VII.
i want your love
and i want your revenge
i want your love
i don’t want to be friends
eka fyst onr amore
un eka fyst onr hefnd
eka fyst onr amore
neo fyst waíse fricaya
Angela figures it out, in the end.
It probably wasn’t even hard, Birgit thinks in resignation. Since leaving the castle she’s been at her worst—moody, snappish, and taciturn. She avoids questions about the cause of her bad mood, and goes out every morning asking if there’s any news from the capital. As soon as the queen’s illness and subsequent recovery become common gossip, the game is up. Angela is batty, but she’s no fool.
“Birgit,” she says seriously, over a quiet cup of tea in Nolfavrell’s guest parlor, “why did you want Katrina to die?”
Birgit chokes a little, but recovers quickly and arranges her face into an ice-queen mask. “If you’ve put that much together, it’s a wonder you don’t yet know.”
Angela is silent for a moment, sipping pensively. Then she says, “You’re in love with the king, aren’t you?”
“Brava,” Birgit says bitterly. “Your powers of deduction are a credit to your mind-reading cat.”
Solembum’s red eyes widen innocently.
“Ah, you caught us. But really, you can’t fault me for cheating,” Angela says, with a hard edge to her airy tone. “Not when your behavior has tossed fair play right out the fifth-floor window and watched it smash into a million pieces in the courtyard.”
“I am sorry,” Birgit murmurs. “About my treatment of you at least. You’re no pawn in other people’s games, and it was wrong of me to use you as such.”
“You’d do well to remember it,” Angela says sharply. Then she sighs. “So. You love the King. How, may I ask, did this come about?”
“I started by trying to destroy his marriage,” Birgit begins—and, in her usual succinct and blunt manner, tells Angela everything.
“I thought getting Katrina out of the way would solve it all,” she concludes. “I thought he’d feel the same.” She puts down her tea to wrap her arms around herself. “And the worst part is I don’t know if I can live without him now. I love him, gods, I love him…if Katrina’s healed, I don’t know where that puts us.”
“They were saying, down in the marketplace, that Elva and Murtagh came to heal her,” Angela says. “Those two wouldn’t’ve come of their own accord. He had to have sent for them, which means he didn’t want Katrina to die… and that means, I think, that you have gravely miscalculated.”
“Do you think he realizes what I did? That I invited you away on purpose?”
“My dear, you’re not in love with a moron,” Angela says. “Of course he knows. And I’ll bet my best hallucinogenic herbs that he is going to be angry about it.”
Birgit hisses a series of rude words she learnt on a pirate ship. Solembum puts his ears back and yowls.
“Do you think I had better go back and talk to him?” she asks.
“That depends on how angry he is. Do you want to talk to him with or without your head still attached to your shoulders?”
Birgit groans. A part of her is urging her to forget all about him—go back to Tierm and pretend he’s still merely an acquaintance she hasn’t seen in nine years. But the greater part would gladly be decapitated if it meant she could see him again.
So she compromises. “Will you take a letter to him, when you go back to the castle?” she asks.
Angela considers. “Will I get to read it?”
“No!” Then Birgit sees the look on her face. “Oh, all right then. But if you tell a soul—”
“Would I?” Angela asks virtuously.
Birgit rolls her eyes.
“It’s a deal,” the witch says finally, “if you promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“If it comes down to breaking your heart or his,” Angela says, staring Birgit down, “break yours.”
***
Two weeks later, Birgit has settled back into her Tierm townhouse and is beginning to sort through the swamp of undone business that’s accumulated in her absence. It appears no one can do anything if she doesn’t breathe down their necks the entire time, but she doesn’t mind the extra workload. It takes her mind off of other things—like, for instance, the fact that her letter has gone utterly unanswered.
The only letters she’s gotten since returning home are as follows: a short and scratchy note from Robin that she was clearly forced to write when she wanted to be playing outdoors; a longer letter from Maris thanking her for her visit and saying how good it was to see her, &c.; a postscript at the end of Maris’s letter saying “Love you Mother and please do come back when the baby’s born” from Nolfavrell; and a few lines from Angela stating that Roran is angry as a hornet whose nest just got sat on by a Nagra, and that she’d better keep her distance for now.
The affair is over. Birgit knows that, after this, he’ll never fully trust her again. And Katrina, damn her, will probably outlive both of them and be healthy as a horse for the rest of her life.
But she can’t help wishing. Can’t help waking at night wishing he was next to her.
Can’t help loving him.
“Lady Shrrg,” says her assistant, tapping respectfully on the doorframe as he steps into her workspace.
“Yes, Ferant, what is it?”
“It’s just that there’s a gentleman here to see you,” says Ferant, tugging nervously at his cravat, “who looks an awful lot like the King.”
Birgit drops her quill, which blots ink all over page thirteen of her very important trade reports. The accountants are going to have her head for destroying their records, but she can’t bring herself to care.
“Show him in,” she orders. Her hand trembles and she gets ink on her wrist. He’s here. Oh dear gods.
She tries to compose herself, but it can’t be done. She’s never felt so discomposed in her life. Facing him will be like facing the pirate leader and her husband and her father, all rolled into one and feeling very displeased to boot.
“Birgit.”
And he’s there. In the doorway. Looking straight at her, face set in stone.
She stands to receive him. “Roran.”
Her instinct is to go to him, to invite him into her embrace—but his stiff posture tells her she had better not.
“Will you sit?” she manages, despite a suddenly dry mouth.
He does, keeping the desk between the two of them. Birgit looks down, not knowing what to say. He is unhelpfully silent, waiting for her to start.
“I’m sorry,” she offers finally. “What I did was cowardly and stupid. I ought to have asked your feelings on the matter before I acted rashly.”
“This can’t go on,” he says abruptly. “You understand, don’t you?”
She shrugs helplessly.
“Katrina knows,” he tells her. “I didn’t mean for her to find out, but it was—an accident.” He takes a deep breath. “She was very angry, but we’ve talked it over and we agreed to try and fix things. For the children, if nothing else.”
“Do you love her after all?” Birgit asks, her mouth twisting sardonically.
“I don’t love her the way I once did,” Roran says. “But she is my wife, and for that I owe her respect and fidelity despite what my heart has come to feel. I should have realized that before things got out of hand between us.”
“Then tell me this,” Birgit says. “Did you love me?”
Roran pauses. “I loved what I thought you were,” he says. “I loved the woman who survived the pirate attack, the woman who knew just what I’ve been through… but the woman who would let her old friend’s daughter die for vengeance, I don’t know her at all.”
“For what it’s worth,” says Birgit quietly, “I still love you. All of you. Even the coward who goes back to a woman he doesn’t love just because it’s the proper thing to do.”
“Don’t, Birgit,” he says, rising to go. “Don’t make this worse.”
She follows after him, catching his arm. “One last goodbye kiss. Please.”
He kisses her without hesitation, long and gentle. When he pulls away, he whispers, “I promised Katrina I wouldn’t do that.”
“Goodbye,” Birgit says. Her voice shakes with oncoming tears.
He pauses in his exit. “Ah, don’t,” he says. “Crown of thorns, pömnuria fricai. Stand straight.”
“No,” Birgit says, recognizing the ancient word. “Never friends, Roran. With us, it’s enemies or lovers.”
“That’s a shame,” he says, brushing his knuckles against her cheek one last time. “I would have liked to remember you as a friend.”
(eh, eh, there’s nothing else i can say
i wish you never looked at me that way)