Beyond the Black Door

by A. M. Strickland

  Only everything. Food, a home, a family. Was he really going to make me beg to stay even as an awkward houseguest?

  No. I almost said it out loud. He couldn’t take away my pride. I would leave before I would beg.

  But he continued before I had to. “If not, then Nikha can show you to your room and a bath—and then take one herself so she can stop tracking dirt all over the floor. Afterward, Nikha, report to me outside. Oh, and call for some coffee to be brought out to me.” He cast another glance of distaste at me over his shoulder. “Call for a tailor, as well. We can’t have her looking like that.”

  I almost couldn’t believe it, despite the arrogance and implied insults. “I can stay?” I whispered.

  “I’m not going to throw you out on the street.” He gestured at himself, his fine clothes. “What do you take me for, a monster?”

  Close, I nearly said, and then he shut the courtyard door in my face.

  * * *

  Nikha showed me to my room—rooms, actually: a guest suite on the second floor—and even helped me fill the large tiled bath and slip carefully out of my tattered gown. I gathered this wasn’t her usual job, but she must have sensed I needed a friendly face. Though the servants dutifully brought copper buckets of hot water, they were staring at me like I was dirt.

  “Just give him time,” she muttered, bent over the bath, testing the temperature of the water. “And them,” she added, with a flick of her wrist at the servants who’d left. “This is new. They’ll adjust.” She spoke with more hope than certainty, adding a dollop of cool-smelling oil to the water. For my skin, no doubt.

  She was so considerate, and I was undeserving. Even so, I needed one more favor. While curls of fragrant steam and the leaves of potted plants on the bath’s edge surrounded me as I sat down in the water, my mind was still wholly on what I’d left behind in the ashes. “Nikha, thank you, but I need to know what happened with Hallan, or even at the villa, if you know something I don’t. You told me to ask Jidras, but I…” I swallowed. “I don’t want to.”

  She stared at me a moment and then nodded. “He probably wouldn’t tell you anyway. He doesn’t want any of us talking about it because, from what I can gather, Hallan Lizier was quietly killed—executed—by the king’s troops.” Her voice grew even gentler. “I imagine the fire at his estate … your mother’s death … had something to do with the king’s soldiers as well.”

  Despite the steam, my throat was suddenly so dry it felt like the bottom of a desiccated riverbed, the cracks reaching down into my chest. “No, I don’t believe it.” It was the Twilight Guild, but I didn’t say that. This was exactly what the Twilighters would want people to think, using such a disguise. “What could Hallan have possibly done to anger the king?”

  Unless … Something told to me a long time ago niggled at my thoughts. Something about Hallan and the queen consort. But it was so unlikely I hadn’t even believed it at the time, when I’d been a far more gullible child.

  Nikha shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know. Whatever it is, you’re not at fault, and your fa—Sir Jidras—has sworn to protect you. He’s solidly in the king’s favor, and he can quietly change your name to his and introduce you at court as his daughter, sent from Risha to live with him just before you came of age.”

  In a little over two months, I would turn eighteen, the age of adulthood. Time enough for my past life to vanish, for people to believe I was only ever his daughter. Never mind that he couldn’t even acknowledge me as such to my face, or to his household. But then, some things were easier to do in public than in front of those closest to you.

  His daughter. His name attached to mine—Kamai Numa, not Nuala. His protection. His home. None of it my mother’s any longer.

  My mother was well and truly dead. All because of secrets I didn’t know. Secrets I desperately wanted to find out.

  Just then, a servant came bursting into the room, kicking over a bottle of oil and sending it clattering on the tiles. But she only looked to Nikha, her eyes wide. “News from the court,” she gasped. “The queen consort, she died this morning—only thirty-eight, and yet still without giving the king a proper heir. They say it was a sudden seizure, natural, but already there’s talk of poison. Can you believe it?”

  Nikha and I stared at each other. I couldn’t say anything, and not only because I was speechless with disbelief. But it didn’t matter—already, I could see the connections forming in her eyes.

