The lower market under Highcrag smelled of smoke and wet wool.
I had no title and no paper, and the queen's new rule needed a name on a card.
So I went looking for a dead woman's name.
The woman in the back room had a face like a shut door.
She sold papers and secrets and other people's grief.
She named her price before I even sat down.
She looked at my gray dress and made a low sound in her throat.
She said servant girls paid double, and she had girls on their knees for less than that.
Tansy: I am not a servant, and I am not paying with my body.
I put Ferris's rider pin on the table between us.
Silver, a dragon's wing, and a dead man's name cut small into the back.
Her eyes changed when the metal caught the candle.
Tansy: One card. One house. No questions.
She picked it up and spat on her thumb and rubbed the wing clean.
She said rider silver was cheap these days, and dead riders came cheaper.
That was the first cut. There would be more before the night was out.
Then she slid a cream card across the wood.
The dead woman had been called Sella, of a small house called Briar, and fever had taken her two weeks back.
Her family was far off and poor, and nobody at court would know her face.
Tansy: She will not mind.
The woman took my wrist and turned it over like she was reading my fortune.
Her nails were dirty and her grip was a hard, unkind thing.
She said the pin was hers now, but she wanted the blood with it.
She dragged the wing across my palm and laughed when my hand jumped.
I walked out with a dead woman's card and a red palm.
The pin had been the last thing of Ferris that still felt warm to touch.
My hand felt lighter in the wrong way, and I hated her for it, and I paid her anyway.
At the palace gate the noble daughters came in like a parade of silk and clean gloves.
They held their invitations with both hands, like gifts.
I held mine down at my side, the way you hold a knife.
The clerk had soft white hands and a voice he kept for servants.
He asked my house, and I said Briar, and I said it like I had every right to it.
He looked at the silk behind me, then back at my gray dress, and took his time about it.
He held my card up so the ladies behind me could see it.
He asked if House Briar had lost its money or its mind, and his voice carried.
Someone laughed. A pearl pin clicked as its owner turned away.
Tansy: We lost our manners. I came to borrow yours.
The clerk's smile went thin and careful, and the laughing behind me stopped.
A guard stepped up and took my arm above the elbow, hard enough to leave a print.
The clerk said a false name could go on the rider wall with a whip behind it, and he said it loud.
Tansy: Then write it carefully.
He shoved the book at me and told me to write it myself, so the shame would be mine.
I dipped the pen and wrote in my best hand, slow and straight.
Tansy of House Briar. A house that had never once drawn breath.
The ink dried too fast, as if it knew what it was.
He squinted at the name and called it a farmer's name, and a liar's name.
Then he wrote a small mark beside it. A mark that meant someone would be watching me.
Outside the hall I stood against the cold wall and let my hands shake once, and only once.
I had a dead woman's invitation and a lie sitting in the crown's own book.
Ferris, I bought the door with the last piece of you.
Hate stays clean when it has somewhere to go. Now mine had a door.