Auralia's Colors

by Jeffrey Overstreet

  When Jaralaine returned in a jealous rage at what she had seen, she was already plotting ways to match, and even surpass, Queen Thesere’s glory.

  Scharr ben Fray was in a panic, declaring that the queen had bent Cal-marcus’s will. But he was too late. And all was lost to the Proclamation of the Colors.

  The king had disguised himself with confidence and pleasure as the house surrendered its colors, its treasures, its life, and its future. He presented his queen in a new gown, with a new crown, to inspire the love of the people. But they only applauded now because it earned them honor stitches and credit for loyalty.

  King Cal-marcus ker Har-baron placed his hands on the mirror frame. A jail indeed, this house. I raised walls within walls.

  Around the time of the Proclamation, as Cal-raven had begun to play with toy swords and declare himself a soldier, rumors spread of a great beast hiding in Deep Lake. The stories captured the boy’s imagination.

  “Pretend you are the Keeper, Papa!” the boy had laughed, jumping out from beneath the great map table and waving a wooden sword.

  The king had dropped to all fours, playfully swiping at his son with imaginary claws. “I thought you said the Keeper protects you. Why would you run at me with a sword?”

  “I want to protect the Keeper!” the boy had announced. “Protect it from fangbears and wolves!”

  “Son,” Jaralaine had whispered, “there is no such frightful thing walking in the forest.” When the king suggested that she should allow the boy such comforting fantasies, her reply was sharp. “I saw what remained of my family after the savages struck. There was no one to help them. Nothing came to save them. The dreams are wishful thinking, a childish comfort for the weak. We must learn to save ourselves.”

  At that moment Cal-marcus began to suspect that Jaralaine ventured out not to force him to respect her will but to challenge the darkness in the woods, to overpower it, to prove to everyone the Expanse belonged to her.

  As Jaralaine stepped beyond the reach of law, Scharr ben Fray dared to say, “I’ve changed my mind, good king. I will not goad you to restrain her anymore.”

  “At last you’ve understood. She cannot be bound.”

  “No. And that is why you must let her go. There are boundaries across which we cannot step, Cal-marcus. Perhaps she will only learn when she steps across them.”

  That step had come so quickly.

  Less than a month later he woke to find her gone. Her resplendent gown of colors, woven from threads stripped from the finest Housefolk treasures, was missing.

  All the palace heard his cries. “Thieves! Invaders! She is taken! She is gone!” It took three guards and Scharr ben Fray’s potions to quiet him.

  In her garden, flowers drooped, once-green leaves curling, ashen. It was never replanted.

  He wanted to believe Jaralaine had been kidnapped, numbing his heart to any doubt. Not long after, he banished Scharr ben Fray, for despite the mage’s counsel, Cal-marcus had lost his queen.

  The voice he heard in his memory crying out for the lost queen had been so like the voice that had sounded in the dungeons only a few hours ago. Could it have been only this morning?

  The mirror rattled against the wall in the hold of his trembling hand. Everything he touched, he broke.

  A voice at the door broke his grasp. “My lord, the Lady Stricia, Prince Cal-raven’s Promised, is here. You called for her?”

  “Did her summoner deliver the gift of the pearls?”

  “Yes, master. She’s wearing them.”

  “Thank you. Send her in.”

  He did not turn to look at Stricia. He continued to stare down at the dead garden.

  “I must make haste. So listen carefully,” he said.

  Even now—with this hopeful, ambitious, beautiful woman waiting behind him. He would crush her too.

  “I have sent for you, captain’s daughter, that I might save you. My son is all I have left. He minds not anything I say of you. His heart is all in knots. The wedding plan was a mistake. I would force him to follow the leading of my heart. But what is my heart? How dare I depend on such a misguided instrument? What kind of wonders might I have seen in this world if I had listened before I spoke, observed before I seized, hesitated before I proclaimed? I am king, laying claim to all I see from this window. And yet nothing gives itself to me. Nothing but beauty. And the love of my son.” He gestured to the north, his shaking hand appearing to grasp at the last flaring diamond of sunlight behind the mountains. “He is all I have left of the world you and I once knew.”

