The Diminished
Kaitlyn Sage Patterson
In the Alskad Empire, nearly all are born with a twin, two halves to form one whole… yet some face the world alone.The singleborn.A rare few are singleborn in each generation, and therefore given the right to rule by the gods and goddesses. Bo Trousillion is one of these few, born into the royal line and destined to rule. Though he has been chosen to succeed his great-aunt, Queen Runa, as the leader of the Alskad Empire, Bo has never felt equal to the grand future before him.The diminishedWhen one twin dies, the other usually follows, unable to face the world without their other half. Those who survive are considered diminished, doomed to succumb to the violent grief that inevitably destroys everyone whose twin has died. Such is the fate of Vi Abernathy, whose twin sister died in infancy. Raised by the anchorites of the temple after her family cast her off, Vi has spent her whole life scheming for a way to escape and live out what’s left of her life in peace.As their sixteenth birthdays approach, Bo and Vi face very different futures—one a life of luxury as the heir to the throne, the other years of backbreaking work as a temple servant. But a long-held secret and the fate of the empire are destined to bring them together in a way they never could have imagined.
In the Alskad Empire, nearly all are born with a twin, two halves to form one whole...yet some face the world alone.
The singleborn
A rare few are singleborn in each generation, and therefore given the right to rule by the gods and goddesses. Bo Trousillion is one of these few, born into the royal line and destined to rule. Though he has been chosen to succeed his great-aunt, Queen Runa, as the leader of the Alskad Empire, Bo has never felt equal to the grand future before him.
The diminished
When one twin dies, the other usually follows, unable to face the world without their other half. Those who survive are considered diminished, doomed to succumb to the violent grief that inevitably destroys everyone whose twin has died. Such is the fate of Vi Abernathy, whose twin sister died in infancy. Raised by the anchorites of the temple after her family cast her off, Vi has spent her whole life scheming for a way to escape and live out what’s left of her life in peace.
As their sixteenth birthdays approach, Bo and Vi face very different futures—one a life of luxury as the heir to the throne, the other years of backbreaking work as a temple servant. But a long-held secret and the fate of the empire are destined to bring them together in a way they never could have imagined.
KAITLYN SAGE PATTERSON grew up with her nose in a book outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. When she’s not staring off into space and trying to untangle some particularly troublesome plot point, she can be found in the kitchen, cooking overly elaborate meals; at the barn, where she rides and trains dressage horses; or with her husband, spoiling their sweet rescue dogs. The Diminished is her first novel.
The Diminished
Kaitlyn Sage Patterson
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Kaitlyn Sage Patterson 2018
Kaitlyn Sage Patterson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9781474074643
Praise (#u32bd4549-2432-517d-945f-61a820fc6dc7)
“Two fierce young people battle a fiery landscape and vicious foes in a race for freedom. I was glued to my seat!”
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Tamora Pierce
“Patterson’s debut novel has strong and imaginative world-building and complex characters. With a splash of swoony romance and a thrilling conclusion, readers will be clamoring for the sequel.”
—Zoraida Córdova, award-winning author of Labyrinth Lost and The Vicious Deep trilogy
“A fascinating and wholly original novel. Bo and Vi are fierce, complex characters, and I couldn’t devour their story fast enough!”
—Amy Tintera, New York Times bestselling author of Ruined
For everyone who’s ever felt diminished, and for Cody, for whom I’ve always been enough.
Contents
Cover (#u249501a9-d9b4-5f0a-afc4-c546f5470be6)
Back Cover Text (#u92d48565-b735-561c-8fbe-e5b8424bb3dd)
About the Author (#u75e41967-4c83-532c-a019-cc738fb4ee17)
Title Page (#u6f610fa7-73ef-5603-a318-8434caa1a593)
Copyright (#u84e505d0-b81c-56d2-a016-e3f77ada0f32)
Praise (#u0d40f3c7-582c-51b9-b948-45b83da1819d)
Dedication (#ua8b4dfe3-f187-5492-8926-4920fe835dbc)
PART ONE (#ub149661c-6e67-59fa-9ef7-1f5c0ccd4f33)
CHAPTER ONE (#u482bd754-50b6-5507-874b-232189415927)
CHAPTER TWO (#u96486c88-d47a-584d-8cbf-ea69f1597a3c)
CHAPTER THREE (#u58398ab9-1791-5de5-ad39-19d97753b1f5)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u095adf6d-26af-54dd-9644-1302c3c3f804)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u02bd1cda-2dd3-5b81-9b4a-876e672b69b4)
CHAPTER SIX (#ubf0a32aa-0f0a-5138-81f2-42efb2a33f8e)
PART TWO (#u40208382-bfa9-5c62-9f55-440675013dff)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u50acaaa0-05ec-5754-9785-37838391c513)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
PART THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
PART ONE (#u32bd4549-2432-517d-945f-61a820fc6dc7)
“Those who lose their twins shall join them in death, that they are never without their other half. Some may cling to unnatural life, and those shall be called the diminished—for in their grief, they become less, and their violent breaking shall scourge this land.”
—from the Book of Dzallie, the Warrior
“Like the goddesses and gods, who are complete without a twin, a blessed few shall be singleborn. You shall know them as our chosen ones, for our divinity runs undiluted through their veins. Raise them up, and let the wisdom that is their birthright illuminate this world.”
—from the Book of Magritte, the Educator
CHAPTER ONE (#u32bd4549-2432-517d-945f-61a820fc6dc7)
VI
The first queen built the Alskad Empire from scorched earth and ash after the goddess Dzallie split the moon and rained fire from the sky. The god Hamil called the sea to wash away most of what was left of humanity, but the people who managed to survive gathered in the wild, unforgiving north, calling on Rayleane the Builder to help them shape an idyllic community that would be home and haven to the descendants of the cataclysm.
They failed.
I came up feared and hated for a thing I had no control over in a world divided. My childhood wasn’t the kind of unpleasant that most brats endure when their ma won’t let them spend all their pocket money on spun sugar or fried bread filled with jam. No. My days coming up in the temple ranged from lean and uncertain to hungry and brutal with shockingly little variation.
There were bright moments among the terrible ones, sure, and my best friend, Sawny, was there for most of them. But even the shiniest days as a dimmy ward of the temple were tarnished. It had to do, I think, with the endless reminders of how unwanted I really was. Even Sawny and Lily, whose ma’d given them up, enjoyed a little more kindness than any of the anchorites ever managed to show like me.
One night, a month before I turned sixteen, I waited in my room, boots in hand, for Sawny’s knock on my door. It had been about an hour since our hall’s anchorite called for lights out. She was a rich merchant’s daughter who’d recently committed to the religious life, and she slept sounder than a great gray bear. Though we’d be hard pressed to find an anchorite who cared that two brats nearly old enough to be booted out of the temple were sneaking out in the middle of the night, Sawny and I were still careful. Neither of us had the patience to endure even one more tongue lashing, halfhearted or not.
Keep them sleeping, Pru, I thought.
While I’d stopped praying to the gods and goddesses years ago, I kept up a sort of conversation with my dead twin, Prudence. Ridiculous as it sometimes felt, a part of me wanted to believe that she was looking out for me—that she was the reason I’d been able to keep myself from slipping into the violent grief of the other diminished for all these years. All Ma’d ever told me was her name and that she’d died a couple months after we were born. After that, it didn’t take long for my ma to dump me at the temple in Penby, unwilling to raise a dimmy. Ma and Pa visited from time to time, bringing my new sisters and brothers to see me when they were born, but we never got close. Getting close to a dimmy’s about as smart as cuddling up with an eel. Not even my ma was that dumb.
There was a soft tap on the door. I slipped out of my room and padded down the dim hall after Sawny.
We raced up the narrow staircase, our hushed giggles echoing through the stillness. Even the adulations were silent at this hour; the anchorites chanting over the altars of their chosen deities were tucked away in their rooms under piles of blankets and furs. At the top of the stairs, I jammed my feet into my boots and slid open the casement window, letting a shock of brisk night wind whine down the stairwell. Once I’d shimmied out onto the slate-tiled roof, Sawny passed me his knapsack and climbed through the window with practiced ease.
“Lily’s asleep?” I asked, flicking my thick, dark braid over my shoulder.
“Snoring like a walrus,” Sawny confirmed. “I put some of Bethea’s sleep herb in her tea. No chance she’ll wake up and rat us out.”
It wasn’t that Sawny’s twin was a tattler—not exactly. Or that she hated me. She didn’t. Not quite all the way to hate, anyway. But when you spend half your life being lectured about dimmys and how dangerous and unpredictable we are, you tend to not want your twin to go clambering across rooftops with one of us. Especially a dimmy whose twin’s been dead as long as mine. Lily would’ve been a lot happier if Sawny would do as she asked, and stop speaking to me. She didn’t want to become one of us, after all, and every minute Sawny spent with me increased the odds that he’d be around when I finally lost myself to the grief. Frankly, I didn’t disagree with her. But she knew—as did I—that Sawny would never turn his back on our friendship. Not after all this time.
So Lily ran to the anchorites every time she caught us breaking the rules. It was all she could do, and I didn’t blame her. But that didn’t mean I wanted to get caught.
We scrambled from one rooftop to the next until we were well away from the temple’s residential wing. Our favorite spot was next to a window tucked between two slopes of roof over a rarely used attic next to the temple’s tall spire. It was safe, for one, but the view didn’t hurt, either.
Though only a sliver of one of the moon’s halves was visible, the early summer sky—even at midnight—wasn’t black, but the same dark, cloudy gray as my eyes. I settled in, my back against the wall of the spire, and drew my layers of sweaters in tight around me. Summers in Alskad were merely chilly, not the biting, aching cold that sank into your very bones the rest of the year. But even though I hated the cold, I found myself wishing for winter, when Sawny and Lily and I’d nestle in close under a blanket and watch the great, colorful strands of the northern lights play across the sky.
“What’d you nick for us?”
“Couldn’t get much, what with the kitchen buzzing with folks getting ready for tomorrow, but I managed a bit.”
Sawny closed his eyes, smiled and stretched out next to me on his back, his long black lashes smudged against his dark olive skin. He was all heavy muscles and broad shoulders. Sawny’s easy good looks drew appreciative glances from anyone able to see past the overly mended hand-me-downs we temple brats wore—which, to be perfectly honest, was a fairly small group. My pale, freckled skin and dark, unruly curls might’ve been considered pretty at one point, but my twice-broken nose, combined with a face that rested somewhere between furious and disgusted, made folks’ eyes slip right past me. I couldn’t say I minded. Being a dimmy brought me attention enough.
“Well?” I held out a hand expectantly. “I’m ravenous.”
Sawny put his hand in mine and squeezed. “I’m going to miss you, Vi.”
“Shut up. You’ll find work,” I said, but the lie felt sharp on my tongue even as I spoke the words. “You and Lily both. Though Dzallie protect whoever hires her.”
“Vi,” Sawny cautioned.
I threw my hands up defensively. “I didn’t mean anything by it. You know as well as I do that your sister can be prickly. That doesn’t mean you won’t find work here in Penby.”
“We’ve been looking for months now, and there’s nothing. Nothing that pays enough to afford a room, anyway.”
Sawny rummaged in his bag and handed me half a loaf of bread thick with nuts and seeds. I turned it over in my hands. Guilt over my thoughtless expectation that Sawny would keep putting himself at risk by stealing food from the temple kitchen, same as he’d always done, gnawed at my stomach. His position was so tenuous now that he and Lily had come of age.
“There’s no way the temple’ll get rid of you,” I said, forcing assurance I didn’t feel into my voice. “You make the best cloud buns and salmonberry cakes of anyone in the kitchens. Don’t you think they see that?”
Sawny ducked his head. “Sure. If I was on my own, I might be fine, but Lily needs connections to get bookkeeping work, and we’ve none. The anchorites can’t get away with letting us stay much longer. We’ve been of age for nearly a full season now. I’m surprised they haven’t already kicked us out.”
I looked out across the wide square at the palace. It was an old-fashioned, elegant thing, all clean lines and contrasting angles with none of the frippery and decoration that was the style now. It’d been built a generation after the survivors of the cataclysm had settled in Penby, around the same time the people’d built the temple where Sawny and I’d grown up. The two buildings were practically mirrors of each other, with the same tall spires and the same high stone walls and narrow windows. But somehow, even though it was a stone’s throw away, the palace had always been impossibly out of our reach.
Sawny and I’d come to this spot for years. We’d look across the square at the lights glowing in the palace windows and imagine the people inside. The palace seemed so much warmer, so much friendlier than the temple. The lives of its inhabitants so much happier. I thought probably they were, but Sawny always reminded me that it only seemed that way because we couldn’t see their dark secrets the way we could see our own.
I caught a flash of white fluttering in the shadows between the palace and the temple. I nudged Sawny and jerked my chin. “Shriven. Think they can see us?”
He shook his head. “Nah. Even if they could, what do they care?”
The whites of their eyes stood out against the background of the black paint they wore across their foreheads, mingling with their stark tattoos. I could almost feel the weight of their gaze settle on me, sending shivers down my spine. The Shriven were always in the background of my life. They patrolled the city, looking for people like me. Keeping the citizens of Penby safe from dimmys on the edge of breaking. They served as the spine and the fist of the temple, and no crime in the empire escaped the ever-watchful eyes of the Shriven. Everyone followed their orders, even the palace guards and city watch. And while everyone in the empire knew better than to cross them, their shadow fell darkest on people like me—on the diminished.
“At least the Shriven watchdogs don’t track your every move the way they do with us dimmys.” I shuddered, remembering the last time one of the white-clad Shriven warriors decided I was up to no good. They may’ve been temple-sworn, same as the anchorites, but I’d never believed they were holy. Turning back to Sawny, I said, “You can get away with a few more weeks of looking. Maybe they’ll hire you over there.” I jerked my chin at the palace.
Sawny laughed. “Sure. And her Imperial Highness Queen Runa will take a liking to me and set me up with an estate of my own. Come on, Vi. The palace would never hire a temple foundling. Those jobs are passed through families, like heirlooms.”
I wished there was a way to argue with him, but he was right. Folks like us had to claw our way up to the bottom of the heap, and dreaming of anything else was setting ourselves up for failure.
Us temple brats worked long, hard hours to build the temple’s wealth and power with no praise, no pay and little enough reward, apart from the barest necessities to keep us alive. Meanwhile, the anchorites draped themselves in the pearls I harvested from the cold waters of the bay and wore silks and furs tithed to the temple. But even their indulgence was nothing compared to the Suzerain, the twins who led the religious order of Alskad. Their power was nearly equal to the Queen’s, and it didn’t take an overly observant soul to see the greed and corruption that colored their every move, like the silver threads that embroidered their robes.
Because of this, Sawny and I had our own brand of morality. It was fine for him to steal food from the temple kitchens because they were charged with our care, and we were always hungry. I wasn’t above swiping the occasional crab that wandered by the oyster beds during my summer dives, and in the winter, when I worked in the canneries, few days passed when I didn’t pocket a tin of smoked whitefish or pickled eel. I surely didn’t feel an ounce of guilt over taking a bit of that work back for myself. None of us did.
Sawny and I took our petty crimes a bit further than most temple brats, though. While most of them stopped at stealing from anyone beyond the temple, we’d no problem with nicking baubles and the odd tvilling off the rich folks who swanned around wearing furs and jewels and waving handfuls of drott and ovstri at poor folks, like the fact that they’d money to spend somehow made them special. We were smart about it, and the likelihood we’d get caught was so slim that the benefits always outweighed the risks.
But I’d gone even further than that over the past few years. The way I’d built my own little store of stolen wealth was too dangerous, so far beyond the line, that even knowing about it would put Sawny at risk. I couldn’t tell him. But I could hint—especially if it convinced him to stay, at least until my birthday.
“I’ll be of age soon. We could go north, the three of us. I can dive and fish—the two of you could work on some noble’s estate. We’d find a way to make it work.”
Sawny took the chunk of bread from me, broke it in two and smeared both sides thickly with birch syrup butter from a crock in his knapsack. He handed half back to me and eased himself back onto his elbows, chewing thoughtfully.
“Lily wants to take a contract in Ilor.”
I sucked in a breath, not wanting to believe it could be true. Ilor was a wild, barely settled island colony, but there was work to be had, and no shortage of it. The estate owners and the temple’s land managers there were desperate enough for labor that they’d pay ship captains to bring willing folks from Alskad. All Lily and Sawny had to do was walk onto a sunship.
A part of me knew this had been coming. Lily’d talked about leaving Alskad since we were brats. Their parents were dead, and they’d no family left in Penby. What family they did have had immigrated to Ilor before they were born, hoping for a better life, more opportunities. It made sense that Lily had always seen their future on those hot, jungle islands.
“You can’t actually be considering it. Haven’t you heard the rumors? Just yesterday a news hawker was lighting up the square with a story about an estate burned to the ground by some kind of rebel group.”
Sawny laughed. “And last week I heard one of them say that Queen Runa had taken an amalgam lover. Come on, Vi. You know better than to believe everything you hear.”
“There’s no such thing as amalgams, you oaf.”
“You grew up with the stories, same as me.”
The amalgam were the stuff of childhood horror stories, meant to scare children into good behavior. Twins who’d become one in the womb, they were said to have magic that let them see the future and control the minds of other people. They were supposed to be more ferocious, more bloodthirsty than even the diminished, willing to do anything to gain power and influence. Legends said they thrived on fear and power, like most monsters. I’d never believed they were real. If they were, they would’ve ended up under the temple’s watchful eye, like every other threat.
Like me.
I made a face at him. “Stop trying to distract me. There’s got to be something for you here. Surely you don’t have to cross the whole damn ocean to find work.”
