by Jaine Fenn
“Do you know how they got in?”
“The new housemaid admitted she hadn’t checked the back of the house before she left. We found the back door unlocked.” Though if she failed to lock the door, why admit it? One more mystery among many.
“And they were surprised to find you in, you say.”
“Yes. Obviously whoever hired them failed to mention my godless ways.” Rhia might still have attended the vigil were it not for the newly arrived lenses, brought by a red-cheeked glassblowers’ apprentice that afternoon. At least the lenses had survived the break-in, even if the sightglass itself was ruined.
“There has been no trouble since.”
“No, I’m glad to say.” Though Rhia had not argued when Markave, her steward, had insisted on accompanying her up the hill to the palace.
“Bunny says it’s a sign of the times.” Despite knowing Alharet for most of her adult life, Rhia still started when the duchess used Francin’s nickname. For all the stresses on their marriage, perhaps the duke and duchess did love each other. Alharet looked pensive, then added, “Perhaps we should approach this from another angle. Perhaps we should ask ourselves who might do such a thing.”
“Do you have any thoughts?” Alharet would be the one to know.
“I did wonder about old Earl Lariend.”
“Him? But why? Oh, you mean his recent bluster about uppity women?”
“He really believes it. If you were married–”
“Then no doubt my husband would put a stop to my work.”
“Would that be so terrible? There comes a time when we must put aside selfish interests.”
Sometimes Rhia wondered if Alharet really understood her. Despite the duchess’s sympathy for Rhia’s work, her friend was eager to see her married off. But she would be thirty next year, so if she was to take a husband it must be soon. “Maybe. If there’s no other way.”
Alharet nodded. “Even if, as we all hope and pray, your brother returns to us safe and well, you should still consider Viscount Callorn’s offer.”
“His House’s offer, you mean.”
“Forget the source, Rhia. Consider the future.”
“I am.”
The duchess’s golden finch began to sing from its fretwork cage beside the window, heralding the evening. The two women listened for a while, the duchess deploying her fan as delicately as she would at court, while Rhia used hers more practically, seeing off the last of another hot, airless day.
The scarred skin around her left eye itched under her lacquered quarter-mask. The mask, painted by her late uncle, showed a realistic woman’s hand, and to the casual glance it looked as though someone was reaching round Rhia’s head. It was her favourite formal mask; she liked the way it made the smooth-faced courtiers look twice. She eased the point of her fan under the mask, scratching the itch as subtly as she could.
The finch fell silent, and ruffled its feathers. Alharet said, “I am sure you have considered this, but could the break-in at your townhouse be related to your brother, wherever he now is?”
Rhia fought the flush rising to her face. Alharet was her friend: she should confide in her, tell her about that awful morning three months ago. But to voice her fear was to give it substance. Pale hair in bloodied water… “I doubt it.” Her voice was clipped. “Unless you have news?”
“I wish I had.”
Rhia looked for some escape from the equally difficult subjects of the Viscount’s proposal and Etyan’s disappearance. She settled on the kind of gossip Alharet lived for. “Did I hear right, that Lady Emerlain is leaving?”
Alharet smiled. “She has already gone. Back to her family estate. Ill health, you know.”
“Not…?”
“Oh no. Not another of Bunny’s by-blows, thank the First. She just…” Alharet waved dismissively “… fell out of favour.”
“Wasn’t there a rumour she had also fallen into bed with the new music master?”
Alharet raised her fan to cover her mouth in mock shock. “More than once, they do say.”
“What was his name again?”
“I forget. He’s gone now too.” She lowered her fan. “Still, he was awfully pretty.”
Of course Alharet knew the young man’s name. Rhia suspected she had hired him herself, probably for his looks, possibly encouraging him to deploy his charms with the duke’s latest mistress.
Alharet smiled. “Now. Let us call for fresh tisane and have the servants light the lamps.” She put down her fan, then paused.
Rhia heard it too: a low rumble from outside. Alharet stood, Rhia rising a moment later.
Both women went over to the window.
The duchess’s apartments were on the third floor of the palace, to one side of the gatehouse. The skyland was visible as a bright line running along the horizon, fading now as the Sun set. Her window overlooked the wide and elegant curve of the duke’s parade. Rhia had a clear view of the jostling mass of humanity boiling up from the lower city.
The people moved like a living creature, an amalgam of faces and bodies. Over mutters and jeers a sonorous male voice rang out, “The First is angry. The duke must pay.”
The marchers responded: “Someone must pay.”
Riots sometimes occurred in the lower city, over taxes or the price of bread or other matters which, Rhia was sure, must be of vital import to those living without her privileges. But the trouble never reached this far upslope.
The crowd took up the cry: “The duke must pay.”
“It appears our citizens believe my husband capable of ending the drought with a wave of his hand,” said Alharet from behind her.
Rhia turned to see her friend’s wry smile. Alharet added, “You may wish to step back from the window.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” Rhia moved to one side, but could not look away. She peered out from behind the folded shutter.
The marchers were now close enough to start hurling more tangible items than shouts. A few stones were flung towards the palace, though all fell short.
