*
King Joyhan of Dearen was a short man with thick muscular build. He had purple hair to his ears and a crown of gold and jewels softened round with furs. Beneath the crown, his purple eyebrows knitted together in a scowl. He ate his expensive meal of crab-meat with violent crunching and gnashing of his teeth. Clearly he did not care to linger over the taste of the stuff, despite its worth in gold.
The royal family sat around a glass table within the Crystal Dining Hall. Candlelight danced upon the walls and reflected the various colors of silk lining the ceiling. In an adjacent hallway, a servant played chimes that reverberated through the chamber. On the royal table lay a splendid smorgasbord of food from across the continent. They had fish and crab roasted in honey-sauce, sliced melons and sugared berries.
Despite all this splendor, only one person at the table was cheerful. This was the mother, Queen Lilyana: the only person at the table without purple hair. She hummed quietly to herself between bites of food. Her entire plate glittered with all the safra she had sprinkled over her meal like a spice. Fayr didn’t even know why she bothered. The Haze was so thick in the palace that most people were happy just breathing in the safra. But then again, Fayr would probably never understand the happiness that safra gave most people—everyone, that is, but for herself, her brother, and her father.
King Joyhan ate out of duty and Queen Lilyana ate with delight. Fayr and Kyne, however, could not bring themselves to eat at all. They had not yet touched a crumb of their own food. Fayr, at least, had an excuse: she had talked throughout the meal thus far, relating to her father what had happened that day as quickly and casually as possible. Kyne, on the other hand, neither moved nor spoke at all, but stared at his plate and kept his mouth shut.
“So,” said King Joyhan, wiping his purple beard with cloth, “what happened to this Merchant fellow?”
Princess Fayr gulped, even though she had no food in her mouth to provide an excuse. She had already explained the most traumatic event of her story and hoped she could stop there. Back here in the safety of the Dearen palace, the entire incident seemed like a garish nightmare, hardly real. She thought if only she had a moment alone, she might convince herself that it had all been a dream. But the more her father questioned her about it, the more he forced her to accept its reality. The Merchant, in his own way, was the most troubling memory of all, for his behavior had never made sense to her.
“He, uh ... he left,” she said at last.
“Did you not offer him a reward for helping you?”
“Of course.” She squirmed in her seat, then poked at her food with a knife. “I suspect that when I flung safra on my attacker, the Merchant breathed some, also. After a moment, he probably ceased to care about the future, for he was already so happy. You know how it is.”
“Hm.” The king stopped eating and stared deeply into the table. So far, he had offered very little reaction to her story. This worried her more than if he had expressed his anger immediately. Just as he had trained his children to restrain all unhappy emotions, so he had trained himself long ago. As a result, the emotions built up inside of him until he could contain them no longer and they burst out in the ugliest fashion. The longer his emotions built up, the worse the explosion. “What became of your horse?”
“The Merchant, um ...” She coughed a little to loosen her throat. “The Merchant took it.”
“Oh? Even though it was lame?”
“Yes. He was very kind, and gave us his horse in exchange. It’s a beautiful horse.”
“How odd.”
“Not really.” She could not look her father in the eyes. “I think he simply wanted to help the poor beast.” Her heart raced in her chest. Why did the Merchant trouble her so much? Perhaps because she wondered the same questions about him that her father did. She wanted to toss him from her mind; she wanted to dismiss him as no more than another safra addict, helping her so that she would reward him with safra. But something about his behavior was strange, nonetheless.
Against her wishes, she remembered how the rest of the incident had played out.
She remembered getting closer to her fallen horse and seeing how badly it was wounded. The creature remained kicking on the ground while bleeding profusely. From its flesh stuck a piece of metal like the one the assassin had pressed to her neck—except this one was buried so deep, she only saw its tip.
Her throat had tightened up. She knew why. She wanted to sob. But she couldn’t, especially in front of a stranger, like the Merchant. She swallowed her sorrow back down. She needed to get out of here. More than ever, she just wanted to go home.
“Well I suppose we should be getting back,” she said, then looked at Kyne. “I’ll need to ride with you.”
“Wait.” The Merchant stepped towards her, and once more, Fayr took note of his unusual appearance. He was so lanky and tall, but he moved with the grace of a breeze. He had such dark skin, a startling contrast to his light blue clothing, and his irises were two deep pools of black. All of his hair was hidden, stuffed underneath his ridiculous hat. “Surely you don’t mean to leave him behind?” He pointed to the attacker.
In another situation, Fayr would have reprimanded someone for taking that tone with her. But right now, she was too rattled. Worse, she knew he had a good point. “We can’t carry him. His suit is covered with spikes!”
“Ah. That does pose a problem.” The Merchant tapped his bony chin. “Perhaps if we tear some of it off.”
“What?!”
The Merchant produced a knife from his strange, angular tunic and spun the handle across his fingers. “This should do it.”
Almost immediately, he bent himself to this task. He was a graceful man, but he had also inhaled some safra, so his movements were a bit sloppy as he struggled to cut through the leather. He devoted himself to the task, nonetheless, and paused only to turn to the princess and say, “Perhaps your guard could help me with this?”
And so it had been. Sir Gornum helped slice the villain’s suit and peel it down so that his top half was free of the harmful barbs. And the Merchant had not stopped there: he next offered to care for Fayr’s wounded horse and give her his own, a large speckled beast with black spots and long sweeping hair down its hooves and neck. Fayr had coveted the beautiful creature as soon as she saw it, and gladly accepted the Merchant’s offer. Next they threw the dazed, half-naked attacker onto Gornum’s horse and rode back to the palace, surely and simply.
Except somewhere along the way back, the Merchant vanished.
If he had helped them in the hopes of obtaining more safra, why had he vanished so suddenly?
Now that her father asked the same question, Fayr was desperate to change the subject, even if by doing so, she jumped to the next most unpleasant one. “Father, when I mentioned that the attacker wore a wolf-mask, you acted as if you had heard of one before. What does it mean?”
The king laid his large hands upon the table. His rings and jewelry thudded heavily against the wood. “I am done discussing this with the two of you. Lilyana, let’s get you to bed.”
For a moment, Fayr was stunned. She should have been relieved. Ever since she sat down, she ached for the chance to stand back up and flee to her room. All the same, she had expected something to happen by then. She expected to be reprimanded at the very least, or, even better, to make sense of the day’s events somewhere in the retelling. Instead, she only felt more confused. What did her father know that he wasn’t telling her? Why was he ready to let the entire topic slide and send everyone off to bed? What was he hiding?
“Father,” she said. Her voice was small and tight in her throat, but her desperation must have rang clearly enough, for the king of Dearen took pause. “Please. Why was that man after us?”
King Joyhan did not move for a moment. Fayr worried that he was coming up with a new way to steer her away from the truth. He did it so often that it seemed second nature to him. Since her birth, he had contrived hundreds of ways to hide what he
alone knew and no one else did. Where did the safra come from? Why was the royal bloodline immune to it? And what was its connection to the Haze?
“Father,” she said again. Hot tears burned her eyes. Her chin quivered. She wasn’t sure if she could hold back her sorrow any longer. She needed to cry, and sometimes, her attempts to hold back only made it harder to do so. “Please. I’m eighteen now. How long must I wait before I understand what the hell is going on around here?” She slammed the table with her fist, rattling all the dishes upon it.
After her outburst, she nearly apologized. Then she saw the flash of emotion in her father’s eyes. She realized that if he was going to break, she would have to help him do it. So she met his stare and for once, she didn’t back down from it.
“Lilyana,” said the king, “go to bed. Fayr, Kyne: come with me.”