Soul of Cinder

by Bree Barton

  Mia stopped abruptly. Her mouth fell open, full of half-chewed piglum.

  “Pepper!” she cried. “I taste pepper!” She looked up at Nell, her eyes so full of hope it nearly broke Pilar’s heart.

  On the beach, when Nell had touched Mia’s wrist—and again when Rose practically made love to the sand—Pilar couldn’t explain what had come over her. She hadn’t meant to be mean. Mia had looked happier than she’d ever seen her. Their conversation under the snow palace came rushing back: Mia confessing she was desperate to feel things, and terrified she never would.

  I’m not a fighter like you are, she’d said.

  Pilar’s own words echoed. Then I’ll fight for you. Until you’re strong enough to fight again.

  But now that the sensations were coming back, she wouldn’t need Pilar to fight for her. Mia wouldn’t need her at all.

  So Pilar did what she always did with fear.

  Choked it.

  The next hour played out like a bad joke. The water in the bath bucket had no temperature, until the moment Mia yelped that warmth had enveloped her feet in silken heat. Those were her actual words: “I feel warmth enveloping my feet in silken heat!”

  Maybe Mia really was destined to be a princess. She was as bad as Quin. Like any good royal, she seemed constitutionally unable to say, “The water is hot.”

  And then Mia’s face fell.

  “It’s gone,” she said, all her joy flushed down the drain.

  Pilar hated that a part of her felt relieved.

  Nell installed them in a room with three hay beds: a welcome relief after weeks on a wooden boat. On each bed sat a white towel twisted into the shape of a miniature elephant. Pilar promptly untwisted her elephant and collapsed on the bed.

  Not Mia. She babbled on and on about a large rock near her cottage in Ilwysion—“Angie thought it looked like an elephant, but I never agreed!”—and then, just as Pilar started to drift off to sleep, Rose waxed lyrical about the hay against the down pillow.

  “Soft and scratchy! So beautifully juxtaposed!” she moaned, her voice muffled in goose down.

  And the fear grew.

  At breakfast the next morning—more bean goop with a side of fresh melon—Mia was distraught that she couldn’t taste the food.

  “It’s all right, Mia,” Nell insisted. “Even if the sensations are coming back in bits and pieces, they’re coming back. Once we get to the House of Shadows, there will be so many people who want to help you, you can’t even imagine.”

  Nell pushed aside her half-eaten soup.

  “Now, on to practicalities. I’ve booked us on a caravan to Shabeeka, the first of the glass cities. Took me long enough to haggle—so many tourists this time of year! The Pearl Moon Festival is in full swing, and more people than ever are making the pilgrimage to the Isle of Forgetting, which seems especially tragic during such a lovely festival, who in their right mind would want to forget that? The House of Shadows sits smack in the center of Shabeeka, so once we’ve—”

  “Are you going to finish that?” Pilar jerked a thumb toward the soup.

  Nell shrugged. “Have at it. Just don’t eat too much, because the caravan can be very . . .”

  Pil had already wolfed it down.

  Bumpy. That was Pilar’s guess for how Nell would have finished her sentence. The ride to Shabeeka had more bumps than a pox victim.

  “Not too much longer,” Nell promised.

  Pilar grunted. The back of her neck was sweaty, her armpits damp. The cold desert from the night before had thawed into a sweltering desert day.

  “You said that hours ago.”

  “Yes, but now I actually mean it.”

  Pilar folded her arms. “How are you paying for all this, Nell? Were you hiding gold coins in those banana leaves?”

  “The glass kingdom has a strong system of credit. My family’s name is well respected.”

  “They’ll know you’re here once they get the bill.”

  “Oh, they’ll probably know long before then. That’s the problem with family, really: their love becomes a kind of leash.”

  She shut her eyes, resting the back of her head on the flimsy canvas wall.

  Pilar frowned. If love were a kind of leash, her mother had been all too happy to strangle her with it.

  She could feel Mia staring at her. Why was Mia always staring? On the boat there weren’t many places to fix your gaze. Ocean. Ocean. Ocean. And so on. But here they were, bouncing along in a caravan, Rose giving her that same look. Oozing sympathy. Ready to tell her how she should or shouldn’t be healing. Eager to propose a scientific formula to get her back on track.