“It’s only a few years, Vi. We’ll work hard and save our pay, and when the contract’s over, we can start a new life. Maybe I’ll open a bakery. Hamil’s teeth, you could even come over with us.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. No captain would ever let a dimmy onto a ship planning to cross the Tethys, Hamil’s blessing or no.”
“You don’t know that.”
I tore a piece of bread off my chunk of the loaf and rolled it between my fingers, considering, before popping it into my mouth. The sticky butter clung to my fingers, and I licked each one, unwilling to waste even a ghost of sweetness and glad for a moment to think through what I’d say next.
“The only work you’ll get is on a kaffe farm.”
Sawny pushed a hank of black hair behind his ear and nodded. “We know.”
“It’s hard work. Backbreaking, and there’s no law there. None to speak of, at least. Nothing to protect you if something goes wrong.”
“Fair point,” Sawny said. “But since when did laws ever do any good to protect folks like you and me? The work’ll be hard, sure. Harder than anything we’ve had to do here.”
“Maybe not harder than enduring Anchorite Bethea’s worship seminars.”
Sawny’s laugh burst out of his chest, shattering the stillness of the night.
“No,” he said. “Not harder than those. But there’s no other option, Vi. And once we pay off our passage, we’ll earn a wage. Can you imagine?”
I could imagine. I’d spent hours thinking about the day I’d be free of the temple and earning my own living. Free to live what was left of my life happy, or as close to it as I could manage with the threat of inevitable, violent grief looming over me. For a moment, my mind slipped away from thoughts of that life and pondered the path our friend Curlin had chosen. She’d—Magritte’s teeth, it made me so mad!—gone and joined the Shriven. Broken every promise we’d ever made to each other and to Sawny.
That was the only other option for Sawny and Lily. It’d keep them safe and fed and earn them a kind of respect none of us could ever hope to gain on our own. We all knew it, but—unlike Curlin—we respected the promise we’d made each other, and we wouldn’t break it. Not even if it was the only sure way to keep us together. It wasn’t worth what we’d have to become.
I didn’t need to say it. I could tell Sawny was thinking the same thing.
“When’ll you leave?”
“Couple of days, I think.”
I reached out and smacked his arm, hard, without thinking. “A couple of days? How long have you been planning this?”
He scowled at me, but when he saw the tears streaking down my cheeks, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and drew me close. “Vi...” His voice trailed off, and I knew there wasn’t anything he could say. Our friendship, no matter how important it was to both of us, was nothing compared to the bond between twins.
“You couldn’t’ve told me sooner?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Lily only settled the details yesterday. I didn’t want to tell you until it was a sure thing.”
I shoved my anger and pain down, cinching it tight into a heavy ball of misery in the pit of my stomach. Anger was dangerous, and I wouldn’t let Sawny’s leaving be the thing that broke me. Not after all this time. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too, Obedience,” he said, teasing me with the given name he knew I hated.
I elbowed him in the ribs. “I take it back. I won’t miss you at all,” I said, laughter slipping into my voice.
But we both knew that wasn’t true.
* * *
Some days, there was no way to avoid the actual temple itself. On high holy days, the cusps of each season and the Suzerain’s Ascension Day, every person who ate at the temple’s table or was under their protection was expected to stop everything and haul themselves to adulations. Most folks in Penby made a show of attending adulations, even the Queen. Not many had so little to lose that they could afford to find themselves on the bad side of the Suzerain. Even folks like me, folks with nothing, weren’t stupid enough to risk it. Because I knew that even with nothing at all, I might still have something to lose.
On the day the Suzerain celebrated their twenty-third Ascension Day, I sidled into the haven hall just after the adulation started, but—thank all the gods—before the Suzerain made their entrance. Lily and Sawny were perched on the edge of a bench on the far side of the hall. As I navigated my way through the crowd toward them, Lily caught sight of me first. She shot me an evil look, but I grinned at her and winked. Even though she’d never have to think about most of these folks again, the girl still couldn’t stand to be seen with a dimmy.
“Scoot,” I whispered.
Sawny passed me a cantory, and Lily heaved a sigh as he nudged her over to make room for me. I settled onto the long, scarred wooden bench next to Sawny just as the gathering sang the final note of the Suzerain’s Chorale. The anchorites were at the front of the hall decked out in their finest, with pearls gleaming at their necks and wrists and their hair tied up in intricate braids, freshly shorn on the sides. Their silk robes, in shades of yellow and orange and red, whispered as they stood, and a hush fell over the crowd. Everyone’s eyes turned to the two initiates drawing open the thick metal doors at the back of the haven hall. The high holiday adulations followed the same damned formula every single time, but somehow, folks still acted like it was some kind of glamorous and captivating performance.
The Shriven initiates entered the hall first, their white robes and freshly shorn heads gleaming in the light of the sunlamps. Their staves smacked the stone floor in unison with every step as they filed to the front of the hall and spread out to flank either side, leaving gaps at each of the altars. Sawny elbowed me.
“See Curlin?”
I shook my head. “Don’t know how you could pick her out at this distance.”
“She’s the one with the black eye.” He pointed, squinting. “She’s gotten more tattoos since the last time I saw her.”
I rolled my eyes. “Give it up, Sawny. She’s one of them now. Our Curlin is dead to us, and starting tomorrow, you’ll never have to see or think of her again.”
My words struck a nerve in my own heart, and I knew they’d hurt Sawny, as well. I missed Curlin, and every time I saw her or one of the other Shriven, the thought of her betrayal poured salt water into the still-fresh wound. We’d promised years ago, in our spot on the temple roof, that we wouldn’t join them. None of us. For a lot of temple brats, serving as one of the Shriven was the best option. The only option. But over the years, the four of us had seen what the Shriven did to dimmys—to people like me and Curlin—and not one of us wanted any part of that brutality.
Or so we’d thought. Until three years ago, the day Curlin turned thirteen, when she’d disappeared from the room she and I had shared. The next time we saw her, her head was shaved and her wrist was banded with the new ink of her first tattoo. She’d not spoken to any of us since, but where I held on to that betrayal like a weapon, Sawny’d always wanted to find a way to forgive her.
Steady me, Pru, I thought, leaning on the comfort I felt when I reached for my long-dead twin.
The catechized Shriven prowled into the hall on the heels of their initiates, all dangerous feline grace and coiled energy. They weren’t the only people in the empire who had tattoos, but few bore so many or such immediately recognizable designs. The Shriven’s tattoos favored stark black lines and symbols that evoked a time long forgotten. It was as though they’d inked a language all their own into their skin. Even in plain clothes, a person always knew the moment one of the Shriven came close. Everyone sat a little straighter on their benches and chairs, and their eyes flicked to the dimmys in the room, looking for a reaction, a sign, a threat.
I gripped the cantory in my lap and stared straight ahead, trying to calm my nerves.
At most adulations, Queen Runa was the last person to enter the haven hall. On Ascension Day, however, she shared her entrance with the Suzerain as a token of respect. They were an odd triumvirate. The Suzerain were tall, with porcelain skin and white-blond hair that, when combined with their white robes, made them look like a pair of twin icicles. Castor, the male Suzerain, was covered in grayscale tattoos of flowers that crept up his neck and onto his scalp, a portion of which was shaved to show off the largest of the flower tattoos. The female Suzerain was named Amler. Her hands were covered in a network of tiny black dots so close together, it looked as though she was always wearing gloves that faded up her arms and over the rest of her body, growing sparser the farther they got from her fingertips.
Before Curlin’d joined the Shriven, she used to joke that Amler looked as though she’d been spattered with ink.
Between them, Queen Runa was small and round as a teapot, the top of her crown barely clearing the Suzerain’s shoulders. Every time I’d seen her on her own—mainly during her birthday celebrations, when she handed out sweets across the city—Queen Runa had been the very picture of imposing authority, wrapped in piles of furs and dripping with jewels. But when contrasted with the Suzerain’s sharp faces and piercing blue eyes, the Queen looked positively friendly. Kind, even.
The Queen settled into a fur-draped chair in the place of honor at the front of the hall. The Suzerain stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the Queen and looked out over the silent crowd. Their eyes fixed on each person, taking stock, tallying. I kept my eyes on the cantory in my lap, avoiding their searching gazes. I knew it wasn’t possible that they knew each of the folks who lived in Penby, but they certainly knew who I was. Maybe not on sight, but they knew my name. My story. They kept track of dimmys.
All I wanted was a life outside their line of sight. Outside their reach.
The rest of the adulation went as these things always did. The Suzerain lectured on the holiness of twins, giving particular weight to their own divine role as the leaders of the temple; the power of the singleborns’ judgment and wisdom, Queen Runa first among them; and, of course, the role of the Shriven in protecting Alskaders from the violence of the diminished. Afterward, the Suzerain led the hall in an endless round of the high holy song of Dzallie, gaining speed and volume until the whole room echoed with the reverberations of their worship.
Sawny and I were silent, despite Lily’s black looks and prodding elbows. Since our promise to each other that we wouldn’t join the Shriven, neither of us had worshipped at adulations, either. We showed up when it mattered, of course. We weren’t stupid. But we were always silent, much to Lily’s everlasting chagrin. She worried that our silence singled us out, and the last thing any of us wanted was to be noticed.
After the adulation, the Suzerain stayed in the haven hall for hours, greeting, blessing and doling out advice to those folks rich enough to make it worth the Suzerain’s time. Sawny, Lily and I filed out of the temple as quickly as we could and stood together in the square, soaking in the near-warmth of the early summer sun. The anchorites would expect us to report in for our various chores before long, but none of us seemed to want to be the first to break away.
“Tomorrow, then?” I asked. “What time?”
Lily shifted from one foot to the other. “The sunship leaves on the first tide.”
“I’ll come see you off.”
“There’s no need—”
Sawny cut her off. “Of course you will. But we’ll have supper tonight, too. We’re not saying goodbye. Not yet.”
Anchorite Lugine strode toward us, scowling. Dozens of strands of pearls were wrapped around her neck and braided into her hair, glowing like fresh-fallen snow against the orange silk of her robes.
“I’d best get down to the harbor,” I said, loud enough that the anchorite could hear me. “I’ll be diving until sunset to make up for my lost time this morning. I’ve got to find Lugine some nice pearls if I want supper tonight.”
Lily rolled her eyes, and behind her, Anchorite Lugine crossed her arms and glared. I gave her a cheerful wave, grinned at Sawny and darted toward the temple to get my diving gear from my room.
CHAPTER TWO (#u32bd4549-2432-517d-945f-61a820fc6dc7)
BO
Like all great houses, the royal palace was a living, breathing thing, and the people who lived and served there shaped its personality. It was never entirely still. Even in the middle of the night, servants carried pots of tea and bottles of wine to guests’ rooms; bakers kneaded endless rolls and loaves in the warm, steamy kitchen; and guards shifted and paced, warding off sleep. There were always books that wanted shelving, forgotten closets filled with the everyday relics of monarchs long dead that needed sorting and fires endlessly burning in the hearths of the palace—which, somehow, even in summer, never managed to fully drive off the chill that clung to those old stones.
No one so much as looked at me twice as I took the long way back to my rooms through the palace’s wide stone hallways, my hands deep in my trouser pockets and a scarf wrapped tight around my thick Denorian wool sweater. I had a stack of books from Queen Runa’s personal collection tucked under one arm, and a small journal full of scribbled questions and notes stuffed into the back pocket of my trousers. After I’d let slip the vast gaps in my knowledge about the shipbuilding industry in Alskad, the Queen had given me a pile of reading on top of my tutor’s regular assignments, and I’d been up half the night trying to make some headway.
Alskad dominated the world-wide shipbuilding industry, and being a nation lacking many natural resources, we held that technology close. We were the first nation to perfect the solar technology that fueled the world after the cataclysm, and none of the rest of the world had managed to harness the power of the sun the way that we had. Denor and Samiria had ships, of course, but they weren’t yet capable of the speed and distance that Alskad sunships managed regularly. Our sunships commanded the trade to and from Denor, Samiria and Ilor, and through our monopoly on ships and trade, the empire had become not only rich, but powerful, as well.
The great irony of a country that spent its winters in the blanket of northern darkness harnessing the power of the sun did not escape me. The sun’s power lit our homes and sent great iron ships filled with hundreds of people hurtling across oceans, and while I knew the history—I’d been captivated by sunships when I was a child—the engineering details eluded me. Queen Runa would undoubtedly pepper me with questions throughout the day tomorrow as I observed her dealing with the monthly petitions from the people of Alskad, and there was little chance that I’d absorbed enough to hold my own under her sharp scrutiny.
There wasn’t enough kaffe in the world to keep me awake through another chapter about the evolution of Alskad’s shipbuilding technology, and I had to be up distressingly early, but there was a restless thread tugging at my mind. It was always like this on nights I spent in Penby, like the buzz of the city’s energy pulsed through my veins, too, amplifying my emotions and keeping sleep just outside my grasp.
I paused outside my door, listening for my valet, Gunnar, and his telltale wheezing snore. In a few short weeks, I’d move from the comfortable, out-of-the-way guest rooms that had been mine since I was a child to a luxurious suite in the royal wing. I’d have to relearn all the creaking floorboards and fiddly sunlamps, and while my new rooms would be closely guarded, the rooms I occupied now were so far off the beaten path that no one bothered to visit, a small boon I would deeply miss when my duties forced me to become even more social. I took a deep breath, bracing myself, and opened the door.
Gunnar sprang to his feet and, after rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, gave me an admonishing look.
“Lady Myrella’s been looking for you,” he said. “She’s stopped in three times since dinner. I didn’t know what to tell her, as you neglected to inform me of your plans for the evening.”
I set the stack of books on the small writing desk in the corner, fished the notebook out of my pocket and added it to the pile.
“You didn’t need to wait up, Gunnar. I’m sorry I put you out. I was in the library, studying.”
Gunnar huffed. “You could have at least let me know where you’d be. I cannot be expected to adequately perform my duties if you refuse to tell me when to expect you and where you plan to spend your time. Your tea’s gone cold, and I haven’t the faintest clue what to lay out for you to wear tomorrow. What does one wear when speaking to the poor?”
I bit back a grin. Aside from cataloging the ways in which I’d wronged him over the course of any given day, Gunnar loved nothing more than reveling in his own snobbery.
“Clothes, I expect,” I replied, pouring myself a cup of rich herbal tisane from the pot keeping warm on a trivet next to the hearth, despite Gunnar’s hyperbolic warning. “It’s still a bit cold for me to go gallivanting off to the throne room to greet my future subjects in my underthings.”
Gunnar’s jaw tightened, and he gave a stiff bow. His manners tended to become polite to the point of absurdity when he was irritated with me. Somehow, he managed to present a picture of perfect deference and simultaneously touch upon my every nerve. Even though I knew he would probably lay out something completely absurd—like a lavender silk suit—the next morning, I was altogether too drained to worry about the consequences of my sarcasm. Gunnar always paid me back in his own way, but I didn’t have to worry about his feelings being too badly hurt in the long run. The man had practically raised me, and he, more than anyone, knew how difficult it was for me to endure these endless days at court surrounded by people who only ever approached what they wanted to say from the side.
* * *
Thanks to my sharp tongue and Gunnar’s long memory, the maid woke me with just half an hour’s grace before I was to meet the Queen. The clothes Gunnar had laid out for me were some of the most ostentatious and garish in my wardrobe, and he was nowhere to be found. Through the servant’s sputtered protests, I stuck my whole head in a basin of freezing cold water left from the night before, scrubbed at my face and dried off with my shirttails as I stalked to the closet to find something else to wear.
Over my shoulder, I called, “I would be eternally grateful to you if you could manage to find me a cup of kaffe sometime in the next ten minutes.”
When the young man didn’t respond, I stuck my head out of the closet, a pair of socks clenched between my teeth, to see if he’d heard me. There, lounging on the settee at the end of my bed, was my cousin Claes, with two enormous, steaming mugs in his hands and a grin lighting his gorgeous face. He, apparently, hadn’t infuriated his butler, and was turned out in perfectly fitted navy trousers and a fine ivory sweater. The smattering of freckles across his high cheekbones stood out against his fawn skin more than usual, and there was a playful light in his angular black eyes.
“Good morning, dearest,” he said, and crossed the room to hand me a mug and plant a kiss on my cheek.
I took a grateful sip, all the bitterness of the kaffe disguised by honey and cream. Claes knew me so well.
“Thank you. I’m afraid I may have annoyed Gunnar last night. All he’s left me is that hideous mauve monstrosity, and I have to be in the throne room in twenty minutes. Do you think these will do?”
Claes looked down at the clothes I’d plucked out of the wardrobe, and his perfectly groomed black eyebrows climbed his forehead. He swept the clothes out of my arms and brushed past me into the closet.
“I swear, Bo, it’s as if you’ve never dressed yourself. Do you pay absolutely no attention to what’s fashionable?”
Ten minutes later, I was respectably garbed in a pair of gray trousers, a pale orange sweater knitted from soft Denorian wool and a long charcoal jacket. I stuffed a cloud bun filled with smoked bacon and caramelized onions into my mouth as I rushed through the palace halls to the throne room. I arrived with only a moment to spare and ran a hand experimentally through my riot of dark brown curls. I had no doubt that I looked a disaster, but there was nothing to be done about it now.
“Am I a total embarrassment?”
Claes smiled and drew me close in a warm embrace. “You’re as princely as they come, my dear. Now go impress old Queenie with your vast intellect. I’m off to gather gossip from the maids. I hear that Lisette has taken a new lover, and I plan to learn who it is before your birthday invitations are sent.”
