Sunshield

by Emily B. Martin

  “No, by all means, don’t let me interrupt you. I’ll be gone in a moment. It’s just my silly foot.”

  Her gaze drops to my feet and the line of angry red sores along the knuckles of my toes.

  “If it would be convenient for you, lord, I have some lengths of clean linen that could serve you for bandages,” she says.

  “Oh . . . well, yes, actually, I would very much appreciate it.”

  With movements small and subtle, as if used to remaining unnoticed, she sets down her brush and pan. Out of the shadow of the pedestal, I can see her more clearly—a kind-faced woman perhaps three decades my senior wearing the all-black attire of the palace servants. She comes around the bench and kneels down in front of me, drawing a few cloths from her apron pocket. I reach to take them from her, but she either doesn’t see my hand or ignores it. She starts to wrap my right foot in linen.

  “Thank you,” I say, embarrassed.

  “I will have the valets request a more proper fit for you,” she says, looping the cloth around my foot. “You will need sturdy shoes to dance at the Bakkonso Ball next week.”

  “I’m afraid it’s my feet, not the shoes,” I say with false cheer. “Where I come from, we only wear soft soles. I have no skill with wooden heels.”

  She finishes wrapping my foot. Peeking from one of her long sleeves is a si-oque—rather than the flashy metal bracelets of most of the court, hers is brown hemp corded through a string of colored glass beads, each a different color. It’s the first time I’ve seen a commoner’s si bracelet.

  “Why are there so many colors on your si-oque?” I ask without thinking.

  She pauses and glances up at me, and then down at her bracelet. Hurriedly she tucks it back under the hem of her black sleeve. “I have no children to pass them on to.”

  “Pass them on?” I strain my thoughts back for recollection on this practice—some countries back east pass on hereditary names, like Lumen Lake and Cyprien, but I thought the Moquoians were like my folk, taking their epithets independently.

  She looks up at me again. Her lined brown eyes are crinkled with suppressed—perhaps sly—amusement. It’s not an unkind expression, but I realize I’ve betrayed my foreignness, if my accent and appearance hadn’t already done the trick.

  “You are one of the Eastern ambassadors?” she asks.

  I nod in concession. “Yes—I’m the translator for Ambassador Rou and Princess Eloise. My name is Veran. What’s your name?”

  “It’s Fala, lord.” Swiftly, she hooks the hem of her sleeve back again to show me her si-oque. With a better look, I see eight small irregular beads, each flawed with bubbles and scratches. The dye in one didn’t mix all the way, creating a green streak through the clear glass. One is little more than a chip, and so worn I can’t tell the color.

  “Common folk have no title,” Fala explains. “The ability to take a si is either inherited, or granted by the king or queen. We are generally given a color by our family based on anything—the si we were born, an ancestor’s wishes, a favorite color.” She touches a faded violet bead at the end of the bracelet. “I was a sweet child, and so my mother gave me quahansi, the color of kindness. But it’s not a title, and it has none of the weight of an official si. Merely a childhood token.” She runs her finger across the beads to the far end, to the scuffed, colorless chip. “They’re passed on to be worn by children, but as I said . . .” She gives the tiniest of shrugs and pulls her sleeve back down.

  “You don’t have any other family?” I ask.

  “None,” she replies, going back to the bandages. “My work has always come first, I’m afraid.”

  “What do you do here?”

  “I am the head of palace staff,” she says. “Interiors, grounds, gardens, kitchens, and utilities. This room is normally cleaned at night, but I am short-staffed at the moment—” She cuts herself off, as if realizing she’s about to reveal some kind of defect to me.

  “Because of the fever?” I ask.

  She draws in a breath. “It is of no importance.”

  But she’s the first person I’ve been able to talk to about what goes on behind the veneer of the court, and I don’t want her to close down. “I find the work you do fascinating—it must be quite an operation to keep this palace as orderly as it is. I’ve never been in a place so well-kept.”

  “You’re very kind,” she murmurs. She makes a small, sympathetic noise at the state of my left foot, arranging and rearranging the linen.

