Page 48 of The Faerie Handmaid

“Ah. So quick to understand.” He turned to one of the closed doors in the hall. When he murmured the cantrip, the same one as before, the door swung open. “Come out now,” he called. “We have company.”

When Braithe saw the woman emerge from the chamber, her sense of horror intensified. For a moment the world seemed to tilt, throwing her off-balance. She had to brace herself on the nearest wall as she stared at the woman. The fully human, very familiar woman.

“This,” Faolin said, with a negligent gesture at the woman, “is Gwen. Gwen has been my—guest—for quite some time.”

“Gwen?” Braithe whispered. And in a voice fainter still, a mere thread of sound, “Gwenvere?”

Faolin’s smile of appreciation was more wolflike than ever. “You are indeed a worthy opponent, Braithe of the Temple. It is no wonder the priestess pretender keeps you with her.”

Braithe was too stunned to even comment on the “priestess pretender” remark. Shocked into silence, she stared at the woman before her. The two of them had not actually met, but Braithe knew the woman’s narrow face and slender body, because the changeling queen had worn them. The hair that had been a pale gold was now a yellowish gray. The green eyes, flashing up for a single glance and then away, were dim, as if the light had gone out of them. The body was thinner, and the features somehow worn, from age or illness or perhaps simply misery, but Braithe knew exactly who this was. She had been forced to care for the changeling in ways she preferred not to recall but which came rushing back to her now.

The great difference between this woman, Gwen, and the version of her Braithe had known was shame. Braithe felt it, and saw it in the lines of her face, the bruised look of her eyes, the attitude of defeat in her body. She kept her eyes down, her head ducked.

In a voice of pure contempt, Faolin said, “Gwen, this is Braithe. Show her where things are, privy and so forth. Put her in the chamber next to mine.” He added, with the smile that was not a smile, “That will be convenient.”

Faolin disappeared into one of the other chambers, his own, Braithe supposed. Gwen beckoned to her and led her down the hallway where she pointed, without speaking, to the privy. Braithe shook her head. “Thank you, but I will not be staying here.”

At that, Gwen threw a frightened glance down the hall, evidently to be certain Faolin had not heard. She lifted her head a little and spoke in a thin, hopeless voice. “He will keep you. He always does.”

“So he is holding you against your will?” Braithe remembered the conversation about servants being slaves. This poor woman was the perfect example.

Gwen said, “He has always done so.” She started back down the hall. Braithe followed, telling herself she needed to know how this house was arranged, where the windows were, any doors, any possible exits.

Gwen led her into a spacious chamber that boasted a bed, a nightstand, a washstand, and several chairs. There was no window. Braithe stopped just inside the doorway. “He expects me to sleep here?”

“His chamber is next door.”

“Why does that matter?” Braithe had no wish to guess. She remembered the casual cruelty of the changeling queen, and it gave her an overwhelming, pointless urge to run to the front door, to try to open it by force, with her fingernails if necessary.

“He will want you near,” Gwen whispered. “When he wants to—to do what he does.”

“Which is?” Braithe asked bluntly.

Gwen’s eyes remained cast down. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“His mood.”

Braithe welcomed the sudden warmth of her rising temper, and she let it burn. It was better to feel angry than terrified. “Has he done these things to you, Gwen? Has he hurt you?”

“When I was younger. He doesn’t hurt me now.” When Gwen turned to go back into the hall, Braithe saw the scars on her neck. They were old wounds, untreated, badly healed. They matched the foul images she had seen in Faolin’s mind.

She followed Gwen out. “Does no one come looking for you?”

Gwen’s head came up, and she shot Braithe the green-eyed glance that was so familiar and yet so strange, lacking the spirit of Gwenvere that had made it sparkle. “No one knows I’m missing.”

This, Braithe understood, with a lurch of sickness in her stomach, was the thing about changelings. They took the place of the stolen child, and no one knew for certain that the real one was gone. It was one of her mam’s warning tales come true. It was ghastly in real life. She said with unintended sharpness, “Show me the rest of this house, please. The other rooms.”

Gwen led the way without demur, a woman accustomed to following orders.

There were other bedchambers, each furnished much like the one she had already seen. There was a kitchen with a square table, two stone sinks, a mostly empty pantry. There were no doors leading outside the house except the front one, a weird circumstance for such a large house.

Braithe paused outside a room that had no door, only a simple arched entryway. It gave onto a workroom, with mortars and pestles on a worktable, and ancient herbs hanging from racks. A large glazed window, dimmed with grime, admitted an uncertain shaft of light that illuminated dust motes spinning in the air.

Braithe was about to go inside, but Gwen seized her arm to hold her back. Her hand was small and cold, nothing like the hot, hard fingers of the changeling. “Don’t go in there. It’s not allowed.”

“Why?”