by K Dowling
It is not long before they reach the bottom step. They pass through a narrow archway, entering an empty room with a low, exposed-beam ceiling. Emerala glances around the expanse, feeling confusion broiling within her.
In the heavy shadows before them, stands a regal looking figure. He approaches the group with a wide smile upon his narrow face. His black hair is pulled away from his neck in a leather tie, accentuating the razor sharp line of his cheekbones and the sculptured bridge of his nose. One gold earring dangles from his earlobe.
“Welcome, all of you.” He takes Emerala’s hand in his—gives it a vigorous shake. His skin is warm against hers. “Welcome to the catacombs.”
“You’re the Cairan king?” Emerala asks. She recalls the disembodied voice that instructed her and Captain Mathew the morning she cut down Harrane’s body from the post. He had identified himself as the king of the Cairans. Emerala denied it at first; she had never truly believed that the Cairans had a king. It was the stuff of legend; the type of games children played in the streets. King of the Cairans—with sticks for swords and slingshots for pistols.
“He is.” Rob’s tone is a silent warning for Emerala to be respectful. She does not acknowledge it. She wishes the man before her would let go of her hand.
“I am Nobody on the streets,” the man explains. “But my mother named me Topan.”
“Yes, well—hello.” Emerala attempts to discreetly dislodge her palm from his grasp.
“It’s wonderful to meet you in person at last, Emerala the Rogue. I must say, I was impressed with your bravery in the square.”
A wry chuckle escapes from Rob’s lips. “Don’t encourage her.”
Topan’s deep blue gaze roves to where Nerani stands, out of place and silent in the shadows. “And who is this?”
Emerala seizes the opportunity to place Topan’s firm grip into Nerani’s hands. Shaking out her fingers, she says, “This is my cousin, Nerani the Elegant.”
“Ah.” Topan beams. He leans down to brush his lips against the back of her hand. Her violet eyes remain transfixed upon her face. “Roberts told me all about you. You’re even lovelier than he said.”
Nerani gives a small smile, her cheeks flushing with pink. “I know I wasn’t summoned here along with my cousins,” she says, ever polite. Emerala fights the urge to roll her eyes. “I hope I’m not intruding.”
“Not at all. You’re always welcome here.” Topan gives her a small wink before turning his attention to Rob. “The other day you told me that you wanted to speak with Mame Noveli.”
“I did,” Rob assents quietly. “I do.”
“Come this way, she’s right in the next room.” Topan turns his back to them, heading off through a narrow doorway at the far side of the room. Emerala starts to follow in his wake, but is dragged backwards by a firm grasp upon her shoulder. Rob’s fingers dig into her skin like claws.
“Be polite,” he snarls in her ear.
“I’m always polite.”
His next word slips out in a warning hiss. “Emerala—”
“I know, I know—I’ll be the picture of perfection, Rob.”
Her brother releases her, heading past her without another word and disappearing through the shadowed door. Emerala shoots a sidelong glance at Nerani, a smirk curling at the corners of her lips.
“What?” Nerani demands.
Emerala shrugs. “Topan thinks you’re lovely.”
Nerani exhales sharply, her gaze darkening. “Stop that,” she snaps, and frowns. Pink heat rushes back into her cheeks and she ducks through the doorway without another word in Emerala’s direction. Emerala follows her cousin, glancing over her shoulder. The towering man in the red doublet is gone.
Strange—she had not heard him go.
The room that Emerala enters is several times smaller than the last. Rob stands hunched beneath the cracked trowel ceiling, his curls brushing the cool stone above his head. Around his feet, several plump and vibrant pillows have been strewn about the floor. Incense rises from hand painted glass jars in colorful, reeking curls of smoke.
At the head of the room, a tiny old woman crouches upon a hand woven wicker chair. Emerala recognizes her immediately, although time has not been kind to the petite Mame. She has become a crippled old woman, bowed and bent nearly in half by time. Her long white hair cascades down her shoulders and pools upon the floor at her tiny feet. Her hands—like eagle-talons—grip at the armrests as though she is fighting to keep her hollowed bones from floating away. Her wide blue eyes watch the group without blinking as they move further into the expanse.