  I look up toward the stage. I wasn’t paying attention to Queen Isme’s words, but now she’s gesturing to Iano to join her. I should hurry and try to find Eloise and Rou before the announcement is made, but there’s no way I can re-join the throng unobtrusively now. Besides, I want to keep talking to Fala. Perhaps she’ll be more forthcoming than the politicians in court.

  “May I ask you a question, Fala?”

  “I am at your service, lord.”

  “Princess Eloise and I corresponded with Prince Iano over the past year, and in his letters he seemed pleased that we were coming, and happy to discuss his agenda with us. But since we arrived, he has barely wanted to speak to us at all. Do you have any idea why that is?”

  Her face is bent toward my foot, so I can’t see her expression, but her shoulders take on a hint of tension. “I am sure I don’t know, lord.”

  “Nothing at all? Did something happen recently? His father passed away last year, didn’t he?”

  “A year and a half ago, rest him.”

  I thought as much—we offered him condolences in some of our earliest letters, and even then he seemed ready to discuss policy. “What could it be?” I ask. “Is he ill? Are we appearing too agga . . . acca . . . aggressive?”

  She shakes her head despite my fumble. “While I can only make guesses, lord, I expect the transitioning of the ashoki has been very trying for him.”

  “Oh, is that all?” I ask, before realizing it came out wrong. “That is, I know it is an important office, but what makes the transition so difficult? What happened to the last one? Did they . . .”

  I rack my brain for the word retire, but before I can recall the translation, Fala sighs. “Yes, may she rest in the Colors.”

  My brain stumbles over the implication. “Oh, she—she died?”

  “Yes, indeed.” She gestures around us at the darkened hall. “There’s always a difficult mourning period after an ashoki dies. Your arrival has come at a bleak time for us.”

  “I had no idea,” I say, filing the information away. Rou and Eloise need to hear this—nobody in court has seemed particularly bleak except Iano. All the talk has been about the selection of the new ashoki, not the fate of the old one, so none of us had stopped to wonder if something might be amiss. I gesture to the empty pedestal. “Is that where her statue will go?”

  “Yes,” she says. “It should have been here by now, but there’s been some delay with the order. A disagreement, I believe, on the text to be placed on the stone. She had highly . . . irregular views, many would say.”

  “Did she? How so?”

  But she bows her head farther, busying herself with the linen. “It’s not my place to gossip. Speculating about the past hardly has its place today. The beginning of an ashoki’s career is a momentous occasion for all Moquoians.”

  “Will it affect your workforce?” I ask, leaning forward slightly. “If someone with more traditional politics is appointed—someone who wants to preserve bond labor—will it affect your staff?”

  She takes a breath, and I realize she’s been unwrapping and rewrapping the arch of my foot, as if she can’t get it right. She shakes her head. “It is not for me to comment on, lord.”

  “I understand, and I don’t want you to get in trouble, but, Mistress Fala—Ambassador Rou and the princess . . . we are trying to work with Prince Iano to phase out indentured service and bond labor. Would you consider speaking with us—speaking with my ambassador—to give us better insight on how it might affect—”


  A sudden hush falls so quickly and absolutely over the gathered crowd that I bite off my next words. I look over Fala’s head to the stage, where Prince Iano is standing rigidly in the harsh limelight. The crowd seems to lean forward as one. Along the left side, I spy Eloise’s cascading curls as she tilts her head closer to her father’s. Fala’s fingers slow on the linen. I find myself wrapped up in the tension of the moment, straining not to miss Iano’s words.

  I shouldn’t have worried. His voice is clear and firm, and sharp as the decorative rapier at his side.

  “Your one hundred and twenty-ninth ashoki,” he says, “appointed on this the first day of Mokonnsi by Prince Iano Okinot in-Azure, is Kimela Novarni in-Chartreuse.”

  A rumble breaks through the crowd like a wave, voices gasping and exclaiming and murmuring all together. Through the commotion, Eloise and Rou look at each other. My eyebrows shoot skyward. Kimela? From the wings comes a stately woman in turquoise silk so vivid it’s nearly green, clutching a golden harp. She offers a deep curtsy first to Queen Isme, then to Prince Iano, and then to the court, buoyed by applause.

