All the Wandering Light

by Heather Fawcett

  “You look . . .” Tem blushed.

  I rolled my eyes. “I look like I’m wearing a costume.”

  “No, it’s— I’ve never seen you like this.”

  I made a dismissive gesture. To my annoyance, it had turned out that the supposedly “urgent” business River had needed to attend to that morning had involved hiring the most overpaid tailors to array us in the most overpriced garments. The silk that swathed me was a vivid red with a white band at the top of my waist. The servants had pinned my hair up and woven it with gold chains, though I had refused any other adornment, as well as the silk gloves they had offered me. Whenever I moved, the gold tinkled softly. In spite of the fine clothes, I knew I gave the other guests little reason to turn their heads. While the dress emphasized my curves, it also emphasized my stoutness, and I had seen in the mirror how ruddy my face was from days spent battling the harsh elements.

  It didn’t matter. I didn’t care what I looked like. I had allowed the tailors to make me look like a courtier, knowing that I couldn’t very well appear before the emperor in my filthy chuba and worn boots. Where was he? When would he return? River had vanished that afternoon to learn what he could, and to investigate the stories he had heard from the servants. I didn’t like him going off on his own. The more people he talked to, the greater the risk that someone would notice the change and realize what he was.

  Lusha had vanished into the crowd almost as soon as we were admitted to the hall. Not out of any eagerness to join the party, I guessed, but as a result of frustration and nervous energy. Lusha didn’t like waiting, though she had tamped down her feelings, allowing the tailors to fit her into a dress of golden yellow, weave her hair with jewels, and thread her ears with long strings of colorful beads. The result was that she could have passed for an empress, even in comparison to other courtiers in equally rich dress. I glimpsed her now, a ray of gold, standing by one of the balconies with her arms folded, pointedly ignoring the young man attempting to speak with her as she scanned the crowd, and giving off the powerful impression that this was her hundredth royal banquet.

  The star, absurdly, was nestled in the pocket of Lusha’s dress. When I had suggested leaving it in her room under guard, I had been treated to a look so icy it froze my tongue.

  A murmur swept through the crowd, and I felt Tem stiffen beside me. I turned in time to see River parting the courtiers. A small number called out his name, and he stopped to exchange a few words. I saw smiles, welcoming shoulder claps. Occasionally, the sound of laughter drifted toward us. River looked perfectly at ease. There was something almost mesmerizing about it—the heads turning in succession, the swirl of brightly clad movement his arrival caused, like autumn leaves stirred by a wind.

  “Beautiful,” he said, once he reached us. For a moment, I wasn’t certain what he meant—but he was staring at me.

  I stared right back at him. In contrast to the courtiers, arrayed in colors so bright I suspected one-upmanship on the part of the Three Cities’ dyers, River was all in black from his boots to his chuba, which was thin, close-fitting, and obviously beyond expensive. It would have looked impractical on anyone else, but I knew that River bore the cold as lightly as a fish in an icy stream. Absurdly, in place of jewels, his chuba was studded with what appeared to be obsidian beading. Even the gloves were black, a silk so fine it gleamed like glass. River, with his beautiful face and strange eyes, and the invisible pull of his presence, would stand out in farmers’ clothes. Dressed as he was, it seemed as if every eye in the vicinity was on him. It was the opposite of a disguise.

  And yet, I thought, perhaps that had been the point. The clothes were as striking as everything else about him, but they also elided other evidence of difference, offering a harmless reason for an observer’s attention to linger. Perhaps it was a more effective disguise than any attempt at ordinary dress, which would have only created a contrast.

  “The emperor will arrive soon,” he said, taking no notice of my silence, or the fact of the crowd’s parting around where we stood. “He’s only just returned to court. In a foul mood, by all accounts.”

  “I see.” My stomach, already in knots, did a somersault at this news.