A low grinding sounded from below. It took Rhia a moment to identify the cause: the great ironwood doors of the palace’s main entrance were only closed for rare ceremonial occasions.
Presumably in response to the closing doors, the marchers’ chants became angry shouts. A few sped up, breaking free of the pack.
Rhia flinched as a hurled missile smashed on the wall just below the window. Beside her, the finch twittered in alarm.
From her shoulder, Alharet said, “There was talk of a rabble-rousing priest.” Her soft voice was a contrast to the growing hubbub outside. “It appears he has indeed roused the rabble.”
The first rioters reached the gate, shouting at the top of their lungs. Mostly it was formless noise, though some still cried, “The First is angry!” and “The duke must pay!”
As the bulk of the crowd flowed uphill in the wake of their braver comrades, Rhia glimpsed movement in the circular avenue that surrounded the palace. Men on horseback, carrying no lights.
The leading rioters saw the advancing dark mass; some turned, uncertain; some shook sticks or other impromptu weapons, shouting and jeering.
The mounted men kicked their beasts into motion.
The horses charged the crowd. In the fitful torchlight Rhia recognized the green uniforms of the city militia. Behind the mounted officers jogged ranks of footsoldiers.
Another sound, directly below: a second cavalry charge, coming from the far side of the parade. The marchers were caught between two sets of horsemen.
Shouts became screams. In front of the barred gates, batons swung. Men went down. She realized, seeing a flash of crushed diamond, that some of the officers carried swords. Just below the window, a boy fell beneath a horse’s hooves with a shriek.
Rhia looked away from the unfolding carnage, back down the hill. The riot had stalled. People were turning, looking around, running away.
But there was nowhere to go. A line of militiamen, barely visible behind their
shields, headed up the hill in a solid unbroken wall. The rioters were trapped.
A few individuals broke free, slipping into the shadows between houses, but most of the crowd milled in panic. Some raised their weapons in defiance. More raised their hands in surrender. The line of soldiers advanced into them, shields held firm; from the second rank spears poked forward, jabbing and harrying. It was all screams now, screams and cries for mercy.
“They’re mowing them down, Alharet! The militia are killing them.”
The duchess reached past her and closed the shutter.
Chapter 4
When Mam Gerisa called her out from breakfast, Dej was indignant.
Pel’s knife was a lovely thing: no longer than a flint paring-knife, but made of bone, the tiny, worn blade shaped like a leaf, the handle’s spiral carvings still visible through generations of handling. She’d have liked to keep it. But Min was right, as usual.
Last night, she’d retrieved the knife from the leather pouch on a high rafter in the west granary. This particular stash also contained a pair of baked clay dice and a goose-feather pen with a real bronze nib. Dej had an idea the dice belonged to the boy who’d glared at her in the dinner queue. She didn’t always worry about who owned the stuff she took; the thing itself mattered less than the act, that pure and perfect moment when something that hadn’t been yours, became yours. With little chance to use them, and limited places to stash them, most objects found their way back to their original owners eventually, though to return the dice now would be an admission of guilt, and she didn’t do those.
But she had sneaked over to the boys’ bathhouse and left Pel’s knife in the middle of the floor. Surely, someone must have found it by now?
Not that she could say anything. She followed the crèche-mother out of the refectory with her head bowed, lips buttoned. Some of her crèche-mates giggled or muttered as she passed. Let them.
The contemplation room wasn’t a room at all, but a cupboard, too small to stand up in, just about big enough to sit down in with your legs out.
Once she’d been locked in, Dej lowered herself to the floor in the hot, reeking darkness, careful of the jug of water by the door. Previous experience suggested holding off drinking that for as long as possible. Once it was gone it was gone, and once the jug was full again – there being nowhere else to relieve yourself – you had to pee on the floor, and any mess you made you’d be clearing up before you left.
At least she’d miss morning classes. Twice. Ethics and geography today. Ethics annoyed her. How could the shadowkin tutors know how real, adult skykin thought? Geography she liked. Getting a feel for what was beyond the crèche fired her imagination and, unlike most lessons, it would be useful after her bonding.
The worst thing about the hole wasn’t the dark or the cramp or the smell or even the lack of food and drink. It was the boredom. She called up a mental map of the world; her own personal geography lesson.
The crèche was about half a day’s walk from the edge of Shen. Shen, like every other shadowland, was a great circle of perpetual shade, four days’ walk across. (She’d once asked the geography tutor how far “four days’ walk” was, given different people walked at different speeds; he’d been surprised at her interest, but unable to give a clear answer.)
It would take between six and eight days to walk to any of the six nearby shadowlands: although every shadowland was the same distance from its six neighbours, some you had to cross mountains to reach. (Again she’d asked, is that a skykin’s walk rather than a shadowkin? Because a shadowkin wouldn’t live long enough to walk even half a day in the skyland, would they? At this point the tutor had put her on report.)
In her head, she named those nearest shadowlands – Marn, Oras, Dolm, Erys, Xuin and Zekt – then the shadowkin nations nearest each of them, all the way along the five-deep strip of shadowlands running through the skyland like a necklace of dark beads.
