“Whose name?” Esther asks.
“I yelled and told him that he was spoiled and irresponsible,” Fallow says, troubled, “but he said that growing up with the burden of power would do the same damage to anyone else.” Fallow takes his daughter’s hand in his own. “He has spoken your name, Ezzie. He’s giving you the crown tattoo.”
“Is that what’s going to happen to me?” Esther asks, on the verge of tears. “Am I going to become angry like Uncle Charlie?”
Fallow rubs a thumb across Esther’s cheek to smooth away a tear. “No, dearest. That’s not what it means. You get to be whatever type of person you want to be, as long as you pay attention to who you’re becoming and make decisions carefully. You know that a sovereign’s first priority is their city, right?”
Esther nods.
“You’re suited for this life,” Fallow says. “I always thought that you would…that I would…” He pats his arm. “Maybe one generation of the tattoo being split is enough to prove that we shouldn’t tamper with magic so frivolously. There are deeper veins of conflict running through this city, more so than the rift between two brothers. I haven’t done much as king. Kept us afloat and at peace. Maybe that’s enough for my time. But I swear to you that we will not tamper with magic for much longer. The tattoo and this city will be mended in the next generation—your generation.”
He holds Esther’s face. She feels the warmth of his skin grow hotter. Then something more arid. She pulls away, and the dry sensation vanishes. She glances down at her arm and sees a small black crown tattoo encircling it.
The king’s brother is dead.
Esther withdraws her hand from mine, and the memory vanishes. She rubs her palms against her pants, offering a weak smile.
“I thought he meant that he would give me the tattoo when he died,” Esther says. “But he didn’t. He meant that he would give it to you, and that then between us, we’d mend the city. Or you would. The conflict he was talking about wasn’t magic: it was the Nameless. He must have known what he wanted of me…of us.”
“This is where it happened,” I say, gesturing at the king’s sleeping quarters. While the fabrics and colors have changed, this is the room that holds the memory of her father. This is his room, where he lived, and it must also be where he died. This is where, if I survive long enough to become queen, I’ll die too.
“Being here helps me remember,” Esther says, “but memories can be influenced by where we are and how we feel. We can even change them. So you can’t always trust them.”
My heart aches. Memories can hurt us. Sometimes they’re more like wounds than scars.
The room smells like books and vanilla, fabric and dust. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
“I wanted to show you this,” she says, beckoning me to join her at the headboard again. “This is our ancestor. Maybe I’m the only one who notices, and maybe it isn’t even true, but if you look closely, the ink shimmers differently.”
I join her, peering at the signature, and I almost see it.
“When I learned you were truly Nameless, I didn’t believe it at first,” she says. “I thought that if you were Nameless and had the crown, it would break the treaty. That everything we have would fall apart. And I’m still not sure. I think that because I have a tattoo as well, maybe it’s my name holding us together. I don’t know.” She bites her lip.
I sink down against the headboard, wordlessly.
“And there’s something else that the council never told you about the Assassins’ Festival,” she adds.
I raise an eyebrow. Great.
“Between now and the festival, your abilities will keep getting stronger,” Esther says. “The day of the festival is the first day that you will be at full strength. But the Council failed to mention that it’s also when you’ll be at your most vulnerable.”
“That’s the day I can give away the tattoo,” I say, recalling my first meeting with the Royal Council.
“Yes,” Esther says, “but it can also be taken.”
Alarm pings through my chest. “Excuse me?”
Esther grimaces. “If someone kills you during the duels, they’ll take the tattoo from you. Traditionally, if a sovereign is bested in combat, they give the tattoo away peacefully so that no one has to die. But historically…it ended in bloodshed.”
I run a hand across my forehead. “That explains why they call it the Assassins’ Festival, at least. If anyone kills me in the duels or from a distance, they get the tattoo. Perfect.”
Esther fidgets guiltily. “The council didn’t tell you, because they wanted to make sure you’d attend the festival and not run, and I agreed with them at the time. But the more I’ve thought about things, the more I’ve thought about everything…I know you won’t run. I understand something now, and I want to tell you the truth.”
“What truth?” I say.
“I really have to show you. Let’s go somewhere first.”
“Why? Why not show me here?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Perspective is important.”
CHAPTER 15
Esther leads me to the five towers that rise from the center of the palace. She explains that the towers are named after prominent Royal families, the ones who most frequently have had the crown tattoo over the generations. Fallow, Demure, Vesania…She relates it like a history lesson, impassive. I reach out to sense her aura, but it’s smooth like the pale surface of a shell.
Oil lights perch at equal intervals around the first floor of the Fallow tower. In the center is a spiral staircase. The stairs are stone, with a smooth wooden railing that curls up alongside, absorbing the warm lamplight. Carved flowers peek out from the rail every few steps. The rest of the room is a common area, filled with a collection of chairs and sofas, and I reach out into the now-familiar void of space until I sense the texture of auras.
Five of them dot the room like watery paint. That means there are four Royals here besides Esther. Amid the furniture I spot three fancy hats and a head of stylized hair. Esther leads me to the staircase.
