Amber & Dusk

by Lyra Selene

  I opened my mouth to correct him, to explain that Thibo was only showing me the map. But Sunder suddenly bowed, hand out and palm up. I hesitated, staring at the long, elegant fingers, the ridge of callus where a sword hilt fit. His hand trembled in an unspoken question.

  I bit my lip, and slid my hand into the curl of his palm.

  A thrill sang up my arm. The world tilted on its axis as he dipped me, the brush of his hands at my waist featherlight. He swirled me across the mosaic, the tiles blurring in a circle of kembric and blue. He was deft, deliberate, stepping in time to the echoes of some forgotten music. I drifted, my feet barely touching the floor, hypnotized by the measured sway and dip of our first dance.

  He eased me back into a niche between two pillars. I gasped in a breath of that sharp, clean scent of him. He closed the gap between us. I could hear the thud of his heart, too fast. His lips brushed my ear, sending a shiver dancing toward the base of my skull. My mind went smooth and hard with desire.

  “Someone requires your presence,” he murmured. The wall behind us clicked audibly, then swung open.

  I stumbled and almost fell into the cramped, dingy room behind me. A single ambric lamp lent a fitful glow. A dark shadow loomed, light glinting off oval spectacles.

  Dowser.

  I set my jaw and glared at Sunder, who leaned against the wall and avoided my eyes. I’d evaded my teacher since I’d gotten back from Belsyre, because I knew what he’d say about all this. He’d tell me—

  “You’re not ready!” he roared, slamming his fist on the table. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw he was incandescent with rage. Angrier than I’d ever seen him. “The time isn’t right!”

  “What do you propose?” I snapped. Exhaustion and grief and duplicity cut my fuse short. “Wait another seventeen tides for you to leave that smoke-filled study and discover how to defeat your old lover?”

  He stiffened. “You are an absolute fool if you think you can face the empress and survive.”

  “How would you know what I can survive?” The old resentment stirred, smooth and polished by tides of use. “You abandoned me at the edge of the world to wait patiently for a destiny that might never come. Out there they treated me like a monster, a freak. They reviled and abused me for the one thing that made me strong. But I survived. I traveled halfway across the world. I fought tooth and nail for everything I’ve been given. This is me fighting to create the world I want to live in. You have no right to tell me I’m not ready for that.”

  “The world you want to live in?” His voice was appalled. “By the Scion, you actually want this. Not just to oust the empress, but to take her place.”

  “I do.” My skin flared hot and cold. “I will remake this world. It’s my birthright.”

  “The birthright of the Sabourin dynasty is lust and blood and death. After everything I taught you, is that who you want to be?”

  “Take me or leave me,” I snarled. “I know you’ll do your part regardless.”

  He rocked back on his heels, shocked into silence. I turned on my heel. I was tired of going around in circles. Everything had already been decided.

  “When you first came,” Dowser whispered. Something in his voice stopped me in my tracks. “When you first came, I thought you were like your father. Lavish, but generous. Unthinking, but brave. Selfish, but ultimately kind. But every day I see it more and more. The single-minded pursuit of a world only you desire. A world only you can see.” He took a deep breath. “You’re just like her.”

  Ice crackled the length of my spine when I realized who he meant. “You don’t mean that.”

  “You’re right: I will do my part.” His voice trembled, then cracked. “But I hope you are very careful when you look your sister in the eye. You don’t want to see yourself staring back.”

  Outrage and grief and a terrible sucking dread filled the cavern of my heart. I felt Sunder lift his eyes to my face.

  “Dark seeks dark, Mirage,” Dowser whispered, and his words were like a song of undoing, an elegy for a disappointed hope. “And pain seeks pain.”

  My gaze slashed up. Sunder’s eyes crackled with ice, and again I glimpsed that unending expanse of desolation held back by pure, steely will. Cold fire and a monstrous longing crackled in the air between us.

  I shoved out into the annex, gasping for breath like I’d been underwater. I stalked away without looking behind me, choking on bitterness and conviction and the glass-bright shards of soul-deep fear.

  Carrousel arrived at last.

