by Naomi Hughes
“No,” Sarai said. “I will not give you a memory tonic. You were a child then. You are nearly a woman now, and old enough to choose for yourself what you wish to do. But before you do choose, you should have all the pertinent information.” She pulled something out from a pocket between the plates of her armor. It was a little mirror, the Smithed charm that Tirine had handed to her a few moments ago. Sarai gave Elodie a last, unreadable look—something like regret—before she dropped it to the floor and broke it with the heel of her boot.
When the glass of the mirror shattered, so did Sarai. Her features came apart along thin fault lines, cracking like she was a porcelain doll dropped from a great height. And then the pieces of her—the illusion of her—flaked away completely, and what was left beneath was the reality of her sister.
Her beautiful golden hair was gone. In its place was a burnt, patchy stubble. One of her eyes was swollen shut and the other was full of dark gray blood where it should be white. Her face was a patchwork of twisted red and white scar tissue. One of her hands was missing, the stump inelegantly sticking a few inches out of her armor’s sleeve. The Iron Crown was the only unmarred part of her, grotesque in its pure and untouched normality.
“Our subjects wonder,” Sarai said, her voice changed now to a wheezing deathbed rattle, “how I escaped the explosion unscathed. The truth is I did not.”
Elodie was still staring at her. There was an alien expression on Sarai’s face, something at once worried and sad, and the empress kept her gaze turned away. She didn’t want to see the look on Elodie’s face. Didn’t want to see her reaction to her horrible injuries, to the difference between the way she looked a week ago and the way she looked now.
Something settled over Elodie, a soft certainty. She stepped forward and, as gently as she could, drew Sarai to her. It was her turn now to wrap her whole self around her sister, to be her shield against what anyone else—even Sarai herself—might think of her.
“Your injuries do not lessen you,” Elodie said, with all the devoutness of anyone who has ever loved a sibling.
Sarai sagged in her arms and let out a laugh that was only a little bit choked. She hugged Elodie back for a moment and then stepped away, the worry wiped clean from her expression but the sadness remaining. “I’m afraid they are, however, killing me.”
Elodie was still for three long heartbeats, trying to fathom her sister’s words. “But you are…you are fine. You’re here, days after the explosion. Albinus must have—”
Sarai waved a hand, cutting her off. “There is only so much that even a royal physician can do.”
“But you said already that he wants us both dead! He must have put something in the healing tinctures he gave you, must have held back some treatment that could help. If we get a second opinion—”
“I have had second, and third, and fourth opinions. I have had Albinus carefully watched by my spies. All that can be done by magic and medicine has been done, and I am yet dying. I have perhaps a few hours left at this point. I was going to spend them raiding the Saints base, as there was word you might be imprisoned there, but as much as I wanted to die slaying the zealots who attacked you, I am happy now to leave the vengeance to you and spend what time I have left at your side.”
Elodie was shaking her head. This could not be true. She had saved her sister’s life by stopping the zeppelin, she had gotten here in time, Sarai could not die now. She could not die from the explosion that Elodie herself was ultimately responsible for. The thought entrenched itself in Elodie’s soul, turning it to a desert: forsaken, unbearably empty, horizons stretching into desolation.
Sarai stepped forward and took Elodie’s fingers in her one good hand, putting her stump of a wrist atop them. “My dear one,” she said softly, “it is true. I would change it for you if I could. But I cannot, and there is a more important matter we need to see to before this is over.”
Elodie realized that she had sat back down on the cot at some point. Her eyes were horribly, achingly dry. Why was it that she only cried when she didn’t want to, and not when she truly needed to? “What could possibly be more important than your death?” she snapped.
“Yours,” Sarai said bluntly.
Elodie looked up at her, brow crinkling. “I’m…I’m fine. I’ve lost my mercury, but I’m not dying.”
“Not yet. But I’m sure you noticed on your way in just how many of our beloved family members hope to take advantage of your new lack of magic. If you choose to remain in your natural state, without any mercury in your veins, I will protect you. But I fear I won’t be able to do it for very long.”
Elodie pulled her hands away. “This isn’t about me.”
“But it is. I told you I have a few hours left, and that’s true. There are, however, some treatments that could extend my life a bit longer—a week, perhaps two. I could be here to settle you. To crown you.” She touched the Iron Crown on her brow, and something about the gesture looked oddly rueful. It made Elodie remember that the crown had been in the explosion too, and that while the fire had been enough to injure her sister terribly, kill dozens of others, and explode several train cars, it had apparently not left even a single scratch on the Iron Crown. While Elodie’s mind caught on this detail like a nail snagging a loose thread, Sarai continued: “But it would be immensely painful for me, and there’s a good chance the treatments would kill me anyway. Still, I would do it for you, even though I know it would do little good—because the moment I die and leave you to take the throne, one or another of our enterprising cousins or aunts or uncles will have you murdered. And they’ll be able to do it easily, because you are defenseless.”
Each word was a hammer wielded against her. Elodie could not yet absorb the blows, and so turned her mind to a different question. “Why is the crown intact?”
