Chapter 16: The Choice

The keeper of scents went through the Keep's kitchen passage on his hands and knees with a lamp.

He found a faint grey smear on the cook's counter, no bigger than a thumbprint, and nothing in any pot or pan.

"She wanted to be seen leaving," he said, wiping his fingers on his apron. "Or she lost her nerve."

After that, he tasted my tray before it left the kitchen, and Junie carried it.

That was all the Keep did about Sylvie.

It was not nearly enough, and I knew it, and I was too tired of being afraid to want to go on thinking about her.

I had decided something instead.

The Keep ate supper at one long table in the hall, the way it had for three hundred years.

That night the table was full.

The oldest elder sat at the far end with his cane across his knees, because he had refused to leave until the petition was settled.

Stewards, the cook, the keeper, two of the council aides, Junie, eight people I could name.

Elias sat at the head with his glass untouched.

I stood up with my own glass in my hand.

"I'd like to say something."

Spoons went down.

"Six days ago I walked out of a hall because a man said I wasn't worth smelling," I said.

"I married the first person who offered me somewhere to stand.

I told myself it was a deal, and that's what I told him.

It stopped being a deal around the time he sat on my floor all night and said he didn't care what I smelled like."

Elias had gone completely still.

"I'm not here because the law makes me. I'm not here because my father hid me, or because Brant wants me back, or because a seer said so.

I'm here because I chose him.

Nobody wrote that down for me.

I'm saying it now so no one can say later that I didn't."

I raised my glass.

The oldest elder cleared his throat.

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