Teka had silently exchanged the finer royal plates for these earthenware ones several years ago, after Galanna had found out that the red-and-gold ones that should only be used by members of the first circle of the royal house—which included Aerin—were slowly disappearing. She had one of her notorious temper tantrums over this, caused crisis and dismay in the whole hierarchy of the hafor, and turned off three of the newest and lowliest servant girls on suspicion of stealing—and then, when no one could possibly overlook the commotion she was making, contrived to discover that the disappearances were merely the result of Aerin being clumsy. “You revolting child,” she said to a mutinous Aerin; “even if you are incapable”—there was inexpressible malice lurking behind the word—”of mending the settings yourself, you might save the pieces and let one of us do it for you.”
“I’d hang myself first,” spat Aerin, “and then I’d come back and haunt you till you were haggard with fear and lost all your looks and people pointed at you in the streets—”
At this point Galanna slapped her, which was a tactical error. In the first place, it needed only such an excuse for Aerin to jump on her and roll her over on the floor, bruise one eye, and rip most of the lace off her extremely ornate afternoon dress—somehow both the court members and the hafor witness to this scene were a little slow in dragging Aerin off her—and in the second place, both the slap and its result quite ruined Galanna’s attempted role of great lady dealing with contemptible urchin. It was generally considered—Galanna was no favorite—that Aerin had won that round. Of the three serving girls, one was taken back, one was given a job in the stables, which she much preferred, and one, declaring that she wouldn’t have any more to do with the royal house if saying so got her beheaded for treason, went home to her own village, far from the City.
Aerin sighed. Life had been easier when her ultimate goal had been murdering Galanna with her bare hands. She had continued to use the finer ware when she ate with the court, of course; when she was younger she had rarely been compelled to do so, fortunately, since she never got much to eat, but sat rigidly and on her guard (Galanna’s basilisk glare from farther down the high table helped) for the entire evening. But at least she didn’t break anything either, and Teka could always be persuaded to bring her a late supper as necessary. On earthenware plates.
She lifted her eyes to Teka, who was still standing motionless behind the tray. “Teka, I’m sorry I’m so tiresome. I can’t seem to help it. It’s in my blood, like being clumsy is—like everything else isn’t.” She walked over and gave the older woman a hug, and Teka looked up and half smiled.
“I hate to see you ... fighting everything so.”
Aerin’s eyes rose involuntarily to the old plain sword hanging at the head of her tall curtained bed.
“You know Perlith and Galanna are horrid because they’re horrid themselves—”
“Yes,” said Aerin slowly. “And because I’m the only daughter of the witchwoman who enspelled the king into marrying her, and I’m such a desperately easy butt. Teka,” she said before the other had a chance to break in, “do you suppose it was Galanna who first told me that story? I’ve been trying to remember when I first heard it.’’
“Story?” said Teka, carefully neutral. She was always carefully neutral about Aerin’s mother, which was one of the reasons Aerin kept asking about her. ‘ “Yes. That my mother enspelled my father to get an heir that would rule Damar, and that she turned her face to the wall and died of despair when she found she had borne a daughter instead of a son, since they usually find a way to avoid letting daughters inherit.”
Teka shook her head impatiently.
“She did die, “Aerin said.
“Women die in childbed.”
“Not witches, often.”
“She was not a witch.”
Aerin sighed, and looked at her big hands, striped with callus and scarred with old blisters from sword and shield and pulling her way through the forest tangles after her dragons—Dragon-Killer—and from falling off the faithful Talat. “You would certainly think she wasn’t from the way her daughter goes on. If he was going to turn out like me, it wouldn’t have done my poor mother any good to have had a son.” She paused, brooding over her last burn scar, where a dragon had licked her and the ointment hadn’t gone on quite evenly. “What was my mother like?”
Teka looked thoughtful. She too looked toward Aerin’s sword and dragon spears, but Aerin was pretty sure she did not see them, for Teka did not approve of her first sol’s avocation. “She was much like you but smaller—frail almost.” Her shoulders lifted. “Too frail to bear a child. And yet it was rather as though something was eating her from the inside; there was a fire behind that pale skin, always burning. I think she knew she had only a little time and she was fighting for enough time to bear her baby.” Teka’s eyes refocused on the room, and she looked hastily away from the dragon spears. “You were a fine strong child from the first.”
“Do you think she enspelled my father?”
Teka looked at her, frowning. “Why do you ask so silly a question?”
“I like to hear you tell stories.”
Teka laughed involuntarily. “Well. No, I don’t think she enspelled your father—not the way Galanna and her lot mean, anyway. She fell in love with him, and he with her; that’s a spell if you like.”
They had had this conversation before; many times since Aerin was old enough to talk and ask questions. But over the years Teka sometimes let fall one more phrase, one more adjective, as Aerin asked the same questions, and so Aerin kept on asking. That there was a mystery she had no doubt. Her father wouldn’t discuss her mother with her at all, beyond telling her that he still missed her, which Aerin did find reassuring as far as it went. But whether the truth behind the mystery was known to everyone but her and was too terrible to speak of, particularly to the mystery’s daughter, or whether it was a mystery that no one knew and therefore everyone blamed her for endlessly reminding them of, she had never been able to make up her mind. On the whole she inclined to the latter; she couldn’t imagine anything so awful that Galanna would recoil from using it against her. And if there were something quite that awful, then Perlith wouldn’t be able to resist ceasing to ignore her long enough to explain it.