“Sit,” Topan urges them. “She won’t speak until you’ve made yourselves comfortable.”
They obey, taking seats upon the pillows. Emerala wonders what it is they are doing here, so far beneath the earth. She frowns, hoping that Mame Noveli will at least have a story to entertain her. It has been ages, it seems, since she heard a yarn from the elderly woman. Emerala was no more than a child, then, and still the storyteller had been old. Emerala reflects upon this, and realizes that she thought the old woman to be dead.
“I’m not dead,” a voice croaks from the direction of the chair. Emerala looks up, surprised. Did she read my thoughts?
The woman is glaring at Nerani, who has recoiled from the scathing accusation on the old woman’s tongue. Her wide eyes are apologetic—her cheeks are red as tomatoes. Emerala notices with mild amusement that Topan has taken care to sit directly next to her cousin. At the front of the room, Mame Noveli glares down at Nerani through glittering eyes. “You’re looking at me like you’re surprised to see me alive, girl.”
“I—” Nerani stammers uselessly for a moment, searching for the right words of apology. Mame Noveli has already turned her attention elsewhere. Her bright eyes rove the room, studying each occupant in turn.
“Why are you here?” Her voice crinkles out of her like paper.
It is Rob who speaks. “I was instructed to seek you out.” He is quiet—respectful—as he watches the Mame with reverence in his emerald gaze. Emerala’s eyes dart in his direction.
When was he instructed to do so? And by whom? She frowns at him, hoping he can feel her eyes like daggers in his skin. More secrets.
“By whom?” Mame Noveli whispers, mirroring Emerala’s thoughts.
“Mame Galyria.”
“That mad old hen?” Mame Noveli croaks out a laugh. The sound quickly becomes a wheezing cough. “She can’t tell you the future, so she pawns you off on me with some absurd dogma about looking into the past, tell me I’m wrong.”
Rob clears his throat, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “That’s, uh, just what she said.”
The old woman squawks in delight. Her talons tighten upon the armrests. Her knuckles whiten. “I knew it.”
“I went to see her regarding the burning at Toyler’s. I wanted answers.”
Mame Noveli leans forward in the chair, allowing her white hair to spill over her shoulders and tickle the floor at her feet. “And? Did she give you any?”
“Well—no,” Rob admits.
“Mame,” Topan says, glancing at Rob out of the corner of his eye. Emerala does not miss the twinkle of implication in his gaze. “If you’re impartial, I have a story I’d like to hear. I think Rob might like to hear it as well.”
Mame Noveli’s blue gaze fixates upon Topan. Her smile wavers slightly. “Do you, now?” Her wrinkled nose scrunches drastically, twisting the features upon her face. “Well, I’m tired.”
“It’s just one story, Mame,” Topan insists. “One story, and then we will leave you in peace.”
Mame Noveli considers this, her nose still crumpled in thought. “Fine,” she grumbles at last. “Out with it, boy—what do you want to hear?”
“Can you tell us about the Forbidden City?”
Topan’s question catches Emerala’s attention. She shoots him a sideways glance, feeling puzzled. Emerala has heard of the Forbidden City once before, back in the days of her childhood. Her uncle had r
egaled them with the dark story over dinner. She remembers the night clearly—remembers the way his eyes had glowed wild in the light from the fireplace—remembers the shivers that dripped down her spine.
Gerwinge, you’re frightening the poor dears, her aunt had scolded at last. Emerala had not been frightened—she’d been mesmerized. But the story was fiction, nothing more. It had been dreamt up ages ago and passed down through the generations. There is no Forbidden City—there was never a Forbidden City. It is a legend, told purely for entertainment and nothing more. She wonders why Topan has requested such a fantastic story of the old woman. It seems ridiculous to her—odd, even, in light of the events that have taken place over the course of the last few days
At the front of the room, Mame Noveli tugs at her hair with her knobby talons. “I do like that old tale. I haven’t told it in ages.”
