by Sarah Ash
Until she reached the portrait. It was set in a simple frame, so unostentatious that you could have passed it by were it not for the vivid quality of the painting. Whomever the artist was, they had captured a moment in time so intensely that whenever Kiukiu looked at it, she felt as if she were gazing through a window into another world.
The portrait showed a boy of nine or ten years, head slightly turned as if someone had just called his name. His wind-ruffled hair was dark brown, lit with little tips of golden bronze. Behind him, Kiukiu could see a white balcony—and beyond that the blue of the sea. The boy’s sunburned features were regular, strong-boned. His expression was serious—though there was something in the way the artist had painted his eyes, and the little quirk at the corner of his mouth, that suggested the seriousness was assumed for the solemn occasion of the portrait and that an infectious grin was about to break through. And those eyes—they seemed to follow her when she moved away. Blue as the misty sea behind him, shaded by curling dark lashes and strong, dark brows, there was a luminous gleam to those blue eyes that was so lifelike it made her catch her breath.
When no one was around, she used to speak to the boy. Who else was there to confide in? Sosia was too busy with the affairs of the household to trouble herself with the feelings of the youngest, lowliest servant girl. Lilias had taken an instant dislike to her. Lilias’ maid, Dysis, ignored her. Ninusha and Ilsi, the other housemaids, were always flirting with Lord Volkh’s bodyguards, giggling over secrets together. . . .
So Kiukiu spoke to the lord Drakhaon’s son. She knew that the boy in the portrait was Lord Volkh’s son Gavril and that he had been sent away before the Clan Wars, a few months before she was born. Which would make him about twenty years old, she reckoned on her fingers, as she was so nearly eighteen.
“Why have you never come home, Lord Gavril,” she whispered, lovingly dusting the frame, “till now?”
The painted sea shimmered blue, an achingly deep, beautiful blue. Kiukiu had never seen the sea, but if it was anything as blue as in the portrait, she thought she would never want to be anywhere else. If you stared for long enough, it seemed as if the painted water began to ripple, to move. . . .
Kiukiu forced her eyes away, focusing on the boy’s face.
“They say your mother wouldn’t let you come back.”
The boy gazed silently back with his clear, sea-blue eyes.
“Because of what Lord Volkh did to her.” Her voice was barely a whisper. Even though the lord Drakhaon was dead, she still feared him. And dead in such a horrible fashion, burned by an alchymical poison, slashed and stabbed till his blood soaked through the floorboards of the hall. . . .
She shuddered. Best not to think of it.
“Is that bed made up yet, Kiukiu?”
Kiukiu started, startled by Sosia’s sharp voice from the corridor outside.
“Nearly finished,” she lied, shaking open the crisp folds of fine, bleached linen. The chill, somber air of the bedchamber filled with the fragrance of summer-dried lemon balm as she spread the sheet on the mattress and carefully tucked in the corners. Then she plumped up the soft goose-feather quilt and arranged the pillows.
A little door behind the brocade-canopied bed led to the Drakhaon’s dressing room and garderobe.
Better leave some clean towels . . .
Kiukiu slipped inside the little room. Here stood a vast armoire of dark-stained wood containing the Drakhaon’s clothes, dwarfing the washbowl and jug on its stand. What would become of all those fine linen shirts, those fur-lined winter jackets of black leather stitched with metallic thread, those rich brocade coats, trimmed with the softest velvet?
Dead men’s clothes . . .
Lord Gavril would never want to wear them, no matter how expensive the cloth. . . .
Kiukiu carefully placed the towels by the washbowl and straightened up, catching sight of a fragment of her reflection in the full-length, gilt-framed glass mirror that stood behind the armoire, still draped in a dark cloth, a funeral custom of Azhkendir.
She knew well enough the old stories told around the kitchen fire at night, superstitions about the souls of the departed. Stories that said the restless dead could use the shadows of their reflections in mirrors and glass to clothe themselves, could return to haunt the living.
But Lord Volkh had been laid to rest in the Nagarian mausoleum with all the funerary rites due to a Drakhaon of Azhkendir. And Lord Gavril would be here by evening.
