Sunshield

by Emily B. Martin

  I remain in my silent, supine position until I hear her footsteps fade away. Only then do I carefully roll onto my side and push myself into a sitting position. The pain in my head spikes, and I let it hang for a moment—it feels like a rock on my neck, solid. Once the throbbing has subsided, I scoot to the bowl. Inwardly I curse my captors. The corn mush is undoubtedly salted—I haven’t been able to tell if it’s extra spite or if they’re too thick to consider the sting of salt in a wound.

  But I’m hungry.

  Silently, slowly, I raise my fist to the door and hook my pinkie finger at the empty barred window, the rude gesture learned from the streets of Tolukum and subsequently unlearned in more genteel company. It feels good to flaunt it now after so long kept primly discreet. I hold it there as I scoop a spoonful of mush and eat.

  Veran

  Dear Veran,

  I’m writing to tell you that our stage was waylaid outside Snaketown by bandits on the first of July. Don’t panic. We all made it through just fine, though I lost a few pairs of shoes. I am back in Callais now in time for classes—I will merely be showing up to my first one in slippers. Don’t tell Gemma.

  Here’s the real bit of news—it was the Sunshield Bandit and several associates who stopped us. I’d suggest you not share this in conversation. I know there are those in both Moquoia and Alcoro who would very much like to get their hands on her—perhaps folk who aren’t far away from the top rungs of society, even among the allies you all will be trying to make. The trafficking business is driven by wealth and power, and despite the fact that the Sunshield Bandit did indeed rob me of everything of monetary value, I’d rather she be allowed to continue her work.

  I did find out one significant thing—her name. It’s Lark. If she has a surname, I didn’t hear it. Again, don’t share this information. But you know how dear the case of missing captives is to us. If the Sunshield Bandit has a camp full of recovered slaves, there is a possibility that Moira Alastaire is among them, or that she knows where she might be. It’s a long shot—Moira would be an adult now, if she’s still alive. But all the same, it’s as much of a lead as we’ve had for the past fifteen years.

  I am not sharing the news with Mona yet, and I’d encourage you not to share it with Rou or Eloise, either. I’ve written them a separate letter without this little detail. I don’t want to give them false hope when it could all turn out to be nothing, and I don’t want to crack open that vault of old grief with so many other pressing matters at hand. But I am telling you. Keep your ear to the ground. Maybe amid all the other talk you’ll hear something.

  We’re thinking of you here. Take care of yourself. Write to your parents. I already have four letters on my desk from your mother demanding news of our trip.

  Wishing you well,

  Colm

  I lower the letter and lean against the rain-streaked glass, gazing absently over the waving treetops. Professor Colm waylaid by bandits . . . I’d been gnawing on this possibility from the moment we parted ways in Pasul. The Ferinno Desert has become an insanely dangerous place to travel, and I worried about him making the return trip without the caravan we journeyed with back in June. He had assured me the smaller numbers meant they’d travel through the worst country at greater speed.

  Liar.

  A sharp rap comes from my parlor door, and without waiting for an answer, it’s thrown open. I stuff the letter in my jacket pocket.

  “Veran!” Eloise calls. “Are you decent? Even if you’re not, you’d better come on—we’re late!”

  I stand from the window. “That’s an interesting suggestion—which do you think would be worse, appearing in court wearing the wrong color, or appearing in court naked?”

  “I’m willing to bet color. You are wearing turquoise, aren’t you?” She steps around the door and sighs in relief at my silk jacket and trousers. The Moquoians observe twelve months like we do back east, but more important than the season is the corresponding si—twelve distinct colors, not seven. With the first day of August, we’ve transitioned from green to turquoise, and heavens forbid one appear in the wrong colors on the first day of the si. Eloise is in a long gown the color of a Paroan lagoon. Her dark brown corkscrew curls are piled on top of her head and secured with strings of opals.

  She spreads her arms. “What are you doing? We should be downstairs by now—Papa’s already there.”

  “I was . . .” I recall Colm’s words not to share the news about the attack with Eloise or her father. I gesture to the wooden box on the coffee table, the linen inside askew. “I was just working up the fortitude to put on the shoes.”

