It had taken me more than an hour to make my way from the suite where the candidate channelers (except for Tenia) had been quartered to the landing below my father’s tower room; now I would only have a few minutes to spend with him before I had to make my way back through the crowds and checkpoints so I could change into ceremonial garb.
It seemed like the whole palace had been decorated for the festival. Even here, in an administrative area, the ring of columns that supported the landing’s high ceiling bore garlands of silver ferrin bark worked into fanciful shapes and dotted with colorful berries.
Up the stairs, I could see the door to my father’s chambers propped slightly ajar, while a worker knelt in front of it applying a coat of paint. For all his planning skill, it seemed like at least one decoration wouldn’t be complete before the party. Or at least the paint wouldn’t be dry yet.
I knocked on an unpainted part of the lintel, and stepped into the room, easing my way around the half-open door.
I still felt a little giddy from Tenia’s almost-kiss, even a few hours later. I had to compose my expression or my father would want to know why I was smiling.
Inside my father’s chambers heavy wooden crates covered half the floor, like the ones people used for a move or an ocean voyage. The crates completely blocked the shelves of books and bound archives that covered the near wall of his central office. On the other walls about a third of the volumes I remembered seemed to be missing, presumably packed in the boxes. A large cabinet where he kept formal clothes stood open as well, with half its contents gone. Incongruously, the Mouse King costume, the same one I’d seen in the theater a hundred times, hung from a rack on the side of the clothes cupboard.
My father sat at a table, sorting through a small box of what looked like keepsakes. Next to the box sat a card case that looked just like the one hidden at the small of my back. With a start I realized it was the real talisman case, the one that held Ananya’s original Talisman of Truce. As chancellor, my father had access to it, of course, but seeing it sitting at his elbow like a register of births or food production ledger startled me a little.
“You’re early,” he said, without looking up.
“Excuse me?” I asked, not sure how to interpret his words. “The cable-carriage arrived hours ago.”
Then he did look up. “It’s you,” he said. “I was expecting someone else. How was your trip?”
“It was pleasant enough. Tenia told me you have a big ceremony planned for tonight.”
He smiled at that. “There will be a few surprises, I think. I apologize for not sending someone to meet your cable-carriage when it arrived. I have been caught up in last minute plans and work—” His hand swept around the mess that filled his normally tidy office.
“I see you’re packing. Are you redecorating? Is that why the door is being painted?”
“If I wait for a day when I am not busy, it will never be done,” he answered. I took that for a yes.
Then the Mouse King costume caught my eye again. I had to ask. “Is that for talking with gods? That’s what Tenia says they’re used for.”
He looked almost angry for a moment, then composed his face. “Remember,” he said “a long time ago I told you that some secrets were not to be spoken of.”
“I remember.” How could I forget. That’s the same day you sent Mala and her family away.
“That, and its uses”—he gestured to the costume—“concern one of those secrets. Understand that I can tell you no more.”
“Of course,” I said. Only my father could make a festival costume hanging in his office into a state secret. I wondered suddenly if he was seeing someone. As chancellor he couldn’t marry, but that didn’t preclude... the thought was too incongruous. He had loved my mother so intensely he had bargained away my name to try and save her. I couldn’t imagine that intensity would allow him to share himself with anyone else. Not that I knew much about love.
I wondered if I could ask, elliptically.
“You said once,” I ventured. “You said once that there would come a time when all I would have left is you. What did you mean by that?”
He smiled again, but this time it seemed a little sadness crept into his eyes. He looked a bit wistful when he spoke. “I think that meaning will become clear sooner than you think, daughter.” He glanced down at the box on the table, then back up at me again. “I must bid you goodbye. You have a ceremony to dress for and I”—he looked around at the boxes—“I have many preparations to make for this night.”
I nodded. “Will I see you at the ceremony?”
“If I can make it there,” he said, in a tone that meant he couldn’t. “A lot needs to happen behind the scenes that won’t happen if I’m not personally looking after it.”
“I understand.” And I did. “I’m sure I’ll see you afterward then.”
But he had turned back to the box of keepsakes, and the Talisman next to it, and didn’t look up at me as I left his chambers.
Ketya
The Drowned City: The evening of the Loss
I managed to speak to Tenia briefly before the ceremony, amid the mob. All around us royal family members and loved ones of other initiates celebrated among tables of food and cases of ancient documents in the giant, museumlike anteroom outside the Hall of Ceremonies. Tenia looked radiant, her blond ringlets elaborately styled. Her skin practically glowed with excitement as she danced from relative to relative, treating each one like a long-lost friend. I had never seen her happier; I wondered if even the Festival of Initiation itself could make her any happier.