Kiukiu whisked off the mourning cloth and folded it into fourths. She sneaked a glance at herself, and in case Sosia came in and caught her preening, gave the glass a perfunctory polish with the cloth.
Did she really resemble her mother, long-dead Afimia? Whenever she asked Sosia, Sosia would nod and then let slip ambiguous little snippets such as, “Of course poor Fimia’s hair was so much lighter than yours . . .”
But all Kiukiu could see in the mirror was a homely kind of face. Strong cheekbones, a broad brow, long, straight hair that was more wheaten gold than pale barley, plaited and tucked away beneath a bleached linen kerchief, and freckles. Try as she might to rub them away with herbal concoctions, they stubbornly remained, dusting her sun-browned skin like specks of golden pollen. No lady of quality had freckles. Lilias’ skin was pale as early almond blossom, unblemished, translucent. Even now that Lilias was so heavily pregnant, her complexion had retained its becoming pallor. Her rich chestnut hair was sleek and glossy—or so it should be, Kiukiu thought scornfully, after the hundred brush strokes Dysis had to administer every day.
Now the dressing room looked a little less dour, but it was hardly a suitable apartment for a young man. Even Lord Volkh had spent little time here, working late in the night in his study in the Kalika Tower. Kostya said that the Drakhaon liked to study the stars from the roof of the tower, that he and Doctor Kazimir were often to be found together, charting the constellations with the doctor’s telescopes.
But all that had been before. Before their quarrel, before the terrible events that followed . . .
Kiukiu felt a strange, sudden chill in the little room. She shivered involuntarily, rubbing her arms, feeling the skin rough with goose bumps.
She sensed that there was someone else behind her, and yet there had been no sound of footsteps or a door opening.
“Who’s there?” The question came out sharp-spiked and tense.
“Kiukirilya.”
“Ilsi? Ninusha? If this is a joke—”
The room suddenly darkened as if winter fogs had drifted in from the moors. The damply cold air tasted of the lightless dark of winter and despair.
“Turn around, Kiukirilya.” The words resonated in her mind like the somber din of the funeral bells in Saint Sergius’ monastery, tolling out across Azhkendir for their dead lord.
“No,” she said in a small voice, resisting.
“Help me, Kiukirilya.”
Slowly, unwillingly, she turned around. The mirror had become a yawning portal of rushing darkness from which wisps of fog escaped, colder than winter’s chill. And framed in the center of the portal stood a tall figure of a man, a warrior, his hands reaching out to her through the swirling mists. The terrible burns of the alchymical poison still disfigured his face, and stains of dried blood marked the gaping wounds through which his life had leaked away. . . .
“Lord Volkh?” she whispered. Her tongue was frozen with fear. She was talking with the dead.
“My son Gavril; I must speak with my son.” The words shivered into her mind, bitter as hoarfrost. How could she hear him so clearly against the chaotic roar of the darkness?
“Bring me through, Kiukirilya.”
“M-me?” Her heart seemed to have stopped beating. “Why me?”
“Because you have the gift.” Blue the spirit’s eyes were, intensely blue as starfire on a winter’s night. “You have the gift to bring me through.”
“I—I can’t bring you through, Lord Drakhaon.” She wanted to back away, but his gaze held h
er frozen to the spot. What gift did he mean? She had no special gifts; she was only a serving maid. She fought to close her mind to the relentlessly tolling voice, to turn away from the lifeless stare of those compelling blue eyes. “I d-don’t know how.”
“For my son’s sake. I must warn him. Before it’s too late.”
“Warn Lord Gavril? Is he in danger?” Those ghost stories told around the kitchen fire on winter nights still niggled at the back of her memory. Something you were not supposed to say, to do, in the presence of a revenant . . . But the chill fog seemed to have seeped into her memory, and there was nothing in her mind but smoke and shifting shadows.
“Kiukiu. Use your gift.” A spectral hand reached out toward her, frail as a skeletal leaf blackened with glittering frost. “Help me.”
She reached out to touch the revenant’s hand. What was she doing! Something at the back of her mind cried out to her to stop before it was too late—
She stood on a bare, scorched plain, dark stormclouds scudding fast overhead, distant bleak foothills, gullies of gray scree, all empty, desolate, lifeless. . . .
