by S. M. Boyce
Water lapped over her nose as she soaked. The currents flowing over her skin grew colder, until she finally couldn’t stomach it any longer and pulled herself out of the bathtub.
Droplets of water splattered on the white tile as she wrapped one towel around her body and rubbed her hair with the other in an effort to dry it as much as possible. She slipped into the green dress and tied the sash, doing her best to keep it from flopping, but each try made the tails more uneven. She gave up, took a deep breath, and opened the bathroom door.
Twin sat alone on the bed, her head hung, but blinked away her deep, heartbroken meditation as Kara walked into the room.
“What are you?” Twin repeated.
“I’m the Vagabond.”
The girl nodded and glanced Kara over. “I heard rumors about your return, but I never thought you would be a woman. The Vagabond is supposed to be a heroic warrior, and you, well—”
Kara scoffed and folded her arms. “Don’t flatter me or anything.”
Twin shrugged. “You forced me to relive the most horrifying memory I have, so I’m not altogether fond of you at the moment.”
“I can’t control it yet. I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you.” Twin examined Kara’s dress and forced a laugh. “You look ridiculous.”
Kara curtseyed. “Thank you.”
The Hillsidian smiled and walked over. She set her hands on Kara’s temples. A rush of heat flew from her fingers, and the excess water in Kara’s hair evaporated with a hiss. Twin turned her around to adjust the hopeless sash.
“Thank you,” Kara said again, but she meant it this time. She ran her hands through her clean, dry hair.
“You’re welcome.”
“So, uh, is this a bad time to ask for pants?”
“I think it’s unbecoming for a woman to wear pants, but you are an exception, I suppose. Give me the chance to look for something. Few women wear pants here, so a pair that fits you won’t be easy to find.”
“Thanks, Twin.”
Kara looked over her shoulder to find the girl staring at the floor, her eyes out of focus while her hands tied the bow with practiced ease.
“That woman in my memory was my older sister,” she confessed in a soft voice. “My real name is Moranna, but everyone calls me Twin because I look just like her. Everyone loved her, since she was fierce and powerful, but she and I were always complete opposites. One of the Queen’s generals had promoted her days before she was killed.”
Kara swallowed her questions and let Twin speak. A year of silence weighed on the girl’s face, straining her voice and creating frustrated wrinkles on her otherwise smooth skin.
“We were walking along some trails beyond Hillside because she wanted to teach me not to fear the woods. Out of nowhere, she stopped talking and suddenly froze. I asked her what was wrong, but she shoved me into the bushes. And, well—”
“—and I saw the rest,” Kara finished.
“I haven’t left Hillside since.”
“Have you ever told anyone else about this?”
“Only the Queen and her generals. I was forbidden to say anything more out of fear that it would induce panic. I’m supposed to say she died on a mission.”
“I’m sorry.” Kara pulled the girl into a hug. Twin flinched, but when the memory didn’t return, she wrapped her arms around Kara and hugged back.
Tears sprung into Twin’s eyes again. “He murdered her for a key to the kingdom. That’s what scares me most.”
“Is that what that key on her neck was?”
Twin pushed away and slapped her hands over her mouth. Her eyes widened, and she gasped.
“I shouldn’t have told you that!”
“Does everyone have a key?”
“I—oh, Bloods,” she cursed and sat on the bed. “No. Only a select few are ever allowed the freedom to leave without Blood approval. If you want to explore the world outside, you have to have a guide with a key. Some people never leave Hillside in their entire lives.”
“Then I hope this place is bigger than it looks.”
“It is. I have to ask, though, why was I forced to relive that memory in particular?”
“I can’t control it, remember? I just see the moment that most defines who you are now. It just happens.”
“You should buy gloves, then.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Well, it’s only fair that you tell me your memory.”
“That’s not going to happen.” Kara laughed, but her smile faded. She couldn’t have told anyone her memory if she’d wanted to. She didn’t know it.
Someone knocked on the door and opened it before either of them could answer. Braeden looked in and paused, eyeing Kara as she stood by the window. He had a patch of gauze on his cheek. A bit of green bled through its center.
“Dresses become you,” he said.
“Well look at that.” Twin poked Kara’s rib and smiled. “Apparently, even girls who never wear dresses look good in them.”
With Braeden’s arrival, the dark lines on Twin’s face dissolved, and she laughed like she had when she first brought in the dress. Kara leaned back and caught her breath at how easily the girl had slipped back into her old self. The smile was forced, though, and her shoulders still slouched as she curtseyed and hurried through the door.
Kara pointed to the gauze on Braeden’s jaw. “What happened to your face?”
“Ah, right. Well, brothers fight a lot.”
