Prized (9 page)

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Authors: Caragh M. O'Brien

BOOK: Prized
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“I trust you,” Peony said.
“It isn't trust,” Gaia corrected her. “It's a true risk. I haven't done this before. My mother always handled miscarriages. I
think I'm right about the herbs and the amounts, but I could be wrong.”
“You don't understand,” Peony said. “I'd take any chance. I can't have this baby.”
Gaia threaded her fingers together and searched her own heart one last time.
“You would never do this, would you?” Peony said.
Gaia glanced up and felt misery move through her like slow, dark molasses. “No,” she said honestly. “I wouldn't. To me, keeping my baby alive would be worth anything that happened to me, even if I had to give up my baby later. At least, that's what I believe now, but I've never been in your position. Listen, Peony. It's because I feel so strongly about it myself that I respect how completely this has to be your own decision. You're the only one, the
only
one, who can make the right choices for your family.”
“My family,” Peony whispered.
Gaia stood. “I'd stay with you, but then everyone would know.”
Peony nodded. She turned bleakly toward the cup on the tray.
“The honey bread's for after,” Gaia said. “The taste is foul.”
“How soon will it start?” Peony asked.
“Soon.”
“And when will it be over?”
“By morning.”
There was nothing more Gaia could do. She took a step toward the door, and suddenly Peony reached out to grab her hand with cold fingers.
“Stay with me one more minute, just while I drink it,” Peony begged.
Gaia squeezed her hand back. “Okay.”
She watched while Peony took the cup and brought it to her lips. A last moment Peony held it there, rigid with fear and determination, and then she tilted the cup to drink. She didn't stop until it was all down. The honey bread went untouched. When Peony climbed onto her bed and hid her face in her pillow, Gaia quietly let herself out.
chainmates
G
AIA COULD NOT SLEEP. Two hours later, she snuck back up to Peony's room to check on her, and later, hearing noises in the bathroom, she checked on her there as well. By dawn, she was anxious to check on her again, but people were stirring in the lodge, and she was afraid it would be noticed and remembered if she went up to the second floor.
She waited anxiously for breakfast, and when the mlasses came down to eat, Peony was the last to appear, wan but managing to act enough like normal to avoid calling attention to herself. That was it, then. She'd made it through the night. Images that had been hovering at the back of Gaia's imagination of the girl's bed awash with blood were finally put to rest, and she sagged in her chair.
“Are you all right?” Mlady Roxanne asked, looking over.
Gaia picked at a button on her sweater. It wasn't chilly, but she was cold. “Yes. Still just a little tired, I guess.”
“You've been working too hard. I warned you,” Mlady Roxanne said.
“I'm okay. I think I'll take a walk.” She couldn't abide the idea of being cooped up inside.
“I thought you would start lessons with the other mlasses this morning,” Mlady Roxanne said.
“Just one more day,” Gaia said. “I'll start tomorrow, I promise.”
Mlady Roxanne touched Gaia's shoulder gently and smiled. “All right. But take it easy today. Give the garden and herbs a rest.”
Gaia was more than willing to agree.
She took a furtive glance down the table to where Peony was eating her oatmeal, and then ducked her head over her own bowl. She would go down to the shore, she decided. Maybe someone there would take her out to the island, or at the least she could look out to where Maya was. She needed something to ground her again.
It was the first time she'd walked downhill since she'd arrived, and soon she found a row of dark, solid cabins where a cooper, a blacksmith, a weaver, a cobbler, and a potter were all busy with their trades. Trees had been felled to make way for gardens and pastures, but most of the cabins and roads were in shade, and the people, she saw, were not as scrupulously careful to wear hats and long sleeves as they had been back home. They looked more comfortable, more carefree than the people in hardscrabble, sun-baked Wharfton, and she took her hat off, too. She liked the feel of lightness around her hair and neck.
Several lesser roads converged at an arching willow, and she recognized the place from the night Josephine had her baby. The marsh was visible farther below, and the main road curved down to the right toward the shore. A pretty, narrow path headed in roughly the same direction, and Gaia took that instead, winding past a dozen small, tidy, welcoming cabins, where children played in the yards and pumped on swings that hung from the trees.
