"I admit it: I'm very impressed."
Hanna glanced back over her shoulder and smiled. After a bit of experimentation, she had settled on a steady pace; the overloaded carriage rolled obediently behind her, slowly but smoothly.
Luvenia worked the piece of candied ginger with her tongue. The familiar taste made her feel a little more like herself.
"Are you really all right? Not in any pain? Not out of breath?"
"I'm fine." A pause of a few steps. "This is actually very restful for me."
"Don't tease me."
"I'm serious, your highness."
Luvenia waited for her to elaborate. When Hanna failed to do so in a timely fashion, Luvenia settled back in her seat and waited some more.
Eventually Hanna stole a glance at her. Luvenia gave her a pointed look, which Hanna pretended to ignore.
"I can wait all day," announced Luvenia.
Hanna sighed. She stopped walking and half-turned to address the princess.
"It's hard to explain without telling the whole story."
"Good, because I want to hear the whole story."
"All right, I'll start from the beginning. First, though..." A bit of color crept into Hanna's sallow cheeks. "We should be safe enough in daylight, but... perhaps you ought to take off your crown. –At least until we reach the capital."
Luvenia had entirely forgotten about the tiara. It was still more or less in place, by some miracle. She eased it off and set it in her lap, covering it with a fold of her skirt.
"You might have said something earlier," she grumbled, without malice.
"I didn't think of it earlier. You wear it so well... and the gems bring out your eyes. You're already pretty without it, but it suits you perfectly."
Hanna's face grew rosier with every word. As soon as she completed the thought, she turned and started walking again, a little faster than before.
It wasn't the first time Luvenia had received such a compliment—not even the hundred-and-first time. Myra had often waxed rhapsodical about her mistress's beauty. Even her cold-blooded father had called her lovely.
She couldn't say why Hanna's compliment took her breath away, or why her heart raced when Hanna blushed. It didn't make any sense to her. Nothing had made sense to her since yesterday's dawn.
"Tell me the story," she said quickly, before she could become entangled in her own thoughts.
Without looking back, Hanna began to speak, her voice low but resonant. Luvenia leaned back and listened with rapt attention.
***
"I was fifteen, I think... maybe fourteen. It was a horribly hot day, I recall, and my birthday is midsummer, so it was close to my fifteenth on one side or the other when my father sold me.
"Well, I say 'sold', but it's more like he lost a bet and used me to pay it off. I looked more like you then, princess—not half so pretty as you, of course, but I was small and thin, and the man my father owed money to said he thought I'd make a half-decent wife with a bit of education. I thought that meant he wanted me to learn to read, which I could already do tolerably well, so when he told me I belonged to him I didn't think it would be so bad.
"Turns out that 'education' means something different to men like that. Othmar—that was his name, not that he let me call him anything but 'master'—he took me to his bed and told me to take off my clothes and lie still. I didn't know much about men at the time, but I knew I didn't want to be 'educated' like that, so I fought back, scratched and bit and kicked him, til he got so angry that he threw me to the floor and started beating me with his fists.
"Once he broke my nose, I didn't have any fight left in me, but he was in a rage and kept going. Then he hit me on the head with something hard—a candlestick, maybe; I didn't see—and he must've thought he'd killed me, because he dragged me out behind the house and left me lying in the dirt.
"I don't know what time it was when I woke up, but the sunlight felt like white-hot iron on my skin. All I could do was try to breathe through the blood in my nose and mouth. I started to feel... numb, I suppose. I knew I was in pain, but I think there was just too much pain for my body to feel it properly—like how a piece of ice against your flesh is cold at first, but then begins to burn, then has no feeling at all.
"At some point I fell asleep and started to dream. In the dream I still felt half-dead, but I was nowhere near Othmar's house, or anywhere I'd ever seen before. It was a contradictory place, as places in dreams tend to be: bright as noon and black as midnight, burning hot and freezing cold, quiet as death and loud as the roaring sea. There were trees growing upside-down in earth as clear as glass, and the moon and the sun were in the sky together.
"I heard a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once call out to me.
" 'Little one, what is it that you wish?'
"I was too scared to say anything.
"Then a flower bloomed at my feet—then another, and another, until I was surrounded by them.
"I've never seen that kind anywhere in the waking world. They were small and perfect, and the same blue as... well, a very pale blue, like the gems in your crown. Somehow I felt less afraid with the flowers around me, so when the voice asked me again I was able to reply.
" 'I wish I was so strong that no one could hurt me ever again.'
"Then it was quiet for a while, so I just stood there and looked at the pretty little flowers until the voice called out again—just one word this time:
" 'Interesting.' "
***
"That was it? 'Interesting'?" Luvenia caught herself leaning dangerously far forward and hurriedly scooted back to safety. "That's a strange thing to say in response to a wish."
