Lior

Introduction

The seven tongues

The colors of her face fractured behind the frosted glass of the window. The rosy peach color from her flushed cheeks made up most of the fractures, followed by the red-orange browns in her hair.

The woman behind the glass worked in wide circles, using the muscles of her upper arm and shoulders. When her circles reached her eye level, her warm, round face came into focus. The glass wasn’t frosted. The soapy water streaming down warped the reflection, creating the illusion of frosted glass.

She continued to wipe down the glass, then reached up, as far as her height would allow, to wipe the surrounding frame. In the gesture, she fogged up the glass with her breath, and her face was lost behind the glass again.

On to the next window. This one part of the wooden door propped open into the shaded courtyard. One courtyard of many. In the daytime, it saw little traffic (a reason Liorit had picked it as her secret corner), but that morning there were a number of stragglers.

A gentleman visitor walked through the pair of doors, and took in the scent of the nearby vines with a deep inhale. Without watching his footing, he took a step forward and dropped two whole steps. He flailed, throwing himself towards the railing, his fingers missing the bar by centimeters.

Liorit held her laughter in her chest, biting her lip, watching through the leaves. The man tumbled down the rest of the stairs, soliciting a few alarmed gasps.

“Call a doctor!” Someone cried.

“Guard!”

“Miss! Your assistance!”

The last comment drew the attention of the pretty woman at the door. She had frozen, kneeling over her soapy bucket, mouth ajar. She dropped her rag into the bucked with an audible ‘schlop’, and ran into the building.

She returned at the heels of a nursemaid, who took quick charge. After assessing the injury, she directed the other maid to help her move the man into the shade. The man was grumbling around, assuring those around him that he was fine. And in time it resulted that he was. He would walk away with a couple of scrapes and a sprained ankle.

Before that however…

“’Elle, fill this with ice.”

The maid took the ice pack from the nursemaid and ran back inside.

Elle. The woman’s name was Elle.

The expression on her face, the face she made towards the man and the maid, was foreign to Liorit. She longed to name it. In her seven tongues she found nothing.

She wanted to know what it felt like to look at someone that way, with earnest concern. All the same, she wanted to know what it felt like to be on the other side of that.

Chapter 1

A hunger like fire

Romance doesn’t exist for people like me. If there are others, that is.

In an effort to look busier than she was, she had been dusting shelves, unshelving and reshelving books, and re-dusting those very same shelves. Her idleness resulted in her knocking over a couple novels that she picked up and found herself flipping through.

One of them was a romance novel, and Canelle couldn’t read any of it. She discerned it was a romance novel because it was illustrated and actually rather gritty.

Such risqué material hardly bothered her as much as it should have. The beauty of the women always catered to that which men valued most, and the men offered very little in return.

“Canelle, you dumb girl, did you hear me?”

The maidservant slammed the book shut and shoved it back onto the bookshelf, wedging it in where she could. She reached for the shelf right above her line of sight in search of the dust rag she swore she left there.

From the doorway of the library, the head housekeeper stood glaring at her.

“Make yourself useful for once and go help Jadd with the laundering.”

As she stomped away, Canelle caught sight of her rag on the floor. She grabbed it, along with the two other novels she’d knocked over.

Prolonging her newly assigned task, she weighed the novels in her hands and mused. Romance was for the members of society that had an identity. Servants, the help, they didn’t count.

She let the thought subside. Accepting that the idea of romance was more attractive than the reality of it.

The Vouverns, the family presently employing Canelle, were a great example of this. They were a noble family of average wealth, and rather reserved compared to other members of the high society that flowed in and out of the Palace of Bevij. Their marriage was arranged, and like many others, heavily romanticized by everyone around them.

But they had to. How else would they survive the rigorous, arduous life at the ‘Palace of the Gods’.

The Palace of Bevij was a large year-round vacation residence for all the nobles that belonged to the Court of Gaidos. The extraneous habitation took its name after the ambitious king who began its construction years ago, King Bevij. He unfortunately did not live long enough to see its completion, and neither did his son. Three generations later however, the monument stood as a gaudy and atrocious reminder of the crown’s wealth.

Anyone and everyone that came through called it remarkable, breathtaking, worthy of the gods. Canelle wouldn’t know, she hadn’t been north of Gaidos.