“Why were you fighting, and why is it stained green?”
“We were sparring, and Hillsidian blood is green.”
She nodded at his subtle hint and kept silent. He must have gotten cut while they were sparring and used someone else’s blood to line the gauze after he healed too quickly. She wondered how he’d gotten the green blood.
“Would you be interested in a tour of the city, Kara?”
“Anything to get out of this room.”
She walked into the hallway, and he led her toward the large door at the end of the passage.
“Braeden, Twin knows about me.”
“How?”
“That weird memory thing I do.”
“Bloods. Please try not to touch anyone else, will you? That sort of knowledge over someone’s deepest thoughts could make people fear you. Touch only clothing. We might need to get you gloves.”
“Man, you too?”
He grumbled something she couldn’t hear and opened the door with the green filigree. She shielded her eyes at the sudden sunlight, waiting for her vision to adjust to the bright day outside. A platform extended a few feet from the threshold, and from there, a bridge crossed into the open air. The bridge’s ropes had been nailed to the trunk and glued with a rosy, gleaming substance.
The rope bridge ended in a massive tree, which rose into the sky across from her and was so wide that its edges were cut off as she stared at it through the doorway. Dozens of bridges crossed to it from various places above and below, swinging gently as Hillsidians walked along them. She glanced down to the ground at least sixty feet below, but when she glanced upward, the tree’s branches didn’t even begin for a hundred feet. Its leaves rustled in a massive canopy hundreds of feet above that.
“That must be the biggest tree in the world!”
“That’s the smallest of the five trees that make up the castle. We are standing in the largest one.”
“The castle is made of five trees this big? This is amazing!” She stared at the ground and giggled.
He laughed. “I like it, too.”
She raced out onto the bridge without testing it and stopped only when she was halfway across. The bridge swayed in small strokes beneath her, but it was the view that made her stomach churn with a rush of adrenaline and joy.
Two dozen roads stretched out from the castle like the rays of a sun, their edges lined with massive trees. Each tree was dozens of stories tall and as thick and round as a house, with windows that circled the trunk every ten feet or so to ma
rk each new floor. Their branches pushed against their neighbors, creating a canopy that stretched in a perfect line along a bustling road that went on for miles.
The crisp, sweet air rushed along her face and nipped her neck. Hillsidians on the bridges waved to each other and shouted greetings before they slipped through the dozens of doors along the bark-covered castle walls.
“The Blood asked to speak with you, but the meeting isn’t supposed to start for another hour,” Braeden said, stopping beside her. “Let me show you a bit of my home.”
Ten minutes later, after more bridges and a maze of hallways, Kara followed Braeden out into the large cobblestone courtyard from which the city’s roads began. Each of the wide roads went on for a mile or more and ended in a tall golden gate in the distance. The courtyard itself, however, was massive and wide enough to encompass the main doors of two of the castle’s five trees. These two trees stood in front of the other three, so that the castle was a close-knit clump of bark and branches tied together with rope bridges.
Hundreds of Hillsidians walked through the courtyard, and thousands more strolled along its neighboring streets. Children ran through the crowds, ducking lightly around the throngs of people, while the shoppers meandered by the stores on each avenue and enjoyed the afternoon heat. The crowds were ablaze with gossip. Men and women alike grinned and sniggered as they chattered about everything and nothing all at once.
Everyone was dressed in brilliant greens, beiges, and browns. Some men wore simple pants and tunics, their sleeves rolled up to reveal thick arms, while most ladies in the crowds wore long gowns that grazed the spotless cobblestone. A few of these women even wore thin gold tiaras that glittered in the radiating afternoon light, and they walked in pairs with their chins held high as they chatted. More than one of these clusters giggled as Braeden strode by.
One young woman wiped away invisible dust from her gown and smiled to him, brushing her honey-colored hair over her shoulder to reveal a slender neck. He, however, ignored her completely and continued down the road. The girl scowled after Kara, fanning her face as she turned and hustled away.
“She was flirting with you, Braeden. Did you miss that?”
“That wasn’t flirting,” he said.
“You’re oblivious.”
“No, just cautious. I try to avoid involvement.”
She forced a humorless smile and glanced down at the stones in the road, pausing long enough in the shock of what she saw that he walked a good distance ahead.
The stones were changing shape.
They shifted and molded around each other, congealing to match the contours of the feet that walked over them. One of the stones even took on the shape of her face while she stared at it. It stuck out its tongue, the small heap of rock gliding out with the grate of stone scraping brick, and the stony face blew an inaudible raspberry. She laughed.
“Hillside is quirky,” Braeden said, suddenly at her side once more. “It’s good to see you smile after everything you’ve been through.”
