PDCOO Chapter 24

The two of them wandered through the castle looking for a suitable space. At the far end of a corridor overtaken by grass and insects, Anna stepped into the very last room and her eyes went wide. This room—sealed against moisture, carefully repaired—had Hans's hands all over it.

There was even a large camp bed in the corner. Thick with dust, but far better than moss and mold.

"You could use this bed once you change the blanket. I'll bring you one. In case the pursuers come, you may end up sleeping here."

"Thank you. But, Anna—"

"Don't call this a debt either. I love looking after people I've taken in, right up until the day they leave—it's my hobby. My personal pastime. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

She'd learned his patterns well enough by now to know what he'd been about to say before she cut him off. Anna felt rather pleased with herself.

The pleasure reached its peak as she watched Bertram lower himself onto the camp bed with careful increments—testing it first—then, once satisfied it would hold, slowly stretching his legs out fully.

New blanket, she thought. And he might be here for days, so a pillow too. And a washbasin—there was no sense making him crouch at a stream to wash—

Bertram sat up in the middle of her mental inventory and asked:

"Anna. Are you not afraid of me?"

"What?"

"I wonder if you trust me too much. Coming to a place like this... I know this is quite an inappropriate thing to say in return for your kindness, but sometimes I find you difficult to understand."

As he said this, Bertram drew himself into the corner of the bed.

Apparently making an effort not to loom over her. Which meant Anna could smile and answer without difficulty.

"If you were actually dangerous, you'd have caused trouble long before now. I have some ability to read people. Think about how many I've taken in over the years."

Among all the people Anna had known, there were no absolute saints. The range of malice they showed varied considerably.

Someone who rifled through your things when you weren't looking was the mild end. There had been the man whose broken arms she'd nursed back to health, who crawled into her room in the dead of night the moment he'd recovered. There had been the one who'd settled in as a laborer and then started trying to recruit the other workers into a scheme to take over the village.

Anna chose not to dredge up those memories. Instead, she told him something he wouldn't have encountered on a battlefield.

"Do you know how genuinely maddening farming is? A nice day comes and the leaves start drying out. You get some rain and it won't stop. A bad harvest and you starve. A good one and you have surplus to sell, but the city pays next to nothing for it—you can't even cover the travel costs. And if you try to compost the extra and flies start breeding... ugh."

She shook her head, recalling something deeply unpleasant.

"But you still have to farm. If you give up because the process and the results are frightening, everyone starves—that much is certain. Even in a bad year, you can fill a few people's stomachs. That's why you do it."

"Picking up people too? Even with the risk, because you might be able to save someone?"

"Exactly."

"You can't put the two on the same level. Farming feeds you. Saving people doesn't always. Do those you've sent home ever come back to repay you? I doubt it. At best, a little help in the kitchen—"

It was then that Anna began moving toward him.

Both hands planted on the bed, her skirts rising and falling with each movement, her knees sliding across the firm mattress.

Bertram tried to retreat. His back met the wall.

The woman bearing down on him with all the ferocity of a wild hamster declared:

"Bertram. Do you have any idea how filthy you were when I first saw you?"

"...Was it serious?"

"Yes. Your hair was a bird's nest. Your eyes were hollow. And your clothes—one tap and dust came puffing out. But while you were eating at our place—this part wasn't intentional, but—you got your clothes laundered and everything. Now you're presentable enough that no one would call you a vagrant."

"Thank you."

"Are you doing all right now?"

"Very much so."

"That."

Anna took his face in both hands, brought it level with hers, and smiled at him with deep satisfaction.

"This is when I feel most full. This is farming for my soul. I have to keep doing it, even when it fails."

"...I understand."

"Do you really? The village people don't even understand it. It's strange that you do, given that you supposedly have no feelings."

"Just now, you looked exactly like a squirrel that had claimed the last chestnut for itself."

Whether this counted as understanding, or whether she ought to yell at him for comparing a grown adult to a squirrel—

Anna was still deliberating when Bertram gave a single emphatic nod. His hair slid forward and tickled the backs of her hands.

