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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Fenlia

L aure de Gianno is a tall woman in her late forties. She dresses in the extravagant gowns of her people, with a wide skirt that extends from her hips. Her colour palette is varied, and her costuming bizarre, and it is made all the worse by the fact that the woman appears physically incapable of smiling. ‘That’s how all the emissaries from Alelune are,’ Adalei explains when Fen goes to her for more information. Fen fidgets with one seed after another in her pocket as she watches Adalei weave a tapestry in her sitting room. Fen is not sure what the final image will be, but Adalei has more than thirty colours ready for use and she switches between them with uncanny intuition.

‘Is anybody ever happy in the west?’ Fen asks. She has only really interacted with Cat, but it seems that anyone born in Alelune is also born with a permanent frown.

‘I have been reliably informed that it’s just their culture,’ Adalei explains as she moves her strings this way and that. ‘They’re not a particularly effusive people. They prefer straightforward gestures without excessive pageantry. Physical contact in public is generally frowned upon.’

‘And yet they enthusiastically insist on going to war with us and kidnapping our prince,’ Fen mutters.

‘Yes. Well. We did the same to them not too long ago.’ Adalei chooses a new yarn spool and begins to weave it into position.

‘Have you ever been there?’

‘Been where?’

‘To the embassy?’

‘Fen.’ Adalei finally meets her eyes at long last. ‘You’re not being particularly subtle, you know.’

Fen’s cheeks burn hot. She crosses her arms over her chest. ‘I don’t have anything to be subtle about,’ she insists boldly.

‘At least pretend you’re asking because you’re interested in courting your little Reaper friend.’

‘I’m not!’

Adalei sighs loudly. She sets her strings down and turns. Her hands fold politely in her lap. ‘You want information,’ Adalei says. ‘You really should be careful about who is aware of you wanting this information. You need to learn how to ask about one thing when you mean something else.’ Fen blinks at her, mind blank. She can think of no other topic at all worth discussing with Adalei, and Adalei seems to realize it too. The older woman sighs once more, shaking her head as she drawls out a perfectly polite, ‘For instance . . .’ and smiles in the vapid way court ladies must always smile. ‘I shared some of Elician’s poetry with your Cat recently. He seemed very interested.’

‘Elician’s poetry ? Why would Cat care about that?’

‘Oh, I’m sure I couldn’t begin to guess. But after travelling all the way from the Bask to Kreuzfurt with only our dashing prince and Lio as his companions, perhaps Cat took a shine to our prince after all.’

Fen is not sure she is following this conversation well. She squints at Adalei, who continues smiling blandly, offering nothing until Fen asks which poems Adalei had given him. ‘Well, the only poems I had that were officially written by him were the ones he used to write about the long-lost Moon Prince. I thought he might like those, so I passed them to him.’

‘You gave them to him?’

‘He seemed like someone who should read them – he is fascinated by Elician, after all. I didn’t see any harm in showing him what Elician had thought about the Moon Prince who died too young.’

‘What does that have to do with anything?’

Adalei very delicately plucks a piece of invisible something or other off her immaculate dress. She flicks the speck off into the distance and asks, ‘Do you think your Cat took a shine to our prince while they travelled?’

‘No. I don’t know. Also, he’s not my Cat. And what does any of this have to do with—’

‘It’s about finding answers to questions that haven’t been asked, Fen,’ Adalei chides lightly. ‘For instance, I know you haven’t taken a shine to Cat, at least.’ Fen’s face burns even hotter as she shakes her head, spluttering and denying the accusation that had not even been voiced.

‘How can—? How do you—?’

‘Your reaction for one. You don’t seem to mind the idea that Cat may have feelings for your brother.’

‘They barely know each other!’

‘Or perhaps you do mind it.’

‘I don’t!’

‘As you say. In any case, you’re angry with Cat about something. Did he tell you not to go to the embassy too?’

‘He—No. Not really. I mean, yes, he did, but—’

‘You’re awful at this,’ Adalei tells her. She turns in her seat and goes back to her weaving.

‘You’re the one making things mean things they don’t mean. It’s very . . . Alelunen of you.’

‘Perhaps it is. But I’m not the one plotting a crime. You are. And you’re hiding it very badly.’

‘I promised Elician I would help him. That I would do what I could to help him with anything he needed. And then they stole Elician! And they did something to Lio. Someone in Alelune must know what happened, so why won’t you help me find out?’