  River was staring at me again, after allowing his gaze to drift over the courtiers. I narrowed my eyes. I was growing tired of being regarded like some sort of exotic animal—first by Tem, now him. River seemed to notice my reaction, and smiled apologetically. Music flared somewhere on the balconies—several lutes and hand drums. River seemed about to speak. But then one of the courtiers appeared to work up the courage to cross the moat that had opened between us and them. She placed a hand on his arm, and River, appearing to recognize her, allowed her to lead him away.

  “Where are you going?” I said in disbelief. He couldn’t just abandon us here. I would rather be abandoned outside a den of red-toothed bears.

  River merely cast a smile over his shoulder and was soon swallowed up by the crowd. To my dismay, the courtiers began dividing into twos, and music swelled through the hall as other instruments joined the first.

  Tem, thank the spirits, didn’t take my hand. He was eyeing the swirl of courtiers with something resembling panic.

  “I think I’ll visit the libraries,” he said.

  “You were there all day!”

  “The emperor isn’t here yet,” Tem pointed out. “And when he arrives, I doubt he’ll be interested in speaking to me.”

  “I don’t think we should split up.”

  Tem gave me a look. “Would you rather I asked you to dance?”

  I took a step back, bumping into one of the courtiers in my haste. “Enjoy yourself, Tem.”

  “Thank you, I will.” He walked away, a lightness in his step that I hadn’t seen since we left Azmiri.

  Keeping an eye on Lusha, who was busy ignoring a different suitor, I wandered to the opposite end of the hall, where there were tables piled with delicacies. Courtiers ate with their hands, for the most part, as they stood and talked, or lounged on plush rugs. Servants brought bowls of scented water for hand washing, which were constantly replenished. I couldn’t help staring. This method of dining was luxury so impractical that I found it difficult to comprehend.

  I had only eaten a few bites when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and found a young man, bony but handsome in his courtier’s clothes.

  “May I?” He extended his hand.

  It took me a moment to realize that he was asking me to dance. “I don’t—”

  “I don’t either,” he said, with a sheepish smile. “But you are so lovely that I thought I might make an attempt.”

  I hesitated. I was about to make some excuse and turn away, but then my thoughts flashed to River’s retreating back, and something made me give the young man a smile. Everything about the emperor’s court made me uncomfortable, from the richly clad courtiers—more people than I had ever encountered in one place—to the din of music and conversation. It was a feeling I hated, and I was going to fight it, and win.

  I splashed my fingers in the bowl offered to me by a servant. Then I took the man’s hand and let him lead me into the crowd. As I did, one of the dragons nipped at my heel. I started.

  “They’re not very well trained, are they?” I said.

  The courtier, who hadn’t seen, gave me a puzzled look. We stepped onto the balcony, and I grew cold in my silk dress. I didn’t shiver for long, however, for the young man immediately pulled me into the whirl of dancers, and it was all I could do to keep my breath.

  Below the palace, the city lights shone like fireflies. Surely they could hear the music down there, see the palace on the hilltop glittering with torches and dragonlight. It would look like a beacon hovering in the sky. I gazed out over the shadowy landscape and shivered.

  “Everything all right?” the courtier said. He drew back to look at me. He really was handsome, his slenderness emphasizing the sharp lines of his cheekbones. I forced a smile, which grew into a real one as he spun me in
a circle.

  “Do you live in the Three Cities?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he responded with a question in his voice, as if uncertain where else someone could live.

  “It’s lovely here,” I murmured. For a moment, I seemed to step outside my body, to watch myself dancing in the arms of a wealthy courtier on the balcony of the emperor’s palace. There came a familiar stirring in my chest, as I had felt setting out from Azmiri, and gazing up at the peak of Raksha. I was standing where no one in Azmiri had stood, except perhaps my father, who made rare visits to the Three Cities to pay his respects to the emperor. In spite of everything, my heart sped up, and excitement kindled inside me. My grip on the courtier’s arm tightened.

  He caught my changed expression and smiled. “You’ve never been to the palace before, have you? Where are you from?”

