I began to perceive the thousands of green layers of magic on my fais, interlocked into complicated knots of enchantments. I could not descry how to unlock them. As the days crawled by, the deeper became my conviction that I would never break it.
Then came the day it all changed.
o0o
It began with another scrying lesson. Jardis demanded I try for a short time at the beginning of every lesson. One day he said, “We are making more progress. Let me see if magic will break the impasse.”
I nearly passed out from the effort of holding hard to my mental wall.
He said impatiently, “This is a waste of time. Elenderi, we must experiment with veris.” And at my reaction, “You will not taste it at all. Recollect that you were given enough to dose half the palace. So, to your studies. Where from comes the Dhes in our name?”
I recited obediently, “Prince Shimosar Dhes from the West Kingdom of the Shinja Empire, in marriage treaty with Imperial Princess Dannay Andis, who became empress ten years later.”
“It is the only time we have ever crossed blood with Shinja,” Jardis said. “Though the peace treaty did not hold past the next generation, the prince embraced our civilization entirely. You will enjoy his travel journal through the empire of his day.”
He talked on, and I tried to listen, but the old dread gnawed at me with renewed fervor. I knew what would happen with the veris, and next time I would not have the relative safety of dropping unconscious from too high a dose.
When he released me I could not go escape to the town as a violent thunderstorm rattled the windows, and I could hear the distress of the birds in the aviary.
In desperation I wandered back to the music room to find Pelan there. Once again, I’d forgotten the midday trine practice hour.
Though this time it was Pelan alone. She greeted me with genuine pleasure, and when I refused to play—I could not risk having an audience to my grief if my mother was still absent, or my joy and perhaps inattention to my surroundings if she was there—Pelan leaped to the idea that I had come to listen to her. I dared not deny it.
So I sat there looking at the harp that I could not touch as she plunked her way through endless Djuran triplets. And when she was done she asked me questions about the beautiful pieces I played—would I teach her—where did I learn them.
I answered randomly, and when she begged me to give a concert I turned her down. “The Chosen despise foreign things. That means they will think foreign music uncivilized.”
“Oh, Your Imperial Serenity, I assure you they do not. Ilhas has talked much about your exquisite music, and everyone wants to hear it.”
I could not prevent a bitter laugh. “Everyone like Darus, Amney, and their followers?”
Pelan flushed. She was kindly, and even sincere, and here I was blasting her with angry sarcasm. I said, “I beg pardon. I didn’t mean to. . . .” Snarl, I wanted to say, but the closest word in Djuran was growl-of-beasts. And anything having to do with beasts was vulgar.
She lowered her gaze. “I beg you to understand that Amney is very ambitious. She . . . always got what she set her sights on.”
“What could I possibly have done to get in the way of her ambition? I scarcely ever saw her.”
Pelan’s eyes widened. “She was courting the emperor before you returned to us. She is so beautiful, so graceful. And there you were, as beautiful and graceful, some even thought you moreso. Until then, you see, she had always been first and best. And then you were granted so many private interviews with him. He used to be among us often. As now. But when you came—”
She hesitated, and I almost laughed, though it strangled in my throat. “Go on, say it. But when I came?”
“Once you arrived we never saw him, and it was said that you were granted private interviews whenever you desired.”
I nearly laughed out loud. “Is that what it looked like?” I stopped. I knew I was not being scryed, but I had no idea if Pelan’s mind might be scryed at another time. I dared not tell her the truth, that her emperor’s intent was to turn me into a fais-controlled weapon. Like a human great gryph, harnessed to his will and whim. I settled on, “My imperial interviews are magic lessons. Anyway we are related by blood.”
She lifted a shoulder, the tiny pearls in her headdress trembling on her forehead. “Only through one side, not both—that is, the imperial brothers had different mothers. One-sided cousin-aunt-uncle marriages are common in the imperial line, to keep the blood pure, though in alternating generations lest it weaken.”
“I thought he had consorts,” I said cautiously, remembering her gossip with her sister.
“Oh of course, but we are discussing imperial marriage.”
“Then there is no love in marriage?”
She gazed at me with an expression difficult to interpret. “I think—I believe—I am not certain. The ballads and even records will say different things. And I am not part of the imperial family, Your Imperial Serenity.” She bowed in place. “But it seems to me that they will take love if they can get it. There are many reasons for imperial marriages.”
I don’t know what she saw in my face, but she lowered her gaze and leaned toward me to whisper, “Our emperor at least is handsome. And fastidious. He dances and converses well, and there have been no adverse rumors about him from those he consorts with him privacy. As my mother warned me against the old emperor when I first came to court, the year before he died in the Shinjan War. He was a glutton, and. . . .” She gestured down her body, glancing away as if she couldn’t bring herself to say the word slovenly. “And cruel.”
Cruel? I thought. And you think Jardis Dhes-Andis isn’t? But hard on that thought memory intruded: me standing there looking at Darus and coming so close to obliterating him with fais “correction.” Then my angry pleasure in Jardis whacking him into extreme pain instead.
