Chapter 10 No.10

Present Time

Yelena gritted her teeth and set out to hunt down the Fae. A great number were in the main hall before the fire, regarding the tables and bench seating as if both were unknown to them. She saw one touch the tabletop.

"It is sticky," the woman remarked with a snigger in High Fae.

"Beeswax," Yelena said crisply, startling them. "Yes," Yelena smiled savagely. "I speak Fae, all five dialects. Where is your leader, Diersen?"

"My Lady," the man to who the woman's snide comment had been delivered bowed low. "He took his aide to the study."

"F-k," Yelena muttered as she turned. She strode across the hall and to the left. The door to her father's study stood open, and Diersen had lit the beeswax candles. She blew them out as she entered, causing him and his aide to look up, startled. "It is still daylight, My Lord," she told him crisply. "No need to use these candles."

She threw open the shutters, the daylight catching on the glittering dust that rose in response to the sudden motion. How long had it been, she wondered in shock, since her father had been in there? How long had he been too ill to sit at his desk? How long...? She had lost track of days, of weeks, of months... Hadn't wanted to face the truth.

"This chamber," Diersen wiped the palms of his hands onto his robes with distaste. "Has been neglected."

"My father has been unwell."

Diersen's brows gathered over his nose. "He is... Fae? Is he not? We do not sicken..."

"Apparently, you do," she replied through her teeth. "For he has and does not respond to any treatment offered."

"Impossible," he shook his head in disbelief. "I have healers and mages amongst our company, I will have them look at him..."

"That would be," her fingers curled over the edge of the windowsill as she leaned into it. "That would be very welcome," her voice broke on the last word. "Truly. Thank you."

"My Lady," his voice softened. "Your father is young, for a full-Fae. This is, I am sure, a minor, passing situation which can quickly be resolved."

A tear struck the stone, splashing onto her hand. "I hope that you are right," she said, and used her sleeve to wipe her eyes hastily as she straightened and turned to face him and his aide, the younger Fae man looking away uncomfortably. Diersen was not daunted by her emotions. "My Lord Diersen."

"Just... Diersen," he said.

"Diersen," she corrected herself and the irony of her outranking him when his clothing was far finer than her own much-patched gown, and her mud-caked boots was not lost on her. "I came to speak to you about the coin in the main hall..."

"Spoils of war that the Honorable Grand Lord Sylvin has sent to see to the maintenance of this keep," Diersen supplied.

"Just that, exactly," she seized upon the opening eagerly. "The maintenance of the keep needs coin, Diersen. To purchase meat, flour... Oh, everything really. Leather for shoes. Livestock for those we have lost," she thought of the chickens that were probably being slaughtered as they spoke. "Everything really."

"Yes, My Lady," he regarded her, his expression neutral.

"My husband's coin... I need some," she decided not to be delicate about it. "To pay the keep's debt to the village, and to stock us appropriately for the arrival of your company. We have no meat. Very little vegetables..."

"My Lady," he straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. "I am chatelaine of this keep and keeper of your husband's treasures. If you will show me the keep's ledger," he gestured around at the cluttered and disorganized office. "I will begin to see that where debts exist, they are paid."

"Yes," she sighed out her relief. "That would be very good."

She looked around her. "Ah," she chewed her bottom lip and shuffled some scrolls and books. "Ah!" She carried the heavy book to the table and set it before him, dust lifting beneath the weight of it. She flicked through pages. "Ah..." She pulled a face at the date recorded. "We may have let our records lapse."

"Let... the records... lapse," he repeated as if the words were death sentences. "How? How can that be, My Lady," he drew a finger down the column and then made a strangled noise as he reached the end. "How is this even possible?" His nail scored the page beneath the last tally.

"That, Diersen," she leaned over the book and thought that the sum that horrified him so was probably a third of the final figure, but thought she'd leave that to the villagers to break to him. "Is what happens to a keep when there is war. Humans take human men from the village, and Fae take Fae men, and every other man of every other species somehow ends up joining one or the other of their armies.

"Those that remain in the village refuse to work the Lord's fields and there are no men-at-arms left to persuade them. And then they begin to charge the keep for their services despite not paying their taxes or working their dues.

"This is what happens when a keep is left with nothing but a handful of lads yet to reach their full height and living on a diet of wild-harvested weeds and rabbits caught in snares, and women," she straightened her shoulders. "And then any marauding band of deserters or thugs decide to try their luck and attack the keep walls in case there is anything left of value within...