She would like to. Truth be told, she had long accepted that she’d likely die on the same piece of earth that birthed her.

Doing the same tasks over and over again made her restless. The days melded into each other, often disorienting her. Did she help Jadd with the laundering already? She recalled having done it... the day prior? She carried a laundry basket in her arms, but was she on her way there, or were these the dried linens from another day?

Reading would help, she thought. Or maybe it wouldn’t. She took delight in hearing stories, books had stories, it was fair to assume that she would enjoy reading. This brought her back to her reflections from earlier. Did trashy romance novels exist for someone like her?

A figure in the distance drew her away from her daydreaming. She stepped aside to allow Lady Liorit the clearance to walk through the narrow corridor. The laundry basket in her hands slipped and dropped to the floor with a soft, muted thud.

Fortunately, nothing fell out of the basket. She bent forward to collect the basket when a hand shoved her back.

“You.” Liorit gripped her shoulder with the same hand, her green eyes coolly searching Canelle’s face. “I saw you out in the courtyard earlier.”

Canelle was accustomed to responding to ‘you’, ‘girl’, or ‘servant’. When she first arrived in City of Gaidos, she’d been told that she would share an identity with her peers. They were ‘staff’ to anyone that mattered.

It didn’t bother her. She watched others be hit and mistreated by their employers, and she was fortunate that the Vouverns weren’t that sort of people.

Canelle ran through the events of her morning wordlessly. Finding nothing that warranted the noblewoman’s aggression. Over the course of several years, she had only known Lady Liorit to visit sporadically, and Canelle had never interacted with her. She knew the name, not the woman.

Lady Liorit had a reputation, if the rumors were to be believed. With the woman looming over her, Canelle nearly wished that she would show her face around the Palace often. Liorit was a handsome woman, and she couldn’t help staring from the angle she found herself in. The help shouldn’t stare.

Her qualms kept her frozen in place. Aside from not having the power to speak up, she grew leery of Liorit’s said reputation. On the chance the stories were true, the woman could pick up on something that Canelle would rather not have out in the world—

Liorit’s mouth curved into a careful grin. Guessing—no, knowing her concern.

“You like girls, don’t you?”

Her shoulders tensed, and her mind declared war on itself. Addressing the woman had rules that she’d long tossed out a window. And…

Liorit, unlike the other women of the court, drank and gambled among the men. She wore trousers, went on hunts, and held a high position in the court guard. One of those positions people respected, but never had to go and fight wars. She was unmarried, disinterested in the idea altogether.

Her father’s position in the Court played a major part in her being able to get away with her behavior. The Lieutenant Governor was always away for his work, and his wife died young, leaving no one around to question or dictate how Liorit lived her life.

“Don’t worry. I’m not sicking the hounds on you,” Liorit clarified. “Although the way you were ogling the nurse maid earlier made it fairly obvious.”

Her demeanor kept the servant wary. At any rate, she picked the wrong young woman to approach. Canelle questioned everything always, it was in her character.

“What do you want?” In her mind, her phrasing had sounded far less harsh.

Although, it seemed that Liorit didn’t take offense at the sharpness of the question.

She answered plainly, “Nothing.”

The woman pushed her back using the same hand she had been gripping her with. The force of the motion lost its earlier aggression. Canelle teetered, catching her balance on the wall behind her.

“All I ask is that if any young women come around asking for Lord Samuel, make sure they make their way to my quarters. Do you know where those are?”

She used the word ‘ask’ and there was a question mark at the end of her request, but none of it sounded like a request to Canelle. She knew better than to point that out however.

The request wasn’t the worst she’d heard in her time in Gaidos. She had heard nobles make far more unorthodox requests of her fellow servants. Canelle would have agreed even without the theatrics.

“Yes, Lady Liorit,” she said, containing her impatience.

The noblewoman shook her head, and based on her flagrant expression, was either pleased with herself or judging Canelle. Without disclosing further details, she turned and strode away, stopping short of the corridor’s exit.

Canelle lifted the laundry basket from the floor and shifted its weight onto her hip, her light colored eyes, waiting for the woman to take her leave.

“In return, if you ever get into trouble, I might be able to get you out of it,” Liorit called over her shoulder. “Within reason, of course.”

This confused Canelle, vague as it was, it almost sounded like a promise. A promise the stranger had no reason to keep.