by Anya Josephs
Suddenly, everything is brightness and noise. I have discovered not the horrible dungeon I was imagining, but a servant’s passageway down into what I can clearly recognize as the palace’s kitchen. The frightening dark silence of the secret stair is entirely gone, replaced by a busy hive of activity. There are dozens of cooks and maids and messengers bustling around—a few of the maids in livery, but most of the people dressed in the same sort of simple homespun clothes I wear at home when helping with the chores.
Well, that explains how the servants seem to appear and disappear out of thin air. They’re traveling by these well-hidden stairs, set into the wall so that no one notices their comings and goings.
I remain half-hidden in the doorway, looking around at everything: at the great central table where half a dozen cooks are engaged in chopping various fruits and vegetables I don’t recognize; at the two roaring, wood-burning ovens, each large enough that a full-grown person could easily fit inside. I shake off that disturbing image and turn to head back up the stairs.
Before I can, someone, a short, sharp-faced woman, catches sight of me. “You, girl!”
My heart stops in my chest for a moment. I’ve been caught skulking around here, where I don’t belong, and I’m surely about to be in trouble. What will I say? How will I explain my presence here? Curiosity—the truth—seems a suddenly weak excuse for creeping about the palace like a thief. I hope I don’t get Sisi into trouble, at least. Her own studies with the books, her plan against the Prince himself, as little as I understand all that, is certainly more dangerous, and if I cast suspicion on her…
But my whirlwind of anxious thoughts is interrupted when all the woman says is, “Take this!”
She thrusts a heavy platter toward me, with a roast chicken on it. I follow where she points, carrying it from the central table to a side station where a stout young man slices it with a carving knife. When that’s done, I’m ordered on to the next station to help drizzle a golden sauce over the whole plate.
It takes me most of the afternoon to find a tidy opening for my escape. Finally, I carefully place the last elegantly carved piece of fruit I’ve been dipping in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon onto its heavily laden silver tray, and flee back up the same staircase I’d arrived by. Once again, I manage to become unnoticed.
I am not as lucky back in our own rooms. Aunt Mae is waiting for me when I arrive, wearing a heavy scowl. “Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry, Auntie. Just, well, I was just walking around.” It’s not quite a lie.
She smacks me hard on the ear. I wince, though I’m grateful my punishment isn’t worse. “Stay in the rooms from now on! I don’t want you getting lost or into trouble.”
“Yes, Auntie.”
After that, I confine my excursions to the nighttime, after Aunt Mae has gone to bed, and I don’t stay gone as long as I had that day in the kitchen. I leave at midnight or later, and stay out for an hour or two at most, and I’m always nervous every second that I’m outside of the safe area of acceptability marked by that heavy gilded door. But I can’t bring myself to stop.
Soon enough, I have a mental map of the entire palace. It’s laid out just like the Kingdom itself: four sections, sprawling out from the inner center, like a wheel. In the middle section, which I realize is where we’ve been taken for our dance lessons, are the useful rooms: the throne room, the banquet halls, the offices, the infirmaries, the kitchens down below, and the high tower where the priests live up above. Radiating out are the four long, thin sections, one for each type of Gaia’s children: for the beasts of the field, the adirim, the pahyat, and of course for the humans.
Only the latter two are inhabited by people. The Quarter of the Pahyat houses those few, like Elan, who are still in royal service. I leave them their privacy, not wanting to snoop around peoples’ homes. The Quarter of the Humans is, of course, always bustling with Numbered and servants alike, and I leave it as quickly as possible.
Instead, I limit myself to the entirely unoccupied wings of the palace. The animals don’t care if I peek in their stables or coops, and the adirim haven’t been seen in years. So there’s little risk I’ll be caught as I walk where they once walked.
I start with the Quarter of the Beasts. Some of the rooms are so big, I can’t see the ceiling when I tilt my head back all the way; others are so small, I can’t crawl inside. In one abandoned chamber, I find scorch marks on the wall and wonder, almost laughing at the absurd idea, if dragons might once have slept here. But most of the rooms are ordinary, holding the kinds of typical animals that a palace of this size needs to keep itself running: horses, poultry fowl, pigs, cows and bison.
