State of Sorrow

by Melinda Salisbury

“It was delicious,” Sorrow said honestly. It was delicious. Even now, with a painfully full stomach, she itched to reach for the golden peach that still remained. She wanted to split it open, eat half as it was and the other half piled high with mazarine. Everything here tasted extraordinary, she didn’t think she could ever tire of such food, hadn’t known it could be this good.

  She sat back, frightened by the strength of her need, reaching instead for her water tumbler and taking a long drink. Even the water tasted better here, crisp and light and somehow cleaner than Rhannish water. She’d never known before that water had a flavour.

  “There’s something ancient and honourable about breaking bread with friends,” said Vespus. “And your country showed me hospitality for a time. It is good that I’ve been able to repay that. To your health.” He raised his wine glass. “To you both.” He tilted the glass to Mael, then drank deeply.

  The server returned with an odd silver pot and seven tiny cups, pouring a thick dark liquid into each one. The drink smelled warm, rich and faintly bitter, and Sorrow’s mouth watered once more. As the server placed a jug of cream and a bowl of sugar cubes in the centre of the table, Vespus held up a finger to stop him.

  “Open the window, would you?” he asked, and the server bowed, edging behind the Rhyllians and unlatching the hexagonal window, pushing it open, the scent of the blossoms on the wall mingling with the coffee aroma.

  As the server vanished back into the recesses of the inn, Vespus added a single lump of sugar to his coffee. “To business, then?” he said. “Mael, are you ready to tell your sister what happened to you?”

  At his words the good feelings from the meal, and the companionship that came from eating together, evaporated, leaving Sorrow on edge once more. Her jaw tightened, but she said nothing, watching as the boy nodded, reaching for the cream and adding a good amount to his own cup, turning the liquid a pale brown. He added two lumps of sugar and stirred the drink. He looked up at Sorrow, smiling briefly.

  “Lord Vespus tells me the Rhannish drink their coffee black, but I never did develop a taste for it without cream,” he said.

  Sorrow said nothing, raising her brows pointedly. No more chit-chat. She was there for a reason.

  “All right.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t remember falling from the bridge,” he began, eyes fixed on the whirlpool he’d made in his cup. “But sometimes I dream; it’s cold, and dark, and I can’t see. I can’t breathe. I think it must be some memory of the river, but I don’t remember it truly. I don’t remember my mother, or my – our – father.” He looked at Sorrow and she lowered her gaze to the inky darkness of the coffee. “I can only tell you what I was told of that day, second-hand. But firsthand, I can tell you what I lived after.”

  The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end, despite the heat of the day, and without realizing it, Sorrow leant forward.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  The Imposter’s Tale

  The old Rhyllian woman found him in the water, half a mile from her home, caught in the rushes there. Her cottage was downriver, miles from the bridge, miles away from most things. She’d lived alone for a long, long time and she liked it that way.

  The war had made life by the water dangerous, as in Rhannon, most Rhyllians had abandoned their riverside homes during the war, fearing foreign marauders, but no one bothered the old woman in her tiny tumbledown cottage. Fat brown chickens safely pecked at worms in her walled garden, offering eggs up in gratitude for their sanctuary. She grew her own leaves and greens, knew where to harvest berries in the small woods a little further inland. She had the river for her water, and for fish, and in her garden she had goats and fowl.

  She’d been on her own for so long she was out of the habit of speaking aloud, and she made no sound when she saw the small figure bobbing in a shallow pond branching off the main river. It was a place she often sat, allowing tiny fish to nibble the calluses on her toes as she gathered the algae that liked to grow there for soup. But today there was a boy there.

  She could see he was dead; his eyes were closed, his rosebud mouth open, his body still. A Rhannish child, she realized as she saw his bronze skin and rounded ears. He was dressed in white and green, the fabric torn where the water had tried to steal it away. She stepped into the pond and saw the birthmark on his neck, like a moon. She bent, the bones in her back clicking as she did, her knees creaking. There was a moment where she thought about leaving him there for nature to attend to, but then chided herself. If it were her little one in the water, wouldn’t she want someone to fetch him out?

