Chapter 141: — "Very Very Poor"

Her name was Osha and she had run Halven’s kitchen for nine years and she had, in that time, developed a specific relationship with the truth.

Not that she distrusted people. She simply noticed when a thing didn’t sit right — the way you notice a door that’s been rehung slightly out of square. Not enough to complain about. Just enough that you keep looking at it.

She had been looking at Erenna for five days.

It started with the dress.

The one she’d arrived in was a horror. Osha had taken one look at the hem and known it had passed through more hands than the house had rooms, and she had burned it herself in the yard, which she did not mention to anybody.

The one that replaced it came out of the linen chest. Good grey wool, plain, four years old, and it had belonged to somebody who wasn’t here any more.

Erenna had put it on and looked at herself and said “oh”, and then hadn’t said anything for a while.

Right, Osha had thought. We’ll not push at that one.

But on the fourth day Erenna was in the yard hanging washing, and Osha came out to find her wearing a shawl she had never seen before in her life.

Fine wool. Deep grey. Excellent.

“Where’d that come from.”

Erenna looked at the shawl as though she had also only just noticed it.

“…I’ve had this.”

“You came in with a dress.”

“I had this under the dress.”

Osha looked at her.

Erenna looked back with an expression of such total and untroubled honesty that Osha found she had already started putting the pegs down.

The conversation happened on the sixth day, lasted four minutes, and Osha thought about it for a month afterward.

“Sit.”

“Am I—”

“You’re not in trouble. Sit.”

Erenna sat.

“You’re poor,” said Osha.

“Yes.”

“How poor.”

And Erenna — who had eaten at this table for six days, who had cried twice, who was extremely helpful and slightly too good at carrying heavy things — sat up very straight and said:

“Very poor.”

“Right.”

“Very very poor.”

“…Right.”

“I am so poor,” said Erenna, with mounting conviction, “that I cannot afford a grain of wheat.”

Osha put down the knife she was holding.

“A grain.”

“A single grain.”

“Of wheat.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve eaten at this table for six days.”

“That’s because you’re generous,” said Erenna, instantly and with enormous feeling — and Osha, who was in fact extremely generous, and knew it, and had never once been thanked for it that directly, lost about nine seconds of the conversation.

She recovered.

“Then where,” she said, “did the shawl come from.”

Silence.

Erenna’s face did something complicated.

“Oh,” she said. “Ohhh.”

“Oh what.”

“The shawl. Right. Yes. Sorry.” She sat back. “That was given to me by the prince.”

Osha stared at her.

“…The prince.”

“The lord’s son.”

“The lord’s son,” said Osha slowly, “who chased you across the market square.”

“Yes.”

“Who took hold of your wrist in front of forty people.”

“Yes.”

“He gave you a shawl.”

“Yes,” said Erenna.

“Why.”

And Erenna said, with the patient air of somebody explaining an obvious thing to a woman being slow about it:

“Because he likes me.”

The kitchen went completely silent.

Behind Osha, a girl called Petta stopped shelling peas.

“He likes you.”

“Yes.”

“He grabbed you in the square—”

“Yes.”

“—in front of the whole market—”

“He does that,” said Erenna.

“He does that.”

“He’s like that.” A small helpless shrug, which Osha would think about later as one of the more convincing things she had ever seen anybody do. “He’s not good at it. At any of it. He follows me and says horrid things and then gives me a shawl and doesn’t mention the shawl. He’s fifteen.”

“He looks about fifteen.”

“He is about fifteen,” said Erenna, with the fervour of somebody who had found firm ground. “That’s what nobody understands. He’s a boy. He’s a horrible little boy with a great deal of money and nobody has ever told him no, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s decided I’m his somehow, and now I can’t get rid of him.”

“So he follows you here.”

“He follows me everywhere.”

“That’s—”

“It’s exhausting,” said Erenna, and put her face in both hands, and said, muffled, “I’ve been so tired.”