  Queen Isme gestures delightedly at the crowd, calling over the din, “Kimela will make her debut as your ashoki on the day of my son’s coronation, in one month’s time. May her words speak truth to his reign!”

  I don’t understand. Everything I’ve heard about Kimela suggests she’s one of the old guard, wedded to the antiquated ways of the country, where labor is based on slavery and industry on resource depletion. I look to Iano—he’s standing to the side, so stiff I expect one knock would keel him over. What happened to all the things he wrote out in our letters? All the timelines for transitioning the workforce, all the steps to leasing the sand quarries from Alcoro, all the budgeting for building the Ferinno Road? Up until now I was willing to believe Rou, Eloise, and I were just hitting the wrong notes, that we’d eventually arrive at the same page as he. But this—this is massive. A lifetime appointment for the most significant political post in the country, and it goes against everything we agreed to?

  Who is this Iano?

  Fala’s hands are still. I glance down to see her staring into the middle distance, her face unreadable. She must sense my gaze, though, because hurriedly she finishes wrapping the linen up my ankle—with far less fuss than a moment ago—and ties it off.

  “Mistress Fala,” I say. “What does this mean for you?”

  She rises from her knees and begins to stand. I offer her my hand, but she doesn’t take it.

  “I am grateful for the wisdom of our prince,” she says simply.

  “But . . . for it to be Kimela, from all I’ve heard . . .” I trail off at the way her face closes warily. “I understand if you don’t feel comfortable talking to me, here and now, but if Princess Eloise were to ask, if Ambassador Rou were to ask, in all confidentiality, only to make more informed decisions . . .”

  “Prince Veran Greenbrier,” she says, and I stop in surprise. I never told her my epithet or my official title, but in the next moment I realize that as head of staff, she likely knows much more. I was silly to think I was introducing myself to her for the first time. She probably knows all about my soft-soled boots, the books on my bedside table, how I take my tea.

  She probably knows everything.

  She takes a breath and lowers her eyes to her folded hands. “Please, Prince Veran, what is done is done. Ashoki is a lifetime position, one that cannot be taken away. And if you do not wish to jeopardize your stay here, I implore you not to fret about the intricacies of this court. It will endure.”

  I lean forward, trying to see her face more fully. “What do you mean by that, Fala? What’s going on?”

  But she only shakes her head and steps away, circling back around the bench to retrieve her dustpan and brush. I rotate on the bench to follow her path.

  She offers me a deep bow. “It was an honor to meet you, Prince Veran. And I am glad you are here to witness such a historic occasion. If you want to know Moquoia—truly know it, at our heart—there’s no truer place than in the words of the ashoki.”

  Before I can respond, she straightens and hurries into the shadows at the back of the hall. She presses a wall panel to reveal a hidden service door and disappears through it.

  Slowly, bracing my bandaged feet against the floor, I turn to the pedestal. All the other statues have words carved at their bases, but Fala said there had been a disagreement about the text for the past ashoki. I pinch the edge of the black cloth and lift it—sure enough, the marble is smooth and unmarked.

  I drop the cloth and look back over the glimmering hall. The court is breaking up, some pressing toward the stage, some cloistering together to discuss the announcement among themselves. Minister Kobok is shaking hands in a circle of his peers, looking smug. Eloise is in deep discussion with Rou, her brow creased. She lifts her head and finds me across the room, and I can read the same anxiety on her face that’s now gnawing at me.

  Our work just got much, much harder.

  Lark

  The thunderhead builds behind me, sending its snarls and rumbles out over the sagebrush flats and broken rock arches. I breathe deeply from Jema’s back, relishing the cool blue feel of the air. I need rain. The desert always needs rain, but these past few days, in particular, I especially need the rain. I need it to rinse the mats from Rat’s fur and replenish the water pocket in Three Lines. I need it to flush out creatures from their dens, to draw them down to my deadfall traps. I need it to bring a bloom to the yellow lilies and yampa so I can dig up their bulby roots without crawling around the rocks trying to guess if a certain weed is poisonous or not.

