by Naomi Cyprus
“I’ll have some food sent up,” he said. “You must be starving. You need a hearty breakfast—porridge and pomegranate, perhaps. What do you think?”
Relief flooded through Nalah and she pulled a face and tried to think how Halan would respond. “Oh, please, not porridge. I simply couldn’t bear it.”
Tam’s intense gaze softened and he grinned. “Of course not. Anything but that.” He cupped her cheek in his hand for a moment and then stood up. “I must go. But believe me, Halan, I’m going to hunt these rebels down and make them pay for doing this to you.”
“Thank you, Father,” said Nalah, still trying to channel Halan’s intensity, her determination. Tam left the room.
“Doctor Shivar, Lilah, would you give us a moment?” said the queen. The doctor hurriedly packed away his things, and only a few seconds later Nalah was left alone with Halan’s mother.
Nalah stared at her, strangely afraid that if she looked away the queen would vanish, but certain that if she didn’t look away she would eventually burst into tears.
Was this what her mother might have looked like, if she’d lived?
Nalah longed to rush into her arms, but her memory of Halan’s words stopped her. Don’t expect any hugs. Could this woman really dislike her own daughter? Could she possibly be as villainous as her husband?
“How could you?” the queen said, her voice trembling. “How could you be so reckless? So selfish? I know that you left the palace of your own free will.”
Nalah swallowed and tried not to move a muscle in her face. Was the queen really angry with Halan? Nalah had never seen anything like this expression on her own mother’s face—it was wild, half fury and half panic.
How would Halan respond?
“I was kidnapped!” she retorted.
“You’re still lying to me. You don’t understand, Halan. You don’t know—” Queen Rani stopped and pressed her lips together as if to stop the words from escaping. “If you had listened to me before the feast, none of this would have happened.”
Nalah just stared at her. But I was in danger, she thought. Doesn’t it matter more that I’m here now? That I’m alive? But this time she kept quiet. She suddenly understood the painful truth behind Halan’s little jibes about not talking to her mother. She’s yelling at me for not listening—but she’s not listening to me, either.
Queen Rani looked like she was trying to compose herself, and failing. Her shoulders heaved in the satin dress, and she pressed her hand to her heart. “You just don’t realize that your actions have consequences,” she said. “I’m the one who has to deal with the consequences, Halan. You don’t know how angry your father was. You don’t know how close he came to . . . doing something rash. You’re getting older, Halan. It’s time you understood how dangerous your father can be to people who stand in his way.”
Nalah’s breath caught. Does she know? About Tam? Is she afraid of him too?
The queen hesitated. She refocused on Nalah and took a deep breath.
“Never disobey me again, Halan, do you hear me?” she snapped. And with that she got up and left the room, slamming the door behind her.
Nalah sat very still in the wake of the queen’s departure, her heart racing, her fists balled in her lap. She could feel her powers tingling inside of her like electricity, surging and waiting to get out. Calm down, she ordered herself. Breathe. If she didn’t, she might twist the whole couch up into a ball of wood and fabric and nails, which would be pretty hard to explain.
After a few minutes, the tingling subsided, leaving behind a dull sense of sorrow.
Not quite how I dreamed being reunited with Mama would go, she thought, and although she’d been trying to make herself feel better, the thought seemed to trigger something within her. She let out a sob, and then another. Shock and exhaustion and frustration balled up in her chest and shook her like a rag doll.
“My lady?” said a voice. Nalah looked up in alarm and saw that Lilah, flanked by two other young women, was standing in the doorway.
“Go away,” Nalah croaked, certain at least that Halan wouldn’t want them watching her cry, either. “I’m tired, I need to sleep.”
“Go,” said Lilah softly, and the other servants went out at once.
Lilah paused in the doorway for a second, then came into the room. She arranged the bedclothes and added an extra pillow. “You’ll be expected to attend the afternoon meal, my lady,” Lilah said softly. “I’ll come to collect you a few minutes before. Until then, rest.” And with a small bow, she turned and left.
