The Book of Snow & Silence

by Zoe Marriott

  “Don’t say that.” Did I imagine the quiver in her voice? “Uldar simply isn’t thinking – but what happened with that girl doesn’t have to change anything. The King has given his blessing. My son does intend to marry you.”

  “For now.” There was blood on my hand, smeared across my palm. The red stain was still wet. It was probably all over my lip. My face. I had become so used to the taste that I had forgotten about it. “If he is this besotted with her, how long before he changes his mind?”

  She didn’t answer. The silence was as thick and choking as smoke.

  He had disgraced me in front of all his people. It wasn’t accidental. He wasn’t a fool – he had to have known the implications of what he was going to do. That it would hurt my standing, my reputation. Hurt me. He had done it anyway. Planned it and done it.

  I had liked him. A little. Only a little. I had also found him confusing, infuriating and tiresome, at times, but – there had been some liking, too. I had thought that he liked me, at least. That he wanted me. It ought not to matter, but it did. In the shipwreck we had clung to each other, helped each other, and I had fooled myself into believing it would be enough to earn his respect.

  Wrong again, Theoai, my Mother’s voice chided in my head. Work harder. Remember, rest is for the dead.

  I always had to prove myself, improve myself. Demonstrate my worthiness.

  I tried to imagine walking away. Demanding to be sent home. Boarding another ship – alone this time, and with nothing but a trunk of hastily sewn hand-me-downs as my luggage. Arriving back at Segemassa, at the palace. Facing my Mother and Aramin with empty hands – exiled again, rejected again. The defective princess. Not good enough to be Queen. Not anyone’s Queen. Oh yes, I could go back. I could beg for a second hand place as a second class princess, and swallow everyone’s pity.

  Pity is more bitter than death.

  But I had never broken. Never begged. Not even that last day when my life had fallen in bloody shards at my feet, when my sister had betrayed me and my Mother turned her back. I had never begged.

  I will not beg now.

  “I can’t – ” I began, hardly knowing how the sentence would end.

  Then I realised Miramand wasn’t looking at me anymore.

  Her face contorted strangely, jaw suddenly tensing, mouth gaping open. One hand flew up to her chest. She let out a choked, helpless little ‘Hah!’

  She stepped back – no, staggered – she was going to fall –

  I lunged, my arms reaching out to wrap around her as she crumpled, folding in on herself like an over-creased scrap of paper. Her wheezing breaths were loud in my ears. Something was very wrong.

  “You are ill.” My arms felt like wet string after yesterday, but I found I still had the strength to hold her against me and ease her down onto the soft rug. “Lie still, I’ll call for help.”

  “No!” she gasped, grasping weakly at my sleeve, as it to hold me in place on my knees beside her. “You mustn’t.”

  “You need a doctor!”

  “I beg you.” She shook her head violently, her left hand still clutching at her chest. “Don’t tell anyone. It will pass.”

  The plea went through me like a spike. The words might have come from my own mouth: “Please Aramin – you can’t tell anyone! Just stay with me. It will pass.”

  “All right,” I whispered, peeling her spasming fingers from my sleeve and folding them in both of my hands. “All right. I won’t leave you, Miramand. Look at me. Breathe. Just breathe. That’s it.”

  Slowly, agonisingly slowly, Miramand’s pain eased. Her face relaxed, her breathing slowed and evened out, and the fingers clutching at her chest went limp.

  “It is over,” she said, eyes fluttering closed. “Help me up, please.”

  Wordlessly, I took her weight as she wobbled to her feet, and guided her to the sofa. I sat beside her, releasing her entirely and leaving a little space between us, so that she could compose herself. I felt very calm. Deep inside, tempestuous emotions still seethed darkly, but for now I could ignore them. I waited.

  “I am dying.” She spoke matter-of-factly, not lowering her voice into a fearful whisper, and meeting my eyes straightly when I turned my head to look at her again.

