Omir reached into his dark robes and pulled out a long knife. The three of us watched it glint in the light that streamed through fine-cut windows. He handed it to me. I did not know killing could be like this—in the open, in the light, acquiesced to by all. It was almost like being at a church service, and I was as excited as a child at his first altar.
The thrill of it sang to me like a crown.
I took the knife from him and walked to the Centaur-King, patting his shoulders like a rider approaching a nervous mount. He did not shy away, but met my stare, heartwood to iron.
“Monster,” I hissed, and slid the knife into his heart, up to the hilt, drew it back and thrust it in again. One, two, three, four. Five, six. Seven. Eight.
Sorrel smiled, and fell onto the dais with the empty thud of heavy bones against marble.
LEANDER STARED AT HIS FATHER IN HIS HUGE, empty bed, the gray at his temples, the lines in his face that were certainly not born from laughter. His eyes flickered in the low light. “Omir and I did find some use for each other. He did not take off his collar, and I did not have him burnt. He wanted the horse-people and their Witch; I wanted a Wizard to make the rain fall when I pleased, to make the drought come when I pleased, to poison whom I pleased and destroy what I pleased. We did great things; we conquered his horse-people together, who were certainly as unnatural as Centaurs. I have never liked magic, but I tolerated his, and that bought him for me. That is a fair bargain, since neither of us was interested in his cutting into me like a side of beef—as fair as the one I struck with this country, which has bent to my order as well as any country may. I did not set out to be beloved and just, only strong.”
“A King can be better than that,” the Prince insisted.
“And so we all begin, determined to better our fathers’ performances, knowing we can change the very nature of humanity, make it better, cleaner. But then daggers strike in the night, and peasants revolt, and all manner of atrocities become as necessary as breakfast. Only Princes believe in the greater good. Kings know there is only the Reign, and all things may be committed in its holy name. Now, are you going to cut my throat, or would you prefer the more intimate method—strangulation? I may have a garrote in the drawer.”
“No,” Leander answered him. “I won’t kill you like a thief in the night.”
Again the King laughed, low and friendly, as though he were reading his boy a story by firelight. “No, Leander. Thieves are not so bad, and killing wears all possible costumes. There is no death, no murder that is better than any other. If you can kill me, the manner hardly bears consideration. You want to kill your own father, and you think it will make your sleep easier for the next seventy years if you can say you did it honorably. But your honor is blackened by patricide, and no amount of high-sounding formalities will make it white again. Are you waiting for a confession, so that your soul will be clean? Very well. Everything she told you is true, and probably a great deal else besides. I have more blood on my hands than you could spill in a lifetime. I wear it proudly. It is my crown and my scepter. Would that you had such purpose, such drive. But you will learn, as we all do.” With this he folded back the rose-colored bedsheets with a genteel hand. Beneath them, he was fully clothed in a beaten leather corselet and breeches, brown from top to bottom, like a chestnut horse.
“Do you need a weapon? Did you really come so unprepared? A father’s work is never done. At least there is no shortage here.” He pulled a dagger from under the mattress—firelight leapt along the blade like a flashing salmon. Leander took it numbly, hardly seeing the hilt slide into his hand. Nothing, he thought, nothing since he had left the Palace that night so long ago, had happened the way it was supposed to.
He sat close to his father, so close he could smell his dry skin, like burned sand. “I’m… I’m sorry.”
Ismail of the Eight Kingdoms rolled his eyes and pulled his own dagger from his corselet, holding it to the Prince’s skin. “If you can’t manage one paltry death, how can you be King? This is how it’s done, my son.”
Before he could plunge the blade into Leander’s throat, Aerie, forgotten by the close-caught pair, threw her head back, black hair tumbling to the floor. She screamed again, louder than when she had first emerged, shattering every window and glass bauble, causing the birds to begin to fall from the sky. Crow, sparrow, finch—one by one they fell by the window, like many-colored rain. The cry was filled with rage that swelled like a flooded river as she watched this father-who-was-not-father coming, at last, near to killing the Prince. As his dagger touched the boy’s neck, her voice shattered its blade, and one of the shards penetrated deep into the King’s royal eye.