Nalah stumbled across the room to Halan’s bed and let herself flop down among the silks and the soft blankets. She curled up around one of the huge, squashy pillows while the tears subsided.
They’d come on like a summer storm, and were gone just as quickly. She felt shaky as she sat up, but she rubbed her eyes and then looked down at her hands.
“I didn’t break anything,” she said to herself. “Maybe I really am learning to control it.”
A chiming chirrup sounded from the windowsill, and Nalah looked up and grinned tearily at Cobalt. He fluttered across to her and rubbed his warm, smooth head against her hand.
“It’s okay, boy. I’m fine.” She tickled him under his chin. “Cobalt, can you still see Papa? Is he all right?”
Cobalt flapped up to her shoulder and leaned over so that she could look into his eye again.
This time, the darkness in the cell was a little less deep.
The crumpled shape that was her father was moving fitfully. She could feel the chill and ache in his bones, the hunger in his belly. But he was alive.
“All right,” she said, and she was back in Halan’s room, surrounded by soft sheets and pillows. “We’ve got work to do, haven’t we? The sooner we figure out how to reach the dungeons, the sooner we can save Papa and get out of this place.”
She got up, passed a brush through her hair because she probably shouldn’t put it up, and wrapped herself in a flowing golden robe, hoping that her princess’s garb would protect her from too many questions about where she was about to go. Fatigue and hunger pulled at her like irons on her legs, begging her to return to the soft, welcoming bed. But instead she splashed a little cold water from the basin on her face and set her mind to the task at hand. There’s no time to be tired now.
Out into the corridor, around the corner, two doors down on the right. Soren had made her repeat the instruction four times. Cobalt followed after her, flitting from sconce to sconce along the wall, turning as still as a statue at any sound of approach.
The room Soren had sent her to was dim, lit only by the sun filtering down from a single high window. It was cluttered with all sorts of random objects: dusty statues, rolled-up rugs and tapestries, ornate boxes, and broken furniture. She picked her way carefully through them, jumping as her presence set off a music box that began playing a tinny tune, and found the tapestry he’d been talking about. It was woven with a scene of tigers creeping through a nighttime forest. She pulled the tapestry aside, and just as Soren had said, a hidden passageway greeted her behind it.
The passage sloped steeply downward, and she followed it, holding Halan’s golden dressing robe up so it didn’t drag along the dusty floor. Soren had said that if she followed the passsage all the way to the end, it’d lead her right out of the palace and into the gardens. Very good to know—but not her goal right now. He had asked her to gather as much information as she could while she was in the palace, and said that this passageway was a good place for spying.
At regular intervals along the passage there were small recesses in the walls, easy to miss if you weren’t looking out for them. Nalah wrapped her hand in the sleeve of the robe, and—with a muttered apology—used the sleeve to clear the cobwebs and dust out of the first recess so she could put her eye to the tiny pinprick of a hole at the back of it.
The room on the other side was a bedroom. A woman was sitting at a desk, writing a letter.
The next room Nalah
peered into was a dark storeroom, empty apart from stacks of clean cloth in neatly color-coded rows. There were more bedrooms, and then a vaulted hall where a few nobles were whispering to each other.
Then she looked through a peephole and found herself looking down into a room that was a bit like a workshop or a very grand study. A huge window spilled bright sunlight onto a wide space where four tables had been laid out with different materials—sand, metal ore, thread, and chopped logs. The floor was a kaleidoscope of different colored woods, inlaid in the shape of the sun.
“It is a miracle,” said a voice. It was faintly familiar to Nalah, in a way that made her skin prickle, but she couldn’t put her finger on who it sounded like. “I went back to my workshop last night, and— Your Majesty, it’s a miracle.”
“It’s no miracle,” came another voice.
King Tam.
Tam and three other people walked into Nalah’s line of sight. She squinted to make out their faces, and then threw her hand over her mouth in surprise.
I know these people. I know them all.
