Symmetry

Quenl slides impatient fingers along the edge of the saffron woollen mantelet around her shoulders. She is damnably cold. The carved stone bench underneath her vacuates the warmth from her legs, the hem of her scarlet cotehardie heavied by wet grass. Her clothes from gown to hose are a palette of fire.

The castle blots out most stars. She fusses with one of her rings, the message wound inside the band and name written on it.

RAFF.

A set of hands pounds her arms from behind. Quenl leaps to her feet, rounding on the stranger slipperily.

Josie’s giggling and curls of auburn hair betray her even before she has lifted her mask.

Quenl hisses, “You fucking dalcop!”, straining not to be overheard by anyone beyond the garden.

“You made it!” Josie clasps the other woman’s hands, rubbing them warm. She pulls Quenl down to sit beside her on the bench. “The dignitary”—she fixes Quenl with a knowing look—“should be along shortly.”

What strikes Quenl as odd about Raff first is her hair. Whereas blondes are the favourable fashion of the court this season, the woman standing before Quenl has dyed her hair coal black (purposefully too, there are smudges from the powder on her fingertips). It hangs over one side of her face, a crow’s wing, the tail of an eye visible.

Next, her livery. Quenl’s eyes can’t distinguish an exact style amongst the overlapping sheets of bluebell, violet, and ultramarine fabric covering her arms and torso.

Josie’s husband joins them last, fair-haired with a perpetually unimpressed look. Josie squeezes Quenl’s hand, going to stand by him. His eyes soften when she takes his arm.

“We have a new face!” Raff declares, gesturing to Quenl. “Did the newlyweds convince you to come? One of whom I am informed is here for strictly ornamental means.”

“I am indulging my wife’s fairground games,” the young man, Larnsk, responds, a smile in his voice, straight-backed wearing an austere oak doublet laced up to his neck.

“Very well.” Raff waves a noncommittal hand and drops into the space left by Josie on the bench. Quenl notes a number of faint scars above Raff’s unobscured eye. “Who would like to go first?”

“Quenl’s sister has a baby who is sick,” Josie speaks on Quenl’s behalf.

Raff chokes on her own spit. “Gods, Josie. You didn’t tell her I could fix that, did you?”

“Raff can ruffle the cosmos. I’ve seen it.” Josie knits her brow resolutely, seeking support from her husband. “Remember how Raff got you noticed for a promotion last year?”

Raff retorts through her teeth, “Which I’ll remind you is quite a bit less serious than what you propose.”

Stalemated, the two women turn to Quenl.

“Have you been paid?” Quenl asks Raff.

At this, Raff laughs. “No. You can check my pockets if you like.”

“Then I’m willing to try.”

Raff holds her hands. They stand together next to the fountain at the centre of the garden.

“I have a theory the gods love symmetry,” Raff expounds. “Sun and moon, sea and sky, husband and wife, you know all the usual paradigms.”

She produces a fine blade. Quenl would snap free their embracing hands if not for the steadiness of Josie’s gaze watching on, completely trusting in her safety.

“We need a little of your blood. I’ll make a cut here, not deep enough for thread.” Raff touches the right corner of Quenl’s forehead. “After, you can do the same to me.”

A slip of the knife, Quenl’s only acknowledgement of the sting a sharp inhale. Raff smears her thumb in the blood that runs, a considerable amount, painting half of the other woman’s face. Quenl tries not to think about it too much lest she sway from nausea.

Raff gives the weapon to Quenl, guiding her to mark the same notch on her own brow. Quenl draws bloodied fingers down one side of Raff’s nose, cheek, lips, and chin until their faces mirror each other.

“Put your hand over my heart. Good. My left is your right, do you see?” Raff flattens her palm over the identical chamber of Quenl’s chest. “What’s your sister’s child’s name?”

“Vule.”

“We ask for Vule to be healthy.”

She begins to chant, no more than ten lines, under her breath. It’s over faster than it began. They break apart to stem their respective wounds and clean the blood off their faces with water from the fountain.

The infant lives.

Raff and Josie conduct a ritual of their own. Quenl doesn’t overhear what Josie asks for, but it must work. The next month their group meets, Josie’s belly swells with child.

Josie excuses herself from the garden early, blaming her inertion on the cold. Raff and Quenl’s entreaties for her to stay because “You have the best wit out of all of us, Joss, the cadence of a storyteller!” fall on deaf ears made sore by the frost.

Josie points out they have told enough stories tonight and she may as well turn in early because there’s nothing to ask for at the ritual, she has everything she needs, and she can’t exactly enjoy the wine Raff brought for them to share. Larnsk helps her back to the castle, steadying his wife’s trembly steps by adding his weight to her movements.

After they have left, Raff offers Quenl a cup of wine. “What should we ask for?”

“The easy delivery of Josie’s baby, of course.”

“Shall we ask the gods to grant you a child while we’re at it?” Raff reaches out to jab Quenl’s stomach with a finger.

“Gods, no! I forbid the thought.” Quenl shoves her away. Raff hooks an arm around her back, laughing.

Another cut, hand over heart. Raff’s eyes close, mouth fluttering. She recites the first few sentences of her incantation, but on the fifth or so, her voice drifts off. Quenl, unwilling to interrupt the sanctity of silence between them, tilts her head, a question to this distracted mystic with her eyelids at half-mast: are you alright?

