The Hidden Icon (Book of Icons)

by Jillian Kuhlmann

  The figure stood and we sat, the bench warm from where he had recently reclined.

  “Shran,” we whispered, our breath hot as his body’s heat, tumbled like a wave over us, over everything.

  And then he tumbled over us, too, and I felt a touch I’d never known but had heard enough from sisters and servants gossiping to guess what it was. Theba rocked back on her thighs and I opened my arms to him, the little sound that escaped unraveling from us both.

  His face in the moonlight was Gannet’s.

  I woke gasping, startling the servant that had slipped in while I was sleeping to rekindle the fire. I waved her away, knowing that even as she left she would return, and not alone. My hands covered my face as though what I’d dreamed was written upon it.

  There was water in a shallow basin, resin-cracked, water so cold I wondered it had not yet turned to ice. I brushed a damp cloth over my eyes and hair. The color in my cheeks might be mistaken for illness, and why shouldn’t it? What I felt, what I was, had no other explanation.

  When Gannet appeared in my door way a few moments later, I wasn’t sure which I felt in greater intensity: regret or relief. He closed the door right in the face of the servant at his heels, but I caught her brief, indignant look.

  “You could’ve thanked her,” I said, not looking at him, preoccupied with containing the dream as a thief might bury treasure, or a guilty man a body.

  “So could you,” he returned. Though he’d entered the room with purpose, the air about him now fairly vibrated with hesitation, and he hung back. Perhaps I hadn’t given myself away then, and breathing a little, though not too much, I stepped back from the water basin, between Gannet and the bed. This stirred the dream again, and I stamped upon it, hard.

  “She said you woke screaming,” Gannet continued, stoking the fire himself with hardly a glance in the absence of the serving girl. “That you fell out of bed.”

  I couldn’t lie to him, not completely. He could know that I dreamed without knowing the details of it.

  “It was a nightmare. I was Theba,” I began to explain, but the eyes that cut at me, sharpened by the lines of the mask, said what I didn’t want to. You are always Theba.

  “She had control, at first, but then what we wanted… was the same thing.”

  It was difficult to say as much and refuse the colors of the dream, my mind like a sketch, only, of what I remembered so clearly. That what I had dreamt was a story didn’t calm me, but perverted what was dear to me. Shran and Jemae both had been used by Theba, and I wanted to believe that I was being used, too. How could that be true when she was me?

  Flames licked softly at first at the logs in the hearth, and Gannet sat down in a chair before the fire. His posture welcomed me to join him and I did, caution like a brand on my face.

  “Tonight they’ll test you. There’s no more time for uncertainty.”

  He didn’t like what he had to say, but he knew that it needed to be said, and he wanted done with it. I closed up more tightly, not wanting this insight into his words, whether he meant for me to have it or not.

  “Will Paivi conduct the test?” I asked, combing my fingers through the damp hair around my face. Paivi had said that Gannet did not like him, though Gannet’s expression grew no more or less dour in speaking of the man.

  “It’s one of his duties,” he answered, “among others. Are you afraid of him?”

  The question caught me off guard. “I trust him less than I did you, when we first met. That’s not insignificant.”

  He smiled, and I felt something like threads pulled in my limbs and lungs at the turning up of the corners of his mouth.

  “He doesn’t trust you, either. But he’s pleased to have you. More than pleased.”

  “How did they know it was me? Did you send word ahead?”

  “No,” he answered, tone wary. “But I’m not surprised. Someone must’ve sensed you, or dreamed you.”

  Or tried to kill me.

  Before he could elaborate, a knock sounded on the door. Either the servant was far more polite than I would have given her credit for after being shut out, or someone else waited outside. As though he were responsible for who should be admitted to see me, and perhaps he was, Gannet rose and returned to the door, opening it wide enough for him to see but not me from where I remained seated. He whispered, and his words were lost. Not wanting to seem a petulant child at his elbow, I stayed where I was, impatient.

