She’d been in a daze, lost even to her own mind. Doing the things that her body felt needed to be done. Visiting old friends and enemies. Well, that was what a ghost did, wasn’t it? It made perfect sense, seen in that light.
The pain that came after Vincen Coe’s reappearance wasn’t the pangs of death, then. Those were done. These were the pains of being reborn, and much like the first time, they were terrible. She woke in the middle of the night weeping until she couldn’t breathe. If she called out for him, Vincen would come and sit at the foot of her bed, but she tried not to call. There was nothing for him to do there except lose sleep. And eventually the seizure faded and she slept her normal sleep.
She found herself expecting to see Dawson. Especially, she found herself trying to think how she would explain being there in her night clothes with the family huntsman sitting beside her in nothing but his hose. And then she would correct herself. She would never explain herself to Dawson because he was dead. And then she’d weep for a bit and move on with her day. It wasn’t strength that kept her going on; it was a lack of options.
“You going out again today, ma’am,” the house woman said. Her name was Abatha Coe as it turned out. One of apparently several dozen cousins that the Coe clan had spread throughout Antea. Before Abatha, Clara hadn’t really considered whether Vincen had a family. He was a servant, and apparently she’d thought that servants sprang out of the walls when you wanted one and left again when they got pregnant. Looking back, she hoped she hadn’t been too much the noble lady.
“Yes, I am.”
“Back for lunch?”
“I doubt it. I’ll be walking nearly to the Kingspire, and I don’t think I can manage that without something fortifying while I’m there.”
“Apples just come in,” Abatha said. “Go all right with cheese.”
It had taken Clara three days to realize that this was not only an offer, but the only offer that Abatha was likely to make. This time, she didn’t say That sounds lovely or Really don’t bother about me. If she had, the conversation would simply have ended, and her without apples or cheese.
“Thank you,” she said. It was safe because it didn’t require a response and it was good for her because her ghost-self still thought she should be polite.
She wore a grey mourning dress and her hair wrapped in a cloth, and she walked with the air of a woman who knew where she was going. Down the narrow, shit-stinking street to the broader but still nameless way that would eventually give way near the Prisoner’s Span. In all the years she’d lived in Camnipol, she’d almost never crossed the Prisoner’s Span, and she didn’t care for it much now. The groaning and wailing from the cages hanging beneath it upset her, and once she was upset it could be difficult to stop. She’d been weak and wailing on a bridge once already. It was quite enough.
But it was the quickest path, and now that there were no carriages or litters or palanquins, the number of steps began to matter.
Vincen was about today too. Looking for work, he said. She felt oddly guilty about that. She was supposed to provide for him, not the other way around. He was her servant, only of course he wasn’t. And she couldn’t very well ask Jorey to give her money for his support. It would have felt too much like having her son support her lover, which was ridiculous because Coe had kissed her exactly once, and that was a lifetime ago. But even she had to admit that between his constant, gentle, dog-loyal presence, her own painful, slow remaking of herself, and the fact that he was an undeniably beautiful man, it was growing somewhat less ridiculous.
She reached the far side of the Prisoner’s Span and looked back. It was much shorter looking at than actually crossing. She took one of the apples. It was red and ripe and she knew that she shouldn’t eat it now, because she’d only be hungry on her way back and not have it. The first bite was tart and sweet and lovely. The second was too.
Her first stop was a baker’s that made its trade at the point where another dozen steps would have made it too unfashionable to go to. It was literally the last place one of her old friends would look for her. Ogene Faskellan was a distant sort of cousin at best, but she was hopeless when it came to knitting and Clara had always been sure to change the activity when she was with the party so that she never had to. Small kindnesses, it turned out, paid large returns.
“Clara, you look wonderful,” Ogene said, rising from the little table. “Please, let me get you something. A little to eat.”
“No,” Clara said. “You’re doing far too much for me already. I don’t want to feel any more a charity than I am.”