TAG | Chapter 5
She woke up in an expensive feather bed and for a moment thought she was back at the Rose Petal. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she realized this was not the case.
The room was small and appeared to be a room at an inn. It was long and narrow; there was a large chest and a bureau for clothes. An expensive full-length mirror told her much about the quality of the inn. Most had no mirrors.
She was upstairs. She could tell because the roof slanted down directly over her, and there was a kind of skylight in it. Grayish-white light filled the room. It was overcast outside. She sensed it was morning.
There was a noise, and she realized there was a man in the room with her. His back was to her. He took clothes from a pile on a chair, folded them, and put them in the bureau. They were not her clothes.
The man didn’t seem aware she was awake. He seemed of shorter than average height, but gave the impression of being fit. Well-muscled. His skin was pale. He had short black hair and seemed to be in his forties. She couldn’t see his face.
She knew what was expected, however. Though utterly exhausted, her mind wasn’t tired. She sat up and adjusted her hair.
“So, do you want me to…uh…” she stopped when the man turned and look at her.
He had a dress folded in one hand. His clothes, an unstylish but practical combination of leather and wool, ill fit him. His face was hard; it looked chiseled out of granite. There were deep lines in it. While old and weathered, there was something handsome about him.
The look he gave her was a kind of appraisal. She found herself unable to read him, and this bothered her. He betrayed no purpose or intent, no desire. She could tell neither what he was thinking, nor what he wanted, and this made her shiver.
The feeling passed, but left her vulnerable. She felt like she was twelve again. She found herself pulling the sheets up to her chin without realizing it.
He opened his mouth to speak and she couldn’t shake a strange sense of being threatened. There was something about him that scared her.
She startled when, without warning, a large and very heavy black cat appeared on the bed. It had jumped up from the floor without a sound. The cat’s presence interrupted the man before he could talk.
The cat walked right up to her without making eye contact, stood on her stomach and when she reached out, it pushed its head into her hand as though it had known her all its life. It was black with bright yellow eyes and seemed made of muscle.
She liked cats. Most inns had them, to keep the mice and rats down. Some used small dogs. But she was surprised that this man, who had not spoken, kept a cat for any reason.
The man opened the door and, without saying anything, walked out, leaving the way open to the hall beyond.
Petting the cat, she looked around the room, wondering where she was and what, if anything, she should do. Run for it? Her instincts told her this was not necessary.
She was in a nightshift, but it was not her own. She pulled back the covers and looked at it. It was expensive. But it meant…
The man came back in, carrying a tray with hot food on it. She was starving, she realized. But she was more angry than hungry.
“Where are my clothes?” She tried being demanding.
Heden looked around.
“I…don’t know,” he said. His voice sounded dark and rough. Hearing him speak, she felt awkward. She was alone in a strange man’s room and he was not a potential customer. He reminded her of something, but she didn’t know what. She felt very small.
“I threw out the shift the guards put you in. I didn’t think to ask what they’d done with your clothes.”
“The guards?” she asked, frowning.
Heden put the food down on a table. “This is for you,” he said. “You’re going to be hungry. Eat as much as you want.”
“Did you dress me in this?” she asked, indicating her nightshift. The cat purred and tried to position itself to get petted again. She pushed the cat off the bed, but it jumped back on making a little trill, walked to the end of the bed, and curled up.
Heden looked at her and then at the food, then back at her. He sighed, picked up the clothes he’d placed on the chair, and sat down. “I gave you a bath, cleaned you, and dressed you.”
None of this made sense to her. She was confused and getting scared and this made her angry. She wanted to get back to the Rose Petal, and the safety of an existence she knew.
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Heden.”
She shook her head once. “I mean what…”
“When I found you, you’d been put in the jail. You were having a fit.”
She stared at him, mouth slack. Her skin began to crawl and she understood what he meant. Discovering she couldn’t remember the past few days, her chest began to tighten up. Her eyes started to turn red and her cheeks flushed.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“What?”