  A Matin like any other, except for the buzz of anticipation buoying Coeur d’Or. The sky was clear, strung with distant clouds of lavender and mauve. Even the sun seemed to pulsate with slow excitement.

  My handmaidens helped me prepare for the day. Sunder had bribed Severine’s hairdresser with an astonishing amount of livres to divulge the style the empress requested for the day, and I asked Louise to imitate the same coiffure. It took shape slowly, a complicated tower of curls and braids, elegant and bold. I did my own cosmetics, lining my eyes in heavy kohl and glossing my lips until they were ripe and plump. I took kembric leaf I bought off an artificer and spread it along the contours of my face: the edge of my hairline, the tops of my cheekbones. I dusted crushed gold powder along my collarbones, the line of my nose, and my décolletage, until I glimmered like a gilt statue in the red light filtering through the window.

  Elodie cinched my corset until I was gasping for breath, and helped me into the extravagant gown. The skirt was pure kembric, a cascade of liquid satin glowing molten in the lamplight. A bodice of thick black lace twisted up over a golden underlay, clinging tightly to the contours of my chest. A black capelet hung from my shoulders, with a deep hood. I didn’t want to be recognized until my big reveal in front of the entire court.

  The bells for Prime rang, and the gates to the palais thundered open. I couldn’t hear it, but I could feel it in my bones—the juddering rush of hundreds of feet pouring across the pavement, up the stairs, into the palais. Boots tromping across the jardins, spectators crushing the shrubbery and peering into the ponds. Voices raised in eager chatter.

  This was the custom: One day per tide, on Carrousel, the gates of Coeur d’Or swung open and anyone who could afford the entrance fee was allowed to come, and admire, and take part in the rollicking merriment organized by the Amber Empress and her court. Peasant, pauper, merchant, fool. All were welcome. Carrousel was a day when anyone could imagine they were anything. A housewife could imagine she was a beautiful courtesan, gowned in expensive silks and crowned in the jewels of her patrons. A lord could imagine he was a merchant stuffing his face with sausage and beer, with no lands or legacy to plague him. The secret child of a dead emperor could pretend she wasn’t about to intentionally turn the world on its head. She could pretend she was the person she used to be: nobody.

  I wandered through the festivities with my face hidden beneath my hood. It was strange to see the jardins and the Esplanade and the Hall of Portraits packed with strangers. Men and women jostled for space, clad in everything from plain cotton to velvet, linen to brocade. Strange, vain, elaborate costumes. Simple rags. Masks. Stilts. An air of merriment and revelry quickened my heartbeat and tightened my fists.

  Pavilions erected on the lawn offered curiosities from distant lands: baubles, trinkets, ornaments, and oddities. A fortune-teller with eyes white as snow and hair forged from dristic promised true love for the low cost of one deadly secret. A troupe of tumbling children flipped and whirled, a motley, gymnastic rainbow. Hawkers peddled spices from across the sea: the powdered horn of an incubus, said to raise your mettle in the bedroom; the liquid tails of captured sea-stallions, guaranteed to speed any journey. Vials of flaming sand enchanted by a desert d’haka. Liquors to make you drunk; elixirs to turn you sober once more.

  Near Compline, Skyclad chevaliers paraded along the Esplanade, their prancing destriers decked in armure chevaline, spiked armor forged from dristic and steel. The chevaliers’ extravagant
coats and polished armor sent spears of light to pierce at watching eyes, and the plumes dancing from their helms frothed like great clouds in hues of raspberry and tangerine.

  Finally, the bells for second Compline rang, and the crowd hushed. Whispers sprinted around the edges of the courtyard as the merrymakers waited. Finally, someone pointed, and the crowd cheered, clapping and waving and howling at the palais.

  From a balcony halfway up the tower Severine emerged, her gown glowing like its own sun in the brilliant light shining at her back. Her kembric crown was a stylized sunburst, alternating straight and curving rays to affect a gleaming corona around her head. She waved, and smiled, elegant and benevolent, then stepped off the edge of the balcony.

  The crowd gasped. Someone shrieked.

  Severine didn’t fall. She floated gently down, her gown billowing and belling around her. She alit like a feather, her pointed slippers delicate on the manicured lawn.

