Eighteen.
I counted it three times, lying in the dark with the door shut, and it came out eighteen every time.
Let me back up.
Before supper, a note had come from Lady Severine. Two lines, in handwriting so straight it could have been drawn with a ruler.
Lord Fabian is reminded of the rule on the board. The matter of a room is under consideration.
That was all. No punishment. No summons. I couldn't decide whether that was good or very, very bad.
Next door stayed quiet all evening.
After supper, the henhouse opened, as Naomi had ordered. Hana wanted to know about the bath. Marika wanted to know whether the young lord next door had a window she could climb through, "for tactical reasons." Naomi said "Sleep," and that was the end of that.
Then I shut my bedroom door, lay down, and emptied the pitcher.
Dame Valeria had said no casting outside the battle yard. She hadn't said anything about my own bed, with the door closed and nobody watching. I'd decided that counted as a battle yard. A very small, very soft one.
One splash at a time, 「Heal」 into my own chest, until the ceiling started to swim.
And I counted. Counting runs in the family.
Two splashes on Ilse, at lunch. About one more for the henhouse, in drops, over the whole day. And fifteen just now, into myself.
Two, and one, and fifteen.
Eighteen.
Yesterday it had been seventeen. It had been seventeen for weeks, ever since the tide. And last night, in a tent on the road, the pitcher had quietly grown by one.
One more splash.
Which meant one more person.
I lay there grinning at the ceiling like an idiot.
Through the wall, very sleepily: "...Done?"
"Done."
"You sound happy."
"I'm counting."
A pause.
"That's the most you thing anyone's ever said," said Liesel, and I heard her roll over.
"We're going out," Liesel announced the next morning.
She was standing in the sitting room in a plain brown cloak with the hood pulled up over her hair. Underneath, she'd turned her crimson vest inside out, so the crowned star didn't show. The seams did, instead.
"What are you wearing?"
"A disguise."
"Your vest is inside out."
"That's the disguise."
"Out where?" asked Wren, who was already reaching for her sword belt.
"The city." Liesel spread her arms. "Term starts in three days. Once it does, you'll be stuck in a battle yard losing to girls. Today, I'm showing you Sanctara."
"I don't lose to every—"
"You will."
I didn't argue. She'd seen me spar.
There was just one problem with the disguise, and I noticed it about ten steps outside the Academy gate.
Nobody was looking at Liesel.
Everyone was looking at me.
A man, walking down the street in broad daylight. In a navy doublet, with a sword, between a hooded girl and a guard in Valcrest navy. Women stopped mid-sentence. A baker came out of her shop holding a tray and forgot to put it down. Two girls on a balcony grabbed each other's arms.
"This is a terrible disguise," I muttered. "Everyone's staring."
"At you." Liesel sounded delighted. "Nobody's looked at me once. You're the best disguise I've ever had."
I wanted to argue with that. I couldn't.
The lower rings of Sanctara were loud and bright and packed. Awnings in every color. Stalls selling spices, ribbons, knives, pies, birds in wicker cages. More people in one street than in all of Greymark. And in all of it, the whole morning, I didn't see one other man.
What I did see was a lot of presents.
An apple-seller pressed an apple into my hand and refused to take it back. A flower girl tucked a sprig of something blue behind my sword belt. An old woman grabbed both my hands, said "Bless you, young lord," and then just held on for a while, beaming, until Wren gently peeled her off.
By the end of the first street, Wren was carrying an apple, two buns, a bundle of ribbons, a very small cheese, and the blue flowers, which had fallen out of my belt. She carried them the way Sigrid carries eggs: grimly, and without dropping a single one.
Then came the proposals.
"My lord!" A broad, cheerful woman pushed through the crowd. "My lord, my daughter's seventeen, she's strong, she can lift a cart one-handed, she—"
"He's spoken for," said Liesel.
I looked at her. "I am?"
"By three sisters," said Liesel, without missing a step. "And a goat."
The woman blinked. Then she went away looking deeply confused, which seemed fair.
There were two more before lunch. Liesel answered both. One got "He's allergic." The other got "He's a Saint, he's very busy, and his eldest sister burns letters."
That one was true.
"Lunch," said Liesel, "is at the Gilded Lark."
The Gilded Lark sat in the second ring, where the streets got wider and quieter and the shops stopped shouting. White stone, tall windows, little gold birds painted over the door. Inside: white tablecloths, silver cutlery, servers in crisp aprons, and a smell of butter and something I couldn't name that made my stomach growl in public.
The owner was a stout woman in a lace cap. She saw me in the doorway and nearly dropped a tray. Then she saw the hooded girl beside me, leaned closer, and her eyes went very wide.
"Your High—"
"Shh," said Liesel. "I'm in disguise."
The owner looked at the inside-out vest.
"...Of course, my lady," she said faintly, and gave us the best table in the house, by the window, where the whole street could watch me through the glass.
So much for disguises.
Wren didn't sit. She stood behind my chair with her armful of presents, looking at the far wall.
"Wren. Sit."
"Young Master, escorts don't—"
"Escorts eat. Sit, or I'll tell Big Sis you made me eat alone."
Wren looked at Liesel for help. Liesel hooked the third chair with her foot and pulled it out.
Wren sat. On the very edge, with the cheese in her lap.
A server brought the menu. One card, thick and creamy, written in beautiful curling letters.
I read the first line. Then I read it again, because I was sure I'd read it wrong.
I hadn't.
