“You haven’t?”
Ismae shakes her head, and I study her to see if this is but a ploy to comfort me.
“I know you were married, and that your father beat you.”
She winces slightly. “Both of those are true, but there is more to my story. I never told you of the poison my mother sought from the herbwitch in order to expel me from her womb. Nor of the long, ugly scar along my back where it burned my flesh. I never spoke of my sister, who feared me, or the village boys who taunted me and called me cruel names. Like you, I was so glad to have escaped, I had no wish to speak of them and taint my new life at the convent with those memories.”
And just like that, she has granted me absolution, declared my crimes against our friendship no crimes at all. I have no words that will let her know how much this means to me. Instead, I smile. “What sort of taunts did they hurl at you?”
Ismae wrinkles her nose and lets go of my hands. “None that I care to repeat.”
“So, then,” I say, changing the subject, “why are you here waiting for me?”
“I was afraid for you.”
“Afraid? What did you fear?”
She shrugs, embarrassed. “That the abbess had sent you somewhere again. That you had run away. The possibilities seemed endless as I sat here all night.”
Something in my heart softens. “You’ve waited for me all night?”
“Once I was here, it seemed pointless to leave until I knew what had become of you.” She turns and grabs a poker to stir up the embers in the hearth. “Where have you been?”
“I needed to get out of the palace, away from the abbess and all her manipulations.”
“It does not help that you are exhausted. Here. Come to bed. You need to sleep. Knowing you, you have not slept more than six hours in the last six days.”
That she has guessed so accurately makes me smile. “Even so, I will not be able to sleep. Not here, not now.”
“Yes, you will. That is another reason I came to your room. To bring you a sleeping draft.”
I feel tears prick at my eyes—merde, but I am becoming some soft, weepy thing! So she will not see, I turn my back and motion for her to help unlace me. “But what of the duchess? Do you not need to attend her?”
“Not for a few hours yet.”
Some of the tension leaves me and I allow Ismae to help me undress, as if I am a small child, after which she puts me into the bed and draws up the covers. I wait while she pours the sleeping draft into a goblet, then drain it. Our eyes meet. I do not even know how to begin to thank her. And because it is Ismae, she simply smiles and says, “You’re welcome.”
I smile back, then study her while she finishes putting away my things. Once we begin going on assignments for the convent, we are forbidden to talk about them with others. But Ismae is no longer as beholden to the convent as she was, and I am half starved to hear about her experiences so I can see if she has the same doubts and questions I do. I begin plucking at a loose thread on the bedcovers. “Tell me,” I say casually, “do you know if the Tears of Mortain wear off?”
She stops smoothing the gown she is holding. “I do not know. Mine haven’t.”
“So you still see the marque?”
“I have been able to see the marque since I was a child. I just didn’t know what it was.”
“Then why did they even give the Tears to you?”
“It heightened my other senses. I was suddenly able to—this will sound mad—feel people’s life sparks. I am more aware of their living, breathing bodies, even if I cannot see them.”
“That is a gift I have had since I was a child,” I tell her. And more than once did it save me. I realize how useless Ismae’s gift of seeing marques would have been in my circumstances; I had no need to spot the dying, but every need to avoid the living, which sensing their pulses allowed me to do. “I suppose you let that blind old woman nearly put your eyes out with her wicked crystal stopper?”
“Didn’t you?”
“No, I took it from her and did it myself.”
Ismae gapes in shock. For a moment it is as if the old Ismae, the one who worshiped everything about the convent and followed every rule, is back. Then she laughs. “Oh, Sybella! I would have loved to be a spider on the wall and seen that.”
“She was most affronted.”
“Why did you want to know if the Tears wear off?” she asks gently.
I take a deep breath. “Because there have been men who I know are guilty of treachery—for I have seen it with my own eyes—and yet they are not marqued.” I look up and meet her gaze. “If Mortain grants mercy to d’Albret and Marshal Rieux, then I find it hard to want to serve Him.” I did not mean to confess that to her, but the words spill out of me.
She studies me a moment, then comes to kneel beside my bed. “Sybella,” she says, her eyes shining with some mysterious light. “I have met Mortain face to face, and the abbess, maybe even the convent, is wrong about so very many things.”
I stare at her dumbly, and my heart begins to race. “You have seen Him? He is real?” I ask.
“I have, and He is more kind and merciful than you can imagine. And He has given us such gifts!” She looks at her hands. “Not only am I immune to poison’s effects, but I can use my own skin to draw it from others.”
“Truly?”
There is not a whiff of hesitation or doubt. “Yes.”
I turn my face toward the wall and pretend I am snuggling into sleep so she will not see the hunger in my eyes. “Tell me,” I whisper. “Tell me of this father of ours.”
“Gladly.” She pauses, as if she must collect her thoughts. When she speaks again, it is as if her voice is filled with light. “There is so much kindness in Him. And mercy. All the judgment and retribution we have been trained to expect of Him was not there. In His presence, I felt whole and complete in a way I have never felt before.”
There is such certainty in her voice that I find myself filled with envy.
“We are not just His handmaidens, spawned to do His bidding. He loves us,” she says.
The idea is so foreign to me that I snort.
“He does! For He is trapped in the realm of Death, and it gives Him great joy to know that we who were born of His seed are able to embrace life.”