Perhaps it makes it safer against invasion, she thought. But it does not seem like a friendly place.
The carriage passed through the gates, under portcullises edged like saws. Marra pulled the lap quilt more tightly around herself, as if the cold were seeping in. Then came the long, winding way up to the palace, through streets that wrapped in a circle, over and over, as if they were climbing the body of a coiled eel. There were eels in the river near the convent and sometimes people tithed them to the nuns. Marra had eaten a great many eels. She suspected that this one would stick in her throat if she tried.
At the palace, hardly anyone waited to meet them. Marra’d had a vague notion that there should have been a great show of pomp and royal favor and she had been braced to withstand it. When it failed to materialize, she felt off balance. “Not many people,” she murmured.
“We are being put in our place,” said the queen calmly. “We are here as Kania’s family, not as royal envoys, and so we are being reminded that we are poor relations.”
“What do we do?”
“We ignore it.” And she proceeded to alight from the carriage as if she were the queen of this kingdom, not a poor relation at all.
Two footmen in livery flanked a woman who reminded Marra of the Sister Apothecary. “She’s gone into labor,” said the midwife bluntly. “Your majesty. It’ll be hours yet, but it’s been hours already, and the first time’s always hard.”
“Take me to her.”
The palace was a blaze of color and hallways and tapestries. Marra was swept along in her mother’s wake, following the midwife. She had also expected to go to a room and perhaps be able to rest or eat, but it seemed there was no time.
Am I going to be there? Am I actually going to see it?
Well, perhaps she was.
The midwife opened a door and there it was, a bedroom the size of a great hall, with a fireplace at one end. Whatever the failings of their reception, the Northern Kingdom did not stint the midwives for their princess. It looked like half an army had encamped in the room, and in the middle of it, in a bed like a battlefield, was the dim brown circle of Kania’s face.
“You look radiant,” said the queen, taking her daughter’s hands. Marra lurked behind her shoulder, unsure what to say.
Kania did not look radiant. She looked exhausted and wan and her eyes were dark wells in her face. “Mother,” she said, clutching the queen’s hands. “Mother.” She closed her eyes and swallowed. It sounded like a click in her throat.
“It will be over soon,” promised the queen. “It hurts, but then it’s over.”
“I don’t care how much it hurts,” said Kania hoarsely. “I want this child out of me. Now.”
“That’s every woman, when the time comes,” said the queen. She stooped and kissed Kania’s forehead. “Soon enough. I promise.” She rose. “I’ll get you something to drink,” she said, and turned to demand tea of the ladies-in-waiting.
Marra looked after her mother nervously, then back to Kania. She had not seen any woman deliver before and she did not know what to expect, but the knowledge of Kania’s hatred was tucked up under her heart. Would her sister even want to see her here?
“Marra?” whispered Kania.
“I’m here,” she said, taking her sister’s hand. “I’m here.”
“You’re here,” Kania repeated. She looked past Marra’s shoulder. “Where is Mother?”
“She went to get a drink for you,” said Marra. “She’ll be back soon.”
“No time, then,” said Kania softly. She beckoned Marra closer, until her lips were nearly beside Marra’s ear.
“Kania…?”
“Listen,” hissed Kania. “Listen! If I die, don’t let her marry you off to the prince. Run away. Ruin yourself. Whatever it takes. Don’t let her drag you into this hell along with us.”
Marra blinked. Kania clutched at her shoulder and might have said something more, but a contraction ripped through her and she shrieked, her swollen body bucking on the bed.
What is that? What was that? Marra looked around, panicking, because such a thing could not be normal, but the midwives were calm and acted as if it were every day that a woman’s body writhed like a dying snake on the bed.
The queen returned. Kania gave Marra a last, searching look before dropping her hand. The queen tipped water into her daughter’s mouth and made soothing noises, and the midwives circled like jackals, waiting for the babe to come.
Chapter 4
The babe, when it came, was a girl. Kania took this news with her lips white and set. She had screamed terribly through labor, but she was strong and healthy and the babe was strong and healthy and perhaps only Marra thought it strange that her sister took this news like a blow.
The queen lifted her granddaughter and smiled down at her, the broadest smile that Marra had ever seen. The prince did not come to visit. Marra had still never seen him. In her mind, he had become something other than human, a creature like a dragon, something large and powerful and uncertain.
The Northern Kingdom’s palace certainly seemed as much like a dragon’s domain as a human’s. It was huge and rich and there were a hundred corridors and a hundred tapestries on every corridor and a hundred courtiers lurking, watching for signs of weakness. Even after Kania’s babe was delivered, there was no privacy. She could not ask Kania what she had meant, or if she had meant anything at all.
Marra did not like the courtiers. She was, in truth, a little intimidated by them. The Northern palace was so much larger than the small, shabby one that she had grown up in, and that palace itself was so much larger than the convent. Had it truly only been five years since she had walked among them? It seemed like far longer, like an entire life had passed. She was glad that she had not chosen to wear the dresses that her mother had offered.
The courtiers bothered Marra, but for the most part, they did not bother with her. She was too minor a player to be worth cultivating. When they spoke to her, they were polite and careful, and after two days, she realized they thought she was simple.
Well, as far as they are concerned, I might as well be. These machinations are beyond me. I would rather look at tapestries and try to work out the stitches.
She met the king, who was very old. He had false teeth made of walrus ivory, and his mind wandered. Sometimes he was very sharp and sometimes very vague. When he had vague days, he wandered the halls of the palace and called Marra by her grandmother’s name. The guards with him pretended that nothing strange was happening, and Marra pretended as well.
They stayed for a week, until the christening. The palace seemed very cold to Marra, even with all the tapestries on the walls. There were drafts in unexpected places, even in her room, and no matter how she tried, she could not seem to find out where they were coming from.
“That’s the dead kings, I expect,” said her maid matter-of-factly.
“Dead kings?” Marra sought her eyes in the mirror.
The maid nodded. She was younger than Marra, but she had lived in the Northern palace for most of her life and had taken pity on the princess’s sister for her lack of worldliness. Marra rather liked her. She never stopped talking, but her chatter was a combination of harmless gossip and acute political commentary. When she told Marra, on the first day after the birth, that she must wear her hair in a particular arrangement, Marra bowed her head and allowed the maid to braid it as she saw fit. She was glad of it later, too, when she saw the way that the other women wore theirs. A simpler style would have called attention to itself by its very simplicity, and Marra preferred to simply fade from notice.
She had not, however, realized that the maid might be superstitious. “What dead kings?” she asked.