Leander hesitated only a second, and then plunged his knife into the King’s chest with all his strength, collapsing onto the hilt as it struck true and deep.
But the laughter of the King did not stop, even as blood bubbled from his mouth.
“Remember, my son,” he gasped as he perished, “with my death I instruct you. This is what it means to wield power. In the end, the blade is always in your own hands.”
Aerie stood in a shimmering white gown on the Castle balcony. She stared out into the highlands, and the mountains beyond.
“All I ever wanted was to leave this place,” Leander said, walking up behind her and placing a hand on her shoulder. “To be free. And he caught the last of us after all, locked me into this place forever. I have been set to zero, for all time.”
“But the nest survives, little brother,” she replied, her voice growing more musical every day. He held her close.
“At least you are here with me, Aerie. At least there is that.”
But she untangled herself from him, and looked sadly into his tired eyes.
“No.” She sighed. “I am leaving. I must go. There is a duty on me, just as on you. You have saved your father’s kingdom. I must tend to our mother’s.” Her gaze stole again to the far hills like a line of shadows hunting her. “When I flew, I knew what I was; I knew the wings were… borrowed, but it was far away. I do not know why I kept my mind in the bird’s body—it is not what the spell was meant to do. But the wind and the moon were all I loved, and then my mother. There was no reason behind it; I simply loved her. Now there is a glut of reasons, and the endpoint of them all is that there is a cave somewhere in those hills, and I am the only one left to enter it. You were born for power—they’ll call you the Maimed King, who lost his blessing fingers. There will be stories, and eventually legends. You cannot escape it, any more than I can escape the memory of the currents of air under my belly. Perhaps you can learn to use it differently; perhaps you can remain a Prince, though you are called King by all who have voices to utter it. Perhaps not. But I cannot stay to be your teacher. I have lost all that I was. I must find it again, with the poor, lost Stars. We must each find our ways to power, and how to hold it in our hands. Your nest cannot be mine.”
Leander struggled with tears he would not let fall on his sister’s slender shoulder. “But you will not go for a while, will you?” he said, choking. “I could not bear it. This is such a lonely place. Given time I could learn to hold power like a coal, and not be burned. But you must stay awhile yet, for me. We must be a family, for a while. Just a little while.”
Aerie turned to him and smiled dazzlingly, like a dozen noontime suns. “Of course I will stay with you, my only brother, my own.”
In the morning, she had disappeared as though she had never been, and the King stood alone in his great ivory hall.
Into the Dawn
THE DAWN HAD BEGUN TO DRESS HERSELF IN BLUE AND GOLD, ADORNING her hair with red jewels. She stretched out her hands to the two children, now almost asleep in the window of the tower. The girl cradled the boy in her lap, her hands stroking his hair, as she spoke the last words of her tale. A wind stirred in the Garden, and a whirl of white blossoms leapt into the air, swept along in the cool currents and eddies. Wild birds pinwheeled above their heads, singing with such passion they nea
rly died of the song.
The boy looked up at the girl, her face crowned in the new sun, which blazed around her like a corona of liquid gold. Her darkened eyes shone warmly, like polished river stones.
“That was a wonderful story!” he cried, embracing the girl in his excitement.
As she slipped down the ivy and crumbling stones, she smiled secretively up into his beaming face, which was washed by the sun’s tender hands.
“And I shall tell you another even more strange and wonderful tomorrow, if you will return to the Garden in the night, and to me…”
Laughing, the girl jumped onto the grass and ran from the tower. She disappeared into the trees, her hair streaming behind her like a promise.
In the Palace
“BUT FATHER!” DINARZAD CRIED, HER VOICE BREAKING LIKE A GREEN branch. Her violet eyes flashed indignantly, and there was a high flush in her fair cheeks. “He was with the demon! I saw them!”
“And I believe you, daughter.” The Sultan chuckled, shaking the beard that curled down to his chest like a fall of blackberry brambles. “You really mustn’t get so worked up about the children under your care. Children, especially young boys of your brother’s station, must be allowed some small indiscretions. It is good for my digestion to see them rebel a little. It keeps them from rebelling a lot.”