  An image of Azmiri, which would now be quiet and slumberous, tucked into the mountainside below the stars, floated through my mind. Like Tem, I had never belonged there. If I didn’t belong in the place where I had spent my life, where did I belong?

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, turning my face away. “Nowhere.”

  He smiled again. “Well, nowhere has some charming inhabitants, I must say.”

  I smiled back, and he spun me. As he did, something caught my eye. It was River, the obsidian beads glittering on his black chuba. I couldn’t not stare—everyone else was. Couples stood back when River and his partner, who wore a dress of shimmering azure, drew near. She was beautiful, of course, with generous curves and the sort of features artists gave to long-dead empresses in paintings. I felt a stab of something that was not quite annoyance, but closer to mischievousness. I recalled the dance in Jangsa—that had been wilder, less formal, but River had moved just as gracefully as he did now. His expression was animated as he talked to his partner, who seemed to be laughing, her kohled eyes bright. I maneuvered myself and the courtier close to them.

  The dance required partners to swap briefly before returning to each other. As River’s hands left the girl’s, I drew the courtier into the path of another couple. His hands lifted to those of the girl in the blue dress, and I stepped neatly into River’s arms.

  He started, and I grinned at the rare look of surprise that flitted across his face.

  “Where did you come from?” He began to smile.

  “I thought you could use a break from being fawned over,” I said.

  He laughed at that, and spun me away from the main crowd. The music faded farther along the balcony, where there were only a few dancing couples, and several more seated close together on low benches. There were fewer dragons here too, and the shadows deepened.

  “I don’t think I ever asked how you like the palace,” River said into my ear. I couldn’t see his face.

  “It’s . . . a nice place to visit,” I said.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “You seemed to be enjoying yourself.”

  “It was the company I was enjoying—that’s all, I promise you.”

  “Would you rather be in the Nightwood?” I pulled back far enough to see his face. “What’s so terrible about banquets and gilded fireplaces, and pretty courtiers hanging on your every word?”

  “You tell me.” He motioned with his chin toward the crowd we’d left behind. “You may have broken that boy’s heart.”

  I made a dismissive noise. My heart was pounding. I could feel the warmth of his hands, gloved in the softest silk, against my bare skin. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “I wouldn’t rather be in the Nightwood.”

  His eyes held mine, and my stomach turned over. Something made me think of my dream, the crane soaring through clouds. “But you’d rather be out there. Not here.”

  He paused. “Yes. Wouldn’t you?”

  I ignored the question. “How many animals can you turn into, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t tried them all.” He said it in an offhand way, as if it was a matter so abstract as to be unimportant.

  “Isn’t that unusual? I thought witches could only take the shape of a single animal.”

  “I think that’s true, for most.”

  “Not for you, though.”

  “No.”

  I thought about what Esha had said about River’s powers being greater than his, and his reference to the Crown. But before I could ask about it, the music died, and the chatter quieted. River pulled away, his attention on the raised dais just visible at the far end of the hall. He drew me inside, toward the edge of the crowd. Their faces were all turned in the same direction.

  “The emperor,” he said.

  I craned my neck, silently cursing my shortness. River, after a glance at me, took my hand and led me into the crowd, which parted before him. With fewer heads blocking my view, I could see the dais clearly, and also the three figures moving toward it. They didn’t clear the way as River did—it was already cleared for them, courtiers stepping back to form a passage, heads bowing like sheaves of grain.

  One of the figures, the most elaborately dressed of the three, to whom my eyes went instinctively, was white-haired, though his shoulders were thrust back and his spine unbent. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see the faces of the two people at his side—a woman in her thirties, her chuba worn over a dress of rose-colored silk. And the other was Captain Elin.

  My mouth fell open. Captain Elin was here, and he was talking to the emperor. There was a powerful incongruity about it—when I had last seen him, he had been menacing and battle-worn, dressed in bloodstained armor with a sword at his side. Now he stood here at a gilded banquet, dressed in a cloak of pure white that swept the floor behind him. The stubble on his face was gone, and his hair was clean and brushed, though several wayward strands still fell across his forehead, partly obscuring one eye. He stood several inches above most other men in the hall, and while he wore no sword or armour, something in his bearing—the soldier’s walk, perhaps—kept alive the undercurrent of menace that I remembered.