Heden got up, picked up a bowl of soup and a spoon, and approached her. She flinched away but he just stood there, proffering the soup.
There was a smell about him. He didn’t wear perfume as many men she knew did, but he smelled…good. Smelled like leather and wood, metal and oil. It was an earthy smell and though it was not familiar to her, it gave her comfort.
She took the bowl of soup and the spoon and began to eat. This seemed to satisfy the man, and he went back and sat down.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he began, but she wasn’t really listening. She was thinking about what he just said. She’d been having a fit. The last one she remembered lasted almost a whole day. She had wondered what Miss Elowen would do, knew she’d have to do something eventually. Cold realization struck. She put me in jail is what she did.
“I gave you some medicine,” the stranger said. It was a term she’d heard but was unfamiliar with. “I gave you something to eat. And you slept for a long time. All through yesterday. But now, I think, you’re better.”
She continued to work on the soup. It was good, and she felt life and normality returning.
“I don’t think you’ll have any more fits,” he said.
Light dawned.
“You’re a priest,” she said. She didn’t know exactly what he was talking about, or what had happened while she was having her fit, but she got the gist of it and now all his behavior made sense.
Heden pulled a silver medallion out from under his shirt. She couldn’t see the sigil on it, but recognized it as a saint’s talisman. She narrowed her eyes. He didn’t look like any priest she’d ever seen. Nor act like one. But there was something about his attitude toward her that only made sense if she thought ‘priest.’
He knew she hadn’t been listening to him. He already knew her story. He adjusted his guess of her age up by a year. He concluded she was fifteen and went to work at the Rose Petal when she was 13. It wasn’t unusual.
“What’s your name?” he asked again.
She looked at him with big, dark eyes. “Violet,” she said.
Heden nodded. “What’s your real name?”
She just stared at him, the near-empty bowl of soup cooling in her hands, and heard herself say “Vanora.” There were not many people left who knew her real name.
He smiled. “That’s a pretty name. But I can call you Violet if it helps.”
“What…” she said, and to her ears she sounded small and girlish. She cleared her throat. “What do I owe for the room?”
“Nothing,” Heden said. “This is my inn.”
“This is your inn?”
Heden nodded.
“You own a whole inn?”
Heden shrugged.
She nodded, eyes wide, and looked around again. She looked at the cat curled up at the foot of your bed.
“That’s your cat?” she asked.
“Her name’s Ballisantirax.”
She lowered her head and gave him a look from under her eyebrows. “You don’t seem like someone who’d like cats,” she said.
Heden shrugged. “I like this cat.”
She nodded again. She’d known this person less than a turn, but his response seemed entirely typical.
He stood up.
“There’s bread and cheese,” he said, indicating the plate. “And milk. Fresh. Vegetables and fruit. Try to eat them in equal measure. If you feel sleepy, go back to sleep. Balli will watch you. There’s a chamber pot under your bed, and a bath down the hall. Use either at your convenience. I’ll be back up here in an hour to clear everything away.”
She looked up at him with something like a sense of wonder. He looked back at her, and she realized he had blue eyes. He seemed to make some sort of judgment about her, took a quick inventory of the room, pursed his lips and nodded to himself, turned and walked out of the room, closing the door. She did not hear him lock it.
One of the things about going with the third-person POV was that it freed me to do stuff like this chapter’s opening, wherein we see Heden from someone else’s point of view. That happens a couple of times and it’s a fun way to present the reader with a couple of different snapshots of what Heden looks like.
These next three chapters are really when things get moving, I feel. Vanora appears in only a few more chapters in the book, but she’s one of the two most important people, other than Heden obviously, and so bringing her and Heden together means stuff can start happening.
One of the things readers often ask is when Heden’s cat is going to talk, or turn into a foxy woman or something equally fantastic. I enjoy such speculation, so I think I’ll keep my mouth shut.