Claes leaned in and kissed me, and I did my best to ignore the guards by the throne room door, who were covering their chuckling with coughs and exaggerated shifting of their weapons. It wasn’t as though my relationship with Claes was a secret, but his public displays of affection drew more attention to us than I liked. Claes pulled away first, his implacable grin already in place as he winked at a guard over my shoulder.
“I’ll see you tonight?” I asked.
“Of course. We’ve got to finalize the guest list, and I do believe that my dear sister has a whole collection of people she’s planning to chastise and flatter with this event alone.”
I sighed. It didn’t matter that I’d been preparing myself to take the throne for most of my life: I would never get used to the social machinations and deceptions required by a life at court. They simply didn’t come as naturally to me as they did to the other singleborn. Even my cousins, Penelope and Claes, had adapted much more easily to court intrigue than I ever had.
Claes brushed a bit of invisible dust off my shoulder.
“You worry about running the empire, my dear. Penelope and I’ll be the ones to get our hands dirty controlling the nobility. Now scoot. You’re going to be late.”
Claes planted a final kiss on my cheek and nodded to the guards. When they opened the door, I was as ready as I could be.
Like the Queen, I entered the throne room not through the wide doors that the petitioners would use throughout the day, but via a small side door in the back. The Alskad throne loomed large on the dais. According to legend, it had been hewn from the upturned roots of an enormous tree, and the tangle of roots that fanned out over the head of the monarch reflected the Alskad crown they wore. The whole thing had been polished and waxed and varnished so often over the years, the wood had turned a glowing deep brown, almost black.
I rounded the dais and saw that the Queen was already seated on a pile of furs draped over the wide throne. Her eyes flickered to the clock in the corner of the room when she saw me, and her mouth turned down in disapproval.
“You’re late, Bo.”
I squinted at the clock. It was thirty seconds past the agreed-upon time.
“My most sincere apologies, Your Majesty.”
The Queen crinkled her sharp nose and adjusted the crown of Alskad atop her graying hair. She was an intimidating woman, with skin that never lost its light brown glow, iron-gray hair and a habit of wearing wide-shouldered capes that made her body look nearly square. She was said to have been shockingly beautiful in her youth, though age had left her more arresting than lovely.
“You’ll need a chair. These things tend to last for hours and hours, and you’ll not want to be standing the whole time.” She pointed at a cluster of chairs in an alcove between two sets of large casement windows. “Drag one of those over. Not the blue one. The cushion’s as thin as a sheet—you’ll be sitting on nails all day.”
Three guards tried to take the chair from me as I crossed the room, but I waved them all off with a smile.
“You lot leave him be. He’s a brawny young thing.” Queen Runa laughed. “No need to start coddling him until he’s actually the crown prince.”
I felt a flicker of unease at the implication, and—as if they could sense my discomfort—Patrise and Lisette swanned into the throne room, alight with jewels and draped in brightly dyed silks and furs. Though it was well known throughout the empire that I would soon be named Runa’s heir, Lisette and Patrise nevertheless took every opportunity to remind me that they, too, were singleborn and eligible for the throne. Of all the singleborn in my generation, only Rylain, my father’s cousin, refused to play this game, and I was forever grateful to her for that generosity of spirit.
Runa raised an eyebrow, and Patrise and Lisette bowed deeply.
“Sorry to be late, Your Majesty,” Patrise drawled, his voice all lazy vowels and grandeur. “We were doing our best to decide what to get our Ambrose for his birthday.”
“I wanted to get him a pony,” Lisette said, pouting, “but Patrise insists that little Ambrose is far too mature for such things.”
“A set of knives, perhaps, to protect him from his many enemies,” Patrise said. “But we wouldn’t want him to prick himself accidentally, now would we?”
“Enough,” Runa snapped.
Patrise and Lisette collapsed into each other, giggling. I settled my chair on the dais, a step behind the throne on Runa’s right, and glared at Patrise and Lisette as they waved for guards to bring chairs for them, as well.
The Queen turned to me, her tone low, but firm. “Ignore them. They only enjoy baiting you because you give them a reaction. If you are to lead, you’ll have to learn to rise above the petty antics they use to entertain themselves.”
I nodded, but a voice in the back of my head wondered how she could speak about the rivalries between the singleborn so lightly, when they were so often punctuated by assassination attempts.
Runa continued. “I hope that you and I will have many more years to prepare you for taking the helm of this empire. But if there is one thing I’d ask you to keep in mind from the very beginning, it’s that we, as monarchs, are here to protect our people. Remember that both the poorest urchin and the wealthiest merchant deserve our equal and undiscriminating respect.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
I tried to focus on the Queen’s instructions, but it was hard with Lisette and Patrise looking over her shoulder and laughing behind their hands. I clenched my jaw and forced myself to look away from them.
“Too much of Alskad’s idea of merit has become predicated on a person’s wealth, rather than their character. As we hear petitions today, I want you to keep in mind how money plays into each person’s story, and, more importantly, how it plays into your reaction.” She glanced over her shoulder at the other singleborn and raised her voice. “And if the two of you could manage to resist teasing Bo while in the presence of our subjects, you might actually learn something worthwhile.”
Without waiting for a response, the Queen signaled to the guards, and they flung open the throne room doors. A stream of people entered the room, each stopping to make their courtesies to the Queen as they entered. There were people from all walks of life: members of the nobility I recognized from the endless social engagements that were the norm when I was at court, merchants dressed in extravagant imported Samirian silks and common folk whose clothes had plainly been mended over and over again. Some of them came with petitions, others just to watch the spectacle and collect gossip with which to tantalize or lord over their peers.
The Queen’s secretary bustled through the crowd, approached the dais and presented her with a list written in a neat hand. Runa scanned the list, raised her hand and waited for the room to fall silent.
“First, I will hear from Jacobb Rosy. Mister Rosy, if you would, please approach the dais.”
The petitioners shifted and moved, and Jacobb Rosy came to bow before the Queen. He was a man in his middle age, of medium height and build, with unblemished light brown skin and dark, wavy hair. He was utterly unremarkable, but for the brilliant yellow suit he wore. The jacket was cut long, as was the fashion, ending just above his knees, and trimmed all around with black ermine. Embroidered bees climbed the legs of his slim trousers, and an enormous onyx brooch ringed with diamonds was pinned to his lapel. He spoke in a clear alto, loud enough to be heard throughout the entire room.
“Your Majesty, I am deeply honored that you have chosen to hear my petition today.”
Runa raised one eyebrow, and I studied the man, looking to see if I could spot his tell. Most people did everything in their power to present themselves as the victim when offering their story to the Queen.
“I hear the petitions of all my subjects, Mister Rosy. What troubles you?”
“Your Majesty, I am on the verge of losing my shop. You see, for the last decade I have designed and created clothing for the fashionable people of your empire. My wife, with the help of a shopkeeper, ran the business in order to give me the freedom to focus on the creative side of the work.”
“It sounds like you’ve created a comfortable and successful life for yourself.”
“It was, Your Majesty. But now, without my wife’s help, the burden of the business has grown to be too much, and with taxes due, I am likely to lose my livelihood.”
Runa’s face took on an expression of sympathy. “I’m sorry for the loss of your wife, Mister Rosy. How long has it been?”
The man squirmed, gazing down at the toes of his mirror-polished black boots, and fell silent. He hadn’t walked to the palace, not with the gray slush of snow still clinging to the streets. He’d taken a carriage. So either he’d not yet sold off all the luxuries typically enjoyed by the merchant class—which was likely, given his clothes and the jewels on his lapel—or he had enough money to pay for carriages and jewels, but had squandered what he should have saved for taxes.
“How long?” Runa pressed.
Lisette snickered, and Runa shot her a hard look.
“She’s not dead, Your Majesty. She left me.”
“And she didn’t see fit to remain a partner in your business or find a suitable replacement?”
“How could I trust her to have my best interests at heart if she was so willing to give up everything we’d built together?”
“This is not the haven hall, Mister Rosy. I am not in the business of arbitrating marital disputes. However, if your predicament is due to neglect on the part of your business partner, there may be some grounds for leniency on the part of the crown. Will you give me your ex-wife’s name, that I may call upon her for her side of this dispute?”
The man blanched. He seemed to be wilting. His shoulders drew inward, and he refused to meet the Queen’s gaze. He muttered something unintelligible in the direction of his feet. All around the room, people were shifting and squirming, trying to get a better look at the man.
“What was that, Mister Rosy?”
“I told her she wasn’t welcome in the shop after she left. I didn’t want her running the business into the ground out of spite.”
“I see.” Runa looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “And what, exactly, would you ask of the crown today?”
“Humbly, Your Majesty, I ask that my tax burden be forgiven this year and the next, to allow me to rebuild my assets and business in the wake of this unforeseen tragedy. Additionally, I ask that my ex-wife be made responsible for the mess she left me in, and pay half of my taxes for the two years after that.”
The Queen nodded slowly and shifted her focus to me.
“Your thoughts, Lord Gyllen?”
Runa had an incredible knack for putting on and taking off personas. In public, she was formal, even stiff, with me. She addressed me by my full name or title, a courtesy she didn’t always bestow on the other singleborn, and she treated me with the respect of a monarch to her successor, despite the fact that I’d not yet been formally named. And while Rylain was allowed to while her days away at her northern estates, only emerging for the most important state occasions, Runa insisted I always be at her right hand.
Her demeanor in private was another matter entirely. She teased and cajoled and demanded that my mastery of matters of state be not just sufficient, but the best in the room. She was every bit the exacting and affectionate aunt, and though I’d not spent a great deal of time with her, the closer we got to my birthday and the announcement of my role as her successor, the more attention she paid me.
Despite all of this, I was shocked when she asked for my opinion. I took a moment to gather my thoughts, wanting to impress her.
“In most cases, I tend to believe that the duty of the crown is to assist and uplift its people. However, it seems to me that it is Mister Rosy’s actions and choices that have led him to this vulnerable place. The taxes paid by the citizens of the Alskad Empire serve to provide basic services and resources to all the people of the empire. It seems that Mister Rosy did not plan adequately for his taxes this season, which is unfortunate. However, there is still sufficient time for him to liquidate some of his assets—such as the jewel he wears upon his lapel—and take in more work. He can hire a bookkeeper to help him as he learns to manage his business in the absence of his wife.”
I paused for a moment, weighing my next words. “It is my belief that the crown should not forgive his tax burden. However, I do admire his excellent tailoring skills, and I will certainly pass some business his way, and I am sure my cousins Lisette and Patrise will do the same.”
Queen Runa gave me a small smile and a nod. I’d done well. I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back in my chair. Mister Rosy’s cheeks were burgundy, and his brows were so tightly drawn that it looked like he had an entire mountain range of wrinkles spanning his forehead. My answer, obviously, hadn’t been what he wanted to hear. It would take a great deal of study for me to learn how to do this job without inciting the ire of my subjects.
“Lord Gyllen is right. The High Council and I have worked hard to ensure that taxes in the empire are not a burden on anyone’s shoulders unless they simply do not plan. It is never any use to stick your head in the sand and ignore your responsibilities, Mister Rosy. That said, however, I appreciate that you sought my guidance and help, and I will have my secretary provide suggestions for bookkeepers with honest reputations to help you manage your business. Further, the royal treasury will pay the bookkeeper’s fees for the time between now and when your taxes come due.”
The tailor bowed, muttered his thanks and retreated into the crowd.
The rest of the day was much the same. We listened to troubles as large as a housekeeper accused of stealing a noblewoman’s jewels—only to find that the noblewoman’s husband had gambled away their entire fortune—and as small as an argument between two street vendors over a particular corner in a park.
Runa showed each of them the same amount of respect, and even made certain to include Patrise and Lisette in the consideration of certain petitions. She paid careful attention to the needs of the poor and destitute, and made notes of the bevy of ways in which the social services provided by the Alskad throne were failing. She frequently asked my opinion, and most of the time, she agreed with my assessments. When she and I were at odds, she explained her thinking to both me and the gathered petitioners, and every time, I saw how her logic was sounder than mine. There was so much I didn’t know, and the plethora of ways in which the privilege of my wealth had coddled me and shrouded me from the everyday challenges of the Alskad people continued to shock me.
By the time the chamber emptied, we’d heard more than thirty petitions, and my brain felt like mush. That was the moment Queen Runa decided to begin quizzing me about the shipbuilding industry.
CHAPTER THREE (#u32bd4549-2432-517d-945f-61a820fc6dc7)
VI
With only hours left until his departure, Sawny and I stayed awake all night, teasing and telling stories and remembering and acting like nothing would change when we were an ocean apart. Even Lily managed to endure my presence in their shared room with a bare minimum of complaints. She had, after all, gotten her way.
We’d planned to leave the temple quietly before first adulations, but the anchorites who’d taken the most responsibility in raising us—Lugine, Bethea and Sula—were waiting for Sawny and Lily in the entrance hall. They wore informal yellow robes and thick wool scarves in golden orange wrapped tight around their shoulders. The color flattered Sula’s and Lugine’s dark brown skin, making them glow. Unfortunately, for a woman committed to a lifetime wearing a very limited palette, yellow turned Bethea’s thin, pale wrinkles sallow and sickly.
“You’ll not sneak away in the night like thieves,” Bethea said grumpily, but she leaned one of her canes against her hip and pulled Lily in for a hug.
I pressed myself into the wall. This was their moment, and I wanted more than anything to become invisible. The anchorites had never hugged me. Not even once. Sawny and Lily and the other twins like them were, in their own way, the children these women would never give birth to themselves, committed as they were to their goddesses. Though we three were all wards of the temple, the fact that I was a dimmy made me a threat.
I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of goodbye I would get when my time came.
Sula slipped a bulging satchel over Sawny’s shoulder and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “We’d extra copies of some cookery books in the library. I thought you might find them useful in your new life.”
Lugine cupped Sawny’s and Lily’s cheeks, one in each hand, a warm smile lighting her face. “Magritte protect you both. Write often, and let us know how you are.”
“And get yourselves to adulations,” Bethea added. “Just because we’re not there to worry you into the haven hall doesn’t mean you can stop showing up.”
Lily burst into tears and flung her arms around Bethea. Sawny, chin trembling, bit his lip and nodded. I sank farther back into the shadows, tears welling in my own eyes. Even though we’d grown up in the same hall, in the same building, raised by these same women, our lives could not have been more different, and it had taken me until that moment to realize it fully. I would never be missed, never be wanted, never be anything but a burden.
We walked in silence through Penby’s quiet streets in the faint glow of the waning moon, only one of its halves fully visible. I laced my arm through Sawny’s, trying to burn him into my memory. He’d been my best friend my whole life, and it didn’t seem possible that when I trudged back up the hill to the temple later, I would be alone.
The city came alive as we got closer to the docks, where the great iron sunships, Alskad’s greatest pride, were moored. Sailors hauled trunks and crates up and down long gangplanks, officers shouted orders from the decks, and vendors pushed carts, hawking the kinds of trinkets a person might not realize they needed until they were on the verge of leaving everything they knew and loved behind. The whole scene was lit by the hazy, flickering light of sunlamps and the first rays of sunlight peeking over the horizon.
“The ship is called the Lucrecia,” Lily said. “I spoke to a woman named Whippleston to arrange our passage.”
We walked down the docks, scanning the names painted large on the backs of the ships.
“There’s still time to back out,” I said quietly to Sawny, fingering the small pouch I’d stuffed into my pocket after supper the night before. “The anchorites would let you stay a bit longer. Work’s sure to open up somewhere in the city. If not, I’ll be sixteen soon. I know there’s work up north we can take.”
But just as I finished speaking, the Lucrecia loomed up out of the darkness at the end of the dock, her name painted in bright white across the stern far above our heads. A brat couldn’t grow up in Alskad without learning a bit about sunships. Even in the cheap cabins set aside for contract workers, Sawny and Lily would experience more luxury in the short trip across the Tethys than we’d ever imagined. There would be endless buffets, libraries and game rooms. They’d sleep on soft beds, and for the first—and only—time in their lives, they’d wake each morning with nothing to do. A part of me wished that I could walk onto the sunship with Lily and Sawny, just to see, but that would never happen. Not for a dimmy. Not for me.
An imposing woman stood at the end of the gangplank, a sheaf of papers in one hand, a pen in the other. The light gray fur of her jacket’s collar set off her high cheekbones and deep, russet-brown skin. She eyed the three of us as we approached.
“Names?” she asked.
I turned to Sawny. “You’re sure?”
“There’s more opportunity there than we could ever hope for here,” Sawny said, his eyes begging me to understand. “It’ll be a better life. An easier life.”
I retied the bit of string at the end of my braid. Lily reached out and squeezed my shoulder, and I started slightly. It was the first time she’d touched me in years.
“We’ll take care of each other, Vi, and we’ll write. All the time.” She turned to the woman at the end of the gangplank. “Lily and Sawny Taylor. I believe I spoke to your sister?”
The woman laughed heartily. “My daughter. Though I’m grateful to you for the mistake. Let’s get your papers sorted, shall we?”
I tugged on Sawny’s arm, drawing him away from the gangplank and the sunlamp’s glow. Once we were in the shadows, I pulled him close to me, like the sweethearts we’d never been. Never thought of becoming. People’s eyes slipped away from sweethearts, cuddled up to say goodbye, and now more than ever, I needed to go unnoticed.
Sawny squirmed. “What’re you about?”
“Shut up and let me hug you, yeah?” I said, loud enough for anyone passing by to hear. I stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “If you’re going to insist on leaving me behind, I have a going away gift for you. But you have to promise me you won’t open it until you’re well away at sea.”
“Vi, you’ve nothing—”
“Don’t be after arguing with me, Sawny. I’ve never had a scrap to give you for birthdays, high holidays, none of it. Let me do this one thing.”