Finally, my midnight walks grow bolder, taking me to the furthest wing of the palace, across the well-populated central hub—I cut through the kitchens, managing, this time, not to be taken for a scullery maid. This is the Quarter of the Adirim, the legendary go’im of great magical power. The most mysterious, and mightiest, of all of Gaia’s children. My heart thrums in excitement as I enter the main corridor.
This wing, though, is locked away. I can’t get the door open, even when I push with all my force, pressing my shoulder against the unyielding oak. Whatever secrets are in there, they are kept from me.
Well, then. If I cannot find the secrets of the palace on foot, I will need other ways of learning them. I certainly can’t go back to my ignorance now, not when Sisi needs me, not when I’ve just begun to glimpse how much there is to know.
But my duties to my Numbered cousin do not begin and end with her schemes to unseat Lord Ricard. I also need to ready her for the evenings when—more and more frequently—she is called to dine with him.
I am the one who has to help her into the best of her new gowns, one of a pearly blue shade that sets off the richness of her complexion. Her hair, as dark and shiny as a raven’s wing, puffs out in a perfect halo around her head, ending just above her finely sloped shoulders. One of Lord Ricard’s many expensive gifts, a glimmering golden necklace, encircles her throat and hangs down to the low neckline of the dress, emphasizing her full bosom. Despite the sour expression on her face, her skin is practically glowing from a range of ointments and lotions I have applied.
“How do I look?” she grumbles.
I sigh. “Stunning, as always. Of course.”
“There’s no ‘of course.’ I’m having dinner with the Second in the Kingdom, Jena. I have to look the part.”
“I thought you would want to look as hideous as possible. Drive him off, and all that.” I’m half-joking, and of course I don’t think Sisi could ever quite manage looking hideous, but nonetheless she sighs at me.
“You don’t understand,” Sisi says, smoothing her skirts.
I barely manage to stop myself from rolling my eyes.
Sisi finishes fussing with her dress just as Elan arrives to show her and Aunt Mae to the dining room. My aunt, as official chaperone, must be at all of their meetings.
Instead of joining the supper, I’m to spend the evening sitting here in our rooms, dining from a plate the maids will bring me, waiting for them to come back. Apparently, this supper is a private affair, so I’m not invited, but Aunt Mae also has to be there, to stop things from being inappropriately private.
All these rules give me a bit of a headache. As much as I hate being excluded from all the excitement, at least I don’t have to worry about applying the etiquette lessons I’ve only half paid attention to. Especially when they seem to contradict themselves as often as not.
I consider going out to wander the palace, but I suppose I ought to be back in this room at the moment my aunt and cousin return, lest they begin to worry. The night will have been stressful enough for them both without returning to find me missing. More than that, Sisi often comes back from these evenings with Lord Ricard in a quiet rage, and Aunt Mae can’t calm her half so well as I can.
I need to be there for her, as soon as I can. Still, that doesn’t mean my evening has to be entirely wasted.
I can at least practice the skill I know I need most if I am to be of real help to my cousin: reading.
I tiptoe into Sisi’s room, where the books are, and look at them. I can’t read any of the words, but I try to make out some of the letters. I recognize the “J” that begins my own name. My lessons have taken me that far, at least.
When I stumble on the golden book that Sisi had been reading earlier, one about the homes and civilizations of the adirim, I flip it open, just to take in the unfamiliar sight of black text on white parchment. We don’t have a single real book in our house—we have no need for one. My father keeps the household accounts in a worn old journal, made of clothes worn down to rags and stitched back together by Aunt Mae. He writes in it with a lump of charcoal that wears away quickly. It’s functional and simple and I’ve never paid any attention to it, unlike this book. This is a different kind of object entirely; though it’s of no more use to me than my father’s ledger, it exerts a strange pull on me. It’s beautiful, like everything in the palace, and as I look at the dark lines against the white pages, I can’t stop myself from wondering what secrets are hidden in this strange sea of symbols.
