The Sword (9 page)

“Either you get in that bed, or I'll
spell
you there!”

Aquamarine eyes narrowed to glittering slits, as her pale, freckled cheeks turned pink with rage. She stomped up onto the mattress to tower over him, taking advantage of the only extra height she could find. “You wouldn't
dare
!”

“Do not try my patience again, woman!” he asserted, starting in a growl and ending in a roar. “Lie down in that bed!”

“You know, this room was built to be proof against most sounds between it and the donjon hall below,” a third voice interjected dryly, making both of them whirl toward the doorway to the stairs. The blond haired, brown-eyed brother leaning in the doorway studied the pair of them. “But I could hear you all the way down in the scullery. Not even my lungs are usually employed that loud.”

“
He's
being
impossible
!”

“That's because
she
won't
eat
!”

Their audience winced and wiggled a finger in his ear. “Okay. Since the two of you are only making volume headway, I'll play mediator.” Brown eyes glanced toward gray. “All right, Saber, what is the problem—softly, if you please?”

“Look at her, Evanor!” Saber demanded, jabbing a finger in her direction. Which she batted away, giving him a dirty look. “She's all skin and bones and eats less than a bee, but works eight times as hard as one! She's been trying to clean this place on less than a third of a meal!”

A golden brow lifted, as the man eyed the partially cleaned room around them. The cobwebs had been batted down, the floor mostly scrubbed, and the dust whacked at least somewhat from the curtains.

“It's indeed a tough job for someone without magic to speed and aid them, but not that overly laborious. And women are often not as fragile as you profess this one to be. Many are often expected to clean and keep house without a speck of magic…though I'll admit ours is one of the worst-kept ones around, despite the efforts I've made in the more used rooms. Now,” he added, giving his brother a “shut up” look before switching his gaze to the other person in the room, “tell me, lady—well, first, what is your name?”

“Kelly Doyle.”

He bowed slightly. “A pleasure to meet you, Lady Kellidoil, despite the circumstances. Now—”

“No, it's just Kelly.
Then
Doyle. Doyle is the name of my family, Kelly is my own name,” she corrected, folding her arms across her chest with a brief tug at her top.

“Ah. Well then, Lady Kelly, tell me why you think my brother is being impossible?”

Kelly debated telling him she wasn't a titled lady, but decided she didn't mind finally being treated nicely by someone in this bizarre universe. “He's demanding I either sit in that chair over there and eat more than I physically can, because my stomach's been shrunk from too little money to buy too little food for too many months. Or that I lie here in this bed and do absolutely nothing. I'm not the kind of person who can do absolutely nothing!

“Back home…” Her voice wavered a moment at the thought of there being no more “back home,” but a pile of charred wood and ash. She firmed it and went on. “Back home, I always had about two dozen projects going at any one time. Lace-making bobbins, embroidery hoops and thread, clothing and dolls and pillows to sew—laundry in need of washing, floors to sweep, a garden to weed, that would hopefully give me more food than I could afford to outright buy, with those idiots pressuring my regular customers away from my shop, so I had to rely on infrequent tourist trade. A Doyle doesn't ‘do nothing'! And as I'm the only one left, I cannot ‘do nothing' even less!”

Evanor frowned as Saber listened to her confession. “Your family is dead?”

“Yes. They died in an auto accident, a couple of—” Breaking off at their puzzled looks, since the word
auto
didn't seem to make sense to them, something the translation spell didn't seem to be able to handle according to their own tongue, Kelly tried a different tact. “Your people have carriages, right? Drawn by horses?”

“Yes. And some have wheels that turn by magic, though they are expensive to purchase and costly in spells to maintain,” Evanor affirmed in his smooth, wonderful voice. “We, of course, make our own for use on the isle, as we have no horses for pulling regular carriages, and we are all mages enough to maintain them. They can go faster than horse-drawn carriages, providing the road is smooth enough to be traveled upon that fast, and can haul almost the same weight in their load as a pair of horses, and they don't have to be fed grain or hay, though they still have to be maintained.”

That was close enough for her to make them understand what had happened to her own family. “Yeah, well, in
my
universe, where I come from, we've got machines that do the same thing as your magic carriages, and lots of smooth, straight roads to go really fast on. And three years ago, some idiot had too much to drink, lost control of his horseless carriage, and crashed into their carriage with his own, fast and hard enough to kill all three of them instantly.”

“Then you have my condolences for your loss, and Saber's sympathies, too,” the younger man added, lifting his chin at Saber, who scowled at his brother for the presumption. “Our own mother, Annia, died in childbirth with our stillborn sister. When our father, Saveno, grew ill from a fever not a month later, he lacked the strength of will to live on without her and succumbed, despite our efforts to heal him and make him better. So we are more or less orphaned, too. As well as outcast for the simple crime of being born.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Kelly added honestly. That sounded like a lousy way to lose one's parents, too. She refocused on the problem at hand, reviving her earlier irritation. “But that doesn't change the fact that he's being unreasonable in his demands—he even threatened to use a
spell
on me!” she added, jabbing a finger in Saber's direction.

“That is because she is a stubborn fool who doesn't know what is
best
for her!”

“Oh, like
you're
an expert on women, Mister We've Been Exiled Here for Three Whole Years!” she shot back, flipping a hand at him, the other on her hip.