‘To what end?’ Adalei asks. She continues weaving, back straight and her attention seemingly only on her threads. ‘Say that somehow, for some reason, there is confirmation in that embassy that Elician and Lio are in Alelune. Undoubtedly, they’re somewhere we cannot reach them. What happens then?’

‘Cat says there’s a traitor in the palace. Someone who betrayed Elician and got him caught.’

Adalei pauses in her task. She cuts Fen a look. ‘There is.’

‘Then maybe that confirmation also shows who that traitor is.’

‘You’re risking a lot on a maybe.’

‘Tell me the truth, though. If we did find something, wouldn’t it be worth it? To you? To know?’

Adalei pauses for a long while. Then, slowly, she nods. ‘You’re too loud, though.’ She continues weaving. ‘Leave it with me.’

‘Or you could—’

‘Fen. Leave it with me.’

Fen watches her cousin. Watches Adalei’s jaw as it clenches. Watches her nostrils as they flare. Watches her delicate fingers working expertly on the tapestry she is designing based on memory and intuition alone. ‘What would you do . . . if you did find out?’ Fen asks next.

Adalei’s lips twitch. ‘Finally,’ she says, ‘you’re asking the right questions.’

On the coldest day of winter, Marina and Zinnitzia are summoned by the King to discuss plans for the coming spring, and so Fen and Cat are released from their duties. Fen leads Cat through the city, showing him all her favourite places. These just happen to be near the Alelune embassy. Their journey ends at the Temple of Life, which stands just outside the embassy’s gates.

Nobody bothers them the whole while. The streets always clear when Cat walks down them, nervous civilians all but slip-sliding across the frozen cobblestones to get out of the way when they hear his bell and see his black garb. He keeps his new fur-lined hood pulled down too, when they wander the city streets. She cannot see his expression, but she hooks her elbow around his after his jingling bell makes a parent quickly yank their young child away from the road – as if Cat had intended to murder her on sight. She squeezes his arm and ignores everyone. If they want to flee, it just means she and Cat will have a better view.

Side by side, they look up at the largest statue of Life. ‘He always looks up at the sun,’ she explains, pointing high above them at the carved features of their country’s god. Life’s face is long and angular. His nose is a narrow shaft that curves outwards around the nostrils, charmingly quaint and eerily reminiscent of the line of kings. Honourable Ricgard, the ancient artist commissioned with designing the statue, seemed to have borrowed a few features from the royal line in his work. Thousands of years later, those similarities still hold true. Fen had even teased Elician about it when they were younger. At a quick glance, sometimes he even looked just like the statue. The comment never failed to make her brother blush.

‘During the day,’ Fen continues, ‘Life’s head turns so he can watch the sun move across the sky.’ No technology guides the statue’s movement. Ricgard certainly never admitted to how he managed to carve a living statue that turned its head, centimetre by centimetre, all throughout the day, never once failing to keep its watch. ‘Elician, Lio and I tried to find the gears, or weights, or levers, that make it move. But we never found anything. There is no spring, no coil, no mechanism. It is all pure stone.’ The boys had climbed the statue itself, hand over hand, until they sat on the god’s shoulders, inspecting every part of it, scrambling back to the ground only when Fen had hissed someone was coming.

‘“Life made all things,”’ Fen recites from childhood lessons memorized long ago. ‘“He shaped the world and all that is in it, but when the creatures he made wanted more, Death came to release their souls, unmake their bodies and give them the chance to reform or try again.”’

‘Death leads to Life, then,’ Cat murmurs. A nearby family quickly shuffles away, kicking up tufts of snow as they go. Fen hopes Cat didn’t notice.

‘In a way. But somehow, dying stopped being a choice somewhere along the way. It comes whether people want it or not, are ready or not. But I think it should still be a choice . . . and we should choose what we’re remade into.’ Fen crosses her arms. ‘I wouldn’t have chosen this life. And now I can’t even die – so I can’t be remade into something else. I’m stuck like this until the gods have decided it’s my time. Same as you.’

A few more people wander inside the temple and Fen guides Cat away from the statue and the crowd, still watching the statue slowly turn. ‘What happens at night?’ Cat asks.

‘The head looks down, and then it turns back to the east.’

‘Why?’ he asks.

Fen pitches her voice to match Elena’s accented tones. ‘I can show you the how, but as for the why?’ Cat huffs, shaking his head with a smile. ‘I have a why for you though,’ Fen says. ‘Why does Alelune use the moon as their symbol – and worship Death – if they don’t like Reapers? Reapers are made of Death. Isn’t hiding you away . . . disrespectful? At the very least?’