A voice was singing, and a man was pinning laundry on a line. The matina bell sounded, and everyone paused wherever they were, even the children, touching their hands to their hearts. Their contentment was almost palpable, and Gaia waited politely, motionless herself until they resumed their activities. Even though the homes and lush terrain were vastly different from those in Wharfton, the neighborhood reminded her of home. Her parents, she knew, would have liked it here.
The path dipped, leaving the cabins behind, and the rich, mottled greens of the woods enveloped her. She ran her fingers through a bed of tall, delicate ferns and peered ahead to where the blue and green of the marsh beckoned between the tree trunks. Newly careworn about Peony, Gaia felt how easy it would be to slide into loneliness for her parents and her sister and Leon, but she focused on the gentle, powerful beauty of the forest, and she breathed deeply, filling the tiny, empty pockets of her lungs with the fragrant smell of pines and shade.
It's possible, just possible
, she thought,
that I could grow to love it here
.
A moment later, the path took a last turn and opened onto a ledge that overlooked the prison. To the left, farther below, fishermen were working and canoes were pulled up on the long, curving beach. Beyond, in the marsh, a wind rippled through the fluid expanse of the black rice slue, bending back each individual stem in a fleeting wave. The first island rose out of the flatness like a very small, green-topped hat. Hope lifted within her.
“Maya,” she said. “I'm coming.”
A clanking noise drew her gaze to the prison. Just below her, in a dirt yard surrounded by a tall, spiked fence, gray-clad men waited in line for bowls of steaming food. A hint of smoke from the fire below the big cook pot drifted to where she stood,
and she sneezed. There were seventy or eighty crims, many chained by their ankles in pairs. Two men worked the ladles, and she was near enough to hear voices as they passed bowls and spoke a word or two to each man. Black-sashed guards armed with short cudgels and swords occupied a station near the gate, and other guards stood by the entrance to the barracks.
The path to the beach sloped nearer to the prison fence. Uncomfortable, feeling oddly exposed, she put on her hat again, crossed her arms and tried to pass at a normal, unhurried pace that wouldn't draw attention.
“Malachai! You want to finish the pot?” called one of the cooks.
A few laughs rose from the prison yard, and then several shouts of Malachai's name. On the far side of the yard, a black-bearded giant of a man stood beside a row of seated crims, and he turned to say something that Gaia couldn't hear. More men laughed this time, and when the tall man, Malachai, shifted his weight, she saw he was chained to a smaller man who sat on the bench. The implication was obvious: Malachai couldn't get seconds because his chainmate wouldn't move. Or couldn't. Malachai crossed his massive arms and leaned his shoulders back against the fence.
Malachai's chainmate was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his forehead on one fist, his other hand holding a bowl. He straightened and sat back, passing his bowl to Malachai, and then he leaned his head back against the fence and closed his eyes.
Gaia came to a stop, staring at him, at his black beard and the distinct lines of his nose and eyebrows, disbelieving.
It can't be.
“Hey, girly!” A jolly shout came from one of the crims.
Gaia hardly heard it. She took a step nearer. A mix of hope and horror was rising in her.
“Hey! Girl! Smile for us!”
Whistles and catcalls broke out around the yard, and the black-bearded crim beside Malachai turned his face, like the others, to scan up the hill. Even with the crim clothes and the deep tan and the beard, he was Leon Grey.
“Leon!” she called.
He came to his feet slowly, as if uncertain he was seeing correctly. “Gaia?”
The wondering joy in his voice was the sweetest thing she'd ever heard. She broke into an ecstatic smile and ran along the path, racing down toward the wooden gate. In the yard below, other crims took up her name. “Mlass Gaia! Give us a kiss, Mlass Gaia! Hey, girly!” Leon had Malachai by the arm, urging him forward, but the big man stayed against the fence, grinning and unmovable.
“That's enough!” came a loud voice. The guards pulled out their cudgels, fanning out from the barracks, but the crims only made more teasing noises, now directed at Leon, too. One of the guards was approaching Leon, his cudgel in hand.
“No!” Gaia called, but her voice was lost in the commotion.
As she ran, the declining path dropped below the sight-line over the fence, hiding the crims from her and her from the crims. She could see the gate now and two guards standing outside it. She clutched at her hat and skirt, still running full force.
“Let me in!” she said, gasping for breath. “I have to get in! My friend Leon is in there!”