  The news was a blow. I barely knew her, but I had already come to think of her as an ally. Perhaps my only ally here, after what Uldar had done.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, accepting the hollow words politely. “Having Uldar weakened my heart, and for a time they feared I would not survive. I recovered, but at the beginning of this winter there was a bad fever and my troubles returned, worse than before. There’s nothing to be done. I might last another year. Or it might be much less than that. It will happen quite suddenly.”

  “You might die at any time?” I tried to keep my distress hidden, but her face told me I had not been successful. “Does Uldar know?”

  “No one knows.”

  “But surely – “

  She spoke over me, the words boiling out as if they had been contained for too long. “When I learned about my condition, my first thought was for Uldar. You have seen what his Father is. Understand, he was not always like that. Once, he was as Uldarana is now. But life hurt him and disappointed him, and he – fell. He has never been a true Father to our son, or to our nation, and we have all suffered for it. And that same weakness is in Uldarana. You saw the evidence of it today. If I am gone, if he loses me and must complete his journey to manhood with no one but Radugana to guide him –who will help him grow into the man, the great ruler I know he can become? What will become of Silinga if my boy slips away into his grief, and lands in the bottom of a tankard as his Father did?”

  Her eyes had unfocussed into that distant gaze from the throne room. Now they snapped back to me, and the intensity, the lioness-at-bay fury, was like another blow.

  “That is when I began searching for a bride for him. I knew it must be someone exceptional – no country Lord’s pretty daughter or friendly third cousin, but a girl of real royal blood. Someone strong enough to lead Uldarana down the right path, once I am gone, and keep walking beside him even if he strays. Someone who can guide Silinga into a better future, with the King it deserves.”

  “Me?” I asked. I had gone numb. Only when the shock wore off would I feel the weight of this, the meaning of it. “You chose me?”

  “You are everything that I had hoped.” She smiled, a real smile. Her eyes were dry. “Stand by him in his foolishness, stand by him in his grief when it comes, and he will worship you for the rest of his life, Theoai. You can teach him how to be a King who is worthy of you. But only if you are brave enough to fight for him now.”

  Her words called to me. Plucked at every fibre of royal instinct and responsibility that had been drummed into me since I first drew breath. I had chosen to come here, to be a Queen consort – but it had been a last resort, a final desperate snatch at some tiny scrap of the power I had been raised to believe would be mine. Now Miramand offered me the chance of something more. Not only a symbolic crown – one that would truly mean something. My Mother had not found me worthy. But Miramand did.

  My gaze strayed to the spiralling shapes of jewels in her hair – a crown that still sat perfectly on her head despite her suffering and collapse.

  “What about her?” I asked. My voice came out evenly, but shamefully small.

  “Leave that to me. I know how to treat such women,” she promised grimly. “By the time I am through, she will wish she had never come here.”

  “That is – not what I mean. This isn’t really her fault,” I protested, conscience twinging beneath my ribs as I remembered her sodden form sprawled on the deck of the ship, her unmistakeable terror when she had awoken among complete strangers. “I saw her myself, flung up on the ice by the sea, half dead. And she honestly is mute, I’m sure of it. She needs help.”

  Miramand nodded calmly. “Then I will make sure she has help. All the help she needs. Do not co
ncern yourself with her. Your task will be to show Uldar that it is you he wants. You must keep silent – silent about my condition, and above all silent about her. You must continue to act with the same dignity and tact as you have today. She is nothing to Uldar and nothing to you, do you understand? You will no more be troubled by her than the sun is affected by the dirt it casts into shade.”

  I worried at my sore lip. “Wouldn’t it be better if I spoke to him calmly, explained how it looked and what that made me feel – ”

  “On no account!” Miramand said with real alarm, reaching out to place her hand on my arm. Her lips quirked into another smile, humourless and pained. “He will only become stubborn and defensive. After all, he hasn’t done anything wrong. Why should you chide him as if he were a child – why should he have to account for his actions to anyone? Is it his business to listen to low, nasty gossip? He had thought better of you than to stoop to believe such stuff!”