Hanna turned her head, still walking steadily onward. "I can't believe that's the only question you've asked so far."
"Oh, I've got lots to say when you're finished, but I didn't want to interrupt."
"Then why did you do that just now, your highness?"
"...I don't really know," admitted Luvenia. She fussed with the tiara in her lap as an excuse to avoid Hanna's probing gaze. "I'll stay quiet until the end."
"Do as you like, princess." She turned back toward the road ahead and continued her story.
***
"I woke up in a neighbor's house. They claimed they'd found me on their doorstep, though I have no idea how I would've got there. It was something like two days after Othmar had beaten me.
"The neighbor paid for a doctor to treat me, but I was pretty thoroughly broken and weaker than a drowned rat. Othmar came and got me a few days after I woke up, and he made it sound like I was his own darling daughter who'd run away from home and 'must have been caught by a gang'—some absurd lie that I couldn't contradict because he'd torn the corner of my lip so badly that the doctor had to stitch half my mouth shut to let it heal.
"He let the doctor come to cut the stitches after a week, but he wouldn't pay for it after, so that was the end of my treatment. Everything else mended itself as best it could, and it wasn't even in shouting distance of perfect, but at least I wasn't helpless anymore.
"Othmar didn't try to touch me, not even after I was well enough to get out of bed. I just had to do chores for him, and call him 'master' anytime I spoke to him, and hide in a closet on the rare occasions when he let someone else into the house. I think he was afraid to let anyone see what he'd done to me—especially when my hair turned white at the spot where he'd struck me.
"Every day I grew a little stronger, so slowly that I didn't realize it at first. Then one day I went to open a cupboard and pulled the door off its hinges instead. Soon I had to hold the broom with my finger and thumb to keep the stick from snapping off in my hand, and washing plates became just about impossible.
"It took Othmar a lot longer than I expected to notice that I was breaking so many things. He didn't seem to like to look at me. Probably my nose bothered him, since it healed crooked, or maybe it was the scars.
"He finally noticed one day when I came in from gathering firewood and accidentally broke the back door—I'd just pushed it with my shoulder because I thought it was propped open, but it wasn't, and instead the whole thing split down the middle. That one was... hard to miss.
"He stormed out of his room and started screaming at me without giving me any chance to explain. –Not that I had much by way of explanation myself, but he couldn't've know that.
"When he ran out of breath, he raised his hand to me—and I caught his wrist and squeezed it as hard as I could.
"His howl of pain was... horrible. It was the wrongest sound I've ever heard. I still hear it sometimes in my nightmares.
"I just walked out the door and left him there. A couple neighbors came running to see what was wrong with Othmar, but none of them tried to stop me leaving. They might have known what he'd done to me and felt bad about it; I left town right away, so I never saw any of them again. A couple years later, I heard a rumor in a nearby town about a man who'd lost his right hand to a changeling, and that's the most I ever found out about what happened afterwards.
"I spent awhile drifting from place to place. I didn't have much in the way of talent or skill, but I had grown so strong that I could make money in the oddest of odd jobs—pulling out tree stumps, moving statues, delivering anvils—if it took brawn and earned me a handful of pence, I'd do it.
"Everywhere I went, someone would make up his mind to challenge me to some stupid contest of strength. I only accepted once, early on, when a man wagered a gold florin that he could throw a log further than I could. When I won, he made some excuse about my log being lighter than his, so I picked up both of them at once and brought them to him so he could try again with mine... but he just gave me the florin and scarpered. I didn't bother with any other bets or contests after that.
"During that time, my body went through some dramatic changes, as you can see. There came a point where I honestly didn't want to be seen in public, but it was either work or go hungry, so I got hold of a big hooded cloak and went out. Since I didn't do a lot of talking, most everyone assumed I was a man, which was fine by me. It made my life simpler, actually. Fewer men tried to best me, no one asked me about my scars or my hair... All I had to worry about was not breaking everything I touched."
***
Luvenia, still listening intently, was surprised when Hanna stopped talking, and even more so when she stopped walking.
"I think that's everything, your highness."
"You haven't explained how pulling a carriage is 'restful' for you!"
"Oh." Hanna smiled wryly. "Pulling a heavy object is as easy as walking for me, especially when I don't have to hold onto anything. Most of the time, I have to be aware of my own strength and do everything carefully so I don't break anything or hurt anyone."
"I see."
They stared at each other until Luvenia thought of some other things to ask.
"Where did you get the name 'Iron Hans'? How did you end up working for my father? ...Also, why have we stopped?"
"I'll answer the first two questions later, because we're nearly at the capital. We'll reach the outskirts in just a few minutes."
Luvenia considered this information gravely, running her fingertips along the arc of the tiara.
"I had better decide," she murmured, "what sort of entrance a princess of Alatir should make."