But her real home was the skyland itself, even if she had yet to see it. She named the features she would find when she did – deserts, mountains, rivers, plateaus, swamps, lakes, plains – listing their salient points and visualizing what they might look like.
It was getting hot, making it hard to concentrate. She took a sip of water.
She didn’t want to think about the future and it went without saying she wouldn’t be reflecting on her “unacceptable behaviour”. That left thinking about the past.
She and Min had become friends thanks to the contemplation room. That thought made her smile whenever she was stuck in here.
It was one of her earliest memories. She’d been three or four, playing in the vegetable garden with the other youngers. They had no formal chores at that age, though they were encouraged to dig and rootle around using miniature trowels and spades, watched over by a house-servant. Dej had put her trowel down when she heard the hedge-thrush’s song. The bird sat on top of the wall, head up, music pouring from its throat. What a wonderful sound! After a while Dej tried joining in, and found to her delight that she could.
A shadow had fallen across her where she sat on the ground. The house-servant shook her head and said, “You can stop that right now, young lady!”
Dej didn’t. She sang louder, scaring the bird away. Now she’d discovered this wondrous thing, she’d never stop!
The servant had dragged her indoors, where she had sung at Mam Gerisa. The crèche-mother said there appeared to be only one way to “stop this foolish noise”, and had shut her in the contemplation room. Dej had heard older children whisper about this awful punishment, but going from light and song to silent darkness all at once was like dying. When she came out half a day later, tearful and shaking, the first dorm-mate she encountered was Min. She’d put Min in the same category as Jen, who was already bossing around the other girls in the youngers’ dorm, but Min gave her a hug and told her not to cry. Then she asked, “Why did they put you in there?”
Dej had shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“But you must have done something bad.”
Dej considered shrugging again. But this girl was interested in her, and the thing she’d done wasn’t bad, it was amazing, as well as being something the adults didn’t like, which made it even better. “I did this,” said Dej and then, keeping her voice low to avoid anyone else hearing, she trilled out the hedge-thrush’s song, note for note.
Min had clapped her hands and hugged Dej again. After that, she began to sit with her at meals, and join in the games Dej had previously played alone.
A year later they started lessons, some of which focused on their skykin heritage. When the tutor talked about parting-gifts he’d looked at Dej, and she’d wondered if he knew she never had one. She wanted to ask… but couldn’t. Min could: she put a hand up and said, “Does everyone have a parting-gift?”
“About one in a hundred babies arrive at the crèche without one.”
“Why?”
Dej would never have dared talk back to a tutor like that back then.
“We don’t know. You should not let it concern you.”
After class Dej asked Min if she’d been one of those children too. Min said she was. Dej’s relief had stopped her breath, then released it like a dam breaking. With fewer than two hundred children in the crèche, this made the two of them unique, special.
From then on, it was Min and Dej against the world.
The door opened, filling the contemplation room with light and dragging Dej back into the present. A house-servant stood in the glare.
The servant let her out, and told her to get some food at the refectory, then assume her afternoon duties. “Did Mam Gerisa change her mind, then?” asked Dej.
“Just get to your chores, please.”
Most likely the she-goat had found the knife this morning but decided to give Dej half a day in the hole anyway. Or maybe someone had found it and hidden it for a while. She’d probably never know.
She hated not knowing. Too much stuff happened without a good reason here,
too many things didn’t make sense. The shadowkin staff went on about acting in the skykin children’s best interests, then made up arbitrary rules and expected everyone to follow them. Like banning music. Dej had asked the numeracy tutor about that when she was ten. In the class he’d mentioned “musical intervals” when he talked about patterns in numbers, then caught himself. Dej had stayed behind and asked why music – a term she’d only heard a handful of times – was forbidden to skykin children. He’d just said, “The crèche teaches you what you’ll need for life in the skyland once you are bonded, no more and no less. And you won’t need music.”
“But I will need numbers? When? How?”
“If you want to be happy here, you should start accepting that we know what’s best for you.”
And that was what she hated, in a nutshell.
The real problem with the contemplation room wasn’t that it was boring, it was that it worked. It got you thinking. Thinking never made anything better.
She didn’t see Min all day, not even at supper. In the evening she went to the herb garden, but found the bench by the wall empty. She sat anyway, trying not to panic. If Mam Gerisa had sent Min away already, and put Dej in the hole just to stop her saying goodbye, then the she-goat was going to see some really unacceptable behaviour.
When Dej saw a familiar figure waddle towards her she jumped up. “I was worried.”
Min huffed out a breath and sat down. “No need. I’m still here. Had a bit of a rough day though. My girl’s making her presence felt.”
“Can you actually feel her, inside you?”
“Reckon I can. The nurse says I’m far enough along now.” Though Dej had known about Min’s situation for months she’d only admitted it to anyone else when her thickening waistline became impossible to hide. “Heard you’d got out the hole early. Also heard that one of the youngers found Pel’s knife this morning.”