I dug into my pocket and fished out the little pouch, keeping my other arm around Sawny’s shoulders. There were sixteen perfect pearls and a couple of dozen less valuable, slightly blemished ones inside the pouch I’d sewn from a scrap of a too-small pair of trousers. The pearls were some of the best of my collection, and enough to give them a start on their savings. It wasn’t enough to pay off their passage or set them up with a shop of their own, but it was something. It was all I could give them.
A long time ago, when I’d first learned to dive from one of the anchorites’ hirelings, she’d told me how pearls were made. The temple anchorites only had use for natural pearls, the ones that came of a tiny grain of sand or bit of shell irritating the oyster’s delicate tissues. But, the woman had told me, there was beginning to be a market for a new kind of pearl, one that could be farmed on lines strung in the ocean. They weren’t quite as valuable, but when you knew that almost every oyster would make a pearl, a bigger profit could be had.
That bit of information had sparked an idea, and as soon as I’d begun to dive on my own, I’d hung lines and baskets beneath the docks, where none of the other divers ever went. I tended them for four long years, and on my twelfth birthday, I opened the first oyster off my lines and slipped a pearl as big as the nail on my little pinky from its shell. In the three years since, I’d harvested close to two hundred pearls from my lines, more than ten for every one natural pearl I’d found and handed over to the anchorites.
That collection was hidden away beneath a floorboard in my tiny room in the temple. I’d created a small cushion for myself—enough to buy a cottage on one of the northernmost islands in the Alskad Empire, where folks were said to keep to themselves.
When I lost myself to the grief, I’d be far enough away from other folks that I wouldn’t be able to do much harm. I’d be alone. It was selfish of me, wanting to spend whatever time I had left in the company of my only friend, but still I’d thought about offering Sawny and Lily my whole stash—everything I’d ever saved, everything I’d ever created—just so they wouldn’t leave. Wouldn’t leave me alone. But in the end, I couldn’t have lived with the guilt of it. My friendship with Sawny was the only real, honest relationship in my life, and I couldn’t bear the thought of holding them back from the life they’d chosen just because I was so desperate not to be left alone.
Pressing the pouch into Sawny’s hand as stealthily as I could manage, I pulled back from our hug just far enough to fix him with a hard stare. “Don’t say anything.”
Sawny’s dark eyes were wide. “Are these...?”
“Don’t. You know the law. You know the consequences. Sell them when you can. Take your time. Be careful.”
“Vi, this is, far and away, the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Sawny,” Lily called. “It’s time.”
Sawny threw his arms around me and squeezed me tight, and a part of me shattered, knowing it was the last hug I was ever likely to feel.
“I’ll miss you,” he said, and I tucked those words, his voice, deep into my heart.
“I’ll miss you, too.”
I watched as they boarded the Lucrecia and disappeared. As I stood there, the sun crept slowly up behind the ship, lightening the sky from navy to violet to lavender, and a sharp cacophony of pink and yellow and orange. Tears streamed down my cheeks as the sunship was tugged out into the harbor, as the tugboat disconnected and the enormous solar sails unfurled and turned to greet the rising sun.
Watch over them, Pru.
I waited until the ship was a mere speck, a memory traveling far across the sea. I watched, careless of the time, of the stares I gathered from passersby, of the tongue-lashing Lugine was sure to give me the moment I showed my face in the temple, empty-handed and having skipped my morning dive. I didn’t care. I was alone in a city full of people, and nothing at all mattered anymore.
* * *
Without Sawny around to fill my spare time, I wandered through the temple aimlessly, counting down the days left until my birthday, when I would be free of this place and all the unpleasant memories of my childhood that frosted its walls and stained its floors. Whenever I wasn’t diving or off on some errand for an anchorite, I found myself in the library, revisiting the books I’d read over and over as a child. I’d always been fascinated by the stories about the world before the cataclysm.
It had been so vast and varied, and yet so isolated at the same time. But, as the Suzerain would have us believe, its people had grown too bold, too selfish. Dzallie the Warrior asked Gadrian the Firebound to make her a weapon that would split the moon. As moondust and fire rained down upon the world, Hamil the Seabound washed away the dregs of the corrupt civilizations that had so angered the gods. Rayleane the Builder took the clay given to her by Tueber the Earthbound and reshaped the remnants of humanity, splitting each person into two, so that everyone would go through life with a twin, a counterweight—a living conscience. Those few precious to Magritte the Educator remained whole, becoming the singleborn.
There were dozens of religious texts that told the story of the cataclysm, but I think the thing that drew me back to the library again and again were the stories from before. Stories about a time when losing your twin didn’t mean losing your life, your whole self.
It didn’t take long for one of the anchorites to find Anchorite Sula and tell her I’d been lurking around the stacks, failing to make myself useful. One evening after supper, when I’d found an empty corner of the library where I could read in peace, Sula came bustling up to me, her orange robes fluttering behind her and a pained look of concern plastered onto her face.
“Obedience, child,” she said. “Do you want for tasks that will better allow you to serve your chosen deity?”
I shut the book I’d been reading and uncurled myself from the sagging armchair, already exhausted by a conversation I’d had a thousand times or more over the course of my childhood. Every child was encouraged to choose one of the gods and goddesses on whom they could focus their worship. I’d chosen Dzallie the Warrior, not that it mattered much to me either way. I’d long since given up any pretense of believing in the gods and goddesses. Growing up in the temple had shown me time and again that the Suzerain’s goal wasn’t actually the salvation of the souls of the empire, but rather power over those souls and their wealth. If the gods and goddesses were real, they would have given us leaders immune to corruption.
Much to my chagrin, my lack of faith didn’t stop the anchorites from forcing me to attend adulations and questioning me about my devotion.
“I don’t want for anything, Anchorite,” I said, grating against the fact that she’d called me by my given name. “I only had a bit of time and thought I might read.”
“You’ve been downcast since Sawny’s and Lily’s departure.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you noticed.”
“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Sula said, her voice flat with a familiar, weary warning. “Because you seem to have found yourself with so much free time on your hands, I have notified the Suzerain that you will assist with their equipment and cleaning needs during and after the Shriven initiates’ evening training.”
My fingers tightened around the book in my lap, and I fixed my eyes on the stone floor between our feet. The worn flagstones were dark with age and centuries of boots. Someone had mopped recently, not bothering to move the armchair. There was a ring of dust surrounding it, the line between Sula’s feet and mine; I, fittingly, was on the dirty side of the line. I took a deep breath and tried to force my anger down to a manageable level. If Sula heard even a hint of it in my voice, it’d mean overnight adulations in the haven hall for a week at least, and I didn’t think I could stand the oppressive silence or being left alone with my thoughts for that long.
“As I’m sure you’re aware,” I said, taking the time to choose my words carefully, the lies like barbs on my tongue, “my daily service is in the harbor and canneries under the supervision of Anchorite Lugine. And while I would surely be honored to serve the Suzerain in whatever capacity they desire, I know Lugine can’t afford to be left shorthanded during the warm months when we’re able to dive, and I’m in the midst of training my replacement. My sixteenth birthday is just around the corner.”
Sula sniffed. “Your assignment to aid the Shriven initiates’ training is in addition to your service with Anchorite Lugine. There’s no reason you shouldn’t fill every available hour that remains to you as a ward of the temple by repaying the generosity that has kept you fed, clothed and housed for the first sixteen years of your life.”
I bit back the sharp response that threatened to explode from my throat and simply nodded. There was no real use arguing with her. I’d do as they asked and count the days until I could leave, just like I’d always done.
“Go on,” Sula said. “They’re expecting you.”
My head snapped up and I stared at her, bewildered. “Now?”
“Yes, now. Go!”
I managed to keep the string of curses running through my head from making their way out of my mouth until I got into the hall, where I launched into a dead sprint. The last thing I wanted was to be noticed—especially unfavorably noticed—by the Suzerain.
I vaulted down the stairs and tore through the maze of corridors that led to the Shriven’s wing of the temple. I’d made it a point to stay as far away from the Shriven as I possibly could manage over the years, but I’d been sent on errands for them often enough that I knew my way to the large training room.
I paused outside for a moment to catch my breath before easing the door open, hoping to enter unnoticed. But the old hinges squealed, and I winced as every pair of eyes in the room turned to glare at me. There were maybe twenty of the Shriven initiates, all sitting cross-legged and silent. One of them grinned, baring newly sharpened teeth at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Curlin, her face flicking from surprise to a callous sort of amusement as she realized that my being there had nothing at all to do with her. I managed to keep my expression neutral, looking instead to the Suzerain. They stood at the front of the room, their arms crossed over their chests, identically impenetrable looks clouding their faces.
“Obedience,” Castor said, his voice at once familiar and disconcerting. “Anchorite Sula suggested that you might consider joining the ranks of the Shriven and would be well served by observing and assisting with the evening training sessions as we saw fit. In the future, do attempt to arrive in a timely manner so as not to disrupt our proceedings.”
Amler’s head cocked to the side, like a bird trying to decide if the creature in front of it could be eaten. I kept as still as I was able and did my best to fade into the wall. Standing there, with the full weight of their attention fixed on me, made me feel like they could see through to my very core and riffle through every secret I’d ever kept. My mind kept slipping to the loose floorboard beneath my bed and the box hidden there—my collection of pearls, waiting, glowing like so many miniature moons, still unbroken, inside.
“She doesn’t want to join the Shriven, brother. She wants to be rid of the temple as soon as we’ll consent to her leaving.”
“I simply stated Anchorite Sula’s suggestion,” Castor observed. “I didn’t say that she was correct.”
Amler nodded. “A fair point, well made, but we’ve lost two full minutes to this disturbance, and I would not like to divert from our schedule any more than absolutely necessary. Obedience, please remain in the back, out of the way. We’ll let you know when you’re needed.”
I bowed my head and shrank farther into the corner. As the evening passed into night, I found myself strangely fascinated by the Shriven’s training. I’d seen them at work in the city, of course—I somehow always managed to find myself nearby when one of the other dimmys fell into their violent grief, and the Shriven inevitably appeared to put a stop to their violence. But it’d never occurred to me that to become that capable, that deadly, the Shriven would have to work very, very hard.
The Shriven initiates mimicked the Suzerain in an endless series of exercises that inverted, balanced and stretched them in ways that didn’t seem to translate into combat at all. They practiced the same movements again and again, so many times that even I, in the corner of the room, could see their muscles quivering.
Eventually, the initiates separated into pairs, the dimmys in the room silently finding one another, and the twins turning to face their other halves.
“The staves, Obedience,” Castor called, not bothering to hide the exasperation in his voice. “Bring out the staves.”
I glanced around the room helplessly. Blunt clubs hung in clusters in one corner. Racks of blades—everything from throwing stars to swords almost as long as I was tall—decorated the wall behind the Suzerain, but I saw nothing that remotely resembled the deadly, metal-tipped staves some of the Shriven carried on their prowls through the city.
Finally, rolling her eyes, Curlin peeled off from the group, darted across the room and shouldered me out of the way. She slid open a door that I’d completely overlooked, despite the fact that I’d been standing right in front of it. Blushing, I helped Curlin heave the padded staves out of the closet and distribute them to the rest of the initiates.
The Suzerain exchanged a cryptic glance as I shrank back into my corner, fuming at myself and Curlin in equal parts.
“You’re dismissed, Obedience,” Amler said. “Remember, when you plan your day tomorrow, that to be on time is to be late, and to be late is to be an embarrassment to your faith.”
With no need for an excuse beyond my burning cheeks and the terrifying attention of the Suzerain, I turned on a heel and fled.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u32bd4549-2432-517d-945f-61a820fc6dc7)
BO
After a solid week of cold, gray rain, the skies cleared and the sun finally came out. Queen Runa suggested to my tutors that I might be allowed an afternoon dedicated solely to relaxation. While I would have been more than content to while away the entirety of my rare free time reading a novel, Claes and his twin, Penelope, insisted that we take advantage of the beautiful day and go for a ride. Just after lunch we took off across the city on horses borrowed from the Queen’s stables.
We three had grown up riding, and all of us were as comfortable on horseback as we were on our own two feet. Nevertheless, it had taken a great deal of wheedling and pleading to convince the stable master to give us mounts with a bit more spirit than a hay bale. We’d still ended up with a set of stodgy, dependable Alskad Curlies that made me desperately miss the horses I’d left behind at my estate in the country.
Penby had grown up around the palace and temple, and as such, there were almost no palace grounds to speak of. However, there were wide swaths of parkland across the whole city—acres upon acres of green lawns, cultivated forests and trails that dotted the city like emeralds scattered over a field of ash. The parks had been a gift to the people from one of my queenly ancestors, and Queen Runa had recently declared that their upkeep would henceforth be entirely funded through a tax on luxury items like fur, kaffe and imported Denorian wool and Samirian silk. Just when I thought my mother was finished ranting about the subject, she brought it up again, appalled that the rich be punished “for having good taste.”
The memory made me wrinkle my nose in disgust. For someone who had as much wealth and privilege as my mother to be upset by a tiny uptick in the cost of her unnecessary luxuries felt ugly, especially when that money went to providing all of Penby’s citizens with something as lovely as free, public green space in the middle of the capital city of the empire.
“Smells like rotting fish, doesn’t it?” Claes asked, misinterpreting my expression.
Penelope glanced over her shoulder and shrugged. “Better to suffer the stench of the wharf than chance getting our pockets picked by the riffraff in the End.”
“Oh, please, Penelope,” I said with a sigh.
“What? Didn’t you hear what happened to Imelda Hesketh three weeks ago? She was robbed blind coming home from a party. I’ve no idea why, but she decided to walk through the End. A gang of miscreants jumped her—they took her wallet, her jacket, her shoes, even her hairpins. Fortunately, she wasn’t hurt, just embarrassed by the whole affair.”
Claes raised an eyebrow at his sister. “Are you certain that’s what happened?”
“Of course. Imelda told me herself.”
“I heard that she’s been spending more than a little time in the gambling dens in Oak Grove, and she used the story about the End to get herself out of trouble with her wife. Patrise told me she’s in debt up to her eyebrows.”
I kneed my horse forward, up a hill and away from the wharf, and let the rest of their gossip drift away behind me. I focused instead on the city, watching the people I would someday rule as we rode into Esser Park, the most fashionable neighborhood in Penby. Tall brick houses, their doors and window sashes painted in bold colors, ringed the largest and most carefully tended of Penby’s parks. The houses were trimmed with ornate stone fripperies and built so close together, their occupants could open their windows and gossip without raising their voices. My father had owned one of these houses, but my mother had closed it up after he died. I tried to pick out which one had been his, but it had been too long since I’d visited. None seemed more familiar than the rest.
Alskaders had thronged to the park, drawn by the lovely weather. The benches and pavilions were full of picnickers popping bottles of fizzy wine and laughing. Vendors hawked their wares from colorful carts, and people crowded around them, buying fry bread dusted with sugar, flaky meat pies and baskets of steamed, spiced crab, shrimp and clams. Children played on the rolling lawns, and their parents watched from blankets as they tumbled down hills and tossed balls to one another. There were other riders out, too, and I nodded at the familiar faces we passed.
Despite the fact that this park was free and open to the public, the only people enjoying it were the nobility—the same nobles who attended the parties and dinners at the palace. Who visited our countryside estate. Who sent me birthday gifts year after year, not because they knew me, but for the simple fact that I was a Trousillion—and though the announcement would not come until my birthday, everyone knew that I would be the next king.
It was as though there was some kind of unspoken rule, more effective than walls, that made this space inaccessible to the poor.
“Why is it that the only people out on a day like today are the same ones we see at court all the time?”
Penelope and Claes exchanged one of their infuriatingly meaningful twin looks, and Claes shrugged.
“Did you give Gunnar the afternoon off before we left?” he asked.
The heat of a blush crept up my neck as I realized my mistake. I hadn’t thought to give him time off. Of course I hadn’t. I was a fool to think I had any idea what it was like to be poor in Penby—or, for that matter, to be employed. It suddenly made perfect sense that the park was crowded with the nobility. We were the only people who could afford the time to enjoy these green spaces.
The entire sum of my life had been devoted to work and pleasure in nearly equal portions. The work I did in preparation for the duties of kingship was challenging and extensive, but if I took ill or needed a day off to rest, I could have that. Queen Runa had always emphasized that the role of a monarch was to be a servant to their subjects, but the reality of my life was such that I rarely interacted with people who were actually poor. Those people I knew who worked for a living, by and large, worked for me in some capacity or another.
Penelope tapped my thigh gently with the end of her riding crop and said, “There’s no reason you ought to have done, Bo. With your birthday around the corner, he hasn’t got the time for gallivanting around a park all afternoon. And frankly, neither do we. We must decide on the menu for your birthday party, not to mention the entertainment...”
I stopped listening, and my eyes drifted to the edge of the woods, where a group of the Shriven stood, their white robes stark and austere against the dark evergreen tree line. I glanced around, looking for the city watch, but there were none in sight. Like the rest of us, the watch depended on the Shriven to protect us from the diminished, but it was odd to see a group of them standing there, as if waiting for something.
“Bo? Bo. Are you listening?” Penelope’s voice snapped me back to the present, and I tore my eyes away from the Shriven.
“Obviously not,” Claes drawled.
A hunk of grass exploded a stride to my left. Then another, closer. I looked over my shoulder, confused. A sound like a thunderclap reverberated through the park, and my horse sidestepped, flinging his head up and snorting anxiously. It was the most activity I’d seen from the beast since I’d mounted. I glanced at Claes, but before I could say anything, something whizzed by my shoulder, and this time, I recognized the sound. Gunshots. One voice rose up in a scream, and in no time, it was joined by a chorus of panicked yells.