  Most knew that Hallan was not only a courtier, but also a well-known pleasure artist. Nikha didn’t need much more to conclude that Hallan must have had an affair with the queen consort, and the king had punished them both.

  But then the Twilighters would have had no reason to get involved. His death wouldn’t have been their fault, like my mother had said it was—at least she’d said they’d be responsible for anything terrible that happened. And there would have been no reason to kill her as well and burn down the villa.

  Maybe Hallan—the thought was like a cold knife in my chest, the pain spreading—maybe he had somehow poisoned the queen consort for the Twilight Guild. My mother might have known of such a plan. Everything that had befallen us could still have been the king’s retribution, but Hallan had always been so careful; how had the king traced it to him?

  There were too many secrets. Too many mysteries: the deaths, my missing soul, the black door. And now that my mother was dead, I might never discover the truth about any of them.

  Perhaps that was for the best. Some secrets weren’t meant to be discovered. Some doors not meant to be opened. I’d already made that mistake once, and I shouldn’t be tempted to do it again. I flinched as I settled deeper into the bath, tears stinging my eyes.

  7

  HEAVY SILEΝCE

  If I’d found something resembling a monster behind one door, I had yet to find anything more than a rose behind the other. Not that I looked at the black door … much. Part of me didn’t want to look at all, but part of me had to. I needed to make sure it wasn’t doing anything, at least nothing horrible.

  It was my responsibility, after all. And maybe I just needed to satisfy my own undying curiosity. But the black door didn’t reveal much. It remained open in the nehyms I managed to visit, and yet the lone offering inside wasn’t enough to overcome the terrifying quality of the darkness behind it. It didn’t help that the rose never withered, seemingly frozen outside of time. The whole picture made me shiver, so I never drew closer for anything more than an occasional glimpse inside.

  Jidras’s home turned out to be equally frustrating in its own way. Everyone continued to effectively ignore me in the weeks that followed my arrival. My appearance in the town house was far less remarked upon than the death of the queen consort and all the theories surrounding it.

  Hallan’s death, and my mother’s, weren’t remarked upon at all. It was as if they had never existed. And, just as strangely, the Twilight Guild hadn’t yet found me—to finish the job of killing me, to interrogate me, to recruit me, or to do anything else. There wasn’t a breath of them or Razim. I didn’t want there to be, but it made my entire life feel imagined. I felt as if I hardly existed.

  Servants who wouldn’t meet my eyes and barely responded to my questions fed and clothed me. My father employed a chef who turned out papaya and pineapple slices on silver platters, avocado and tomato salads, prawn and peanut soups, coconut and cashew rice with spice-glazed chicken, and honey fritters that melted in the mouth. My father’s tailor made fine dresses and scarves and shawls for me out of the highest-quality silks and linens, embroidered or beaded or lace-trimmed in the latest fashion. I had no grievances with any of them, except the silence.

  Only Nikha talked to me. She truly listened too—she let Gerresh go as a household guard within a week. Shortly after that, she began regularly playing Gods and Kings with me.

  “Tain’s eye, you have a martial mind-set,” Nikha said as my hand beat hers for the fifth time in a row. The two of us were alone at a sma
ll table in the courtyard, playing the version that didn’t require a third person as judge. Ties in this case were resolved by a complex subset of rules about the order cards were played—rules I’d mastered—instead of each player making an argument one way or another for a nonbiased observer to decide.

  Nikha was humble, unlike me, and usually won or lost without more than a shrug. Not that she was used to losing, which made her attitude all the more admirable. She regularly beat others at the game, and I’d seen enough in the previous weeks to know that she also almost always won her duels during her regular training sessions with the household guards under her command.

  “I’ve been wondering,” I said. “You’re only a handful of years older than me. How did you come to be the head of Jidras’s guard? You’re good, but…”

  “But he would only want the best?” She smiled, as if to tell me she wasn’t offended. “Well, I am one of the best. I was the second woman to pass the royal test to become a licensed bodyguard.”

  The test was incredibly rigorous, from what I’d gathered. I’d never even heard of a woman being allowed to take it, let alone passing.

