Revenge17 min read
The Eleventh Daughter and the Jade Pendant
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"I am the eleventh daughter," I said once, aloud, to the rafters. "Call me Eleven."
"You are Eleven," Finn said, flat, and let my mouth be muffled by his hand.
I remember the day the household fell. "They took Father first," Kenna hissed when we huddled in the dark. "They dragged him before the magistrates."
"They shaved his head, but did not spare his skin," our eldest said, voice like flint. "They sewed verdicts into his collar and tore his papers."
"I thought they would not come for us," I murmured then. "We were nobody's prize."
"They came for everyone," Kenna said. "They came for the proud and the plain. They came for the ones the court said must be lesson."
"Are you afraid?" I asked Cason.
He only set his jaw. "Afraid is pointless."
At the public sale I stood on the raised platform with my sisters and cousins. "Buy me," I called, surprising myself. "Buy me, not her. She is ill-suited for bearing. Pick me. I am cheap and well led."
"You shame us," Kenna spat at me. "You would sell our name."
"I would save what I could," I said. "I have a little cunning. I can live where others die."
A silk-clad young man laughed from the buyer's box. Bram Freeman—he had the look of money and a bored appetite. "She speaks quick," he said. "Take her. She will do."
They folded me into a bath long enough to scrub out my name. They named me at my knees: "You will be Eleven to them." I learned to answer.
That first night I met Finn Hoffmann properly. He came in with the authority of a house with long memory. He was tall. He did not smile. He stepped to the screen and let a woman of fine features watch the scene like a hawk. "We need an heir," she said. "One child, and this dispute ends."
"They said the same before," he answered. "Carry on."
"Eleven," he said later, leaning over me when the curtains were closed, "stand still."
I did. "What do you wish?" I asked, as I would ask a teacher.
He put his fingers under my chin. "You are what I have. Behave."
I behaved.
"You closed your mouth when you saw me at first," he said on a dawn that smelled of lamp oil and something sweeter, "but you are loud in your eyes."
"I thought if I kept silent I might be kept," I said. "I am afraid of dying. I have a brother in the coldlands. He is nine. I cannot let him perish."
"His name?" Finn asked.
"Cason—no—" I choked, "Cason."
"That Cason?" he said. "A rare name."
"You know of him?"
"Heaven knows everything the court can't hide," Finn said. "Your brother is sick. He will be kept alive. Do not lift your voice."
Later, in the light, he said: "You will be Eleven from now on."
"Do you not tire of repeating yourself?" I asked.
"Say that again," he replied, then smiled once—so faint it might have been a trick of light. "Good."
"You're cruel," I told him. "But I like the world that keeps me alive."
"You will be useful," he said. "Useful is safe."
"Then let me be useful," I answered. "And keep my brother."
"Keep your face down, be pleasant, and you will not be taken," Finn said. "I will see to it."
He did not say, "I will love you"; he said, "I will see to it." That was not the same. It was better than nothing.
"You'll have to work," Veronica—the matron of his house—told me. "Bow, sweep, serve. Never reach for more."
"Yes," I said. "I will do all."
She did not warm to me. She watched me with thin, precise eyes. She was a woman of rank, and she made me understand my station. "You are a servant," Veronica told me. "You are to serve. The house keeps you for its uses."
"I will learn," I said. "I will obey."
And I obeyed. I listened for news. I learned who had supports and who had spies. I slept with one ear to the corridor for a messenger's foot. I whispered to myself in the dark: "My brother lives because of this. I will repay the world."
"Do you miss your old life?" Finn asked once, when I still pretended not to notice the things he kept hidden.
"No," I lied. "I miss the taste of old cakes and a warm hearth."
"You perform well," he said. "You flatter me. You are small but useful."
"Then I am worth my price."
There were other women. Jaylah—lin the maid—smiled at me like someone who wanted something from me. "I would be favored, if only he noticed me," she whispered. "Teach me."
"How?" I asked.
"Look up at him," Jaylah said. "Let your hand brush his. Let him think you fragile."
I watched Jaylah learn the angles: the tilt of a chin, the small tremble when she set down a cup. She tried and tried. Finn's eyes never lifted.