Dinarzad frowned, planting her hands on her hips in a fashion he imagined she had often seen on her own nursemaids. “Father. I hardly think this is a small thing. He might have brought that awful child’s curse upon all of us! I don’t understand why you have not banished her once and for all. Couldn’t you leave her to rot on some distant hillside?”
“I perceive that you have a cruel heart, my child. It lies within your breast like a smoldering blade, hissing steam at me. So long as she does not enter the Palace, we do not risk her devilment! When you have lived as long as I, you will learn a little more about dealing diplomatically with demons. To banish her to the wilds would bring down the vengeance of whatever creatures gave her birth. Why should she concern us? She does not even approach the silver gates or the corners of the house. And the boy has promised not to see her again. At the snowy summit of all these things, however, is the fact that you simply cannot go about locking your siblings in towers when they misbehave. It is unseemly and betrays a sad lack of creativity. Find another way, Dinarzad. That is all.”
The Sultan dismissed his daughter with a wave of a gold-ringed hand. She blushed deeply red, the shade of harem silk, and walked out of the throne room with a stiff spine, holding her dark head high.
“That girl is a little autocrat. It is a pity she was not a son. She would have made a fine Sultan,” the monarch mused, turning to his supper.
Of course Dinarzad was bound to obey her father’s word. But as she wove through the halls like a swift loom, she rubbed her shoulders where one of her mothers had beaten her for allowing such treason in their house. She was cruel because it was necessary—the Sultan did not take the time to know that the indiscretions of the children were visited on her by the harem. The bruises flared blue and yellow on her skin like wings, and her eyes watered painfully. In her mind, she was already devising a new punishment as she ascended the thin spiral of the tower, and it grew in her like a slim stalk of wheat.
Turning the heavy key in the lock, she entered the high room where she had left her brother. She was entirely prepared to find him gone, the room empty as a dried well. She steeled her stomach for it, hardening her flesh against blows to come.
Instead, the boy lay sleeping in the windowsill, his tousled head resting against the wind-washed stone, eyes darting beneath his lids as though he was deep in dreams as thick as mulled wine. The sun shone through his hair, turning it to embers in an iron grate, to black-rimmed flames. Dinarzad allowed herself a soft smile, pleased at his reluctant obedience. Nevertheless, when she shook him awake, her voice was rough as crocodile hide.
“Get up, you little urchin. You have slept far too long. Today you will work in the kitchen. If you like to roll around in the Garden like a dog, you might as well go beg for scraps. And the Royal Guard is dining at the Palace tonight, so there is plenty for you to do. By the end of this day you will be so exhausted you will not even dream of your little demon friend.”
The boy woke quickly—he knew better than to show her grogginess or the sand of his night eyes. He followed her in a sullen humor down from the tower and into the bowels of the Palace. The kitchens were as noisy as a stampede of oxen, oven fires leaping and steam bubbling from copper pots as though some magic brew steeped within them. Cooks and maids moved with great gestures, bellowing at each other with equal fury, their smocks stained with all manner of colored sauces, syrups, and spices. Dinarzad gave him a harsh shove into the room.
“Cook will look after you. You obey her, now. I don’t fancy returning to this inferno today. One prefers to see food only when it is pleasantly on the plate. Have a lovely day, little brother.” With this she disappeared in a flurry of white skirts and dark, flowing hair.
Cook towered over him, a great, hulking cow with cheeks fat as a hound’s jowls and a belly that tumbled over the waistline of her apron in a massive heave of flesh. Her eyes were a pale, fishy shade of blue, and her right one had gone a bit rheumy, so that when she looked him over her gaze seemed to slither on his skin like a snail. She appraised him like a general sizing up a soldier.
“Eh,” she grunted, her belly shaking with the sound, “soft thing like you isn’t fit to cook a scrap of toast, so you’d better get to washing the flagstones. Stay out of the way of my feet and no stealing, hear?” She gestured at a wooden bucket of gray water that stank of lye and hurtled towards a clutch of chefs faster than he would have thought possible, like a hippopotamus after hapless river boats, squalling at one of the helpless maids.
