Sigrid Chapter 89

Chapter 89

Marie-Chez took one look at her face and said nothing.

This was, Sigrid reflected, one of the more remarkable things about her. For a woman who talked almost constantly, she had an uncanny instinct for when silence was the more interesting choice.

She simply sat Sigrid down in front of the mirror and began removing the hairpins one by one.

The maids worked quietly around them. The room slled of cold cream and rosewater. Outside the window, the city had settled into its evening register — carriage wheels on cobblestones, distant laughter, the occasional bell from the cathedral a few streets over.

Sigrid watched her own face in the mirror as the elaborate upswept hair ca down, silver strand by strand, until it fell loose around her shoulders. The reflection looked more familiar now. More like herself.

Though she was not entirely certain, anymore, what herself ant.

"Well?" Marie-Chez said finally, eting her eyes in the mirror.

"Well what?"

"How was it?"

Sigrid considered the question with the seriousness it deserved.

"We rode a horse without a saddle," she said. "And I rowed a boat. And we ate chestnuts outside in the street."

Marie-Chez stared at her.

"That is not what I was asking."

"I know."

A pause. Marie-Chez resud unpinning her hair.

"He said I was glowing," Sigrid offered.

"He's right, you were." Marie-Chez caught her eye in the mirror. "And?"

Sigrid was quiet for a mont. A maid appeared at her shoulder with a jar of cold cream and began gently removing the makeup — the powder, the color at her cheeks and lips, the careful work of that morning disappearing layer by layer.

Underneath, her own face.

"He asked what I wanted," she said. "Several tis. In different ways."

"And did you answer?"

"...Eventually."

Marie-Chez made a sound that was not quite a laugh but in the sa family. She set the last hairpin down on the vanity with a small click.

"Sigrid."

"Yes?"

"You're allowed to want things. I hope you know that."

Sigrid looked at her reflection.

The face looking back was familiar now — her own coloring, her own angles, the faint shadows under her eyes from years of early rising that no amount of powder had ever fully concealed. The face of soone who had spent a long ti being useful and not much ti being anything else.

"I'm learning," she said.

Marie-Chez patted her shoulder once, briskly, and stepped back.

"Good. Now get out of that corset before you do yourself an injury."

She returned to her own rooms late.

The house was quiet — the Count had retired early, and the servants moved through the corridors with the muffled efficiency of people trying not to disturb anyone. Sigrid changed into her sleeping clothes, braided her hair loosely, and sat on the edge of her bed.

She should sleep. She was tired in the pleasant, diffuse way of a day spent outdoors.

Instead she sat there for a while, looking at nothing in particular.

What do you want?

She had given him an answer. Peace. She had ant it.

But lying down and staring at the ceiling, she found herself cataloguing other things. Smaller things. Things she had noticed today and filed away without quite examining.

The way he had wrapped his cloak around her at the lakeside without asking first, and then imdiately offered to remove it if she didn't want it.

His hands over hers on the oars. Ready but not directing.

The laugh — the real one. The way it ca out before he could stop it, like sothing he hadn't planned.

Soone who doesn't find strange.

She had said it as if it were a small thing. She was starting to understand it wasn't.

Sigrid pressed the back of her hand to her cheek. It was warm.

'This is inconvenient,' she thought.

Not unhappy. Not unwanted, even — she was honest enough with herself to admit that. But inconvenient. She had co into this arrangent with clear paraters. Help Beramund. Gather information. Survive whatever the Emperor was planning. Those were the objectives. Simple enough.

She had not accounted for chestnuts.

She had not accounted for the particular quality of being understood.

Sigrid exhaled and closed her eyes.

From sowhere in the house, a clock chid the hour. Nine. Earlier than she usually slept. She should try anyway — tomorrow would bring training, and correspondence, and eventually whatever ca next. The world did not stop simply because she had spent an afternoon on a lake.

She was almost asleep when she heard it.

A sound from the corridor. Not the soft shuffle of a servant — sothing different. A footstep, and then a pause. And then nothing.

Sigrid was upright before she was fully awake, her hand reaching automatically for the dagger on the nightstand.

She waited.

Silence.

Then, very quietly, a folded piece of paper slid under her door.

Sigrid stared at it.

She waited another full minute, counting her own heartbeats. No further sound. Whoever had left it was already gone.

She crossed the room, picked up the paper, and unfolded it.

The handwriting was small and precise. Not Beramund's — she knew his handwriting now, the slightly forward slant of it, the way he always pressed too hard with the pen. Not the Count's either.

She didn't recognize it.

The chrysanthemum banquet. Third week of the month. You will be invited. Accept.

— A friend.

Sigrid read it twice.

Then she folded it carefully, went to the small writing desk in the corner, and slid it into the back of the drawer beneath her correspondence paper.

She sat down in the chair.

The chrysanthemum banquet. She knew of it — a formal Imperial occasion, hosted at the palace once a year in the early spring. Nobles, high officials, military commanders. The Emperor presided. Attendance by invitation only.

She had never been invited before. She had never had reason to be.

You will be invited. Accept.

A friend.

Sigrid looked at the drawer for a long mont.

Then she went back to bed. Not because she was no longer alert — she was very alert, the pleasant tiredness of the afternoon entirely gone — but because lying awake in a chair solved nothing, and she needed to think clearly, and thinking clearly required rest.

She was good at this. Setting things down until she could carry them properly.

She closed her eyes.

The lake. The chestnuts. The soft exhale in the carriage doorway.

Then we'll make sure of it.

She held those things alongside the folded paper in the drawer, weighing them against each other in the dark.

Tomorrow, she would tell Beramund.

Tonight, she let herself rember, just for a little while, what it had felt like to row a boat across a half-thawed lake with soone's hands steady over hers.

Then she slept.