  When he closed the door again, he looked at me, something shifting deep in his eyes.

  “What is it?” I asked, though the answer I wanted had little to do with what had passed just now at the door.

  “They’re bringing you clothes and something to eat,” he said simply. “I’ll have to go.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with this?” I lifted my arms, the traveling dress I wore wrinkled by my brief sleep but fine enough for anything, I felt. I realized at his expression – weariness and something else, too – that my first question was taken in regards to his leaving, and not my wardrobe. I blushed, crossing my arms over my stomach and taking an elbow in each hand.

  “Eiren,” he said, and surprised me by crossing the carpet, footsteps muted against the rich weave, he placed a hand each over my hands. “I’ll be called away soon, to other duties. You will have to become used to them.”

  He meant more than the attentions of the servants, of Paivi. He meant everyone, a life that would be different not only from the one I had known in Aleyn but the one that had, I realized, been a comfort to me on the road.

  “What did you do before, that you return to now?” I whispered, thinking of the things he had yet to teach me, the stories I hadn’t told him yet. I thought of other things, like the color of his hair in sunlight and firelight, the way his mask might feel if I pressed my thumbs around its base and under – not as an enemy might, to crush his eyes, but to see them better.

  He stood there, holding my hands over my elbows awkwardly, but neither of us moved to break the contact.

  “We’re responsible for many things,” he explained, though I could tell he struggled, with what he said or something else I wasn’t sure. He had masterful control when he wanted to, when I was willing to show restraint. “We advise, we train others, we work to preserve our histories. The operas wouldn’t exist without the work of icons, though we aren’t suffered to participate.”

  Confused by this, I looked up, catching his eyes where I had avoided them the moment before.

  “Suffered?”

  Gannet’s expression clouded. “Don’t you think we have part enough already?”

  I knew better than to translate his statement as some admittance that we were but players. Gannet believed wholeheartedly that he was whoever it was he had been confined to as a boy, that each of the icons was bound to do what they had been given mortal body to do. I didn’t understand it, but I knew his life depended upon his belief. How else could one resign themselves to a life of service and sacrifice, disguise their face their whole lives and their own wants besides?

  What Gannet meant was that any story worth telling would be about us, anyway.

  I sighed and dropped my arms, feeling the warmth of his fingers against my elbows. He hadn’t stepped back, and neither had I. The space between us seemed less, somehow, without arms crossed against it. I was looking at him still and thinking hard on what it really meant for him to go away, how it made me heavy and aching as a sun-baked stone to imagine this place without him. Hadn’t we come this far together? Two days out of our capitol and I would have made twice the journey alone to be spared his company, everyone’s company. But his, especially.

  Now he lifted his hands only slightly and I stepped into them, my arms circled like a ring about his back. I felt his hands, then, not linked as my hands were but pressed one each on my waist and mid-back. My face was turned away from his, but never had the space between his neck and shoulder seemed more intimate than it did then, my hot breath cupped in a hollow I thought I could occupy f
orever. With only cloth between our skin, Gannet couldn’t guard himself, or perhaps he wasn’t trying to. His heart was like a drum, each pump of blood as sure of the danger of what he did in holding me as it was in surrendering to wanting to.

  It was as natural as breath, our bodies relaxed against each other. For the first time in months, I didn’t feel as though I were holding mine.

  An excruciating space seemed to build between us when he stepped away from me, eyes hooded, holding me at arms length a moment before releasing me altogether. He opened his mouth to speak, but the voice that emerged then didn’t come from him, but from his sister in the doorway.

  “Han’dra Eiren. I told Avery I would help you dress,” she said carefully. The servant Gannet had disappointed earlier appeared from behind Morainn, arms laden with several wooly bundles. I didn’t know how long Morainn had been there, and her manner betrayed little. She was looking at a space above us both, avoiding our faces, but there was an uncertain smile on her lips, tainted a little by the same fear her brother had shown when holding me. I could’ve fallen to the floor for want that he hold me again, and I made no mystery of my feelings. Gannet, however, had crossed the room to his sister, nodding at her before exiting without a word. My mouth opened and closed in protest or outrage or crippling desperation, but no words emerged.