One corner of Sarai’s mouth tilted up, and that same ruefulness flickered across her features again. “I knew you would notice. I’m afraid it’s because I used the vast majority of my powers to protect it during the explosion.”
Once the words sank in, Elodie was on her feet, anger and shock humming in her bones. “You protected the crown? If you had enough magic to shield anything, you should have protected yourself!”
“The crown is more important that any one ruler. It’s the source of our strength.”
Like everyone else, Elodie knew that the Iron Crown was enchanted, but no one except the current ruler knew the actual nature of the enchantment. Sarai took the crown off now and set it in her lap, smoothing a finger over it.
“Our nine-times-great grandparents did the Smithing, assisted by their entire court,” the empress said. “It took nearly their entire lifetimes. They enchanted the crown to channel the power of the land’s magic and concentrate it in a tight vicinity around the crown itself. The actual enchantment is quite complicated, but basically, it pulls magic away from the peasant villages and mining towns and such, and concentrates it here in the palace. That is why all the great Smiths are born here, to noble houses, and any magical children that the peasants can manage to sire are too weak to do anything of use. A few slip by here and there, but without the crown’s power, there would be as many strong Smiths among the Saints as in the palace.” She tapped the crown gently. “The enchantment also protects the crown from destruction. I imagine your fire—if you were using all your fire—is probably the only power strong enough to break it. Which is why I had to use so much magic to protect it in this case. And what an irony that is; if it had been destroyed, it would have released all of its pent-up magic at once, magics from every metal, from every corner of the land. The copper magic would have been enough to instantly heal everyone on the train including myself if it were channeled properly.”
“Then why didn’t you let it burn?” Elodie demanded. Her hands bunched in the coarse fabric of her trousers. “We could have Smithed a new one. It is metal. You are irreplaceable.” She hated the thread of desperation in her voice, of pleading. Her sister was already dying and
the past could not be rewritten. Still, she couldn’t let it go.
Sarai laid a hand over one of Elodie’s. “It too is irreplaceable. The Smithing methods that created it have since been lost. Not to mention there was no copper Smith close enough who could have channeled the magic to heal me in any case.”
Elodie stared at the crown. It seemed suddenly malevolent, this creation that had stolen life from her sister and Tal’s people both. But just as strongly as she reviled it, she found herself longing for the safe weight of it on her brow, the security of wrapping herself in the power of the whole empire.
She turned away, disgusted with herself, and afraid that the disgust would overpower the desire. The parts of herself—the Destroyer, Elodie, all of their separate facets and edges—were at war within her. They scraped through her like broken glass, and she feared they would shred what was left of her soul to bits before it was over.
The cot creaked. Sarai had sat down on its other side, and reached across now with her good hand to set one of the glass jars full of the mercury concoction on the little table next to the bed. “You must choose,” she said softly.
Elodie closed her eyes.
She had wanted to be Elodie. She had tried and tried to be her. But Elodie hadn’t been good enough. She couldn’t make Tal stay, couldn’t make him love her back, couldn’t win herself free of a past that she hadn’t even been able to remember. She certainly couldn’t defend herself against the tribulations that awaited her within the walls of her own home. Elodie would never, ever be safe, and she would never, ever be free. She was soft. She was vulnerable. She was broken.
But if she went back to being the Destroyer…she wouldn’t be any of those things. She would no longer be the weapon of her sister, either, but would instead belong wholly to herself. No one would crack the defenses of her body or her heart ever again. She wouldn’t feel everything so much. Her mind could be cold and clear again like ice, the way it used to be.
Before, she had wondered what future there could be for her. She understood now that this was the only future there had ever been.
Wordlessly, she held out her arm.
Sarai fetched the necessary contraption, a series of glass-and-copper tubes and tiny clever pumps. She slipped the needle at one end into Elodie’s arm, and the tube at the other end into the jar. Then she laid down at her sister’s side, her breathing labored, her crown on the bed between them, and held Elodie’s hand.
The mercury hit Elodie’s blood like a drug. A heavy sleepiness drew itself over her—a calming potion that had been mixed in to ease the transition from misfire to Lady of Mercury. She turned her head to look at her sister, wanting someone she loved to be the last thing that she saw.
And then she fell asleep, knowing that the Elodie she had been would never wake again.
MORE THAN TWENTY GUARDS HAD PASSED TAL’S CELL IN THE LAST HOUR. None of them had spotted him, or at least, none of them had realized he was someone who wasn’t supposed to be there. He’d tucked himself against the wall, hidden his swords behind the chamber pot, and relied on the fact that they were searching for people escaping the prison, not people trapped within it. If they did discover him—bleeding undeniably silver blood, with the multi-colored blood of the slain guards spattered atop that—he would be executed. Of course, things wouldn’t be much better if they didn’t discover him.
None of the Saints had been recaptured, at least. They might all have been killed in the pursuit, but Tal chose to hope that at least some of them would make it. He wondered if Saasha had. He hoped that whatever plans she might have that had led her to lock him in here, they didn’t involve Nyx. Either way, though, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it now.