"Stop," I warned once. "You do not want to be a thing shared among men."
"I want him to look," she confessed. "To look is to be spared."
He looked, but not at her. Not really.
"I will not be shared," I told the tatters of my old self. "I will not let what happened to Kenna happen to the rest."
Kenna had once been promised to a crown's son; she had the pride of silk. At the auction, she struck at the wooden post and fainted rather than bend. They took her to the soldier houses. Her pride had been weaponized and turned against her. She went away to survive, and later we learned that pain had taught her a terrible calm.
"I will not die for the name," I said to myself. "I will live for my brother."
Finn's favor came and went like seasonal light. When he favored me, he might hum a tune and brush my hair. When he withdrew, the matron made me hand over my comforts. I learned that his heart was a closed chamber. I learned his hands could be gentle and likewise cruel.
"Stay," he said once when I knelt at his bedside. "It is late."
"I will stay," I lied. "I will watch."
"Promise me," he whispered.
"I promised already," I said.
"You promised, didn't you."
He did not ask for truth. He wanted the comfort of a thing that obeyed. I promised because I had to promise something.
Weeks passed with small mercies. I found that small acts loomed enormous. When he took my thin hand in winter and tucked it under his sleeve, my heart did little somersaults.
"Why are you so quick to please?" he asked in the dark.
"Because being small keeps me safe," I said.
"People die for less," he told me. "People die for flattery."
"Then I will not die today," I said.
We went to the western barracks—the army camp Finn inspected. It should have been a parade, a show of order. Instead it was a stage for fate. I stood beside him when the tents lined like a forest of black and cloth. I sat on a low step, pretending to read while cornet horns called.
"There's a musician," I said to a lady of the camp. "Any lute players?"
"Only rough ones." She laughed. "Why do you ask?"
I thought of Kenna: she had once set a stringed instrument to a prince's ear. Songs can warm or break a heart. "I thought to hear music," I said. "To hear my sister's song."
They spoke of a scholar in the crowd, a man called Griffin Lombardo, who had poems like soft knives. "Tall, white-faced, clever," someone said. "He might be a match."
"Griffin?" I trembled. "He was meant for me once."
"He was poor," the woman mocked. "Now rich families want him to stand for them."
Griffin—who years ago had bowed to me with a jade charm in his palm—was in the camp. He had been a boy with a white face and a bright heart who once flushed when I splashed water into his lap. He grew into a man who tried to buy me back when the world had flipped its course.
"Did you love him?" Finn asked later, in a way that had no softness.
"A little," I said. "He was kind."
"Kindness is not currency," Finn said. "You had better learn now."
After the visit to the camp, a dart struck the quiet of the road like a bell. Assassins. Finn was quick. "Stay in the carriage," he told me, voice iron.
"They will take me," I said. "They will—"
"They will not," he snapped, and then he moved. He killed a man and saved my breath. When the carriage jolted and some murderer's poisoned bolt hit him, I saw red bloom on his tunic.
"He is poisoned," someone cried.
"Bring the doctor!" Veronica barked.
"They say it's an exotic dart," Finn mumbled before the world went dark for him.
At home the best healers came, and I learned then what my value was: a bed for a gravely ill housemaster is a place to be watched. Servants closed doors. Lanterns burned like suns.
"I am with child," I heard the chief physician say in a low voice.
"She?" Veronica looked surprised, then sour with calculation. "She is a tool to keep."
I went mute for a day and a night. "If he dies, we will die," I thought. "But we may also live."
Finn slept in a fever. I knelt outside the curtains and practiced silence. He woke and found my face over him.
"You came to see me?" he whispered hoarsely.
"I could not be elsewhere," I said.
"Good," he said. "You have been useful."
Useful again. It was not the promise of love. It was the promise of survival.
When the court said the worst—that he might never wake—Veronica moved as a woman who mines advantage. She had crawling men under her, and they hummed with intent. They fed me, and kept me secluded. They polished me like a small good to be resold.
I learned too that the house had other plans that did not include me. That Bram Freeman had designs beyond his first whim. That men like him would trade a girl's life as easily as I had once stacked plates in my father's hall.