  She tsks in annoyance. “I’m sorry, Veran—I know they hurt your feet, but we really don’t have time.”

  Hurt your feet is an understatement. I’ve worn my fair share of foreign wardrobes, but not once have I ever had to trade out my soft-soled leather boots. Even at the University of Alcoro, Silvern students are allowed to wear our native boots, as long as there aren’t bells on the fringe. But here in Moquoia, men wear breathlessly tight silk breeches, fastened with large, jeweled buttons up the calves. It was a shock, that first day we arrived in court, when I realized my boots wouldn’t fit over the embellishments. In their place, the stiff, hobnailed slippers don’t so much blister my feet as eat them away one layer of skin at a time. Almost four weeks into our diplomatic trip, and I’m still no better at walking in them than day one.

  Eloise removes the shoes from their wrappings and holds them out. “Come on—once we get downstairs, you can sit, but we need to go.”

  Biting back my dread, I set the shoes down and slide my battered feet into them. Pain spikes in the blisters along the pads of my toes. Eloise picks up the jeweled wooden walking cane fashionable with young Moquoian men and hands it to me. Shifting my weight to my heels, I plant the cane on the floor and rise. Eloise nods in satisfaction and turns for the door. I wobble gracelessly after her and out into the hall.

  The first impact of my heels on the hardwood floor sounds like a clap of thunder. I hurry after her, my collar hot, almost reluctant to use the cane and add a third clack to the cacophony. I think of my mama’s forest scouts—in order to earn the rank of Woodwalker, they have to be able to tread past a series of blindfolded sentries so quietly as to escape detection, all while carrying a forty-pound pack. I, at the moment, sound like a drunken elk on cobblestones.

  We pass into the atrium at the end of the hall. Like the other windows in the palace, the ceiling is constructed from absolutely massive panels of glass—Moquoia’s primary industry and probably the single greatest feat of manufacturing of our age. I still haven’t gotten over my awe at the soaring panes, the biggest three times my height and half that across. Water runs down them in rivers, muddling the view of the stormy sky and tangled forests rolling away from the palace.

  “I wonder if we’re ever going to get a tour of the grounds beyond the palace,” I say, straining to see past the streaming rain. I want so desperately to get out into those forests, to see more of the giant maples shaggy with moss and the bracken ferns dense enough to swallow a coach. I want to travel south along the coastline and see the fabled redwoods, trees that I’ve heard surpass even the grandmother chestnuts back home in height and girth. We only caught distant glimpses of the groves as we traveled to Tolukum, and since we arrived, we haven’t left the palace once.

  “Probably not with that fever on the rise,” Eloise says. “Everyone’s been so anxious about venturing outside for too long.”

  I frown, remembering all the dire warnings about rainshed fever we received when we first arrived. Keep all windows closed, they told us. Sleep in long sleeves. If you must go out, wear lemon balm or cedar oil. The illness is apparently carried by mosquitoes, which thrive in the humid forests, and as such—even on rare days when there’s a break in the rain—the palace has remained sealed tight as a bubble. It makes me feel like a goldfish turning circles in a bowl.

  “I still don’t understand why the fever is so bad h
ere in Tolukum, when we barely heard about it in the towns we passed through on the way here,” I say. “The environment along the coach road was no different from here, but we saw plenty of open windows and folk moving about.”

  “Well, it’s a curiosity we probably won’t have time to investigate,” Eloise says, picking up her hem in anticipation of the approaching staircase. “We’re not here to sightsee in the countryside. If we are able to secure any kind of outing, it should be to the sand quarries and glass forges—they’re the main thing this alliance is hinging on. In fact, I hear Minister Kobok is back from his tour of the glassmaking factories. We should try to schedule an appointment. Can you take the stairs?”

  My collar heats more. “Yes.”

  She starts down the sweeping staircase, her shoes barely clipping against each step. I clamp my hand on the railing and follow, my own heels cracking like a smith’s hammer.