The elderly woman who leaned on a twisted staff and wore elaborate wooden combs in her gray hair was Mrs. Kayyali, the wood Thauma who had vanished from the market on the day Nalah first saw Tam.
The other woman, dark-haired and wearing a deep purple robe draped with glass beads that jangled together as she moved, was Kiva Lang, the glassworker who’d vanished a week before that.
Nalah wasn’t as sure of the third, a thin, bald man with small, dark eyes—but as she watched he went to the table of thread and ran his hands over the skeins. A name came to her then: Malek. The dead fabricworker Marcus had told her about, the one who’d had an “accident.”
Presumably, these people were Lady Kayyali, Lady Lang, and Lord Malek. The tawams of the Thaumas Nalah had known back in New Hadar.
It was Lady Lang who had spoken. She went to the sand and ran her hands through it, shaking her head. “My powers have never been so strong, my lord. I have never felt so alive!”
“It is quite the marvel,” said Lord Malek. He began to knot the threads together, chanting under his breath. Nalah saw the shape of a net begin to form between his hands. It started to glow and tremble, and then it seemed to vanish altogether. “The base material of a shadow cloak, in less than a minute,” he said in awe, holding up the filmy net. “It would normally take half a day of weaving and incantations.”
“If I’d known it was so easy to increase my powers,” said Lady Kayyali, with a cold chuckle in her voice, “I would have done the deed decades ago.”
“You speak as if you were the one who did it,” the king muttered. “Believe me, it was not as ‘easy’ as you say.”
“Of course, my lord,” Lady Kayyali demurred. “I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”
Nalah leaned her forehead against the cool stone, trying to get her head around this. Their tawams are dead. Mrs. Kayyali and Kiva Lang—they were killed, but not by the Hokmet. They were killed by Asa Tam.
And because they’re dead, these Thauma lords and ladies are more powerful? But why?
“I know that you are all grateful for this gift,” said Tam evenly, and Nalah could hear the implication in his voice: You had better be grateful, or else.
The three Thauma nobles sank to their knees at once. It took Lady Kayyali a little longer to get down, but once she was there she bent deeply and touched her forehead to the floor at Tam’s feet. They groveled before their king. Nalah wondered whether any of them resented having to do it. She couldn’t tell.
“We are not worthy, Your Majesty. We will use these gifts to serve you.”
“Even a legion of rebels couldn’t threaten us now,” said Lord Malek.
“Respectfully, my lord,” said Lady Lang, sitting up and brushing back her hair, “your guards still haven’t had any success finding their hideout in the sewers. And Ironside, whoever he is, still goes free.”
“We won’t need to find them,” said Tam, brushing some dust from the sleeves of his robe. “They are coming to us.”
Nalah pressed her lips together, afraid she might make a noise that would let them know she was listening. He knows!
“I am not sure when, but it will be soon. I believe they have my daughter’s tawam. I had hoped to catch her right when she crossed through the mirror, but those bumbling guards let her slip through their fingers. Their mistake, however, turned out in our favor. Two of my night guards came back to me with news that she had fallen in with a young boy known to be connected to the rebellion. She is working with the rebels—I’m certain of it. And when she brings them here to rescue her poor idiot father, we will slaughter them all.”
Nalah sucked in her breath. Tam got a lot of it right—except one thing. He didn’t know that she was already here, in the palace, listening.
“I will hang their bodies from the palace walls,” Tam said. “No commoners will dare to make such a nuisance of themselves after that.”
Nalah felt sick. He says it so casually! As if the death of hundreds of his subjects were nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
Soren was right about Tam. Nalah’s instincts were right too.
But poor Halan! Nalah’s heart squeezed with fear for the princess.
She couldn’t imagine finding out something like this about her own father. If Halan told her that she had been listening in on Mr. Bardak’s conversations, that he’d killed people and was planning the deaths of hundreds more, would Nalah believe her?
There was a good chance she wouldn’t. No matter the evidence. She knew her father, just like Halan thought she knew hers.
Nalah sighed heavily. Halan believed in her father’s innocence, because she was innocent herself. She couldn’t imagine him doing anything so terrible.
