Nobody's Lady (25 page)

“What is it?” I asked, leaning in beside him for a better look.

A man I didn’t recognize plunged a shard of glass into another man’s back. The second man crumbled, his head lolling forward and then his body vanishing, only his clothing cluttering the floor.

I gasped. “Someone might have
died
! We have to stop them! Find whose page that was! Find out if he was killed or hurt or … ”

Ailill let the pages fall back, leaving the page he’d held open, the page belonging to my father. Bright red burst onto the paper, the first shade of color I’d seen on any of the pages. It dripped down, like spilled ink. Like blood. And then the page went blank before vanishing in a surge of bright violet.

“F
ather
!” I screamed, clawing at the book. It was he who was stabbed on that other man’s page. He who crumpled. Ailill’s arms slipped around me, his hands clutched together at my abdomen. Tears streamed down my face. Endless, white-hot tears.

Ailill’s cheek pressed against my temple. It was warm, not at all like the cold marble I remembered. “They watch us now,” he whispered, barely audible over the sobs choking out past my throat. His lips brushed close against my skin, like the flutter of petals in a breeze against my cheek as I lay in the lily fields.
Lily fields.
I’d associated those, that feeling of serenity, with Jurij for so long.

“They are always watching.” He took a deep breath. “But we cannot let them win.”

I strode out of the throne room before I could even think.

“Olivière, where are you going?” Ailill grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around. He cradled the book in which I’d watched my father. I’d watched his page burn.

Father’s not dead. He’s not!
But I couldn’t just stand there. I had to know.

Ailill frowned. “Do you intend to run all the way to the tavern?”

My stomach hurt, and my throat felt dry. I didn’t know what I intended. I was going to head down the stairs and just run until I got there. Until I could prove to myself it wasn’t true. My eyes wandered over Ailill’s shoulder to the door leading to the cells.

I spun out of Ailill’s grip toward my friends. “I have to go!”

“Now what are you planning?” asked Ailill as he walked quickly along beside me. “The door is that way.”

“Aren’t we going to free them?” I gestured at the door to the cells. “They could help. They know the crowd at the tavern.”

Ailill didn’t respond to my question. “We will take the carriage. It will prove faster.”

I started. “You’ll come with me?”

There was a slight bob to Ailill’s throat. “Of course.”

“But you never leave the castle.” I frowned. “Hardly ever, that is.”

“This is too important.” He muttered something to himself about how “the Ailills would restrain them” and disappeared down the staircase to the second floor.

Several specters appeared from the dungeon and walked past me at a brisk pace, following after him. I may as well have been invisible. One bumped into me with an echoing clatter as he passed and didn’t even slow down.

I stood there a moment longer, staring at the dungeon door they hadn’t even closed behind them.

My father needed me. Because he couldn’t be dead. It had to be some mistake. But he wasn’t the only one who needed me.

Something glistened from the floor beside my feet, and I bent to pick it up. The specter who’d brushed past me had dropped the cell key. It was almost like he was asking me to free them while Ailill was distracted.

***

The book on my lap jostled with the bump of the carriage, and I was afraid my tight grip on its edges would make the thing crumble beneath my fingers. Up close, it wasn’t really in the best of shape—although when I considered how old it was, I was surprised it hadn’t faded to dust years before. My fingers traced over the scene of the tavern men fighting, from Vena’s point of view, as she and Elweard cowered behind the counter, their arms wrapped tightly around one another.

I wanted to throw up. My mind was racing. I hadn’t felt this anxious, this
awake
, since the day I’d led Avery and the other women to Elric in the castle. And thinking about that, I realized no one in this village—in this present-day village—had seen physical fighting before.

Ailill tapped his knee with his fingers, displaying worry for the first time in all the time I’d known him as an adult. “The Ailills can restrain them,” he said, for the tenth time at least. “They will have to.”

I flipped the pages until I found one with a better view of the brawl. It followed a man I didn’t know as he threw a punch and then received one.

Ailill had been talking to himself since we’d left the throne room. He touched the fingers on one hand as if he were counting. “There are a 104 of them. Some more frail and older than others.” The specters, I assumed. Even though some certainly looked older than others, I hadn’t suspected any were “frail.” “There are 564 men in the village, minus the seven currently in the cells.”

I stopped flipping through the book to glare at him. His knowledge of exactly how many men were in his village would have impressed me—assuming it was right—if it wasn’t compounded by the fact that he still intended to keep my friends in his prison.

“I will not have them bring swords,” continued Ailill. “The longer the people go without thinking about those, the better.” He ran a gloved hand over his face. “But just because I secured all the swords in the fifth life does not mean they cannot turn their tools into instruments of death.” He laughed sourly. “I seem to remember women made great use of pitchforks and axes at one point.”

I swallowed, too distraught to think of the mob of violent women, instead thinking of the glass shard in Father’s back. I turned the book back to where Father’s page had been. I felt the page that had been behind it, the tanner’s wife, asleep in her bed. Completely free of the pain and worries that filled my chest.

Because I couldn’t quite believe Father was dead. Page or no page, I had to be mistaken. Or if not, then I’d just have to undo it. Somehow. Someway. I’d been into the past before.

“Olivière?”

His voice brought me back to the moment. “Does this mean my father is dead?” I tapped the woman’s page.

“Olivière,” said Ailill, softer than was his usual custom. “The book shows the truth of the village. When a page burns, that means the villager has vanished into … Well, he moves on from this life.”

“
No
!” I slammed a palm against the book. “You burnt Master Tailor’s page, and he didn’t die.”

“Burning the page is not the same as the page burning itself. My act only returned the page to its bindings.”