“Were you close to your father?” I ask after a while. An ache grinds between my ribs as I sense the pain and loss in her aura.
“Yes and no,” Esther says. “I was his daughter, and he taught me how to use my abilities discreetly. Yet, as I grew older, he kept me at arm’s length. In the end, we were nearly strangers.”
“You seem…” I don’t know how to finish. I don’t know how to have this conversation. I’ve never lost a parent. I’ve never even had one to lose.
Her aura pulses like a heartbeat. “Angry. Of course I am. You can love a person, lose them, and still be angry with them.”
“Do you know why he kept you at arm’s length?”
Esther stops on the stairs and turns to face me. “You tell me.” She puts out her hand, palm up, as if asking for coins on the street.
I hesitate, fingers curling at my side.
“Tell me what I’m afraid of,” Esther clarifies.
Cautiously, I uncurl my fingers and touch her hand. The rush and silk of sadness and resentment slips over me, and then her fear makes its way through my skin. It pulls at the bones of my hand as if to dismantle me.
“You’re afraid of disappointing him,” I say slowly, as images of Fallow’s downcast, disappointed eyes flash through my mind. “Of failing Seriden and never living up to his expectations.” Her fear clings to my bones like metal cobwebs.
She withdraws her hand, and the stiff cobwebs rust and fall away.
“My fear: failing as a ruler, and failing my father,” Esther says. “My father saw that every time he touched me. And after a while, I sensed that same fear in him. Then he passed the crown to you. You tell me what I’m supposed to feel.”
We share a silence that slowly soothes her aura.
“One of my fears?” I o
ffer quietly, like a truce. “I’m afraid the city will never care. And worse, I’m afraid that at some point I’ll stop caring.”
Esther tilts her head in question.
I explain what Hat saw at the prison, how a Nameless boy was taken from his cell and wasn’t executed, but just disappeared. I explain what it means to vanish from a place that doesn’t even recognize you to begin with. I tell her about Nameless families and Marcher’s crew and rumors of forced labor in other cities, about the Nameless who have been going missing more frequently in the past months, about the Nameless who showed up dead just before Fallow died. I tell her about the slaughter Belrosa showed me during the first council meeting.
We reach a small landing the width of three steps, and Esther yanks aside a blue curtain. Behind it, I find that this entire level of the tower is a single room, and it stretches as high as twenty feet. We are near the top of the tower. On the outer wall, there’s a heavy stone door.
I examine the room. There’s a bed, several identical wardrobes lined along the curving wall, and two low tables scattered with maps.
“Where are we, exactly?” I ask.
“This is where I live,” Esther says. “This is where I come to escape the auras.”
I don’t know how high we are, but I can no longer sense the auras of the Royals in the common area on the first floor of the tower.
“Sometimes I can ignore the auras, and sometimes they overwhelm me,” she explains. “I go days at a time without making any skin contact with people so that their memories or thoughts don’t have a chance to force their way into my mind. In fact, it’s dangerous for me to do that. If things go properly, I shake their hand and I’m glimpsing their thoughts or memories. If I make a mistake, though, then suddenly I’m showing them my memories.”
“What?” I say, taken aback. “You can show your thoughts to others? Instead of just seeing theirs?”
“Yes,” she says. “I can witness their thoughts without them knowing it. But if they see my memories, that’s impossible to explain.”
“Did anyone ever find out about your tattoo?” I ask.
“I don’t think so,” she says. “You can never be sure, of course. When I was learning as a child—and still making mistakes—my father was always with me. It was easy enough for them to assume it was him. Then, as I got older, we drifted apart. I learned enough on my own, but it was never easy. And that’s why I live up here in the Fallow tower, high above the city and out of its reach.”
A draft of cold air rushes into the small room as Esther heaves the door open. She’s so close, I feel her aura like a halo of humidity.
The door is smooth peach-colored stone, the same as the outside of the towers. It opens to a bright blue sky, clean and clear. There’s a small ledge outside but nothing else. No railing or balcony, nothing but empty space all the way down to the roof of the palace.
I step out onto the ledge. We’re nearly at the top of the center tower, and Seriden opens up before me. Far below are the eastern and northern quadrants. East Market crumbles into the harbor, which in turn disintegrates into the ocean. From so far away, the ocean is slow and calm. Whitecaps crest near the coast, and the surface crinkles with waves farther than I’ve ever seen before.
I lean outward. Wind rushes past me as if to pull me out into the open space. A laugh bubbles in my chest.
Esther comes up behind me, and I realize I’ve put myself in quite a bad position if she wants to push me. But I don’t sense anything cold from her aura, only alarm, like the taste of lemons—sudden and sharp.
She eases herself down into a sitting position, letting her legs dangle out in the open air.
“I have one more memory to show you,” she says. “And before I do, I want you to know that any time you want to escape the auras of the city, to have a few precious moments alone, you can come here. You’re always welcome.”
Her offer reminds me of when Hat and I were in Glenquartz’s house and he said that we’d always have a home there. When she extends her hand to me once again, I take it, and her memory rushes into me like air.
