The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal Read Free Book Online

face might be too narrow, his nose too long, his eyes too hooded. But on him, perfection.
    He is Nicolas Bullen af Bon. Steward of the Queen’s household for the last year or so, appointed as a favor (I believe) to someone in the ranks of the King’s household (it being tradition that each half of the royal couple keeps a separate staff); lord of lands on one of the western green islands and owner of a castle called Aftenslund; a great man known for his ambition to be greater.
    He sits now at a table heaped with papers in the dim light of an oil candle. His teeth look as long and sharp as a wolf’s, and they gleam like the pearl in his ear.
    I have never trusted anyone with bright white teeth.
    “So,” he says, “here is a surprising turn of events. Who likes a surprise?”
    I cannot speak. I keep my eyes down and make a curtsy. It is all I can think to do.
    “I,” says Lord Nicolas, crumpling a page with one elbow, “never have favored surprises myself. I prefer a good plan.”
    He dismisses the pouch-necked guard and the door latch
thonk
s as it falls in place. I imagine the guard waiting just beyond, ready to drag me off to some worse dungeon where I might be tortured. Lord Nicolas has only to raise his voice to make it so. He gestures toward me,
Come here,
and adds, “Look at me.”
    There is some relief in receiving an order, as now I know what to do. I use the servants’ trick of focusing on his chin, so it seems I’m attentive but still properly deferential. I notice a single gleam of silver among the dark hairs there.
    “I must admit that surprises create opportunities,” Lord Nicolas comments, as if continuing a conversation. His mouth has already settled back into the more smoothly pleasant expression it wears around the court. “But they also disturb the best-laid arrangements.”
    He lights another candle from the first; its spreading glow makes the room both smaller and larger, a storehouse of riches. What is not gilded is made of finest amber or glass, and the walls are hung with bright pictures and tapestries. He has an entire bowl of sugar cherries and lemons to himself. My own sugar cherry is growing sticky, melting between my breasts.
    In the light, I feel him gazing at me a long time, know he’s seeing the same things in my face that the nobles see in all of my station when they bother to look: pale, tall, with big strong bones for working and a wide brow for . . . not thinking, exactly, but remembering. Remembering their commands and our conquest, for while their blood bears the dark stamp of France, ours is said to belong to witches expelled from Norway in a long-ago time of pagans. We have a natural inclination to labor and a feel for the sea, since we lived long in those boats and (some say) mated with the mermaids who guided us to these islands of warm-water springs and floating yellow stone.
    I may be a scrawny example now, but I carry the history as well as anyone else can manage.
    All of this Lord Nicolas sees in me, and the pricked fingers and strained eyes that are a seamstress’s badges of office. I think he guesses everything about me, down to the smell of the lanolin I rub into my hands and the flavor of parts I keep hidden.
    Lord Nicolas is handsome and powerful and knowing and rich. He could make a woman feel pleasured and safe. And that woman would be a fool.
    “Ava Mariasdatter Bingen,” he says, and so he knows my name. “You have served in the Queen’s household for how long?”
    “Almost a year, my lord. Health to your soul.” I keep my eyes on that single gray hair on his chin. “I sew her personal linens,” I add unnecessarily, for of course he already knows what matters. I can’t stop myself from chattering: “I’ve never worked on a dress before. I don’t know why the Countess chose me to repair the Queen’s bodice.” (The Countess, far paler even than the sturdy descendants of Norway.) “And such a thing as tonight has never happened with me. I