He leaned his head back, tired to his very marrow. When he closed his eyes, eerie spots swayed behind his eyelids, afterimages from the floor’s glow. They coalesced into figures. Dipping and spinning, they danced across his vision until they became a memory.
A dance hall. The illusion of a glass-calm ocean as the ballroom floor. Men wearing suits in brash colors and exquisitely detailed patterns slipping in and out of the complicated group dance. Most of the women wore ball gowns in shades of red that flared like sunspots when they twirled. Tal had stood against the wall and watched it all and tried not to be sick.
Earlier that same day, he had sworn his oath to the Destroyer and then stabbed the soldier who had—on her own order—attacked her. Take him to the physicians, she’d said afterwards. He may live.
He hadn’t lived. Tal had walked to the physicians’ wing, getting lost several times in the endless corridors paved with extravagance before he stumbled upon the morgue. That wasn’t where he’d meant to go, but it was where he found his answer. The soldier was laid out atop a ceremonial gold-gilded gurney. An attendant was clutching a pair of tongs that held a cup of steaming molten lead over the stab wound in the soldier’s torso. Tal watched, frozen, as the woman poured the lead into the injury until it was filled, and then pried the dead man’s mouth open and filled that, too. The stench of burning flesh and hot metal drifted down the hall. It was a ceremony of honor for a person who’d died in the course of duty, Tal learned later, but then it had only seemed obscene. He had thrown up right there in the hallway. The attendants had been amused and annoyed in equal measure.
It had been the first person he’d ever killed.
An hour after that, the Destroyer summoned him to attend her at the ball. He’d refused to dress in finery, keeping his practical, blood-flecked peasant clothing on as both a memorial and a protest. He had hoped the Destroyer would ask about his choice of evening wear and then he could confront her, perhaps shock her with the knowledge that she had effectively killed her own soldier, but she’d only raised an eyebrow when she saw him.
We make a matched pair, she’d said, glancing down at her own slender red dress. Though the color of blood on your outfit is a bit more authentic.
She hadn’t danced. She had stood near him, a full glass of untouched wine dangling elegantly from one gloved hand, watching the ball with her usual untouchable, distant amusement.
Then, he had thought she seemed like a queen passionlessly surveying her subjects, or a well-fed lioness content to watch the antics of her prey. But now, in his cell with nothing left to lose and nowhere to hide from the truth, he remembered how lonely she had looked. How the amusement on her face turned brittle around the edges when a giggling group of her nieces had asked why she had no dance partner. He remembered how she’d raised an eyebrow and turned to him, giving him a moment to save her, to ask her to dance in front of the people who weren’t even trying to hide their mockery. But that had been the beginning of the death of his idealism, because every time he looked at her now he saw a dead man’s mouth filled with lead and felt the jarring impact of ribs breaking beneath his sword.
He would defend her if one of these chittering peacocks attacked her. He would have to. But he refused to dance with her.
Idly, he wondered now what would have happened if he had. Would that brittleness in her have cracked? Would he have caught a glimpse of what was underneath? If he had realized earlier, when he was still hopeful and idealistic, that she could be a person like Elodie—would he have been able to sway her?
He realized suddenly that he missed her. She had left him because he had given her no other option, and he found that he regretted it. He examined the feeling with distant curiosity, because what did it matter now either way? She had by now already returned to her sister. She might or might not be convinced to restore her magic, and the poison it brought with it. His realization that he loved her would make no difference to any of that, because he would die down here in the dungeons of the one place he would give anything to be away from, and she wouldn’t even know until it was too late.
He buried his head in his hands. He loved her, he thought again. What a fool he was. Just when he thought he’d left behind that naïve boy of two years ago, he went and fell for the one person he sho
uld despise above all else. And he did despise her, but he loved her too—the brittle girl who had been afraid to ask aloud if he wanted to dance with her because she knew he’d refuse, the fiercely innocent girl who’d offered him a headless rabbit like it was a trophy, and the girl who’d wept because she didn’t know how to start a fire. What he felt was impossible, but it was also true, and he could no longer maintain the mental distance it took to deny it.
He sighed. Very well, he said to his god with the resignation and relief of someone who has exhausted absolutely every possibility, including death, and must now finally be honest with himself. What do you want me to do?
It had been Saasha who had trapped him here—he didn’t know why she would do such a thing, but somewhere in the space of the last few days, he had utterly lost the ability to be surprised—but he knew that his god had been behind it. She might have shut the door on him, but it was the Unforged God who had led him to this spot. Not because he was sadistic. Because, Tal thought now, he wanted to offer Tal a choice, and this was the only way Tal would listen to it. He had refused to be honest with himself about his feelings for Elodie until he’d been literally locked in a jail cell with no other option, and now a vision was hovering on the horizon of his mind, waiting for him to decide whether to open himself to it and whatever possibilities it might offer, or stay here in this cell and die. Of sheer stubbornness, Elodie would probably say if she were here. He smiled a little and then shook his head with another sigh.