I’m afraid she’s going to lose that innocence, and soon.
She backed away from the recess in the wall and leaned on the other side of the passage. She couldn’t let Halan’s world crumble around her like this. What would happen to the thread tying them together if her tawam was destroyed?
“Cobalt, we can’t leave,” she whispered, thinking aloud. The blue bird tilted his head at her in surprise. “We have to rescue Papa and the rebels. But we can’t leave until I know they’re going to be all right. Halan, Ironside, all of them.”
She looked down at her hands.
“Maybe I’ve been wrong about my powers all this time,” she said. “Maybe they’re a gift, not a curse. And I can’t waste it.”
Nalah hurried back to Halan’s rooms, aware that she’d lingered longer than she meant to in the passage—and learned far more than she’d expected. If she wasn’t back when Lilah came to fetch her, the servants would probably raise the alarm.
She was only back in Halan’s rooms for a few minutes when there was a soft knock on the door.
“Halan, may I come in?” said a voice.
It wasn’t Lilah, though. It was Queen Rani.
“Um, y-yes, of course,” Nalah stuttered. Cobalt fluttered out through the open window, and Nalah sat down on the bed, awkwardly folding her hands in her lap, trying to look meek. Then she remembered that it wasn’t very Halan to sit meekly and wait to be yelled at—but it was too late now. The queen had opened the door and come inside.
She looked at Nalah, and Nalah’s heart gave a painful squeeze. The queen looked somehow, subtly, even more like Rina than she had earlier. Her hair was looser in its braids, and her dress was open at the throat.
“Halan, I . . .” She sighed. Her dark brows twitched with frustration and sadness. “I’m no good at this. I’ve made myself hard, over the years. I know that. Earlier, I was very tough on you.”
Nalah felt tears prickling at the corners of her eyes again. She didn’t dare speak. Did Rani often apologize? What would Halan say?
What did she want to say? All at once, Nalah realized that she might never have this chance again. Queen Rani wasn’t her mother—and yet . . .
If she could tell her mother
anything, what would it be?
“I love you, Mother,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.
Queen Rani’s lip trembled and tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, Halan, I love you too. All I want, in this world, is to keep you safe. I know that I seem to overreact, but one day—very soon, perhaps—you will know that everything I do is just because I couldn’t bear it if you were hurt.”
“I understand,” said Nalah, and she meant it. Halan thought that the king was a good man, who would never intentionally hurt anybody, but something told Nalah that the queen knew a lot more than she was letting on. Her words were familiar to Nalah. Stay inside, be careful; wear your gloves for now, darling. They were the same kind of words her father used, when he was afraid for Nalah’s life in New Hadar.
Before she could stop herself, Nalah ran to Queen Rani and threw her arms around her waist. Rani froze for a moment, clearly not used to being hugged. But a second later she wound her arms around Nalah and held her tight. She kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair.
This woman was not her mother, and Nalah knew it. But at that moment, she didn’t care. Something opened up inside her and she felt a warmth spreading throughout her body that she hadn’t felt since she was a tiny child.
It felt safe.
“Oh, you’re warm,” the queen said, releasing her. “After everything you went through, you probably haven’t had enough to eat or drink. Here.” She reached over to the bedside table and emptied a small bottle of fruit juice into a glass. “Drink this.”
Nalah took a few sips and set the glass back down.
“Why don’t I tell you a story before we go down for the meal,” Rani asked. “I haven’t done that in years, have I?”
Nalah nodded against her chest. Queen Rani even smelled like her mother—like jasmine and sandalwood. “I’d like that.”
Rani climbed onto the bed and Nalah curled up next to her, feeling the warmth of her through her beautiful satin dress.
“Once, in a faraway land, there was a princess who loved a handsome knight,” she said. “She gave her heart to this knight, without reservation, without caution or care.” Nalah’s heart gave another little jolt of recognition. This was a story she’d heard before, but not for so many years. This was a story Rina also had loved.