I munched defiantly as cold, sleety air blew steadily in, wet enough for me to feel the bite of ice. I fluffed out my fuzz, glad of the meal warming me from inside. When the hunger pangs abated the memories flooded afresh, and in a futile attempt to escape them I slipped from the alcove, passed the servant standing outside it, and slipped into the great room, which was lit by its glowglobes on carved pedestals.
Since I was barefoot my steps made no noise; when I crossed the room I glimpsed an unobtrusive side alcove between the grand chamber and the bedroom. There in the shadows, Kal’s profile caught my eye. He sat on a bench, eyes closed, head down, the skin below the short, thin sleeves of his tunic rough in the way of hairless people enduring bitter cold, his hands pressed tightly between his knees. His profile eloquent with misery.
Angry as I was with Aranu Crown I could not prevent myself from remembering what Hlanan had once said about servants and their powerlessness.
Kal might be a spy, but if he didn’t do a good job as a spy would he get a dose of that fiery pain?
Who is being evil now?
Flames of Rue, that was a nasty thought! I whirled around and moved to the first of the tall windows. The noise of my pulling the casement in roused Kal, who jumped up nearly flew to the window next to mine. “If the Imperial Princess desires the windows closed, she has only to express it and it is our honor to tend to it,” he said, his voice strained. He was shivering.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was stupid of me to demand they be opened. I’m angry. But you didn’t put me here.”
He gave me a worried glance and bowed low, empty hands away from his sides, his not-familiar eyes mercifully hidden. “As the Imperial Princess wishes.” He turned to the windows and began shutting them far more swiftly than I could.
I looked outside for the first time. My fancy prison apparently stood on a precipice for a sheer drop fell away below. In the darkness the depth was impossible to guess. I leaned out—and warning heat tingled outward from that cursed necklet.
I yanked my head back inside. Then cautiously, slowly, leaned out again. The moment my head cleared the sill, the burn began to ignite. A ward, on the windows, to keep me corralled.
Scarcely had Kal finished shutting the windows up again when the inner door opened in the unobtrusive alcove. In came the stream of servants. Tired—ashamed, really—of my game, I accepted everything they brought and so I found myself settling into a net made of interwoven silken cords slung between two of the trees. The dressing room in the chamber between the bedroom and that bathroom now sported fabulous silks embroidered with stars, vines, and blossoms.
I sent the servants off to what I hoped would be a well-earned rest (after they made their report on the uncivilized half-Hrethan, I had no doubt), and once I was alone I opened a single window near the hammock.
I climbed into this new bed and stretched out, gently swinging.
That was the last night of unbroken sleep I was to get for a long time.
SIXTEEN
And so began my life as an imperial prisoner—er, princess.
My prison was exquisitely elegant, nevertheless this would be the hardest fight of my life.
That next morning I woke refreshed, swinging softly in a deliciously cool breeze. I opened my eyes to the hazy light of a cloudy dawn filtering between perfect leaves, light green underneath, silver on top—and memory tightened its shackles around my heart and mind as effectively as that thing around my neck.
I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes, longing with throat-choking intensity to slide back into sleep forever.
I had to find a way to escape.
That meant getting out of bed. I flipped out of my hammock and hit the floor. I landed soundlessly out of long habit, but here came one of the servants, a female around my age, with dark red hair and slanted blue eyes.
“His Imperial Serenity requests the honor of the Imperial Princess’s presence at sunrise-trine.”
My lips shaped the words, How many of us will be tortured if I’m not there? But I didn’t. Guilt wrung me when I remembered my stupid gesture the previous night.
So all I said was, “What does ‘sunrise-trine’ mean?” I saw her about to define the words, and I added hastily, “I know the words aren’t in Djuran.”
“Sveranji, if it pleases the Imperial Princess,” she whispered.
“Later I’ll want to find out why you name times in another language, but for now, how do you measure time, whatever the language is?”