  But I need the rain for myself, too.

  The anticipation of a good thing is always better than actually having the good thing, because good things never last. Soft blankets get gritty and threadbare. Fresh cornbread goes hard and stale if it’s not eaten quick enough. And the rain-washed desert dries up all too fast, the sudden blossoms and rushing gullies giving way back to tough plant flesh and cracked earth.

  No, give me the expectation of a thunderstorm over its aftermath any day. At least when it ends, it ends in the actual event, rather than the memory of the event.

  I whistle to Rat, who has paused to sniff out some creature denning under a dead sagebrush. His head pops up, his big ears pivoted forward.

  “Come on, dummy,” I call. “Let’s get into town before we start getting ground strikes.”

  He lopes over the rocky ground, and I nudge Jema down to the dirt track leading into Snaketown. It’s a three-hour ride from camp, but I took the long way along the river to take advantage of the cattails, and it’s already late afternoon. I’ve developed a healthy appreciation for cattails—Rose and I learned to collect the roots, shoots, and seed heads back with the rustlers. Cook used to send us into the streams to gather the heads for boiling and the roots for mashing into starch to bake into biscuits. It was one of the few chores I enjoyed, relishing the freedom to splash along the muddy banks and sit in the water to wash off the roots.

  Unfortunately, we’re too late in the season for the heads to be green, and the shoots are now too tough to be tasty. But I gathered a pouch full of the fine yellow pollen that grows on the spikes of the plant—we’ll be able to mix it with the sack of cornmeal I plan to buy in Snaketown to make it stretch further.

  The first raindrops begin to fall as the ramshackle town comes into view over the rise. Snaketown is a dusty little outpost, hardly more than a single street and a collection of scattered homesteads. It was a miners’ town back in the day, but when the mines closed it came to rely on a handful of ranchers and those desperate enough to take the stage farther into the desert. The splintery wooden buildings creak in the wind gusting from the thunderhead. I urge Jema toward Patzo’s general store, the shabby red paint darkened by streaks of rain.

  Patzo knows I’m the Sunshield Bandit—it’s hard to keep your identity a secret when you match all the descriptions frightened travelers bring in fr
om the road—but he had a nephew abducted by slavers a few years ago, and he’s always turned a blind eye to me coming in for supplies as long as I have coin to pay for it. Besides that, I’m good for business—the travelers I rob inevitably have to replace their wares from Patzo’s store, and I spend all the money I win back in town anyway. I’d like to think I keep Snaketown on the map.

  Still, it’s always smart to maintain a low profile. I toss a glance at the sheriff’s office down the street. She always mysteriously has piles of paperwork that keep her inside when I come into town, but there’s no need to push my luck.

  My poking through the cattails earlier today means I’ll be spending the night, but I don’t mind—sometimes Patzo will let me split wood for a hot meal and a bed in the storage room. Mm—just think about it, a full belly and a roof echoing with the drumming of rain . . . it’s almost too delicious to dwell on.

  Yes, give me the anticipation of something good any day.

  By the time I rein Jema to a halt in front of the general store, my clothes are drenched. I swing from the saddle and rope Jema’s lead to the hitching post. Shaking the rain from my hat, I tell Rat to stay under the porch he’s ducked beneath, and I head into the store.

  Patzo’s helping someone at the counter, a burly lady in a dark cloak, with a strip of blue fabric wound around her head as an eyepatch. Her hands wave agitatedly as she talks, but in the few moments they’re still, I can make out the discolored pox scars stippling her skin, like Pickle’s. She’s arguing about the mail in Eastern blurred with a heavy Moquoian accent, trying to make Patzo promise the stage will reach Tolukum on an exact day. He’s doing an admirable job in keeping his manners—if it were me, I’d just laugh in her face. You want something delivered on a specific day, you’re better off making the trip yourself rather than relying on the overland stage.

  I head to the medicine cabinet to start strategizing my purchases. The stock boy is unloading crates of castor oil—he looks me up and down with wide eyes. I gift him an eagle-eyed glare, and he scampers clear into the back room.