Sherry's Peninsula
Niccolette sat with gaze fixed firmly on the moldy curtains over the window, and did her best not to take in the miserable, unaired scent of the place. The Bastian wore a black dress, ruffled and flounced. If the ruffles had been somewhat crushed by her escapades the night before, the dress itself was still of thick, expensive material, well-tailored to her. A man’s coat lay in her lap, too thick to wear in the heat of a Roalis day, and her hands were buried tight in the fabric, the slender gold ring on her left hand glinting in the soft sunlight that seeped into the cabin.
She did not, so far as she could help it, look at her traveling companion. Xonia, who Niccolette had found injured and half-dead in an alleyway the night before, had managed to fall asleep straight away into their journey; Niccolette had looked at her, then, and not known if she felt pity, disgust, pride, or sorrow. The young girl had not been shy about telling Niccolette what she had suffered. Niccolette might have wanted to know none of it, but she knew now; she could not but know. That, too, and the mona had told her something of the history of it, written on the girl’s bones, inside of her.
Forever, Niccolette thought, idly. Forever marked by the history of what had come before.
The Bastian had thought of trying to close her eyes; she might have wished she could sleep. But the rattling of the carriage forbade it, and her own thoughts did not help. She would be glad to leave the girl behind with Corwynn; let him deal with this. Xonia had never asked Niccolette for help, and Niccolette did not want or need her gratitude. In truth, she could not precisely have articulated why she had helped the filthy, bloody girl in the alleyway; she would not have wanted to admit that Xonia’s will to live, in the midst of all that despair, had touched her.
And so Niccolette kept her chin up, kept her gaze away, and kept her mouth pressed in a thin, soft line. Her whole body ached; there was a queasiness in her stomach, and she had not heard anything in one ear for several days now. None of that could be attributed to the casting she had pushed through the night before, but the bone deep weariness that ached somewhere inside could – was – and Niccolette wished, rather desperately, that she might simply be able to go sleep. To cry, of course, too; of course.
Corinth Wynngate III – Corwynn, to his friends and comrades, and Niccolette counted herself as the second, if not quite the first – lived on Sherry’s Peninsula, the long strip of beach that stretched out from the end of Old Rose Harbor, that curved around to protect the opening of the Mahogany. Niccolette lifted a tired hand to the curtain of the carriage, and twitched it open, gazing back at the Rose stretching out along the shore behind them, as they began to draw closer to the large, old, half-empty house. Niccolette had been there before, more than once; there were memories there that the widow did not quite shy away from, but neither did she embrace.
Corwynn. Niccolette held back from glancing at Xonia, trying to reconcile the man she knew with how the young girl had spoken of him. She did not like it; she did not like it in the least. But this was the best way; Niccolette did not wish to care for the pathetic little galdor, and whatever Corwynn’s motivations – at least Xonia would have a place to sleep. Niccolette’s jaw clenched, slightly, and she let the curtain tumble shut, buying her hand in her husband’s coat once more. Corwynn reminded her of a maja’wa; Niccolette thought of the sun-drenched creatures, lying on the banks of the Turga in Mugrobi – waiting patiently in the waters around the Muluku Islands, half-invisible in the tangled weeds. Strong and tough, useful in the right circumstances, but nothing to be weak around. Those jaws, stretched open, happy to devour whatever came along –
Niccolette exhaled, tiredly, and rubbed her face with her hand. She was in no state to face Corwynn, but, then, she had not been in a state to face anyone for months, and yet here she was.
The carriage rattled to a stop. The leathery old Bastian hopped with surprising spryness down from the coach box, and opened the door. “'ere ‘t is, madam,” he mumbled, touching his cap with a glance between the two galdori.
Niccolette murmured something about Hurte, and the old man smiled, revealing a mess of broken, yellowed teeth, with a few prominent gaps. Niccolette did not look at him again, stepping out of the carriage, and waiting a moment for Xonia, Uzoji’s coat still folded over her arm.
“Wait here,” she told the man. “I shall not stay long.”
Niccolette waited for Xonia; she did not rush ahead, but neither did she quite look at the younger woman, pacing her steps without the faintest acknowledgment of it. Niccolette made her way slowly to Corwynn’s door, sighed one last time, and rapped firmly against the old, weary wood, then stepped back to allow Xonia to make her own re-introductions.