Echo in Amethyst

by Sharon Shinn

  “Very good, my lady.”

  Behind the screen, under cover of her chatter, I tended to the hurt echo, unwrapping her bandaged leg and rubbing on some ointment that Gretta had brought. The bruising was still purple and dark, but the swelling had gone down. I had originally feared the ankle might be broken, but now I thought it was only sprained. The echo didn’t exhibit too much pain when I pressed carefully on the discolored flesh. Good. Maybe she would be well enough to walk again in a few days.

  Maybe we would draw less attention from Prince Jordan if there were three of us. If we all behaved as we were supposed to. Maybe he wouldn’t glance over so often with that puzzled and assessing gaze. I told myself that was what I hoped for—that Prince Jordan wouldn’t notice me, wonder at me, look at me.

  I wasn’t even remotely convinced.

  The only activity that occupied any of the women on the following day was getting through the hours until the ball that night. It was all they could think of and all they could talk about.

  “So do you plan to spend half the night dancing with Nigel and Dezmen?” Cali asked Elyssa over lunch. “I think that’s probably what I’ll be doing, too. Oh, and that fellow from Orenza who’s been so quiet.”

  Elyssa looked both annoyed and puzzled. “Of course not,” she snapped. “Why would you think so?”

  Cali’s round face was guileless, but I sensed a certain deliberate malice behind her warm voice. “Oh, you know, because when you only have two echoes, it’s easier to dance with someone else who only has two echoes, and you’re down to two at the moment—”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” interposed one of the Banchura triplets in a breezy way. “Cormac will have hired extra men and women to fill in whenever the number of echoes don’t match up. It makes the whole evening go more smoothly.”

  “That’s how they do it in all the finest houses,” Elyssa said, getting in her own dig. “I suppose you didn’t know that.”

  Cali just offered her usual friendly smile. “What a relief! Though I suppose it will be odd to have ‘extra women’ following us around all night.”

  The Banchura sister smothered a grin and said firmly, “Nothing will be odd. It will be a marvelous evening.”

  The whole day seemed to stretch out as long as three ordinary days combined, but finally it was time to dress for the evening’s festivities. Gretta took inordinate care styling Elyssa’s lustrous black hair, lacing her into the lavender silk gown, and decking her with amethysts. The scoop necklace of her dress seemed designed expressly to show off her favorite piece of jewelry, the gold necklace with the three interlocking circles that curved around the large central gem.

  “I can’t imagine anyone will be lovelier than you tonight,” Gretta said when she was done.

  Elyssa studied her reflection in the mirror. “Then let’s hope that loveliness is enough,” she said and headed for the door. The other echo and I fell in step behind her.

  After dinner, all the nobles and echoes made their way through the wide corridors of the palace in a rustling, murmuring, bejeweled river of excitement. They poured themselves into the ballroom, which was a large, well-lit space full of graceful architectural accents. Musicians sat on a low stage in one corner, playing lively music. Most of the women positioned themselves near the doorway, trying to look casual and artless, but clearly awaiting the arrival of Cormac and Jordan, who had fallen to the back of the parade.

  The minute the princes entered the room, the musicians segued into a rousing waltz. I couldn’t tell how Cormac and Jordan chose their partners—by prearrangement, by proximity, or by preference—but Cormac did not solicit Marguerite’s hand and Jordan did not ask for Elyssa’s. The Thelleron lord appeared at Elyssa’s side and she turned smoothly into his embrace. I felt his echo’s cool hands close over my fingers as he pulled me onto the floor behind them. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a plain-faced woman in a black gown step forward to partner with the man’s third echo. She was so unobtrusive that I thought she must have acted in this capacity hundreds of times.

  I quickly lost interest in her and put all my attention into performing the dance, which I enjoyed immensely. During my periods of wakefulness in the past couple of years, there had been many social events, but only a few balls. Once I’d realized that Elyssa was an excellent dancer—which meant I was, too—I’d found myself enjoying this activity above all others. Tonight was no exception, and I quickly found myself skimming over the floor with delicious abandon. My bones were light as willow branches, my feet were dainty as flower petals, and the music produced a more urgent beat than my own heart. Around me flashed bright swirling colors of garnet and amber and emerald. It was the first time I could ever remember experiencing the word that I had heard others describe as delight.

  Too soon the dance ended, and as we came to a halt, my body felt heavy and leaden, unaccustomed to stillness. But it was only a few moments before the music started up again, and another lord bowed to Elyssa, and she and her echoes and her shadowy extra woman all curtseyed in return. Back to dancing. Back to revelry. Back to something akin to flying.

  The evening continued like this for the next couple of hours, as couples traded partners, the pace of the music slowed, the type of dancing shifted from one style to the next. There was a short pause while refreshments were served and all the participants fanned themselves and pretended they were fatigued. But the minute the musicians started tuning their instruments again, the nobles set down their plates and goblets and looked around for partners.

  Elyssa was gazing to her left, where Deryk was chatting with one of the Banchura sisters, so the voice on her right came as a surprise.

  “Are you enjoying yourself this evening?” Jordan asked.

  She turned to him with a smile. “I am! I find there are few pleasures purer than dancing.”

