“You will have every comfort,” Valus said. “Don’t hesitate to signal if you need anything.” He nodded at a rope hanging near the door. “The guards, of course, will see that you are kept safe.”
Ah. A warning. I was still to be locked in.
“When will I see you again?” I asked, playing my part in this maddening, baffling game he was perpetuating.
He turned startled eyes on me, and then he smiled with half his mouth.
“We dine with my father. I’ll see you then, Angelfish.”
He bent and brushed a kiss across my cheek. The touch of his mouth stung me, and I stood stunned as he retreated, leaving me alone.
~ ~ ~
I searched the room, and found no way out besides the door that was currently guarded by two men with spears. I did discover a few jeweled hairpins with sharp edges, and I kept them in case I needed something to defend myself with.
Servants arrived after I’d been alone for a few hours, two women with large, dark eyes and quiet, furtive movements. They moved in tandem, as if long used to serving together.
“My lady,” the taller one said. “We are here to help you prepare for dinner with the governor. Have you bathed yet?”
“No,” I said, eyeing them. What information might they have to give me? I didn’t need any help, but I wanted to talk to them. “Can you assist me?”
“Of course,” she said. Her eyes slid away from mine, avoiding contact as she headed for the bathing room with the tub, and her companion drew a black tunic from a wardrobe and laid it on the bed.
“Why are there no windows through which to see the sea?” I asked.
The shorter woman paused from straightening the tunic. “The pressure of the water, my lady.”
“But the ceiling...”
“The glass is merely decorative. The light behind it comes from lamps. The sea outside is black.”
“Oh.” A crushing sensation crept over me. I rubbed my arms.
“My lady,” the taller woman said, appearing in the doorway. “The bath is drawn.”
“What are your names?” I asked.
“I am Nona,” she said. “That is Tallia.” She gestured to the shorter woman.
“I’m Aemiana Graywater,” I said, speaking the name clearly and firmly.
They both stilled, and Nona’s eyes met mine before she remembered herself and averted them again.
They knew the name; that much was obvious.
Nona recovered quickly, though, and led me to the bath. I slid into the steaming water, and she scrubbed my hair with soap that smelled like milk, her fingers working quickly over my scalp
“The water is heated from the volcano,” she said. She sounded a little breathless. “Is it comfortable, my lady?”
“It is.”
“It probably isn’t what a gilder is used to,” she continued.
“A gilder?”
Nona paused. “It is a word we use for someone from the other cities.”
“Oh,” I said. Did they make such a distinction here on Volcanus? “Why do you call them gilders?”
“Because everything is gilded up there,” Tallia said. She spoke quickly, her words sharp and tense.
Nona rinsed my hair. The room was silent except for the splash of the water.
“Are you Indentureds?” I asked.
“No one is Indentured here,” Tallia said. “We’re all just workers. We were born here. We will die here.”
Kindling, Keli had said. I winced.
“I was an Indentured once,” I said.
“You?” Tallia sounded surprised in spite of herself. I’d caught her off guard with my words.
“On Celestrus, before it was revealed that I was a Graywater.”
The water rippled as Nona dipped her hands in it to rinse off the soap. I felt chilled despite the warmth.
Nona said carefully, “Is it true that you... that you’ve seen the sun? We’ve heard—”
“Nona,” Tallia said sharply.
I sat up and turned to them both. “It’s true,” I said. “I lived on the surface since I was a child, and I played in the sun every day.”
Nona nodded, but Tallia said nothing, her lips pressing together. Did she believe me?
“The sun is so yellow and bright that you can’t look at it directly, or your eyes will hurt and you’ll see colors when you blink,” I said. “The light is warm where it touches your skin, and if you spend enough time in it, your skin grows darker. If you aren’t careful, it might redden and blister, or get little spots called freckles.”
Nona leaned forward as if hungry for my words.
“The sky is as blue and vast as the sea, and birds fly in it the way fish swim,” I said.
“Birds?” Nona asked.
Tallia folded her arms, skeptical.
“Animals that can soar through the air.”
“And the air isn’t poisonous?” Nona asked.
“No. It’s as good as the air here. Better, even. Fresher, sweeter.”
“Is it always bright, the sun?” Tallia asked skeptically.
“No,” I said. “At night, the sun sinks behind the sea, turning the whole sky orange and red and pink. When it vanishes, the stars come out, little pinpricks of light in the black sky, and the moon—the moon is round and silver—comes up and shines in the sky instead.”
Nona sighed as if I’d described a dream. She sat back and wiped her hands on her lap. “Your hair is done, my lady. Shall I braid it?”
“Please.”
They helped me dress, and Nona plaited my hair. She did not do a four-strand as I was used to. When she finished, I pinned up the braid with the combs I’d found so I’d have them on hand.
A chime sounded, signaling the dinner hour. The woman stepped back and surveyed me. Nona’s eyes were shining.
“You look perfect,” she said, and then the guards opened the door and led me away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE DINING HALL was empty when I entered. A long table dominated the space, and stained glass windows with patterns of red in various shades cast light over the seats. Statues, frozen in poses, lined the walls.