"This is life in war," she told him, enjoying the utter horror on his face. "You should be glad that you have, thus far, been spared it's toils." This is what happens, she thought woefully, when the Lord apparently forgot about those left behind whilst he was at war. "If you want to eat meat tomorrow," she stepped to the door. "Coin will be needed."

"This is... Unsatisfactory, My Lady," Diersen declared with anger, rising to his feet. "You cannot deliver this news and walk out. You have allowed this keep to decline, to decay around you, whilst you have done what, exactly? You are... You are an ineffectual household manager and a shame to your husband and upbringing."

"Diersen," she rounded at him, and stalked across the room until they were chest to chest. "I have nursed this keep through three winter fevers and eight marauder attacks – the evidence of which is carved into the courtyard walls.

"I have personally, with my own hands, weeded, sown seed, carted water and harvested the vegetable garden, darned socks, remade garments so that they can be reused, and reused, and reused. I have turned bed curtains into clothing. I have been through every inch of this castle, every store, every chest, and turned every find into food to fill the bellies of those dependent on me.

"I have wielded sword against attack, and hoe in field. I have chopped wood, and overwatched cattle in the field. Maybe the accounts don't make a pretty tally," she snarled up at him. "Maybe my skin is not as fair as a princess, my hands are calloused, and my gowns are threadbare, but that there is a keep, or a tally to be read, is due to my efforts, and you do not, in no way, have permission to disparage them until you have walked a mile in my hole-filled and much patched boots."

"My Lady," he swallowed heavily.

"Yes," she said stepping back. "I am still that, for the time being at least. Pay the villagers, Diersen, order meat, and whatever else that you can. The war might have ended, but our battles are just beginning. If the armies are disbanded, armed, and trained rogues will be looking for trouble, and we are, unfortunately, only too vulnerable to attack in our current state."

"My Lady," he drew in a breath. "Point taken."

"Good luck," she paused in the doorway and glanced up, meeting his eyes. "I mean it. The villagers... They have suffered too, and they have lost all loyalty to the keep as a result. We have not protected them, and they do not answer to us. They will not be easy to deal with."

"My Lady."

She took the stairs up to the nursery where her mother's spell book was hidden in a hidey hole made by an ancient ancestor. She flicked through the pages, starting whenever a floorboard creaked in the hall beyond the nursery door, every time a voice rose and fell in conversation. She found a spell that was far advanced of anything that she had thus far attempted, and yet she could only think that more, an undefinable more, was needed in order to drive the illness from her father.

She sighed out a breath. It would not be an easy spell to cast, and she had to wonder at the balance required for such a spell. There was no mention of balance in the instructions, which either meant that her mother, or whoever had recorded the spell into the book, had not thought it necessary to record it... or it had been too terrible to say.

"F-k," she closed the book and gripped between her palms pressing her forehead to its spine as she fought against fear and need. "F-k it."

She returned the book to its hiding spot and took the stairs to the main hall just in time to see a carriage, no doubt carrying Diersen and his aide, bumping along the road towards the village. She took the kitchen, busy with women plucking feathers from chickens, and out into the kitchen gardens.

In her mother's life, the gardens had been well tended and fertile. The herbs and vegetables that clung on now did so stubbornly, each plant nursed along with tender attention. It was just keeping the keep fed. Just.

The walled garden showed the least damage of all the walls around the keep, and the ancient fruit trees within twisted their gnarled branches towards the sky in triumph. Only the last fruit of the season remained rotting on the boughs, left there in order to seed the next generation, an effort she and some of the boys were attempting further down the gardens.

Amongst their roots she dug, collecting bug and tender roots of weeds, pocketing them for later use. Her collections were furtive. Spell component collection could hardly be mistaken for anything else. There simply was no other reason such ingredients were sought. Skeleton of mouse, eye of toad, young lizard drained of blood... all took time to find and capture, all went into her apron pockets whilst her heart raced frantically, expecting at any moment to be seen, trying to keep the trunks of the trees between her and the keep so that any who looked out would not see.

Half Fae, Half Human, and with the magic of both. Condemned by both because of her ability? She did not know and feared to find out.

She leaned against a tree trunk and looked up into the branches remembering better times...