I’d hunted for sport all my life. I knew the sound of a rifle, but it was so out of place here, so unexpected in this beautiful park in the middle of the city. There was no game to hunt, no reason for a person to come armed. I was as baffled as I was frightened; it simply didn’t make any sense.
Realization dawned on me suddenly. Someone was shooting. At me. There’d been attempts made on my life before, but they’d been flashy, easy to identify and avoid. Poisonings, cut stirrups, clumsily hidden explosives. It was tradition more than anything—a show of strength and power. The singleborn threatened each other with assassination all the time, but never with firearms, and people rarely actually died unless in some kind of horrible accident.
The horse jigged beneath me, and I knew he was on the verge of taking off. It took nearly all my focus to stay in the saddle, but even still, I saw the Shriven streaming up the hill toward the copse of trees at the edge of the bluff. They moved like silverfish streaking up a stream, silent and focused. Something about their coordinated movements, and the way they’d been waiting—it left a bad taste in my mouth. An overwhelming wrongness, like biting down on a copper tvilling.
Another shot rang out, and this time my horse wheeled and started to bolt off down the hill. I sat deep in the saddle and tightened my grip on the reins, murmuring soothing nonsense and slowing his pace. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Penelope and Claes catch up to me as people dashed out of the park, leaving hampers and blankets behind in their rush to get away.
“We have to get back to the palace!” Claes yelled over the din of the crowd.
“Follow me,” Penelope called. “Side streets will be faster.”
We rode at breakneck speed through the city, dodging street vendors and pedestrians. Our terrified horses needed no encouragement, and they only gathered speed as we rounded the last corner and finally caught sight of the palace.
Startled guards threw open the gate, and we thundered across the courtyard, finally slowing as we neared the stables. Claes leapt off his horse, snarling, and stalked off toward the palace without a second look for Penelope or me. I dismounted more slowly. As the rush of danger faded, my hands shook, and my knees felt like jellied eels.
“Are you all right, Bo?” Penelope handed her horse’s reins off to a groom and looked me up and down.
Dry-mouthed and weak, I ignored Penelope, pressing my forehead against the curly hair on the horse’s thick neck, petting him automatically. He was shivering, too. Without thinking, I started to run my hands over his body, looking for injury. When I reached his left flank, my hand came away damp with blood. The poor beast had been skimmed by a bullet.
“Bo?” Penelope put a hand tentatively on my shoulder.
“He’s been wounded. Call for the stable master. He might need stiches.”
A groom gently took the reins out of my hands and led the horse away.
“Bo?” Penelope asked again, peering into my eyes. “Do you need to sit down?”
“I don’t know, honestly. I’m not injured. That poor horse, though...”
Penelope sighed in exasperation. “Honestly, Bo. Worried about a horse. The beast will be fine. It was only a scratch.”
“Do you think the Shriven will make a report to the Queen?”
“Why would they? They deal with the diminished all the time.” Penelope drew my arm through her crooked elbow and led me back toward the palace. “They must’ve gotten a tip that one of the dimmys was on the verge of breaking. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I stopped and drew back. “Why would you assume that it was one of the diminished? Those bullets were aimed at me. They hit my horse. It was an assassination attempt.”
“The Shriven were there. What more proof do you need that a dimmy was holding that rifle? It was, in all likelihood, simply an unfortunate coincidence, and one of the diminished lost control while we were in the park.”
“Why would Claes run off like that, then?”
Penelope’s eyes flicked down the path, and though Claes was inside the palace and well out of earshot at this point, she lowered her voice. “You know that coming into contact with the diminished has always upset Claes, but ever since our father...”
Her voice trailed off. There was no need for her to finish the sentence as we continued down the cobblestone path that led to the palace. The twins’ father was my mother’s eldest brother. When his twin died, the family had gathered to say their goodbyes, but their father didn’t do as was expected of him. He didn’t die. In fact, he seemed healthier and more full of life than ever. After several weeks passed, the family was caught between relief that they wouldn’t lose him as well, and fear of what would happen to their standing in society. Unfortunately, their fear was well-founded. They stopped receiving invitations and visitors, and before long, their social stock had fallen so appallingly low that the only place they were welcome was the palace—and there were whispers that even the Queen, with her liberal views on all social rules, would refuse to allow them to court, if only as a way of keeping herself safe should he lose his grip on the grief.
Not long after, Penelope and Claes had come to live with my family, and their parents immigrated to Ilor, where their social status would no longer threaten their children’s prospects. Claes lived in constant fear of learning that his father had finally succumbed to the grief and done something horrible.
I ducked my head. “We still don’t know if it was one of the diminished that fired that rifle. Surely the Shriven will tell Runa that much at least.”
A guard held open the side door, and Penelope paused, waiting for me to go first. The dimness of the inner hallway after the bright day was temporarily blinding. I stopped, blinking the starbursts of darkness out of my eyes.
“We shouldn’t mention this at the dinner tonight,” Penelope said. “Just in case.”
“In case I’m right, and it wasn’t one of the diminished?”
“In case it panics your already overwhelmed mother.”
I scoffed. “Mother is absolutely fine. A meteorite could demolish our house on the same day a tempest strikes Penby, and the only thing that would make her bat an eye is the potential impact on our profitable interests.”
“It isn’t a bad thing to be concerned about, Bo. Her careful business strategizing is the reason you’re kept in books and horses.”
I sighed in defeat. “I know. I ought to go study before dinner. Queen Runa is sure to quiz me about the kind of metal used to make the pipes on the sunships or something equally obscure, and I’d rather not be embarrassed in front of the rest of the singleborn. Check on Claes for me?”
Penelope nodded, a knowing smile playing around her eyes. “Of course. See you at dinner.”
* * *
State dinners were held in the same cavernous great room where all of the important royal ceremonies and celebrations had taken place since the cataclysm and Penby’s founding. That evening, with most of the Alskad singleborn and nobility in attendance and fires burning in the wide hearths, the room was warm and bright and full of jewels glittering in the light of the solar lamps. I peered through a crack between the doors and watched as Claes moved through the crowd, all dark, perfectly mussed hair and bright blue silk. His jacket was embroidered with silver thread and crystals in a pattern that made it look as though there were raindrops clinging to his shoulders. He was, by far, the most handsome young man in the room.
The whisper of footsteps snapped me out of my reverie, and I stepped away from the door just as the Queen said, “We can’t be spending the whole night in the doorway, mooning over some pretty young thing, Bo.”
“Apologies, Your Majesty.” I bowed.
The Queen adjusted the golden cuff bracelet on her wrist and made a face.
“You’d think that after all these years, I would have grown used to the ceaseless gossip and small talk these kinds of functions require. Yet every time I come to stand outside this room and wait to be announced, I find myself desperately wishing for a quiet night in the peace and comfort of my rooms.”
I nodded, grateful that I wasn’t alone in that feeling. Before I could respond, she went on.
“It’s the meaningless, petty gossip that I find intolerable. Most of the people in that room have no idea that the seemingly scandalous behavior of a wealthy member of the nobility will have mind-bogglingly little effect on the struggles and triumphs of the greater population. Sometimes I wish that the first queens of the empire had quashed the ambitions of the noble class in the very beginning. It’s those most innocuous and seemingly necessary things that will do the most damage in the long run.” She paused and looked at me wearily. “There’s a lesson in there somewhere, Bo.”
Queen Runa took a deep breath, and before I could reply, she asked that I be announced. The butler called out my name and titles, and as I entered, I realized this was the last time I would hear the titles I’d been given at birth spoken into a room in just that way. In a couple of days, I would turn sixteen, the Queen would declare me her true and rightful heir, and all of my titles would change. When the room quieted, the butler blew a triplicate call on the long, twisting horn, a relic of some long-extinct animal, and announced the Queen.
Runa swept into the room, all smiles and cheerful greetings for the courtiers who approached her, the irritation of moments before washed from her face. It didn’t seem to matter at all that she loathed these kinds of events—she played along beautifully. Waiters swept through the crowd, offering the guests flutes of sparkling wine, snifters of ouzel and appetizers as complex and intricate as they were small. The long table was laid with gilt-edged dishes and gold-plated flatware. Exotic hothouse flowers overflowed from tall vases, and each place setting had no less than five matching crystal glasses.
I snagged a glass of sparkling wine from a passing waiter and searched the room for the brilliant blue of Claes’s jacket. Before I spotted him, Patrise and Lisette descended on me. They wore matching looks of predatory delight, and with them came a cloud of rich perfume. Patrise’s dark brown eyes were crinkled in amusement, his sepia skin bore almost no wrinkles and his black hair was perfectly arranged, as usual—I’d never seen a single lock out of place on his head. But where he was all languid grace, lithe muscle and smoldering looks through suggestively lowered lashes, even I could appreciate that Lisette’s beauty was sumptuous: all elegance and not a hint of the deceptive and brilliant political maneuvering that came so easily to her. Her tawny skin and auburn hair glowed like amber in the soft light of the sunlamps. Claes had often made a great point of reminding me that there wasn’t a man or woman at court who wasn’t entirely under Lisette’s sway.
“Darling Ambrose,” Lisette trilled. “How are you? We heard about the unfortunate incident at the park this afternoon. You must be terribly unsettled.”
Patrise laced an arm through mine and leaned in conspiratorially. “You don’t believe it was a coincidence, do you?”
“Isn’t it odd that Rylain hasn’t yet arrived for your party?” Lisette asked, sending me a look full of meaning. “We’ve always suspected that she was up to no good, haven’t we, Patrise?”
Spotting Claes, I squirmed out of their grasp, only barely managing to keep a civil tongue in the process. Of all the singleborn, Rylain was far and away my favorite, the one with whom I felt comfortable enough to be myself. She was a historian who’d devoted her life to researching the cataclysm and its fallout. She had visited our estates often when my father was still alive, and always brought with her huge numbers of books for my father and me. After my father’s death, Rylain had been a great comfort, always ready to lend a sympathetic ear.
I refused to give weight to Patrise and Lisette’s ridiculous accusations against her.
Well-meaning members of the gentry stopped me over and over as I tried to make my way across the crowded room. The questions on all of their lips were about the incident in the park that afternoon, and I had no answers for them. None at all. By the time I reached Claes, the butler had just announced that dinner was to be served. I laced a hand through his and leaned in close to whisper in his ear, my false smile beginning to make my cheeks and jaw ache.
“How is it that every soul in this room has heard about what happened this afternoon?”
Claes squeezed my hand. “It did take place in Esser Park, darling.”
“Do you know anything else? Was it an assassination attempt?”
“Bo, honestly. How often is there an incident with the diminished in Penby? Once a month? Twice? The Shriven wouldn’t have taken action had the violence been committed by anyone not diminished. It had to be a coincidence.”
The assumption didn’t sit right with me, but I wasn’t about to argue with Claes in the middle of a dinner in my honor. The guests were beginning to find their ways to their seats. I glanced over at the Queen, flanked by the singleborn of her generation—Zurienne, Olivar and Turshaw, all wearing matching expressions of mild annoyance. Runa eyed the seat to her right, the place of honor I was meant to occupy. I took a step in that direction, but Claes kept hold of my hand and leaned in once more.
“An attempt on the heir apparent’s life, so close to the ceremony? Think of the scandal such a thing might cause. It would look as though one of the other singleborn was so desperate to usurp your place that they would try anything. No one is that stupid.”
Claes dropped my hand, and I sat down to my last state dinner before I became the heir. But his words sat like lead in my belly, and for the first time in my life, I wasn’t quite sure if I trusted him or not.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u32bd4549-2432-517d-945f-61a820fc6dc7)
VI
The tide was low and the fishing boats not yet in the water as I walked, shivering, into the sea. Though the weight of the whole ocean pushed me back toward the shore, I slogged through the icy water as fast as my legs would propel me. The wind whipped black curls loose from my braid and into my eyes, but I kept my focus on the red marker bobbing in the water and the salty musk of the ocean. Five more strides before I could dive.
I checked my knives, my nets, my ballasts. I tried to breathe deeply, to get ready. Focus, Vi, I thought. This cold summer morning would be the last time I dove for the temple, and glad as I was, I wanted the ocean to myself to say goodbye. I knew the memory of this last dive would stick to me like a barnacle I’d carry with me forever.
I wondered what Anchorite Lugine would say when I left. She’d be glad, more than likely. I certainly wouldn’t get the tearful goodbye that Sawny and Lily had been given.
Four more steps.
My feet slicked around smooth rocks and sank into the sand. The seawater was as gray as the clouds. Gray as my eyes. Scummy foam laced the tops of the tiny waves and lapped at my shoulders. The chill would cling beneath the waves for months yet, turning lips and fingertips blue after a few minutes. But not mine. Not anymore. Not after today.
Three more steps.
Something sleek and scaled slipped past my calf in the cold water, breaking my reverie. I shuddered. It didn’t matter that I’d spent most of my nearly sixteen years in this same harbor—until I got underwater, the unseen creatures that swam past my legs still set my teeth on edge. My oil-slicked body had grown almost used to the cold.
Two more steps.
One last time, I checked that my tools were securely tied to my belt. As I pulled my goggles into place, I started taking deep breaths. Today’s dive would be easier than usual, with the water low and the tide nearly imperceptible.
One more step.
I took a last, long breath and sank beneath the waves.
The sea was never silent. The hushing crush of the water, the clicks and squeals of the few hardy sea creatures and the soft thud of my heart finally drowned out my racing thoughts. My goggles were older than me, issued by the temple when I first began to dive. The leather was cracked, and tiny bubbles in the glass left my vision hazy at best, but they kept the seawater from stinging my eyes and made it a little easier to see below the surface. I found the red rope net that surrounded the underwater bed of oysters the temple’s divers were harvesting this month and swam toward it. I had to focus.
When I reached the marker, I swam back to the surface and treaded water for a few minutes, breathing in the pattern I’d learned many years ago. A deep breath in followed by many little gulps of air.
Good luck would go a long way today, Pru. See if you can’t manage a bit for me? I thought.
Finally, on the third breath, I dove toward the ocean floor. I couldn’t hold my breath for as long as some of the older divers—only about seven minutes—but I was faster than most and a strong swimmer. I dug my fingers into the sea floor and yanked the rough shells of startled oysters from their sandy beds, my mind settling into the rhythm of the work. By the time my chest began to burn, my net bag was half-full. I ascended slowly, like I’d been taught, and as I caught my breath, I pulled my ballasts back up by the long lines that attached them to my belt.
I went down three more times, and when both my bags were full, I swam back toward the wharf, where I’d hidden my clothes. I had one last thing to do before I steeled myself to get out of the water. I tied the net bags, heavy with oysters, to a rusted iron ring that had long ago been sunk into the wood of one of the pilings halfway between the end of the dock and the shore. I swam back out toward the bay, keeping myself hidden under the dock.
I turned sixteen the next day, and I could finally bid farewell to the city, the temple and the anchorites. It was time to harvest the last of the pearls I’d been so carefully cultivating beneath the docks all these years. Since I wouldn’t be returning to the harbor again, I cut the ropes, after pulling the oysters from my lines, and watched them drift to the ocean floor.
When I got back to shore, I set my bag of oysters apart from the others before I dried off and dressed with numbed fingers gone blue and wrinkly in the cold water. The cool air was a shock after having gotten used to the water’s chill. Even in the summer, Alskad was never hot, especially early in the morning before the sun had baked away the mist and fog.
I stuffed my braid under my wool cap, kneeled on one of my folded sweaters and set to work. I needed to move fast. The others would be making their way to the shoreline soon, and they’d have questions if they saw me shucking oysters on the beach rather than under Anchorite Lugine’s watchful eyes. I could already hear the news hawkers on the docks, calling headlines about the declaration of the heir and rebel groups disrupting trade in Ilor. I thought of Sawny, hoping that he and Lily had arrived and settled safely as I slipped my knife into an oyster shell and twisted, popping it open.
After I pulled the pearl from each of my oysters, I tossed its meat to the seagulls gathered around me. My stomach was talking at me, but even that wasn’t enough to make me eat the pearl oysters. Unlike the oysters we gathered to sell to the nobility for pricey appetizers, pearl oysters were tough and tasted of seaweed and slime. I wished I’d had the foresight to steal a couple of scallops from their seabeds.
I worked fast, leaving a heap of shells in the sand next to me. By the time I finished, I’d harvested sixty-three pearls, my biggest haul yet—and of them, twenty were some of the biggest I’d ever seen, oysters I’d left undisturbed since I put them on the lines nearly ten years before. I dug a quick hole in the wet sand and buried the shells that had housed my small fortune. By the time the ocean pulled them back up, I’d be long gone.
Pearls tucked safe in a pouch beneath my shirt and sweater, I hauled the bags of the anchorites’ oysters up and over my shoulder. If I could get back to the temple before the end of the morning’s adulations, I might be able to sneak a sugar-dotted cloud bun from the anchorites’ tray before it went up to their buffet. I didn’t just miss Sawny for the treats he’d pocketed for me, but I would’ve been lying if I said I didn’t wake up thinking about cloud buns and sweet, milky tea on mornings like this.
I picked my way across the gray puddles that littered Penby’s streets. The merchants and street vendors had just started stirring as I stepped into the market square. Bene’s bakery windows were misted over with the fragrant steam of rising dough. My mouth watered at the thought of her spiced pigeon pies, which I’d tasted a few times but could rarely afford to buy on my own. Shopkeepers leaned against doors just opened and sipped their tea as their assistants chalked specials and sales onto display boards. Early risers bustled down the streets, shopping baskets hooked over their arms. A farmer set bowls heaped with the first salmonberries of the season onto his cart next to jars of bright pickled onions and the cabbages and potatoes we’d seen through the winter. I nodded to Jemima Twillerson as she flipped the sign to open her apothecary shop, but her eyes—no great shock—slid away from mine.
