Naamah's Curse

THIRTY-NINE

The following day, we arrived in Udinsk.

Although it wasn’t a very large city, it was bustling with traders and activity. I was glad to see it wasn’t all Vralians. There were Tatar faces here and there, trading sheep, cattle, and goats for furs and timber. Any sort of diversity made it easier to blend into the crowd, and their brown skin made the honey-colored hue of my own less noticeable.

There were vendors selling food-stuff along the wharf where we disembarked, leaving behind our taciturn fur-trappers. I wished to all the gods that Aleksei hadn’t spent our last coin on the passage. The smell of food-ground, seasoned meat grilled on a stick, cooked cabbage stew with dumplings floating in it-made my mouth water and my belly growl. Blessed Valentina had done her best, but it had been a long journey coming on the heels of three days’ worth of fasting, and we’d eaten the last of her bread and cheese yesterday.

I was starved for food, real food. I couldn’t help but eye the vendors’ fare longingly, breathing the savory aroma deep into my lungs.

“Moirin.” Aleksei cleared his throat. “You’re not exactly looking demure.”

“I’m hungry!” I said plaintively. “I’m hungry and tired, and I would like a hot meal, a bath, and a clean place to sleep.”

“I know, I know,” he said soothingly, jingling the bundle of chains. “Let’s find a place where you can call your magic safely, and I’ll look for a smith willing to pay good coin for silver.”

“No. Oh, no.” I shook my head. “No, I want to watch them melt. I need to see it done myself. I need to know for sure no one else will ever be forced to wear those chains.”

“Moirin, be reasonable!” he pleaded with me. “Once we’ve gotten rid of the chains, I won’t worry so much. Until we do, the less you show yourself, the less chance there is that word will get back to Riva.”

“You’re not all that inconspicuous yourself, my blue-eyed boy.” I pointed at the bundle. “Not peddling those.”

In the end, we struck a compromise. I would summon the twilight and accompany Aleksei cloaked in its concealment.

We found a narrow alley and ducked into it. Aleksei turned his back on me, shielding me from view, and I called the twilight. It was still a blessed relief to feel it settle over me, to watch the world turn soft and silvery.

“Moirin?” Aleksei turned around.

“Aye,” I said, willing him to hear me. I reached out and touched his hand. “I’m here.”

He shuddered. “Don’t do that, please. It’s unnerving. It feels like I’m being touched by some unholy spirit.”

“No, just me,” I murmured. “Lead on, my hero.”

There were three smithies in Udinsk, easily located by the smoke and clatter. The first smithy dealt only in weapons, horseshoes, tools, and the like, and sent us-or at least, Aleksei and my invisible self-on to the others.

The master smith at the second place gauged the chains with an appraising eye and asked questions. Too many questions. Aleksei flushed and stammered out the tale we had concocted about the chains being his wife’s dowry, an heirloom from her mother, who was freed from vile servitude in a D’Angeline pleasure-house. Even with my limited Vralian, I could tell he was doing a bad job of it. It wasn’t a very convincing tale, and my earnest Yeshuite scholar lied very, very badly.

“Aleksei,” I whispered in his ear, making him jump. “Not here. Let’s try the third smithy.”

He twitched and bit back a reply, stuffing the chains back in the makeshift satchel and bidding the second smith a curt farewell.

To my everlasting relief, the thick-set master smith at the last place was every bit as taciturn as our fur-trappers. He examined the chains, bit into a link to test the quality of the silver, and made a gruff offer.

Aleksei countered.

He didn’t haggle any better than he lied, but I was proud of him for making the effort. When he told the smith that he had promised his wife he wouldn’t leave until the chains had been rendered molten silver, the fellow merely nodded without a trace of curiosity and placed a crucible on the forge, ordering an apprentice to feed the forge and pump the bellows.

It was a tedious process, but I didn’t mind. It was worth it to see those bedamned chains destroyed.

While the crucible heated and Aleksei hovered nervously, I wandered the smithy unseen, examining a tray of wares on display. Some of the work was surprisingly lovely and delicate-brooches and necklaces set with gems. Amber, I thought, although it was hard to tell in the twilight. I glanced at the master smith with his bushy beard and thick, blunt fingers, wondering what inspired him to create such delicate beauty.

I touched his work lightly, thinking of Terre d’Ange and all the careless riches that had been bestowed on me there.

Of Jehanne, commissioning her former adversaries at Atelier Favrielle to make a sensuous gown and an elaborate headpiece with gilded branches and garnet berries for me to wear on the Longest Night.

Of how she had smiled and stroked my cheek. I’ve no objection to you looking as stunning as possible now that you’re mine, Moirin.

It made my heart ache, but it was a good memory, too. It had surprised and delighted me to find such an unexpected streak of generosity in Jehanne. On the Longest Night, she’d had living pine-trees brought in to decorate the great hall in the Palace; immense evergreen trees in huge pots, their tops reaching for the ceiling high overhead, releasing their fragrance into the hall, their branches hung about with sparkling glass icicles. No one had ever conceived of adorning the hall on that scale before. She had done it just to please me.