The boy scrubbed until his fingers were raw and wrinkled as paper pulp, but he was secretly filled with delight, hiding it within him like thieves’ gold. He would be able to bring the girl such a feast tonight, anything she could possibly want from the vast kitchens. They were preparing a huge banquet for the Royal Guard, who were so rarely barracked within the Palace gates that their entrance caused lavish holidays to spring up like dandelions in the courtly soil. A gargantuan boar had been killed earlier in the day, and it sat on the central table like a mighty lord, glistening with fat. All he had to do was wait until the maids left, scurrying like muskrats, to serve at the banquet hall, and the cooks went to report the menu to the stewards. Then the great boar would be unguarded.
And indeed, as night drew on the sky like a bodice, lacing it with the last beams of sunlight, the kitchen cleared of all its citizens and he was alone. Cook, by this time, had probably forgotten his existence entirely.
Slicing off a few fat pink hunks of boar flesh with his little dagger, he rearranged the slick green garnish to cover the missing meat, and cast about for further treasures. He smuggled sugared loaves and a rind of cheese into his vest, packing them in with smoked fish and a few of the little dormice soaked in pepper and honey that the Sultan favored. As he made his escape, the boy looked back over the sorry prison his sister had devised, and with a grin, snatched the shining red apple from the boar’s mouth. He crept out the door on his quietest feet, stealing past the glittering silver Gate and into the Garden, clutching his prizes to his chest, where his heart beat like a hammer striking an ivory bell.
In the Garden
BUT THE BOY DID NOT FIND HER THAT NIGHT.
He sat on the lip of one of the great marble statues, his feet resting on the stone tail of a dancing mermaid, and ate his cold pork and apple alone. He could not understand why she would break her promise, why she would not appear as she always had, as if by magic, to deliver her stories to him all dressed in silk and silver. As he chewed the honeyed meat in the dark, he looked into the spray of stars and pictured her face to himself, the private face that was revealed when she was deep in her tales, her smoky eyes shut and moving bene
ath black eyelids. A terrible fear was born in him suddenly—perhaps she did not like him at all, and only wanted to tell her tales so that her curse would be broken, so that whatever strange miracle dwelt in her stained eyes would release her from the Garden. Perhaps he was nothing to her but an ear. He trembled with it, the crawling cold that chewed his bones. She had abandoned him, and what was left was the roiling weight of sorrow and silence, her absence like a statue in the glowering moon.
That night of all nights, he accomplished his deception easily, and drew the bedsheets over his knees as the sky was beginning to flush an icy gold.
On the last night of the full moon, he wandered out into the western wing of the Garden, where a small lake lay glittering in the cool light, filled with gilt-eyed fish. He had not brought food, having not much hope of finding her. He had returned to eating meals with his brothers after the term of his punishment was complete, and food was difficult to smuggle. Dinarzad redoubled this by eating solemnly at his side each night, ignoring the stares of the other sons. He hated her, her thin fingers peeling back the skin from roasted quail, holding her knife at the angle they had all been taught as though it were an effortless habit, not the result of years of slapped knuckles.
He crouched at the grassy edge of the clear water, scowling into the sparse mist and picking at pebbles underfoot. The boy’s mouth had taken on a permanent sicklelike frown, a little moon whose horns were drawn ever downwards to the black earth. He began to skip stones on the placid water, listening to their satisfying plink-plink-plunks, when suddenly a gleam of star and shadow on skin caught his eye, and his heart leapt into his throat like a starving fish after a dragonfly.
The girl stood waist-deep in the water, her long charcoal hair clasped into a wet nest at her neck with willow whips, the lake beading on her stomach, her small breasts, her arms, outstretched as though she were trying to catch the moon in her arms like a child. Her eyes were shut; she did not yet see him. And so he watched her unabashedly, unable to move or to call to her, rooted to the mossy soil by the vision of her rising out of the night, pale as the gasp of a star’s breath—and the closed eyes, floating black and secretive in her ghostly face. His own breath would not come at all.
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