Three days.
Three full days, from sunrise to sunset. Nights, with their dark and their cold, and a straw mattress that smelled of the goat that probably slept there before me. Then I woke up in the morning, and I was still here. In this body. In these clothes. On this goddamn farm.
I'd never had a dream with a sleep cycle inside it. I'd never had a dream where I woke up, went to bed, woke up again, and the dream just kept going.
Three days, and I had scooped more shit than I ever thought a single human being could scoop. Goat shit. Chicken shit. Horse shit. I scooped it into buckets, carried them, and came back, only to find more. It was endless. It regenerated. The shit had a more consistent schedule than mine.
The farm was miserable and it needed constant work, which meant I needed to do constant work. Apparently Cassian's whole life was just this: waking up before the sun, feeding animals, hauling things from one place to another place for reasons nobody explained, and then getting paid almost nothing for it. The coin I made, and I use the word coin singular, went straight to the family.
I couldn't even buy myself a decent shirt. Not that they seemed to exist here, but I'd seen some guys in the village wearing stuff that didn't look like it had been used as a horse blanket first, and I wanted that. I wanted to customize my avatar a little. Was that too much to ask? Apparently so, because it seemed that my character build was “Broke Peasant Boy” and there was no upgrade path.
Everyone thought I was a man, which... fine. I'd been briefed on that, sort of, by the fact that everyone I encountered called me "lad.” And very soon, it became clear to me why Cassian had enemies. The dude—the girl, whatever the person—had apparently been running through this village's married women like it was a hobby, and their husbands had noticed, and now half the men in town wanted to beat the shit out of me, personally. Superb. Wonderful. Mystery solved.
The days smelled. I smelled. Everything smelled. No matter how many times I went to the well and splashed water on my face and hands, there was a baseline funk to this life that could not be scrubbed out. It was baked in.
And Wesley was exhausting—God, he was exhausting. The man didn't have an off switch. He talked non-stop to everyone about everything, and he consistently almost got himself killed by men twice his size by insulting them.
"Are you trying to die?" I asked him when we were far enough away that I could let go of his shirt without him wandering back to finish the job.
He adjusted his collar. “I spoke only the truth, fox. The horse does have better rhythm. I've seen them both dance."
"He was going to kill you, dude. He’s huge.”
"Size is no measure of a man's spirit."
"It's a pretty good measure of how hard he can hit you."
He considered this. "Perhaps. But what is a bard without his tongue? I would sooner lose my teeth than my words."
"You're gonna lose both if you keep this up."
He grinned at me, completely unfazed, and I understood, with clarity, why Cassian was always getting beaten up. It wasn't just the married women's thing; it was Wesley. Following this idiot around, cleaning up after his mouth, throwing punches so he wouldn't have to. Cassian wasn't starting fights. Cassian was finishing Wesley's. No wonder their mother looked like she hadn't slept in ten years.
Tonight, I limped home at sundown with blisters on my hands and sunburn on the back of my neck. Every part of my body ached. My ribs, my feet, my shoulders, and the areas where my skin had become taut from a day spent in the sun.
The cottage smelled like stew. Or what passed for stew. I didn't care. It was warm and it was edible and I would have sold a kidney for it. Both kidneys. I didn't need them. What I needed was food in my mouth immediately.
Wesley was sitting at the table plucking idly at his lute. Mother was by the hearth with a pot on. Steam was rising. My whole body oriented toward it like a compass finding north. I took a seat and reached for a bowl.
"Hands," Mother replied without glancing back.
I looked at them: they were black. Dirt caked in every crevice and under every nail, even making its way up to my wrists. I'd been hauling feed and shoveling shit since dawn, and my hands looked like I'd been digging graves.
"They are filthy. Wash them or you do not eat at my table."
I went to the basin and splashed water. Scrubbed, then returned, reaching for a bowl.
"Your face," she said.
“My face?” I cried. “Can I please just —"
"Wash."
I returned to the basin. I washed my face. I scrubbed my neck, getting water in my eyes. I returned and took a seat. I stretched out my hand for the bowl.
"Is your father not coming for supper?" Mother asked Wesley as if I wasn't there, my stomach gnawing at itself.
Wesley shrugged. "He took the cart to Provanad at first light. He said he would return by evening but the road is long and Father is slow and the mule is slower."
I had not met the father. Three days in this dream and the man was a ghost, never present. His cart was gone, his tools lay untouched, and his chair at the table remained empty. Either my subconscious hadn't bothered to render him, or he was just never around.