  He cocked his head. “‘Purer,’” he repeated. “An interesting word choice.”

  She laughed and explained. “Oh, every conversation has an edge to it—you are trying to create an impression or uncover a secret. Every meal brings with it a series of calculations. If I try this unfamiliar dish, will I hate the taste and want to spit it out? If I have another glass of wine, will it dull my senses and lead me to say something regrettable? But a dance is just a dance. There is no requirement beyond pleasure.”

  He was smiling. “Well, some would say there is a requirement to be graceful,” he said. “A standard many do not meet.”

  “Not something you have ever needed to worry about, I think.”

  “Ah, but I distinctly remember telling you that dancing was not a skill that came naturally to me. The echoes made me clumsy at first—but I flatter myself that all four of us are now as nimble as men might be on the dance floor.”

  Elyssa glanced from Jordan to his echoes, who seemed so much more substantial than those of the other nobles. This night, their clothing mirrored Jordan’s so exactly that they might have been his living brothers, not his hollow shadows. “I have often wondered if dancing with an echo would be the same as dancing with a man,” she remarked. “Particularly with your echoes, who seem so present and alive.”

  “I have wondered the same thing!” he exclaimed, just as the musicians completed their discordant warmups and produced the first measures of another waltz. “Let us try it, just for this dance. I will partner with one of your echoes and you with one of mine.”

  Her face was a quick study in surprise and dismay. “I don’t think—” But he had already turned away and reached out his arms to one of her echoes.

  Reached out his arms to me.

  Even as I stood there, ossified with shock, I marveled at the heat of his hands as one wrapped around my fingers and one settled at my waist.

  I sensed Elyssa’s fury and helplessness, checked somewhat by her reluctance to make a scene, as she allowed one of Jordan’s echoes to pull her into a similar embrace. I felt Jordan’s hands tug me into motion, felt my feet unglue themselves from the flo
or, felt myself gliding into the first dip and turn of the waltz. It was coincidence, surely, that Jordan held me so that his back was to Elyssa—and so that his echo, copying Jordan meticulously, held Elyssa in a way that prevented her from turning to see my face.

  All this time, I was staring at Jordan and he was staring intently back at me. He kept his eyes on mine as he spoke under cover of the music and asked, “Can you speak?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I was too astonished to reply, and so we trod out a few measures in silence. Jordan watched me with unabated curiosity.

  “She cannot see you,” he said in a reassuring voice. “So you may nod or shake your head and she will not know. Unless this is one of those moments when she has you in perfect thrall, and you cannot deviate from her actions in the slightest?”

  I had been enjoying the other dances so much I hadn’t paid much attention to how closely Elyssa was maintaining her bond, but I tested it now, cautiously, and found the connection loose. I slowly shook my head.

  Excitement blazed in Jordan’s eyes. “So you can communicate,” he breathed. “But you can’t speak aloud?”

  I had to try three times before I could get my mouth to cooperate. “I can,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “But I have not often done so.”

  His hands tightened on my body and his expression grew even more intense. “You are in there,” he said, triumphant. “I thought I could not have imagined it.”

  “Don’t tell her,” I begged.

  His eyebrows arched; I couldn’t read his expression. “You mean she doesn’t know?”

  “I—” I could not imagine how to explain and I was well aware that we had only the length of the dance for me to do so. In the end, all I said was, “She has no idea how truly conscious I am.”

  He absorbed this for a moment as he continued to move me around the dance floor. Normally, the waltzers would spin in circles and make grand sweeps around the whole room, but Jordan was determinedly keeping us in a position that would prevent Elyssa from seeing my face. I supposed his echo had such strength of will that she would not be able to swing him around and gain a different view. Of course, she could always wrench herself free and stalk off the dance floor, but I didn’t think she would do that. She was probably hoping that, if she didn’t draw attention to her situation, no one would realize who her partner really was.

  “So you live a secret life,” Jordan said at last. “Not quite human and not quite—whatever echoes are. Supernatural creatures, I suppose. You can think for yourself and act for yourself, and yet your every move is governed by the desires and whims of someone else— Someone who, I must guess, is not the easiest person to live with at close quarters.”

  “No,” I said, “she is not.”

  He grimaced but did not enquire for details. Just as well, perhaps. I could not believe this conversation was actually occurring, and I was filled both with eagerness to talk and terror that every word I said was ensuring my doom. Between the disbelief, the elation, and the despair, I could hardly gauge how much I was willing to share—but I had a feeling I would tell Jordan anything he asked.

  “How does it work?” he asked. “Do you always possess some degree of freedom? Can you break your connection with her whenever you wish?”

  “She decides,” I said. “Whenever she is with company, she generally keeps all of us closely tied to her. Sometimes she is a little sloppy about it—”

  “As when I saw you in Amanda Plaza, making the sign of the benediction before the goddess statues.”

  I nodded. “Yes. We were attuned to her, but I could muster some independence.” The longer we talked, the easier I was finding it to speak complete and complex sentences. “Other times, it’s like she has complete power over me, over all my bones and muscles. I can’t even blink unless she blinks. I can’t breathe unless she does. And she can invoke that connection whenever she wants.”