  The crowd roared its pleasure, and the empress curtsied deep, her violet eyes sparking. I peered at the balcony to see which legacies had been drafted to forge this illusion, but the courtiers lurked out of sight.

  “Welcome!” she called. The onlookers quieted, craning and pushing. “The wonderful Fête du Carrousel returns once more. Sample the delights we offer you, for nothing is too grand or too decadent on this festival day! And when you are sated, follow me to the Golden Grotto, where my most talented courtiers will entertain us all with the glory of their legacies!”

  She curtsied once more, and again the crowd roared its approval. She danced across the lawn toward the little wilderness and the amphitheater beyond, where the evening’s performances would be held. Ladies and gentlemen frolicked in her wake, but not too close—a platoon of Skyclad Gardes shadowed her every move, a grim reminder that even on this day of celebration, the empress didn’t fully trust her own people.

  I let the crowd part around me, and stared up at the balcony, letting my imagination soar. Severine’s entrance was just a show. I knew it, and the crowd knew it. But everyone loved a show.

  At least, that’s what I was hoping.

  Past the Weeping Pools, the trees grew closer together, their untrimmed branches shadowing the sun. A narrow pathway coiled between the boughs, shimmering globes strung along the darkened trail. Veils of flowers festooned the trees, light and color swaying between the looming shadows of crooked branches. The scents of jasmin and lavender drifted thick in the languid air.

  I trailed at the back of the crowd following Severine to the Grotto. Because of the famous wager and the buzz surrounding my performance, I’d been designated to appear last. I had an hour, if not two, before I had to prepare. I wanted to see a few of the other courtiers perform—Lullaby was singing, and I had missed her last concert—but part of me wanted to linger here, to savor my last moments of relative anonymity, before chaos descended and the world burst apart with noise and color.

  I glanced quickly over my shoulder, then stepped off the pathway into the shadows. I lifted my skirts, moving quietly through the clinging underbrush, until I looked back and couldn’t see the path anymore. I gazed upward through the reaching branches, glimpsing a sky stained with rust and wine. A sudden breeze sent leaves rustling on the trees, and I couldn’t help but think of bare branches etched in pewter on a pale floating skirt, the nip of an icy wind, the steam of someone’s breath mingling with my own.

  A heavy hand fell on my shoulder.

  I stifled a scream and spun on my heel. A dark hooded figure loomed between the trees. I swallowed my fear, steadying myself on the trunk of a tree. He wore all black. He knew what I was wearing. He was—

  The figure held out a placatory hand and brushed the hood away from his face. Dark brown skin. A glimmer of spectacles.

  A wave of residual anger crashed against sweeping disappointment. He wasn’t who I hoped he would be.

  “Dowser.” The ragged edge of resentment made my throat hoarse. “What are you doing here? Come to scold me one last time?”

  “Scion’s breath, Mirage.” He stepped closer, lowering the hood of my capelet with wary fingers. His eyes took in the kembric leaf slicked along my skin, the shimmer of golden dust along my neck, the elaborate coiffure. “You really do look like her.”

  “I have to get to the Grotto.” Bitterness and misery made my voice foreign.

  “I know,” he murmured, and stepped away. His throat bobbed as his hands folded into their black sleeves. “You must know I never meant to say those things. And I didn’t mean a word.”

  Something collapsed inside me. “Yes, you did.”

  “Some of it,” he amended. “But it’s hard not to be frightened of how powerful you’ve become. This place has changed you. Not just your legacy, but your sense of self. You came here to fight for a place in this world where you thought you belonged. Now you fight for a new world—a world you think you can create. You are formidable in so many ways, Mirage. I only hope you can remember why you really want the things you strive for.”

  “I—” I choked on my words, casting my eyes to the jeweled hem of my dress and fighting for composure. “I understand what you’re saying. But this place hasn’t changed me. It’s just given me the opportunity to show the world who I really am. And I won’t apologize for being who I’m not. And never was.”

  “I remember I once said you were ambitious, arrogant, and even a little cruel.” Dowser turned his eyes to the burnt sky high above. “I wasn’t far off. But I hadn’t realized yet how deeply the pains of this world reverberate inside you. How they are transformed, in you, into something sublime. Transcendent. That, Mirage, is your gift.”

