52.

Watchtower

That night, as I did every day we went to farm, I bathed in Gareth Pope’s private bathing room, so as not to offend the man with whom I shared a bed.

I had just finished my courses that moon and had taken to storing strips, soap and linens for drying there.

I gathered the used strips for disposal and added them to the waste in the privy next to the women’s baths.

The sun was setting when I made my tired way up to our room.

I knocked in the courtesy we had established, assuming there would be no answer as usual, but the door swung open and my husband stood inside the doorway.

“Edith,”

he said.

“Good evening.”

I stared at him in surprise, my left arm draped with my black cotton dress, the belt, apron and sagaris.

I had changed into the celadon for the evening, planning on depositing the other items in the room and either seeking solace in a read on the turret’s top step or just sitting and listening to the relentless waves kissing the bluff rocks.

I was tired and I felt like a failure that day, having had no magic in me that I could feel.

His eyes quickly glanced me over.

Then he reached out and took the items draped over my left arm and took them inside.

He reappeared in the doorway and shut the door behind him.

“I told you, in my letter,”

and here he paused and cleared his throat.

“I told you about the watchtowers.”

Stupidly, I continued to stare.

He frowned.

“I will let you go to bed.

I can give you the room if you would like.”

I had not seen him in days, he having risen before me and retired after me.

And then I remembered, I had woken up to the copper comb four days prior and had been hoping to thank him.

I also remembered our pledge to think before speaking.

And instead of saying that I was exhausted and wanted to be alone to read or stare out into the sea, I said, “Thank you for the comb, Alric.

It is very pretty.”

He put his hands on his hips and nodded, still frowning.

I smiled.

He was severe to a fault.

I pondered whether he had ever smiled or laughed in his life.

“You did not have to give me such a lavish present.”

He looked at a point past my shoulder.

“You once asked me for a comb and I gave you a military issue scrap of tin.

I did not know if Zinnia had provided you better.”

“And we were all grateful for that comb,”

I answered him gently, still unsure why he was barring my entrance to our room.

“What do you mean you told me about the watchtowers?”

He met my eyes.

“In my letter?”

Again I tried to think before speaking.

“I’m sorry.

I am having trouble remembering—”

“Cian is working you too hard,”

he said, brows drawn.

I shrugged.

“They cannot seem to find a penchant in me and I may only ever be able to do scribe work for the temple.

I know this may be blasphemous, but I think Cian is mistaken.”

I could hear the strain in my voice and I tried to cover it with a smile.

He shook his head.

“I will show you another time then.

I can see you need rest.”

Then I remembered.

When I return, should you like, I can take you to the watchtowers, where only infantrymen go.

The views from those windows are grander.

“Oh! The views!”

He looked away again.

“I know you like windows.

I assume the reason is the view?”

I smiled at him again, this time genuinely.

“Something like that.

Please take me.”

“Are you certain? You seem worn.”

I had teased him, but only slightly outside the brewery, the night of our resolve to be better to each other.

And I thought it had lightened the mood.

So now I said, “Has no one ever explained to you that women do not like to be told that they look tired?”

He looked confused and almost upset.

I laughed and said, “Surely with Thatcher as a friend, you are not inexperienced with teasing.”

His face lost some of its unease.

“He seems to want to forever educate me on the subject.”

I stepped to his side and looped my hand through his arm.

My touch seemed to make him tense, but I held on and said, “Please show me the watchtowers.”

He took us down our stairwell to the first level, down another corridor and up a different stairwell, quiet all the way.

In my fatigue, I was more familiar with him, leaning on him a little and nestling my fingers into the crook of his arm.

We did not speak, but the silence was not uncomfortable.

The Shark’s Keep was ten levels and the climb was really eleven as the watchtowers rose up much higher through the bluff rock than the turrets.

After the first four levels, I pulled on his arm at the landing and asked for a moment to catch my breath.

He looked so worried, I climbed the rest of the levels ignoring the burn in my lungs and protest of my already vexed body.

On the tenth level, we encountered two infantrymen standing guard and then more soldiers as the last landing gave way to the building of the watchtower.

They all nodded at my husband and their conversations died.

And not for the first time, I realized that the Procurers were elite.

“This is what I meant,”

he said, pointing at a wooden door inside the stones.

He pushed it open and the bluff rock, covered in moss, stretched out before us.

I stepped outside and saw the almost violent expanse of the sea to the right.

It stretched and stretched.

I had seen it on horseback at first, but the fear of what awaited us in the hall of the Shark King had kept me from fully seeing that great beast.

The view from the turret window was impressive, but this, standing on the bluff rock itself with nothing but air between me and that endlessness, was akin to what it must feel like if a god plucked you from the ground and held you in its hand.

Behind me, my husband was pointing out the pathway from watchtower to watchtower, highlighting a particularly larger section of bluff next to a watchtower that was above the king’s chambers.

The watchtower opened to a tiled courtyard with a low wall that faced the sea.

He explained that a private guard only was allowed in that stairwell.

I spared a glance over my shoulder to the dimming city below, already in shadow because of the bluffs, lights appearing in windows as they lost the day.

But I turned back to Sister Sea in all her fading, golden glory, basking and roiling under the dipping sun, a line of flame reflected on her undulations.

And I wept.

Damn me, I wept.

I knew the man standing beside me was bewildered and I afforded him the sympathy of his confusion, but I kept weeping.

What was this life? Where was I? Who was I? It was the same collapse I had had in the orchard earlier, an absolute loss as to the reason for my existence and the burning self-resentment that I needed to know.

“Edith, I— had I known,”

came Alric’s voice, “this would be so unsettling—”

“It is beautiful,”

I cried, turning to him.

“Please forgive me.

I am not myself.

Or perhaps that is the dilemma.

I have let too much of myself out.”

I put a hand over my mouth.

“I have never liked that word,”

he said, crossing his arms, seemingly grateful to focus on my choice of language, not my emotions.

“It is an unfeeling word and overused.

People say beautiful all too liberally and when it is said meaningfully, it feels cold to me.”

I laughed.

This humorless man always seemed to somehow make me laugh.

“Well, what do you say when you see something that is beautiful?”

He pressed his lips together and turned his face to me.

“Well.

I just look at it.”

I wiped my tears away and laughed again, turning back to the sea, taking her in.

It was only at the edge of slumber that I remembered thinking, having spied it, out of the corner of my eye, he had not continued to look at the sea for the rest of our visit to the bluff.