I looked across the smithy at Aleksei, the forge-light flickering over his features. I wondered if he could ever understand that it was a blessing, not a sin, to be graced with more than one love.

It could be complicated; of course it could be complicated. And it opened one up to the possibility of more pain and loss.

Still, it was a blessing I would never relinquish. Love, genuine love, was always a cause for joy.

At last the crucible reached the proper temperature, glowing bright silver in the twilight. The smith began feeding the chains into its maw, and I drifted over to observe the process, standing unseen at Aleksei’s shoulder and peering into the crucible. Slowly, slowly, the chains and shackles began to glow with heat, the perfect links softening, the cursed lines of each perfectly etched sigil and inscription beginning to blur.

It was profoundly satisfying.

Once or twice, Aleksei shifted restlessly, glancing around as though to ask if I were ready to leave, but I wasn’t content until those chains were altogether gone forever, reduced to a seething mass of molten silver. Then, and only then, did I whisper in his ear that I was ready to go.

Outside in the cool air, it was hard to contain my exhilaration. Those hateful chains were gone, gone, gone. Oh, I knew they could be forged anew, but for now, they were gone. Even if the Patriarch found me, he couldn’t bind my spirit. Those chains would buy my passage out of Vralia. I laughed and spun around Aleksei in circles as he led us back to the narrow alley where I could release the twilight safely.

He smiled wryly when I did. “You look positively giddy, Moirin.”

“I am,” I admitted. “I’ll try not to look it.”

“Yes, do. It’s nice, though,” he added. “You’re right. Until we fled, I’d never seen you happy. I imagine…” He cleared his throat. “I imagine it would make a person want to go to any length to coax such a dazzling smile from you.”

I raised my brows. “Are you turning romantic on me after all?”

“I don’t know.” Aleksei frowned a little, nodding to himself. “Mayhap I am. It’s a bit like trying on a strange garment. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.”

“It looks well on you,” I said. “But if the fit doesn’t suit you, you needn’t keep it. However, since we’re posing as husband and wife, you may as well wear it a while longer.” I took his arm, resting my fingers lightly on his forearm. He gazed at my hand as though it were a foreign object. “Here.” I adjusted the angle of his elbow. “This is how you would escort your beloved, at least in Terre d’Ange.”

“Like so?”

I smiled at him. “Aye, perfect.”

Naamah’s gift stirred between us, coils as hot and bright as the molten silver roiling in the crucible.

Aleksei tensed, but he didn’t pull away from me. He returned my smile, and there was yearning in his eyes, but there was sorrow and regret, too. “Let’s find an inn, and a hot meal for you.”

“And a bath,” I reminded him.

“And a bath,” he agreed.

There were several inns to choose from in Udinsk. We found a quiet one on the outskirts of town run by a devout Yeshuite couple. They regarded me warily at first, but I kept my eyes modestly downcast and Aleksei’s earnestness soon won them over. It was too late for a bath that day, but they offered us an ample supper and a private room, with the promise of a bath on the morrow-a hot bath, if we were willing to pay extra.

“Can we, please?” I begged Aleksei. “I know we can’t afford to be wasteful, but just this once?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “All right.”

“Thank you!” I kissed his cheek, making him blush. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

It won a smile from the innkeepers. So they were not so dour after all that they could not be touched by a pair of young newlyweds in love, the shy husband indulging his foreign bride in a small luxury.

It was such a pleasant fiction, I almost wished it were true.

That evening we dined on roasted chicken generously basted with butter, the skin a crisp golden brown, with stewed cabbage and dumplings on the side. It tasted like the best thing I’d ever eaten, and when I complimented our hostess in my halting Vralian, she seemed genuinely pleased.

Even Aleksei relaxed over the meal, setting aside his abstemious discipline to eat with rare gusto. I was glad to see it. I knew what young men’s appetites were like. If I was hungry, he had to be ravenous. He was too young for the ascetic lifestyle he led. The hollows of his cheeks were too gaunt beneath those rugged cheekbones with their perfect D’Angeline symmetry, his rangy, long-limbed body too rawboned.

If he were my husband, I thought, I’d take better care of him. The thought filled me with unexpected tenderness.

“Moirin, why are you looking at me that way?” he asked.

I bent my head to my plate, knowing it was unfair to give him even a hint of false hope. “Oh, no reason.”

Once our hosts escorted us to our chamber and the door closed behind us, the pleasant fiction ended. There was one bed in the chamber, big enough for two, but with little room to spare. Aleksei eyed it sidelong, nervous as a green-broken colt shying at a fence, fidgeting with the worn blanket that had served to carry our possessions. “I… I will sleep on the floor. I don’t mind. I’m used to it.”

“Mortification of the flesh?” I asked.

He nodded.

I was sorry, but not surprised. “As you wish, sweet boy,” I murmured, turning back the bed-linens. “Sleep well.”