He met me halfway across the hall. His hair was disheveled, the way Mother liked it. Murasahara hung on his waist, glinting brightly against the torchlight. It wasn’t sheathed, but the metal never clanked when he was walking. It was silent, but in a noticeable way—the way the sea is silent.
“Dina, you’re up again?” He knelt to level with me. Despite the dinner we had served, he looked like he hadn’t eaten. Not just recently; he looked like he hadn’t eaten in a day or two. I had noticed it in the great hall, but it was more pronounced now. The lines on his face ran deeper than usual. More distinct. He looked older, but not in a bad way. It was just noticeable. He had started to grow white hairs more frequently in the past year. The scar by his brow stood out. A pearl line with several thinner ones running across it horizontally. Something like a white centipede.
Like Taa, Father had a lot of scars, but his didn’t reach down to his bones. They were discolored patches of skin, usually with the marks of old stitches. They all came from his teenage years. Just before he took the throne. They weren’t from alchemical accidents. Mother liked to refer to it as an ordinary case of a boy with too much to prove. There was a long threaded scar along the back of his right arm. The story went that he got it from wrestling a threshtip in the center of Enchantress Bay to show his cousins he was more worthy of the throne than them. Mother insisted that couldn’t be the real story, but sometimes, Father made you believe that it could be the real story. Not always, but sometimes.
The courtier behind him tapped impatiently against the stone wall.
I shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Leave us,” Father said, waving a hand behind him without turning. The two courtiers looked at each other, a bit dismayed, but bowed and retreated silently.
Father pointed behind my shoulder, keeping his finger hidden underneath my chin.
“You couldn’t sleep, or are you having a late night get together?” he asked.
“What? No! Nothing like that.” I turned around to look at Nikhil. He had kneeled when Father acknowledged him, then turned back and stood against the wall, hands folded in front of him.
Father laughed. “Dina, I was eleven when I first snuck out of the palace to meet a girl. Your uncle caught me that very day. By the market square in Center Chaya.” He fumbled with Murasahara’s hilt for a second, then scratched his beard. “I mean, not that anything ever happened. Not until years later when I met—”
“Yes, yes, you have eyes only for Mother,” I said. “I have eyes for no one. Maybe my books. I just ran into Nikhil. He couldn’t sleep either.”
“Right. Of course,” Father replied.
I narrowed my eyes, but that only made him laugh again.
He grabbed both my hands with one of his, then looked away, his smile fading.
“I haven’t been able to sleep either,” Father said.
“We just declared war on Rhauk,” I replied. “I’d be worried if you could fall asleep now.”
Father chuckled. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.” He squeezed my hands. “Dina, you’re growing up fast. There’s a lot I still haven’t taught you. I’m sorry I haven’t made the time. I keep putting it off, thinking it should wait till you’re older, but now you’re past the age where I could have made the biggest difference.”
I tipped my head to the side, giving him a questioning look.
He continued, shaking his head. “Not things that Taa or your mother teach you. Other things. Things that I think they can’t teach you. Or won’t. Things they don’t think are important.”
I turned around. Nikhil took a step into the corridor, pretending like he was looking out the window. Through the corner of his eye, he was trying to look into one of the rooms.
“Father, could this maybe wait till tomorrow?” I asked.
“Ahh… right… you probably want to get back to your date,” he said.
“No. Stop that.” I turned away, feeling the warmth in my face. Without much effort, he could make me sound my age.
“All right, all right.” He let go of my hands and rested his own on his knees. “But hear me out for a second, Dina.”
I leaned in. “The bare bones for now Father, please.”
Father sighed. “Dina, a lot will change after today. We’re at war. I’m not sure if you’ll understand that entirely.”
“I’m sure I won’t,” I said impatiently. I felt guilty for rushing him. He did look like he really wanted to speak to me, and like there was a lot on his mind, but there was an invisible daemon haunting the palace and whispering its violent inclinations to me. That had to take some level of priority over this.
Father focused his expression, looking like he had just figured out the answer to the question in his head.
I wasn’t alone with Father often. When I was, I had a habit of trying to imagine him when he was younger. I had heard that he had an eerie fascination with the sea, far beyond what was normal for someone from Chaya, even an Anasahara. He used to stay at cottages near Enchantress Bay from Hearthday evening to midnight on Lunaday, following uriel war crabs and different kinds of water snakes down to their cellars underneath the shores. He built sand castles as tall as dunes, swam behind schools of trout, and would sometimes bring dogs from the palace to search for buried treasure underneath the pink beaches. His best friend had drowned when he was fourteen. The period between that and when he finally met Mother was filled with a number of long and enchanting years. He’d spent them drifting out toward the old continent, studying alchemy, or exploring the Obelisk Tundra east of the lower kingdom. I collected as many stories as I could, but he spent most of those years alone. The tales before that time would have been lost with his best friend. Father shared no more than a few stories about sharks and squids, ascribing the rest of those days to afternoons and evenings lost to the sound of tides.