  The snap of heavy fabric shaken out behind me was an unwelcome distraction, but I turned despite myself. Avery was laying out a rich garment, plum colored and embroidered in great detail at the sleeves and hem. From the second bundle she produced what appeared to me at first to be a second gown, but when she unfolded it I realized the two were meant to be worn together, one over the other. The second was dark, too, blue-black and belted, sleeveless but with an ample cowl and hood. It was far finer, and would be far warmer, than the traveling dress I had insisted to Gannet would do for anything.

  “I can manage, Avery.” Morainn interrupted the servant’s fussing, and I could tell by the expression on Avery’s face that she didn’t consider waiting on me to be among Morainn’s duties. She did not, however, attempt to dissuade her mistress, merely excused herself with a curt nod and closed the door behind her.

  Alone with Morainn, I felt immediately that some explanation, some apology, must be made, but she held up her hand, crossing to the last bundle and unrolling a pair of tall, soft boots.

  “The less that I know the better,” she insisted, and though I was confused by her words, I didn’t continue. If there were some rule I had broken, I figured it was better not to know if I ever wanted to break it again.

  Because I really wanted to.

  “They’ve embroidered this dress in haste,” Morainn observed, gathering a fold of cowl and allowing it to fall again. She smiled. “I hope it fits. I think they expected you to be taller.”

  I blushed at this, my heart reeling still but my head settling easier to this task than it might have another. Lista had dressed me for many occasions when I had let her, when we had lived in the capitol still and had cause for fancy dressing.

  “They made clothes for me?” I asked, approaching Morainn and the gown shyly, as though it represented someone I had yet to be acquainted with. Morainn nodded.

  “The seamstresses did what they could, in the little time they were given. I wish I knew how they knew. Father was furious that I didn’t notify him immediately, though it was safer that I didn’t. But the icons… have means we don’t. He resents it.”

  “Gannet doesn’t know how my identity was known, either,” I said quietly, fingering the fabric. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t as safe as she imagined me, hadn’t been, but that would mean telling her the truth of what had happened in the Rogue’s Ear.

  And I wasn’t sure I ever could.

  “Gannet doesn’t know everything, though I suspect he’d like us to think he did,” she mused, again with the little smile. I let out a little breath of relief, grateful for some levity when my mind and body both seemed so tangled up. I lifted the heavy hem of the gown, and thought I’d get quite literally tangled in such a garment.

  “I hope my test won’t require running,” I observed. “I’ll trip.”

  Her eyes flickered at my comment.

  “I don’t know anything about it. We aren’t permitted to know such things.”

  “Don’t you govern the icons? You must know some of their business.”

  Morainn, however, shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. The icons are keepers of our history, and many secrets besides. The wars my father has begun… he’s had encouragement.”

  This surprised me, but it shouldn’t have.

  “It’s not over,” I whispered, thinking of what the howling man had said. If the icons had a hand in Ambar’s conquests, what would they plan now that they me?

  Morainn misinterpreted my shuddering as a signal that I was cold, and helped me to shuffle into the unfamiliar gown. Though cumbersome and weighty as one tried to get into it, it moved comfortably on the body. The cowl, especially, I appreciated for the warmth it provided, and the embroidery on the inside, above my brow, attracted my attention. The characters reminded me of something from my book, if not lifted from it directly.

  “What does it say?” I asked Morainn, pulling it back off of my head and holding the hood open for her to see. She turned her head, the angle an awkward one.

  “It doesn’t say anything,” Morainn said, her voice a little like that used when one talks to a child who has limited means to communicate. “These aren’t words, they’re pictures. Symbols.”