Raff tucks fingers under her chin. The kiss is quick, secretive, and leaves both of them smiling flashes of pearlescent teeth until silver plate armour glints in Quenl’s peripheral, a weighty tread scuffing the grass. A set of gauntleted hands seizes her arm and fists in Raff’s clothes.

“By the saints, what are you doing out here?” the brittle-voiced head of the guard demands. Observing their faces in horror, twins wet with blood, she vows to Quenl, “Mark me, girl, I will speak to your mother and father about this. You.” She lays a boot across Raff’s arse and shouts, “Get off the grounds!”

Raff tumbles to the dirt. Staring at the remnants of blood on her hands, she seems to forget where she is for a moment, her eyes gelatinous, fearful yolks. “Wait. I didn’t finish it! You have to let me finish the—”

The head of the guard goes to draw her sword. Raff recoils, hurrying for the gate.

Quenl stands between the head of the guard and her quarry. “Ma’am, you have shared in all of my confidences since I was a child. Please, don’t harm her.”

She is escorted to her bedchamber, the head of the guard muttering behind her, “I am running out of blind eyes to turn.”

The door closes at her back.

She finds Raff already inside the room, sitting on the floor by the bed with her arms wrapped around her knees and tear tracks down her face. Raff stands up, throwing herself at Quenl. “I’m so sorry,” she murmurs into her neck, then leaves, climbing out of the window whence she came without another word.

Only so many rounds of cards can be played at a table near the hearth before Josie insists upon seeing Raff. Quenl piles her with furs in the hope she’ll sleep, but Josie clings to her arm, pleading for them to go outside. Larnsk has been occupied all week. Quenl chews the inside of her lip, unsure if Raff will be there under this subsequent full moon after the outburst at the end of their last meeting. Perhaps the cold will put Josie off waiting for too long.

“Alright, but quickly.”

Josie skips, or tries to, along the corridor.

“Damn your blood, you’ll break your neck.”

“You mustn’t be so gentle with me simply because I’m near to bursting. I’m still the same person I was before,” Josie chides her in a jovial tone, stopping for breath at the staircase. She leans on a newel post, pushing back strands of hair wet with sweat from her face and blinking stinging drops of it out of her eyes. “Gods, that was an effort.”

“Wait for me there,” Quenl cautions her.

“I can see Raff in the garden!” She lifts her skirt. Quenl reads Josie’s intention to rush down the stairs in the fiendish grin between her ruddy cheeks.

“Joss!” she shouts.

At the sound of her barking voice, Josie’s head snaps around. She forgets where she has placed her foot, heel slipping backwards, unable to see the step beneath her.

She disappears from Quenl’s sight in one fluid movement. Quenl screams Raff’s name above the unholy cacophony that follows as though the other woman may be able to catch her below. She falls over four steps herself trying to get to Josie, grasping the balustrades, and crawls past eight more.

It hurts to look at the grotesque stillness of her body, the lack of breath integral to life. Quenl listens, waiting for Josie to cry out. Her writhing on the stairs will be horrible to witness, but at least she’ll be there with them.

It’s Raff’s voice she hears instead. “We have to go.”

She drags Quenl to her feet. They run.

Blood, a mark the shape of her lips, is left on the bread Quenl bites into. A manifest omen for what she knows is coming. She tosses the food onto her plate.

Raff’s homestead is a wooden shack flanked by an expansive field of dried grass and a lake. Quenl sleeps nights away on the floorboards. Days are a blur of sleep, sex, and meals snatched at odd hours when Quenl can find them in the house. Most of the time, Raff stays inside with her. If she does leave, she returns at late evening carrying a bottle, drinks, and willingly knots herself in thoughts.

Quenl often wakes up to Raff’s fingers twined with hers, the other woman whispering apology after apology, deep in her cups.

A knock. Raff, asleep at the table, arms outstretched in the pose of a drunkard, groans but doesn’t stir. Quenl squeezes her hand.

Looking out of the tattered curtains first, red-rimmed eyes regard her, watery like an old man’s on a young face. Quenl opens the door. Sleepless retribution wears a cape that whips about his ankles.

“Where is she?” Larnsk grips the pommel of the sword strapped to his belt. There is no pride or anger in his expression. He derives no joy from this task. It is a matter of what’s fair.

“Raff loved Josie.”

“Step aside.”

She turns to allow him a view of the despondent woman. “She isn’t the same Raff we remember. Whatever Raff was died behind her eyes at the same time as your wife.”

His shoulder knocks hers. Gods help her, all Quenl can think of is the unthinkable. “I’ll do it. Let me kill her.”

Raff deserves a shepherd to slaughter with a kinder face.

“You have until tonight. I will see the body.”

Once Larnsk is gone, she lifts Raff’s knife from her belongings.

“Raff, wake up.” Quenl rubs the other woman’s shoulders to enliven her. She presents the blade to Raff, laying it in her lap. “I’ve had an idea. We’ll play our game.”

Her feigned enthusiasm has the desired infectious outcome. Raff laughs airily and shrugs.

Quenl leads her outside, hearing Raff sigh in relief behind her, the fresh air a balm on her skin while it slices past Quenl’s cheeks. She ducks her head so Raff doesn’t notice her tears or gasps for breath disguised as shudders.

At the lake’s edge, she discerns Larnsk watching them from the back of the house. He nods to Quenl. Is that gratefulness? She cannot tell from such a distance.

“What do you ask for, my love?” Raff smiles, bitterly nostalgic at the sensation of blood on her face.

Quenl lowers the knife from her brow. Raff doesn’t flinch, undisturbed by the tip of the blade touching her throat.