Everything was sharp, cold, and elegantly beautiful.
Where was Valus?
Someone entered behind me, and I turned.
Nautilus.
He was alone, dressed in a plain black tunic, his curly black hair slicked away from his face, threads of it shining silver in the light.
He bowed. “My Lady Graywater.”
A shiver worked over my skin. This man had been searching for me for months, and before that, he’d ordered my death. Now I stood in the same room as him, with no one else present to stand between us. Even the guards were outside.
He seized my hand and slid a ring onto my finger before I could say a word. “An engagement gift,” he said. “It’s an old family heirloom.”
The massive gem glittered under the lights, too heavy and gaudy. I wanted to yank it off, but I resisted. I looked at his face instead.
“You look surprised,” he observed. “Is it that I’m not a monster with claws?”
“I’ve seen you before,” I said. “I know your appearance. Besides, even monsters can look like men. If I’m surprised, it is that you aren’t in your captured capital, Primus.”
Nautilus smiled. “You speak with such venom of my victory there. All I did was drive out the dross, send the rich and corrupt fleeing. The people are still there in Primus, my lady, and they have not been harmed. If anything, their lives have improved.”
“By an occupation?”
His gaze flicked over me. “You resemble your mother,” he said, startling me. I had not thought about how he knew her. But of course—I was once engaged to his son.
Still engaged, by Valus’s account.
He smiled. “But do you have that indomitable Graywater spirit?”
Indomitable. What a way to describe us.
He paused, as if gauging my reaction. I felt out of my depth here,
as if another conversation were occurring, one that I was not sure what I should say in regards to.
“I would have said ruthless,” I replied coolly.
Nautilus clasped his hands behind his back. He paced around me. “Ruthless, perhaps. But more than that. I’ve always admired your family.”
Admired?
“They have persevered through much adversity to build what they have. They have never let others’ opinions thwart their goals, however ruthless, as you say, they may be.”
I lifted my chin in what I hoped looked like a confident and steely manner. “Like your destruction of Itlantis, piece by piece?”
Nautilus chuckled, a surprisingly warm sound. “You are like your mother. Relentless to the last.”
He pulled a chair back for me. After a moment’s hesitation, I sat.
“How have you found Volcanus so far?” he asked, taking a seat on the opposite side of me. We were two in a vast spread of chairs, dwarfed by the massive expanse of table.
“Dark,” I said. “Sunless.”
“Ah,” Nautilus said with a twitch of a smile. “You say it with such accusation. All of Itlantis is sunless, my dear.”
Anger rushed through me as I remembered the sunlight that had glittered over Celestrus, the city closest to the surface. I opened my mouth to disagree.
“Perhaps you should remember that the sun,” Nautilus said before I could, “is not always good. It can blister and burn.”
“I suppose you would know, since you’ve made many trips to the surface while you’re snatching people away to use as slave-soldiers.”
He mused a moment. “You are so full of righteous anger. So eager to make accusations. We take surfacers, yes, but they are well-fed, they are given jobs, lives. More than can be said for most of them who languish above from famine and disease.”
I remembered how skinny the people of Mak’s surface village had been, how the hunger had shone in their eyes and written itself in their jutting rib bones. Yes, some were suffering from famine. I also remembered a cold floor, a bright ceiling, and blood on my tongue as I lay bound in the belly of Nautilus’s ship, a captive. Soldiers, striking us. Shouting. Herding the others away, leaving only me and Nol.
“I watched prisoners beg for their lives. I watched our houses burn. You expect me to think you a philanthropist for what you do? You’re mad.”
“You have such fine speech for one who was raised a slave,” he said instead. He tipped his head to the side, a gesture that reminded me of Valus.
“My mother made sure I was educated. She taught me how to speak properly.”
“Your mother, or the woman who stole you away to keep you away from me?” he asked. Noting my surprise, he said, “Yes, I know. I know all about it. I know many things, you see.”
I kept quiet in response.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious?” he asked.
“I feel being drawn into a game of question and answer with you would be a trap.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you could learn a few things, answers to what you’ve undoubtedly been wondering.”
“And what have I been wondering, Nautilus?” I demanded.
He frowned at my flippant use of his name. “I see the way you look at me, as if I’m a monster. I know what you think.”
“You destroyed a city! What is there to think?”
He leaned across the table. “I seek to liberate a nation. Celestrus was compromised, infested with enemies. I regretted the sacrifice, but it had to be made.”
“Compromised?” Against my will, the word slipped out.
“You have heard of Tempest by now, I suppose, given your intimate involvement with Itlantean politics?”
Tempest. A chill lanced through me.
“Ah, I see by your expression that it is so.”
“What do you know about Tempest?” I managed.
“My dear, Tempest is a cancer devouring our republic from the inside out. The people are smothering in these cities, quietly dying among the ruins, while the wealthy refuse to consider that our time is quickly running out. Tempest keeps the cogs of the current machine running, and destroys attempts to change anything. It murders and manipulates to its own end, and it must be eradicated, or it will destroy us all. The base of Tempest’s activities was Celestrus, and the destruction of that city struck a decisive blow against them, although they are not finished, not yet.”