  My brow furrowed, and Morainn held open her hands in a moment’s frustration over how to illustrate what she meant before she crossed to the wash basin and dipped a finger in, tracing one of what I had assumed were characters on the stone.

  “See, this is a house, and this, a carrion bird,” she explained, then dipped her finger again, drawing the two together in one of the designs on my cowl. The images were not as clear when joined, though now that I knew what they were separately, it seemed obvious. She grimaced.

  “It’s not nice, what they’re saying. Houses are traditionally seen as wombs, and well, it’s like saying your belly is full of death.”

  Whatever Morainn expected it was not that I should laugh, but I did, wildly and full, scooping the hood back over my head.

  “How fitting,” I answered after a breath, thinking of the son Theba had torn from her own belly and planted in that of a mortal. I didn’t know if she could bear life, but it didn’t matter. What was important was that she chose not to. I laughed because they had branded the clothes I should wear with her spirit, as though I needed reminding. I had to laugh for fear of crying.

  Morainn looked at me, eyes wavering in the fading light. The fire made us both seem haunted, and would more as night grew. With each moment I had the feeling that I knew just where to go, and I suspected it was because it was being shared with me, somewhere, by Paivi. He felt differently than Gannet did, enough that I had to dwell on the thought before I realized it wasn’t my own.

  Morainn touched a hand to her lips as though to stifle a question, but it followed the gesture anyway.

  “Will you tell me one thing,” she asked, each word weighted with her power, a life’s privilege of simply getting to know and have what you wanted when you wanted it. “You’re more like her every day, whether you want to be or not. Do you know, now, who he is?”

  Pained by her pronouncement and the necessary distance it created between us, I shook my head. She pursed her lips.

  “Then you should love him while you can.”

  Chapter 20

  Morainn had gone and the hour grew late. I’d been feeling more and more alone with every moment, beginning with the one that followed Gannet’s hasty departure.

  Avery had left a tray for me beside the fire. I was reminded of other evenings I had spent in company, but this drink I would take alone. I set myself beside the cooling hearth, sipping carefully the bittersweet brew.

  As I
drank I hoped for someone to come for me. I wasn’t meant to follow Morainn or Gannet, but my path began there, in the door. I drained my cup. Hugging the folds of the hood against my cheeks and grateful for the warmth if not the message embroidered within, I exited the chamber and pulled the door closed behind me.

  The palace was opulent, but the design was not a complicated one. Paivi didn’t wait for me here, but I could sense him, was allowed to sense him, far above where I now stood. There were stairs winding at either end of the corridor in which I stood, and I chose to go up. I was surprised to find no one as I passed, crossing several floors and many stairs, higher each time. There were furnishings rich and clustered together, the many generations of wealth and rule in this place witness to my trial. I sensed that this was part of it, the need that I should lead myself to judgment. I had grown exceptionally skillful at acting on instinct since I’d met my first Ambarian, even better, begrudgingly, at doing what I was told. Why should I expect any differently here? Even when I wasn’t told. Even when I was telling myself.

  I knew I wouldn’t have the comfort of Gannet waiting with Paivi, or if I could look to Gannet for comfort of any kind again. Had he meant to reach out to me, or had I imagined the gesture as something other than what it had seemed, taken advantage? Perhaps he had only put his hands on me because to resist would have been to rouse my temper, Theba’s temper. In the dream only moments before he had arrived, though, Shran had been eager. But he’d clutched Theba unwittingly. Gannet knew. Could our ancient king have known, too? Would it have changed him or his fate if he had? How much longer would I have to be Eiren, then, and worthy of such tenderness?

  I faced a silvered mirror at the base of yet another stair landing, cleverly lit from an angled shaft that gathered and filtered the moonlight from well above. I didn’t see a vengeful goddess in its depths but only a young woman, who looked more frightened even than she felt. There was nothing about this mirror to suggest the one I had seen in the prayer garden with Gannet, but it felt kindred to that object all the same.