The tickle didn't stay there. It traveled slowly—down, until it seemed to settle somewhere around her chest.

Anna belatedly tried to pull her hands away—and then noticed his eyes were closed. Like a man turning something over in his mind.

She waited, counting his eyelashes. When Bertram opened his eyes, she asked the question she'd already guessed the answer to.

"Did you feel something again?"

"I can't say for certain."

Bertram lifted the hem of his shirt slightly and looked at his chest.

The blue dragon bone pulsed as always, lit by the beat of his heart, deep as ocean water.

In the meantime, Anna's hands had freed themselves and pulled away. The rustle of her skirts against the mattress grew gradually more distant. Even while examining his chest, his ears tracked that sound.

Finally the rustling was gone.

From somewhere he couldn't have reached with an outstretched hand, Anna said:

"Let's head back down now. I'll bring a blanket tomorrow."

"Of course. Please don't walk too fast. I can't have a lady walking alone through the deep forest."

"Ugh, there's that word again—lady! Stop calling me that, it gives me goosebumps!"

Anna all but fled out of the castle.

Following the footsteps she left moon-white in the grass reminded him of chasing rainbows in childhood.

A vision visible but untouchable. Days spent pursuing something that left no trace. A worthless enterprise.

Rather like this useless guide ahead of him.

Bertram could memorize a path after walking it once. Anna, carefully picking her way through the dark ahead of him, wasn't guiding him. She was an obstacle.

But every time she turned back to check whether he was keeping up, and smiled—

There was only one thing he wanted.

To give that same look back to her.

Karlah was having a think, as she did most mornings these days.

A strong worker had come to the house. Feed him and he'd do anything. He'd even brought a piglet as a gift.

This was, objectively, good news.

The only problem being that her daughter had started noticing him.

Karlah ground her teeth as she watched Bertram sweeping since before dawn.

Last night she'd sent him to the communal lodging, worried something might happen with Anna under the same roof. But it rather seemed like her daughter had followed the man out and crept back in the dark of night. The sheer nerve.

'Easy. I've been too prickly with her and she's pushing back on principle.'

She tried to hold herself to patience.

'But wait. She's twenty-two. Shouldn't the rebellious phase be over by now?'

The magic words, but wait, stoked Karlah's fire.

'In normal times she'd have been married off at nineteen, twenty, and I'd have stopped worrying. But the war ended and everyone struggled, and here we are. She's old enough that it's natural she'd start noticing men—so what is Dieter doing, pining after my daughter without making a single move? ...And what if this Bertram starts noticing her? My daughter isn't unattractive. Not at all. Well. He wouldn't bother, would he, with someone that small? That would just be unconscionable!'

Karlah was simultaneously thinking she's grown and she's so small without noticing there was anything odd about it, when Bertram appeared beside her.

"Finished cleaning the restaurant. Shall I—"

"The pigsty."

"The restaurant and pigsty are both done."

"Hold on. Give me a moment to think."

"Would you like me to clean the house?"

"That would be—wouldn't be fine! Don't casually invite yourself into someone else's house! We clean our own!"

"Understood. I won't mention it again."

That wasn't sarcasm. He meant it.

He was the same when she'd taught him to prep ingredients—tell him once and he remembered it all, and did exactly what he was told. Nothing more.

Extraordinarily convenient. So why did every exchange leave her more irritated than the last?

"Bertram. How old are you?"

"Twenty-five this year."

"Younger than I'd thought. Isn't it about time you were married? Shouldn't you go home and put your parents' minds at ease?"

Karlah deployed her most experienced elder-authority tone, testing whether it would get under his skin.

But Bertram's answer was bewildering.

"My marriage is for my uncle to decide. He hasn't said anything on the matter."

"Why would your uncle decide something like that? Even your father deciding would be absurd—"

"My other family died during the war. My uncle is my only family. So I leave all household matters in his hands."

"...I see."

The silence that followed was entirely comfortable for Bertram and no one else.