“Your Taa is not the best example to follow when ruling a kingdom. I learned that very early in my life. I hope you won’t learn it too late.”
“Taa?”
“Taa. For the Sisterhood, ruling is about playing the best chutrang game possible, but people aren’t pieces on a board. Chaya isn’t a kingdom of courtiers and nobles, though sometimes, your Taa, that’s how she pictures it. When you are queen, you’ll end up spending most of your time with courtiers and nobles, but your decisions will affect farmers and soldiers the most, not the wealthy who can take care of themselves. Those are the people whose lives you’ll make a difference in, and who will give you their lives in return.” He took his hands and made a grasping motion in front of him. “The Sisterhood might pull all the strings in the world behind closed doors, but there’s a reason why people want kings and queens. They want to see the faces that rule them. They want to know it’s a real person on the throne.” He rested both hands on my shoulder, then leaned in and kissed the side of my head. “Sometimes, you can’t overthink it. You’ve got to act with honor when you’re a leader. Just feel for the right thing to do. You don’t always have to calculate it.”
Father turned around to see how far the courtiers had gone. They were waiting for him at the end of the hall. “I was proud of what you did today. Earlier. The wine alchemy. That was truly fascinating.”
I made a half-laughing, half-choking sound, feeling the guilt grow.
“I’m afraid that things like that come too easily to you,” Father continued.
“You’re unhappy I’m talented?”
“Yes. Actually, exactly. Too talented.” He tugged his beard as his eyes grew more serious. “You have to learn to fail. I’m afraid it’s not a lesson the world has been good at teaching you.”
“You’d be surprised,” I mumbled. “Does not having magic not count as a failure?”
“I’m sure you think so, but it doesn’t even come close,” Father replied. His blank expression said much more than if he had shown any other emotion. “When I was your age I had doubts about everything. It made me always push myself to be better. If you don’t fail often enoug
h now, you’ll have a harder time dealing with it when you rule. And trust me, it will happen. It always happens. It’s just the timing that differs for people. I hope that makes sense.” He flicked his thumb between his fingers, looking down.
“It does, Father,” I said, putting a finger on his forhead. “I’ll keep it in here.”
He laughed again, then stood. “Okay, go back to your date,” he whispered. “I’ll have to return to hearing about Mimenhi’s stance on this war.”
“They don’t support it? I thought the five kingdoms were unified.”
“They support it, but they’re worried about the growing tension between Panbin and Xenash. I’ll have to talk to Queen O’nell about it. I was hoping King Restangi would come and we could sort it out together.”
“Father, today, in the Cathedral, I saw Yuweh’s final words to Semladon before their battle. It was written on his bracers.”
Father laughed. “Most people have them on bracers or weapons, to avoid the pain of ink and the feeling of commitment the words come with if they’re etched onto you permanently. It’s not easy, I think, to really live by words like that.” He pulled down his collar to show his chest right above his heart. The Old Emelim words were written there in kraken ink.
Who comes to the deep to steal my treasures?
Who comes to the deep to see my throne?
“I haven’t told you that story in a long time, have I?” Father asked as I grazed the words with a hand.
“No, you haven’t,” I replied. “You used to tell me the story almost every night.”
“I’ll come tomorrow night. I’ll tell you and Iris and Yephi the story. From the beginning.”
“Perhaps just me.”
“Perhaps just you.”
He stalked away, sparing one last glance. I made sure to wait before walking back to Nikhil, feeling overly self-conscious now.
“Good, Dina. You didn’t tell your father,” the voice said. “I knew I could trust you. Come open the door. Let me free from this place. I’ll leave you and your palace alone if you just invite me in.”
“You didn’t tell your father?” Nikhil asked when I returned. Like me, he was a shade redder.
“You said no one could see it. What could he do? He probably wouldn’t even believe me. He’d think I just woke up from a nightmare.”
“He wouldn’t? He must know what happened in the forest.”
“Maybe. Don’t worry, if we need help, Taa will come. Hopefully.”
“Oh… wouldn’t your father be better? He could bring more people.” He turned away, watching the windows on the other side.
I gave him a wavering glance. “You don’t want Taa to come?”
He looked hesitant. “Well she does kind of hate me,” he said. “I don’t want her to think I was trying something, seeing me and you here.” He blinked quickly several times, raising a hand. “I mean not that there’s anything to think about.”
“Oh, come on,” I said, gesturing flippantly at the air. “She doesn’t hate you that much.”
He clenched his jaw together.
“It’s not that she hates you.” I grinned, resting a finger on my chin. “Hmm… it’s just that… you remind her of Father.”
“I remind her of her son?” His brow furrowed. “And that’s a bad thing?”
“It’s complicated,” I said. “Anyway, fine, let me see this thing and I’ll call Father if we need to.”
“Come.” He crept past the corner of the corridor. I followed, pressing down heel to toe to step as quietly as I could against the stone floor.