  She closed her hands around his pudgy arms and lifted him, grunting at the weight. He was bigger than he’d looked, heavier too. She hauled him up, pressing him to her shoulder, and waded out of the water. On the bank, she lowered herself to the ground and set the boy beside her.

  His eyes were open.

  For a moment the two stared at each other, the old woman and the boy. Then he began to cry. And so did she.

  “She took me to her cottage,” Mael continued. “She said that I was ill for days, that I lapsed into a deep sleep almost as soon as we got there, and for a while she thought I wouldn’t survive. Despite it, she kept feeding me broth, cleaning me, tending me, and finally, after almost a fortnight, I woke up properly. According to her, I ate some toast, and an egg, and began babbling to her. Of course, she couldn’t understand a word I was saying, and I had no idea what she said either. But we muddled along.”

  “Why did she tell no one she’d found you?” Charon asked.

  Sorrow looked at him gratefully. She had questions, at least a thousand of them, but they crowded her throat and her mouth, leaving her unable to speak, as though she’d been the one half drowned.

  “There was no one to tell. We lived in the middle of nowhere. She had no visitors that I ever saw, until Aphora and her brother, Melakis, came. She never left the little world she’d created for herself. She didn’t need to.”

  “But surely she must have realized you had a home, and a family. Did you not tell her who you were?”

  “I expect I did. But in Rhannish. Which she didn’t speak. And by the time I’d mastered enough Rhyllian I’d mostly forgotten everything that came before. It was only when Lord Vespus questioned me that I found I remembered some Rhannish, and even that was limited, given how young I was when I fell. Before that, I only knew her, and the chickens, and the moon and the trees and the river. I never questioned it. Not until…” He looked to Aphora. “This is where Aphora comes into it.”

  The Rhyllian nodded, topping up her water tumbler before she began to speak.

  “My brother and I were out riding,” she began, and Sorrow sat up as something occurred to her.

  “Wait, when was this? How old were you then?” she asked Mael.

  Both he and Aphora looked to Vespus.

  “How long ago?” Sorrow repeated to Vespus.

  “Two years,” the Rhyllian lord supplied slowly.

  Sorrow and Charon reacted at the same time.

  “You’ve been keeping this a secret for two years?”

  “You found him two years ago and said nothing?”

  Even Rasmus had slammed his tumbler down and was staring open-mouthed at his father.

  “If you’ll allow him to explain…” Vespus began.

  But Sorrow had realized something else and turned her attention to Lincel. “You sat in my home, under my roof, for two years and you said nothing.” Her voice was cold. “You knew everything that was happening and you said nothing. You spied, and lied—”

  “I never lied.”

  “Don’t you dare defend yourself to me,” Sorrow spat. “Traitor.”

  “Miss Ventaxis, I must ask you to calm yourself,” Vespus said softly.

  Sorrow’s skin flamed with both anger and embarrassment at being corrected like a child. Rage gathered in her chest, but before she could release it a warning hand squeezed her knee. Rasmus, staring straight ahead, was gently gri
pping her leg.

  It was enough to bring her back to herself, and she took a deep breath.

  She folded her arms, turning to Aphora. “Fine. Continue.”

  Aphora’s mouth thinned at the command, but she inclined her head and began to speak once more.

  “My horse threw a shoe, so we decided to cut across the land, hoping to reach somewhere before nightfall to attend to the horse. And the first cottage we came to was Beliss’s—”

  “My … guardian,” Mael interrupted. “Her name is Beliss.”

  Aphora nodded. “We approached, knocked on the door and were surprised to find it answered by a Rhannish youth.” She nodded to Mael. “At first we assumed he was there with a Rhyllian lover –” Sorrow kept her expression carefully blank “– hiding from the authorities. But then Beliss herself came in, and it was obvious that they weren’t what I’d believed. We didn’t know what else to do, so we sent for Lord Vespus. We waited three days, asking the boy the same questions, over and over. ‘Who are you? Why are you here?’ But his answers were always the same; he was Beliss’s child, it was his home. The old woman herself refused to be drawn, until Lord Vespus arrived. But he got her to speak, and finally confirmed what we’d begun to hope. That we’d found the lost Ventaxis heir. Alive, and well.”