  You and I.

  “I’m sorry, my lady. I was thinking of my dear lost queen. Her pearls. It is right that you should have them. And the royal apparel you so desire.” He gestured to the marrowwood closet. “I give it all to you. You may wear anything you find within it without fear of punishment. That is my offering to you. For all that I have destroyed stands beside me. I cannot let Cal-raven join that line of resentful ghosts. He is to be king, after all.”

  He glanced backward and sighed. “Thank you for accepting this.”

  She stood there, wavering in a splendid gown of white and gold. Already arrogant in her assurance of a royal wedding and a throne, she had come to him in illegal colors.

  But she was not alone. Wraiths slipped past her, crowding into the room, shadows with pale, mournful faces. She did not see them, and he was not surprised.

  “Ah, they have come for me.” He spread his arms in welcome. “I have always wondered if they were conjured by the drink. But here they are again, come to watch and wait. And this time, at last, I do not loathe their gaze.” Was there comfort in the hands of Northchildren? Were they perhaps not so malevolent as the stories said?

  Stricia, looking around but seeing nothing, sucked in a shuddering breath. “Why? Why take back what you proclaimed?”

  He stepped forward to touch the pearls that glistened around her neck. She flinched.

  Stricia cautiously approached and took his hand. “Do not make any hasty decisions today.”

  “You will always ask me why, captain’s daughter. Perhaps someday you will find something beautiful has grown around your question. I’ve made nothing from my questions. I’ve only caused more pain. I have nothing beautiful to give. Nothing but these. Just empty garments, frail skins the queen shed.”

  She stood beside him, a young Jaralaine distracted by her jewelry. Together they were like giants of history, statues for the stage at the Rites, gold in the torchlight. Stricia clutched at the pearls. Did she understand?

  The king sighed. “Perhaps where I have failed, Cal-raven will succeed. I won’t hinder his journey anymore. You want a gift from the king? Hear this: if you allow Abascar freedom, some people will choose what they shouldn’t.” He took hold of her shoulder, speaking with urgency. “But take away that freedom, and no one has opportunity to choose what they should.”

  He was speaking nonsense, his trembling hand shaking her shoulder. She wrested away, and he was filled with despair. The Northchildren crowded around him. They said nothing, but their touch was comforting, not cold as he had feared.

  Could Stricia not see these shadows?

  He fought on, determined not to falter in this final proclamation. “We thought we loved each other, Jaralaine and I. Maybe we did.” He spoke with difficulty, struggling to translate from a foreign script. He managed a soft smile. “You resemble her, captain’s daughter. But you still have time to choose. And so does my son.” He turned from her to the window. “Do not hate him. Punish me instead.”

  “But you are the king,” Stricia said desperately. “Your will—not Cal-raven’s—must be done.”

  “My son is too kind to insist upon his own will. No, he is finding the path of some greater will. I think I used to know that path.” He looked to the window, but the world was dark now. “There is something familiar about his spirit.”

  He heard the pearls hit the floor as Stricia ran from the room. He winced, but remained still, waiting for a
n answer to an unspoken question.

  The answer came, for she ran back into the room, snatched the necklace, and then departed, never to return.

  “Come away.” The whisper was gentle. “It is finished.”

  The shadow dissolved under his gaze. “No,” he whispered, “not yet. I have one last wrong to right.” He drew back the curtain and called with newfound strength for an escort to take him to the dungeon.

  “Please,” he growled as he leaned on the bewildered guard and staggered down the stairs. “Please let me reach her in time.”