The first guard appeared amused. “This is a prison, Mlass. You can't go in. Visits aren't until next Tuesday.”
“This isn't a visit!” she said. She stepped back to project her voice over the top of the wooden doors. “Leon!”
She couldn't hear any specific reply, just the continued rumble of the disturbance inside.
“Let me in!” she repeated, grabbing at the heavy beam in the brackets that held the doors shut.
“Back up, Mlass,” the second guard said, setting his hand on top of the beam. “You can't go in.”
“But I have to! An innocent man's in there!”
The guard didn't budge. “You'll have to take that up with the Matrarc.”
“Leon!” she yelled again. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”
Gaia listened for an answer, and then turned to run back up the path again. By the time she could see into the prison yard again, Leon and Malachai were gone, and the other crims were filing into orderly groups.
Gaia hurried back down to the prison gate.
“How long has Leon Grey been here? The new man from the Enclave?” she demanded.
The two guards looked at each other and she almost died of impatience.
“I guess they brought in a new man a couple days ago,” the first guard said slowly.
Gaia balled her hands in fists. She wasn't going to get any information out of these idiots. She had to see the Matrarc.
“Give a message to Leon Grey,” she said. “Tell him Gaia says she'll get him out. Okay?”
They nodded, but their ready agreement only made her suspicious that they wouldn't. They didn't care. Their job was to guard the door, and that's all they were doing.
She spun on her heel and ran up the road, but she had to stop
far too soon. She hated not being strong.
Did Leon have the acclimation sickness yet?
she wondered. How would she help him through that?
Then another thought struck her: if he hadn't had the sickness yet, he could still leave.
 
Mlady Roxanne met her on the veranda of the lodge. “Where've you been? We've been looking for you. The Matrarc wants to talk to you.”
“I want to talk to her, too,” Gaia said. Murderous rage had overtaken her frustration. “Where is she?”
“She's in your room.”
Good,
Gaia thought, pulling open the screen door and charging in. She stormed past the mlasses who looked up from their books, down the hall past the kitchen where Norris worked, and into her little room.
The Matrarc stood before Gaia's barred window, facing outward, as if she could sense the light, and her red cane was angled rigidly to the floor.
“How long has Leon been here? Why didn't you tell me he'd come?” Gaia demanded.
The Matrarc turned. Her expression was furious. “Close the door,” she said with ominous calm.
Rage and confusion warred in Gaia's heart, but the Matrarc's unyielding, steely eyes penetrated into her with uncanny precision, commanding. Gaia turned to close the door, even managing to do it without a slam.
“I need you to release him. Immediately,” Gaia said.
“And I need you to explain that.” The Matrarc pointed to Gaia's desk, where a dirty box was set. It was a wooden box, with neatly dovetailed corners and a lid, the sort of box made
with care to last, and which might be used to deliver a gift or hold keepsakes. With no distinguishing marks, it could belong to any one of a thousand people.
“I've never seen it before,” Gaia said.
“Look inside.”
Gaia's heart beat strangely, and as she stared again at the dirt, the significance became clear to her: a box with dirt upon it had been dug up, which meant it first had been buried. The Matrarc was waiting, listening. Gaia stepped to the desk and lifted the lid. Inside was a neatly folded pile of rags, darkened with absorbed blood, now dried. On top lay a stem of blue cornflowers, dainty and just beginning to wilt. She gasped, stepping back.
“One of the boys, Sawyer, found it in the garden this morning. He thought it was odd to see fresh dirt under the apple tree,” the Matrarc said.
Gaia felt the blood drain from her face.
“Explain,” the Matrarc said.
“You've obviously reached the only conclusion,” Gaia said. “Someone had a miscarriage and buried the remains.”
“Who was it?”
“You can't think I'd tell you if I knew,” Gaia said.
The Matrarc slammed her cane against the floor so hard that Gaia jumped.
“Don't fool with me. I asked you a question.”
Gaia backed up, bumping against the rocker. “And I'm not answering.”
“You mixed something in the kitchen last night,” the Matrarc said. “The smell still lingered this morning, but Norris didn't think anything of it until I asked him to account for it. I can't make any sense of the pantry. That's all put away. But obviously you've started your medicines there, and it's more than likely you prepared something toxic last night.”

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