No one wanted to be seen associating with a dimmy. Worse still, a dimmy like me—penniless and a temple ward. In all my life, Sawny’d been the only twin willing to call me friend. Others, like Jemima, might do me a kindness from time to time, but not where they might be seen—and worse yet, judged—.
I pushed away the familiar sting and adjusted the sack of oysters balanced on my shoulder. A bright slash of red caught my eye, and I turned on a heel to see a girl I recognized streaking through the market square. She clutched a long, curving Samirian knife in each white-knuckled hand, and her feet were bare on the stone road.
Her name was Skalla. I’d only met her the once. She was some Denorian merchant’s daughter, and he had enough drott to dress his girls in imported silks and brocades. Her twin sister had died a couple weeks back, and when the girl didn’t seem to be succumbing to death herself, Anchorite Lugine dragged me on a visit.
“Vi,” Anchorite Lugine had said, “it’s important that she sees the glorious contentment that your faith has sustained, even after all these years of being diminished.”
The implication—that the grief would inevitably catch up with me—had lingered in the air unsaid all through the painfully silent visit with Skalla and her family. What could I say to her? That I was sorry for her; for what she’d become? What we’d both become?
I hated those visits. They were such a lie. I had no faith, and I certainly hadn’t kept myself from violence all these years through prayer and piety. I was a fluke: I would eventually lose the tight hold that kept my anger from turning to violence. Just because I’d lasted this long didn’t mean I would be able to avoid the grief forever.
Skalla’s silks were damp with sweat, and her arms prickled with gooseflesh. Her eyes were blank with rage. She was gone; lost to the grief she felt for her twin.
Before Skalla, it had been at least a month since another dimmy was lost in Penby. There’d been rumors of an incident in Esser Park, but I’d overheard a group of the Shriven saying that it’d been a ruse. Folks did that from time to time. Used dimmys as an excuse, as an explanation for their bad behavior.
I clenched my jaw and sidled toward an alleyway. I didn’t want to see what happened next. Sometimes it seemed like I always managed to find myself nearby when a dimmy lost their grip. When I was younger, I’d tried to stop one of the temple brats, a dimmy, when she attacked Lily in a dark corridor in the middle of the night. I got between them right before the Shriven arrived and threw me off the other girl. That was the first time I’d broken my nose.
Skalla’s bare feet smacked slush from potholes, and, in a moment, she was across the square, dragging the baker from her doorway before the woman had a moment to think. Still frail from a bout with the whispering cough, Bene never stood a chance.
Blood spattered across the bakery’s steam-covered window.
I froze in horror. Skalla smeared Bene’s blood over her porcelain pale face, screaming. The sack of oysters was an anchor, tethering me to the walk outside the apothecary’s shop. No one moved. We sank into the shadows, took shallow breaths, willed ourselves to become invisible. The Shriven’d appear soon, all tattoos and white robes and swift, deadly action. We’d be safe once they arrived. As much as I hated them, they were good for that much, at least.
A high, keening wail poured from deep inside Skalla’s body, and then she screamed. In a language that had to be Denorian, her voice filled the square. She’d be cursing the gods and goddesses. They always did. Even the Denorians, who placed an irreverent amount of value on science over religion, spent their last, raging breaths cursing the gods for condemning us with grief.
The names of the Alskader goddesses spurted from her rant as the Shriven slipped silently into the square. Magritte the Educator. Rayleane the Builder. Dzallie the Warrior. I couldn’t parse all her words, but I knew that feeling of vitriol. It rose in my chest, the anger, and I bit down hard on my cheek. I couldn’t afford to feed the slow burn always smoldering next to my heart.
Not a day went by when I didn’t bite back fury. Every moment was a fight against the close heat of rage when I caught someone’s eyes staring, and I knew from that one look that all they saw was a dimmy. I stopped being a person and was reduced to danger wearing the skin of a teenaged girl in a hand-me-down sweater. But the anchorites’ chorus of voices in my head reminded me that anger loosened my grip, and I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t be like Skalla.
The Shriven descended on her like a shroud. Their long staves whipped through the air, fast and dangerous as eels. I lost sight of her for a moment, then dark crimson spurted over one of the Shriven’s white-clad shoulders. He collapsed in a heap with Skalla on top of him, and I gagged as I caught a glimpse of her face. Blood streamed out of her mouth and down her neck—she’d torn the man’s tattooed throat open with her teeth.
A moment later, it was over. Skalla’s wrists were held behind her back at vicious angles by two of the Shriven, another two stood at her elbows and a fifth had his hand wrapped tight around her throat. She wasn’t but a slip of a thing, but dimmys were unnaturally strong, and it looked like the Shriven were going to be extra careful with Skalla. They didn’t often lose one of their own—they were trained for this work.
As they hauled her away, I tried not to picture the inevitable scene on the wide square between the palace and the temple. I’d seen it so many times—before I was old enough to know to hide, one of the anchorites had always taken it upon themselves to drag me and any of the other dimmys in the temple’s care to the executions. As though it would help. As though anything would help.
They would chant Skalla’s name as the tattooed Shriven led her through the crowd. Skalla. Skalla. Skalla. The Shriven would pull her onto the platform, still writhing and wailing. They used to hang the diminished, but the day before my twelfth birthday, the Suzerain had declared hanging immoral and cruel. So violent dimmys lost their heads these days—as if that bloody death was somehow less cruel.
All of us in the temple knew the truth. Donations poured in after those executions. Folks were so grateful to be protected from one of the diminished, they’d increase their already steep tributes. There was money in fear, and money in blood, and there was nothing the Suzerain liked better than a fat tribute and a city that remembered who kept them safe.
Waiting for the Shriven to clear the market square before I headed back to the temple, I could imagine Skalla standing on that platform, fighting like a wild thing. They never went quietly. Her fiery red hair would be tangled and matted with blood, her fingers raw from scraping the stone walls of her cell. There would still be blood on her face, dried and flaking.
They’d wait a day. Let the story spread. Drum up the crowds. The Suzerain’d be there at the back of the platform, all calm and beatific in their white robes. The benevolent guardians of everyone in Alskad—except for the people who needed them most.
People like me.
* * *
The yeasty warmth of the day’s bread baking swirled around me when I opened the kitchen door. Perhaps tomorrow, on my birthday, Lugine might slip me a thin slice of ham or a cheese rind with my dinner roll. She’d never hugged me like she had Sawny and Lily, but from time to time, if it was a special occasion, she’d give me a small treat. After all, I’d been with the anchorites longer than any other dimmy but Curlin.
As I turned to close the door, I was startled to see Sula, Lugine and Bethea sitting at the kitchen’s long slab of a table, their faces grim. They shouldn’t have been back in the residential part of the temple yet—adulations were barely over. Moreover, it was more than a little strange for all three of them to be in the same room together like this. What would bring them all here at this hour?
My hands trembled as I dumped the sacks of oysters into the tin trough at the end of the table and shrugged out of my sweaters. I sent up a silent prayer to my twin. Watch my back, will you?
“Before you say anything, I know I should’ve gone to adulations this morning, but I hadn’t yet had any luck this month, and I wanted to find at least one pearl for you before my birthday.” I gave the women my best smile, which none of them returned.
They were each powerful within their orders. Anchorite Sula supervised all that went on in the trade library and made certain that each of the temple’s charges were assigned a craft or else made our way into the Shriven. Anchorite Lugine oversaw my work as a diver in the summer and in the canneries in the winter. Long-suffering Anchorite Bethea, the eldest of the three, was responsible for the spiritual education of us brats the temple took in. They were the closest thing I had to real parents. Though, to be fair, they were collectively about as warm as an ice floe. I’d spent my whole childhood with their eyes on me, watching me with the same wariness they’d use with a rabid dog.
Once, when I was barely seven, a gang of grubby urchins cornered me in a back alley. One of them managed to break my nose before I fought my way free. I ran through the streets, blood and tears streaming down my face, and sought comfort from Lugine in the kitchen. She’d taken one look at me, thrown me a dishrag and set me to scrubbing pots. From then on, when the other brats came after me, I scrambled up onto the roof of the nearest building or into a dank corner to hide.
That was how Sawny and I’d found our spot on the temple roof.
Sula sighed. “We’ve long since given up on forcing you to attend daily adulations, Obedience.”
My jaw clenched. I hated being called by my given name, and she knew it. The name “Obedience” had always seemed like a cruel joke. “I’d prefer you call me Vi, Anchorite.” I fetched a plain ceramic bowl and a spoon from one of the shelves that lined the walls of the cavernous kitchen. “My birthday’s not ’til tomorrow, and before you ask, I already sent my ma a birthing day note. Did you come to tell me you’d miss me when I leave?”
I lifted a ladle from its hook and started toward a pot of rich broth studded with root vegetables and chunks of lamb. Before I got close, a low, disapproving sound from Lugine stopped me. I turned to the half-congealed pot of pea and oat mush on its hook at the edge of the hearth instead and filled my bowl, and settled myself on the rough bench across the table from the anchorites to eat. Diving was hard work, and trouble or not, I was ravenous. I shouldn’t have provoked her with the stew, though. Not when she already looked so angry.
“Tell me, Vi. What are the rules of the pearl trade?” Lugine asked.
I swallowed my spoonful of lumpy mush and recited the rules I’d been taught since I began to train. “All the fruits of the dive must go toward the betterment of the temple and its occupants. The meat to feed the servants of the goddesses and gods, the pearls to glorify the goddesses and gods by making their home and their servants beautiful.”
“And why are laymen allowed to partake in the bounty of the sea?” Bethea asked.
“So that they, too, may share in the glory of Hamil’s gifts.”
Sula nodded. “And how do the laymen honor the god’s gifts to them?”
“I don’t plan to stay here and keep diving, Anchorite,” I said. “I’ll look for work in the North, near my ma’s people.”
“Answer the question.”
I sighed. “Laymen must offer their bounty to Rayleane, Hamil’s partner, to thank him for his gift. They can keep what the goddess doesn’t want and be paid for their service besides.”
The anchorites stared at me in silence. I set my spoon on the table, the pouch of pearls burning between my breasts. A wave of cold ran over me, and I tried not to shiver.
Finally, Bethea asked, “What is the penalty if a layman is found to be giving the goddess less than her due?”
“What is this about?” I asked, though the answer weighed heavily on a thong around my neck. They’d found my stash. That was the only explanation for this interrogation.
They waited, unblinking. Lugine’s brow furrowed. Bethea bit the inside of her cheek. Sula’s face was implacable, as always.
“They suffer the same penalty as any thief, time in jail and half of their earnings until their debt is doubly paid.”
“And what is the penalty for a thief who is diminished?” Sula asked.
Lugine stared at her lap, and Bethea cleared her throat. So. This is how it would end. Just shy of sixteen years, and not a day without someone’s terrified glance. I’d long ago accepted that no one would ever hold me, kiss me, love me, but I had hoped that I would at least have one day when no one looked at me with fear in their eyes.
“Death,” I whispered.
“Do you know why we are here?” Sula asked quietly.
I nodded, studying the table, tears hot in my eyes. I wasn’t ready to let go. I’d held on for so long.
“We sent Shriven Curlin to pack your things in preparation for your birthday. She brought us this.” Sula slid the wooden box full of cultured pearls across the table toward me. My pearls. My savings. Of course Curlin had known where to look for my secrets. She’d shared the room with me for years. “You know, if you were to join the Shriven, you would be exempt from any penalty.”
Fury flooded me. Nothing, not even the threat of death, could make me become one of those mindless, soulless murderers. The people of Alskad might think that the Shriven were righteous, holy even, protecting them from the atrocities of the diminished, but I knew better. I’d grown up in the temple. I knew the kinds of poison that ran through their veins.
“Over my rotting corpse,” I snarled.
Lugine drew in a sharp breath, but Sula put a calming hand on her arm.
“We assumed you’d say something of the kind.” Bethea laid a stack of papers on the table.
“What’s that?” I asked warily.
“A choice,” Sula said. “We care for you, as much as you may not believe it. We’ve not brought this matter before the Suzerain. Instead, we’ve decided to let you choose your own path. You may either join the ranks of our holy Shriven, or you will be sent to Ilor, to spread the word of our high holies to the wild colonies by helping to construct temples there. You’ll serve one month for each pearl you stole from the temple through your deceit. Twenty-five years.”
My breath caught in my chest. It wasn’t a choice. Not really. Either way, I would be forced to spend the rest of my life in service to a pantheon of gods and goddesses I didn’t believe in, couldn’t bear to worship.
I would be no better than a prisoner in Ilor, but I knew deep in my bones that I could never join the Shriven. I could never be like Curlin.
And there was a bright spot of hope in a future in Ilor: the only person who’d never been afraid of me. While I knew I would never see freedom if I accepted the temple’s twenty-five-year sentence—the grief would take me long before those years were up—but at least in Ilor, I would be close to Sawny. I would see him again. Missing Sawny was an ache that went all the way to my bones.
I met the eyes of the three anchorites and took a deep breath, rising to my feet. “Ilor. I choose Ilor.”
I stalked out of the room, visions of space, of time to myself, of freedom crumbling in my mind, leaving my bowl of half-congealed mush uneaten on the long-scarred table—and my hard-earned fortune in the hands of the anchorites.
CHAPTER SIX (#u32bd4549-2432-517d-945f-61a820fc6dc7)
BO
My bedroom was warm from the large fire crackling in the hearth, but I was ice all the way to my bones. I’d been cold since I woke up, probably due to nerves at the thought of what the day would bring. I smoothed my jacket’s embroidered cuffs and stared out the window. I turned sixteen at midnight, and the Queen would declare me a grown man, singleborn of the Trousillion line and successor to her throne. The thought of that heavy crown and the responsibility that came with it nauseated me.
I wanted to be King. I wanted to be a great king, but I’d never felt the easy entitlement the other singleborn flaunted. And after the incident in the park, I’d never felt so unsure of myself, so afraid. I’d spent my whole life preparing for this day, yet still feared that I would trip over some part of the ceremony and embarrass myself—or, worse, my mother.
The soft din of the party drifted through the palace. The fashionable quintet my cousins had hired seemed to play only fast, reeling tunes. My feet ached at the idea of another night spent dancing, but I’d do, as always, what was expected of me, though the stack of books Rylain had sent for my birthday called to me from my bedside table. There was a history of trade dating back to the cataclysm that I ached to dig into.
Outside, in the dark night sky, the two halves of the fractured moon were full, and so close they looked like they might crash into each other. My tutor, Birger, said this interaction of the moon’s halves was a rare and good omen: the reunited twins. He claimed that when the halves of the moon were close, the goddesses and gods forgot the evil our ancestors had done when they split the moon in half. I’d always thought they looked more like twins conspiring in a corner than a pair long lost and reunited, and personally ascribed to the theory that the halves were always the same distance apart—it was our perspective that shifted.
No great wonder Birger was so fascinated by the moons. He and his twin, Thamina, were always whispering in each other’s ears and exchanging those infuriatingly weighted looks twins gave one another. Nothing made me feel more alone than standing in a room full of twins, steeped in the knowledge that I ought to be grateful for the fact that I was singleborn. I knew it was a blessing, but the constant reminders that I’d been born with a greater conscience, a keener sense of justice, a powerful birthright—they had never helped me see those things in myself.
A knock at the door brought me out of my reverie, and Mother swept into the room, not waiting for my response. Rather than her usual well-cut breeches, silk tunic and jacket, She wore a floor-length, lavender-gray gown that sparkled with silver embroidery and accented her olive skin. Her brown hair had been curled, and it brushed the immaculate white fox-fur stole wound round her neck. Huge hunks of raw diamond set in creamy gold cuffs decorated each of her wrists, but her bare arms and sleeveless dress made more of a statement than those jewels. She was the living personification of Dzallie, invincible and immune to the chill of the early summer night.
She narrowed her dark eyes and looked me up and down and adjusted my jacket. “That color suits you, Ambrose. It brings out the gray in your eyes.”
“I thought it was a little garish, but Claes insisted I choose something bright.” I felt like a pigeon dressed in peacock feathers. The purple silk jacket was festooned with scads of embroidery; colorful birds and flowers exploded from my shoulders, trailing down the sleeves and to the wide hem that brushed the floor. At least my trousers were plain—if very fine—gray wool, with embroidery only along the cuffs.
I was waiting for someone to notice how out of place I really was.
“You look so like your father, Ambrose.”
She wasn’t exactly right. I saw him in the line of my jaw and the stubborn set of my mouth, but my eyes were gray where my father’s had been hazel, and I’d grown taller than both my parents by the time I was twelve. Four years later, and I still hadn’t filled out the promise of that early growth. Though my shoulders were broad enough, I was tall and skinny, where the rest of my family was small and muscular.
I coughed, not knowing what to say. I never knew what to say about my father. His absence was like a gaping hole in our lives, and Mother had an uncanny knack for bringing him up at times when feeling the enormous emptiness of his loss would be crippling. I didn’t think she did it on purpose.Even after four years without him, the specter of my father’s death was a constant weight my mother carried. Her grief followed her everywhere, and his memory colored every private moment we shared.
Mother perched on the edge of a gilt-legged settee piled with furs and patted the seat beside her. I sat obediently, careful not to wrinkle my jacket or sit on her skirt. She ran a hand through my newly shorn curls. She used to cut it herself when my father was still alive, as she’d done for him. We’d had the same dark brown curls, unruly and difficult to style. But since his death, she’d left the task to my valet and was ever critical of his work.