At last Finn stirred. He looked weaker, his face a thin map of pale roads. "You were brave," he told me once, and I believed it until I did not.
"You promised you would keep my brother," I said in a whisper. "You promised."
He did not answer at first. He took my hand and pressed something small into my palm. Metal. "A token," he said. "Keep it. If the world breaks, this may bind what is left of you."
It was a little jade pendant—Griffin's gift returned to me through stranger hands. I held it to my chest like a small sun.
"Will you forgive me one day?" he asked me.
"I do not know what to forgive," I said. "You keep me and take from me. You save and you harm. You are both thief and guardian."
He laughed, a sound that was not a song: "Good answer."
I learned to keep secrets. I learned to hide a plan under a pleasant voice. I learned to give my smiles like coins. I waited. I waited for chance to pull at the loose thread.
Months passed. I grew round and then flat again from fear. Jaylah and Jaelyn—my household maids—tried their schemes and paid the price. Jaylah dared to smile too loudly and then was taken from the service as a warning. Jaelyn stole a small coin pouch and then saved my life by whispering a letter.
"Run," Jaelyn wheezed once, breathless. "I'll make a way."
"Where?" I begged.
"Anywhere," she said. "Anywhere but here."
I packed. I had the jade. I had memories of a scholar who had once blushed when I soaked him with a pail of cleansing water. I remembered Griffin—Griffin Lombardo—the only man distinct from the bargain of title and rank. He had become a scholar and then a man who took me in when rumor said I might be sold.
"You may lie there," Griffin told me once, squeezing my cold hands in his palms. "But you are not finished."
"Will you take me away?" I asked, voice small like spring water.
"I will," he promised. "I sold my mother's brooch, and I borrowed money. I will take you where men cannot buy you."
He did. He took me to his small house, dressed me in simple cloth, and told me that the world could be mended a little. We went together; shy hands and trembling vows. "You will be mine," he told me.
"I will be myself," I answered.
We left the capital for a quieter sea town when the court sputtered. Griffin—now a low official—kept me hidden, and he treated me with a dignity I had not thought deserved. He spoke of futures like a man who believed fate can be nudged.
"Why do you help me?" I asked him one night. "Why risk yourself for someone stained by a lord's bed?"
"Because you gave me a jade," he said. "Because you looked at me once and smiled. Because I am cowardly in other ways, and this is not cowardice."
We were almost free. Sea breezes filled our faces. We were almost certain that safety could be bought by kind hands.
And then the sea crashed with pirates.
They came like rotten teeth. Men fell and women screamed. "To the storehouse!" the governor's wife shouted. "Save what you can!"
I pushed little things to nook spaces. Someone called Griffin's name. "He is a man of the court," a raider said. "Take the pretty ones."
They took the pretty ones. I was shoved into a dark ship hold. The planks roared. I curled with the jade pressed to my heart.
And then, like thunder, Finn returned.
He rode with black banners and a band of men so disciplined the sea itself seemed to read their step. He shot the head of one pirate with an arrow and then stepped into the fray like a god that does not care.
"I told you I'd keep you," he said when we met in the torn courtyard.
"You lied and saved," I said.
"I saved you," he insisted. "That is different."
He saved much more than me; he routed the raiders. He sat high on a crate and directed men. People cheered his name. "Finn!" someone bellowed. "Finn Hoffmann!"
Griffin's men were given time to tend the wounded. "Thank you," Griffin said, voice tight. "You arrived just in time."
Finn did not kneel. He had no patience for thanks that told of debt. He only looked at me like a man who had reached for an object he desired. "Return with me," he said. "There is order to build. You belong in my house."
"Do I?" I asked. "You said the same once and then you tightened my throat."
"Then come," he insisted.
Griffin stepped back. "Imogen," he said quietly. "If you go, may you be safe."
"I cannot promise any more," I told Griffin, and then I walked toward Finn because I had to see my brother again. I had to know he lived. Finn arranged papers, and men moved, and I found Cason at last—older, but alive.
"You kept your word," I said, hands on my brother's shoulders.
"We keep one another's accounts," Finn returned. "It is simple."
