“I saw her—”
“The queen saw you like that?”
Mienthe couldn’t help but laugh at Karin’s expression. “I think everyone was a little distracted by other things. I’m supposed to go join Her Majesty for a decent breakfast in an hour, or I’d be begging you to run down to the kitchens for me—even the bath could wait. Briefly. Did you hear we got Tan back?”
“Everyone’s heard that, and that he’s hurt.” Karin rolled her eyes, her voice tart on her answer. “Half the household staff has him dying before another nightfall, and the other half thinks he’ll be up dancing before dusk, but I don’t think even the esteemed Iriene is quite that good a healer. But they all think he’s terribly romantic! The injured hero, right out of an epic. You’d think he’d rescued you and not the other way around!”
Mienthe laughed again. “Oh, that would fit into an epic much better! What has Iriene said, have you heard?”
“She’s still working on him, they say, so I guess he won’t be dancing at dusk because she wouldn’t take so long for anything simple! Let me help you off with that. There’s hot water—I had them bring it as soon as we heard you’d come back—” The girl’s voice trembled on that last and she fell abruptly silent.
“I’m sorry you were frightened,” Mienthe told her gently.
“I’m never frightened. I’m just jealous because you got to go off on romantic adventures and I didn’t.” Karin effectively stifled any response Mienthe could make by pulling her shift suddenly over her head.
The water in the copper basin was still hot, for which Mienthe was grateful. Karin helped Mienthe take down her hair and step into the steaming bath.
“What do you want to wear? If Her Majesty will be at breakfast… Do you think the blue dress?”
Mienthe hesitated. “The queen has such lovely things even when she’s traveling. And all her ladies… maybe the green?”
Karin laughed. “Oh, the green, then, by all means! I’ll lay it out for you. Oh—here’s Emnis, after all!” She kicked Mienthe’s discarded clothing out of sight behind the door, handed Mienthe the soap, and slipped out toward the wardrobe, adding over her shoulder, “Maybe you could tell me, later, all the parts you leave out for Her Majesty?” She meant, after Emnis was no longer around to be horrified.
Mienthe’s senior maid appeared in the doorway, clucking with mild disapproval over the state of Mienthe’s hair, looking so perfectly ordinary that Mienthe found she could almost believe that nothing unusual had ever happened or ever would.
Emnis had been Mienthe’s maid almost since she’d come to live in the great house. She wasn’t especially pretty or at all clever, and she worried if Mienthe got mud on her skirts or under her fingernails, but she was kind and cheerful. She murmured all the time she was helping Mienthe wash her hair, a low-voiced sound as pleasant and almost as meaningless as the babble of a stream. Did Mienthe want the green dress again, or the white one with the flowers on it, and did she expect to go out in the gardens today, because then certainly not the white. Did she want those new slippers with the pretty stitching on the toes? Here, now, careful stepping out of the bath. Now, couldn’t Mienthe please settle down just for a moment so Emnis could dry her hair a bit before she braided it and put it up, and no, there wasn’t a trace of swamp-smell left, for a mercy; earth and iron, you’d think Mienthe had been swimming right through the swamps all night. Here, perhaps a touch of this rose oil under her ears, just to be sure.
No, Mienthe thought. Of the whole household, Emnis was probably the one person who had the least curiosity about recent events and the least inclination to gather and pass on rumors. It was restful. She let Karin bring her the slippers with the stitching on the toes, then stood for a moment looking at her maids and at the comfortable rooms around her and thinking, really for the first time, that she might honestly have lost everything on last night’s adventure. If there had been a whole troop of Linularinan soldiers at that barn… or if they’d met trouble on the ride home… If there had been a mage with the Linularinan spymaster, as it seemed there must have been, well, they hadn’t had a mage of their own—unless Mienthe herself—well, that seemed just silly. But… anything might have happened. She’d known that, but somehow she hadn’t really known it until this moment after everything was over and everyone was safe. She shivered.
“You’re cold?” Emnis asked anxiously and patted Mienthe’s hand. “Your hands are cold!” she exclaimed, and went to get a long scarf of dark green and gold that would go with Mienthe’s dress.