“I have something for you.”
I looked at her questioningly. “I thought we were going to wait to open gifts until tomorrow. The spectacle’s half the ceremony, or so Claes and Penelope are always telling me.”
“You’ll get the rest of your gifts tomorrow, but this is between you, your father and me. He and I decided long before his passing.”
She pulled a small cedar box from her skirts and handed it to me. I untied the crimson ribbon. Inside the box, a long, brass key rested on a velvet cushion.
“A key?” I asked, bewildered. There was no door in our house I had any reason to unlock, and the only time I left our estate was in the company of my mother and our ever-present cadre of servants. There was never a need for me to unlock anything at all.
“To your father’s house here in Penby. You’ll need a place to get away from the chaos in the palace as you spend more and more time at court. Your father’s house is perfect for a crown prince. We’ll have to hire a staff to open it, but that shouldn’t be any trouble. I’ll even give you an allowance to redecorate it to your taste. Do you remember it?”
Strange that, after years without thinking of it, the property had come up twice in one week. I hadn’t been there often—since Father’s death, we’d always stayed in the palace when we went to court. Before his passing, I’d only been a child, and rarely visited Penby—children of the nobility were raised in the countryside, where they could breathe clean air and learn genteel sports. But, much to my mother’s dismay, Father had taken me to see the sunships launch when I’d been briefly fascinated by them as a little boy. I’d wanted to become a ship’s captain in the royal navy, to spend my life at sea, exploring the vast swaths of land left unpopulated and destroyed by the cataclysm. I remembered sliding down the banister of the grand, sweeping staircase in the front hall and hiding on the landing long past my bedtime, wrapped in blankets and listening to my parents laugh with their guests.
The reality of what lay ahead of me curdled my stomach. The responsibility of guiding the empire, of working hand in hand with the Suzerain—it was daunting, especially when I felt so very alone. I wished, as I so often had, that I was normal; that I had a twin like everyone else. And seeing the expectation, the eager hunger for my accomplishment and success in my mother’s eyes inflamed me.
The old argument, the one that tangled our every interaction lately, took hold before I could stop myself. “Mother...”
Her jaw tensed. “Don’t start, Ambrose. You are the Queen’s choice. It’s your duty to serve the empire. To become its next King. You will show Queen Runa that you are, without a doubt, the best choice to lead the succession, just as your father or I would have done, had we had the luck to be singleborn.” She tucked the key and its box into an end table drawer.
I bit the inside of my cheek and tried to extinguish the anxiety rising in my chest like a flame. If only I could escape from that word. My whole life, I’d been told I was special because I’d been born alone. Singleborn. The conscience of the empire. Every move I made was lauded, commented upon. My interests became trends. I was deferred to, admired and praised at every turn. But Mother’s eyes never rested on me for a moment without the expectation that I could do more, be better.
As if she could read my thoughts, Mother reached out and cupped my cheek. “You know that I’m proud of you? You know that I love you?”
I sighed. “I know. I know you want the best for me. I love you, too.”
Before the heaviness of the moment could weigh me down more than my anxiety already had, I changed the subject.
“Has there been any more news about what happened in the park?” I asked.
Mother dropped her hand into her lap, exasperated. “There’s no need for you to continue to bring that up,” she said, annoyance sharpening her words. “It was a coincidence. One of the diminished. Honestly, if there were something to tell you, I would. Now, tonight is a momentous occasion, and I want for you to remember it fondly.” She glanced at the clock on the mantel. “We should go down. Your cousins are doing what they can to keep Her Majesty occupied, but Claes may run out of gossip if we don’t relieve him soon.” She laughed, a sound like a burbling spring that did nothing to soothe my frayed nerves. “Worse, Penelope will be in a state trying to keep him from saying something out of turn.”
I grinned, knowing she was right. I offered her my arm. “Best make my entrance, then. Into the den of foxes, as it were.”
Mother swatted at me as we left my room. “Hush, you. You mustn’t make jokes about the other singleborn where someone might hear you.”
“It’s Father’s joke,” I protested.
“I know.” Mother stretched up onto the tips of her toes and kissed me on the cheek. “But those foxes hold your fate in their jaws.”
* * *
Outside the great room, I stared at the enormous, ancient doors. Doors I’d seen so often during our many visits to court, but never truly looked at. I wondered what had crossed the minds of each of the other singleborn chosen to wear the crown, who’d all waited outside this very door on the night of their sixteenth birthdays. It was a sobering thought, and all my jokes and nervous giggles fled my body.
Gunnar, my valet, knocked twice on the carved panel beside the great room door. I took a deep breath, and three bass notes from the horn just inside the great room reverberated through my bones. The musicians went quiet, and an anticipatory hush settled over the crowd inside. Gunnar looked to Mother for her signal. She wound her arm through mine and looked up into my eyes searchingly.
“Ready?” she asked.
I nodded and set my jaw, forcing a slight smile onto my lips. Gunnar heaved against the doors’ polished bone handles. Inside, a uniformed servant took up the Trousillion horn, curling and carved, and blew a long, clear note. Silence hung heavy in the room, and the weight of hundreds of eyes fell upon me all at once. The solar lights were dimmed, and they cast a golden glow over the nobles dressed in their best silks and furs. Their jewels shimmered as they waited for the ceremony to start.
Penelope, Claes and I had spent months shaping the guest list. In addition to the ambassadors from Denor, most elite Ilorian merchants and the highest-ranking members of the nobility, the guest list included a number of my more irritating relatives who had to be invited, despite their tendencies to hoard all of the attention in a room. The three other singleborn of my generation were like that, captivating and dazzling all at once. Even Rylain, despite her hatred of public appearances, was the kind of person who could enchant a crowd with a single word.
I felt drab standing next to them, like a baby puffin before its plumage fills in. I should have been brimming with excitement, but instead I was blinded, unable to move, like a fish frozen in a streambed. My eye landed on a woman draped in austere black wool, her dark brown hair threaded with silver, and a serene look on her unlined face: Rylain. My heart lifted slightly—I hadn’t thought that she would be willing to make the trip to court, even for such a significant event. I was relieved to see her—perhaps her presence would stop Patrise and Lisette from spreading their bizarre notion that she’d had something to do with the shooting in the park.
Patrise lounged on a chaise nearby, flanked by a beautiful, red-haired woman. I wondered if the accusations he’d leveled at Rylain were a thinly veiled attempt to hide his own involvement in the most recent attempt on my life. He’d tried to have me killed more than once, or so Mother claimed. It was a fair concern—if something happened to me, the Queen would likely choose either Patrise or Lisette to succeed her. Patrise’s companion whispered something to him, and he threw back his head and laughed. His hearty guffaw became the only sound in the room, and he turned to grin at me before leaning in to reply to the redhead.
For a moment, everything I’d learned to prepare for this moment disappeared. I started to turn, to flee, but Mother’s elbow dug into my ribs. My eyes darted around frantically, and I finally found Claes standing with his sister. He smiled at me, his face a beacon in the crowd. His grin lit me like a torch, and warmth blossomed in my belly. When I looked at him, it felt like he and I were the only people in the room, and suddenly, I cared about doing this right.
I wanted so badly for him to be proud of me. I wanted to show them all that I deserved to be King.
I blinked and looked away before I could start blushing. Beside him, Penelope looked at me with the impatient urgency that seemed to be the natural set of her face, and my hours of practice flooded back to me. I stepped forward, smiling the solemn smile that my cousins had cajoled me into replicating for hours on end until it was more natural to me than any other expression.
Our guests parted, creating an aisle that led to the dais where Queen Runa waited. Tonight, her cape was black sealskin trimmed with gray fox fur. She wore the Alskad Empire’s ceremonial crown, a hefty circlet of hammered gold studded with raw jewels and pearls. Her hands rested on the Sword of the Empire, a weapon nearly as tall as she, forged in folded steel so keenly sharpened, it could cut a whisper in half. It was a weapon made to shed blood, though the empire’s rulers had expanded their borders by exploration rather than force.
Queen Runa was flanked by the Suzerain. With their pure white robes, pale skin and blond hair, they looked like twin towers of salt. Aside from the Queen, these were the most powerful people in the empire. While the Queen controlled the nobility, and had the final say on all laws written in the noble council, the common people looked to the Suzerain and their ranks of the Shriven for religious justice and protection from the diminished. The Queen never made a decision without considering the opinion of the temple.
Seven of the Shriven, all clad in the purest white, stood like statues against the wall behind the dais, their eyes glittering amid the black paint that bisected their faces. Tattoos crept up their necks and across their knuckles, and one of them bared her teeth, sharpened to spikes, at me. It took everything in my power to keep from grimacing. I wished they’d take their hands off the long knives in their belts, even only for the duration of the ceremony, but I knew it didn’t matter. They were as deadly unarmed as they were if they bristled with weapons.
Wrenching my gaze away from the Shriven, I was grateful for the kind faces of the anchorites, with their brilliant yellow-and-orange silk robes and the ropes of pearls that draped their wrists and necks. They stood before the dais, the emblems of the empire in a chest at their feet. The anchorites showered me in approving nods and warm smiles as I approached them. We stopped before the first step, and I leaned down to kiss Mother on both cheeks. She took her place next to her twin sister, to the right of the anchorites, and I knelt before the Suzerain and the Queen. I inhaled deeply and focused my thoughts on the ceremony at hand.
Together, their solemn voices filled the room, as rich as kaffe and sweet as honey. “Why do you kneel before us, Ambrose, son of Myrella and Oswin, descendent of the Trousillion line?”
I paused, took a breath and let the responses I knew by rote flow. “For I am worthy of the Trousillion crown.”
“By what right are you worthy?”
The words caught in my throat, and I coughed before saying, “By right of birth. I am singleborn, chosen of the goddesses and the gods.”
“Why were the singleborn chosen to rule their lands?”
“When the moon split and the people corrupted the earth, the goddesses and gods chose to split their souls in twain, that the consciences of the people be doubled. They decreed that each person be born with a twin they would love above all others, to whom they would be responsible for all their deeds. The goddesses and gods chose a family from each land, one who had demonstrated great honor, compassion and intellect. The descendants of those families would bear a number of singleborn in each generation, and from those, the next ruler would be chosen.”
Silks rustled as the crowd shifted from one foot to the other. The Queen nodded to my mother, who joined her on the dais. They each took hold of one end of the long Sword of the Empire, hefting it above their heads to form an archway. The female Suzerain, Amler, stepped through the archway, carrying the empire’s golden wheel. The male Suzerain, Castor, followed her, a delicate gold net stretched between his hands. Finally, the Queen nodded to me, and I stepped beneath the sword, ducking to clear my head. I was grateful to kneel once again on the other side and hide my shaking legs.
The Queen handed the sword to my mother and came to stand before me, to perform her role in the ceremony. She faced the crowd. “Do you swear to uphold the honor of the singleborn of the Trousillion line?”
I looked into her deep brown eyes, feeling the enormous magnitude of the vow radiating from the depths of her soul. “I do.”
The weight of the net, surprisingly heavy for all its delicacy, settled over my shoulders like a ballast, and my heart sank. I admonished myself silently—I’d spent my whole life preparing for this, and it would be years yet before I took the throne. The weight of the responsibility need not feel so wildly overwhelming yet.
“Will you guide the people of the empire with your conscience, serving them with justice and grace, putting their needs before your own?”
“I will.” I accepted the wheel, and the Queen gave me the barest hint of a smile.
“Will you wear this cuff as a daily reminder of your duty to your crown and your country, and swear in the name of your chosen god that you will serve the people of the Alskad Empire for the rest of your days?”
I held out my left wrist. “I swear on my honor and in Gadrian the Firebound’s name that I will serve the people of the Alskad Empire for the rest of my days.”
The Queen snapped the hammered gold bracelet onto my wrist and locked it in place. The crown-shaped bracelet was fitted to my wrist, loose enough to move up and down my forearm, but too tight to slip over my hand. There was no way for me to take it off without the key unless I was willing to break my hand. As the weight of the bracelet settled on my arm, I wondered if any of the other singleborn had ever tried to remove the cuff.
The Queen held out her hand to me, her own bracelet gleaming in the low light. “Stand, Ambrose, son of Myrella and Oswin. Stand in the knowledge that you are my chosen successor to the throne of the Alskad Empire.”
I took the Queen’s hand and stood, heart pounding in my chest, raising the wheel over my head. The room erupted in cheers and whoops, and the musicians struck up a fast, reeling war song. Queen Runa squeezed my hand reassuringly as we descended the dais together.
* * *
There were several comfortably furnished chambers adjacent to the great room, where guests could rest or talk quietly during the epic gatherings that were the social centerpieces of the empire’s nobility. I followed the Queen and my mother into one of these rooms, and they waited in silence as two anchorites lifted the golden net off my shoulders and relieved me of the wheel.
When the anchorites had gone, closing the door behind them, the Queen settled into a wide chair, plucked the crown off her head and set it on a side table. The regal monarch disappeared, and in her place was my great aunt, all sharp wit and convivial smiles.
“Myrella, be a dear and pour me a glass of something strong, will you?”
Mother went to the sideboard and filled a glass with clear ouzel from a crystal decanter. She took a sip from the glass, to show it wasn’t poisoned, before handing it to Runa. The Queen accepted it and downed it in a gulp, holding the glass out to be refilled.
“Sit, sit, both of you,” she said.
Mother poured a cup of kaffe, doctored it with cream and sugar and took a sip before handing it to me. I sank gratefully onto a divan, and Mother took her place in the room’s other chair, an ouzel glass of her own in hand.
“Now, tell me. Whom will he marry?”
“His cousin Penelope, though we haven’t made the formal arrangements yet.”
I choked on my kaffe. This was news to me. My heart fluttered. What would Claes say? Did he know? There was no way Penelope would agree to the match, not when I’d spent the last year kissing her twin. Even the Queen had seen me kissing Claes. Never mind the fact that I had no desire to marry her. No desire to marry a woman at all. And why should I? Even as King, the heir to the throne would not necessarily be my heir, but the singleborn I deemed most suited to the role. Runa herself had never married, never had a child. She ruled the empire alone, and while I didn’t entirely understand why she’d chosen me out of all the singleborn, I didn’t think it was purely due to our close line of descent.
When my coughing fit subsided, I looked up to find Mother glaring at me.
“When was this decided?” I asked. I tried to keep my voice level.
Queen Runa laughed, ignoring me. “It’s a good match. She’s smart and will continue your good work with the estate with no great trouble. Poor Oswin would have been destitute without you. Poor man didn’t have a practical bone in his body.” She bit her lip, eyes softening. “My apologies, Myrella. I miss him so, as I’m sure you do.”
Mother nodded. “It has been exceedingly difficult, but we’ve made do.”
“The Suzerain think we should see Ambrose married within the next two years, and for once, I don’t disagree. It will lend him more weight with the nobility if they know he has a strong partner.”
I sputtered, “Excuse me?”
They ignored me.
“And the other matter?” Mother asked.
A muscle in the Queen’s jaw twitched. “Still safely in the hands of the temple. Magritte’s wisdom keep her.”
“Magritte keep who?” I blurted, knowing as soon as the question left my lips that I should’ve kept quiet.
There was no point in asking questions that wouldn’t be answered. It seemed like they were intentionally speaking in riddles, throwing out one incomprehensible statement after another in order to infuriate me. It wasn’t as though they didn’t know better. It wasn’t as though they weren’t the ones who’d taught me my manners, and here they were. Acting like I wasn’t even here.
The Queen waved her hand dismissively and shot Mother a look cold enough to freeze mulled wine. “No one you need ever worry about. Now, before you leave, I’ll have a chat with the tutors about the topics they’ll need to cover in Ambrose’s and Penelope’s curriculum. We’ll correspond soon about announcing the engagement and planning the wedding. Meanwhile, he should spend more time at court, and Penelope will be able to assist you in running the estate.”
The music died away in the great room. My mind raced, trying to process the last few minutes of conversation.
Queen Runa lumbered to her feet and replaced the crown on her head. “Time for toasts. Come along.” When she got to the door, she turned sharply. “You do have someone tasting for him, don’t you, Myrella?”
I looked at my mother, one eyebrow raised. My valet, Gunnar, was ostensibly my taster, but I rarely bothered with the pretense at home. It didn’t seem necessary.
“Of course,” Mother said.
At the same time, I replied, “Sort of.”
The Queen closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose. “Not a drop, not a crumb passes his lips before a taster has sampled it. Not. A. Crumb. I will not lose my heir to something so easily preventable. Not after everything I’ve done to secure his place. Do you hear me?”
Mother bowed, her knees nearly dropping to the polished marble floor. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
They swept out of the chamber together, leaving me to wonder what, exactly, the Queen had contrived to make me the heir to the Alskad throne.
PART TWO (#u32bd4549-2432-517d-945f-61a820fc6dc7)
“The knotted, tangled cord that stretches between twins serves as both lifeline and tether. Your twin exists to be your counterweight, to balance you as you balance her.”
—from the Book of Rayleane, the Builder
“When my earth was rent apart by the mothers and fathers who came before, Dzallie spilled her fiery fury upon my land, already so broken by the shards of the moon. Steward this second chance well. Use and care well for my gifts, for you will find no mercy in my arms again.”
—from the Book of Tueber, the Earthbound
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u32bd4549-2432-517d-945f-61a820fc6dc7)
VI
A single day was not enough time for me to find my balance after my whole world had turned upside down. The anchorites tasked Curlin—her shaved head, seemingly ever-multiplying tattoos and newfound piety still startling, even after all this time—to be my shadow in the hours before I was to board the ship at dawn. I didn’t like to think about how they’d managed to get a captain to agree to give me passage, or what that would mean for me on the journey ahead, so instead, I focused my ire on Curlin.