  She knew Mia meant well. That was the story of Mia Rose’s life, wasn’t it? Trying to do everything right, then doing everything wrong. But Pilar couldn’t take Mia looking at her like a piece of broken glass, one that had to be handled gently. She glared back. Ferocious.

  “What?” she growled.

  Mia shifted on the bench. Opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, then shut it. Turned away.

  Pilar felt a stab of guilt. Why was she being heartless? Mia was the only family she had left. The other half of the leash.

  But maybe that was why it hurt. In their Reflections, they had understood each other. They’d stood side by side, stronger together than apart. Ready to reclaim their lives. They’d been equals, partners. Sisters.

  Now when Rose looked at her, it was with sympathy. Or worse, she didn’t look at all.

  Frustrated, Pilar peeled back a flap of canvas. They were deep into Shabeeka now. Sandy dirt roads, buildings of mud and wood and limestone. There was no glass in the glass city. One more bill of goods she’d been sold.

  And then she saw it. The caravan veered down a wide street, and at the far end, an enormous structure appeared. Pilar sucked in her breath.

  The building was made of glass. Every wall a different color, cut into a different shape. Her sharp eyes took in spheres, cubes, diamonds, waves. The walls dipped and rose—some smoothly curved, others sliced at sharp angles. One whole surface was blue and rippling. Were those fish swimming inside the glass?

  Beyond the fish, she saw bigger blurs. People, she assumed. It seemed laughable, imagining humans in a house of glass. Wouldn’t they constantly knock into the walls?

  In the front courtyard, a clear staircase led to a massive gold door. The entire building seemed to be hovering a few feet off the ground. Obviously a mirage. They’d been in the desert too long.

  Pilar rubbed her eyes.

  The building was definitely hovering.

  “We’re here,” Nell said, waking with a start. She hadn’t even looked outside, yet somehow she knew.

  Mia peered out of the caravan, clearly as awestruck as Pilar.

  “Is it . . . ?”

  “Floating? Oh yes. That’s just one of the many strange things you’re about to see, believe me. Remember what I taught you about the Elemental Hex? The House of Shadows was built on an ancient source of power: the Elemental Whorl. All the elements are suspended in perfect balance, no human intervention required. The Whorl is strong enough to hold the whole House, and supple enough to adapt to the wind. The sands here are always shifting. This is why other structures sink, some become totally submerged. But the House hovers, impervious to time.”

  “Till the glass cities sink into the western sands,” Mia murmured. Familiar words, though Pilar couldn’t place them.

  She felt pulled toward the House of Shadows, and also repelled. It was too open. Too exposed. Pilar thought of Dove’s underground torture chamber, where she’d stood, unable to move, staring at her reflection in frosty black ice. Not so different from glass, really.

  Of course, the Shadowess didn’t torture children to fuel a kingdom. Or so Nell said. You couldn’t be too careful.

  “Great sands,” Nell murmured. “Four years and it hasn’t changed a bit.”

  They stepped out of the caravan, which wasted no time trundling off without them. For a moment th
ey stood in perfect silence, staring up at the House.

  “What’s that?” Pilar pointed to a coil of glass stones in the courtyard. The path looped in on itself, then looped back, then looped back again. Which was pointless, when she thought about it.

  “A labyrinth,” Nell said. “It’s how everyone enters the House. Sometimes you have to go backward to go forward.” She groaned. “Listen to me, I sound just like her! That’s the problem with the Shadowess’s little sayings: once you’ve heard them, they’re stuck in your head forever.”

  After a month of silence, Nell was suddenly doling out all kinds of little gems about the Shadowess. It seemed suspicious. Who cared if the Shadowess was appointed to her position? That meant some self-righteous temple of experts gave her power, not the people she served. In Pilar’s experience, people with power were all the same. Her mother. King Ronan. Lord Dove. Orry.

  No one should have that kind of power. It was too easy to abuse.

  “Shall we, then?” Nell started toward the House. “I can’t wait to show you the Creation Studio . . . Oh! And the Curatorium, of course. I think you’ll love it, Mia, scientist that you are.”