Was this why Tempest wanted me dead? Because they were in some sort of secret struggle with Nautilus, and they wanted to thwart his plans?
“I thought you wanted to go to war to continue your power,” I said. “So you framed the Dron for your crime.”
“War would have distracted them, and given me the power I needed to throw them out. It was a desperate gamble, and it required sacrifice. But better to cut off the hand than lose the whole body,” he said. For a moment, his mouth twisted. “It was not an easy decision to strike Celestrus, whatever you may think.”
“Oh, so because it ‘wasn’t an easy decision’ you aren’t a monster for killing those people and destroying that beautiful city?”
Nautilus sighed heavily. “You are so young and full of noble belief. One day you may see the world as I must, as a series of decisions that you can only sort in order of least to most harmful. What of my city? My people are crammed into this hold in the bottom of the sea.”
I decided to take a chance on a question. “Has Tempest been trying to kill me because of you?”
He rubbed his chin. “Perhaps not directly because of me, but they know what I know.”
“And that is?”
“You will help me find the lost city of Trulliman.”
Perilous, then. Did it always come back to Perilous?
I fought to keep the fear off my face. “Why do you want to find the lost city?”
He looked past me at the statues lining the walls. I turned and saw the one directly behind me was of a man with his arm outstretched as if admonishing the viewer, his mouth open as if in a shout. The inscription at the base of the statue read Trulliman.
“Trulliman is my personal hero,” Nautilus said. “Do you know much about him?”
He paused, but I didn’t reply, so he continued.
“I’ve collected all of his writings, many of them originals that were once thought lost before I found them. He was the founder of our civilization after the Cataclysm. He shunned praise and made a recluse of himself, and eventually, he succumbed to insanity and died. The man wrote a great many things during his later years, books and laws and admonishments. He also kept journals, which were meant to be private, and were discovered many years after his death. He wrote about the lost city extensively in these journals, and although the scholars eventually came to believe that these writings coincided with his eventual madness, I believe they are true. He promises the lost city will be the salvation of our republic in the end, and so it shall be, when I find it. Of course, it was not lost when he was alive. He called it ‘the seventh.’”
“Why will it be our salvation?”
Nautilus shook his head. “I don’t know, but I believe Trulliman was right. The lost city must be found.”
“The Dron—” I began.
“The Dron are outsiders. They are not to be trusted, and they are not in the plan to save Itlantis,” he interrupted.
Servants entered, carrying steaming bowls of soup that they placed before us.
Where was Valus?
Nautilus rinsed his fingers in the bowl of water in the middle of the table and picked up his spoon. I supposed the conversation was over now.
But I wasn’t ready to be finished.
“So you mean to tell me that you believe you’ve perpetuated war and slaughter in the interest of saving Itlantis?”
“Everyone is a villain to his or her enemies,” Nautilus replied. He appeared unmoved by my words as he dipped his spoon in the soup.
A door slammed against the wall as Valus strode in, his eyes f
lashing.
Nautilus flicked a glance at his son as he sipped his soup. “You show no decorum, Valus. Calm yourself.”
“You deliberately told me the wrong time,” Valus said, his voice cracking with anger.
His father pointed at a chair with his spoon. “Sit. You’re upsetting your betrothed.” He smiled at me, a conspiratorial smile as if we shared secrets. “That is the story we’re telling ourselves, isn’t it?”
Valus didn’t move. He looked at me.
Nautilus leaned back, his mouth curving upward. “My son seeks to scheme, but he is clumsy at it, just like his mother always was. He thinks he can manipulate me by delivering you on a platter to me, but keep himself in the picture by pretending love, as if I cared about such things. He is and has always been a fool.” He looked at his son. “Anything you care to add, Valus?”
Color crept up Valus’s neck. He clenched his hands into fists, but he didn’t speak.
“You are my prisoner,” Nautilus said to me. “Now that we’ve had time to get acquainted, I hope we can work together, to both our satisfaction.”
I sat still, the soup before me steaming. Sweat beaded on my lip. “And my friends?”
Nautilus leaned back in his chair and touched his fingers together. “I was under the impression they were your captors, of a sort.”
“They are her manipulators,” Valus spat. “They’re using her. Especially the one who thinks himself in love with her.”
“Ah,” Nautilus said. “The plot thickens. Perhaps there is a bit of feeling in my son after all, and everything he told me is not entirely lies.” He looked between us. “And does she return your feelings, my son?”
Valus didn’t answer, and his father sighed.
“Sit,” he ordered.
Valus sat, but he didn’t speak. He looked as though he were holding in his dismay and rage by sheer willpower as he picked up his spoon, his knuckles white. A servant appeared and placed a bowl of soup before him.
“What do you think the Graywaters will do when they find out you have two of their people?” Valus demanded.
“That is hardly a worry at this moment, my son. You always worried about the wrong things.”
In Dawn and Darkness Page 13