  “You said she keeps you tied to her when you are in the presence of others,” he said. “What happens when you’re alone?”

  “Usually the minute we step into a private room, she cuts the connection—practically flings us away from her. At home, she sends us to our own bedroom. Here, the maid has set up a folding screen so she doesn’t have to look at us.”

  He was frowning. “She dislikes her echoes that much? I realized she found them cumbersome, but she actually despises them?”

  I found I did not want to tell him the entire truth. “That has been my conclusion,” I said.

  “Are the other two as aware as you are?”

  I shook my head. “No. They can take a few independent steps, they can sit on the bed or turn over in the night without Elyssa’s permission, but I have never seen them display more sentience than that.”

  He studied me a moment. “So then. At night when you have been released. In your separate bedroom where Elyssa cannot see you. Is that the only time you are truly free?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “What do you do?”

  I just looked at him, shaking my head slightly and lifting my shoulders. How to describe it? “I walk around the room. I look out the window. I whisper words to myself. I just exist.”

  “Then in the morning, she wakes and calls you back to her side.”

  “Yes.”

  His warm brown eyes were narrowed in concern. “How do you bear it?” he demanded.

  “It has not been easy,” I acknowledged.

  “Has it always been this way? Since you were born?”

  “No. For a long time, my awareness came only in bursts and flashes. A few moments on one day. A few moments on a later day. Only gradually did those moments stretch out into days and weeks. Only during the past six months have I been in a sustained state of consciousness—what I might call truly alive.”

  He shook his head. “I have never heard of such a thing.”

  “But you said— You told Elyssa a tale about King Edwin—”

  His eyes lit at the memory. “That’s right! We were in the library at her father’s house, and I saw your face and I realized you were listening! You were, weren’t you?”

  “I was. And you said that King Edwin took over the bodies of his echoes.”

  “Yes, but only when someone killed off his original,” he pointed out. “His echo didn’t just suddenly come to life and start thinking its own thoughts.” We executed a few steps in silence while he mulled that over. Then he said, “I’ll have to ask my father what he thinks.”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she— Because Elyssa will not like it,” I floundered.

  He studied me as we passed another measure or two in silence. “Is she cruel to her echoes?” he asked at last.

  Oh, I so much did not want to go into the details of that. “Sometimes.”

  “The echo that is missing tonight—the one Elyssa says tripped and fell—what really happened to her?”

  I didn’t know how to answer, so I just shook my head.

  “I see,” he said. I could hear the anger in his voice, although his tone remained polite. “So Elyssa takes out her grievances on the most helpless creatures in the kingdom, and there is nothing you can do about it. And you’re afraid that if she knows you are—aware—that she will do something abominable to you.”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “That’s why I want to talk to my father,” he said. “There might be some precedent I’m unaware of. Sometime in the past when an echo came to life and was granted a legal status of personhood.”

  “I’m too afraid,” I said in an urgent voice. “She would be so angry.”

  He nodded. “I will make inquiries, but discreetly. And when I learn something I will let you know directly—” He paused and a ludicrous expression came over his face.

  I couldn’t help a sad smile. “It is not like we will be able to find many opportunities to converse,” I pointed out. “This might be the only time.”

  “We will find ways t
o communicate,” he said. “If nothing else, I can tell Elyssa things that I want you to know.”

  Now my smile was almost a laugh. “I am having difficulty imagining that conversation,” I said. “‘By the way, Elyssa, did you know that if one of your echoes attains consciousness, you are by law required to set it free?’ She will think you have gone mad.”

  A smile tugged at his own mouth. “I can be more subtle than that, I think. But I would want to be sure you were actually aware and listening before I tried to drop bits of information. We should agree on a signal of some kind.”

  “I can’t be sure that I will have enough freedom to be able to nod or gesture,” I said. “But I always seem to be able to control where I turn my gaze. I can simply meet your eyes. No other echo looks at you so boldly, do they?”

  “No! It was most unnerving the first time you stared me straight in the face.” He looked down at me a moment. “What a wondrous creature you are,” he said at last. “You seem both wise and innocent, like a child just discovering the world.”

  “That’s how I feel sometimes,” I admitted. “Like I am learning so much every day—or remembering things that I learned long ago, before I was aware. It’s confusing and frightening and exhilarating all at once.”

  “So you don’t retain conscious knowledge of all those years you were just Elyssa’s shadow?”

  “Bits and pieces. People don’t look familiar to me, but sometimes a room or a building does. And sometimes scraps of knowledge just snap into place, and suddenly I know something that I didn’t know before.”

  “Maybe someday all those memories will come rushing back.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’m not sure I want all those memories.”

  He winced slightly. “That was thoughtless of me. It’s just that your situation is so impossibly strange.”

  “That it is.”

  His hands tightened briefly on my fingers, on the curve of my waist. I was once again flooded with awareness of how warm his skin was, how reassuringly solid his body seemed compared with that of an echo. Only Elyssa and Gretta had ever been this close to me, and neither of them had such mass and heat and presence. “I know this song, and it is about to end,” he said, frustration in his voice. “And there is so much left that I want to ask you!”