The Kingdom of Little Wounds (45 page)

Saa.
There it is.

Midi Sorte and I are allies.

And we are walking outside the palace walls, along the great Skön Kanal of Skyggehavn. Edging our way between shoulders and hips, along the spaces opened up for entertainments. We are together.

The crowds make a stew of murmurous anticipation. On foot and in boats, they cheer when the nobles cheer. I reach back among Midi’s soft skirts and clasp her arm. Not merely so we won’t be pulled apart amid the shifting and the bumping; she also seems to need it. She wears her noble pattens for walking on muddy footpaths and stony squares, but she’s clumsy as a pig in a ditch and almost stumbles into one. She’s tired and unwell; her fingers are like ice. No cloak, because she hasn’t needed one in the Queen’s chambers, and she’s unused to cold.

Yes, this version of Elinor Parfis, Countess of Belnát, needs me to hold her up. She needs me to find her way. She has not been among common Skyggehavners in years, if she ever did walk through them; more likely, she took a boat with the real Elinor everywhere the Countess went. She recoils from trolls who beg for money, even from sellers of nuts and ribbons who call out that some color would enliven her gown.

“Nej, nej, nej,”
I say, arm out to ward them off. No, no, no.

In time, the people start to fall away. They dip knees to Midi’s strangeness, to her silks and glittering paillettes. They speculate.

Must be an entertainment from the palace.

Look again. Entertainment don’t wear silk.

I’ve heard of this one. She’s the Dark Countess who waits on the Queen.

She’s Queen of Night herself.

My father’s star, once brighter than the sun, has paled to the light of an ordinary torch. Night is growing nightlier.

So Midi and I stumble on together, beside the great canal, toward the house with the stone head. Following my plot.

At first, I could not think of a
how.
The
how
was too hard to imagine. I knew only that I had to speak and please the others.

So I began to gibber another fairy story, one I made up as I spoke. About an evil king with a bloody crown, two little princesses he demanded to take as brides, a mother who saved them by casting a spell.

And as I spoke, an idea grew in me, so when I stopped the story (with what some would call a bad end), I was ready. I had a plan.

As I should have expected, Midi and Queen Isabel found my scheme as difficult to believe in as the magical tale I had just told them. But perhaps the tale prepared the way for action, because here we are embarked upon what I suggested. My scheme. My madness.

In Isabel’s chamber, I pointed at Midi. “She’s the only one of us who can pass the gates unchallenged. You can’t, Your Highness, because you’re the Queen; and I can’t because I’m a servant. But that one can go wherever she likes, as long as she’s dressed as the Countess and is known to have your favor.”

Midi looked down at her once-glorious gown, streaked now from Isabel’s miscarriage. I could tell it had never occurred to her, this idea that she might simply walk out and thereby escape her bonds. She is so accustomed to being a slave that she would never think of running away.

“No one will see the blood on your skirt, now there’s no sun,” I assured her, even as I remembered uncomfortably that I had to change my soggy monthly cloths for clean ones. “You’ll pass the guards as a countess. They’ll let you do anything you want tonight.”

I could see Midi wavering, almost daring to believe, but Isabel fretted. “I cannot lose my Elinor again!” she wailed — though she retained enough sense to hold her wailing to a whisper, so only Midi and I heard.

At that, Midi touched her gently on the shoulder. I realized then that some change had come over her, as if she’d developed a true friendship for Isabel, and one more tender than the real Elinor’s ever was.

“Midi — Elinor — will come back,” I said, somewhat uncertainly; for why would she, once having tasted freedom? “If perhaps . . . Your Highness might offer her some reward?”

Of course, I was seeking a reward for myself as well. I held my request ready. But Isabel focused on Midi, brown eyes on brown eyes.

“Elinor, if you do this,
I will grant your heart’s desire.
” The words from a fairy tale.

In reply, Midi spread her hands. What would anyone want in her position? What would anyone dare to want? Even when told she could do it for herself, she sought permission to go.

“Yes,” Isabel resolved. “If you do this for me, I’ll give you . . . complete liberty.” She seemed to understand in that moment that Midi is a slave — though in some sense we are all slaves to our sovereigns. “Then you may do exactly as you please. You may join Count Belnát on the green islands or go wherever else you like.” Then again, it was as if she didn’t understand after all who Midi is. “Or” (wistfully) “you could remain with me . . . If you would like to,
I
would like you to. And you” — she turned to me at last —“what do you want?”

