9.3

Firen sat in the garden.

Then the kitchen.

Then aired out their room in the loft and cleaned it.

Again.

The laundry was hanging on a line. There was an entirely separate space dedicated just to the craft, down in what she thought was a root cellar. But no, there was the cauldron on its great hearth, the scrubbing boards and wringer.

The colourful quilts moved gently from the state of the breeze, but Firen was restless.

Lucian was under tutelage with Vandran until almost supper, and he’d asked her to please refrain from indulging her threat of refreshment until he’d at least settled a week with the man.

There were things to do. A great many of them if she wanted to fuss and make lists of it all.

But it was too quiet about her. Too few people. No one to share anything with.

She went back into the house and changed out of her work clothes. Smoothed her hair and tried not to look like a laundress. The looking glass was small and speckled, but she was satisfied with her appearance when she went out the back door. Out the gate that creaked just a little as she exited the courtyard.

Then hurried back in both when she recalled she’d locked nothing and had not even remembered the keys to do it. Also, her coin purse. That was rather important as well.

This time she made it beyond the gate before she hurried back again, suddenly worried what might happen if Lucian came home early and found her gone, the house locked and empty. The second key was in possession, but he might worry, and she didn’t want that.

She scribbled a note on a scrap of parchment and debated where she might leave it. Why he’d take to their bed she didn’t know, so she decided against his pillow.

There was the small room on the lower floor that they’d discussed making a workroom. Books and study for him, a place to tinker for her.

It would spare the kitchen being subjected to either fancy, and the disorder that would surely accompany either pursuit.

Satisfied, she actually made it away from the Hall. She might have circled a few times, just to see if she could spy Lucian, but that felt a little desperate, even to her own judgement.

So on she went.

Away from the towers. Away from all that was new, and back to what she knew far better.

She would make new friends, eventually. Befriend shopkeepers and the like as she braved doing her shopping in a building rather than a stall.

But that could be another day.

She smiled broadly as the market came into view. The lines of fluttering pennants, the wooden tops of the stalls painted in varying shades of white. She knew the routes so well, and she would have landed early to walk and mingle as she pleased, but she waited until almost the last moment, her approach so quick that she earned the startled gasp from her mother when suddenly she was simply there.

“Was that necessary?” she scolded, with a hand on her chest and a scowl on her face.

“Yes,” Firen answered sweetly before wrapping her arms about her and sighing just a little.

A bit of normalcy.

“Surely you have better things to do,” Mama countered, eyeing Firen over. It had only been a few days since they’d seen one another last, so there was nothing truly to see. But she supposed that was to be expected. Age and mating did not change a mother’s love.

“Probably. But I wanted to be here.” Everything was arranged a little differently, which she should have expected. Mama hadn’t worked in the stall for a long while. Not since Firen had come of age and taken over. “We didn’t talk about this part,” Firen observed. She sat on the second stool, the one that more often than not, she’d filled with a friend. But now it was just her and Mama, and it felt like her younger days. When she couldn’t keep still, and Mama would threaten to tie her to that same stool if she didn’t stop fluttering about like that.

Mama brought a flask to her lips and took a deep pull. Water, surely, for the day was warm, and the breeze was calm. Even so, Firen peered a little closer, trying to make out the contents.

Mama shoved her away with a playful hand. “I’ve not turned to strong drink in your absence, Firen,” she chided. “And what do you mean we did not talk? Talk of what?”

Firen gestured to the stall before them. “About this. You don’t like it here.”

Mama frowned, shaking her head slightly. “I never said that.”

Firen snorted out a laugh. “You did not have to. Hip high, all of us could see how grumpy you got on market days.” It was all right that Mama laughed. Ask any of her siblings and they would tell her just the same. “It’s true!”

“In the height of summer, I’ll grant you. Or when I was growing a child, I did not much care for it, then. These stools are hardly comfortable on the best of days.” Firen gave her a dubious look, for she could remember her mother’s weary sighs more often than that. “You do not believe me?”

Firen tilted her chin, smiling as someone walked by. Their eyes drifted over the wares, but their feet did not slow, and their attention flickered away just as quickly. She could bring them back, bring them in, but it would be a stilted sort of exchange, and not worth the effort. “I do not... not believe you,” Firen assured her. “I just remember it differently.”

Mama rolled her shoulders and fiddled with one of the anklets Da had finished. “You love the people,” she mused. “You light up when someone comes near, and I will admit that I’m relieved a little when someone walks on. Not with having fewer coins, mind. But...” she turned her attention back to Firen. “This is my trade. Mine and your fathers. And I’d not have any of my children bound to it simply because of our choices. So what are you here for, Firen? Truly. Not some sense of obligation, I hope.”

Firen sighed. She had not come here to complain. Lucian was working hard, and she loved their home. Loved that she could be as affectionate as she pleased. Loved...

When he was there.

Then it became a house. With her things in it, to be sure, but it felt so desperately empty when it was just her.