“I know! I saw it. I … ” I didn’t know what I was going to say. The next word caught in my throat, suffocating me. Breathing hurt. Thinking hurt. I’d lost my mother once, and that pain had numbed me for months. Father and I had never been as close, but that brought its own kind of pain. We’d never properly talked since men became free. What kind of man was he really? All I’d have to remember him—the
real
him not bound by devotion to Mother—was that night I brought Arrow back and our chance meeting in the tavern, when he’d reminded me of the father who’d blamed me for Mother’s illness.

“Olivière.” Ailill’s soothing voice melted the cold panic and confusion ringing in my ears. He got up from where he sat across from me, his back hunched, his arms out to steady himself as the carriage flew down the path. He slid in beside me, our thighs pressed close together on the too-small seat. His arm flew around me, and before I knew it, I was cradling the book to my chest and pressing my head against his shoulder. It took me a moment to realize the great heaving sobs I heard were coming from my own throat, that my tears were dyeing his black jerkin even darker with dampness.

“He can’t be dead.” My voice cracked. “I just saw him. And I thought my mother dead once, and she wasn’t.”

“She was in my care.” Ailill’s gloved fingers ran through the back of my hair. “And I have no such power left. He has already vanished.”

I leaned away and took his hand in mine, dropping the book to my lap. He swallowed, perhaps hurt that I’d pulled back from him yet again. But I took the glove off and gripped his hand tighter, running my finger—the injured finger now almost entirely without poultice—over his smooth, pale skin. I wanted to feel that healing touch. He’d used it once on me, on a splintered finger. He could use it again. He could fix my hand and save my father. But even if he couldn’t …

“I
could save him,” I said, determined. “The pond will have to accept me and take me back in time. I’ll make it.” My eyes burned as tears continued falling.

Ailill threaded his fingers through mine. “Olivière, you cannot let your thoughts take you to such dark places. You cannot turn to that power. Please. You do not understand what you were dealing with when you fell through that pond before. They toyed with you.”

I wanted to scream. “Who are
they
?”

“I … cannot tell you.”

“Fine.” This whole exchange reminded me of how frustrated Jurij must have been when he was the one asking questions and I was the one not giving answers. “Then what do you mean, they toyed with me? By sending me into the past?”

He didn’t answer. I clutched the book again to my chest with one hand. It was a wonder Jurij hadn’t taken me by the shoulders and
shaken
the answer out of me, because that’s what I was considering doing now.

Is this what those women who assaulted their men after the edict dissolving marriages felt? The desire to hurt even those you love just because they don’t act exactly how you want them to? Violence is a scary thing. The little elf queen knew nothing of it.
“Ailill,” I said, willing my heartbeat to slow, “what happened to you during that month you were gone? Why does no one seem to remember it but me?”

“Does a dreamer remember his dream after he has finally wakened from it?” An echo of a smile glinted across Ailill’s face briefly, but it was hollow. “They toy with me, too. With all of us.”

“Is it these people who are really the ones ‘always watching’? Are we nothing but—”
The carriage ground to a halt, and I flew forward. With the book cradled to my chest, I couldn’t stop myself from falling.

But Ailill was there to catch me. He gripped my shoulders, saying nothing of it as he tore his eyes from me to look out the carriage window. “It is too soon. I told them not to stop but for any injured parties we come across.” Alarm colored his face as he gently pushed me back upright and swung the carriage door open, jumping to the ground without even waiting for a specter to assist him.

I pulled the book away from my chest. I’d bent a page, and now Mother’s face was halfway revealed. I pulled it out and smoothed down the creases, realizing with a jolt that I saw an ink figure I’d never seen before—Ailill—running across her page. I left the book on the seat and jumped out of the carriage after him.

“Where have they taken her?” Mother looked up. “Noll!” She ran past Ailill to pull me against her chest, choking back sobs. Did she know about Father? “Elfriede’s missing.” She pulled back and wiped her eyes with a shaking hand. “Forgive me, your lordship.” She curtsied unsteadily. “I should have greeted you. I’ve just been so frantic.” Lines had deepened across her face. The past few hours had aged her.

Ailill nodded curtly, his hands behind his back. What I once would have taken for rudeness I understood now was simply his mask for discomfort. He was so unused to interacting with others, now that I thought about it.

“Since when?” I asked, thinking about how I’d seen my sister in bed on the book’s page just a short while earlier. No, hours earlier. And she’d been awake, looking worried or frightened.

“I don’t know!” Mom threw her hands out as her eyes clenched, tears running down her face. “A few hours maybe. I was asleep. Or, I was trying to sleep. I should have heard her leave. But I just woke up, and she wasn’t there.” She cradled her face in her hands. “I came out here to find her, and then I saw the carriage and—oh,
goddess
.” Her gaze ran over the two lines of specters at rest behind the carriage, and she sobbed. “Something has happened, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, unsure of how to tell her. “But not with Elfriede.” I swallowed. I didn’t really know she wasn’t involved. The pages showed such a mess of chaos at the tavern.

The pages.

Ailill gestured to the specters and pointed toward the village. The servants continued their march toward the tavern, splitting to walk around the carriage, my mother, and me. I let go of Mother, eager to slip back to the carriage.
Why now? Why did Elfriede have to go
tonight, of all nights?
I tapped my foot anxiously, willing the men to hurry up so I could get back to the book in the carriage.

I heard Ailill speak from behind me. “Why do you think your daughter has gone against her will?”

I’d forgotten she said something about people taking her.

“It’s not that she’d go against her will. It’s just … ” She grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling me away from the line of specters between me and the carriage. “I’ve tried to help her get over things, Noll. It’s been so hard. She took it so much harder than I thought she would.” She hiccupped. “And all this time, I had my own problems to worry about with your father.”