“We’d like to hear it now,” Topan urges. Mame Noveli’s left eye flutters shut and she peers at him from her right. The tiny, pink tip of her tongue darts out from between her lips. She surveys him in silence for a long moment before turning her attention back to Rob.
“You’re half-blood, boy, aren’t you?”
Rob appears startled by the question. “Y-yes.” His voice cracks and he clears his throat. “Yes, I am.”
“And your sister? You share a father?”
“We—”
“She’s half-blood, as well?”
“Yes, she is.”
“The eyes,” Mame Noveli barks, jabbing one, knotted finger at Emerala’s face. “Green as the storming sea. That’s uncommon in these parts. Singular. Who are they from? Your mother? Your father?”
The question sends a jolt of adrenaline through Emerala and she sits up straighter. The pirate in the square—the one with the golden eyes and the wicked grin—had asked her the same exact thing.
Next to her, Rob’s expression has darkened considerably. He does not like to speak of their father—hates to even be reminded of the man. He chews his lip for a minute before responding, his words frosted with ice.
“Our father had green eyes.”
Mame Noveli nods enthusiastically, sending tendrils of white hair flying off in all directions. The conviction in her bright eyes suggests she already knew the answer to her own question. A gummy smile appears on the lower half of her face. Her skin crinkles, folding like raw dough over the pale blue of her eyes.
“Quite right, my boy, quite right.” She licks her lips, and sighs. “The Forbidden City, eh? A fitting tale for a fitting audience, I should think.”
Emerala glances sideways at Topan. His hands are folded in front of his lips. His face is still and unreadable, like the flat surface of the sea before a stone is cast into its depths. She dislikes the quiet reserve of the Cairan king—dislikes the way the Mame is studying her, as though she and her brother are some sort of magnificent specimens.
“Girl,” Mame Noveli barks, startling her. Next to Emerala, Nerani jumps. A gnarled finger is prodding pointedly in her cousin’s direction. “Fetch me the vial of amber incense. You’ll find it on the corner of the table behind you.”
Nerani obliges dutifully, clambering to her feet and snatching at a crystalline vial filled with lightly smoking sticks of gold. The pale smoke that rises from the ampoule has a deeply honeyed scent, and it tickles the inside of Emerala’s nose as Nerani carries it gingerly towards the Mame.
“Set it here,” Mame Noveli commands. “No—not there, by my feet, girl.”
Nerani obeys, setting the glass down with a quiet clink and rushing back to the relative safety of her pillow. At the front of the room, the old woman clears her throat. Her heavy eyelids drift slowly closed, her fingers relaxing upon the armrests of her chair. When she speaks, her voice is no longer crinkled with age, but strong and honeyed. The sound of her words lull Emerala into a deep sense of calm. Upon the floor, the pale smoke thickens, blanketing the room in a smoldering aura of gold.
“To tell the story of the Forbidden City, I must tell it all,” Mame Noveli says. “I’ll begin at the beginning, as stories go.”
She launches into a yarn, then, but her words, to Emerala, sound like a foreign language. The whispered tongue curls around Emerala’s thoughts, lulling her downward into darkness. The thick, cloying smoke fills her eyes, and with a swooping motion she finds herself plummeting downward through the dark.
“Watch, child of Roberts,” instructs a deep and terrible voice. “Do not look away.”
Emerala is suddenly standing upon the deck of a ship. Overhead, the sky is painted gold. Streaks of sunlight spill across the sea in shafts of unfiltered brilliance. Before her stands a man, tall and broad shouldered, with stormy green eyes staring out from a pale, pointed face.
“What do they call you?” His voice is swallowed by the endless sea.
“Saynti,” Emerala hears herself say. There is a tremor in her voice. “Have you come to kill us?”
The man before her shakes his head. She notices that he is donned in the fineries of a king. He drops to one knee, his green eyes never leaving her face.
“I’m here to rescue you and your people, lady Saynti. Your captors have all been slain. You are free to go. Although if you stay, I would take you as my wife. Your people will want for nothing as long as I reign.”