The vaulted hallway sparkled with purple light. It fell through the upper windows, where the glass was high enough to catch the pre-dawn light through its slanted panes. This happened only once every month, and only for an hour or so, before the sun swept away the blue moon and its trailing lights. In old cities, this was the only light that let you see the street scriptures etched into decrepit roads that existed back when the Church used to guide all men through the lucid hysteria of old god premonitions. In places that were still wild, like the Obelisk Tundra or the Glacial Swamps, this mix of dawn and twilight bewitched the land with the rapture of the old magic. This shade of purple light marked the passage of the blue moon. Daemons ended their celebrations. Eio sunk past the horizon, and the sun quietly blew away the jungle fever that had been building up for a fortnight.
Nikhil pointed to the room up ahead, pinching the top of his forhead nervously with his other hand. He held his breath as he closed in, then put a finger over his mouth to signal quiet. He brushed a hand against his shirt. He was wearing a white cotton long-sleeve with black shorts. Sandals covered in sable hair that I had given him on his birthday. Too hot for this weather, but they were good for wearing at home in the winter.
I wanted to move faster, but I followed his pace once I fell in stride behind him. Inch by inch, we crept closer.
There should have been more people in this hallway. If Avisynth was here by himself, then Taa must have had all the rooms emptied out, and maybe guards placed by the kitchen doors to keep people from straying this way from the great hall. The only two other entrances were from the Togaru Wing where my sisters and I stayed, and from the staircases that led to the lower levels. If Taa wanted privacy, she should have taken him down there. Unless she had a reason not to. The basement corridors spread out into a labyrinth of dungeons and old storage rooms, many that I’d never been to. The archives were there, and more statues of my ancestors. There were too many to ever fit in the great hall at once. Every year, the palace keepers changed out which Anasahara were celebrated.
I looked into the room through the glass pane in the middle of the door. I had already calmed and braced myself, so I didn’t jump back or gasp at what I saw. I watched quietly.
CHAPTER 20
It was a small chamber. Two bunk beds stood against the walls on the sides. Avisynth was sleeping on the bottom bed on the left. His feet twitched every few seconds, kicking out like he was trying to stretch out a cramp. The other three beds were empty, and none of them were made. There was a bucket of water nearby, a wooden mug, and a plate of half-eaten potatoes and cheese. Two candles lit the room. Thick wax cylinders set inside of a double-cased glass lantern. The room was lit from corner to corner, with no space left for shadows. It was set up too precisely for that to have been an accident. The star of Raya was nailed to the wall on the other side. The symbol was newly cut and the stone it was nailed to still had fresh dust around it.
Opposite of Avisynth, sitting on a wooden stool, was the figure of a bleached and disfigured creature. It was no bigger than me—far smaller than what I had seen in the forest. It was kind of a cross between a bat and a human. Its shape was too distorted to be a normal vampire. Its forehead was an egg-shaped bulge as large as its face. Its teeth were long lines of tiny, broken crags that weren’t particularly sharp. Pointed enough to chew flesh, but not to easily pierce it. Its skin was stark white with an ashen quality, like it had been chalked up sloppily with a brush. It had deep creases along its brow, where its skin folded on top of itself to create milky lapels of flesh at the center of its head. It had no ears, just holes a few inches behind its eyes where the flesh inside looked wet. It had loose flaps of skin for lips, and a slitted, triangular nose with only one hole. Its left eye was an empty socket with a long Y-shaped scar where the skin opened up from the inside. Its right eye was black with a white pupil. It flicked its tongue when it saw me. A thin, bright strip, the color of a rose.
I had seen vampires before. If you paid close attention, past the qualities that stood out to your more primeval senses, you could learn a lot about them. They carried themselves with an effortless grace. Nobility in Mirradalia were different. We tended to carry ourselves with an anxious kind of grace. Always mindful of our precise status among peers, hyper-conscious of appearances. It was one thing for the vast majority of the world to exist to serve you, and another for the vast majority of the world to exist to feed
you.
The creature here was neither of those things. It had a very desperate flavor of hunger, the type you might’ve seen in a beggar or a stray dog. It sat in place, but was never still. A finger twitched. A foot slid across the floor. Its head turned. Its tongue tasted the air. I was sure that its heart was racing. It had the calm but struggling expression you find in people wrestling with their inhibitions. If it went to bite you, it wouldn’t do it in the bold and overpowering way of a vampire. It wouldn’t want you to notice. It would want to drink for as long as it could, and its jaws would make a mess of the wound.
It turned to me with an impatient smile.
“I’m going to ask it a few questions,” I said, keeping my eyes on the creature.
“Are you sure?” Nikhil asked. He looked down the hall. “If people see you talking into the room they might think it odd. What if we attract attention?”
“Why would they see me? I’m not going to ask from out here.”
Nikhil turned to the creature. Turned back to me. Turned to the creature. Then realization set in and he snapped his head in my direction, taking a step back. A bit too quickly—his sandal slipped off. He held his hands out low, and then took another step back, like he was trying to retreat away safely from an animal he had gotten too close to without realizing it.
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