  “Of course, once they realized there was a woman’s body under all my armor,” Nikha added, somewhat reluctantly, “they disqualified me from truly becoming a royal bodyguard, never mind how well I’d done.”

  My mouth fell open. “But if you have the skill, that’s unfair! It shouldn’t matter what you are.”

  Nikha shrugged awkwardly. “Those are the rules. But at least I gained a reputation, despite … how I look. Enough of one for someone of Sir Jidras’s standing to hire me.”

  I’d heard several of the servants, both men and women, alternately scoff at her—behind her back, of course—for either being a female guard or being “mannish.” It was another area, it seemed, like the royal test, where she couldn’t win no matter what she did.

  “So the first woman to pass the test must have been disqualified too,” I said. Nikha nodded, and I couldn’t help but ask, “Who was she?”

  “My mother,” she responded shortly, going back to scrutinizing our card game. I let my bubbling questions subside, since she didn’t seem to want to talk about her mother—something I could understand. She leaned forward on a leather-braced forearm and rubbed her chin. “You know, I wonder what you might do with an actual weapon.”

  I grimaced. “Not much—Wait, Nikha, please, no!”

  But she was already leaping up, going for a pair of practice blades.

  After that, she regularly trained with me in the interior courtyard, the draping vines and canopy of leaves shielding us from the beating sun. I was no good with a sword—I hadn’t been falsely modest. I could barely lift one. My attempts only triggered the memory of my mother trying to heft the ax in the entryway before she was murdered, further distracting me. Once Nikha realized I was hopeless, she helped me build on my existing skill in self-defense with a knife and bare hands. Things every woman should know, she insisted.

  Jidras didn’t mind the lessons, or at least he did nothing to stop them. He hired a tutor as well, to continue my other studies of subjects like geography, theology, and law. My tutor only spoke to me in a lecturing tone that didn’t welcome any sort of response. I vastly preferred learning from books, which I continued to do on my own time. At least books didn’t have a nasal voice.

  My tutor asked me only one personal question, on a rainy day just shy of a month after I’d arrived in Shalain, nearly six weeks before my eighteenth birthday. “You must decide which realm to enter, of course. Which shall you choose?”

  “What?” I’d been staring out the second-story window of the library, tracing the tracks of rain on the bubbly glass and wondering if I could resist checking the black door again that night. It was about all I was good at. Over the weeks, I’d cautiously ventured into the nehyms of Jidras’s household to ascertain that no one here was a soulwalker. I’d also tried to glean any information I could about my mother’s death, or the Twilight Guild, but I couldn’t find anything. I didn’t even know what to look for, nor even how to fully search a nehym, beyond wandering around and squinting for the answers my mother had always seemed able to extract. Jidras’s soul might have held more clues, but I hadn’t been able to walk in his nehym yet.

  “The topic of discussion is which artistic realm you will decide upon as your means of employment in six weeks’ time,” my tutor said stiffly. “You will be a woman at eighteen. This is your future, so you might pay attention.”

  Of course now he wanted my opinion, when it was the last thing I wanted to consider. Facing my future meant entirely leaving my past, my mother, behind me. I put my pen down with a sharp click. “I wasn’t aware we had discussions.”

  He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Sir Jidras works in finance, and that would be an admirable pursuit within the Solar Arts, blessed by brilliant Tain.” He touched the top of his head with three fingers. “You might also consider a career in law, medicine, astronomy, or other such cerebral paths.” In response to my obvious distaste, my tutor continued, “Or perhaps in the Lunar Arts, blessed by wise Heshara.” He used the same fingers to tap between his eyes. “You could be a diviner or poet or musician.” He knew I had only the faintest aptitude for music, but then he brightened as much as he was capable. “Or perhaps a priestess of Heshara. It’s never too late to be tested for the ability to peer into one’s soul, since you may not even realize you possess the talent. Usually, only candidates with likely bloodlines are investigated since the gift is extremely rare, but an exception might be made for you because of Sir Jidras’s prestigious reputation, and, at the very least, you could serve as an acolyte and then perhaps become a theologian.”

