The person who had been drawing water from the well ahead of her finally finished and moved on, and it was Hyderlin’s turn at last. She filled both buckets to the brim and hoisted them up in one clean motion. Not particularly heavy, as far as she was concerned.
“I’ll be off, then.”
“Oh, goodness, look at me. Yes, yes, go on.”
The woman called after her — Hys! See you next time! — her voice fading into the distance. Hyderlin nodded her head in place of a wave.
The walk home was far quicker than the walk to the well had been. Hyderlin flew down the road toward Sarg’s godforsaken house.
“I’m back!”
Sarg was downstairs tending the hearth. He appeared to have washed in her absence — his face was somewhat cleaner than before, though his jaw and cheeks remained rough with ashy stubble.
He glanced up at her arrival and rose from his place. He drew hot water from the great pot boiling on the fire, mixed it with cold, and poured the lot into a wooden tub.
Hyderlin set down the two buckets with a thud.
“What? You already had plenty of water. I wasted my time.”
“That’s drinking water.”
Sarg picked up both buckets she’d dropped and poured them into the wooden drinking-water barrel beneath the eaves.
“Water drawn from the well goes in there. Firewood’s stacked at the back of the kitchen — use it as you need.”
To think she had to see to such tiresome things with her own hands. Hyderlin sighed inwardly.
“How terribly inconvenient, the life of a commoner with not a single servant to their name. How I miss the days of my stand-in’s life — eating well, sleeping soft.”
“My sincerest regrets for the meager household.”
There was nothing remotely regretful in his tone. Sarg pressed a basket into her arms.
“What’s this?”
“Towels and a change of clothes. Soap’s on the shelf. Leave what you take off in the laundry bin beside the tub.”
Since when has this man been so thoroughly domestic…
Hyderlin regarded him with faint distaste as she rummaged through the basket. Inside were plain linen towels and a garment that looked, by the eye alone, several sizes too large.
“Need anything else?”
“Not particularly.”
She waved a hand dismissively. Sarg studied her for a moment. Hyderlin rolled her eyes and offered him a languid smile.
“I’m about to undress. If you insist on watching, I won’t stop you.”
Sarg stepped outside without a moment’s hesitation.
Hyderlin smirked and shrugged off her clothes, tossing them into the laundry bin. She sluiced herself down with bucket water to wash off the grime, then picked up the soap from the shelf and stepped into the wooden tub.
When she submerged herself completely, water sloshed over the rim and spilled onto the floor. She held her breath for a long moment before breaking the surface with a gasp.
“Ah. That’s more like it.”
Compared to her days as a princess — when she’d bathed in water laced with herbs and flower petals, attended by a retinue of handmaidens — this was a pittiful thing. But even so, the heat of the water loosened something wound tight inside her.
It had been, by her own reckoning, several weeks since she’d had a proper bath. She thought back on her time in the dungeon, when the only water to touch her skin had been used as a form of torture, and her urge to complain about bathing in a kitchen tub quietly disappeared.
What does it matter if there’s no one to attend me, no scented oils to hand? When I was younger, I went on undead-suppression campaigns in the northern mountains in the dead of winter and couldn’t wash properly for weeks. This is a luxury by comparison.
Hyderlin thought this quite serenely. She had always been adaptable, if nothing else. She took her time lathering soap over every inch of herself, working out every knot in her tangled hair.
The water had begun to cool by the time she finally stirred to rise. Then she remembered, too late. The black dye she’d worked into her hair had been bleeding out. She muttered a sharp curse as she climbed out of the tub.
She checked her hair as she dried herself. It had lightened somewhat. Not fully restored to red — but the black had faded in patches, leaving it streaked in places with the warm brown of old wood grain.
She twisted the not-quite-dry strands into a braid to hide the discolored sections.
“Comes out fast, doesn’t it. Should’ve never bothered dyeing it.”
Grumbling, she fished the clothes from the basket and dressed herself.
She was tall, by most accounts, and yet Sarg’s tunic required the sleeves to be rolled up twice over. The waist hung far too loose, demanding that she cinch the belt as tight as it would go.
For someone who had never worn anything other than clothes made to measure, it was a decidedly novel experience.
“Hys. Are you in there?”
A voice from outside. Hyderlin looked up, then shuffled out to the door and poked her head through.
“Hey, these clothes are enormous.”
Sarg recoiled half a step at her sudden appearance. He looked her over — the sleeves folded up multiple times, the trouser legs dragging on the ground — and said, with visible displeasure:
“You’re… shorter than I expected.”
“First time I’ve ever heard that in my life.”
She was shorter than Sarg, yes, but Hyderlin was above average height by any ordinary standard. Nearly as tall as Chesa, in fact. Sarg cleared his throat and redirected.
“…I’ll find you something that fits soon. Wear that in the meantime.”
“Don’t go to the trouble. This is fine.”
Hyderlin plucked at the fabric. The stiff cloth carried the faint herbal scent she’d noticed in his house. Then the obvious occurred to her, arriving a beat late.
“Ah. These are your clothes, aren’t they.”
“Since you know, wear them with care and return them when you’re done. Take this as well.”
He held out a small glass bottle. She took it and removed the stopper, and a rich fragrance bloomed immediately in the air. Sandalwood.
She might have imagined it, but Sarg looked, just faintly, embarrassed.
