Chương 97: Chapter 95: A Trip Outside (Part 2).

The side street opened onto a small square I had never seen before. It was not much of a square, if I was being honest. It was little more than a handful of stalls clustered around a cracked fountain that hadn't worked in what looked like decades. A woman sold roasted nuts from one of the carts. Two men argued over something at a butcher's stall. A boy, no older than ten, sat on the fountain's rim and stared out at the world. A food stall on the far side caught my eye.

A broad woman tended a heating Magical Implement behind a counter, flipping skewers of meat on it that sizzled. The smell hit us from quite a ways away. I pulled Cordelia toward it before I'd fully thought about why. Her eyes moved from the Magical Implement to the generously dripping sauce to her white gloves and back again.

"Three, please," I said to the woman. We waited. Violet did not. Violet snatched one off the counter the moment it was laid down and tore into it. I was fairly sure the chefs at my home were feeding her, so why did she have to act like she was starving? I took mine and ate with more careful motions. The meat was good and the sauce was better. Cordelia stared at the remaining skewer. The vendor held it out to her, one eyebrow raised, clearly wondering what the issue was. Around us, people ate these things standing.

There were no plates. Nobody used so much as a napkin or a handkerchief. Cordelia reached for it. Her gloved fingers closed around the wooden stick. She raised it to her lips. Took one careful, precise bite. Sauce touched her glove. She went still. It was a tiny freeze. One invisible to anyone who wasn't watching for it. Her eyes dropped to the dark stain blooming across her left glove. Her free hand twitched toward… something. A napkin that wasn't there, perhaps? Cordelia took a deep breath.

She took another bite, and another. She ate two, in the end. I watched her finish the second without comment, because commenting would have ruined it. Violet watched too, and I did not know what she was thinking.

"Not bad," Violet said finally.

"For a princess." Cordelia set down the empty stick on the counter. Her stained glove rested at her side. She did not hide it.

"It was acceptable, as far as food goes," she said primly. She had eaten two. I chose not to point this out. After that, we found a low stone wall at the edge of the square, near enough to the fountain that we could hear the pigeons squawking on its edges. I sat first. Cordelia lowered herself beside me. She was lowering herself on rubble, and somehow making it look dignified. Perhaps I should take lessons from her. Violet took the far end, stretching her legs out and leaning back on her hands.

She looked rather satisfied. Doubtless because of the street food. If I'd known she liked this kind of thing, I'd have had someone bring it in for her. I'd remember. For a few minutes, none of us spoke. The square moved around us and people passed without looking. The sun had climbed higher, warming the stone beneath us. It was Cordelia who broke the silence.

"The drawing," she said. She was staring straight ahead, at something I couldn't make out.

"The one that girl gave me at the orphanage." I turned to regard her.

"What about it?"

"I don't know where to keep it." She said it lightly, as if it didn't matter at all.

"My rooms are not…searched, precisely." She chose the word carefully.

"But things I leave out have a way of being…commented upon." She paused, turned her ring once.

"A child's drawing in my rooms would raise questions." She did not mention what types of questions. I could guess well enough. Could guess, even as they boiled something inside me. Her words were calm. She might as well have been discussing the weather. I let the silence hold for a moment.

"Keep it in my library," I said.

"It won't go anywhere." Cordelia turned to look at me. Her expression was difficult to read, though I was starting to learn the difference between her mask and the things that showed through its cracks."You would do that?"

"It's a drawing, Cordelia. It's no great secret." I paused for a heart beat.

"Though I suppose in your house, those might be the same thing." Her lips pressed together, into the shape that wasn't quite a smile. She nodded once and looked away. The pigeons fought over something on the fountain's edge. A bit of bread, I now saw. One of them won, flew off before the other could catch it.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"You're going to regardless." I smiled at that.

"Alexander…what is he like?" The question was clumsy and I knew it. It was no less clumsy the second time around. Cordelia's answer came smoothly.

"He is dutiful and his reputation is impeccable. House Bulwark is among the most distinguished in the Kingdom." Each word was perfectly selected. It was almost the exact thing she had said last time too.

"But what is he like?" There was a pause, one longer than it should have been.

"He has been perfectly courteous, as far as men of his station go." Perfectly courteous, huh? Perhaps Vindicta had been right after all. Whatever rot she had seen in the world, I was seeing more and more of it too. Vaelin hummed in agreement in my mind. I wanted to push. Instead, I leaned back against the wall and stared up at the sky.

"I received several marriage proposals while I was in the Wastes," I said. Cordelia blinked.

"Several?"