“I can’t even think about anything bad right now. I needed this.”
“Sorry to mention this, then, but I need to ask something of you,” he said, lowering his voice so that it came out as a barely audible hiss. “You can’t tell anyone that I was with you in the Stele.”
“Then how did we meet?”
“The muses needed a guide to bring you here, so they found me while I was on my way back from my isen hunt. Tell them that. Drenowith are legendary here and no one knows just what they are capable of doing. They will believe it.”
“Okay.”
Several of the shops had tables set up on the roadside. Trays lined these tables, each filled with something different. Some had jewels that glittered as she passed, while others brimmed with fish or vegetables. Vendors laughed and chatted with their patrons, exchanging thin gold coins for their wares.
Any human alive would have been lost in the Hillside crowd. Hillsidians with every skin tone passed by, and blondes walked hand-in-hand with brunettes. Everyone looked different and no one seemed to care.
“Here we are,” Braeden said.
He stopped at a shop with a particularly gnarled trunk and rifled through the small tables outside. She laughed when she realized that he had found a few trays of gloves.
The shopkeeper trotted out to them and welcomed them with a broad smile. His face was as wrinkled as his shop, and the silver hair that dangled around his ears framed his brown eyes. When Braeden insisted that they didn’t need help, he flitted away to another customer.
The prince rummaged through several boxes before he handed Kara a pair for approval. A thin woven braid along the edges of each finger accented the dark brown leather gloves. Small pieces of opal had been sewn into each cuff.
“Do you like those?” he asked.
“They’re beautiful, but are you seriously that afraid of me touching people?”
He grinned. “Yes.”
A breathless young boy ran up to them from the crowd. He bent over his knees, huffing. “Master Braeden, the Queen would like to start the meeting early.”
“Thank you.” Braeden slid a coin in the boy’s hand. “And that’s because I know you’ve forgotten to get your mother’s birthday present, Thomas.”
Thomas blushed and bowed. “Thank you, Master Braeden. I did.”
Braeden ruffled the boy’s hair and ducked into the shop to pay the merchant, leaving Kara to pull on her new gloves. She tested them by wiggling her fingers as Thomas bowed again and rushed back into the crowded street.
“Are you ready?” Braeden asked when he returned.
“I have no idea.”
“You’ll be fine.”
They walked back to the castle, which loomed overhead, and it became rapidly evident that they hadn’t walked as far as she’d initially imagined. After just a few minutes, they stood at the main doors of the castle’s second tree, which opened out onto the stone courtyard. These doors were propped open, and a dozen soldiers lined the edges of the stairs which led to them. Each guard stared straight ahead, unmoving.
Braeden jogged up the steps two at a time while Kara hurried to keep pace, following him through the entryway and toward a second set of broad doors that were easily twice her height.
He leaned on one of the doors, which creaked open beneath his weight to reveal a massive throne room. Two dozen white marble pillars supported the ceiling above, which was lined with thick windows that let in the summer light. Sheer green tapestries hung from the space between each pillar and rippled as the door opened. The walls and floors were covered with the same white marble as the pillars.
At the far end of the room was a raised platform shaped like a crescent moon, and on it sat three marble thrones, two of which were draped in more of the sheer, emerald green fabric that hung between the pillars. The largest chair was centered against the wall, while the two smaller thrones had been set on either side of it in a layout that reminded Kara of Carden’s throne room.
A woman wearing a gold gown stood beside the middle seat, her auburn hair pulled into a bun. A shimmering golden crown inset with emeralds adorned her head.
“Oh.” Braeden stopped at the door and didn’t enter.
“What?”
“It seems like the Queen wants to speak with you beforehand,” he said, nodding toward the woman as he nudged Kara through the door.
Kara’s stomach twisted into a knot. “I have to go in there alone?”
“You’ll be fine,” he repeated. “So you know, her name is Lorraine, but you need to address her either as the Queen or the Blood. Nothing else.”
“Why?”
A shadow passed over his face and he grimaced, his eyes trailing out of focus. He shook his head. “Just trust me.”
“You’re not exactly instilling me with confidence, here.”
“Don’t keep her waiting.”
He patted Kara’s shoulder and disappeared back into the hallway, letting the giant doors swing clo
sed behind him. She turned back to the woman standing at the other end of the huge room and tried to smile, but the corners of her mouth twitched and she couldn’t hold it. She coughed through the nerves in her stomach and began the considerable walk to the thrones.
The Queen nodded in welcome and cradled her hands in front of her with a delicate twist in her slender wrists. Her gown’s tall collar framed her thin face. Kara suppressed the urge to simultaneously curtsey and bow, and luckily found herself speechless instead.