The Truth-Teller's Tale (14 page)

Roelynn's brother Micah had been aboard the ship.

 

 

There was no way to comfort Roelynn. I was not good at comforting anyone, anyway, because I could never see the value of offering false words of hope or reassurance. But in those first awful days following the news of Micah's disappearance, I wished fervently that I had learned how to shape the conventional phrases of consolation and encouragement.
There, there. You'll be fine.
Or,
Everything will seem better in the morning.
Or,
All things happen for a good reason.

I could not imagine that any of these things were true. And so I could not say them. I could only run up to Roelynn, when she appeared weeping at our back door, and throw my arms around her, and push back her dark disheveled hair, and tell her how very, very sorry I was.

I had never been particularly fond of Micah, it was true, but Roelynn was, and I could not imagine anything worse than losing a sibling. Anything. I hugged her, and let her cry, and shuddered at the strange, terrible events a life could hold.

As might be expected, Adele was much better at this sort of thing than I was. She spent much of her time away from the inn, at Karro's house, sitting silently beside the grieving Roelynn. Or at least I assumed that they sat there in silence—Adele never bothered to say. When Roelynn came to the inn, looking for solace, more often than not she and Adele would end up outside together, curled on the ornamental bench, their arms around each other's shoulders, their faces solemn with pain. Not for the first time, I marveled at my sister's gift for wordless empathy. I was so much more likely to try to
do
something to make the situation better. Nothing could improve this particular circumstance, but I found myself bustling just the same. I stitched a black silk shawl for Roelynn and embroidered it with Micah's initials; she wore it every day during the month after we heard the news. I worked in the kitchen to make the special dishes that I knew were Roelynn's favorites, and I carried them to the kitchen door of the great mansion, hoping to tempt her into eating. Karro must have employed three cooks and any number of scullery maids, so it wasn't as if they needed my contributions to the dinner table, but I felt better just for making the effort. And Roelynn appreciated it, I knew, for she always made a point of personally returning the serving dishes and thanking me profusely for my gifts.

How Karro took the news of his son's disappearance I could only guess, for I never saw him. But new ships that he had commissioned to be built sat unfinished in the harbor; merchants who came to town to renew contracts with him waited for days at the Leaf & Berry and were never admitted into his presence. Roelynn said that he would sit by himself for hours in his private office, and whether he drank or whether he wept or whether he merely stared out the window and mourned, she had no idea.

It occurred to me that, now that she was Karro's only heir, Roelynn would be an even richer catch in the marriage market, and the queen might lose whatever final disinclination she might have shown toward the match with her son. I felt guilty for even having the thought, and I did not make this observation aloud.

It was probably three weeks after we had gotten the dreadful message that I began to notice something was wrong with Adele.

It had always been hard to tell when Adele was sick, unless she had a rash or a hacking cough, because she never bothered to mention it when she didn't feel well and her behavior did not change at all. She was so often reserved or withdrawn that you could not tell when her silence was the result of a fevered lethargy or merely her current mood. When we were children, every time I fell ill, my mother just assumed Adele would do so as well, and dosed her with whatever drugs had been prescribed for me. Now and then, even when I was healthy, my mother would pause and lay her hand across Adele's forehead to check for heat. Once we learned she had sprained her ankle only when we noticed her very slight limp and the way she leaned against the wall with her heel slightly raised.

I've never understood people who won't speak up when they're in trouble. I always want whatever sympathy and aid is available, the minute I start to feel miserable. I am not interested in bearing wretchedness alone. But I think concealment is such a habit with Adele that she sometimes is not even aware she is practicing it.

At first, this time, I could not imagine what Adele might be hiding. At first, I was not even sure I was reading the symptoms right. But then I started watching her more closely at dinner. She put small portions on her plate and pretended to eat, but mostly she just moved food around and then covered the whole mess with a napkin when the meal was over. Or she ran errands right at lunchtime and came back claiming to have eaten with Roelynn or to have purchased a pie from a street vendor. She began to wear her hair in a new style so that when my mother said, “Your face looks thinner,” she could reply, “It's the way I've got my hair pulled back.” She wore her long-sleeved dresses and her high-necked blouses even in the warmth of early spring.

It was another week before I became certain that Adele was trying to starve herself to death.

The longer I watched her, the more I became convinced that she was barely eating enough to keep a child alive. Her cheekbones had acquired a gaunt prominence, and when she put on her nightclothes and hurriedly slipped into bed, I could tell that her arms and her legs had grown painfully thin. In such a short time. I woke once in the middle of the night to hear her slipping soundlessly from the room, so I rose and followed her with equal stealth. I saw her duck out the back door and vomit in the garden, clutching her stomach as if she was in so much pain that she expected her body to tear itself in half.

I cannot describe the terror that took hold of me that night as I peered out a small round kitchen window and watched my sister try to throw her life away.

The minute she turned for the door, I ran back upstairs and flung myself in bed. I pretended to be sleeping as she crept back into the room and arranged herself on her own mattress. I lay awake the rest of the night trying to decide what to do.

In the morning, Adele was the first one up, dressed, and downstairs. I supposed she had given up sleeping as well as eating. As soon as she left, I scrambled up and began searching her possessions. Neither of us had that many places where we could hide things—and I rarely bothered to hide things, anyway—so I didn't have that many places to look. Her armoire. Her dresser. A few small boxes cached under her bed. The pockets of her various gowns and jackets. I figured that surely I would find something, anything, that would give me a clue as to what had made my sister so sad.