  “At least we get a taste of the forests inside,” she says, gesturing into the open space on either side of the staircase, where we’re almost instantly surrounded by living branches. Trees planted inside—another astounding facet of Tolukum Palace. Their crowns reach up toward the glass ceiling; their roots are buried five floors below, flanked by tiled pathways, carved fountains, and vibrant flower beds.

  “These forests aren’t real,” I say, the pain in my feet making me irritable. “They’re just a show—all make-believe. The trees may be alive, but I haven’t seen a single brown leaf or bent twig in four weeks. No worms in the soil, no pollinators on the flowers. They must have an army of servants just to groom everything to perfection.”

  “Veran . . .”

  “Have you noticed—they don’t even take the folk names, like we do. We’ve always called them Tree-folk, because of the redwoods, and the northern rainforests, but they consider that archaic, like they don’t even care about the forests at all—”

  Eloise stops on the landing so suddenly I run into her. I splay my cane out to keep from falling. She turns to me, her usually cheerful face arranged into displeasure. She purses her lips—she looks startlingly like her mother when she does that.

  “Oh,” I say, realizing what I’d just said.

  “Veran . . .” she says again.

  “I’m sorry,” I say quickly, embarrassed. “That was rude of me.”

  “Yes. It’s just . . . I know Moquoia is different from the Silverwood—in a lot of ways—but you can’t let it affect your respect for the people in court.” She looks out at the cedar trees, their needles immobile in the enclosed air. “Do you remember what Uncle Colm always said at the beginning of each semester?”

  Do I. His was my very first class at the university, and those introductory words became the undercurrent for my studies from there on out. I can hear him now, plain as that day.

  “Ethnocentric bias,” he said.

  The scent of evergreen and the drumming of rain on glass give way to memories of cool adobe and dry, sunny skies.

  “Ethnocentric bias. Cultural supremacy,” Colm said, standing in front of a massive map, his gray university bolero piped with the same blue as the illustration of Lumen Lake. “Everyone has a lens through which they view the world, and the inherent urge to classify everything within your lens as right and everything else as wrong is the most basic and fundamental error you can make. The notion of cultural supremacy ruins the scholar’s ability to adapt to new ideas, to work collaboratively, and to create peaceful relationships. Never allow yourself to devolve into a dichotomy of right and wrong, of normal and not normal. This is the most important thing you can learn from me.”

  None of his students would dare challenge the validity of that statement. We’d heard the stories, we’d read the history accounts. He was in many of the history accounts, along with his wife, Gemma, the provost of the university and Last Queen of Alcoro. To a group of starry-eyed freshies, they were living legends. To me, the awe always went a step further. A mention of Colm’s name is usually never far away from his sister Mona’s, queen of Lumen Lake, or Rou’s, her husband and international ambassador . . . or my own parents’, king and queen of the Silverwood Mountains.

  The familiar weight of all their names, titles, accolades, and accomplishments settles over me like a blanket, stifling my breath.

  So much is riding on us not screwing up. On me not screwing up.

  “Sorry,” I say again. “I wasn’t thinking. I’ll be more respectful.”

  “I know the Moquoians manage their forests differently than your folk do,” she says. “And don’t get me started on their trade records—my mother would have a fit. But it’s not necessarily wrong, Veran—just different.”

  “Ethnocentric bias.”

  “Right.” She nods down the next staircase, and we keep going. Clip clop, clip clop.

  Four flights later, we reach the main landing and the roots of the cedars. The shade would be nearly impenetrable if not for the galaxy of lanterns hanging along the path. Glowing sconces illuminate ornate wooden planters—until yesterday they had been filled with thick green ferns and hostas. This morning they’re overflowing with cascades of teal-tinted orchids. The palace must have been an absolute anthill last night—all the green draperies swapped out for turquoise ones, the gardens replanted, the colored lanterns replaced. Despite this, I can’t help but notice that we’ve hardly seen any servants beyond the ones who bring us our meals. It’s another strange anomaly I can’t quite wrap my head around.

  Ethnocentric bias, Colm whispers.