I stayed with Finn. I let him wrap the world around me once again, and for days there was a kind of peace. "You will have a place," he said. "I will give you rank."
"Rank comes with chains," I replied.
"Then be my chain," he said, and kissed my mouth in a way that blurred hope into make-believe.
I had the jade at my throat. Sometimes he would take it and study it as if the stone held my conscience. "You have strong eyes," he said once. "You are crooked and useful."
"Am I forgiven?" I asked, and he laughed like a man who knows how to withhold mercy.
"Sometimes," he said.
But I had learned to count little victories. I had learned that to survive now was to play all parts: tender lover, dutiful concubine, silent wolf. I prepared my heart to be steel. I prepared to be cunning.
Then I found the truth—an ugly truth. Jaelyn had written me a letter in secret before she died. "They told me to do it," she had scribbled before the ink ran. "They told me to spice the broth. I could not refuse. They said if I did not, they would cut me free."
They meant Veronica, or Bram, or men in rooms of cloth that smelled of coin. I read Jaelyn's final sentence and my jaw locked: "It was ordered. For an heir to be taken."
"You poisoned me," I confronted Finn one night, so that the kitchen light rattled.
"What?" he asked, slow. "Who told you this?"
"Jaelyn," I said. "She told me she was forced."
He made a face that showed nothing and everything. "Men do their worst sometimes."
"Who arranged it?" I demanded.
He looked away. "I did what I had to do to secure a future," he said. "Are you newly shocked at the complexities of power?"
"I had a child and it died," I said. "You told me not to hope and then you broke me."
"I had no choice," he whispered. "It was safer that way."
"Safe for whom?" I spat.
"For the realm," he said. "For my house. For the childless wife. For the order of things."
"You killed my child," I said. "You turned my trust into a contract and then tore it up."
He closed his eyes. "I am sorry," he said.
The apology felt like ash. "Sorry does not stitch a womb," I said. "Sorry does not warm a child."
He looked at me then like a man robbed. "You fled then," he said. "You were not mine."
"I left," I replied. "I left because I could not be a thing to be used."
"Return," he said desperately. "I can make this right."
"No," I told him. "You can never make it right."
I left again. I rode a tall horse to the high ridge where we had once parted and brought the jade to the sky. "I will be free," I told the wind, and then, with a suddenness I did not expect, I heard him call: "Imogen!"
"Stay," he cried, at the foot of the slope, breath ragged, bow slack in his hands. "You hear me. Stay."
"No," I said, and the sound of my own voice was a small victory.
Weeks later, as men turned crowns and thrones shifted, Finn's enemies and friends changed shape. Griffin wrote to me, a letter that smelled of salt and ink. "Be careful," he said. "He crushes those who are soft and rewards only the useful."
And yet, in the throng of shifting loyalties, the day came when the court gathered in the great hall to hear the new sovereign speak. I—who had been sold, who had been used, who had been loved, then betrayed—stood in the crowd with Cason at my side.
Finn rose to speak some trivial duty, and the room watched him like a hunter showing trophies. I kept my eyes down, but my hands twisted the little jade in my palm.
Then the moment came. Bram Freeman—who had bought me, who had trafficked in the dignity of bodies for coins—was dragged forward by the men-at-arms. The clerk read charges: "For buying from the auction those not fit and selling them into discredit, for collusion with judicial men to profit from ruined households."
Bram's face was pale. "This is nonsense," he hissed. "I paid for goods. I paid fair price."
"Stand and confess," the chief of court said.
Bram's color flitted. He had been certain of money's sanctity. He had been certain that the law would shuffle like paper in the wind. Now his certainty was torn. "You have no proof," he cried.
"Bring the records," someone called. "Bring the witness!"
The room filled with the small, human noise of curious ears. Old women in silk leaned forward. Young men whispered. "What will happen?" "Will they cut him?" "Will they shame him?"
Then a figure stepped forward—an official who had once signed the paper that sent my family to ruin. He was a small man with big hands that always looked to need be kept in pockets.
"You," Finn said quietly, and the hush tightened like a net. "You betrayed a family for coin."