“How did you stand it?” Firen blurted. “When it was just you and Da and he was in the workroom, and you were all by yourself?”

Mama smiled at her as she reached out and patted her shoulder. “I was not alone for long, remember? Your brother came soon after. And it was different for us. He came in throughout the day. And if I was lonesome, I could go out and see him.”

Firen slouched a little further in her seat, plucking at a stray thread on her tunic. “I think I should start working with Da again. Or be... here. On market days, I mean. We’re... waiting. A bit. For our children.” She sat a little straighter because she’d allowed something too close to discontent to seep into her tone. “And we’re in agreement, so I’m not complaining. Just... nothing is how I imagined.” Her smile grew a little thinner. “Some ways it’s better. And then there’s... others.”

“Where you’re still lonely, and you thought having a mate would fix that forever and ever, and you wouldn’t need another living soul.” Mama said it all so dryly that Firen knew she found her ridiculous.

Chastened, she nodded.

“I tried to tell you,” she continued, which was a bit too close to a quip that Firen tried not to bristle. And she saw, because she was her mother, and she pulled her into an embrace. “Oh Firen,” she breathed. “You can work with us for as long as it pleases you. You can find your own employment if you’d rather. But I hope you’re not afraid to make new friends where you live, or that the old ones will be offended if you do so.”

Her throat burned. “Why wouldn’t they? I belong here. In my district. With all my lovely people.”

“True,” Mama agreed. “And you belong in towers, or in Halls, or anywhere else the Maker puts you. Because you are my lovely daughter, and it is a pleasure to know you. She kissed her temple before she pulled back just a little. “Is someone making you feel you do not belong?”

It was a question gently given, yet it was enough to cause her stomach to knot with dread. “You know there are.”

“Yes,” Mama agreed. Their rendition of the supper with Lucian’s family had been truthful, but carefully moderated. The overview more than the details.

She wasn’t protecting them. She’d promised herself that was not her responsibility. But she did want to protect Lucian. To ensure he was given grace even... even when she had struggled with that in the beginning.

“Have you seen them again?”

Firen rubbed at her wrist and suppressed another sigh. “No. And maybe that’s why I feel so guilty.”

Mama snorted, and then there was a customer, so she sat quietly and piped in only when it seemed important for the sale. A mate there to celebrate with a gift for a wife. A healthy girl, had they heard? A necklace. No, not just that. A bracelet would be better, wouldn’t it? Or maybe rings for her toes, or...

On it went.

And it was so delightfully normal that Firen forgot the rest of it for a while, and that was better still.

She watched Mama tuck the large coins into her purse and settled back onto her stool, her eyes drifting back to her daughter all too soon.

“Why do you feel guilty?”

Firen’s wings drooped, and she’d rather hoped Mama had been distracted enough to forget what she’d said. “Because he loves them. Loves them even now. And I don’t blame myself for being me, and I know he doesn’t either. But I wonder if I should... try. Or...” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Has he said he misses them?”

Firen’s shoulders dropped further. “No. He’s tired. Says he isn’t, but I don’t believe him.” She glanced toward her mother. “I’m fussing about nothing, aren’t I?”

Her mother’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “Maybe. Or maybe you had in that head of yours all the people you’d get to love after you found your mate, and now you’re disappointed when they aren’t there.”

Firen’s throat hurt.

“When did you last see your sister?”

Firen couldn’t look at her.

Which was evidently answer enough.

“Well. Then maybe you ought to start with your own family instead of feeling guilty about Lucian’s.”

“I suppose,” she mumbled, and Mama reached out and grasped her hand tightly.

“Jealousy does not become you,” she offered gently, but firmly. “Eris did nothing wrong, and neither did you. Just because her mating went a little easier, does not mean it was a wound against you.”

Not a wound, no. But an irritant. That was unjust and unbecoming, and Firen felt dreadful for it at once. “I suppose,” she drew out with a long sigh, but turned her head so her mother could see her begrudging smile. “You just want to be rid of me. Admit it.”

“Yes, that’s certainly it,” Mama confirmed with a rueful look. “Now go make nice so I can tend to my patrons.”

She did not have to shove at Firen lightly, but she did so anyway. Who, in return, did not have to make an exaggerated expression of hurt, but did it just because.

But a customer was approaching the stall, so the game had to end, and Firen felt a momentary pang to see it. She shouldn’t. She was welcome—Mama had said so.

But it wasn’t expected any longer. Wasn’t a simple fact that market days meant what they always had before. And what had once seemed an exciting venture, full of possibility and newness, now left her feeling like an outsider.

Where once she’d belonged so completely, there were bits of her that were meant to be somewhere else. Not just to sleep and reside.

Would her children know what it meant to grow up in these same stalls? To fly about and learn so many names and trades, it was almost dizzying to recite them all.

And if Eris was with child and she was not...

She shoved that thought away as hard as she could.

She would be more than pleased to welcome another of her sibling’s children into the family. There would be no room for envy. Not in the least.

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