It starts with a lullaby. The notes are distant and slow and beautiful. A woman hums a careful melody. It fills my entire body and resonates inside my chest.
The room is blurry, as though Esther’s memories are melting at the edges. She’s still quite young, and I feel the presence of the tattoo on her arm.
Then the lullaby stops abruptly, replaced by the discordant sound of two voices arguing. Esther peers around a door, and we’re staring into the king’s quarters again, except this time, he isn’t alone.
A woman is arguing but I can’t see her face. Her hair falls in dark brown ringlets to her shoulders, just like Esther’s. I see the broad slope of a nose, and the rounded curve of a lip. Esther stands on her toes to get a better view of them, and I finally see the woman’s hand resting on her rounded belly.
Esther moves to another memory, and this one is crisp and fresh. She sits at her father’s bedside. He’s sick—that much is obvious. His skin is dry and his expression reveals an underlying pain.
“I need to tell you something,” Fallow says. His voice is uncertain and scratchy. “And I need you to remember it.”
“Of course,” Esther says, scooting closer, but neither of them reaches out to touch the other. There’s a stiff formality between them—a far cry from Esther’s childhood.
“You are my daughter,” Fallow says. “I know we don’t know each other as well as I would have liked…but that’s the truth. You have the crown tattoo now. I know you’ll have a lot of questions, that you may not understand why you have been put in this position.”
“I’ve had it for years now, Father,” Esther says. “I understand it well enough.”
Fallow continues as if she hasn’t spoken. “Two tattoos—it’s a dangerous mistake that needs to be rectified. But there is no greater danger to address within Seriden than the plight of the Nameless. No one should be without a name, legal rights, a family, or a home. You should understand that more than anyone.”
Fallow clears his throat. “Please understand, dear daughter, that everything that has been done is in service to Seriden. A sovereign’s first responsibility is to…” Fallow breaks into a fit of coughing.
Esther nudges his glass of water toward him, and she finishes, “A sovereign’s first responsibility is to their city. I remember. I understand. I’m ready.”
Fallow smiles sorrowfully. “You’re not. But you will be. You both will be.”
Confusion edges in on Esther’s thoughts, and she tilts her head.
I let go of Esther’s hand this time, pulling us out of the memory.
“What exactly are you trying to show me?” I demand, and already my mind is wheeling and racing. The first memory she shared with me was of the former queen—Fallow’s wife, and Esther’s mother. The second memory was from the last weeks of Fallow’s life.
“My mother…,” Esther starts, her voice tight with pain. “She died in childbirth soon after the first memory, and I never saw her again. I always thought…everyone thought…that the baby died too.”
Esther looks at me, really looks. Her eyes roam over my hair and my face, the curve of my nose, the angle of my chin. “My mother died nearly eighteen years ago.” Don’t say it, Esther. Don’t think it. Don’t ask. “How old are you, Coin?”
My head swims, and I suddenly can’t remember how words are supposed to work. “I…I don’t know. I never knew. Marcher looked after me for as long as I can remember.”
“Father wasn’t talking to me,” Esther insists. “When he said those things, he knew we’d be here, sharing this moment. That wasn’t him telling me to mend the divide between Seriden’s classes. It was him talking to you, apologizing for letting you grow up as one of the Nameless when you had a name all along. It was him talking to the daughter who never
knew him.”
I shake my head, stunned.
“It explains why Father knew your name,” Esther continues. “How you ended up with Marcher when you were so young, and how you had a name but didn’t know it. It explains why he told me that the crown would be reunited in the next generation. My generation. Our generation. Coin—you’re my sister.” Esther clasps her hands in her lap to stop herself from touching me.
For once, I don’t say anything. I stare out at Seriden and beyond to the ocean.
Everything Esther is saying makes sense. It answers every question I’ve ever had about what happened to my family and how I could have been named queen.
Fallow was my father. I am a king’s daughter. I have a family.
Had. I had a family. Fallow is dead.
But Esther. Esther Merelda Fallow, the girl sitting beside me on the edge of a tower, is my sister. I have no father or mother, but I have her. A sister. A family, however small and broken it may be.
“You’re the one who told me that memories and fears can lie,” I say carefully. “Belrosa showed me her thoughts of the future. Maybe that’s all this is. Maybe you’re lying to me.” But despite everything, I believe her. I want to believe her, and that’s what makes believing so dangerous.
“I’m so sorry,” Esther says. “It could have just as easily been me who ended up on the streets instead of you. I’ve been so angry because I’ve been an orphan for two weeks, but you’ve been alone your entire life. When my father died, I couldn’t sense a difference in my tattoo, and I knew he’d given it to someone else. When you came forward, I didn’t believe it at first. It took me a while to put it together, but I finally understand.”
My head is spinning. I believe everything she believes, because it makes sense.
I rise to my feet and backpedal into her room. She said this place is her sanctuary—her escape from the auras of Seriden’s citizens. But all I can sense is her guilt, frustration, and fear—they leach into me like the cold winds of winter.
I don’t want to feel her pain or her guilt. I don’t want to see her memories of the family that could have been mine. I can’t be here for another second.
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