And that, Osha would remember for a long time.

Because that part hadn’t sounded like acting at all.

Osha stood in the kitchen a while after she’d gone.

Petta said, “Poor thing.”

“Mm.”

“That’s a horrible situation, that is. Nowhere to go, and a rich boy who’s decided—”

“Mm,” said Osha.

She picked her knife back up.

A grain of wheat.

Who says that.

Nobody says that. Poor people don’t talk about grains of wheat. Poor people talk about rent, and the price of eggs, and whether the roof’ll hold. Poor people are specific. That’s the whole condition of it — you know exactly what everything costs.

She said it like she’d read it in a story.

Osha went back to the onions.

She didn’t say any of it to anybody.

But she started a small running list in the back of her head, in the same place she kept the count of the good spoons — and the first item on it was grain of wheat, and the second was lifted a full water barrel one-handed on Tuesday and put it down again quickly.

Two streets away and one storey up, Seraphina was having a worse afternoon.

“He said what.”

“He said the prince gave it to her because he likes her.”

“He said—”

“That’s what came out of the house,” said Mira. “Word for word. From the girl who shells the peas, to the girl at the grain stall, to me.”

“He said it out loud.”

“In a kitchen. With two witnesses.”

Seraphina sat down on the edge of the bed.

“That’s insane.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not a cover story, Mira, that’s not even a lie, that’s a—”

“It worked,” said Mira.

“It what—”

“It worked. The entire kitchen thinks he’s a boy with a crush. Two of them have said they feel sorry for her. One has offered to walk her to market so you can’t get near her.” Mira folded her arms. “It is the worst lie I have ever heard in my life and it has made that whole household protective of her, which is exactly what we wanted, and I genuinely don’t know what to do with that.”

Seraphina stared at the floor.

“He told them I’m fifteen.”

“He said you’re about fifteen.”

“I’m twenty—”

“You’re twenty and you look about fifteen,” said Mira, “which is the entire reason you’re playing this part, which you knew when you cast yourself, so I don’t want to hear it.”

She went out that evening because staying in the room had stopped being survivable.

Seraphel of North Aldera walked the north end at dusk in a good coat, being disliked, which by now took no effort at all.

And halfway up Marl Street she passed the glass front of a shuttered shop, caught the reflection, and didn’t recognise it.

For about half a second.

A boy in a grey coat with his hair swept back off his face and nothing in front of his eyes at all.

She stopped.

It’ll need shaping, she’d said. In a common room four hundred miles from here, with four years of hair on the floor in front of her and a boot knife still in her hand.

She’d said it in a completely normal voice. She remembered being quite proud of the voice.

Mira had had both hands over her mouth.

Eren had stared at the pile on the floor with an expression she had never once been able to read, before or since.

And she’d sat there for a second — just a second — holding the weight of it in her left hand.

Four years of it. Since before the pass. Since before Kestral. Since before the road, and the carriage, and a bench at five in the morning with somebody eating bread in the dark.

Three passes with a boot knife, without asking anybody.

Then it’ll need shaping, and up, and on with it.

She looked at the reflection a while longer.

He won’t like this haircut.

It arrived fully formed and entirely uninvited — about a man she hadn’t written to in two years, in a town he had never heard of, while she was dressed as somebody else.

She examined it for about a second.

Then put it exactly where she put everything, on a stack that no longer had a top, and walked on up Marl Street being a horrible little boy with a great deal of money.

The chance came the following afternoon, and it came badly, which was how all of them came.

Erenna went to market with Petta.

Not with Osha. That was the first thing Mira noticed and reported and disliked — because Osha had walked her the previous four times, and today Osha had stayed in the kitchen and sent the youngest girl in the house instead.

“That’s a change.”

“It could be nothing.”

“It could be nothing,” Mira agreed, “or it could be a woman who’s decided she’d rather watch the house than the market, and I’d like to know which.”