It turned out that the day was divided into three threes—sunrise-prime, sunrise-seconde, sunrise-trine, midday-prime, seconde, trine, and sunset-prime, seconde, and trine. Nighttime divisions were starrise, midnight, moonset—based on the movements of Little Moon, who always set before dawn, unlike Big Moon, who wandered about the sky in different places the year round.
Prime, seconde, and trine were the “hour” of Charas al Kherval. There, they divided the day and night into twelve hours each, something Thianra told me ancient ballads insist came with humans from other worlds beyond this one.
The Djuran hour was further broken into threes, their formal names prime-sand, seconde-sand, trine-sand, but among themselves the Djurans used shorter nicknames for various time measures. Pretty much as everybody does—for example, midnight among the dockside people in Thesreve is cat-yowl, and in Erev-li-Erval, second bell of the morning was always Rising—when the empress (may she fall into a vat of honey and ants find her) officially began her day, though Thianra said her mother was generally up long before dawn.
The serving maid explained with a constrained, hurried air that I saw mirrored in the others. Then I bathed. As I’d expected my old drape was gone and with it the thief tools. So much for my authority, I thought. Dhes-Andis might be amusing himself with this princess pretense but he was the one giving the orders.
So I pulled on the first of those new clothes that I laid my hands to. The staff clearly wanted to get me safely out the door.
The silks were woven in interlocking patterns that shimmered between white and silvery blue, or pale ivory and pale gold, or warm cream and the peachy glow of dawn, and other color combinations.
The over-robes all had long sleeves of the winged kind, the formal ones (with the most embroidery) ending in tassels.
In design, the unknown tailors had managed an interesting adaptation of my drape, which is a sort of tunic that is paneled to permit my back hair to rise. Some drapes have sleeves, others don’t; the main components are the open-backed tunic and the loose trousers that are also open at the back to permit the tail freedom. Over that one wears the secondary bit, a long rectangle of cloth that crosses over the front and is usually thrown back over the shoulders.
This rectangle was narrower than those I’d been introduced to in the Kherval, embroidered and tasseled at the ends. As soon as I attempted to cross it over me in front and throw the ends behind my shoulders, I saw in two sets of widened eyes that this was wrong.
“What is it?” I asked.
The maids, one maybe fifteen, turned to Kal—whose eyes still reminded me of someone I knew, but I didn’t know anyone who looked the least like him, no! He bowed to me and said in the most neutral possible voice, “Our way is the. . . .” He used a Sveranji word as he indicated a line from shoulder to foot.
So I was supposed to let them hang loose like a stole? For all I knew the Emperor of Evil was watching at that moment.
“Stole it is. Ready,” I said rather louder than needed.
After another of those elaborate bows Kal asked, “Would the Imperial Princess desire to dine?”
No, I wanted to snap. My stomach boiled with nerves, but long habit—never turning down food when I could get it—overruled my fear of what lay in wait.
“What a luxury,” I said, struggling to hide my apprehension, and the fact that I did not want to look at Kal if I could possibly help it. “I am so used to eating once a da. If that.”
I felt more looks exchanged behind
me as I marched across the grand room to the dining alcove where once again I found a variety of fresh foods set out. Enough for ten people. But it was clear that it was all for me. It was equally clear that I was expected to dine in privacy, with a servant hovering outside in case I asked for something.
I piled bits from all the nut bowls on a plate with some wedges of citrus and munched as I walked to the bank of windows to peer out, now that I could actually see. My portion of this building did indeed perch at the edge of a precipice. To the south, a mountainous peninsula extended outward toward the horizon on which an enormous conical mountain rose, distinctive even in the haze of distance.
To the north and east, nothing but gray ocean on either side, under a lowering gray sky. To the west, tiny islands bumped up, bird-shaped specks swooping over the nearest.
A glance down hollowed my insides: oh, so high! If I could throw myself out that window I could fly out over that water and join those far-away birds. . . .