Cat shrugs. He does not look at Fen. His head is angled only towards the turning statue, hands and arms tucked in close to his body. Children yell and run this way and that. Parents call their names. Worshippers bow and pray to the statue and all that it represents. ‘Alelune respects change,’ Cat murmurs eventually. ‘The change of shape. Of the next becoming. Of evolving into something new. That is what we worship. Death represents the . . .’ He says a word Fen does not understand. He tries another word, but she still does not recognize it. ‘Machine? Mechanic? The thing that sparks – that does the change?’

‘Catalyst?’ she offers. He nods.

‘Catalyst. Death is that catalyst. Reapers bring change too soon. Unasked for. Unwanted. Change should be natural. Without the influence of Reapers or Givers.’

‘Change on its own terms,’ Fen guesses. He nods.

‘Death is a god we question. She is not a god we worship, as such.’ He tilts his head towards the men and women bowing and praying to the statue of Life. ‘We ask questions of Death, we accept her answers, but we do not ask for anything. We wish, rather, to change on our own. Like our moon.’ He curls his hands together and makes a shadow puppet on the wall behind them. She watches his hand twist and turn, precisely shaping the journey of a moon as it waxes and wanes.

‘Where did you learn that?’ she asks, awed.

He shrugs, letting his hands fall. ‘We played games in the cells sometimes, when none of the guards could see. Even in the dark, there is light, ’ he murmurs.

‘That sounds like something Elician put in a poem once,’ she tells him.

‘It is,’ he replies.

Fen tilts her head back up to the statue. Its gaze is fixed towards the sun, not once looking down at the meagre folk below. Even at night, with its head bowed and eyes lowered, the statue’s gaze is not for them .

News of the war has been steady and constant. Battles have been won and lost, but no ground has been ceded. Nothing has changed. No one has mentioned Lio or Elician or anything related to where they might be.

‘I miss him,’ she murmurs. ‘No one is saying anything. They just keep pretending as if everything is fine. But it’s not fine, and if someone did betray him, then why hasn’t anything else happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ Cat whispers.

‘How could they keep him somewhere where no one would see him? Unless he really is dead?’ He does not say anything to that. Perhaps there is nothing to be said.

The sun starts setting, slowly at first, then faster. Tourists begin to leave the temple; clerics begin to clean the grounds. Fen and Cat find a bench to sit on and watch as the statue’s head follows the path of the sun. Its chin tucks inwards as its body moves in the opposite direction. Fen stares up at it. She waits to feel something, anything. Two women and their young baby, bundled up with care, are all that remain at the statue’s feet. They hold the baby up and say their prayers, offering gratitude to their god. Fen tries to feel something similar. Gratitude, affection. Some deep, resonating reason to pray or offer praise to an all-powerful being that blessed her and her brother just like this. She feels nothing.

Nothing, save an even greater desire to know why .

Why her? Why Cat? Why Elician?

The statue does not answer. It just continues to turn. The couple and their child make to leave, and she catches Cat watching them as they walk by, his head turning to follow until they’re out of sight. ‘Cat?’ He turns back to her. ‘Do you know them?’

‘No. Not really. I thought that woman looked familiar, but . . . it’s nothing. Must have passed her at some point on the road.’ It doesn’t sound entirely like the truth. Especially not when there is something almost pleased in his tone that had been absent moments before. She cannot begin to guess what he might be pleased about. She does not really want to ask to find out.

Looking back at the statue of Life, it still offers no guidance, nor taste of inspiration. Shaking her head, Fen slides her hand into her pocket and pulls out one of her seeds. What is the point of living, really, in the first place?

Maybe Alelune has a point. She certainly could see the value of questioning Life, in trying to ascribe meaning to it. The seed on her palm is alive, yes. And yet . . . it should not stay like this, given its purpose. It would not stay like this if left to its own devices. If put in the ground and provided with nutrients, water and a good temperature . . . it would grow. It would change.

Closing her eyes, Fen wills it to do just that, then. Not to live; it is already living. But to do more. Be more. To grow to—

Something soft and smooth slides across her palm. Cat shifts at her side. Her eyes open. There, small and white, is a root growing from the bottom of the split shell on her palm. A bit of life, in a world made quiet by the chill.

‘Well done,’ Cat says.

She meets his eyes through the veil. ‘Help me find my brother,’ she commands. Cat hesitates only for a moment, but he is, and always has been, true to his oaths. He nods his head as the plant in her hand continues to grow.