowed around her. Even in the midst of the so many, she was alone.

Marriette was more used to being invisible. She no longer wondered at it. At home, her father's cronies let their eyes slide past her without ever stopping. Even the servants came and went through her rooms as if she wasn't there, on her father's orders. Her mother died when she was just a child of eight. In the decade since then the Duke of deLanguiers worked to crush her and form her into a tool for his use. Running out into the city was one of the few ways Marriette had left to assert her own existence. He would beat her for it, but she was used to that. Her father had been punishing her for one thing or another since her mother had died. She wasn't going to let a potential beating stop her from her purpose today.

Marriette walked toward the end of the market where the wagons came in and were unloaded. Horses and oxen steamed as men hitched and unhitched them. The wagons were unloaded with rough efficiency. She recognized some of the men from her previous trips to the market, but they ignored her. She knew she wasn't pretty enough for their whistles. The way the barmaids talked to the men when Arthur took her to the Broken Dog astounded her. What must it be like to banter so freely?

Art had been the first person to see her in as long as she could remember. She still didn't know what it was that had made him look up from his work and come over to talk to her. Ignoring the complaints and jeers of the other men, Art took her to a little tent where they drank weak tea and talked. Not only did he notice her, he listened. Over the next few months, Marriette crept out of her father's house, again and again, to meet the strong, blond man who made her heart beat with something other than fear.

The long, cold winter had offered little chance for Marriette to escape her father's house. In desperation, she chanced sending Art a letter asking him to meet her, but her father suddenly announced that they must attend a ball at another duke's city house. Trussed up in clothes meant to make her beautiful, she spent the evening dancing awkwardly in the arms of young nobles whose hungry gazes were for her father's wealth, or listening to her father explain how much she was disappointing him.

Today, Marriette came to surprise Art, and to apologize for not showing up at their assignation. She watched the men at work for a while looking for Art. A young girl stood off to one side with a board making marks as bales and boxes were moved about.

"Excuse me," Marriette said, "could you tell me where to find Art?"

"You mean Arthur?" The girl didn't look up from her work. "Haven't seen him for a couple of days, Father is furious. This is our busiest season and Arthur is supposed to be learning the business."

"Would you give him a message for me?"

"Sure, assuming he can still hear after Father is done with him. You know what fathers are like."

"Oh, yes," Marriette said. "Just tell him Marriette was asking after him and said sorry."

The young girl looked at Marriette for a long moment, then nodded.

"I will, promise. You had best be getting on. It is almost time for break and this is a rough bunch. My name is Joan, if you come around again. I'm Arthur's sister."

"Thank you."

Marriette walked back toward the market. The day grew warmer, and she was uncomfortably hot. She envied Joan both her lighter clothing and her quiet confidence. Marriette pushed the hood back away from her face and reveled in the cool breeze. Even though she wasn't going to see Art, Marriette was reluctant to go home. The day was so beautiful, she couldn't bear to be locked up in her room any sooner than need be. The breeze caressed her face, and the young woman walked in whatever direction the playful wind led her.

The wind failed and left her in the midst of a strange section of the market. The people in the stalls were dressed in bright colours and embroidery. Unlike the people in the market, they made no secret of their suspicious looks. Marriette swallowed and tried to remember the path that had brought her to this unfriendly place. Tears pushed at the back of her eyes, and she rubbed angrily at them. She was not going to cry just because she had got herself lost.

Marriette couldn't help staring at two young men whose braids might have been as long as her own. They said something to her in a strange language, then laughed and walked away. A familiar heat burned her face. She didn't know the language, but she did know mockery all too well. They sounded like the young men her father forced her to associate with.

"You must be thirsty, m'dear."

Marriette started and spun around. The speaker was an old woman. Her hair was grey, though her eyes still looked sharply at Marriette.

"I am, a little, now that you mention it." A sudden raging thirst clutched at her throat, dust coating her tongue.

"Come, I make you some cool tea. Maybe I tell your cards." The woman led her into a tent. She pushed Marriette onto a cushion on the floor. "Wait. I come with drink. Ease thirst."

Marriette was too thirsty to be scared. How had she become so dry so quickly? She might fall into dust any moment. The woman came back with a tray with glasses filled with a clear red liquid.

"Rose tea, make you beautiful, make the boys want you."

Marriette took a glass and barely remembered to nod in thanks before she sipped at the glass. Indescribable liquid flowed through her mouth. Lemon, but also something tasting a bit like the smell of a rose. She finished the glass, and a second without concerning herself that it wasn't ladylike. An oversize deck of cards lay on the tray.

"What are these?"

"Those are the cards of fate. They will tell you your past, and your future." The woman handed them to her. "Hold them and think your question. Do you have silver? No, your father is a hard man who doesn't give his only child any money of her own." She took the cards back and began dealing them out.

The first was a man lying with swords stuck in his back.

"Ten of Swords."

Another card showing a woman surrounded by more swords.

I look like her.

"Eight of Swords."

The third showed cups floating in the air filled with fantastical images.

"Seven of Cups. The cards of your question. You are trapped in a life that is killing you. To break free will cause great pain, to stay will bring greater pain yet. Wishful thinking that you will escape without pain. Put it off now, make it worse later."

More swords. "Three of swords: you lived through heartbreak and loneliness, hope betrayed to pain. Ace of Cups: love in your future, not what you expect."

Another card laid under the line, a skeleton in black armour. Marriette's heart fluttered as she gasped for air.

"Death: your life will change, and change and change again before you hold the cup in your hands."

The next card was worse. A malignant creature held a man and woman in chains.

"The Devil traps you. He keeps you hopeless and ignorant." She began laying out yet more cards and talking of future struggle and pain, always pain. Marriette stared appalled at the cards and wondered why she bothered living. There was a tower struck by lightning and falling. She knew how it felt. More swords, more cups, a man blithely stepping off a cliff, another hanging from a tree. Her head swam. The drone of the old woman became a voice thundering doom. Marriette held her head and tried to shut out the cards, but they burned their way into her mind. The woman laid the last card in the pattern, a person in a chariot perfectly balanced between light and dark.

"This is the crux, to choose," the old woman said. "It doesn't make sense now, but it will in time."

It was too much for Marriette; she let out a thin scream and fainted.

"Take her back to her father," the woman said to a man who came in from the back, "when you get back, we leave."