I suppose the anchorites thought I might’ve tried to run, despite the fortune they’d taken from me and I from the sea. I might’ve, too—the weight of the secret pearls in the pouch around my neck whispered to me of escape, but I knew all too well how far the temple’s reach extended. How far the Suzerain could see. There was nowhere I could hide if they wanted to find me. My stash would have to go with me to Ilor.
Curlin shifted from one foot to the other in the doorway of my bedroom, her arms crossed over her chest. The new tattoo on her knuckles was red and tender-looking. Yet despite the vast chasm that’d opened between us since she’d joined the Shriven, I could still read Curlin’s face as easy as any book.
“Dzallie’s eyebrows, Curlin. Come in or don’t, but stop looming there like an ass. We’re alone now.”
Curlin made a sour face, but came in and sat on my bed. Her eyes avoided the side of the room that’d once been hers. I shoved my spare set of clothes and the few small bits and trinkets I’d collected during my childhood into an ancient bag and sat back on my heels, glaring.
“Now what?” I asked. A long day and a longer night stretched ahead of us, and I’d nothing else to occupy my time until I left to board the ship that would take me to Ilor. There was no one who’d care to hear my goodbyes, no one who’d care that I was gone. The only person in the world who’d ever given me a second thought was on the other side of the ocean.
My heart beat a little faster at the possibility of seeing Sawny again. I wouldn’t hate seeing Lily, either, though I could only imagine the look on her face. She’d thought herself rid of me, after all.
Curlin’s dark blue eyes searched my face. “There’s still time, you know.”
“Time for what?” I asked.
“Time to change your mind, idiot,” Curlin snapped. “They’d still take you. It’s not so bad. Better, at least, than what you’re walking into. Do you really want to spend the rest of your short life hauling stones until your fingers bleed or your back breaks? You’ll never make it twenty-five years. I bet you’ll hardly last one.”
I ran my hands through my still-damp hair, working out the snarls and doing my damnedest to stay calm. “Do you have no recollection at all of the promise we made?”
“Of course I do, but—”
“I’d rather die than break it,” I said, cutting her off. “I would rather die than turn into a monster like them. Like you.”
Curlin’s brows furrowed, and she set her jaw. I’d gotten under her skin. I couldn’t help but dig a little deeper.
“At least in Ilor, I’ll be near Sawny. Near someone whose word actually means something.”
“Actually,” Curlin said slyly, her voice taking on a cruel, musical edge, “you won’t. They’re sending you to the far side of the islands. They know the kind of trouble you two get into together. They’d never chance letting you see Sawny again. You don’t deserve a reward like that after what you did.”
Bile rose in my throat. There was no one in the temple who could possibly care that much about my only friendship. “Horseshit,” I said. “They’re sending me away to die quietly. Where I won’t embarrass the Suzerain when the grief breaks me.”
Curlin scoffed. “If the Suzerain knew what you’d done, that you’d stolen pearls from them, you’d be waiting for an execution block, not a ship. Count yourself lucky that the anchorites care enough to protect you. Though I’ll see Hamil dry the seas before I understand why.”
“Are you going to tell them?” My nails dug into my palms, suddenly wondering if Curlin had truly changed that much.
It would be the right thing for her to do. Her loyalty had been to the Suzerain since she’d taken her vows. There was a part of me that hoped some flicker of our friendship still warmed her, though. Just a little.
“I could. One more dimmy given over to the gods and goddesses to excise in their mercy,” she pondered, her voice icy and distant.
“Don’t talk like that,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. “We were friends once, Curlin, and you’re a gods’-cursed dimmy, too. Remember?”
“No,” Curlin said. “I’m Shriven now. Shriven of all sin. Past and present. No more rules. No more holding back. My only task is to protect the faithful. I am not cursed, but forgiven. Each time I do violence, I bask in the glory of the gods and goddesses, for I act as the arms of the Suzerain, and they are the embodiment of the gods and goddesses.”
Curlin crouched in front of me, looked me in the eyes and raked her sharpened nails across my face. Pain shot through me, and even as I forced myself not to flinch away from her, the tears that’d welled in my eyes snaked down my cheeks, mixing with my blood.
“You could have been saved, Vi. But you’re too stupid to save yourself.”
“Get. Out,” I snarled.
She smiled at me coolly. Unable to contain my fury for another moment, I spat in her face. Shock played over her features like wind over the ocean, and before I could even process what I’d done, she’d stood, lifted one booted foot and kicked me in the gut, sending me sprawling backward. Air gusted out of me. It had been a long time since someone’d caught me and given me a proper beating, but the red-hot blaze of pain was uncomfortably familiar.
She was gone, with the door slammed closed behind her, before I’d gotten my breath back.
* * *
In the gray light of the predawn, I walked the foggy streets of Penby for the last time, surrounded by the women who’d colored and shaped my childhood. Sula and Lugine flanked me on either side. Bethea walked in front, her two canes clattering on the cobblestones, and Curlin trailed behind. No one had remarked on the three slowly scabbing wounds on my cheek where Curlin’d scratched me, but I was well aware of them, especially as the icy air stung the tender skin.
I would’ve left Penby on my sixteenth birthday anyway, but instead of heading toward a freedom I’d chosen, clouded though it was with the threat of my own unstoppable violence, I trudged toward twenty-five years of hard, never-ending physical labor—and the inevitable loss of myself in a land impossibly different from the one where I’d grown up.
I knew a little about Ilor, but only what we’d been taught in our history lessons. After the moon split and the goddesses and gods rained their vengeance down on the world, little land was left habitable. The virtuous chosen who survived fled to the places not pocked by falling moon shards or covered in fiery rock spewing from the fragmented earth, splitting into three settlements.
Samiria, a distant, mountainous land, had closed themselves off from the world. Even now, everything we knew about them came through their ambassadors. Trade ships were forced to dock in their harbors and wait for the Samirians to come to them. There were rumors of magic, but, much like the stories of the amalgam, hardly anyone believed them. Denor’s people were said to have little fear of the goddesses and gods, instead living their lives guided by the murky principles of science. And in the Alskad Empire, all gray and frozen drizzle, lived the only people brave enough or stupid enough to venture out to explore and colonize the unsettled lands decimated by the rage of our goddesses and gods.
When Alskad’s explorers had harnessed the power of the sun and built the first sunships, they set off to explore the land left empty since the cataclysm. It was in these explorations that Ilor had been discovered. Its wild jungles, high mountains and deep harbors had lured some sailors to stay, and thus, the first settlement on Ilor had been born.
The crowd on the docks hushed and parted in the presence of the anchorites. The great hulking masses of the sunships, nestled into their places along the docks, took on new meaning this morning, though I’d seen them almost every day for the past ten years. We approached the ship that would take me to Ilor, its portholes like black sores lined along its lower levels. The decks that ringed its upper third were already half-full of folks flapping their handkerchiefs at the lives they’d chosen to leave behind.
Irony of all ironies, it was the Lucrecia. Tears pricked my eyes at the thought of Sawny and Lily, but I fought them back. I wouldn’t let Curlin see me cry.
“I don’t suppose I’ll see any of you again,” I said. “Let my ma and pa know what you’ve done with me, yes? And Curlin...” I smiled sweetly at her. “I hope you rot and die.”
Curlin glowered, and I could see the effort it took to keep her trap shut. She deserved it—her vindictive prying had gotten me into this mess in the first place. I’d never forgive her for that, never forgive her for becoming one of them. I was glad to be rid of her, even with the short, hellish life that was laid out before me.
Anchorite Lugine tsked at me and handed a slip of paper to the familiar uniformed woman at the end of the gangplank. I recognized her fox-collared coat and the humor crinkling the corners of her dark brown eyes. She was the same woman who’d arranged for Sawny’s and Lily’s passage to Ilor. She examined the paper and rifled through a box before handing me a ticket. She didn’t seem to recognize me, but why would she? I’d just been one in a sea of unremarkable faces she saw every day.
Lugine pulled a parcel from the pocket of her wide skirts and pressed it into my hand. “Rayleane bless you, child.”
Sula exchanged a meaningful glance with Bethea before saying, “Remember what we’ve taught you. Only devotion can save you from the burden of your diminishment.”
I did my best to keep from rolling my eyes. These women had raised me from a babe, but they’d forget me before I’d been gone a month. My ma certainly had. Da’d come to see me from time to time, plying me with sweeties when I was little. Later, after some brat had broken my nose the first time, he’d taught me how to climb walls and find hidey-holes. He’d even taught me how to throw a punch, the idiot. Not many in Alskad were stupid enough to encourage a dimmy to violence.
I shook away the thought. I didn’t want to think about Da. The man, as much as he’d tried to be kind to me, had still abandoned me to the temple. All those memories brought with them were darkness and pain. No matter how many times he’d come to see me, no matter how many times he’d told me he cared, at the end of every visit he still left me there, alone in the temple, and went back to my brothers and sisters in their warm house on the good side of the End. And not once did he hug me. Not once in all those visits had he held me close, like he did his other brats.
I was far better off without him. Without any of them.
I didn’t look back as I climbed the gangplank. Not once. Not even a glance. I’d forget them as quick as they’d push me out of their heads.
See if I don’t, I thought petulantly to Pru.
By the time I made my way to the railing on the third-class deck, the tugboats had begun to chug us out toward the open ocean, where the sunship’s sails would unfurl. The folks around me wept and laughed and talked in nervous whispers about the lives they had to look forward to in Ilor. They talked like they’d never heard about the way folks treated their contract workers. No one mentioned the temple’s demands on the folks they hired to manage contract workers like these folks, and the length those managers would go to to see those obligations fulfilled.
It was like the news hawkers on the streets of Penby never once hollered a story about rebel groups destroying crops or workers so mistreated they ran away, only to be hauled back, the terms of their contracts doubled. The world we were chugging toward wasn’t any better than the one we were leaving behind, but I understood the impulse to escape. Sawny and Lily weren’t the only folks who’d had trouble finding work in Penby. Outside fishing and shipbuilding, jobs were hard to come by. At least in Ilor there was a chance, albeit a vanishingly small one, for a person to make something of themselves. To change their station.
That chance existed for some people, anyway. But not for dimmys. Not for me.
I raised a hand to my brow to protect my eyes from the icy drizzle and watched the capital of the Alskad Empire disappear into the fog of the early summer morning.
Good riddance, I thought.
I took one last look across the frigid gray waves and spat into the water. Hoisting my bag over my shoulder, I elbowed my way through the folks peering over the railing as if they could still see their kin on the docks. I wanted to claim a bunk in the cabin where I’d sleep for the next two weeks. I didn’t plan to do much more than sleep there, though. The ship was filled with so many things I wanted to see, so many rooms and luxuries I’d only ever imagined, and I planned to savor every moment of freedom I had left. I never thought I’d get the chance to explore a sunship, much less live on one for any length of time.
Free of the crowd, I rested my bag on an empty bench, blew on my numb fingertips and tried to get my bearings. It’d gotten colder on the deck as the ship picked up speed, even in my sweaters and scarves, and I wished that I had thicker leggings and another pair of woolen socks on under my worn knee-high boots.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, miss.” The deep voice still held the nasal vowels of the End, though softened and disguised. Anyone who got out of that poor, shabby neighborhood always tried to leave it as far behind them as they could.
I assumed my most polite expression before turning around. “Yes, sir?” I asked, gray eyes wide and innocent. That look worked on all the anchorites, even Bethea, unless she was in a particularly foul mood.
“See your ticket?”
My face masked in a feigned, sweet smile, I fished the slip of paper out of my pocket and handed it over to the bald, pinch-faced man, his chapped skin red and peeling. His eyes lingered on the scratches Curlin had left on my cheek.
He scanned my ticket and his mouth twisted in a cruel smirk. “Temple worker, are you? Miss Obedience Violette Abernathy. Cabin 687. You’ll need to find E deck with the rest of the trash. Walk down there a ways, and take the staircase on the left down six flights. Follow the signs in the corridor from there.” His rough words grated on my nerves.
“Thank you, sir,” I said as politely as I could manage, heaving my bag over my shoulder.
“Where’s your twin, girl? Ought not get separated, even on the ship. It’s an easy place to get lost.” There was a dangerous glint in his pale eyes.
“I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”
I started walking toward the staircase he’d pointed out. I knew where this conversation led.
“Where’s your twin, Obedience? Mayhap you need some help finding her?” His thin screech carried over the din of the ship and the ocean beneath us.
I continued striding across the deck and fled down the stairs as soon as I reached them. I’d have to be more careful. Some people could smell dimmys from a mile away and took special pleasure in torturing us. The scratches on my face didn’t make me any less conspicuous, either.
I shuddered, remembering Gil, a little towheaded boy who’d been left on the temple doorstep when he was maybe five years old. There was a note pinned to his sweater, explaining that his twin sister had died, and his parents couldn’t be burdened with a dimmy. It wasn’t unusual; dimmys were left on the temple steps all the time. Curlin and I used to take them under our wings a bit. Us being the dimmys who’d lived in the temple longest, we knew how to skirt the rules. Make things more comfortable.
Gil’d been practically silent during the day, but every night he’d shown up in our room, asking for a story before bed. One day, early in the spring, Gil hadn’t come back from an errand. The anchorites fussed for a night or two, but after that it was like they’d forgotten him. Sawny, Curlin and I had combed the streets for days, driven by some invisible force. None of us wanted to give up on him. He was too little to fend for himself, and too sweet. I’d finally found him, shivering in an alley, covered in burns and blisters, his arms and scalp cut to ribbons.
He’d never spoken another word, and soon after, he’d tried to set the temple ablaze. The Suzerain had forced all of us temple brats to watch his execution. Curlin, Sawny, Lily and I had stood there, shivering in the first snow of the fall, our tears cutting icy paths down our cheeks, as the Shriven hauled Gil onto the platform. One of the anchorites stood behind me, hands on either side of my head, so that I wouldn’t be able to look away when the Shriven hangman tightened the noose around his slim neck. That was the day we’d sworn, on our lives, that none of us would ever become one of them. We promised not to join the Shriven, and three of us kept that promise.
The people who’d targeted Gil hadn’t been dimmys, just cruel folks who knew a lot more about hate than love.
I followed the signs through a maze of corridors, looking for my cabin. Turning on to the final hall, 680–690, I saw a young man with dark brown skin that glowed under the hall’s sunlamps leaning against the doorjamb outside what looked to be my cabin. His shoulders were broad beneath his deep purple livery. Another of the ship’s crewmen, and likely as not, this one’d hold the same prejudices as the other. I stepped quickly back around the corner, hoping he’d not spotted me.
I didn’t know if I could manage to hide myself from the ship’s entire crew for the whole of the journey. It didn’t seem possible. I gritted my teeth and tried to push down the fear, anger and exhaustion that brought tears to my eyes. I’d hardly slept the night before, and the idea of dealing with another ignorant, aggressive idiot was almost too much.
Steady me, I thought, reaching out for Pru, and strode down the hall with every bit of confidence I could muster. The young sailor straightened when he saw me, drew his hands out of his pockets for a brief bow and watched me with clear, golden brown eyes.
“May I see your ticket, please?” he asked pleasantly. His voice was warm and carried a faint lilt I didn’t recognize.
“It’s already been checked,” I said. “And you’re blocking my way. Excuse me.” I tried to shoulder past him, but the young man was all lean, hard muscle, and my head barely came to his chest.
He very gently placed his hand on my shoulder and nudged me out of the door frame, which he now fully occupied. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m required to check the tickets of everyone who’s been assigned to this room.”
A cluster of middle-aged Denorian men dressed in beautifully dyed and intricately knitted wool whispered at the end of the hall. Their broods of children swirled like storm clouds at their feet. I eyed the young man standing between me and the cramped room lined with bunks. It was empty, thank all the gods. I didn’t think I could bear to have one more person witness this exchange.
The young man’s amber eyes refused to leave mine, not even to linger on the scratches on my cheek, and I was grateful to him for that small kindness. Heat crept into my cheeks, and I could’ve kicked myself for blushing. His wide mouth seemed unable to contain its smile, and with his high cheekbones and those eyes, he was easily one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. It was a pity he was a sailor—a good-looking fellow like him could make a fair match in the city. He looked to be about the right age for marriage, perhaps five years older than me.
I glanced at the Denorians and weighed my options. The part of me that knew better than to cause a fuss outweighed the urge to run—though only because the young sailor had some of the longest legs I’d ever seen and would surely catch me before I made it back to the stairs.
I fished in my pocket and handed my ticket over. “See? 687. Now may I please pass?”
He studied the paper for a moment and handed it back to me. “Miss Abernathy, would you come with me, please?”
“Why? This is my room. Haven’t you got to check the other tickets?”
His jaw tensed and his voice softened, like he was talking to a frightened animal. “Your cabin assignment has been changed. If you’ll come with me, I’ll escort you to your new room.”
Alarms sounded in my head like the horns that blew each time some hovel in the End caught fire. I took a step back and my eyes flashed to either end of the hallway. This felt like a trap.
“I’m fine here. Promise,” I said.
“I must insist you come with me, Miss Abernathy.” He put a big hand on my shoulder, but I ducked out of his grip, thinking fast. He didn’t seem threatening, but I’d learned the hard way that looks were often deceiving. I didn’t trust anyone.
“I’d rather wait for my twin,” I lied. “Don’t want to get separated. It’s a big ship, you know.”
The young man leaned down close to me, careful not to touch me again, and whispered in my ear. “I know you’re traveling alone, and I think it’s for the best if we keep that knowledge as quiet as possible. Don’t you agree?”
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