"He'll not be back before nightfall," Mother said, frowning. "The roads are no place to be after dark. Not with the trouble in the eastern villages."
"Father has survived worse roads and darker nights. He will be well."
Mother made a sound that was not an agreement, but not an argument either. She lifted the pot from the hearth and placed it on the table, and my soul left my body. There was stew, hot and bubbling, just three inches away from my hands.
I reached for the ladle.
"Bread," Mother said, placing a chunk of the loaf next to the pot. It was hard as stone. She sat down. Wesley put his lute aside. Mother bowed her head and murmured something: a prayer, short and quiet, words that I didn't catch. Wesley bowed his head, too. I bowed my head because I didn't want to cause dinner to be delayed for another thirty seconds.
The prayer ended. I grabbed the ladle. I poured stew into the bowl. I picked up the spoon. I brought it to my mouth. The steam hit my face.
Then I heard it.
Hooves. Far away. Then, not far away. The heavy pounding of hooves, growing louder and shaking the ground, and the jingle of metal on metal. I held the spoon in the air. The stew trembled in the bowl. Mother snatched it away from me. She quickly stood up, her face pale. She moved aside the gap in the wall and peered outside. So close.
"Soldiers."
Wesley stopped moving. His hand, which had been reaching for the bread, lay limply on the table.
"How many?" he asked.
"Four. Perhaps five. They carry the king's banner."
"Soldiers of the crown do not ride this far from the palace for the pleasure of it," Wesley said.
"No," Mother agreed. "They do not."
I stared longingly at the stew.
The hooves stopped. The sound of creaking leather, blowing horses, and boots crushing dirt filled the air. Then, a resounding thump, not a knock but a heavy gauntlet striking the door, shaking it in its frame. "Open, in the name of King Ionracas."
Mother smoothed her apron and touched her hair. She opened the door, a towering figure appeared, filling the frame. Taller than the doorway, armored, a sword at his hip. Behind him, mounted soldiers with torches, their horses stamping and restless, casting long shadows that reached into the cottage. His face showed no expression. His eyes moved across the room. Mother. Wesley. Me, with my spoon frozen in the air like an idiot.
"How many sons in this household?"
"Two," Mother said. Her voice was steady. Her hands, however, trembled.
"Their ages."
"My eldest has seen twenty-three summers. The younger, twenty-one."
The soldier reached into a leather bag and extracted two scrolls, securely wrapped in dark red wax. He held them aloft, not addressing Mother, but past her, toward the table, in our direction. Wesley rose and took them. Without delay, the soldier began to recite from memory, repeating the same words at every door that night.
"By the sovereign command of His Majesty King Ionracas, Lord of Tolamn, Warden of the Northern Reaches and Shield of the Coastal Throne, every man of eligible age and blood within the borders of this kingdom is summoned to present himself at the palace on the night of the next full moon, for a ball held in honor of Her Royal Highness, the Princess Cruit." He paused. "This is not a request. This is the word of the crown, and it carries the force of law. Any man who fails to present himself will be found. Any man who refuses will be dealt with as the crown sees fit. You have been given your summons. You will obey them." He turned. The soles of his boots crunched across the courtyard. The horses moved. The torches swung away and the shadows pulled back from the doorway, like a tide retreating, and then it was quiet again, just the fire and the night and the sound of mother's breathing, which had not steadied.
She closed the door and pressed both hands flat against it. She stood there. Wesley cracked the seal on his scroll and unrolled it. His face slowly broke into a smile, amused. "A ball," he replied. "At the palace. For the princess." He raised his head in excitement. "Fox, we have been summoned to court her royal highness!”
"I don't care. Can we eat?"
"They say she sent the Duke of Admore home without his trousers." He leaned back on the stool and placed his hand on his chest. "They say she put a snake in Lord Merton's bed. The man wept."
"Wesley," Mother said, still facing the door.
"They say she has not been seen outside the palace walls in three years and that her face would turn a man to stone.”
"Wesley." She turned. "You will not speak of the princess in such a manner.”
"I speak with admiration, Mother. She sounds magnificent."
"You would do well to hold your tongue about her." She crossed the room and sat down heavily, as if the act of standing had taken everything from her. "This is not a celebration. This is a net. The king casts it wide because he is desperate, and desperate men do not care what they catch."
"Or perhaps he is kind," Wesley offered, "and wishes his daughter to choose freely."