It took me almost an hour, and the whole time I was jumpy, expecting her to walk in on me at any moment and demand to know what I was doing. I found the most amazing items among her store of secret treasures, things I could not believe she had kept. The painted miniature of Princess Arisande, of course. A letter from Melinda, written to us one year at Summermoon when we were quite small. A wooden baby rattle that must have been ours when we were infants, though she could certainly have no memory of holding it. Two thin, gold-blonde braids—one from my head, one from hers—cut when we were six years old. A sketch of the palace in Wodenderry, acquired when we had gone to the royal city four years ago. A newly minted gold coin with an excellent profile of the queen. A ring that Roelynn had given her one year. Inch-long strips of ribbon from some of her favorite dresses, now too old and ragged to wear. A poem I had written when I was eight. A silver-veined black stone I had found in the river and given her one day so many years ago I could not remember. A handkerchief with my initials on it, ripped almost in half and of no use to anyone. A sketch that nine-year-old Roelynn had made of me, that looked nothing like me, identifiable only because my name was written at the top of the page. A broken brooch that had belonged to our mother. A buckle from one of our father's shoes.

Silly, pointless, sentimental reminders of friends and family and intimate history. You would never have expected to find such things among Adele's possessions. Or maybe you would. You certainly would not have expected to find them among mine.

I had almost given up when I thought to look under her pillow. I myself can't abide a lumpy pillow, so it would never have occurred to me to hide something under my head, but it was clear Adele had different notions of comfort and importance than I did. As soon as I slipped my hand under the cotton slipcase, my fingers encountered the smooth feel of a richer fabric. I tugged, and out came a flat, slim parcel of satin about the size of my hand. I could feel small objects tucked inside but could find no way to get at them, since all four edges of the bag were sewn shut.

I crossed the room, pulled my scissors from a drawer, slit one seam, and dumped the contents of the bag on the top of my bed.

Four items fell out, and I examined them one by one. The first was a hollow gold heart hung on an incredibly fine chain. I pursed my lips into a soundless whistle, for this was a rather expensive piece—not the sort of thing our parents could afford to give us or that Adele or I could buy for ourselves. It had been a gift, then. And it took no kind of genius to realize that it was a lover's token.

Adele had a secret beau. Who in the world could he be?

The second item was a beautiful, heavy envelope with “Adele” written on the front of it. I looked inside—she had not saved the letter, or if she had, it was somewhere else in the room—but clearly she had not been able to throw away this memento that featured her own name written in her beloved's handwriting. I studied the script; not a hand I knew. I sniffed at the open flap. No scent. Nothing to indicate the person's identity.

The third item was a length of ribbon, thin and dainty, an iridescent white shot through with threads of silver and gold and turquoise. This was a piece I recognized—she had used just such ribbon to trim the Summermoon dress she'd worn three years ago. I hadn't been with her when she bought it, so I couldn't guess why it was so significant that she had saved a scrap of it with her most precious treasures. Perhaps her young man had helped her pick it out; perhaps he had paid for it. Perhaps, the day she had worn the dress, he had told her he loved her.

The last item in her hoard was a round flat disk of white stone, worn through in the center so that it formed a fairly symmetrical circle. Unlike the other things in the packet, it was not in pristine condition. It was blackened with soot as if it had been rescued from a fire; a small scrap of singed ribbon was still wrapped around one portion.

I held this between my fingers for a long moment, frowning. It looked familiar, but I could not at first say why. A white stone hung on a fancy ribbon that had been thrown into and then saved from a fire. . . .

“A lover's quarrel?” I said out loud in a very quiet voice. “A gift from him that she tossed in the flames and then rescued when she repented? But everyone knows that stone won't really burn. Wouldn't you throw it into the ocean if you really wanted to get rid of it? But maybe she didn't want it to burn. Maybe she threw it for luck into a Wintermoon fire. . . .”

As soon as I said the words, I remembered. Wintermoon, two years ago. Micah and Roelynn bringing Melinda back to our house, and staying for the burning of the wreath. Micah pulling this white stone from his pocket, claiming it offered the gift of a complete life. Adele offering him a ribbon to tie it to the greenery.

Had this been one of the years Adele and I had gotten up early the next morning to sift through the cinders of the Wintermoon fire? I couldn't remember. But she at least had made her way to that cold bonfire the next day and poked through the ashes till she found the piece she wanted.

Micah's stone. Adele was in love with Micah Karro.

Micah Karro was drowned.

I knew now why my sister's heart was breaking.

We had guests at the inn, so the morning was busy. There were beds to strip, piles of laundry to do, grates to clean, and all sorts of preparation to be done for the next few meals. We had fed lunch to our guests before any of us had a chance to take an afternoon meal, but then I wheedled for a treat.

“It's such a beautiful day,” I said to our mother. “Can't Adele and I eat outside? We'll come right back in to help with the afternoon chores.”

“Yes—fine—but I'm going to make a new recipe tonight, and I'm going to need your help in the kitchen,” Mother said, already distracted by the next task on her agenda. “Come back in as soon as you're done.”

I organized bread and cheese and dried meat while Adele filled a jug with water. She was gathering up some stained linen napkins, suitable for outdoor dining, when I headed out the back door with a blanket over my arm. I spread it out under the silent green leaves of the kirrenberry tree.

When Adele stepped outside and saw where I was, she hesitated just a moment before coming over to join me. I waited till we had arranged our feast and built our sandwiches before I spoke.

“If you don't eat every bite, I'm going to tell Mother and Father,” I said calmly. “If you get up in the middle of the night and throw it all back up, I'm going to tell them. If you try to leave the house without me, I'm going to follow you. If you walk anywhere near the harbor and look like you're going to jump in the water, I'm going to grab your arm and haul you back. If you so much as glance at a knife, I'm going to scream as loud as I possibly can, and everyone will come running.”

She looked at me. Even her hands, folded in her lap, looked parched and thin. “I'm not trying to kill myself,” she said.

“You're not trying to live, either.”