  A fragile seed burst into tenuous bloom inside me. I tried hard not to think about another Nocturne. Perhaps you want to show the world something only you can see. Something lovely, and strange, and just a little bit monstrous.

  “I just hope you remember how much good there is in this world, although too often it is obscured behind shadow and pain.” His voice cracked with all the things he would never tell me. “I hope you remember how much good there is in you.”

  “I never wanted to be good,” I muttered.

  “That’s what makes it so special.” He smiled, a clear-glass swell of pure joy. “I want you to know how much it meant to me that you cared. About me. I never—” He cut off abruptly, staring at the ground and polishing his spectacles on his sleeve. His eyes gleamed with varnish. “I never had a child, Mirage. But—”

  “I know,” I whispered. The words were a strip of splintered wood tearing at my throat. “I know.”

  He leaned down, slowly, and brushed a breath of a kiss on my temple. Hot nettles prickled my eyes as I flung my arms around his neck. When he drew back, some of my makeup had smeared on his cheek, leaving a swathe of golden stars glittering against his night-dark skin.

  “Here,” I said. I couldn’t help but laugh as I lifted a gloved thumb to swipe away the dust. “You’ll give me away.”

  He chuckled, but we both knew it was for show.

  Something made me reach into my pocket and draw out a small velvet pouch. I placed it in Dowser’s palm, and before I could change my mind, I curled his fingers around it.

  “Keep it for me,” I whispered. “You’ll know what to do with it, if anything—if anything happens.”

  He nodded, grave. “Please, Mirage. Be careful. If not for your sake, then for mine.”

  “I promise.”

  He disappeared between the trees, silent as a wraith. But as I turned and faced toward the Grotto, I felt like an iron band had been unfastened from my heart, and I smiled through the film of tears turning the world soft as watercolors.

  The Golden Grotto was riotous with light. Built into the edge of an old quarry, the amphitheater rose in sloping tiers. Hidden fountains gurgled and plashed, releasing the scents of fresh mint and spring water. Hundreds of floating lanterns mixed a cool white glow with the red burn of the sun. The crowd was raucous and merry, half-drunk and well pleased by the
performances of the empress’s captive legacies: a festive aria sung by a radiant Lullaby, whose dulcet tones had most of them dancing like enchanted marionettes in the aisles; a watery display by River, who floated undulating globes and sent liquid javelins lancing in great arcs; Tangle, who grew an entire brambled jardin into a spiky château, then made giant blossoms float to the heavens like colorful balloons.

  And finally, my turn came.

  An uneasy silence fell as I stepped out onto the stage. I was still wearing my cloak and hood, but I heard a few murmurs about my dress, so similar to the empress’s outfit. I cut my eyes to the great lady herself, careful to keep my face out of the light. She perched on the top tier of the theater, voluminous skirts arrayed and sunburst crown gleaming. Courtiers fawned over her.

  The lacquered ruby sleeping by my heart spat a spark.

  Strains of music rose from the edge of the stage: the Meridian Suite, by a composer well known in court. The piece began slowly as I lifted my arms and surrendered to my illusion.

  Night. A swathe of purest black, impenetrable save for distant stars prickling like chips of diamond. I made the night vast, stretching from one end of the amphitheater to the other, blocking out the sun. I imagined the Midnight Dominion, and it was so.

  A soft moan of appreciation rose from the crowd.

  I showed them the moon, drifting pale and cold and distant across the night. And then I shifted the night into day, black bleeding slowly into red, bleeding slowly into bright, eye-stinging blue at true Prime. I’d never seen such a sky, but then, I’d never seen true night either. And in that azure sweep I put the sun, a giant globe of pulsating orange.

  The crowd gasped, and clapped.

  I spun the illusion, slow then fast. Dawn, day, dusk, night. Day. Night. Sun. Moon. And as I spun I subtly transformed the sun and moon into figures—people, dressed in elaborate costumes. I finished the metamorphosis, placing the figures at opposite ends of the amphitheater, facing each other across the dusk.