I wondered if that was how Jardis started, a childhood of angry pain, after which he became the giver. Who was going to tell an emperor it was not justified?
That made me wonder about the circumstances of Emperor Ifan’s death on some faraway island.
Pelan straightened, her voice returning to a more normal courtly cadence. “To resume. Amney would settle for no less than the triple crown, and there you were that night of your first dance, wearing an imperial courting robe.”
“I was?”
She put a finger to her lip. “The silver butterfly robe you wore.”
I remembered asking Raifas about the symbolism of butterflies, and now it registered that he had not actually answered me.
“The butterflies with long trailing trains, the silver and white—surely you knew that those butterflies signify willingness for courtship, and the silver is imperial?”
“I didn’t know that at all,” I said. “The staff gave that robe to me to wear. One said it had been left behind, or something like that. I thought it was an expensive cast-off that I ought to get use out of, considering how much labor went into it.”
“Such a robe would be cherished for generations, and only brought out for special occasions.” Her brow furrowed. “It might have been your mother’s. She lived here, you know, before she married Prince Danis and went into exile.”
“Do you know what happened?”
She looked away, and I knew before she said anything that asking about it was probably considered vulgar. Or dangerous.
“ I was born that year so I don’t know the details,” she said in a low, apologetic tone, bowing slightly in place.
“So with the butterfly robe. The servants wanted to get me into trouble by bringing up old . . . problems?”
“Oh, never. The opposite, surely—a great honor—but do you really permit them to choose your robes?”
“Most of the time. I did not grow up knowing what all the symbols mean.”
“Oh, I would be glad to tell you anything you wish to know. Though some things have changed in meaning even in the short time I have lived in Icecrest. Amney has always bee
n the leader of fashion, and. . . .”
She went on about Amney in a tone difficult for me to define. It wasn’t a malicious tone. More vindicated, somehow, which made me wonder if Amney had been the one to push Pelan to the lowest rung in their hierarchy.
At any rate, she talked about Amney, fashion, and symbols until the bell rang signifying the end of afternoon. That meant it was time to withdraw for dinner and then to get ready for that night’s dance, which Pelan was hosting with her sister.
We parted, me forcing a smile with my thanks for her enlightening talk. It was not her fault that all her words closed the prison bars around me that much tighter.
When the time came I went off to the dance.
In honor of the Union festival day, instead of relying on the magical glow globes for lighting, they had set out hundreds of candles in crystal and mirror holders. The effect was quite beautiful as we paced sedately through the Shadow Dance, no one more controlled than I, with Jardis Dhes-Andis as my partner. We touched for the first time, his hand cool, clasp brief and not at all demanding. But all I could think of was him wielding that stick so artfully until Darus collapsed to the ground.
Though nothing untoward happened that evening, Pelan’s gossip heightened my anxiety to such a pitch that I could not sleep that night. My brain prowled from one imagined horror to another; never had I felt so alone.
When I finally slipped into sleep, it was to a landscape of tumbled rock and pits of smoke with flames shooting up. The air shimmered with magical scintillation, the deep green of impending storm.
And through it glided—the Blue Lady.
Elenderi my darling, she said, holding out her hands.
Surprise—joy—sorrow rushed through me with such violence that I plunged out of the dreamscape into wakefulness, lunging upright. My hammock swayed as I gasped for breath.
And . . . of course I could not get back to sleep.
I pitched and turned, and in desperation finally slipped to the floor, but I had scarcely made it to my doorway when the duty servant appeared, her voice a little hoarse. “Your Imperial Serenity requires something?”
“I was thirsty,” I lied, and then was forced to drink water I didn’t want, fetched by someone who would rather have been sleeping. Because an imperial princess did not sneak around at night without raising question.
The next morning I hastened through breakfast in hopes I could get to the music room before being summoned to magic studies.
And when I got there, though every other instrument lay untouched, the harp was gone.
o0o
Something was wrong. I could feel it.
For the first time in days—weeks—the sun streamed through the long palace windows, illuminating the marble to warm translucence and painting the statues with a golden light that made them seem alive.
When I was summoned to the chamber of perfectly trained trees, cats, and fear, I found Jardis in a benevolent mood. “It appears,” he said, “that you have won a genuine admirer in Third-Cousin Pelan. She has arranged a surprise for you at midday seconde, so we will have to cut your lessons short as I have affairs to tend to. At midday trine you will commence attending the Chamber of Wisdom.”
“But I. . . .”
“You need not speak. Listen. Learn. That will be far more useful than your entertaining the silk-weavers down below. I understand that you enjoy practicing your magic in that way, but your future is not going to be squandered doing minor magics for those who serve.”
Another escape denied. Though the fais had never changed size, the sense that it choked me was so strong that it took all my strength not to wind my fingers in it and either yank it free or cut my fingers to ribbons.
But I didn’t. Again I gripped myself and forced my focus to the lesson of the day, which were the properties of wood. With especial reference to its destruction.
When at last the lesson was done it felt as if someone had wound a band of metal around my brow like the coronet Jardis wore, only mine was inexorably tightening.