  Standing in the light of the closest constellation of lanterns, studying a creased sheet of parchment, is Eloise’s father, Ambassador Rou Alastaire. At the first clap of my hobnails on the hardwood floor, he looks up.

  “By the Light, it’s about time—I thought I’d have to come hunt you down.” He kisses Eloise’s forehead. “You look perfect, lolly, and you’re not half bad yourself, Veran. We’ll have to commission a portrait before we leave, or your ma will never believe it.”

  I gesture to his wardrobe, a Cypri-style vest and loose trousers. “How come you’re not in Moquoian dress?”

  He pats the wide sash around his waist, the same teal as his ascot. “I’m the old, out-of-touch ambassador, so I get to pass off my outlandish—but ultimately harmless—cultural practices as charming eccentricity. But you two are the young, trendy liaisons who are up on all the latest court fashions.”

  “You just don’t like wearing the pants,” I accuse.

  “I hate wearing the pants,” he agrees. “And nobody wants to see me in them, anyway. Maybe twenty years ago, when I was a handsome stripling like you, but not now.”

  Eloise groans and passes a hand over her eyes. “By the Light, Papa.”

  He grins and offers her his arm. “Now come on—they’ll be starting soon, and I need to brush up on my terminology before I cause another international incident.” Rou has a passing grasp on the Moquoian language, but his accent is absolutely terrible, and he has difficulty with a few important inflections. Eloise is better, but not fluent—which is why I’m here. Rou nods at me. “Say the name of the month for me again?”

  “Mokonnsi,” I say as we start down the path. “Keep the k in the back of your throat, otherwise it means garbage.”

  “Right. And the color is turquoise, not green like last month, and the meaning is—serenity.”

  “That’s Bakksi, Papa—October,” Eloise says. “Mokonnsi celebrates friendship.”

  “Correct,” he says, ducking under a lantern hanging too low in the path. “I was testing you.”

  Eloise sighs and catches me chuckling. “Of course you were. Do you need to test me on what this morning’s ceremony is all about?”

  “I’m offended, lolly,” he says with exaggerated affront. “Of all people to know about court jesters, none should be more well versed than your father. Ambassador was always my second career choice.”

  “I hope you haven’t referred to the ashoki as court jesters,” Eloise says. “They’re more like sto
rytellers.”

  “The closest translation is actually truth teller,” I say. “Sort of a cross between a jester and a bard. From what I’ve read, they’re the only ones who can publicly poke fun at politics, the monarchy, the court—they’re sort of a catharsis for everybody.”

  “And today Prince Iano names a new one,” Rou says, grinning at our hurried efforts to correct him. “I know. This is an important day—we might be the first Easterners to witness the start of an ashoki’s career. By my understanding, an effective ashoki can alter the entire political climate of the court. We should hope whoever is appointed is in favor of our work in the Ferinno. Speaking of.” Rou gestures to the folded parchment in his free hand. “We got a letter from your uncle Colm this morning. He was attacked by bandits outside Snaketown.”

  Eloise gasps, whipping her head to her father. “Is he all right?”

  “It sounds like he was just robbed, and not hurt,” I say absent-mindedly, distracted by a tiled pool filled with wending fish—dyed a startling shade of teal. They dye their fish.

  “How do you know?” Rou asks in surprise. “That is—you’re right, but how did you know?”

  I jerk my gaze away from the pool. Well, that was hardly discreet. Both he and Eloise are looking at me, confused. “Uh . . . he . . . he sent me a letter, too. Just to say . . . that I should write to my parents.” I shrug. “You know, updating me on what’s happening at home.”

  “What’s happening at home?” Eloise asks.

  “Nothing.” I instantly flush at the stupid comment, realizing I should have made up something harmless. “But uh . . . about Colm.”

  Eloise fortunately shifts her focus back to her father. “Yes, about Uncle Colm. Is he really all right?”

  “The two guards came away with some injuries, but either Colm came away unhurt or he’s purposefully not telling us.” We round a bend in the path, and golden lamplight shines in slices through the dark cedar trunks. The buzz of voices filters toward us. “I’m wondering if I can get in touch with the coach driver—I’d be highly interested to know who waylaid them.”