“Where have you brought me?” she cried, but her voice was drowned by the howl of the wind. Stinging grit gusted into her face, a hailshower of burning dust. “What is this terrible place?”
“Look.”
Through her dust-stung eyes she began to make out a slow stir of movement in the plain. As she stared, she saw they were human forms, some crawling laboriously, mindlessly onward across the barren plain, others so exhausted they had collapsed, lying half-buried in dust, gray statues of petrified lava.
Pity and horror wrung her heart. But at the same time she knew she must escape before she found herself drowning in the stinging dust. She forced herself to turn away, straining back toward the distant glimmer of light.
“Don’t condemn me to eternity here.” The revenant still held fast to her hand, gripped it with a desperate strength, and would not let go. “Bring me through, Kiukirilya!”
“I can’t, I daren’t—”
Then they were falling, tumbling back down through a turbulence of boiling thundercloud and whirling, serecold wind—
Her whole being fought the pull of the darkness. She wanted to let go, to shake herself free of the revenant, but still it clung on.
The mirror frame glimmered ahead, a portal limned in stardust.
She strove toward the daylight, the shadow clinging fast to her hand. It was like swimming up through the cold, heavy waters of Silver Lake in the forest, kicking free of the treacherous pull of the hidden currents. One more effort and she would reach the surface—
Suddenly she felt herself tumbling out onto the floor of the dressing room. Her head hit the floor—and the room about her seemed to explode into little stars of pain.
“Kiukiu. Kiukiu!”
Someone was shaking her. She wished they wouldn’t. It only made the aching in her head worse.
“Don’t . . .”
She looked up and saw Sosia’s face frowning down at her.
“What happened?” Kiukiu asked, trying to sit up. Her head only ached more; a dull throbbing spread from the back of her skull to her temples. She closed her eyes again.
“What happened? I come in to find why you’re not in the kitchen and there you are, stretched out on the floor and the mirror broken. Now you tell me what happened, my girl! Is it your monthlies?”
“No, Auntie.”
“Look at this mess! Glass everywhere. You’re lucky you didn’t cut yourself.”
Kiukiu blinked. Shards of mirror glass lay on the floor, on her skirts.
“You’ll have to do extra work to pay for this, Kiukiu. Mirrors don’t come cheap!”
“I—I’m sorry . . .”
“Have you eaten? I can’t have my girls passing out. Not today of all days, when Lord Gavril is expected. You’ve got a nasty bruise on your head; go and dab some of my witch hazel on it before it swells up into an egg.” Sosia gave Kiukiu her hand and pulled her to her feet. “At least you had the foresight to faint after you’d finished changing the bed.”
Kiukiu looked about her warily. What had happened? Had she brought the shadow through? Did the dressing room feel any different? Colder, maybe; the kind of unearthly cold that made the little hairs rise on your arms. And was there a slight taint of gravedust in the air?
But everything looked just as it had before—except for the shattered mirror.
“Fetch your dustpan and sweep up this mess.”
It must have just been a trick of her imagination, a vivid illusion brought on by a blow to the head.
“Don’t dawdle, Kiukiu!” Sosia called back sharply. “There’s work to be done.”
“Coming . . .”
Kiukiu hesitated—then took up the carefully folded cloth and draped it over the mirror frame. Just in case . . .
“What’s the matter with you, Kiukiu?” Ilsi glanced up from the herbs she was chopping—but not at Kiukiu, over her head, catching Ninusha’s eye. “Cat got your tongue?”
Kiukiu, cheeks hot with the rising steam from the beetroot soup she was stirring on the great cooking range, sensed that Ilsi was out to cause trouble. Ilsi and Ninusha found baiting Kiukiu a perpetual source of amusement. Kiukiu had patiently endured their taunts since they were children. She had always been the odd one out when it came to games and choosing friends. Their scornful teasing had caused her many tears when she was little, the youngest, unwanted one, tagging along behind the older kastel children, begging to be allowed to join in.
“I’m tired,” she said, squeezing some lemon juice into the rich, red soup. She hoped that would stop them pestering her. Besides, her head still ached.