“I’d forgotten I had it. I don’t use it anymore, but I thought you might.”
“Oh. Well. Thank you.”
Hyderlin turned the little vial over in her fingers. Sandalwood oil was a luxury even among nobles. She herself had favored it during her years as Captain of the Royal Guard.
She had always made a habit of flaunting wealth and power. A preemptive measure — so that no one would ever think to look down at her.
“Something like this, you ought to sell. Put the money toward the household.”
“Give it back if you don’t need it.”
“I never said I didn’t need it. I’ll make good use of it.”
She stoppered the vial and slipped it into her pocket. Sarg watched her with a flat expression, then moved past her and into the kitchen.
“Go on upstairs. I’ll be there shortly.”
She had accepted his gift. She could hardly pretend to take no notice of it. Hyderlin darted forward and planted herself in his path.
“It doesn’t look right for you to clean up after me. What should I do?”
Sarg had been rolling his sleeves up. He scratched his jaw and gestured to one end of the tub.
“Hold that side.”
Hyderlin nodded and took the opposite end, hoisting it up together.
“One, two!”
They carried the sloshing wooden tub outside and tipped the water out. The puddles left on the kitchen floor were swept up and mopped dry between them.
Hyderlin brought in dry firewood from outside. Sarg built the fire in the hearth and set a small pot on top. While he warmed a pot of oat porridge, Hyderlin leaned against the wall and absently opened and closed the glass vial for something to do.
Sarg ladled the porridge into two bowls and carried them upstairs. Hyderlin snatched one from him and followed.
The furniture had been rearranged while she was away. He’d moved the small side table in front of the bed and placed the chair from the window across from it.
Hyderlin let out a soft, amused breath.
“Well. This is a rather sorry-looking arrangement. Say, husband.”
Sarg’s shoulders gave a startled jump. He turned to look at her with a thunderous expression. Hyderlin continued, utterly unbothered.
“What do you say we get ourselves a proper table and chairs?”
“Just now—”
“Good heavens. Are you going to jump every single time I call you husband? If we’re to avoid suspicion at the Queen’s birthday banquet, we’ll need to play the part convincingly. Get used to it.”
Sarg merely drew his brow together without saying anything more. It seemed to be his version of agreement.
He set his bowl on the table. The food Hyderlin had lifted from a nearby house went alongside it.
Sarg sat on the edge of the bed in lieu of a chair, and Hyderlin took the seat.
“Speaking of which — where’s the child?”
“Bathed her, fed her, changed her clothes.”
Sarg tilted his chin toward the head of the bed. The baby was squirming there, wholly absorbed in the task of examining her own fingers. Hyderlin smiled.
“A proper little father, aren’t you. Have you considered taking up nursemaiding as a profession?”
“You already hired me.”
Whether that was a joke or not was impossible to say. Sarg folded his hands, bowed his head briefly, and offered a short grace before eating.
Hyderlin, who did not generally pray before meals except on feast days, watched the ritual with open curiosity.
“You’ve left the sacred order, and yet you still pray.”
“Leaving the order doesn’t mean leaving one’s faith.”
“You went to all the trouble of leaving everything behind — might as well have left your religion too.”
“There was a time I genuinely considered it.”
Sarg admitted this without hesitation, lifting his spoon.
“But I found I couldn’t bring myself to. She asked me to pray for her.”
He stirred his porridge slowly. Words Hyderlin had left behind all those years ago were still lodged deep inside him, immovable as iron.
If you pity me at all, pray that Hyderlin Biche ends up in the cooler part of hell.
Biche. I—
Even if God ignores my prayers… He’ll hear yours.
And so Sarg had prayed for her, for a long time. Every day he had gone to the grave, wiped the filth from her headstone, and silently hoped that whatever stain had been carved into her soul might be gradually washed away.
She had paid the price for a crime she had never committed. He had hoped that death, at least, would be kinder to her.
He had prayed that wherever he was destined to go when he died, she might be sent there instead — and that her place would be returned to him.
Once, he had questioned whether such a prayer was even appropriate.
It did not seem likely that a man who dared to grieve her would be offered a place in paradise. And so, at some point, the nature of his prayer had changed.
When my life comes to its end — please, send me to the seat beside hers. Let this sinner share the weight of her sins.
Sarg said simply:
“Eat before it goes cold.”
Hyderlin was looking at him and seeing the ghost of who he had once been. She was layering the memory of a silver-haired knight onto the ruined man before her — the knight who had come to her bearing the words I know you are innocent, the knight she had watched from the corner of her eye without ever meaning to.
But that was a phantom.
Hyderlin lowered her gaze and pushed her spoon idly through the plain porridge.
“Sir Sarg truly is a most considerate man.”
She lifted a spoonful to her mouth. The moment it reached the back of her throat, her stomach revolted. It wasn’t a matter of taste. Her body was refusing the food outright.
The nausea surged upward, and she forced it back down. She took another spoonful. Then another.
Sarg watched her picking at the bowl and said, evenly:
“If it doesn’t agree with you, you don’t have to force it. I’ll go out later and find something you can actually eat.”
Hyderlin’s gaze flicked up to his. The black of her eyes met Sarg’s, and something strange passed through him.
Hyderlin stared at him a moment — then tipped her bowl and swept the porridge into her mouth almost in one motion. Sarg blinked.
“I told you, you didn’t have to—”