I moved to the window, halting at a pulse of remembered heat at my throat and almost dropped my plate. I stood rigidly, fighting the urge to rip at that thing around my neck.
Instead I turned and yes, every one of them wore a silvery braided thing at their necks, barely visible above their plain gray tunic robes. “So we’re all prisoners, is that it?” I asked bitterly as I flicked the snake thing above my collar bones with my free hand.
Expressions of puzzlement and consternation met my question.
Kal said with all the care that one might use before a dangerous animal, “I beg the Imperial Princess to understand that we all wear fais. How else are we to. . . .” The word he used translated in my head as web, but he used it as a verb.
I frowned. Before the previous summer I’d listened for surface thoughts without being aware that I was doing it. I’d always managed to pick up clues to what people meant by words or phrases. I fought the impulse to break that hard block I kept around my thoughts. Dhes-Andis might be waiting to pounce in the mental realm the way he had during summer. Now that I was a prisoner of the very person I had spent the two succeeding seasons resisting, I was more determined than ever to keep my thoughts behind a protective wall.
I touched the golden necklet. “So only mine is a torture instrument then?”
The word “torture” froze them as if I’d burned them with that evil spell. I stared at them, they stared at me, then they all bowed deeply, their faces hidden as Kal said, “Those given responsibility for correction are guardians, and above them the Imperial Chosen, Your Imperial Serenity.”
“Let me get this straight. You call that torture, where magical fire burns you alive, ‘correction?’”
Nobody spoke. Either they were afraid of speaking, or else this conversation had no context. A distant bell chimed and once more they made that low, formal bow, their hands and shoulders tense.
I let out my breath in a whoosh. “I’m ready.”
And once again I sensed relief signaling between them in minute motions of eye, turn of hand, relaxed breath.
Their relief intensified my apprehensions.
Kal had not issued any order that I heard, but the double doors, carved with fantastical birds and beasts intertwined with tripled knots of flowers, opened on a new servant in gray, a tall older woman.
“I beg the Imperial Princess to honor with her notice one Frei,” Kal said. His quiet voice was low, his accent Djuran: I cherished every difference, but his familiarity kept striking me, again and again. “Frei shall have the honor of conducting the Imperial Princess to the Garden Chamber.”
You mean the torture chamber, I thought as I followed Frei into the vaulted hall.
Less exhausted than I’d been the day before, less dazed by happenstance as well as transfer residue and pain, I took in details as we walked. Statuary sat in alcoves, sometimes individuals, sometimes figures in triples, asymmetrical and dramatic, leading the eye upward. Figures from history or ballad, that is, royal or heroes of other sorts?
The individuals all looked taller than actual people, imposing with complicated crowns. Royal, then. The statues wore long intricately carved panels from shoulder to feet that gave me a clue to at least one persistent style in Djuran wear. Those panels, or stoles, or whatever they were effectively divided the body into three parts.
As I passed under the unseeing eyes of a stern-looking bearded statue, I said, “Can you tell me what’s meant by ‘web?’” I pointed at her necklace—fais, I reminded myself.
Another of those inescapable bows and she said in a low, melodious voice, “If the Imperial Princess pleases, I shall do my best. At any time between our second and fourth years each Djuran is given his or her fais, and so we join our civilization.”
“What does that mean?” And then it hit me. “You communicate with them?”
“Yes, Imperial Princess,” she said.
“So it’s not merely a torture device? Er, ‘correction?’”
Frei’s gaze flicked to me, her body tightening as if I’d flung a fire spell at her. But she didn’t pause in her step as she said in that melodious singsong, “The Chosen honor us with correction to benefit civilization for all, Your Imperial Serenity, as do guardians for children.”
I repeated those words over in my head. So this platitude meant that they tortured each other and called it civilization? No, guardians and Chosen did the torturing. And ‘Chosen’ was probably what Dhes-Andis and his sort called themselves.
