Page 46 of The Castle & the Cloister

Only a connection he felt was of equal or greater value could induce him to risk the bindings of loyalty he already bore.

So Fia swallowed back futile anger, this time directed at herself. She straightened her shoulders and met Nikolau’s eyes.

“You want to know why I’ve come to you,” she said quietly. “Why I’ve tangled myself up in all this, when before I only cared for my own interests. It’s a fair question. Because I’m not here solely on my own behalf. I wouldn’t have involved myself in any of this if it weren’t for…”

Fia stopped. She couldn’t bring herself to say Miriel’s name—to do so would choke her.

“There’s a child,” she breathed. “Mine. My daughter, safe at Raea’s cloister. I want a better world for her than the one we’ve been handed.”

When Nikolau spoke, there was an urgency in his voice Fia had never heard there before. “Am I—?”

She nodded. “Yes. Of course. I was never with anyone else after meeting you. I know your home in Vesper was razed. Know there’s no one else left of your blood. Well, not anymore. I told you when we first met that I’d drown your loneliness, Nikolau, and the goddesses saw to it I spoke the truth.”

Nikolau sat back in his chair and ran a hand over his face. Shock had written itself across every line of him, and the look he gave her was half beseeching. “You wouldn’t lie about this? Because I swear to Raea, Fia, if you’re deceiving me, I’ll cut that wicked tongue out of your mouth.”

In answer, Fia stood. She unlaced the ill-fitting vest of Ariana’s cast-off riding habit and lifted the linen blouse underneath. The soft flesh of her belly was looser now, etched with a tracery of telltale silver marks—sunlines, the sorias called them, a gift from Raea herself—and even the supportive bindings she wore between feeding the prince could not hide how her breasts had swollen.

Nikolau was not so ignorant of women’s ways that he could fail to recognize what had happened to her. She’d brought life into the world and been irrevocably changed by it.

“I will let you see her,” Fia said, lacing up her vest once more. “On the condition that you do as I ask. Take what I’ve brought for payment and feed your people with it, but first I need two dozen of your finest, those best fit to carry out the most covert of actions. You cannot leave too soon—tonight would be best. When you return, and your task is done, come to the cloister. Then I’ll show you my Miriel.”

The bitterness Fia had seen in Nikolau before was nothing compared to the contempt radiating from him now. “You would bargain with our child?”

“Withmychild,” Fia said, and there was steel in the words. “Yes, I would, though I don’t expect you to understand. I do expect you to do as I ask, though. Afterward you may see Miriel once or twice a year, on the condition that she not be told who you are. It’s a capital offense, colluding with deserters, and I won’t put her in danger.”

“You’re a witch,” Nikolau spat, and Fia nodded.

“Yes. And I will have my way in this, as always.”

For what seemed a very long time, Nikolau only looked at her. Fia did not falter beneath his gaze, remaining motionless, expressionless, set in her purpose.

“Very well,” Nikolau said at last, spreading his hands wide in a mocking gesture. “I’m yours to command. You have your sell-swords.”

“Good,” Fia said curtly, bundling up her kirtle under one arm and leaving the shoulder bag of gemstones. “Remember, you leave no later than tonight. Hurry on the road. And I want to hear nothing of this—not so much as a whispered rumor that there was some skirmish to the south of Caervallion’s capital. I want this trouble dealt with so neatly, it’s as if it never arose in the first place.”

“AndIwant to see the child, no later than harvest time,” Nikolau warned her.

“Done,” Fia said. “Our bargain’s struck. May Raea bear witness to it.”

“May Raea bear witness to it,” Nikolau echoed, sealing the arrangement between them.

“One more thing.” Fia spoke abruptly, knowing she was pushing harder than she ought to, but unable to keep from making another petition. “You were a student of the body in Vesper, before you came to Honoria. You spoke of it often—of how most things, you were forced to learn. Honorian, covertcy, the habits of my people. But medicine was your choice. I need a physician’s knowledge of how to stop a flow of blood that’s refusing to end.”

The way Fia phrased her request was a reminder of how Nikolau had referred to her when they were together.I am a student of your body, he’d said,a servant of your blood. The way he’d spoken the words,meaningfully, she always thought they must be some Vesperin turn of phrase for a lover, or a line of poetry, perhaps. But she’d been singularly incurious about him when their lives intertwined, and it was too late to ask such questions now.

Nikolau’s gaze snapped to hers, and there was the same raw worry in it she’d shown at the idea of pressers harming him. “Your blood? From the child? She must be, what, half a year old? It’s been far too long for you to still bleed.”

Fia shook her head. “No. My concern is for a friend. This is personal, mind, not part of our other business. But she’ll die of her bleeding if it’s not staunched soon, I think.”

Nikolau ran a hand across his face again. “I learned only the most rudimentary things before I left Vesper, and I would hardly call it medicine. They always intended me to be a taker of life—most of the knowledge I was allowed was of how to harm, not to heal. Understanding of what can be cut or crushed or poisoned in order to kill swiftly.”

“And I’ve told you before, healing is only killing worked backward,” Fia said stubbornly. “Please. Vesper is so far ahead of Honoria in such pursuits, and I promise you, this is a life worth saving.”

Nikolau relented. He went to a stack of crates along one wall, rummaging through them and coming up with an oilskin bag.

“This is something I keep at every meeting house and outpost I’ve ever put in place,” he told Fia. “You’ve never seen one because, thank Raea, you never had to. But these have saved dozens of deserters over the years. You can take this with you. It’s a hemorrhage kit.”

“Hemorrhage?” Fia asked, the Vesperin word awkward on her tongue.