Islands in the Sky

2.16

The wedding was boring, as Cassa had expected, so she ignored everyone and stayed coldly angry at them all. Especially, she ignored her soon-to-be husband, even though that wasn’t entirely fair, since he’d had as little say in this as she had.

She stood at the front of the hall, on a dais, in front of a crowd. She stood there, and ignored her husband, and looked up at the ceiling, bored. No-one mentioned her dress, and no-one mentioned her bare feet. They just made their speeches, and said their words, and formed the contacts between the two families.

While they did, Cassa did her best to look so vacant as to be bereft of her senses, but they married her all the same, which was about what she would have expected.

She had tried to make the day more interesting. She had tried to take two knives with her to the wedding, just in case she changed her mind about murdering her betrothed halfway through. As she had half-expected, though, both had been taken from her before she was anywhere near the ceremony. The visible one, on her hip, a guard had asked for politely, on her grandmother’s instructions the guard had said. The other a maid must have mentioned to someone, because the guard captain knew to look in Cassa’s sleeve.

The guards were well-used to searching Cassa. The matter of her and knives was an old source of concern for her family. Cassa didn’t completely understand why her family was so nervous, but they were forever having her searched. She didn’t understand it, because she valued her wits, and they all knew she did, and so it ought to be obvious that she would try to get her way with wits rather than murder. She wasn’t going to just go around stabbing people who were already doing as she wished. The knives were only if someone tried to kill her, which could actually still happen at any time, or if someone especially upset her and she was in a particularly foul mood.

Her family ought to understand that, but they didn’t seem to. Instead, her knives had been taken away from her before the wedding, and worse, someone had searched her chambers that morning, while she was out, and removed a half-dozen knives and daggers and also a sword of her great-grandfather’s which she kept on a shelf as a memento. The room had been searched, but they hadn’t found all the weapons in it, because Cassa wasn’t completely stupid. She left knives on the table, in plain view, but she had also carefully hidden others about her rooms. The two knives she had taken with her had been inside a cushion on the bed, and stuck to the underside of a drawer in the writing desk in the dayroom, and there were many more still in her chambers, too, in case she needed them later on. There was a knife behind a loose bathroom tile, and another inside a hollowed-out book beside her bed, and more in the seams of about four items of clothing in the wardrobe. And there were two in the public hallway outside her rooms as well, as well, in a vase and beneath a corner of carpeting. Cassa didn’t quite know why she had so many knives around, it simply seemed like a good habit to have. She’d look foolish, and could well end up dead, too, if she ever needed one, and someone had actually managed to find all that she had. So, being cautious, she kept a lot of knives. It was as simple as that.

She should try her grandmother’s trick too, she thought, and keep a blunted dagger in plain sight where anyone who became enraged would see it first, and grab it.

She would start doing that, she decided, even though it was too late to matter now.

It was far too late to matter right now.

The guards had disarmed Cassa, and taken her into the great hall, to her wedding, and she had stood where she was expected to stand, and said the words she was supposed to say, and otherwise had done her best to ignore them all. She wasn’t the first disgruntled bride forced to a ceremony among the great families of the towers. She might not even be the first that year. She was irritated, and made her irritation clear, but no-one seemed to especially care. They held their ceremony, and Cassa did as she was bid. She said the words which sealed the contact between her and her husband, including all the usual empty promises to place his family above her own, and to make heirs with him, neither of which she had any intention of keeping, and neither of which she was expected to keep anyway.

The ceremony was over soon enough. It was quick, only the barest minimum that was needed, because Cassa’s grandmother had probably made certain that it would be. No doubt in order to avoid Cassa becoming bored and making a scene. The ceremony was quick, and when it was done, Cassa’s grandmother and her new husband’s grandmother congratulated one another, and everyone was happy.

Everyone was happy except Cassa, who was adamantly upset.

There was a meal afterwards. There was a feast. There would be drinking and eating all day. Outside, food was being prepared for the people of the city in Cassa’s name as well. Everyone was happy. Everyone was distracted.

Everyone was so distracted that today would be a good day to start a war, Cassa thought to herself. It would be a good day for it, except that someone had already thought of that, probably Konstantin, and guards from both families were present, and not distracted at all.

Cassa sat at her feast, and warmed to the situation enough to smile coolly when people spoke to her.

She still felt annoyed, and didn’t especially want to talk, and she didn’t eat anything either, just in case someone had thought to poison the sauces and assassinate two entire towers in one go. She didn’t think that was actually likely, for the same reason there were sober guards here today. The kitchens were secure, because they were vulnerable and poisoning was easy, but she didn’t eat all the same, because it struck her that it would be funny if that actually happened and she was the only survivor of her own wedding.

She sat, and was bored, and tried to decide whether to be civil to her husband or not. Until she decided, she didn’t speak to him, and he didn’t try and make her. He seemed to understand how she felt.

She sat, and sulked, and glared at her grandmother and mother across the room. She glared, and they ignored her, probably telling one another they had both been in this situation too and Cassa would learn to make the best of it.

Cassa ignored them. Then, quietly, in the middle of the meal, when she thought no-one was looking, she slipped a knife from the table and into her dress. Then she realized Konstantin was watching her, and had seen her do that. He grinned, and shook his head, and later took the knife away from her.

She let him take it. She didn’t care. She already had another in her other sleeve.

That little act of theft made her happier.

She passed the day. She smiled a little more often, as the afternoon wore on, and eventually she grew hungry, and ate a little, and then sat there watching everyone else be happy.

She wasn’t unhappy. She wasn’t sad. She was simply irritated at the imposition this wedding was.

She still didn’t speak to her husband, though. She wasn’t quite ready for that.