"All of these were from outside Aelheim. Imagine my surprise. I'd thought I had already rejected everyone in this city." Cordelia did not say anything immediately. Violet sat up a little straighter.

"One of them was interesting. It included poetry." Cordelia was staring at me now."Was it good?"

"Anias said no, but I wanted to read and see for myself, and so I did." Something shifted in Cordelia's expression. Interest, maybe. The genuine kind, not the performed kind.

"What was it about?"

"He rhymed 'Veyne' with 'pain' in the first stanza and it went downhill from there. I fear the rest…." I paused.

"I have severed from my mind, for my own sake." Cordelia's hand went to her mouth. I heard it clearly. A small, choked sound that was almost a laugh. Almost, but not quite, because Cordelia Greenward did not laugh. Except she had, once, and the memory of it would not leave me.

"That is…" She composed herself, but her eyes were bright.

"That is unfortunate." The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"For him or for me?"

"For the art of poetry." I grinned. I couldn't help it. Violet, at the far end of the wall, was very pointedly not looking at us. Her braid was getting a fierce tug. I did so wonder just what she thought. The sun was warm. People milled all around us. For now, we were just three girls. Three random, normal girls. It was a small thing. I wanted to hold onto it. There had been signs. There always were small signs, if you were really paying attention. I usually was.

A skewer wrapper appearing near Cordelia's elbow at the food stall, placed by no one. The faintest footprints in a muddy patch between the cobblestones, trailing behind us in a pattern that didn't match any of our steps. I had noticed because I knew what to look for. What surprised me was that Cordelia had noticed too. She said it quietly, while we still sat. When there was no one around us at all who could overhear. She was looking at the empty air to my left, where the footprints had stopped.

"You have someone else with you." It wasn't a question.

"You have had someone else with you all day." I went very still. Cordelia's expression was careful. As if she was afraid to point this out now, when she had so obviously noticed long ago. I looked at her for a long moment, at her green eyes. She could have asked at any point. She could have pressed. She hadn't. I made a decision.

"Sere," I said to the empty air.

"It's okay, you can come out." Nothing happened. The square was still. Cordelia watched me speak to nothing and did not so much as blink. I waited. If Sere wasn't ready, she wasn't ready, and I would never force her to do anything she didn't wish to. Ten seconds passed, and then Sere appeared. One moment she wasn't there, and the next, she was standing a few paces to my left, her notepad clutched against her chest with her good arm, the sling on the other side making her look smaller than she already was.

She looked at Cordelia warily. No… shyly. Someone else would have flinched or gasped or at least raised an eyebrow. Cordelia didn't. Her eyes moved to Sere and stayed there. She took in the sling and the notepad. Then she did something I hadn't expected. Cordelia stepped towards Sere and lowered herself. Hers was not the perfect curtsy I was used to. Instead, she crouched slightly, bringing herself down to Sere's eye level. The hem of her coat touched the dirty cobblestones.

She didn't seem to notice, or perhaps she simply didn't care.

"Hello," she said. Sere stared at her and didn't move. Her grip on the notepad tightened. Cordelia waited. She simply stayed where she was and waited. Slowly, Sere held out the notepad. She opened it to a blank page with one hand, pulled a pencil from somewhere -she always had a pencil somewhere- and wrote. Sere. Cordelia read it. She did not ask why the girl hadn't spoken. She simply nodded.

"That's a lovely name," she said. Her voice was warm in a way I hadn't heard before. In a way I didn't think it could be. Sere's grip on the notepad loosened a fraction. She wrote again, much faster this time. You are the tea lady? I blinked. Cordelia's composure cracked. She almost looked amused.

"I suppose I am," she said.

"Is that what-" She stopped herself from looking at me and kept her eyes on Sere.

"Is that what they call me?" Sere shook her head and wrote again. Just me.

"Then I'm honored," Cordelia said. I could hear that she meant it.

"You can call me Cordelia, but I am happy to be the tea lady, Sere." Sere studied her for a long moment. Then she flipped to a new page and drew something. She turned the notepad around and held it up. It was Cordelia. A tiny, quick sketch. The clothes, the dark hair. Sere had captured her in a dozen lines. She had also given her a slightly too-large head and a very round face, which I chose to interpret as artistic license rather than commentary. Cordelia looked at the drawing.

"It's wonderful," she said softly.

"You are very talented…I am just a beginner at drawing myself." Sere beamed, and it was a bright smile. She ripped the page out and held it forward. Cordelia shook her head, slowly.

