I wished I could have hidden my face in my hands, but I would not hide from what I had done any longer. He’d already heard that I’d had contact with goblins. How could I now withhold what I’d done? Even if I, in some part, was responsible for the death of the goblins, I would not deny my role in it.
“I purchased a death mask,” I said, my voice scarcely a whisper. “Made by goblin craft.”
Syndrian shoved back from the table so roughly, his chair toppled backward and landed legs up. “Pali!” With one hand, he worried an eyebrow; with the other, he leaned onto the table. “What, by the gods, were you going to do with it?”
I bit my lower lip to distract myself from the impulse to break into wretched sobs and fall apart. “I intended to fake my own death. Send my parents the mask and start a new life. One where I was not bound to generations of secrets. Bound to a loveless marriage that was nothing more than a cover for my father’s highly organized crimes.”
He whirled on a heel, his hair slapping roughly against his broad back. The sun was setting, and the cabin grew so dark, I was only able to see the contrast of his light hair as it moved. He paced the cabin from end to end, muttering fervently under his breath.
“And what happened?” he demanded. “Where’s this mask now?”
I shook my head. “Ruined. I not know how. All I do know is that a boy delivered it to me with the terrible news that it had been damaged. I took it anyway, since I paid for it, though I have no hope of repairing it without access to more like those who made it. And, I’ll most certainly need more money than the few coins I have left in my personal treasury. That’s how I first met your brother.”
I paused to see if Syndrian would deny that Flynn was the boy I’d met, but he did not. He, curiously, did not look angry. Rapt and intensely focused, yes, but the pain of earlier was absent from his eyes.
“I learned just recently from the one who connected me to the…creatures…that they have all been killed. There is no hope to recover or repair what I have. Not by returning to where I went before.”
I explained that I had taken to my bed for several days, overcome with grief.
“Not only for myself,” I rushed to add. “Lest you think I am purely heartless and thoroughly selfish.” I described the guide who had brought me that night to the sanctum, carrying me in his arms into the lair. “I know not who that man was, but today, my mother called a healer from the village.”
“Odile,” he said, closing his eyes.
I nodded. “Her driver is a young man whose very distinctive voice I recognized. That’s when I knew he was the one who returned the damaged mask to me. Your brother.”
“Flynnie.” Syndrian fell silent as he paced the room faster and faster. Finally, as if wearing himself out, he slowed.
I waited, watching as he stopped beside me. He hovered over me, and I leaned back in the chair to meet his eyes.
“Is there more?” he rasped. “Why marry you off to an Otleich now? Is there some significance in the timing?”
I shrugged. “I believe my father intends to move closer to the capital. He’s called it a retirement of sorts, but he is rarely honest about anything. I suspect there is a business motivation. Otherwise, why put me and my new husband in charge of the Lombard estate when my father could maintain his position?”
“The Otleiches are behind this,” he mused. “They want something from your father, and I am sure this marriage is the easiest way to force his cooperation. To keep him close as well as loyal.”
I covered my face with my hands and shivered. “It shames me to think of my father controlled by criminals. Using me as a playing piece in some horrifying match. Am I worth so little?”
“Quite the opposite,” he mused. “They will protect you.” He surprised me by plucking a bit of straw from the tangled mess of my hair. “Your father knows that one of the safest ways to work with them is from within. You’re more in danger now than you will be once you’re one of them.”
I shook my head and locked my fingers together. “I don’t care for safety if I’m to be trapped for the rest of my life. I do not want to marry an Otleich. I cannot abide becoming the lady of the manor where I’ve grown up a prisoner, with bonds in adulthood that will feel even more restrictive. I cannot become my mother.”
I covered my face with my hands and imagined the lights at the crofter’s cabin. The merry sounds of Biko singing. Of Idony rolling dice and baking bread. Of Syndrian’s quiet, strong presence so close and yet forever closed off to me. How could my heart survive knowing he was within reach and yet I could not see him? A soft sob choked my throat, and I squinted my eyes shut.
“Pali.” He knelt beside my chair.
The cabin grew cold as the sun disappeared in the horizon. I shivered and sighed, my lips leaving a tiny puff of steam in the chilly air. While I stared at the rough floor, I imagined all the meetings my father had held here. All the dirty deals and clandestine business that had been transacted here. I wondered if someday I would be expected to participate in the business, whatever the Otleich enterprise really was. I thought about the hole that had been sliced through the forehead of my mask and trembled.
“Do you think I’m the cause of what happened to those creatures?” I whispered. “Did someone find out about the mask and hurt the goblins? Is that even possible?”
“It is possible,” he said, “but that is not what happened.” He reached for one of my hands, still kneeling beside me on the floor. He laced his fingers through mine. “It is my turn to share what I can without endangering you. Pali, those creatures, the ones who crafted your mask… They worked with many unsavory types. I know what happened to them. And I know for certain it had nothing to do with you.”
“How can you be sure?” I stared at our linked hands. His were scarred and muscular, the knuckles dusted with the same dark hair that grew on his face. “I never meant for anyone to be hurt. I only wanted a way out. A way to finally be free.”
“None of us are truly free, Pali,” he said. “Not here in Tutovl.”
“Then I intend to leave,” I said. “I’ll move to Drammen or…anyplace. There must be some place in all of Efimia where people live freely. Where an honest day’s work provides reasonable pay. Where the crown and the government don’t rule by control and fear of those things that anyone with any sense would admit are true.”
I lowered my chin, and tears dripped from my face.