  There was something odd about the way she was talking. It sounded rehearsed. The pauses, the inflections, even the way she raised her brows as though unable to believe it herself, had the air of performance.

  Charon’s flat tone when he replied “How incredible” told Sorrow he felt the same.

  “It was the first I knew of it.” Mael leant forward earnestly. “I’d never questioned that I was supposed to be there, or that she was my mother.”

  “But you don’t look Rhyllian,” Sorrow said. “Not at all.”

  “I didn’t know what Rhyllian or Rhannish was.” His eyes lifted to hers. “I knew me, and I knew Beliss. That the only two people in my world didn’t look alike meant nothing to me. I looked nothing like the goats or the chickens either. For all I knew, everyone in the world was a different colour, and a different shape.”

  “You must have been surprised,” Charon said. “When they told you.”

  He shrugged. “Of course. Of course I was. You see, I liked my life. I liked – loved – Beliss. She’d been everything to me, taught me everything I knew. It was my home. I didn’t want to be someone else and I didn’t want to leave.”

  “So you were taken to the capital?” Sorrow didn’t care what Mael had or hadn’t wanted; all she wanted was to hear the rest of the story. She let her impatience seep into her voice. “And then?”

  He sat back, slumping in the chair. “Yes. And I could still remember nothing, none of my past, nothing of Rhannon at all. They…” He looked at Vespus, who nodded. “Her Majesty, Queen Melisia, and her council weren’t as convinced as Lord Vespus.”

  “My sister suspected he was an imposter,” Vespus added. “She worried he was plotting to make trouble between our countries. She had him arrested and imprisoned. They brought Beliss to the castle too and accused her of the same.”

  “So what changed my aunt’s mind?” Rasmus asked. Vespus’s expression darkened briefly, but he said nothing.

  It was Mael who answered. “Besides the birthmark, Beliss had kept the outfit she’d found me in. After all those years, she still had it, tattered as it was. It was brought to the castle and examined and the tailor’s label was found. Queen Melisia remembered what I’d been wearing. The embroidery on the collar, specifically. It was Rhyllian made, you see. By her own tailor, as a gift. Completely unique.”

  Silence fell over the table. Vespus gestured for the server to return, murmuring to him to replace the coffee.

  “Where is it?” Charon asked. “The outfit? I don’t suppose you still have it.”

  It was obvious he expected them to say it was lost, or destroyed during some kind of examination, and Sorrow privately agreed, so she was surprised when Aphora reached into a concealed pocket in her flowing gown and pulled out a small parcel wrapped in gossamer-thin paper. She lay the package reverently on the table and delicately peeled the paper away, revealing a set of shorts, and matching tunic, in green and white, fit for a child. There was embroidery on the collar of the tunic, as Mael had said. Moonflowers.

  Sorrow reached for the garments and Vespus moved, snatching them away.

  “They’re fragile,” Vespus said coolly when Sorrow glared at him. “As you can imagine, the fall and the water took their toll. We’ve been protecting them carefully until we could hand them to the chancellor.” From inside his robe Vespus drew a long glass stick, and used it to push a scrap of the white cloth back, revealing a label. “But you see here, the royal tailor Corius’s label. You were there, Lord Day, were you not? You remember it.”

  Sorrow looked at Charon, whose face was stony as he gave a curt nod.

  “Did the Rhannish ambassador know that you believed you’d found the lost child?” Sorrow asked.

  “No,” Vespus said firmly. “Ambassador Mira knew nothing. There was a very small inner circle who were aware of it until this morning, on Melisia’s orders. She did not want Mira to be compromised. Mira was notified this morning, along with those who accompanied us to the bridge shortly before we began the journey.”

  “Why wasn’t she there?” Sorrow asked. Mira had always attended the ceremony before, remaining on the Rhyllian side.