For a moment, with the words
heart’s desire
echoing in the anxious bell of my brain, I saw Jacob Lille’s face and the legendary solid streets of Copenhagen into which he’s vanished. But I say instead, “I want freedom too. For Klaus Bingen, who has been unfairly imprisoned.”

I still have some doubts as to whether Isabel can really grant this wish, given Nicolas’s tight hold on the present government; but a mad queen seemed more likely to keep a promise than a cruel regent, and so I decided.

I never wanted to kill her, anyway. I prefer not to be a murderess. It is a relief to shake off that role — one impossible task I need not complete.

“He’ll go free,” Queen Isabel vowed. Her lips were white from the effort of speaking and plotting and trying to remain un-mad. “My daughter will do it. My son. Bring me a baby and you’ll have what you wish for, and money besides. But here . . .” Her right hand struggled with her left, tugging at the little finger until she pulled something off. “Take this. A baby cannot come cheap.”

I dared step to her loose-clasped fingers and dig into their nest. I emerged with a most precious egg: the famous ruby ring of the Bullen family.

I carry the ring in my pocket now.

It is surprisingly heavy, the first real jewel I’ve held without a backing of cloth or a casing of skin. No, not surprising; a jewel should have a certain heft. Especially a ruby. And one of such importance.

At first, I took pleasure at feeling this weight upon
my
hand, rubbing against
my
fingers. Then Isabel, for what seemed like the last time possible, called me away from pleasure and back to duty. “Go quickly, both of you.”

And when we looked at each other, uncertain — for accompanying Midi was not part of my plan — Isabel added, “She’ll never find the way on her own.”

Midi pointed to the chest where the miscarriage was stored. But I thought, with that selfish scheming part of me, that it was better to leave the demon there for now; because the demon keeps pressure on Isabel to honor her promises. While I mouthed something about it being easier to dispose of after the new baby is in place, Isabel interrupted impatiently:

“Then go on, go quickly, together. You can leave me alone for once in my life. Everyone considers me dead, anyway.”

So here we walk on the other side of the gates, among crowds who treat Midi as noble; on an errand for a dead Queen, to save a man who may be dead already himself. It is the one constant of our lives: We push against Fate, driven forward by the limpest of hopes, that Chance will intervene and save us.

I am Elinor.

After every thing that have happen in my life, here be the first thought that cause me deep upset.
I am Elinor.

When I crack the door and leave the inner chamber and pass through the rooms and nooks and down the stair . . . all the palace see me as she. They let me pass, they bow to my skirts. And though they might stare, they require no thing of me — no paper or permission — be cause while I be Elinor, I am one who give such permission, not get it. And Ava is the one who knew it could be so. Why did I never think it? Why did n’t Arthur say so? If he ever had a kind feeling for me . . .

Outside where the night smell too sweet and feel too cold, I nod at guards and hoist my bosoms. They bow and dip they halberds. So they also let me pass, and Ava with me. To the gate, and then they ope the gate. And at last I am Outside.

I am Elinor.

I walk in the city.

It is a terrible place.

Three steps beyond the palace, on the square of the cathedral, filth begin. Heaps of trash and dirt and cats crawling every where, eating trash. Dogs snapping at the cats. They eat trash, too, and fight each other.

Some thing catch my skirt with it jaws. I fall, Ava catch me. From then after she hold my arm while our breath make snow in the air and broken people ask for money. One balance a knife upon his nose and then push it down his throat to ask that people pay. I refuse, though he speak around the knife and call me a
grande dame
and say that I be beautiful.

We have no money any way. We have just a ring to buy a baby. A tiny child who have no opinion for his own price and who will become a coin-purse for the Lunedies.

Ava have said may be we will not need to pay, a baby with such a future may come free. If he even exist. But I know she will make sure to use the ring some way and mold me to her plan, and so she grip my arm so tight as an eel she’ll eat for her dinner.

We trace the canal they call Beautiful, and though I see great houses that I know belong to some of the court, I see also more filth heaps between them, streams of garbage leak to the big water. The canal is choked of boats, and in between there swim rats who seek out trash and careless skirts to nibble. The tall, cold people of this place point to me and stare as we pass by, while rats tear shreds from off they clothes to make their beds.