  I swallowed uncomfortably, silenced by the disturbing echo of Uldar’s voice in the self-righteous justifications. She saw my reaction, and nodded.

  “Nothing will more speedily drive a man into any woman’s arms than being forced to defend her. Nothing drives him away as surely as the merest hint of possessiveness or jealousy,” she said wisely. “The next time you see Uldar you must display complete unconcern, as if none of it ever happened. Ask after the girl’s health! Smile, laugh, take his arm just as before. Without the satisfaction of recriminations or arguments he will be left to account for his actions to himself. His own conscience will trouble him more than you ever could.”

  Would it? While that glorious, glowing girl looked at him with such eyes? “And we will try to find out where Shell comes from, and send her back to her family?”

  “Of course. I’m sure it won’t take long to figure out where she needs to go. Take my advice in the meantime, and I promise, he will be just as happy to see her gone as you and I. And then everything will be as it should be.”

  13

  On Miramand’s advice, I declined to attend the banquet planned for that night, excusing myself on the grounds of exhaustion, despite the bruise to my pride at the pretence of weakness.The only excitement during the remainder of the day was the arrival, in the late evening, of the first rushed order of clothes from Mistress Kirgin. Osia, the young maid the Queen had loaned me from her own staff, quietly put everything away for me after I failed to discover any interest whatsoever in looking at them.

  I would never win any contest of beauty if Shell was my rival. All the new gowns in the world wouldn’t change that. As long as the new things were modest and of good quality, which under Miramand’s orders I was sure they would be, I really could not have cared less. I ate dinner in my room, alone save for the maid, and tried to bring my emotions under control.

  When had it happened, I wondered?

  Was it during the shipwreck, when Uldar and I had fought for survival, side by side?

  Or afterwards, when I had first glimpsed the shining towers of the Silingana looming over the snowy shores of this land?

  Was it when I had seen that sudden, intense connection between Uldar and Shell, and realised I might have lost his interest and regard before they were ever truly mine?

  I did not know the answer. All I really knew was that something had changed. No – I had changed. My shrinking dread over marriage to a stranger and my weary, resigned need to scratch out some sort of place for myself in this foreign land had become a firm and fixed determination. I would win Uldar over and, in time, earn the crown of Silinga’s Queen.

  There was respect, power, responsibility to be had here. All the things I had been raised to crave, to believe were my birthright. All the things I had lost in a moment in Yamarr. Such a chance to reclaim them would never come again. So I would fight for what was mine. With bared tooth and crimson claw I would fight. I had failed to find the strength to battle my own family but this time, I would. And I would win.

  As I was about to extinguish the gas lamp that lit my bedroom – readying myself for another restless night – I noticed that someone, probably Osia, had retrieved the journal from where I had left it, forgotten, by the bank of windows in the sitting room. It sat now on the occasional table by the bed. I leafed idly through the blank pages, taking comfort from the familiar sensation of paper beneath my fingers.

  At home I had never kept a book of days or a diary. My Mother did, for the official histories. It was The Book of the Queen, and as soon as she filled a volume it was placed in the royal library among hundreds of journals by Queens past. I would have started mine – The Book of the Heir – on the day after my ascension ceremony, if...

  If things had been different.

  But my memory was always sharper when I had written something down. That was a trick my Whisperer tutors had taught me. The movements of pen or quill seemed to inscribe the words on my brain as well as the paper. And I needed to remember why I was here.

  Why not? No one in this place can read Yamarri, anyway.

  I ground ink, selected a pen, turned to the first page and wrote: The Book of...

  Of what? The Princess? The Crown Prince’s Potential Wife? The Future Queen? I found I did not want to contemplate these questions too deeply. Not now. What did it matter? It was for no one but me to read. Let it be titled when it was finished. I left the inscription incomplete, turned to the next page, and began.

