Feeling the pressure that came through those fingertips, Marilou raised an eyebrow and glanced at the young mistress. For once there were a few unusual threads of red running through that powdered face.
Her voice, too, came out far colder than usual.
"If it's a matter of attending the banquet, I'm enough on my own. She isn't qualified."
That "she," naturally, meant Marilou.
By the rules, someone like Marilou, dragged in only to play the role of a wife, had essentially no rights at all. To put it crudely, she was a tool in the arrangement, and with Viya's contract laid on her besides, her standing sank to the very bottom.
A live-in son-in-law at least has a title to play with, and anyone who wants to bully him has to weigh the family standing behind him first.
Marilou's position was subtler than that. She was simply a maiden shut away inside a great house.
Fortunately the young mistress Viya had no taste for bed-warming, so Marilou's days were quiet enough, and chances to attend a family banquet remained rare.
"Whatever you say, she is your spouse now. Your eldest sister won't be staying long this time either. One hurried look and she'll be gone."
Vilianne coaxed her patiently, her eyes still on Marilou out of their corners.
Marilou deliberately avoided that gaze. Vilianne gave off the impression of someone with no airs at all, as if she could hold a conversation with anyone. From what had been said, Marilou gathered she held an official post in the Kingdom.
She didn't believe a person in that position had no airs whatsoever, so to be safe she kept her head down and didn't look at her.
Viya held her enamelware teacup. "The last time my eldest sister came back she took a fair number of my servants with her. And this is a family banquet. I doubt Marilou would cope with it."
It was a compromise of a line, and Viya used it to probe at her mother's real purpose.
"The child looks quiet enough to me, and hardly the type to make trouble. Besides, your father is back from the capital as well. There's no harm in one meeting."
Viya's gaze wavered, drifting between Marilou and Vilianne, and at last she sighed. "I'll take her to get ready first."
Without giving Marilou any chance to speak, Viya took her hand and walked out.
The young mistress had long been in the habit of ignoring Marilou's existence.
In the early days after she arrived, Viya hadn't even allowed her to touch her. Even Marilou had rarely heard of a demand like that.
Going by her previous life's experience, an overbearing young mistress of this sort not breaking her into a ** already counted as mercy, and yet Viya's initial attitude toward her had been something closer to distaste.
It was the contempt a noble is born holding for the poor. Unlike the sort of young lady you might run into on the street after she'd fled her house, every trip Viya made was arranged in advance.
Servants went with her, bodyguards too. A poor boy could forget about happening upon a young mistress; he'd struggle even to catch sight of her face.
If not for this contract, Marilou would have found it hard to believe she'd meet Viya in this lifetime at all.
Walking ahead, Viya noticed she was still holding Marilou's hand and asked, offhandedly:
"What are your thoughts? Will you come with me to the banquet?"
Marilou looked up, brown eyes turning, and said softly, "I'll do as the young mistress says."
"That line again. I knew I shouldn't have asked you."
Viya sighed, stopped walking, and tugged at the zip of Marilou's dress, correcting it as she spoke.
"I won't scold you here. But at the banquet you count as my wife. There's no need to take whatever anyone says to you the way a servant would. Show some spine, understand?"
"Understood."
Marilou made her reply. Naturally she would treat the young mistress's suggestions as optional reading. The contract term was almost over, and lying low, collecting the money and clearing out was the real business at hand.
"I'll have a servant bring you a set of clothes later. You may wash in my rooms tonight. Don't let the servants outside see your body."
Viya bit down harder on the words and patted Marilou's shoulder.
Marilou had no idea what that was about, but she nodded anyway, thinking that the young mistress managed rather a wide range of things. Then, considering her own station, she decided to let it go.
"Go on down. I have official business to see to."
Viya pulled the door open and left without a backward glance. Finding herself with a rare stretch of peace, Marilou hurried downstairs and found Grampuss sprawled resting near a patch of grass.
She nudged the cat's belly gently with her foot and pitched her voice differently.
"Grampuss, stop sleeping. I really do envy you. No work to do, and people waiting on you."
Marilou picked up a twig and poked him in the back. The orange cat rolled over, thoroughly unmoved by her "harassment."
After poking a while longer and confirming that Grampuss genuinely wasn't going to acknowledge her, Marilou stood and wandered off around the courtyard.
The space she could move through was however big the courtyard happened to be. In three years she had worked out exactly how many pebbles sat under the big rock out there, down to the last one.
At the far end of the yard stood a gate sealed by magic. Without a key there was no getting out.
Unless Viya let her out to play, all she could do was sit in the courtyard and look at the sky. Marilou picked at her fingers, remembered she hadn't done today's lessons, and went most unwillingly back to her room.
She fetched the basic manual of magic and read it with a yawn coming on. At her level these spells were no great difficulty; learning them was hardly hard at all. And the reason she wouldn't do the homework, and wouldn't sit the mage examination, was this.
It was purely that she knew she would leave sooner or later, so this scrap of surface knowledge would be of no use to her whatsoever. Besides, if she happened to learn too well, what if the young mistress decided not to let her go?
Better to have Viya believe she was useless. That suited her nicely.
Marilou rolled the crystal ball on her desk back and forth. She remembered it had been a gift from a servant, and when the young mistress found out, the servant was dismissed, though the gift was never taken away.
After that, no servant dared go near Marilou.
Viya's exact words had been that if Marilou was bored she could read a few more books, and count it as time not wasted.
As for contact with anyone else, she could put that out of her mind entirely. Marilou learned later, through what her fellow students said, that the Temple had always ground down its consorts' minds this way.
With no outlet for feeling at all, they would come to hold absolute loyalty to their one master, and some, starved of love, would climb into that master's bed of their own accord in the middle of the night and become a docile little dog.
Marilou had been astounded when she first heard it. But going by Viya's manner, she didn't seem the sort to want anyone climbing into her bed; it looked more like she simply didn't want anyone else touching her.
KNOCK KNOCK—
A crisp rap at the door pulled Marilou's thoughts back. She opened it and found a servant holding an evening gown.
"Miss, these are the clothes Her Holiness sends you."
"Oh."
Marilou took the dress. The servant turned and left without pausing for a moment. The last servant who dared linger a few extra seconds at Marilou's door was off making a fortune somewhere by now, and nobody knew where.
The servant went off in a great hurry. Marilou gathered up the dress and shut the door.
She sat on the bed and felt the fabric. It was soft, and when she tried it against herself it fitted closely. Judging by how new or worn the threads were, it didn't look freshly made; it had probably been finished long ago, waiting for the day it might be needed.
Marilou put the dress away. Just then the door sounded again. She opened it and found the same servant, back at a run.
"Miss, one more thing. This is the key to Her Holiness's rooms. She says to come and find her in the study once you've bathed."