"I'm sorry. I do not want... someone else to take it." Sere seemed puzzled at that. But then she nodded, folded it between two pages of her notebook. Violet stood a few paces back, arms folded, watching the whole thing in silence. She hadn't said a word. I let the warmth of it sit for a moment.

"Cordelia." She looked up at me from where she still crouched.

"Sere's Gift. What she can do…and what you have just seen," I held her gaze.

"It needs to stay a secret. Nobody can know. Not your father, not your maid. Nobody." Something between us changed. Perhaps she was weighing what this information was worth. Then she looked back at Sere -at the notepad and the bright eyes and the small smile that hadn't faded yet. Cordelia nodded. It was a hesitant nod, but she nodded all the same.

"I won't tell anyone," she said. Sere started scribbling again on a fresh page. She held it up toward Cordelia. It was a small drawing of two stick figures side by side. One tall with dark hair, one a little shorter with a sling. Both were smiling. Underneath, was Sere's handwriting. Friends? Cordelia stared at the drawing.

"Yes," she said.

"I think so." She hesitated, and whispered so quietly I almost did not hear her.

"I hope so." Sere nodded once, firmly, as if a negotiation had been concluded. Then she vanished. The air rippled and she was gone, as suddenly as she'd appeared. Cordelia froze, slowly blinked. She put a hand to her head and slowly closed and opened her eyes several times. She looked around, searching for someone that wasn't there. She paused, stared down at her hands.

"Sere…." She mouthed the word, as if she wasn't sure if it was a person or something else entirely. Sere's Gift was rather disorienting when you'd never experienced it before. Even now, I felt its strangeness, and I had gotten used to it over weeks.

"I think I see." She murmured.

"No wonder it's a secret." Not for the first time, did I think that Cordelia was far smarter than I. Cordelia straightened slowly. She looked at the sketch in her hand.

"You have strange friends, Lady Veyne," she said.

"I do," I said.

"And my name is Esra." We walked back the way we had come, and as we did, what I saw of Cordelia was slowly but surely being replaced by Julian's daughter. I saw it happen piece by piece. It was a smoothing of her face. It was her pointedly trying to clean her glove. It was something passive settling in her expression. I said nothing. Could not say anything. Would that I were a God instead of a Hero, then perhaps…. The disguises came off as we neared the Manor.

Cordelia removed the cloak and folded it precisely, as if it were a garment she might need again. I chose to find that encouraging. The guards were waiting at the entrance. The maid stood behind them. The head guard's jaw was set so tight it was a wonder his teeth hadn't shattered. He looked at Cordelia, then at me, and whatever he saw in my expression made him step aside without a word. Cordelia slipped into Greenward's daughter like a second skin.

"Lady Veyne, thank you for a most productive discussion. Your District shows remarkable promise, and I look forward to our continued cooperation." Then she paused, leaned in, just slightly. Just enough that only I could hear." The sauce stains, by the way. I cannot get them off, and so, I will need new gloves. I'd rather liked these ones." Her eyes were bright, and they made something bright rise within me. She stepped back, curtsied, and turned toward her carriage. The guards closed around her.

The door opened, and she was inside, and the carriage was pulling away. I watched it go until it turned the corner and vanished from sight. Violet came to stand beside me. We stood there for a moment, watching the empty street where the carriage had been. She had been remarkably quiet today, all things considered. Perhaps she had been quiet only for this moment.

"I still don't trust her," Violet said. I nodded.

"I know."

"But…" I waited. Violet chewed on her lower lip. She tugged her braid, folded her arms and unfolded them.

"She was good with the kid," she said finally.

"She didn't make it weird. Didn't ask stupid questions."

"She didn't," I agreed.

"Just like you, when you first saw her." She was quite for a time.

"Is this going to end in father-killing too?" A blunt question. One that truly only Violet Indri could have ever asked.

"I hope not. I don't think we could but…." I'd thought about it. I didn't say it, not that I needed to with Violet. Violet slowly nodded.

"Doesn't mean I trust her."

"You said that already." I pointed out.

"Because it's still true!" She folded her arms, for the second time. I reached over and flicked her forehead. She swatted my hand away, gently. I flicked her again, and this time she did not stop me. I smiled. A notepad appeared on the bench beside me. We both turned to look at it. Sere had drawn the three of us at the food stall. Cordelia -or at least, the figure I assumed was Cordelia- had sauce on her face in the drawing, which I was fairly certain had not actually happened.

Violet was drawn twice her actual size for some reason. I was drawn with an especially large head. Good day. Again.

"Yeah kid," Violet huffed.

"I guess it was kinda fun."