  He acted as if being tested were an honor and not a requirement if one came under suspicion of unsanctioned soulwalking. Besides, I already knew I had the ability and had no desire for anyone to find out. Priests and priestesses spent their days locked in temples, searching souls for some fault the owners might perceive or for mistruths when suspects were put to the question by lawful authorities. I couldn’t imagine a duller future, so of course my tutor would favor that option for me.

  Even if I wanted to go that path for some twisted reason, I would face bigger obstacles than tedium and isolation. Aside from the fact that I was fully aware I’d been illegally soulwalking for years, in testing to become a priestess of Heshara, it would take little time for someone to discover I had no soul—or at least one nobody could find. Would they think me a monster? Would they find the black door—open, no less? Imagining how it would feel to burn alive was all I needed to forever board up that door in my mind.

  “What about the Earthen Arts?” I asked in my sweetest voice.

  My tutor’s tawny cheeks pinkened in embarrassment. “Those are not for you.”

  “Is Ranta not due her respect?” I threw his own words back at him. He liked to say we all owed Ranta reverence equal to that of her two parent-gods—fiery, exacting Tain and cool, mysterious Heshara; sun and moon; spirit and soul.

  “The Earthen Arts do not befit your status as Sir Jidras’s dau—ah, responsibility,” he corrected himself. Even as a lover of pure fact, my tutor knew well by now not to call Jidras my father, or me his daughter. “That is the realm of the body—of soldiers, herbalists, farmers, dancers…” His voice grew more scandalized as he went on.

  “Whores?” I said, arching my eyebrow for maximum effect. “Like my mother?”

  I’d heard the servants whisper it: the whore’s daughter. The proper name for my mother’s calling was pleasure artist, since Marin and Hallan had accepted only gifts in exchange for their talents, never money, and they’d always had a choice of who they slept with. But it was a silly distinction, since even common pleasure workers deserved respect for the trade of their choosing, and getting paid shouldn’t have made them any less artists. I balled my hands into tight fists every time I heard the servants’ disrespect, wanting to hit something.

  Nikha had hi
t one of them, early on, a male servant, when he’d whispered too loudly in her hearing. As a guard, she was herself an adept of the Earthen Arts. And maybe she’d done it because, for some reason, she cared about me when no one else here did.

  “Sir Jidras would prefer you to follow his path, or at the least find a new one—not hers,” my tutor continued.

  He hadn’t called my mother a whore, but he was certainly thinking it. My anger erupted before I could contain it—at him, at my father, at this new life that I didn’t want. “Then he should godsdamned tell me that himself! And I’ll tell him how much of a hypocrite he is since he took full advantage of her artistry when it suited him. In fact, you can both take your slimy opinions and choke on them!”

  My tutor sat up even straighter, if that were possible, huffing as if I’d slapped him. “Language, young lady! Shall I inform Sir Jidras of how you are speaking to me?”

  I stood and curtsied in the highest courtly form my mother had taught me, and my tutor’s eyes widened in surprise. Marin would have been proud. “Since he won’t hear it from me, by all means,” I said icily. Then I touched my lips in benediction to Ranta, and I stalked out of the library.

  It wasn’t that I even wanted to work in the Earthen Arts, I reflected as I stormed through Jidras’s town house up to my room. Not at all. Marin had worked in all three realms anyway: Solar as a spy, Lunar as a soulwalker, and Earthen as a pleasure artist, but of course I couldn’t explain that to the idiot man. I just didn’t want him to think he could insult my mother, or tell me which path I should choose.

  I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I felt lost, directionless without her.

  I didn’t want to be a tax collector for the crown like Jidras, or a priestess, or really anything other than what my mother had brought me up to be. Not that I entirely knew what that was, in her absence. I never wanted to make love, so that would make things a little difficult as a pleasure artist. Soulwalker wasn’t exactly a viable profession, especially since it could get me locked away and perhaps executed. Spy was also unlikely, despite all the secrets I wished to discover, since the only people I knew who could employ me belonged to the Twilight Guild. I would rather die than work for my mother’s murderers.