  When she beckoned, Rose followed.

  Maybe Nell wouldn’t abandon them at the House, Pilar realized. Maybe Nell would stay, and she and Mia would become lovers. Or friends. Or sisters.

  Pilar’s heart sank. There was more than one way to be abandoned.

  She clenched her fists. It wasn’t too late. She could leave them before they left her.

  “Pilar?”

  Mia had stopped walking. Pivoted halfway.

  “You coming?”

  Pilar’s heart lifted. Mia was waiting for her.

  “The thing about a labyrinth,” Nell said, “is that there’s only one place you can end up. Which is exactly the place you were meant to end up all along.”

  Pilar unclenched her fists. Swallowed. And stepped onto the first glass stone.

  Chapter 7

  Home

  “WHERE,” SAID TOBIN, RISING from the piano bench, “are your manners?”

  Quin stood in the not-so-deserted brothel, mouth agape, still trying to parse this unexpected reunion with his music teacher.

  “My . . .”

  “Not your manners. Gods, no.” Toby flourished a hand toward his band of unsmiling acolytes, the way an innkeeper might flourish a hand toward a plate of bad cheese. “Don’t you remember how to address a royal? All hail the son of Clan Killian!”

  “Uncontested king of Glas Ddir,” muttered a gravelly voice behind him.

  Someone snickered to Quin’s left, and it echoed through the group. He bristled. Was his rightful claim to the throne so amusing? He glanced over his shoulder, hoping it wasn’t Domeniq. But Dom was nowhere in sight.

  Instead Quin saw a girl of eleven or twelve, with cropped dirty-blond hair and puckish blue eyes. When those eyes met his, she did not laugh. She curtsied. A tiny curtsy—presumably so as not to provoke the others’ ire—but a curtsy nonetheless.

  “Silence,” Tobin reprimanded the others, and the snickers immediately ceased. “Forgive them, Your Grace. We’re all in need of a good laugh.”

  Were these people loyal to Tobin? They certainly seemed to listen when he spoke. Quin winced, remembering the last time he and Tobin had seen each other. As Quin and Mia fled the Kaer, Toby had emerged from the shadows with bread and snow plums—stale and moldy, respectively. Quin knew he deserved far worse. What struck him that night was how old Tobin had looked, how tired. So painfully diminished from the dazzling prodigy he once was.

  “What should we do with him, Toby?” said the big fellow to Quin’s left, presumably the same jester who’d found his claim to the throne hilarious.

  “Take him with us, of course.”

  “Alive?”

  Tobin massaged his temples. “Is that so hard to grasp?”

  “But we . . .” The man looked to the others, uncertain. “We don’t believe in kings.”

  “Pinch him, if you must. I’m fairly certain he exists.”

  This seemed to confound the man, who frowned and folded his arms over his burly chest. The others looked equally uncertain.

  Tobin’s silver eyes locked onto Quin’s, and he did not look away.

  “Four gods,” Quin said, realizing. “You’re the Embers.”

  Toby looked pleased. “Our reputation precedes us! I must admit: I’m surprised you’ve heard of us. You’ve been gone quite awhile now. All the way to Luumia, I hear, chasing after your wife.” He tapped his upper lip, thoughtful. “Or were you running away from your other wife?”

  Quin frowned. His friend had always possessed an acerbic wit, but the line between acerbity and vitriol was growing thin.

  “I don’t understand, Tobin. You’re leading a band of murderers and thieves?”

  “Do we look like thieves? We’re a band of brothers, sisters, friends, lovers. We are the Embers. The ones the world expected to flicker and die out. Instead we ignited a revolution.”

  “Remember the Embers,” his broad-shouldered acolyte said solemnly. “They remember you.”

  Quin arched a brow. “Is that some kind of slogan?”

  Tobin folded his arms. “Do you not approve?”

  “A little grandiose, I think.”

  “You know what I find grandiose?” Toby smiled. “Tyrants.”

  The room pulsed with a strange energy Quin couldn’t quite read. As if a crust of sardonic laughter had formed on top of something far more malicious.