  Roselinda had just returned from a conference with the tailors and weavers who would outfit the wedding party and the jewelers who were crafting kingly rings and queenly bracelets. It had been her task since Jaralaine’s time to gather the finest artists in the house and direct them in weaving all manner of cloth. The royal marriage was still many days away, but there was much to do, and if Roselinda had learned anything in her years as royal seamstress, it was the value of working ahead of schedule.

  Today, however, she had immersed herself in the wedding plans, delaying the task that lay waiting in the washroom.

  Roselinda leaned with one heavy hand on the edge of the deep washbasin. It seemed cruel, what she had been ordered to do. She turned on the water, reached to the shelf above the tub. The jar of dye powder seemed small in her hand, but when she lifted the lid to see it was full, she knew well what its contents could do.

  She set the jar beside the basin.

  Auralia’s colors lay draped over the drying rack, shimmering in the cold white light.

  Roselinda pulled in a deep breath, patted her bosom in dismay, and then, gritting her teeth, grasped Auralia’s weaving by the edges and lifted it over the basin, ever so careful not to knock the dye into the water prematurely. Perfumes flowered in the air, and she drew her face into its folds, where a sob escaped. The colors smelled like a forest in the morning after a rain.

  “Never,” she had whispered to the tailors and jewelers, “never has there been anything so beautiful.”

  As Roselinda placed the cape slowly in the water, she glared at the dye jar, wondering what accident might cause the powder to disappear, at least until the king saw reason and withdrew his instructions.

  The cloth sank into the water and began to twist and fold and turn like a living thing, the water glittering with its light.

  On impulse, she put a safe distance between her and the basin. “Maybe I’ll just tease loose some of those stitches before it’s destroyed. I should store those mysterious threads for safekeeping.”

  Relieved that the deed was yet to be done, Roselinda rushed from the washroom and back up the stairs to search for her scissors. Along the way she was interrupted and drawn back into the wedding plans.

  24

  THE PROMISE BROKEN

  S tricia moved as if sleepwalking through the dark door of her family’s seven-structure home.

  As she did, she remembered that she had been the first to step through this door into the most coveted lodging outside of Abascar’s palace, on a day of inauguration after her father had been promoted to the role of chief strategist and captain of the guard. A host of soldiers pulled carts with the family’s belongings up the path through the brandberry bushes. A wreath of roses decorated the door. As Aug-anstern delivered a speech, she had jumped from her chair, dodged her mother’s grasp, and run up the front path, plunging into the house which smelled of marrowwood, incense, and newly woven grass rugs.

  She had run through every room in search of her own, the youngest woman in House Abascar to have a chamber all to herself. When she found it, she immediately realized that some of the laborers had huts smaller than her room. This pleased her immensely.

  Behind her, the Housefolk had laughed, but she was not embarrassed. This place belonged to her.

  She never hurried through the front door again. She liked to be seen going in, liked to linger and greet the stone-carved wyrms that guarded the door. She liked to salute the guard, who ensured their privacy and patrolled the perimeter of the adjoining structures on a nightly fire watch.

  But this evening…

  The nature of her conference with the king was clear to anyone who saw her walk from the palace past the guards without so much as a nod or a blink, past servants hurrying home and dusty grey-clad children being told the time for roadball games was past.

  The servant woman busying herself within the house nearly dropped an armload of towels as she dodged the captain’s daughter. Stricia went straight to the tapestry above the fireplace, a reward to their house from the king, granted because she had turned in several young Underkeep thieves. Without hesitation, she tore it free, knocking cold candles from the mantel, which shattered into waxy crumbs. She bundled the tapestry against her as if squeezing the life from something within it, wrapped it into a tangled ball, and thrust it into the piles of ash in the fireplace.

  With that, she rushed down the corridor. The servant woman, now carrying a broom, had to jump again to stay out of her way.

  As Stricia stepped into her mother’s chamber, a sudden movement caught her eye. She turned to behold herself in the full-length mirror. Her face was fixed in the pale horror that had possessed her ever since she had faced the king. She straightened and regarded her proper stance. The pearls about her neck were large, exquisite.