Emerala is falling again, plunging through water like ice. She claws at her throat—kicks frantically for the surface. Overhead, the sun is a muddled circle of rippling white on the top of the sea. She sinks deeper and deeper still, landing finally in the soft, white cotton of a four-poster bed. Her curls are plastered to her cheeks. Her fingers are knotted in the fabric. A scream erupts from her chest, violent and hoarse. Somewhere nearby, she hears an infant’s wail.
The green-eyed man appears besides her, clutching at a tightly swaddled infant, red and howling. A crown rests upon his wild head of curls. His face is filled to the brim with elation.
“My queen—Saynti—look, it’s a boy. You’ve given us a beautiful boy.”
Falling again.
This time, she lands upon a throne of solid gold. Overhead, fat cherubs ogle her from the painted heavens. The green-eyed man sits beside her. Two young boys stand at her side. Her knuckles are white against the armrests. Her palms are slick with sweat.
“What news do you bring from the marketplace?” she hears herself ask. Her voice is high and clear. Before her stands a nervous looking valet. He glances from the king to her and back again.
“Your Majesties—it is just as you feared. The riots have begun. We are on the verge of a civil war. The Chancian people have risen against the Cairans.”
“I knew it,” she says, her voice a breathless whisper. “I knew this would happen. Your people have never accepted a Cairan woman as their queen.”
The green-eyed king at her side rises from his throne. “Saynti—”
“Don’t say a word.” She cuts him off, mirroring his movements. They are face to face beneath the painted heavens. “Don’t you say a word. You promised me we would be safe under your rule. You are a powerful man, Lionus, but even you cannot change the hearts of men. They are given to hate. They are prejudiced against us.
“Have you heard what they are calling me in the streets? Witch. Sorceress. They say I’ve spelled you into taking me as queen. A hate that burns as deep as theirs does not sputter out, my king. When you die, that will be the end. They will never accept a half-blood king. They will never accept the rule of my sons.”
Lionus’s green eyes flash with anger. “They are my sons, too.”
“And my people? Are the Cairans your people as much as the Chancians?”
“You know that they are, Saynti.”
“Then protect them. It is too late for us—too late for our boys—but the rest of them—”
She feels the words choke and die upon her tongue. Lionus’s gaze fills with determination.
“I will build them a sanctuary, safe from the eyes of the city. You are right, for all the power that I hav
e invested in me, I cannot change the black hearts of men. Only time can do that.”
Emerala nods. “The Forbidden City,” she whispers, taking Lionus’s hands within her own.
“It will be done at once, my love.”
The room changes as the sun outside the window rises and falls and rises again. A flicker of untainted life pulses in Emerala’s womb. She presses her hand to her distended stomach, suddenly wrought with such a warring clash of grief and love that she nearly collapses to the floor. Before her stands an elderly Mame, bent at the shoulders and leaning on a cane. When she speaks, it is Mame Noveli’s voice, sweet and loud and clear, that reaches Emerala’s ears.
“Who are you, the seer asked, that knows his fate is set?
Your day will come. Your line will fall. Your people will abet.
But in the babe, so soft and pure, your bloodline will be spared.
She’ll fall to dust and dust she’ll be, forgotten by the erred.
And when the years, they roll away knowing what’s to come,
Her blood with blood will mingle true—a queen she will become.”
The scene changes and Emerala is back in the four-poster bed, biting hard upon her lower lip.
“Don’t scream, Your Grace,” whispers a frightened voice in her ear. “They will come for us if they hear you.”
Blood trickles down her chin and she moans.
“My sons,” she cries. The pain is blinding, searing at her insides. She feels as if she is being ripped open. “Where are my sons?”
A long pause follows her question. Her ragged panting fills the silence, broken only by the murmuring of midwives. Far beyond the stone, she knows the world is burning.
“They are slain, Your Majesty. They were killed besides their father. The people are at the gates.”
A disconsolate cry escapes her, ripping free of her chest in a broken sob. It is echoed by the wail of an infant, piercing and shrill.
“Quiet her at once,” instructs a midwife. “Wrap her and take her away.”
“My daughter,” Emerala sobs. “Let me see my daughter.”