The official tried to speak, but the chamber would not permit such lies. "Without retraction, the house of former officials will be stripped of title," the judge intoned. "All assets of the accused shall be redistributed to the families ruined."
Bram went white. "You cannot—" he stammered.
"Look at him," I said, loudly, because I could and because the moment had found me. "This is the man who sold us. This is the man who chewed my father's name like a bone. He stood in halls and watched fathers torn."
Bram's mouth quivered. "You are mad," he said. "You were property. Who are you to speak?"
"Who am I?" I repeated, and every eye fell to me like rain. I had been trained all my life to be silent. I had been sold. I had been kept. I had been broken. I had also learned words as weapons.
"I am Imogen Sanchez, the eleventh daughter, once of the House of He," I said. "I stood on a stage and offered my body to save a boy who had been exiled. You bought us and sold us. You pretended to be charity."
"Shut her," Bram cried. "She is a vagrant."
"Let her speak," Finn said, voice low, and even his enemies quieted.
I looked at Bram. He was sweating. The clerk read names. Witnesses came forward—servants, girls with scarred wrists, men who had once traded money for marriage. One by one they spoke of the auctions, of forced sales, of punitive "orders" written in ink for bribes.
"For the record," I said, "this man took my sister, he took my mother's breath, he took our right to be children before men marked us guilty."
Bram's face ran from disbelief to anger to collapse. "You lie," he gasped.
"Watch when you can no longer buy silence," I told him. "Watch when your dining table loses its servants to the law you scorned."
The judge's hammer fell. "All property will be redistributed," he declared. "Those complicit in selling the innocent will be stripped, their assets seized, and they shall publicly apologize to those they ruined."
"Apologize," Bram coughed. He had expected to slip from the world like a bad thread. He hadn't reckoned the people would look up.
They pulled him to the center of the hall. A crowd gathered that included the wives of men who had not seen such spectacle in years. Some scowled. Some took shells from pouches and tossed them like breadcrumbs of scorn.
"Look," an elderly woman called, "they took our girls. They took our sons. Let them feel the shame."
Bram's voice cracked on the floor. "I—" He tried to stand tall but the room had no respect left for him.
"You sold daughters," I said, and the sound of my own voice was clear as a bell. "You sold our names. You think coin absolves all."
Sweat beaded his lip. "I had need," he whispered. "I had debts."
"Everyone has debts," Finn said. "Not everyone auctions daughters."
"Apologize," the judge ordered. "Tell them you were wrong."
Bram tipped his chin like he tried to reclaim dignity. "I apologize," he muttered, shallow and wet. "I am sorry."
The hall erupted in reactions. Some laughed. "Hear him," someone sneered. "He says he is sorry like a man says grace."
Others spat. "Shame!" they cried. People took out little writing slates and stamped the scene with charcoal to remember. A young girl with a scar on her wrist stepped forward and tore at Bram's sleeve. "You sold my sister," she said simply.
Bram's knees buckled. First arrogance, then outrage, then denial, and then collapse into pleas—his face moved like a puppet robbed of its master string. "I didn't know," he cried. "I didn't know there would be consequences. I only did as others did."
Around him the crowd whispered and clucked like a flock. Some people pulled out palm-sized mirrors and recorded the man's cringing posture with a crude ink that would survive longer than his words.
"Will you return their goods?" a merchant asked.
"You will be stripped," the judge repeated. "And you will stand in the market square tomorrow where all can see."
"You cannot—" Bram's voice was a thin reed.
"Tomorrow," the judge said. "And your name will be posted."
The crowd cheered in an ugly, human way. A soldier spat and the spit dropped on Bram's polished shoes. The man who had once sat above others now sat below all.
The ceremony ended not with a single blow, but with the slow folding of dignity. Bram's expression moved through stages: colorless shock, an attempt at denial, a moment of pleading, then a small and terrible collapse. People took to the doors talking fast, the sound of gossip like dry leaves.
"Will he be flogged?" someone asked.
"Not today," Finn said to me at my shoulder. "Today he is stripped of what he thought made him human."
"And his accomplice?" I asked, thinking of the little official who had signed our doom.
