Long Live the Queen (Book 5 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Thirteen: Liber Consolatione

Matthi ambled further down the row of paintings and then came back, flexing her shoulders as if stretching after a long sleep. "I been outta town myself. Only got back last night. Just in time to get an 'eadache from that wave of magic you and the fella unleashed to make your 'air glow."

"Where did you go?" said Ellini, smiling at the reproach.

"'arrogate."

"Harrogate? In Yorkshire?"

"S'right."

"What on earth were you doing there?"

"It's where I'm from," said Matthi rebelliously. "A girl's gotta be from somewhere."

"I thought you were from Cheapside?"

Matthi shifted her shoulders again. Now it looked as if she was struggling against something very heavy that had been dumped on top of them.

"Only till I was thirteen. Parish farmed me out to an Innkeeper and 'is wife. Only they decided they could get more money by saying I'd died and selling me off to a rich lady from the North, to be 'er companion. Cushy job, I 'ear you say, but you didn't know the rich lady in question, or the layers of euphemism surrounding the word 'companion'."

"Oh Matthi," said Ellini, in a small, strangled voice.

Matthi sniffed. "I weren't under any illusions about it, even as a thirteen-year-old. All the girls down my road were going into service. I was just going into service of a different kind. And I got some decent clothes out of it. She might've 'ad a thing for plump, working-class girls, but she couldn't 'ave me running round 'er mansion in rags and tatters."

She stopped, and then went on, in a voice that was hoarse and hesitant. "One of my most... disquieting thoughts... was that I ended up doing exactly the same thing to you. That I found you when you was vulnerable and made you do things you didn't want to do..."

Ellini stopped in her tracks, unbalanced by the lurching in her stomach. She was surprised to discover, on closer inspection, that it was anger. "How can you say that?" she demanded. "How can you think that about yourself? You know very well you didn't make me do anything. It kept me alive, what we did."

"That aint the same as you wanting to do it," Matthi put in.

"I did want to," Ellini protested. "But--" She swiped a hand through the air, torn between panic and exasperation. "But everything was different back then..."

She didn't want to say anything else. She didn't want to say she loved Jack more. She didn't think that was it, anyway. She couldn't quantify her love for those two. How could you compare something you couldn't even quantify? She just didn't know how to explain that her love for Matthi had turned into a different kind of love. Something platonic, but no less fierce.

Perhaps Matthi understood, because she didn't press her. She sniffed and shrugged and went on, "Yeah, well. We all turn into our tormentors, don't we? 'Cept you, of course. You've healed so completely, it makes me think of Prometheus with 'is bloody regenerating liver."

"Which means it will hurt just as much when it happens again," Ellini muttered. 

Matthi made a face. "Yeah, well. I always thought the horror of Prometheus's fate was largely a question of emphasis. So it 'appens again and again. It always gets better."

Ellini laughed in spite of herself, but Matthi was already waving this digression aside. She had to get through the story of Harrogate, it seemed – as calmly and factually as possible – or she would burst.