"No woman in Tolamn chooses freely. You know this." Her eyes met mine. "She cannot go."
"Mother, you heard the soldier. If she does not appear they will come looking, and that will bring the very attention you wish to avoid."
"And if she goes? If she stands in a hall full of soldiers and lords and someone sees what we have spent a lifetime hiding?"
"No one will see. No one has ever —"
"Because we have been careful! Because she has stayed close, stayed quiet, stayed —"
"Mucking stalls and hauling grain until her back is bent? That is the life you would have for her?" Mother said nothing. Her hands were neatly folded in her lap, and her mouth was in a tight line.
My stew was cold.
I had been awake since before dawn. I had hauled water and feed and shoveled more animal shit than I'd thought was physically possible. I had blisters on blisters. My ribs ached. My feet throbbed. My skin was burnt and peeling. I was in the middle of a family argument about whether I was allowed to attend a ball in a kingdom that didn't exist, in a dream that had been going on for three goddamn days and that showed no sign of stopping.
I picked up the spoon, put it in the stew, and brought it to my mouth.
"Cassia, we are discussing —"
"I'm eating," I said. "I am eating this stew. Right now. Whatever's happening with the ball and the princess and the soldiers and the everything will have to wait. I'm eating first. I've been trying to eat this stew for an hour. I'm eating the stew."
The decree hit every household in Tolamn like a rock through a window, and the aftermath was chaos. Grown men, men who hauled timber and slaughtered pigs and hadn't thought about their appearance since birth, were suddenly crowding the tailor's stall in the square, arguing over fabric and holding it up to their faces. It was like watching a bunch of dudes discover vanity for the first time. One of the guys who beat me up the week before was now standing in the marketplace arguing over the merits of a blue versus a green tunic.
"The blue," his friend said, holding it up to the light. "It sits well against your coloring."
"I look sickly in blue. My mother always said so."
The tailor, a thin, tired looking man who had clearly not slept since the decree, was working through a line of customers that stretched past the baker. His hands worked quickly, measuring people's shoulders and grumbling about their posture, insisting that he was just one man with two hands and that miracles required time.
The entire village was abuzz with activity. Women sewed, and men practiced their bows badly in the yards. Kids ran around pretending to be knights.
On the fourth day, I met the father. He came back from Provanad with the cart and the slow mule and a silence that filled the cottage the second he walked through the door. He was a big man with hands that could crush a fence post and a face that had never once been described as friendly.
When he came in, he looked at me and saw the still yellow bruises on my face. He said nothing. Later, behind the curtain, I heard them talking. Mother and Father, low voices, the kind of conversation that was more breath than word. I caught pieces. The ball. The soldiers. The risk. Father said one sentence, final, and that was that.
I was going, but I had to keep my head down, my mouth shut, and my hands at my sides. I was not allowed to talk to anyone, dance with anyone, or attract any attention. I was to be a shadow in a room full of light, and come home the moment the evening allowed.
Mother bought fabric. Every night, she dedicated herself to the task of creating two sets of clothing: one for Wesley and one for me. She took measurements without asking. Her hands were quick and certain. She held pins in her mouth, muttering to herself about seams and hems.
I had abandoned all hope of it: the farm, the village, the decree, the preparations. It was a very long, very detailed, and increasingly suspicious dream that I had stopped trying to wake up from. Day 5. Five days of sleep cycles inside a sleep cycle. At this point, I was either in a coma or dead, and this was the afterlife. I had been staring at the same three buildings for five days. The cottage. The barn. The square. Dirt roads, thatched roofs, chickens, and an endless cast of men who wanted to beat me up and women who wanted to do other things. The world I'd seen so far sucked. Somewhere out there was a palace. A castle. With walls and towers and whatever else my subconscious had cooked up.
I wanted to see it, not because I cared about the ball—I didn't—but because, if my brain was going to hold me hostage in a fantasy world, it should have at least rendered the good parts. I'd earned the castle. I'd experienced poverty. I'd scooped the shit. I'd eaten the shitty bread. Now give me whatever the medieval equivalent of a buffet was, because if there was one thing I was absolutely certain a royal ball would have, it was food. Good food. Food that wasn't stew and bread.
I was going to eat everything in that palace. Everything. I was going to eat like I'd never seen food before and I was going to enjoy every second of it and if anyone tried to stop me, I'd bite them.
Mother finished sewing the clothes three days before the ball. She held it up for me to see. Simple, clean, dark fabric. It was probably the nicest thing that Cassian had ever owned.