One thing I’d learned from talk with Hlanan’s half-sister Thianra during my months at Erev-li-Erval was that as far back in history as you went, no matter where you traveled, you found humans busy organizing themselves into hierarchies. Somebody was always at the top, whether they called themselves pirate captain, guild chief, head cook, or king. Which is why I chose the bard’s life, she had said. If I’m never to get away from hierarchies, at least let mine be determined by excellence in music.
We approached a golden door twice the height of the tallest man. Gold flashed from the carving of a sun radiating outward as the door swung open.
Frei bowed low as another servant in the ubiquitous gray also bowed. They must be talking to each other somehow by their fais, I thought as I held my breath and stepped inside the room with all the trees. I hadn’t heard them do it.
Two white cats scampered from tree to tree, distracting me. Another white cat perched on a low tree branch, tail twitching. Green eyes blinked at me. A black cat walked daintily over the patterned floor.
My hackles had stiffened. Not because of the cats; I made an effort to settle my hair, but even though danger tightened my middle and the anger and grief roiled in my mind like a thunderstorm about to strike, from somewhere a tiny flicker of humor hitched my breath when I recognized that my tail twitched behind me exactly like that cat’s.
“Well done, Elenderi,” came the hated voice, and there he was, approaching through the trees. “A step toward civilization!”
He paused. I braced myself to look at him, my shoulders tight. He wore white and gold, and yes, two long embroidered panels lay over the complicated folds of his robes, drawing the eye upward. As before he wore a thin, graceful coronet of beaten gold over his blue-black hair.
“This way.” He extended a hand as his long, embroidered sleeve moved gracefully, like a raptor folding its wing.
I fell back a step, an instinctive defensive reaction. His eyes narrowed.
Alarm burned through me, followed by anger. I was not going to cower. I recovered that step and folded my arms across my front, but my hair once again betrayed me by lifting all along my spine.
He swept his hand outward to gesture toward glass doors behind the trees. Servants in gray opened the two doors. Dhes-Andis walked by my side through these doors, as cold air billowed icily around us. I braced for anything, and found myself standing on a balcony overlooking a vast parade ground filled with people.
I blinked in astonishment at all those upturned faces in various hues of gold from brown to p
ale, blurred a little by the vapors of breathing the wintry air, as chiming bells rang a complication of triple chords from somewhere overhead.
Dhes-Andis didn’t shout, but somehow his voice carried as he said, “Behold Her Imperial Serenity, Princess Elenderi, returned to Sveran Djur at long last!”
With a sough as if from a great wind, all those people dropped to their knees and touched their foreheads to the frozen ground.
I looked down in witless horror.
“Speak to them, Elenderi.” Dhes-Andis’s low murmur verged on laughter. “They await your words of wisdom.”
Dislike curdled in me at his tone of soft mockery, but that only lasted a heartbeat. From his smile it was clear he expected me to be impressed. Maybe even pleased.
I could only shake my head, my hair swirling about me, the ends roiling the way my innards roiled.
Dhes-Andis lifted his voice again. “Her Imperial Serenity is overcome by your loyalty and devotion. She wishes to give you, our loyal people, a festival day in her name.”
A shout rang up the stone walls, reverberating through my skull and teeth and bones. I backed up a step and he let me retreat inside the Garden Chamber.
He followed me in, leaving all those hundreds—maybe a thousand or more—people outside in the frigid air, and stretched out his hand to one of the cats, who butted up against his fingers.
“You may take the remainder of the day to explore the imperial residence story,” Dhes-Andis said, stroking the cat. “But when I have a moment to address the paucity of your education, you will promptly attend.”
I was ready to run. I began a turn, then said, “Um, if I get lost. . . .”
“You have only to speak Kal’s name, and your desire.”
“But I don’t know how you do it,” I said.
His brows lifted. “Do what?”
“This thing.” I jerked my thumb at the fais around my throat. (I refused to think of it as mine.) “I gather everyone has one, but they also do something called web.”