  In the reflection she saw her mother’s dresser. On it stood a clay sculpture dressed like the king, a figure she had made as a gift for her father years before. Muttering, she turned and smashed it against the edge of the dresser. The head broke off and rolled across the floor, and its crown of dried flowers disintegrated. She dropped what remained, and it shattered.

  Falling back against the bed and trembling, she was horrified at what she had done. The statue lay broken in jagged shards, sharp as the knowledge piercing her. A piece of the king’s face, eyes sightless, looked up at her.

  She turned her eyes away from the king’s broken head, remembering that she had seen another broken face in recent days. Her father had confiscated evidence from the courtyard after the Rites. The stone-sculpted arm and hand—those he had turned over to the king. But the face, the mask of Scharr ben Fray—that he had kept as a souvenir.

  “I did it all properly!” she said to the ruin of the king. “It’s not my fault! I followed all the rules.”

  She wished her mother were home. But Say-ressa was at the medicine house, tending to those who had been injured in the riots. Did her mother know already? The whole city might already know. They might have known before she ever received the summons.

  She sat up straight like a queen, closed her eyes, and said to the servant who was carrying a cat out of her father’s chamber, “It’s all just a misunderstanding.” She touched the line about her neck. “You see. These are pearls for a bride. They were the queen’s. He gave them to me.”

  “I’m sure they will make you very happy,” said the housemaid. The cat wriggled and yowled, and she shook her head and walked away. Stricia would have asked her to come back. She wanted the company. But she did not know the woman’s name.

  Descending the long stair, in the rising thunder of her pulse and panic, she had heard the king’s distant voice echo down a command. He would go to the prisons. He would release Auralia.

  Which meant the afternoon rumors were true. Cal-raven had mentioned Auralia to his father in a favorable fashion, and now everyone was caught up in a mad scandal.

  She heard the sound of the Underkeep hatch creaking open and then a resentful hiss as the housemaid turned the crank and lowered the troublesome cat into the tunnels on the delivery pallet. She heard a distant, bitter growl as the hatch slammed shut.

  Stricia stood, pulling the necklace over her head, and paced into her father’s room. The servant woman scowled. “Blasted animal.” She pushed past Stricia with a hint of contempt in her voice and did not stop when the girl turned to ask her name.

  The shields and helm Ark-robin had worn
in his days serving Captain Tar-brona were hung on an armor stand in the corner, oil-lamp flames scrawling silver lines across their polished angles. At the edge of Stricia’s vision, the empty figure of the soldier seemed a ghost from her childhood.

  “You promised me.”

  Tears sped from her cheeks to her chin, trailed down her neck. Too ridiculous to wear, these jewels. Rocks from inside some sea creature’s shell. She hated them. But if she didn’t wear them, someone else would, so she could not bear to throw them aside.

  Into the shadows she said, “What will become of me?” She approached her father’s helmet, touched her forehead, knelt in the first salute they had ever taught her.

  She had hoped that someday others would kneel for her.

  Somewhere far below this house, Say-ressa’s serving women had prepared the first gown of many colors since the Proclamation. Even if the king allowed her to wear them, they would be worthless, signifying no superiority, no privilege. People would look at her and be reminded of Auralia, and their thoughts would wander to the moment color had filled the courtyard.

  “Witch. Weed-puller. Deceiver.”

  What if that enchantress had claimed the prince’s affection?

  Stricia looked at the distorted outline reflected in a tarnished boot. She saw the hilt of the dagger in the scabbard. Glancing back over her shoulder to ensure she was alone, the captain’s daughter unbuckled the sheath and then pulled up the train of her elegant gown and tightened the knife strap around her thigh. She needed a way to make herself dangerous. She needed someone to accuse, someone to punish.

  The rushroof above wheezed and rustled. She glanced up, imagining the king’s spies would break through and take back the pearls.