  “She was asked not to attend.”

  Charon’s tone was icy as he said, “You detained the Rhannish ambassador so she could not attend the memorial?”

  “Let’s not get into that now.” Sorrow’s eyes pleaded with Charon’s and he grudgingly nodded. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell us as soon as you were sure,” she said to Vespus.

  “Many reasons,” Vespus said. “In the first, the practicality of it. What were we to say – we’ve found a boy who barely understands a word of Rhannish, who’s never had a haircut or worn a pair of shoes in his life, but we believe he’s the chancellor’s lost son, can you prepare a suite of rooms? He couldn’t read, had had no formal education, no experience of people; simply being in a room with Beliss, Aphora and I was enough to make him shake when we first found him. Then there was the situation with your father… Was it wise to expose Mael to your father, given his … ah, difficulties?”

  Sorrow didn’t like the pause he’d left there. Didn’t like the way it was exactly the right size to imply he knew precisely what those difficulties were.

  “You didn’t have to contact my father. You could have contacted my grandmother, while she lived. Or Lord Day. Or even me.”

  “I didn’t want it.” Mael spoke up suddenly, drawing their attention back to him. “When they told me who I was, I decided I didn’t want to be Mael of Rhannon.”

  Sorrow took a breath. “Then who did you want to be? What was your name? To the woman, Beliss. She must have called you something.”

  “Ir bishi. She called me Ir bishi.”

  “It means ‘he who was discovered’. Basically, ‘foundling boy’,” Rasmus said, his voice icy. “It’s not a name.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Mael snapped, his eyes clouding. “It was a name to me, until they told me otherwise.”

  Rasmus made no reply.

  “I know how you feel –” Mael focused on Sorrow once more “– because it’s how I felt two years ago. My whole world turned upside down; everything I believed I knew to be real was gone. I was angry and I didn’t want it to be true either.”

  She stared back at him. “What’s different now?” she asked softly. For a moment it felt as though the others in the room had vanished, not a breath or a murmur from any of them. Sorrow waited, her heart pounding fiercely without her knowing why, for his answer.

  “I want to know where I come from. Who I am.” Mael laid his hands on the table, palms up, the universal gesture of openness, and leant towards her. “I want to know my history and my family, if they’
ll allow it. If you’ll allow it. I want to know the truth of who I am.”

  Without meaning to, Sorrow found herself leaning towards him too, nodding. With a start she realized she recognized him. Though she’d been born after her brother died, Sorrow was consumed by an unmistakable sense of knowing as Mael’s eyes locked on to hers. He was familiar. She forgot where she was, forgot everyone else there, save for Mael.

  “I want to come home,” he said.

  The Chessboard

  Rasmus coughed loudly, and at the same time Charon rolled his chair away from the table and said, “I think we’ve heard enough for now.”

  It was enough to shake Sorrow from the reverie she’d fallen into at Mael’s words. She blinked and sat back in her chair, her thoughts thick and syrupy.

  “We’re leaving?” she asked.

  “We need to bring the rest of the council up to speed, and prepare for your father. I believe we know everything we need to.” When Sorrow continued to stare at him, her confusion clear on her face, Charon spoke again. “Miss Ventaxis, we need to make our way to the Summer Palace. Now.”

  “It might not be safe to go,” Mael said, and Sorrow looked back to him. “There might still be a crowd.”

  The sense of recognition was gone, and Sorrow found herself frowning at Mael, an uneasy feeling tickling her spine as he stared back at her, his own expression puzzled, as though he felt it too.

  “Allow me to send someone to the bridge to be sure it’s clear for us.” Vespus stood smoothly, planting both hands on the table.

  “Us?” Charon said.

  “Of course. We’re coming with you. We agreed that.”

  As Charon sucked in a deep breath, Sorrow stood, suddenly filled with the need to be outside, away from these people, and the inevitable argument that was about to happen. Charon could handle it. She needed space to think.

  “I’m going to get some air.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Rasmus and Mael chorused.

  “I’d prefer to be alone,” Sorrow said, not looking at either of them.