“Ketya! This is amazing!” She gave me a big hug. “Did you see the harbor procession at sundown? Every ship in the home fleet in formation, throwing off streams of colored magic as they left the harbor just as the sun went down. Then they sailed south for a sea monster hunt tomorrow. Tomorrow night at sunset there will be another procession back into the harbor and then a midnight feast for the entire city. And your father organized it all!”
I smiled. “He said there would be surprises.”
“He’s an amazing man,” she said. Then pitched a little lower: “You’re going to have a lot to live up to as my chancellor.” She winked, which was as intimate a gesture as anyone could make in this crowd.
“Will everyone fit in the hall?” I asked.
“They should. I’m sure your father worked out all the numbers.” Then in the low voice again. “There was even a scandal this afternoon. I guess Burren isn’t harbormaster anymore, and whoever is, didn’t want to lower the harbor defense chains the way your father wanted for the sunset procession. Something about not being able to raise them again quickly enough and breaking procedure. Your father ended up having to go down to the harbor himself to make sure the procession went off the way he planned it.”
Tenia looked around. “Is he here?” she asked. “I wanted to thank him again, and introduce some of my relatives to him.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “It sounded like he would be too busy doing things behind the scenes.”
“That’s too bad. But I suppose he would have to be busy to avoid the limelight. He loves to be at the middle of every ceremony—even ours.” She smiled impishly. “My chancellor does things differently.”
“She does,” I agreed, but by then the crowd of royal relatives had swept her away. We exchanged a few glances across the crowd, but didn’t manage to get close to each other again before the guards began ushering us in for the ceremony.
* * * *
Tenia has a lot of relatives, I thought to myself. The bejeweled crowd filled the room so tightly that even the guards barely had room to move. I had so little family—or at least so little that I’d seen since my mother’s death—that the sea of excited people who surrounded us at the initiation ceremony seemed unfathomable to me.
I thought the Empress would call Tenia up last, but she actually called her daughter first.
Tenia glowed as she stepped forward toward the Seat of Ananya
where her mother awaited her.
“You are my jewel,” the Empress said as she opened her arms. Tenia stepped forward into her mother’s embrace.
The air crackled with magic. Tenia’s expression changed as the magic flowed into her, and her features took on a calmness I’d never seen. She stepped aside as the Empress called the next girl’s name, and stood looking at her family with utter serenity.
Magic filled the air as the Empress embraced each initiate. Her magic suffused the room. Colorful streamers of light danced and spun in the air as if the initiates couldn’t contain all the magic that flowed from her. Underneath it I felt a faint humming, and blue light flickered at the edge of my vision: the barely visible glow of ancient runes beneath layers of paint and paper that covered the walls of the Hall of Ceremonies.
Nearly everyone had been called to receive the Empress’s magic and I wondered why she had chosen to leave me for last. Then I realized she was giving my father as much time as possible to make it to the ceremony.
I didn’t see him anywhere in the room. A few of his fellow ministers had glanced my way sympathetically—pitying me because official duties meant my father hadn’t been able to attend his own daughter’s confirmation into power.
I still didn’t see him when I approached the throne for the Empress’s embrace. And then I didn’t care, as the Empress held me and power flowed into me. For the first time since my mother’s death, I knew what it meant to feel whole and complete.
“Aren’t you precious,” the Empress said, echoing the first words she’d spoken to me. Colorful streamers of magic flickered around her blonde hair. “You are still much quieter than your father. But tonight I think you have made him proud.” She embraced me a second time, holding me tight the way my mother had, or the way I wished my mother had.
I felt an odd sensation—something magical, but like nothing I ever felt at the academy. Then the runes on the walls winked out.
The Empress stiffened and spat blood on me. The colors vanished from her hair. Another channeler screamed. Then they all started screaming. A guard at the door clutched his throat. Something flashed in my head.
The magic ripped itself out of me even more swiftly than it had flowed in. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
I heard Tenia call my name, an agonized wail. Her mother collapsed onto me, gushing blood.
Then the palace faded into darkness.
Part II
The Drowned City
Chapter 8
Sperrin
The Drowned City: The night of the Loss
I never knew her name, but the dead girl changed everything. On my rounds as commander of the Early Watch, I had seen the girl arrive in the palace the previous morning with the other channeler-initiates from the Empress’s Academy. Not routine exactly, especially with all the celebrations surrounding the return of the Empress’s daughter, but as long as they could be kept out of trouble until then, the group of girls would assume their powers with the Empress’s touch in the midnight ceremony that completed the Festival of Initiation.
At the time, I didn’t give the girl a second thought.
I spent the day mostly guarding introduction parties and keeping virile junior palace guards separated from doe-eyed new arrivals. By the time the actual ceremony started, I was asleep in the West Tower room I shared with the commander of the Late Watch.
The screams weren’t what woke me: I was half a palace away from the first attack. I woke when the lights went out.
The lights never went out in the Drowned City. Darkness never touched the palace here at the heart of the Ananyan Empress’s magic. Even from a deep sleep, when the wall-lamp flickered and died I woke instantly.
