Page 10

Nine Years Ago

Daeros—Tenebris

Gods’ Fall is over. The sun returns, and the year begins anew.

I don’t welcome it. At least the days are still short, the light brief.

I watch the hours climb up the Iljaria time-glass in the wall and shrink down again.

I keep myself limber in my cage. I scrape the stolen knife against my scalp.

I pick the lock every evening when the palace has gone to sleep.

I stand a long while at the door, listening to the guards on the other side, angry that I am still trapped in a cage, even though I can get free of the iron one.

Most nights I step up to the great glass wall opposite those doors, and stare out into the Sea of Bones, watched over by the stars.

Sometimes I stand with my hands splayed out on the glass, pressing against it until I can no longer bear the coldness.

Sometimes I just sit and stare, feeling lost, alone, afraid.

Forgotten.

I am here at the glass wall one night, slumped on the floor, when someone touches my shoulder and I nearly jump out of my skin. I wheel to see Gulla, the king’s Iljaria wife. She looks silvery in the starlight, her white hair almost seeming to shine.

I blink at her, heart slamming against my rib cage. She gives me a gentle smile and holds something out to me.

It’s a slab of soap, a clean rag. She points at my head, mimes shaving it with a knife, then folds the soap and rag into my hand.

My heart pricks. I don’t know how she knows how uncomfortable it is without soap, how I have cuts everywhere along my scalp.

“Thank you,” I tell her softly.

Her smile deepens. She lifts her fingers, moves them slowly so I can see, and repeats the same motion several times. Then she points at me. I mimic the gesture with my own fingers, as best as I can.

“Does that mean ‘thank you’?” I ask her.

She nods.

That warm feeling in my heart expands. “Teach me more,” I say.

And she does. She teaches me how to shape the alphabet with my hands. She teaches me the words for star and ice and dark . And then she smiles yet again, squeezes my arm, and slips soundlessly away.

I watch her weave among the cages of the king’s Collection and see that she has taught most of the children her finger speech already.

They all have a kind word for her, and she’s brought most of them trinkets she pulls from her pockets: bone charms or bits of ribbon, scraps of paper, stubby pencils.

The children hoard her gifts and thank her sincerely.

Then she slides away across the hall, knocking at the doors to be let out.

She comes like this, every few nights, and I realize she cares for all of us in the king’s Collection because she was once part of it, too. The only one, it seems, who has ever left the Collection and not ended in the Sea of Bones.

She brings me more slabs of soap, when she senses I have run out, and little treats: candies or nuts or, once, half a slice of cake, with frosting so sweet it nearly made me sick.

And she continues to teach me her finger speech until her nimble hands have trained my clumsy ones, and I begin to understand her.

The ceilings, she tells me one night.

We’re again sitting by the glass wall, bathed in moonlight. She’s snuck me a piece of crumbly sweet bread. I meant to make it last but devoured every bit of it immediately.

“Ceilings?” I ask her.

They are false, she tells me.

My heart begins to race. “False ceilings.”

She nods. Palace carved from mountain. Ceilings false. Keep rooms heated.

I try to tamp down my excitement. “Heated rooms.”

Gulla nods again. She spells out her next word: Vents.

I turn to stare at the doors that have held me captive in this hall for so many weeks. My eyes slide to the time-glass beside them, to the grates above the time-glass that I’ve never thought much about before.

Gulla gives a silent laugh.

I make the sign for thank you . I hug her, sudden and tight.

She looks at me knowingly when I pull back and slips off to make her rounds with the other children.

I don’t wait. I climb up the chain that leads to my cage and leap across to one of the swinging platforms. From there it’s a few quick steps along the wire to the aerial silks hanging near the doors.

The time-glass is designed with branching metal to look almost like a tree, the twenty-four veins that mark each hour encased in glass to trap whatever magic the Iljaria set within it long ago.

The metal branches protrude from the wall, each one nearly as wide as my foot.

I leap from the silks without thinking, scrabbling for purchase and cutting my hand on one of the branches, which is sharper than I expected.

But I ignore the pulse of pain as I take one of the filched hairpins from my belt and work on loosening the screws that hold the vents in place.

The vents are an elaborate filigree of metalwork.

And they are large enough to climb inside, with room to spare.

My heart pounds as I slip into the upper vent, the metal freezing against my arms and legs.

I pull the vent cover over the opening again, slipping my hand through the filigree to tighten the screw enough to keep the cover from clattering to the floor while I’m up here.

Then I crawl forward, afraid that darkness will utterly consume me, but it doesn’t.

The vent shaft opens up into a rocky domed space, rough wooden planks creating the ceiling for the room below me. Irregular knots in the wood allow chinks of light to shine through. I crouch there, shaking. A whole world has opened suddenly before me. Finally. I could cry, but I don’t.

I take a deep breath.

I explore my new world.