Chương 13

Lady Elara's residence occupied the third floor of a student court on the eastern side. Elara's chamber and the room Mirelle shared with her by night stood at the end; a short interior passage ran behind them, servants' territory, low-ceilinged and lamp-dark, connecting the chambers to the stairs. Off this passage: his room. Beside his room, between him and the service stair, a smaller one.

The smaller one's occupant was waiting in the passage with a paper and a graphite stick, and John understood who she was before she spoke. She was perhaps sixteen or seventeen, dark-haired, and short. She looked at him the way a farmwife looks at a fox someone has proposed housing in the coop for its own protection.

"Master Rook." The courtesy was flawless, though its edges were sharp enough that he could have shaved with them.

"I am Nessa. Lady Vey's maid." Ah, John thought. The supposed catalogue with commentary.

"Nessa."

"I keep the household's inventory." She held up the paper, in case he wished to dispute the existence of paper.

"If you would place everything on the bed, Master Rook, so I might pen them in." It was not phrased as a question, which was interesting, because he was — he consulted the morning's paperwork in his head — technically a senior member of this room after its lady, on equal standing with the Duenna, perhaps. Sworn retainer against lady's maid was not a close contest on any chart. Nessa knew it too; he could see her knowing it, the whole time, which was what gave the politeness its particular brittle quality.

She was being exactly as respectful as the rules required, to the eighth of an inch, which was to say just barely. Cal settled the bundle he had signed out of Dorr's office on a tray. She wrote it all down. One brigandine. One helm. One longsword, peace-bound. One dagger, worn. And then, with the graphite pausing like a magistrate's gavel: two further longswords, two further knives, one hunting knife, one whetstone.

"Three swords," she said.

"Two are stock. I mean to sell them."

"Until they are sold, they will be locked." She indicated, through his open door, the iron-banded chest at the foot of the bed, which had a hasp and a serviceable lock and had clearly been chosen for this exact reason.

"Household rules require spare weapons to be secured. You may request them from me."

"From you."

"I hold the key."

"Do you now?"

"Yes." John, amused, shook his head before proceeding to ignore her as he turned to examine his new appointment. The room itself was narrow and honest. A bed built for a slightly shorter man, a peg rail, a washstand, the chest, and an arrow-slit window that dispensed daylight the way Mirelle dispensed approval. There was floor enough to run a sword cut from guard to guard, provided he was prepared to sacrifice the water jug in the corner.

As servants' quarters went — and he had, by way of Cal's scant intuition, some basis for comparison — it was respectable. It was also his, which no room had been for a while. It was in the course of settling in that he found the bells. The first was on the inside of Nessa's own door: a tiny brass thing on a hooked bracket, hung so that the door could not open a hand's width without ringing it.

The second, he saw when the far door stood briefly ajar that evening, hung on the inside of the chamber Elara and Mirelle shared. Cheap, small, bright, and perfectly positioned. Anyone who came through either door in the dark would announce themself to the whole floor, and the doors they guarded were precisely the two an intruder — or a treacherous new retainer — would want. She had hung nothing on his door, and John did not know if this was done before his arrival or after. Still, the message was not subtle.

He didn't resent it after all as he found the arrangement fairly sensible. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Amused still, John considered telling her the bells were an excellent idea to troll her, but ultimately decided the joke was too easy to misinterpret, so he said nothing. He flopped into bed, lying back without removing his boots. The ceiling was plain plaster. Worse than the infirmary's marginally more interesting ceiling.

Staring at the cream expanse, he wasn't sure exactly when he fell asleep. The next morning, after waking up, washing himself and having breakfast, John discovered the registry's welcome papers included sketched diagrams and instructions of how to tie the sash of his uniform. The grey wool had to pass twice around his waist and finish in a flat knot at the left hip.

