#7kppweek

Conway scans the horizon, looking for the ship the spotters at the docks had reported. The Blackwater, they’d thought.

The ship returning with his son. And, if nothing had gotten mucked up on the trip, his future daughter-in-law.

The jewel of the Corvali delegation, to hear everyone tell it. Trust Hamin to manage to do the one thing he wasn’t expecting.

It probably would have been more efficient for Corval to send her on a boat themselves, but Hamin had volunteered. He’s always had a fancy for the idea of properly kidnapping one’s spouse. (At least he, unlike some of Hise’s youth, realizes that the phrase “kidnapping” is mostly a joke these days. Once or twice every year, Conway has to deal with some wayward upstart who took it bit too literally, and their disgruntled would-be spouse.)

Based on Hamin’s behavior shortly before he left, there’s also a very real possibility he would have gone stir-crazy if he’d had to wait that extra week or two before seeing her again. The pacing, the early morning walks to the shore, the smiling off into space when he thinks no one’s looking. It’s good to see him—it’s good to see.

As the Blackwater draws closer, Conway puts the looking glass up to his eye and scans the deck.

It’s pretty easy to pick her out. There’s only one person on deck in a skirt, and she’s got her hands on the railing, leaning forward eagerly, like her new life will start sooner if she can spot it. He knows that look.

The dockmaster catches him then, with a long list of annoyances he’s been meaning to bring to the council. Some of it really does need to be looked into, but a lot of it…

By the time he finally gets free, the Blackwater’s docked and they’re dropping the gangplank. He spots his son directing from the deck, making sure it’s firmly settled before heading over to the woman he’d spotted through the looking glass.

She’s stepped back from the railing, gathering up her skirts as she looks over her shoulder and smiles at him.

Hamin scoops her up and lifts her off her feet, carrying her down the gangplank like a prize.

(It’s pretty much exactly what Conway was expecting, but from the woman’s surprised look, she wasn’t.)

She thumps his chest playfully, laughing. “Hamin, put me down!” If Conway hadn’t already known she was Corvali, the lilting edge to her words would make it clear.

“Mm…no, I think I like you like this.” He looks over and grins. “Hi Dad.”

“I—Hamin!” she breaks off into breathless laughter. “I can’t—introduce myself—to your father like this!”

“Sure you can,” he says. “Dad, this is Shahira. Shahira, Dad.”

She inhales deeply between bouts of silent giggles, clearly struggling to compose herself, and twists around to face him, her cheeks flushed with laughter. “I’m—pleased to meet you, sir.” She tugs at the dangling fall of her skirt in something that might be aspiring to become a curtsy.  

He holds out a hand for her to shake, and she takes it, still laughing.

They look good together. Young, happy, ready to start a life side-by-side.

It reminds him of—

He firmly drags his mind away from that well-trodden path. She’s not coming back. He hopes she’s happy, wherever she is. Hopes she’d be proud of their son.

But he’ll just have to be proud enough for both of them.

A happy moment? 

He doesn’t ask for much, Calanthia thinks wryly, taking a sip of her tea to buy herself a moment and to give Lord Clarmont the option of politely ignoring her small satirical smile. Maybe it truly wouldn’t be ‘much’ for anyone else, anyone from a country that didn’t devour its young. For anyone from a family that didn’t view their progeny as an investment or a resource, every bit as much as the sheep. Clarmont cannot help but know the first, and has certainly inferred the latter; she wonders, a little, why he asked.

That will come clear in time, no doubt. She does have one moment of uncomplicated joy that springs readily to mind - and moreover, one it costs her nothing to offer up over tea. This one moment of long-ago happiness isn’t a vulnerability to be exploited, even if he were the type to take advantage… and she’s fairly sure her initial assessment was correct, and he is not.

She studies Clarmont over the rim of her teacup and thinks,

Very well.

She settles her cup neatly in its saucer before she begins,

“It was cold that winter; bitterly cold. My parents were making a halfhearted effort at frugality that year, by which I mean ‘not lighting most of the fireplaces even when the water in the troughs was freezing almost a hand-span thick every night.’ My siblings spent a lot of time in the kitchen by the stove, since it was kept going at all hours. It was the only place in the house we always knew for sure would be warm. On this particular afternoon, though, Emmaline and Portia and I were in the library, huddled together under a quilt while we told each other stories - our parents had sold off most of the books by then. In a lull, it dawned on all of us how quiet it was. It was a blanketing silence, the kind that has a physical presence, the kind you hesitate to break. Em crept to the window, then ran back and grabbed Portia and me by the hands and towed us over, too, still in total silence. None of us spoke, but we watched with a kind of wonder as white flakes came falling down; snow. The first snow any of us had ever seen. We could hear it, there at the window, hissing and hushing and whispering to itself. It took several minutes to realize that we could go out and feel it, not just see and hear. Portia categorically refused to set foot out of doors, but Em and I stuffed our bare feet into worn boots and bundled each other in every single one of the scarves left by the door and whichever pair of gloves nearly fit, then ran right out into it. The powder crunched underfoot and we took those first few steps like newborn lambs, clumsy in our uncertainty, and then turned up our faces to the silver winter sky and tried to catch the flakes on our tongues…

“We laughed and danced until the snow underfoot was churned into mud and our toes burned from the cold. I don’t think either of us cared about the scolding we got for coming in soggy and tracking in dirt and damp.”

She remembers Emmaline grinning up at her, pink-cheeked from cold and delight both, and feels a little tug of homesickness. She doesn’t miss the ancestral pile or her parents - has felt nothing but relief to be well away from both - but someday she would like to have the power to see to it that her sisters look that happy for more than an hour at a time.

“Thank you,” Clarmont says, and she blinks back into the warm, candle-lit room with a bit of surprise. It’s funny, the power good memories have. So many of the bad ones are gray and drawn and distant. He continues,

“I remember that winter, but my memories of it are not so kind. I think… I think I feel better knowing that they were a good time for someone.”

Calanthia studies him and notes the strain around his eyes. He does understand, after all.

Revaire eats her young, these days - or tries.

And now they’re here, two who escaped her teeth and claws, with a lever and a fulcrum set at the foot of the world. They can change that. 

She smiles again, and there’s nothing sharp or sardonic about it this time, although it is absolutely a baited trap.