“
Enough.
” It wasn't loud, and it wasn't forceful…not exactly, but the single, hard-voiced word cut their argument dead. The younger Nightfall brother eyed Kelly, eyed Saber, then straightened, his gaze returning to the first real woman all of them had seen in three years. “He is right in that you should rest, Lady Kelly, and eat, and regain your strength while you are a guest in our home—you do not have to worry about where your food comes from as our guest, or that you must conserve it for another day's meal; we gain more than enough in provisions, both locally and for our trade-goods, than twice our number could eat. So eat your fill whenever you can take another bite, so that you regain whatever in your hardships you have lost.

“And
she
is right,” he added as Saber folded his arms and took on a smug look, “in that
you
are being unreasonable in expecting a woman with her obvious natural energy to simply lie abed with nothing to occupy her hands and mind. You also need more appropriate garments, Lady Kelly,” Evanor continued politely but pointedly to their strawberry-haired guest. “My brother and I will go look for some. And as we do so, we shall look for something in the way of embroidery, or lace-making, or even simple clothes-mending for you to do…
if
you promise to rest in bed, eat your fill whenever you can, and not scrub any more floors today or tomorrow. Agreed?”

“I already brought her some clothes,” Saber pointed out gruffly, nodding at the pile of cloth discarded on the floor near the door.

“Then we will leave her to try them on—a nontaxing event for any woman, surely even you will agree—and go in search of needle and thread so that she can alter them to fit her better, giving her something nonstrenuous to do with her time here.
Now
, Saber,” he added pointedly.

“You do
not
order me around,” Saber asserted, moving toward the door anyway. “I am the elder brother, and I—”

“—I do when you're acting like an a—uh, fool,” the slightly shorter man asserted with a wary, genteel flick of those mahogany brown eyes in Kelly's direction. “We will return in an hour, my lady.”

“She is
not
your lady,” Saber growled, as his brother pulled the door shut behind them, leaving their unwanted guest inside the lord's chamber. “She is leaving the moment Morganen can safely rid us of her!”

“I am merely being polite, Brother,” Evanor returned calmly, as they descended the steps. “She is not my type, anyway.”

“We don't
have
a type, remember?” Saber pointed out. Hating that he had to say it. “None of us dares have a ‘type.'”

His brother carefully said nothing to contradict his words.

 

W
ell. At least she had something to do—try on the clothing he'd brought and then thrown on the floor.
Clothing that's in serious need of a heavy scrubbing, though I'll have to settle for a dust-beating, for now
, she decided, moving to the nearest window. Thrusting the panes back on their stiff hinges, she returned, picked up the large pile as best she could and carried it over to the open window.

Several hard shakes of each garment, and they were made somewhat more wearable, as specks of dust billowed out onto the sea-scented breeze. Or at least more presentable than her pajamas had become, between fire, holes, scrub-water, and general grime. Once that was taken care of, Kelly sorted the pile, examining each piece and reluctantly admiring the stitching. Tiny, straight, and entirely machine-free.

But of course they'd do it by hand, here. Assuming not everyone has magic to do mundane tasks by, or even if there is a spell to stitch fabric by.

There were two sets of underdrawers and three corsets. Five skirts, four blouses, three chemises, two gowns, three overgowns. Eight stockings that ranged from a fine-spun woolen pair that would be too warm to wear in this summer-like weather, and silk so thin, aged, and fragile, it tore under just the pressure of her fingertips when she picked it up to give it a good shake. There were already larger holes in the hosiery, which she guessed had come from Saber's handling of them.

Tossing that pair aside, she looked over the shoes. Five sets of those in different sizes, some a little worn, but all more or less fit to wear. The second-best pair looked to be approximately her size, when she held one up to the sole of her bare foot. She set those aside and returned her attention to the clothes.

Some of the clothing was moth-eaten, with little holes here and there, but most of it smelled of some kind of peppery, cedar-like storage material, proof that they had been preserved for at least part of the time, and were probably even older than they looked. There was a hip-length, sleeveless camisole that fit her and seemed sturdy enough that it wouldn't rip just from her breathing. It would do for an undershirt, though it was a bit sheer for a medieval tank top.

Rummaging a bit more, Kelly sighed. There weren't any pants. She didn't mind skirts, but she preferred pants. Everything was of a different size, proof he had grabbed a variety for her to try on, but it was all skirts and such. Slipping into the smaller set of underdrawers as soon as she was naked, she tightened the drawstring. It promptly snapped, making the shorts drop, unable to stay on her hips. A test of the larger pair, and that string broke, too, making Kelly sigh in exasperation.

Kicking them aside, she gingerly tested the corset strings. The smallest and medium sets broke, but the largest stayed taut and firm. Unlacing all three corsets, she held each one up to her ribs, gauged which one would be roughly the right size to support her breasts—even half-starved, she still had a full enough figure in that respect—and laced it with the good strings salvaged from the large corset. Pulling it on over the sleeveless camisole, she tightened the garment, glad it laced in the front. Glad these people did believe in some form of breast support in their archaic sense of fashion.

Given how medieval these men dress, I wouldn't have been surprised if there hadn't been anything for holding up a woman's breasts. But I'm glad there is; I hate going braless for too long.
The only boning in the garment came from the tightly flat-felted seams from breasts to hips, but it was fitted like a bra in many respects, if just a little loose for her currently undernourished size. And unlike some corsets, at least this style had shoulder straps to take up some of the weight of her flesh, rather than trying to rely on compression alone for support.

She tried on the skirts and blouses next. Unlike the plain, beige muslin of the underdrawers and corsets, the rest of the clothes were dyed in light, pastel colors, some with flowers embroidered at the hems, some with woven ribbon trim stitched in stripes. One of the gowns was too tight for her upper body, not to mention simply too long to be practical without some serious reworking, and the other was too loose to even stay on her shoulders. Namely, because the drawstring broke.