According to Figure 3, which showed a serene, sleeveless everyman, the loose end went beneath the inner turn, around the outer turn, back through a loop and somehow emerged facing down. Cal had produced a bulky knot in front, followed by a smaller one behind. His third attempt left the bronze badge upside down. He was unwinding it for a fourth attempt when he became aware that the door to the household passage stood open, and that Lady Elara Vey was in it, dressed for lecture, staring strangely at him.

"My lady."

"Master Rook." Her eyes went from him to the welcome papers on the bed, to the object formerly known as a sash.

"What are you doing?"

"I am trying to tie this stupid knot," John spat, annoyed as he stared at it, before he caught himself and added at the tail-end of that statement, "my Lady." Shaking her head, apparently amused with his antics, Elara stepped into the room.

"You should have asked Nessa to assist you." John crooked his lips in a wry smile.

"I doubt the girl feels comfortable being around me in any capacity. I would rather not inconvenience her if I can help it. Besides, she appears occupied." In the next room, through the thin walls flimsy enough to facilitate eavesdropping, came the intensified sounds of Nessa being industrious — pans being arranged that had, John suspected, been sorted already, the task done loudly enough to demonstrate both her presence and her occupation.

"I see," Elara mused as she glanced at the wall. Something in the industrious noises must have failed to persuade her. She shook her head as she crossed the room, saying, "You have it backwards. Give it to me," and took the sash out of his hands.

"The seam rides inward. Shoulder first." She set it over his right shoulder, drew it across his chest, and brought the ends together at his left hip, working briskly.

"The under passes twice and the first turn after must be flat." Her fingers pressed the sash against his shirt. She drew the other end around him and reached across his waist to catch it. Cal lifted his arms out of the way.

"Then beneath," she said.

"Keep this part still." He pinched the wool where she indicated. Elara folded the free end over his fingers, passed it through the inner loop and pulled. The knot flattened.

"That is the first half." She moved closer to see the lower turn. Her sleeve touched his arm. Cal looked down. The top of her head was just below his chin, and one smooth coil of hair had loosened near her ear. Elara drew the sash across his waist again. Her knuckles brushed his shirt. She stopped. For a moment, neither of them moved. She was, John registered, very close.

This was a consequence of the task: the task involved his chest, his hip, and the space directly in front of him, and she was in all three, her head bent over the knot below his shoulder, near enough that he could see the individual pins Nessa had fought her hair with. The silence arrived for both of them at the same moment, roughly one moment too late. Because it was — his brain supplied this with the unhelpful thoroughness it saved for exactly the wrong occasions — a servant's task.

Ladies did not dress their guards; maids dressed their guards, valets dressed their guards, and ladies stood in doorways and issued corrections from a dignified distance. The entire format of the custom that governed who stood this close to whom had been, for the past thirty seconds, comprehensively violated by both parties on a working morning with the door open. Distantly, John could already imagine the rumours that could emerge if the wrong person walked in on them at that very moment. Elara seemed to as well.

Her hands finished the fold. It cost her one more brisk, precise motion, executed with great attention to the knot and none whatsoever to him, and then she stepped back one full pace. John watched, fascinated, as colour rose to her cheeks and the tips of her ears. Clearing her throat, the lady's aloofness returned, closing over the blush a moment later like water over a dropped coin, smooth, cool, and completely uninformative.

"The fold faces outward," Elara said, in an exact voice.

"Remember it."

"…Yes, my lady."

"Mistress Saye has your schedule." She was already at the door.

"I am for lecture." She was gone before the sentence finished cooling, footsteps quick and even down the household passage, and John stood in his narrow, respectable room, correctly dressed for the first time in his tenure, having learned the retainer's fold and absolutely nothing about how to perform it himself. He looked at Figure 3. Figure 3's serene everyman gazed back, smug, sleeveless, dressed by arrows. Through the wall, he noticed, the industrious noises had stopped entirely.

John decided — in his capacity as senior member of the household, at half-effort, with a clear conscience — that he had witnessed nothing, knew nothing, and would be at the guard yards if anyone wanted him.