As I flip through the pages, I see a map of the Earth. I recognize what it must be instinctively: blue for the waters of the sea and the rivers that run through the land of Gaia, small triangles that depict mountain heights, tiny drawings of trees to represent forest and grove. I even see a picture of a crown and wonder if that means the Capital, where I am now.
There’s little else I can even try to identify, as small handwritten labels distinguish all the other places in the map. I try to deduce the words, but it’s like every other time I’ve tried to read outside my lessons with Jehan—without the context, I am entirely lost. Still, I make what meaning I can out of it.
I look in the southern and western part of the map, away from the City, and know that must be where I came from. These thin, scrawled lines show the outline of the second Corner of the Earth, where Leasane is. I can follow the great road part of the way—the meaning of the long black line seems obvious, and at least there, I can muddle out the capitalized H and R for High Road to confirm my guess—but I’m not sure which of the many small black dots represents my own hometown, if any of them do. Maybe Leasane is so small a place it doesn’t deserve to be named on this map, though it was once the entire universe to me.
I push away my sudden, surprising sadness and make myself focus on the possibilities that lie before me. I trace my finger toward the East, along the road away from the City, farther than I’ve ever gone. Aunt Mae said that my mother went east when she left. I wonder how far. I wonder if she went all the way toward the great blue expanse of sea on the far side of this map.
One town in particular catches my attention. It has a silver dot, where most of the places on the map are represented in plain black, and a word—a name—is scrawled above it. I wonder what it says. I squint, which of course does nothing to improve my literacy. Still, I find myself imagining what it would be like if that tiny dot were where my mother came from, and trying to picture what it might be like there.
I imagine all sorts of things. A place of comforts, of rich fabrics and woods as this palace is, but without the sparkling and sterile exterior. Maybe there’s always enough food to eat—not the odd delicacies of the palace, but good, rich, solid food. Comforting, as Aunt Mae makes it, but prepared by my mother’s hands.
I wonder if it’s a place filled to the brim with friends and family. Perhaps my mother has married again and maybe I have another father there, one who isn’t so quiet or stubborn, one who wouldn’t hold himself so far away from me. Maybe I have a brother or sister, the way all the other children I know do. Maybe even several.
I can see myself as part of a band of laughing, playing children, included not out of kindness or pity, the way Sisi tolerates me, but simply because I belonged. I would have something to do, something useful. Good work, like I do on the farm, but more fulfilling. I know I must be good for more than climbing branches. Maybe I could find what that is.
Maybe she looks just like me. That’s what my aunt says. Maybe we would stand next to each other like reflections in a mirror, knowing each other, seeing each other, and maybe we would both know at that moment that we had found what has always been missing from both of our lives.
Maybe she’d hold me close and tell me how sorry she was to have left me. That it was a mistake, it always had been a mistake, and that all she wanted now was to be a true mother to me.
Maybe all these wonders, or more that I cannot even begin to imagine, lie in that town, any one of these towns, these little dots on Sisi’s borrowed map, each one an unknown and wonderful Kingdom of its own. Maybe I will see all of it with my own eyes, someday.
Before I can lose myself any further in this foolish line of thinking, though, I hear the door open and look up. As I’ve become used to in the wake of these dinners, Sisi looks a mess.
Well, all right, she looks as lovely as she did before she left, but with her lips bitten red as if she’s been trying to stop herself from saying something that was just on the tip of her tongue. I can even see the wetness of a tear welling in her eye.
I look up at her, biting back my urge to babble apologies for being in her room, searching instead for the right words to comfort her. Finally, giving up on being able to actually bring her any peace, I simply ask, “Sisi, what’s wrong?”
I’m braced for a storm of wrath, shouting, screaming, anything. It’s what I expect. Instead, Sisi goes to sit at the corner of the bed, slowly, slowly, moving as though each of her limbs is intolerably, unbearably heavy. “I can’t, Jena.”