  I forced my attention away from Elin to the white-haired man. “That’s the emperor? You said he looked young.”

  “I think your attention is in the wrong place,” River said. He seemed half lost in thought, his eyes on the three figures.

  I looked back at the emperor, not understanding. Even as the woman in the rose dress bowed to Captain Elin, I still didn’t understand. The white-haired man bowed also, and stepped back to join the crowd, who watched the captain expectantly as he stepped onto the dais and seated himself on the elaborately carved throne.

  The scene before me seemed to freeze, as if rendered in ink on a canvas. For a moment, it was all I could do to breathe.

  It can’t be.

  “River,” I said, my voice very low, “who is that man on the throne?”

  River gave me a puzzled look. “Who do you think?”

  My entire body was numb. “That. Is. The emperor?”

  I saw Captain Elin gazing at Tem with murder in his eyes. Saw him binding us, saw his arrow pointed at Lusha’s throat. I saw the ravens attacking him as we fled into the forest.

  River was watching me. His hand was still in mine, and he brushed his thumb against my knuckles. “What? Tell me.”

  A booming voice rang out. It was the woman who had accompanied Elin to the throne—she stood below the dais upon which the captain lounged, looking simultaneously tense and bored, his eyes scanning the crowd as he sat with one ankle propped on his knee.

  “The emperor welcomes River Shara, Royal Explorer of the Three Cities and the Empire,” the woman announced.

  As the captain’s eyes turned toward the place where we stood, I stepped behind a taller courtier. River was still looking at me, nonplussed, even as before him another corridor was opening. He turned his face back to the dais. He couldn’t very well delay, with all eyes upon him. I wanted to grab at him, to tell him we needed to leave now, but I stood frozen, unable to look away.

  Calmly, River strode forward, the hem o
f his black chuba stirring with each step. It was enough, if you didn’t look closely, to disguise the way the shadows at his feet shifted strangely, as if they were drawn to him. Once again, I was reminded of the effectiveness of River’s nondisguise.

  He stopped at the edge of the dais and gave a short bow. Beneath my fear, it struck me how strange it looked for River to bow to anyone, but the emperor didn’t seem to notice, or perhaps he had simply grown used to it. He leaned back in his throne, a surprisingly genuine smile on his face. He gazed at River as one would an old friend, and I recalled that River was one of the emperor’s closest advisors. And of course he was—though the generals had more actual power, the Royal Explorer’s rank was above theirs. The emperor couldn’t very well give the honor to someone he didn’t trust.

  “Welcome home, River,” Captain Elin said. “I trust you had an uneventful journey?”

  A ripple of laughter went through the crowd. There was something familiar in it, the recognition of an old joke. River smiled.

  “It was productive, Your Highness,” he replied. His voice was clear enough to carry across the crowd. “Shall I bore you with the details?”

  The captain’s gaze held a hint of affection that looked strange in a face like his. The courtiers laughed again. “Later. I’ll permit no serious talk now. You’ve returned safely, and that warrants celebrating.”

  River lowered his head. The captain turned toward the woman at his side. As he did, his gaze fell on me.

  Shock spread across his face. I ducked behind the tall courtier again, having forgotten myself for a moment. But unfortunately, every eye that had been trained on the emperor had noticed his reaction and followed his gaze to where I stood.

  “There, that—that girl.” The captain seemed to falter, but when he continued, his voice was steady again. “Bring her to me.”

  I tried to run, but there were too many people in the way, and the crowd was parting again, people stepping back to witness the source of the confusion. A guard appeared out of nowhere and seized my arm. He half dragged, half led me to the dais, sending dragons darting this way and that. The captain leaned forward now, both hands gripping the arms of his throne.