The Whiteflower Ascendant

Mara Dace learned of her engagement on a market morning, from a woman who smiled as if she had brought cake instead of ruin. "Your father's found you a husband," Maura Fen said, wringing river water from a sheet with both red hands. "One-eyed Cole. The smith's boy." Mara kept scrubbing. The sheet in front of her belonged to the Rooke house, and the Rookes did not pay for linen returned with old blood or kitchen grease still in the seams. The water in the tub had gone gray hours ago. Lye stung the cracks across her knuckles. If she stopped now, Maura would remember that she was paid by the bundle and find a way to take one of Mara's. "Did you hear me?" Maura leaned closer. Her breath smelled of onions and damp bread. "Garrick means to settle it before the next feast day." Mara heard her. Everyone heard everything in Alderwick. The village had no walls worth naming, only low fences, sagging roofs, and doors that never shut tightly enough to keep out smoke, cold, gossip, or fists. A woman could not hide a bruise beneath her sleeve without three neighbors asking how she had earned it. A girl could not bury two copper pennies under a fence post without some boy shouting about treasure by supper. Mara was almost sixteen. In the Avelorn March, that was old enough to be traded into a household and called lucky if the bargain came with a roof. In the world she remembered before this one, sixteen had meant examinations, cheap notebooks, late buses, and rain sliding down clean glass. Here it meant a father's right to hand her to a man with a forge, a bed, and one half-blind eye. "Cole's people have coin," Maura added. "Better than your father deserves." That, at least, was true. Garrick Dace deserved nothing but an empty cup and a locked door. He was a squat, heavy man with muddy brown hair, a drinker's red nose, and the habit of blaming his bad luck on whatever stood nearest. Most often, that was Mara. When ale made him tender, he called her a thin little curse. When it made him angry, he said her dark hair and darker eyes proved she had been marked by the Pit. Mara did not look much like him. She had never looked much like Mira either, the woman who had borne her and died before illness finished taking all the color from her face. Mira had been pale-haired and green-eyed, like most people in Alderwick. Mara was narrow, dark, and quiet. The villagers thought hunger had made her small. Hunger had helped. But Mara suspected there were stranger reasons. Some stubborn part of Lin Vale, the woman she had been in another life, had followed her across death and pressed itself into this body. Not enough to save her. Not enough to make her cleverer, stronger, or blessed. Only enough that, when she looked into a warped bit of mirror, she did not meet an entirely unfamiliar face. Maura was still watching her, waiting for tears. Mara gave her none. At noon, when the washing was counted and stacked, Mara walked to the village road and waited beside the ruts. A farmer from Dunmere was taking seed grain into Alderwick town. His cart was already loaded with sacks, a broken plowshare, and two women who had paid in advance. "Three coppers," the driver said when Mara asked for a ride. "I will pay when I collect my wages." He spat into the mud. "Five, then." Mara nodded and climbed onto the back. The cart lurched forward. Alderwick village slipped behind them, a smear of thatch and smoke pressed low against the fields. A boy near the well cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "There goes grave-face Mara! Hide your coins!" The women on the cart laughed. Mara looked at the road. She had begun washing for the Rooke household when she was twelve. Because she was small, they paid her two-thirds of an adult wage. Because she needed the work, she accepted it. Four years of boiling, beating, rinsing, hauling, and ironing had made her hands older than the rest of her. In winter the skin split until blood marked the linen; in spring it healed badly and split again. In her first life, she had once thought boredom was a kind of suffering. That memory now embarrassed her. Real suffering had weight. It had smell. It woke before dawn and waited beside the bed. It taught the body to value a crust of bread, a dry hem, a locked door, a day without being noticed. The road to Alderwick town was only a few miles, but the cart moved slowly. Mud sucked at the wheels. Bare branches scraped the sky. By the time the chapel spire appeared above the roofs, Mara had decided on the shape of her plea. She did not go first to the Rooke house. She went to Saint Alian's Chapel. It was the second-best building in Alderwick, which meant only that its roof did not leak in more than three places. The Rookes owned the best house, a long stone structure with glass windows and a courtyard wall. The chapel had blackened saints, cold flagstones, and candles that never went out because the priest insisted the Dawn must always have a flame to find. Mara did not believe in the Lady of the Dawn. In the world before, disbelief had been an opinion. Here, it was a hazard. Priests blessed babies, lords, thieves, drunkards, soldiers, and women who came to the altar with split lips. Even the men who cheated at dice crossed themselves before drawing a knife. Mara had learned early to bow her head at the right moments and keep her private thoughts behind her teeth. Father Ashwell received petitions in a narrow screened room beside the nave. He had served Alderwick for twenty-seven years, long enough for pity to become a scar rather than a wound. Mara knelt because girls like her were expected to kneel. "My father means to give me to Cole of the forge," she said. Behind the screen, the priest shifted. His chair creaked. "Marriage is not always a misfortune, child." "This one is." Silence. Mara lowered her eyes to her folded hands. The posture made her look harmless. Harmless girls lived longer. "I earn four Avelorn silvers a week at the Rooke washhouse. If my father keeps me at home one more year, I can bring him more than Cole's family is offering. I will swear it before the Lady if you ask me to." "A vow made under fear is a fragile thing." "Then ask my father what he loves more. A vow, or silver." The words escaped sharper than she intended. Ashwell did not rebuke her. Perhaps he was too tired. Perhaps he knew Garrick well enough to find the question fair. Mara pressed on. "You need only speak to him. Tell him it would be wiser to wait. Tell him the chapel frowns on haste. Tell him anything that sounds holy." The screen hid Ashwell's face, but not his pause. Mara knew that pause. Adults used it when deciding whether a child's misery was inconvenient enough to ignore. "The Lady sees you," he said at last. Mara's hands tightened. "Does she?" Her voice stayed soft. Softness was safer than anger. "Then she has watched a great deal." A knock sounded from the outer door. Someone else was waiting: a penitent, a liar, a woman with a bruise, a man with stolen goods under his coat. Alderwick was never short of sins. Father Ashwell exhaled. "May the Dawn keep you, Mara Dace." It was a dismissal. Mara rose. Her knees were cold through her skirt. Outside, the town stank in the daylight. Slops ran along the gutters. Men drank against walls before noon. Painted women leaned beneath warped shutters and watched the street with bored, clever eyes. A bucket emptied from an upstairs window, splashing filth across the stones a few paces ahead of Mara's shoes. She stepped around it.