I had been a soldier for almost thirty years—changes in environment meant danger.
Danger had passed silently on its way to the Empress’s glittering Presentation Chamber. Fifteen steps from the door of my chamber, I saw the same girl dead on the floor at the foot of the tower stairs, in the hallway that linked the guardroom with the kitchens and guest quarters. Likely, she’d been on her way to the ceremony after visiting someone she shouldn’t have. A slice through her shoulder blade had cut her almost in half.
She’d been dead an hour, meaning she had died before the lights went out.
No light palace blade had caused that wound. Maybe not even a human blade.
The girl looked about the age my daughter would have been. The age my daughter was, I corrected myself. As far as I knew, my daughter still lived.
Only, I hadn’t known about my daughter when I’d fallen asleep. By order of the Empress, she wasn’t my daughter anymore. Her mother was no longer my wife.
My family, and all my memories of them, had been the Empress’s price for accepting me into palace service. Had been her price for letting me leave the battlefield and put an end to the killing I had started to love too much. Memories of why I had left, of what I had done, remained fuzzy. I could remember only bits and pieces about my wife.
But at that moment, standing over a dead girl’s body in a dim hallway lit only by moonlight through the high windows, I remembered my daughter’s name for the first time in a decade: Lynniene.
That was the moment when I knew the Empress must be dead. Not just the Empress, I realized. The whole royal family had been gathered for tonight’s celebration. Empresses had died before. When an Empress died before abdicating, the magic passed to her closest blood relative. Which tonight, seemed to be...no one.
Lifting my blade, I moved noiselessly through the hallway toward the Presentation Chamber. Like the memories of my family, battlefield reflexes returned quickly. I found myself smiling, even now at the moment that my Empress was dead and my whole world dying along with her: It was time to find something to kill.
Ketya
The Drowned City: The morning after the Loss
I woke groggy and disoriented. Sticky blood covered me.
Water lapped at my feet.
I held a dead woman in my arms. The Empress. The thought only slowly registered, as if it came from far away. As if I wasn’t soaked in the broken woman’s blood.
The body and I lay curled together across the huge gilded bulk of the Seat of Ananya, the Empress’s throne. Early morning light shining through high, arched windows lit the Presentation Chamber dimly, even with the wall-lanterns darkened. Several women floated facedown in knee-deep water, which lapped gently at the base of the Seat. Barbed darts protruded from the floating women’s backs, like museum pieces from the Holy War.
The truce must have been broken, or betrayed: After eight hundred years of exile, gods had returned to Ananya. For a moment after I regained consciousness, the scene felt oddly abstract. I wondered who had let the servants of the gods into the palace. The passages between worlds were sealed. Only a few people had the skills to even see the seals, much less open them. Who had broken the seals? Who had invited the gods back into this world?
Then I looked at all the dead around me, and the bodies suddenly became real.
All of my academy classmates, dead. The Empress who had done so much for my family, dead. Her consort—Tenia’s father—sprawled alongside the throne, his head split open. The magic that flowed through the Empress, lifeblood to Ananya, gone.
Tenia!
She couldn’t be one of them—the cold, floating bodies. She had to be alive.
I thought of her as I’d just seen her a few minutes ago—no, it had to be a few hours ago, from the light coming through the windows. In my mind I saw her alive and glowing, colors flickering in her blonde ringlets as her mother embraced her.
Then I saw her.
She floated face-up, apparently unmarked. An anguished look had replaced the easy smile I remembered. I remembered hearing a scream as I had passed out.
Dead, all dead.
The Empress and her whole family. All of them had been in this room. The only movement other than me came from bodies gently rocking in the rising floodwaters.
&n
bsp; Many of the channelers’ bodies looked unmarked, killed by the magic torn from them when the Empress died. The bodies of the guards and relatives had been hacked apart. What could do such a thing? I answered my own question: The gods, or their servants, nothing else.
My father had drilled that into me, the same way he’d made me memorize the treaty. The gods were to be feared and respected, but never trusted. Only the treaty and its guardians—the Empress and her chancellor, who’d surrendered their names for the privilege—stood between the people of Ananya and the brutal return of the gods.
And now the Empress and the entire royal family lay dead around me. If my father had been at the ceremony the way I had asked him, he would be dead too.
I couldn’t avoid the question any longer. Is my father alive?
But he had to be. I knew he had to be. He had told me that someday I would have no one left in the world to turn to but him. he had repeated the words just this afternoon.
He had to be alive tonight. I would die if I lost him to.
He would be crushed, though. My father had brought all of the royal family together for the first time in generations. His grand gesture had been used by someone as the means to destroy Ananya, to strip the empire of magic. What would happen when he realized that his actions had so badly failed his Empress?
The Lost Daughters Page 11