He let me go, saying we would meet again in the Rose Chamber for Pelan’s concert. Instead of retiring for the midday meal, which I didn’t think I could eat, I could not resist making my way to the aviary.
But this time I heard a familiar voice: Darus.
“. . . Visits my Stormwing? Does she also do this with Firebird or is it only my great gryph?” he asked, his courtly cadence sharpened.
“Most Noble, her Imperial Serenity visits them all, but only to scratch their heads and pet them. If I may be permitted, they seem to favor it.”
“I am not interested in what birds think,” he retorted haughtily. “Carry on.”
I backed away and fled, hastily examining memory of my visits for any sign that could reveal my mental conversations. Sick with worry, I wondered if this was yet another thing I would be denied. But surely Darus would not go complaining to Jardis, considering what had happened.
No, it merely gave him another thing to detest me for.
I sped back to the west side of the residence floor. The music room was empty, the harp still missing.
I returned to my suite and prowled restlessly along the windows, gazing out at the sparkling sea. It hurt so badly to watch those distant waves far below, the azure water reflecting the serene blue of the sky. Serene. So many words had become tarnished: serene, civilization, order, even peace.
And yet I could not get away. To escape pain I suppressed my inner truth; I was afraid to speak as once I had done so easily; I was not smart enough, or wise enough, to see my way out of being bound in silken ribbons until Lhind was smothered to death and Princess Elenderi took her place, weapon of Sveran Djur and imperial consort of Jardis Dhes-Andis.
Because all that seemed real, that is, inescapable, was power.
My eyes burned. Midday prime had reached its second sand, and here was Kal patiently waiting for me to take the midday meal. It lay in the fine porcelain dishes, good food that was hard to come by so far into winter. Everything I liked. Probably tested against poison.
And yet my stomach had closed. My throat ached too much to swallow.
“Your Imperial Serenity I beg your forgiveness, but I must observe that you would do well to eat and regain your strength,” Kal said in a gentle tone. “Your well-being is our chief concern.”
And I was not well. But food would not fix what was wrong with me.
I shut my jaw tightly against a retort. That was another thing I hated, that furnace of anger ready to burn brightly inside me. When would I surrender and strike out because I could?
My eyes stung. I ground them against my shoulder, despising my self-pity. How useless!
I forced a couple of hazel nuts past my lips, crunched them, and got them down with a wash of water. Then I found myself up and prowling back and forth along the circle of windows in my tower dining room as I studied sky and sea, and far out beside one of the islands the white sails of a vessel, its details too distant to make out.
I wished myself aboard it with the fishers, Djuran or not, and then turned away, disgusted at the awareness that my self-pity had become maudlin.
The ting of sand trine rang. Mealtime was over. Midday seconde was nigh. Grateful for that respite, I got ready for Pelan’s concert. At least no one would attack me there.
I made my way to the room of rose marble where select concerts or readings were customarily held. And there was the harp in the center of the room.
I let out a quiet breath. I should have guessed; I was disgusted with myself. With what else was Pelan going to give a concert?
Pelan greeted me with genuine pleasure as she conducted me to the dais where two cushions sat. Then she sedately fussed over her performance cushion, the harp, and her stole until the doors opened to the hands of imperial guards and Jardis arrived, impressive in gold-embroidered black silk.
He took his seat beside me, the air stirring with a trace of his herb-scented soap. Fastidious, Pelan had said. I locked my muscles har
d against a shiver as Pelan sat to the harp, and began.
She played three complicated pieces, then was joined by Ilhas in three duets. We applauded, and I thought, a sand and a half to go before I would be expected at that Chamber of Wisdom after which more interminable courtly affairs.
But then Pelan approached me, dropped to her knees and said, “Your Imperial Serenity, here are all friends, people who appreciate music. Any kind. I ascertained that myself. I beg you to give us the same joy I tried to gift you, though I cannot play nearly as well.”
I stared at her, fury and fear boiling up with white heat to a painful degree.
“Go ahead, Elenderi. I promise, no one is here to do anything but take pleasure in whatever music you choose to give us,” Jardis said.
Witlessly I gazed at him, excuses streaming through my mind and out again. The others could not question, but he could. And every excuse would bring me perilously near my single most precious secret. Because my mother had not abandoned me, however brief was our contact.
That reminder steadied me enough to enable me to rise and take my place at the harp. I had to trust that if she was there again she would understand why I must shut her out quickly.
I sat, pulled the harp to me, touched the strings, and out came music.
And there she was.
Fear lanced through me and I prepared to shut her out, but she, experienced at a lifetime of communication in the realm of the mind, saw in a flash what I could not tell her and arrowed a single thought to me: Be ready: He comes.
Then she was gone.
He? Who was that? I nearly opened my mind again, but I had to look Jardis’s way, and caught that watchful gaze that always flared through my nerves. He couldn’t have seen anything wrong. My eyes had been closed no more than two breaths. What was I playing? I had fallen into a habit of letting the music guide my hands without my hearing myself as I listened in the mental realm.