“Sosia’s favoring her sister’s child again,” Ninusha said to Ilsi. Talking about Kiukiu as if she were not present was another childhood torment that had carried over into adulthood. “Letting her prepare Lord Gavril’s bedchamber. Such an honor.”
“Lord Gavril. They say he’s not much above twenty. Good-looking, too.” Ilsi gave a coquettish little shake of her fair curls, twisted into bunches like yellow catkins.
“Think you can compete with Lady Lilias?” Ninusha said with a giggle. “What’s the odds that she’ll be fluttering her lashes at Lord Gavril within a day of his arrival?”
“Lilias?” Ilsi gave a snort of laughter as she scraped the chopped herbs into the bowl of salad leaves. “She’s as fat as a farrowing sow these days. He won’t give her a second glance.”
“And won’t she just hate that?” Ninusha said, breaking into delighted giggles.
“Ninusha!” cried Sosia, appearing with a tray which she put down on the table with a crash. “What possessed you to sprinkle cinnamon on the lady Lilias’ dish of sutlage? You know she can’t abide the smell or taste of it! Whatever were you thinking of? Now she’s in a temper and blaming me.”
“Must’ve forgotten,” Ninusha said with a shrug. “Everyone else has cinnamon on sutlage. Why does she have to be different?”
“Pregnancy affects you that way,” Ilsi said. “My mam said she couldn’t be in the same room as anyone who had eaten garlic when she was carrying me. But I love garlic!”
“You’ll just have to prepare some more.”
“Pregnant women and their stupid little fads. That’s the fourth bowl she’s pigged today. She’ll turn into sutlage if she goes on eating so much of it. White and glutinous . . .”
“Perhaps she’ll stay fat after she’s had the baby,” Ilsi said with a malicious little smile. “Lolling around all day, making us wait on her hand and foot. Who does she think she is? He never married her. She was only his whore.”
“Ilsi!” Sosia slammed her fist down on the kitchen table, making the pots rattle. “That’s enough. I won’t have idle gossip in my kitchen. You’re here to work, not chatter.”
Kiukiu glanced up to see Ilsi pull a sour face at Sosia behind her back.
“Here’s Lady Lilias’ pudding.” Ninusha slopped some cold sutlage into
a clean bowl and slammed it down on the little lacquer tray.
“Don’t forget the chopped pistachio nuts,” Sosia said, not even glancing up from the pastry she was rolling.
Kiukiu was looking longingly at the rejected bowl, with its brown sprinkling of powdered cinnamon. To throw it away would be a wicked waste. She loved the smooth, creamy taste of the ground-rice dessert; she loved the subtle sweetness of the precious rose water Sosia used to flavor it. No one would mind, surely, if she just took a spoonful or two . . .
“Talking of greedy pigs,” rang out Ilsi’s voice spitefully, “look at Kiukiu. Caught with her nose in the trough!”
Guiltily, Kiukiu gulped down a mouthful of pudding, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth as if she could erase the sweet, sticky traces of her crime.
“You know the rules of my kitchen, Kiukiu,” Sosia said, shaking her rolling pin at her. “No women servants to eat leftovers from the Drakhaon’s table until the men have had their fill. Have you any idea how much rose water costs these days? Or pistachios? Or lemons?”
“No supper for you tonight, Kiukiu,” whispered Ilsi.
“I could make rose water,” Kiukiu protested. “It can’t be that difficult.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Sosia said. “Besides—where would you find the rose petals? And when was the last time roses bloomed without blight at Kastel Drakhaon?”
“It just looked so good,” Kiukiu said contritely, “and I was so hungry.”
“So hungry,” mimicked Ninusha.
“Listen!” Sosia lifted one floury hand for silence. “Horses.”
Kiukiu, glad of the distraction, ran to the window, opening the shutter, peeping out into the dark courtyard.
Torches flared; the black shadows of mounted warriors came clattering in over the cobbles beneath the archway.
“The druzhina,” she cried excitedly. “Lord Gavril’s here!”
“Out of the way!” Ilsi and Ninusha elbowed her aside, eagerly peering out into the night.