  I was born Her Royal Highness Theoai Herim. Senior daughter of Queen Theoan. Crown Princess of Yamarr...

  The next morning, over an equally quiet breakfast, a beautifully penned note arrived.

  Dearest Princess.

  I hope the day finds you well. I have made good on my words and cleared my son’s diary of all engagements this morning. He will be free to give you the tour I mentioned, and introduce you to all our favourite places in the Palace. It is our wish that you may come to love your new home. Please be ready for Prince Uldarana to attend on you at the tenth hour.

  Faithfully,

  M.

  P.S. Remember what I said.

  The battle had begun. I folded the note and tucked it between the pages of my newly begun journal with fingers that did not – did not – tremble.

  “Osia! What time is it?” I called out, a frisson of mixed anxiety and anticipation making my voice sharper than I had intended. The little maid jumped, fumbling the miniature timepiece which hung from a chain on her waistcoat out of her pocket.

  “It is nineteen minutes past the ninth hour, Highness.”

  I pushed my breakfast tray aside and flung myself out of bed, pleased to find that the aches, creaks and twinges were starting to fade from my limbs. “The Prince will be here in less than an hour – draw me a bath quickly, and then let’s see what is in the wardrobe.”

  Fifteen minutes later, pink with scrubbing, fragrant with bath salts, hair curling damply around my face, I flung open my closet doors – and froze in place, blinking.

  “Why – why on the Triple Gods’ blessed earth is every single thing here white?”

  Osia blinked at me.

  “Well?”

  “Um. M-mistress Kirgin s-said...”

  “Yes? What? What did she say? Have they run out of dye? Am I going to be attending only weddings and funerals for the rest of the year?”

  Osia’s face crumpled in confusion and I remembered that white must have different connotations in this country.

  “Do people wear white at weddings here?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” Osia said eagerly. “Well, the brides do, not the groom or guests. And young, unmarried women often do as well. Ladies, I mean. It symbolises purity, modesty, and virtue. And Mistress Kirgin said, when she delivered them, that it would show that little beggar girl up as the painted wanton she is.”

  My hands tightened on the doors of the closet until I felt something – either the wood or the bones of my hands – creak. So even the servants knew about it, right down to the youngest and most junior lady’s maid. G
ossip travelled through a palace like fevers travelled through a slum. With some effort I forced myself to release the doors, distantly surprised to see that I had not left dents in the mother of pearl inlay. It seemed best to keep silent and turn my attention back to the clothes.

  Considering everything here must have been thrown together in less than a day, the selection was impressive. Despite my objections, I saw that one of the gowns was made of that distinctive, translucent lace I had rejected; the colour, like all the other garments, was white. Given how carefully the other items here adhered to the more familiar Yamarri style that I was used to, it felt like more of a private joke from the dressmaker than a show of defiance. Still, I pushed it firmly to one side. No doubt my real ball gown would arrive in the next few days, because I would die of mortification if I was ever forced to wear that.

  I ran my fingers over a gown with simple lines, made of a heavy fabric embroidered with abstract, frosty designs in silver thread. The dress had a good imitation of a femi, a long, soft drape of pleated fabric that one gathered up from the back of the skirt and allowed to fall in graceful folds over one’s head in the bright sun, or over one’s shoulders and down to the waist if indoors.

  “That one.” I thought for a moment, struck by a sudden memory of Shell’s hair. “And you shall braid my hair at the temples, and leave it loose at the back.”

  It would not have been considered an appropriate style at home. But this wasn’t Yamarr. And Enesis – I felt a dart of longing for my sensible old friend, and a warm flood of gratitude that I had left her safely at home – had always said that I had beautiful hair.

  Osia, proving that despite her youth the Queen had picked her wisely, flew into action. I was dressed with ten minutes to spare, and she even devised a clever way to wrap Miramand’s pearls in a twisted, double band around the crown of my head. The pearls showed beautifully against the deep brown of my hair, making a kind of mock diadem.