Now, I should explain something. I'd never paid for anything in my life. Not once. I'm a man in Octavia; nobody lets me. But I'd grown up watching Hana keep the household accounts, and I'd seen her argue with the butcher for ten minutes over less than the price of one bowl of soup on that card.
One bowl. Of soup.
"Liesel," I whispered. "The soup."
"It's very good soup."
"Is it made of gold?"
"The saffron is. Practically."
Across from me, Wren had gone very pale. She was reading the card and counting on her fingers under the table. Then she started over. Then she started humming, very fast.
"Wren?"
"Young Master." Her voice was faint. "The pheasant costs more than my mother's house."
"Does it?"
"Her roof leaks," Wren admitted. "But still."
Liesel put her head down on the white tablecloth and laughed until her shoulders shook. The owner peeked out of the kitchen to see what was wrong. Liesel waved her away, still laughing, tears in her eyes.
"I'll have water," said Wren, with great dignity.
"You'll have the pheasant," said Liesel, wiping her eyes. "We'll all have the pheasant. And the soup. And honey cakes."
"How many honey cakes?" asked the server.
"Six," said Liesel and I, at the same time.
She looked at me. I looked at her. Neither of us said a single word about helmets.
The food came, and it was the best thing I've ever eaten in my life. Don't tell Hana. Wren ate her pheasant with her eyes closed, and somewhere around the third bite, she hummed a fourth note. I'd never heard Wren hum a fourth note. I hadn't known she had one.
When the bill came, I reached for my purse.
I didn't have a purse.
I've never had a purse. Men in Octavia don't carry them, because men in Octavia don't pay. Somebody else always does: a mother, a sister, a wife, a house. I'd known that my whole life. I'd just never felt it until that exact moment, sitting in the Gilded Lark, patting an empty belt.
Liesel watched me do it with great interest.
"Looking for something, Saint?"
"...No."
She dropped a gold coin on the tray and didn't wait for change. The server's eyes went round.
"I'll pay you back," I said.
"With what?"
I thought hard. "Eggs."
"You ate the eggs."
"Not all of them. I have two left."
"One, Young Master," said Wren quietly. "I had one this morning."
Liesel had to hold onto the table again.
In the late afternoon, Liesel stopped at the foot of a narrow stone stair that climbed the inside of the inner wall.
"You can walk along the top," she said. "Best view in Sanctara. Nobody comes up here except the guards and me."
There were a lot of stairs. A hundred and twelve. I counted. Of course I counted.
At the top, the wind hit me in the face, and the whole city opened up underneath us.
White rings of wall, stepping down the hills like the layers of a cake. Rooftops gone gold in the low sun. Crimson banners snapping from every tower. The great shrine's dome, catching the light and holding it. And far off, past the outer wall, green fields and the thin brown line of the road we'd come in on, curling away toward home.
Liesel pushed back her hood. "Finally," she said, and shook out her hair.
The wind took it at once. Her gold hairpin, which had been losing that fight since the day I met her, gave up completely and went flying.
She caught it. Twisted and snatched it out of the air without even looking, and laughed. Her hair was everywhere, a tangle of gold against the evening, her cheeks pink from the stairs and the wind.
"That's the palace," she said, pointing with the hairpin. "Where I'm supposed to be right now, being measured for something with sleeves. And that"—the dome—"is the great shrine. They'll probably want to pray at you there, eventually."
"At me?"
"Saints get prayed at. It's in the book."
I didn't answer.
I wasn't looking at the shrine.
I was looking at her.
And for one heartbeat, just one, something in my chest went thump. Hard. Like a foot missing a stair.
I blinked. It passed.
Stairs, I told myself. A hundred and twelve of them.
"Your face is red," said Liesel.
"Stairs."
She raised an eyebrow. "You do five hundred swings every morning."
"...They were very steep stairs."
Behind us, Wren was looking extremely hard at the view and humming her three notes with great concentration.
Liesel narrowed her eyes at me for a moment. Then she shrugged, pinned her hair back up (badly), and turned to show me the street where she'd once fallen off a horse.
I listened. I nodded in the right places.
And I tried very hard not to wonder whether four candles had just felt my heart trip over its own feet.
(Report from Sanctara,) Liesel announced after supper. (Three proposals. One apple. One very small cheese. One very expensive soup.)
(BURN THE PROPOSALS,) said Marika.
(They were shouted in the street,) said Liesel. (There's nothing to burn.)
(Then send the women to me. I'll explain things to them.)
(Did he eat the soup?) That was Hana. (Was it hot? Was there enough?)
(It was the best thing I've ever eaten,) I said. Then, much too late: (Except yours, Sis Hana.)
A small, wounded silence.
(...I'll make soup when you come home,) said Hana, in a very determined voice. (Better soup.)
(Who paid?) said Naomi.
A pause.
(I did,) said Liesel.
(Fabian.)
(Big Sis.)
(Pay her back.)
(I offered eggs.)
The bond went quiet. A long, long quiet.
(He offered EGGS?) said Marika.
Somewhere in Greymark, Hana started laughing and couldn't stop. And somewhere else, very faintly, I could have sworn I heard Naomi make the sound that's almost a laugh.
(One egg,) said Liesel. (Wren ate the other one.)
Later, with my door shut and the residence quiet, I emptied the pitcher into my own chest, one splash at a time, and counted.
Eighteen. Still eighteen.
In the dark, right before sleep, I thought about a gold hairpin flying off a wall, and a hand snatching it out of the air without looking.
Thump.
It was definitely the stairs.