“Talk to me.”
“Please, don’t ask me to.”
I stand there for several long, long moments, frozen by my fear for her and my own uncertainty. Finally, I close the distance between us, lean in almost close enough to kiss her, and rest my hand gently against her cheek. “I love you, Sisi. Whatever you’re facing, whatever this is, I’m at your side. Even if you can’t tell me.”
She reaches up and laces her fingers through mine, pulling our joined hands down to rest in her lap. “Make me a promise, Jena?”
“Of course.”
“After the ball, when I have to… I’ll have to stay. Promise me you’ll leave this place. I don’t want you spending your life trapped here.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I say at once, instinctively.
“You’re meant for more than this. More than what lies ahead for me.”
“I’m meant to be with you.”
She squeezes my fingers gently in hers. “You are so young.”
This is the Sisi I can barely stand, who thinks she’s so much cleverer than everyone else. One of my favorite things about her is that she doesn’t have a sense of pride about her looks, for all everyone else is always praising her for them, but she can be painfully condescending in other ways. I start to snap back at her, but something about the trembling in her hands stops me. She lets go and turns away, and I realize with a terrified jolt that Sisi, strong, unshakeable, all-knowing Sisi, is trying to hide her tears. “I promise,” I say, my own voice thick with an emotion I do not recognize.
Chapter Fourteen
I’m trying to get better at reading, but it’s hard. I still get bogged down in the words quickly if I work at it too long. I practice every day until, at times, my head is throbbing with the effort of making sense of all of the words and I’m so weary I can hardly make my eyes stay focused on the page, the letters fogging into nonsense.
Still, I try. Now that I’ve explored every part of the palace I can that isn’t locked up tight or flooded with people, and with the Midwinter’s Eve Ball still a few weeks away, there’s little else I can do to help Sisi, or to feel close to her. I have to unlock this secret, the mystery of how the words give up their meanings through the page, if I am to make myself of any use in her quest to find out Lord Ricard’s secrets and discover why magic has abandoned the
Kingdom.
Jehan warns me sternly that it will be a long time before I can make it through anything like the thick volumes of history that Sisi keeps on her shelf. But he brings me simpler books. Among the volumes in the royal library are myths for children and narratives written in everyday language. Reading them helps me understand something of the great books my cousin always has her perfectly shaped nose buried in. While she’s digging through those dense volumes, I start to look over her shoulder. Sometimes I can even keep up with Sisi’s reasoning as she debates the issue she’s currently considering.
That’s something, at least. I may not quite be earning my keep as an aide to her search yet, but we can have a real discussion. I don’t offer too many opinions of my own, but I’ll ask the odd question, hoping I’m not annoying her too terribly.
“It seems the adirim really did once walk the land of Gaia,” Sisi comments. We are reading—or more accurately, she is reading, and I am watching her read—an unbearably dry book titled One Year Amongst the Fair Folk: A Few Thoughts on the Adirish Personages of Gaia by Elidino Karrson. It is somehow even less exciting than it sounds.
“You think so?” I ask.
“Can you imagine this Elidino having the necessary imagination to make such things up? He just wrote about watching an adirit use their magic to fly from treetop to treetop with all the excitement I might use to describe doing the laundry.”
“All right, I’ll give you that he doesn’t seem the creative type. But do you think it’s true that the adirim could really fly? Maybe he was impressionable, and he heard someone say something, and wrote it down—”
“It’s a decent thought, I’ll give you that, but…you remember the game we used to play back on the farm, Heard-You-Say?”
“Aye.” It’s a simple game, popular among farm children, given that it requires nothing whatsoever in terms of materials to play, and can be done even between chores if one is quick about it. The players sit in a circle, and one begins with a phrase, whispering it into another’s ear. That player then passes what she heard onto the next, and so on, until the last player gets the message and recites, ‘I heard you say…’ with whatever message he has heard. It’s usually hopelessly garbled nonsense, much to everyone’s delight.