  “You’ll come with us,” Toby said. “Won’t you?”

  Quin studied him closely. Was it an invitation or a threat?

  He drew himself up, doing his best to sound kingly.

  “I’ve got my own matters to attend to.”

  “One night, at least. Have a few drinks, a few laughs? Like old times.”

  Tobin’s gaze was steady. Those silver eyes had once sparked delicious heat in Quin’s body. To his embarrassment, they still did.

  “It’s been so long,” Toby murmured, in a tone Quin never thought he’d hear again.

  A new horror squirmed through him. He had returned to the river kingdom to make his claim to the throne. Any pretenders were his enemy. If Toby led the Embers, would Quin have to fight him? Kill him?

  “Please.” Tobin gestured toward the others. “It would make all of us so happy.”

  Quin looked from face to face. He did not see happiness. He saw distrust, amusement, and disdain. He wished Domeniq hadn’t abandoned him; surely they’d have had at least a glimmer of the friendship they had begun to forge on Refúj.

  Again Quin met Tobin’s eyes. This time, he understood something. If the lonely farmer was to be believed, the Embers posed the greatest threat to his claim. For days Quin had been following their carved triangles. Not triangles, he realized, in a jolt of epiphany. Flames. Those flames had led him, finally, here. The Embers now had a face. A face that Quin had once loved. A face that, he felt certain, had once loved him back.

  If he accepted Tobin’s invitation, it was tantamount to bedding with the enemy.

  What better place than the bed of the enemy to ascertain the threat?

  “All right,” Quin said. “One night.”

  Reactions rippled through the group—a mixed bag, from what he could tell.

  “Wonderful!” Toby cried. “I’m so happy to hear it. I’ll lead the way.”

  When Tobin turned and walked out of the brothel, Quin did not fail to notice the hitch in his gait. That hitch was a gift from King Ronan. The kind of gift you could never give back.

  Killian Village was in ruins. Cottages stood empty, doors ajar or ripped off their hinges. Shops had been ravaged by fire; carts and wagons lay overturned, spilled fruit rotting on the cobblestones. There were carcasses in the streets: rats and dogs and sometimes larger bodies that shook Quin to the core. A mantle of snow covered everything, scabbed over with soot and mud.

  As Tobin led the group through the village, Quin fel
l behind. All the other wrecked towns paled in comparison to Killian Village. Had his father done this? Had he unleashed one last torrent of fury and destruction? Had Zaga? Angelyne? Or were the Embers to blame?

  They were passing a corner Quin knew well. On instinct, he looked toward the building that had always lifted his spirits—and stopped dead in his tracks.

  What was once a pretty two-story facade had been decimated. The fire-eaten walls were little more than rock and ash; he could see the building’s blackened innards. It called to mind a gentle giant, charred down to the very bone.

  The orphanage.

  Quin could pinpoint exactly when his furtive visits to the orphanage had begun. For years he’d watched his sister ride into Killian Village bringing food, clothes, and other supplies. The villagers invited Karri into their homes, their pubs and taverns, their houses of worship. The princess came ever ready with a kind word or a pint of cold ale. She had a gift.

  Quin had no illusions. He’d never been as generous or good-hearted as his sister. But after witnessing firsthand what his father had done to Tobin in the castle crypt—what he was capable of doing—Quin knew he could no longer look the other way.

  It was too late to protect Toby. He had failed miserably in that regard. But he would do all he could to atone through other means.

  The day after King Ronan banished Tobin’s family from the Kaer, Quin had slipped out to the stables, saddled a horse, and rode straight to the orphanage. He had stuffed his pockets full of treats: sweet candies in waxy paper he’d pilfered from the kitchens, little music makers constructed of wood and twine, dolls with straw hair. And coins, of course. Tiny discs of Killian gold his father would never miss—but that could feed and clothe a child for months.

  Sometimes he wrote them plays. He would bring a pile of costumes, and they’d stomp about the orphanage, performing their roles. Other times he played piano. He’d sit at the rickety instrument and play Glasddiran nursery rhymes, songs the children’s mothers might have sung to them. He could guess what had happened to those mothers. Had Quin seen their hands hanging in the king’s Hall?