"He will lose his post," Finn said. "He will be public property."
The crowd dissolved, their appetite for spectacle satisfied for now, and I felt the pendant against my palm like a new weight. The jade did not undo my loss, but it remembered what had been taken and given in my hand.
After the public shaming, Finn led the men who had sold girls into houses and returned property, and the court recorded names to be stripped of titles. Bram's face haunted the market squares in printed flyers; his shame was made to travel. He changed from smug predator to trembling figure. He walked through the city with his shoulders gone slack, with women pointing at him from doorways, children making songs.
He tried to deny, then to beg. "You cannot do this," he cried once at the gate.
"You sold mothers," one woman told him. "You sold their children. You have no right to ask for mercy."
He collapsed, and people recorded the moment with slates and song. He was forced to ride in a poor cart through the town while women spat and the day hissed.
When all was done, when the law had made its statement in a voice as cold and precise as a blade, Finn stood near me at the gate. He put his hand on my shoulder—not possessive this time, but to steady.
"You did not need to stand there," he said softly.
"I had to," I answered. "It needed to be said."
He looked at me like a man who finally understood how much a word can weigh. "You did well," he admitted.
"Do not flatter me," I said. "It does not heal."
"No," he agreed.
We walked away from the square with the crowd thinning, their chatter like a tide. The jade hung heavy. The city's sun leaned toward evening. People would speak of the day for a long time, and Bram would not sit at silk tables again.
"Will you forgive?" Finn asked later, when we were alone and the day had thinned to lanterns.
"I don't know about forgiveness," I admitted. "I know I will not forget."
"Then stay," he said. "Be here, and let us make fewer ruins."
"No," I said. "I can live where I choose, not where I am bought back to. I will not be that thing again."
He did not argue. He only placed his hand on the jade pendant and held it there like an offering. "Keep it," he said. "It will remind you that nothing is forever."
I slipped the pendant around my throat.
"Do you love me?" he asked finally, where love is a small and dangerous question.
"I love what keeps my brother fed," I said truthfully. "I love the man who does small things well. I am not wholly certain I love the rest."
He smiled, this time without cruelty. "Neither am I wholly certain," he admitted. "We are useful to each other. Maybe that is a kind of love."
We walked out into the night with the city's bells slow and full. I was no longer a girl on a selling stage. I was a woman who spoke in court, who had watched a man feel humiliation, who had watched a court turn over a rock and find worms underneath.
I kept the jade warm at my throat. I had won no grand justice for myself, no child returned, no naive ending. But Bram Freeman's face—once smug, now ruined—would be a story told. He had jeered while the mouths of the poor were closed; now he was the one who begged.
"Do you regret the day your father fell?" Finn asked some nights later, when we sat in a low room smelling of steamed rice and lavender.
"No," I said. "I regret only that I loved the wrong miracles."
He laughed, a small and private sound. "I thought you would say something grander."
"I said it," I told him. "I will keep my brother. I will keep the jade. I will do what must be done."
"Then stay," he said again. "This house has its rules. But some rules can be bent."
"I will be careful," I promised.
And in the end I did not become a myth. I became someone who could stand and speak while crowds watched. I learned to bend and to hold. I learned that men like Bram would be brought down not by fast swords but by the slow procedure of law and the sharp teeth of public shame.
That evening as the market emptied and the lanterns dangled like tired eyes, I took the jade pendant between my fingers and turned it so that it caught the lamp's warm light.
"Eleven," Finn said, "sometimes I think I had you not for my sake but for the reasons I cannot say."
"Maybe," I said, "we are both half thieves."
He laughed. "I have been caught as one."
"So have I," I replied. "But at least now we are honest about it."
We sat with the quiet of people who had survived much and not a thing more. The pendant swung between my fingers. It did not mend what had been lost, but it kept a pulse. It would recall the auctions, the baths, the night the arrow whispered through the carriage. It would remind me that the world could be made to answer.
"I will not be sold again," I said aloud.
"No one will sell you," Finn answered, and for a moment his voice held a promise that felt like an ember.
I put the jade inside my shirt and looked at the door where the night breathed. "We'll see," I said.
The End
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