Page 4

Ten Years Ago

Daeros—Tenebris

There is a cage waiting for me when we arrive at the mountain palace. I suppose the king sent word ahead.

The mountain devours us, a maw of cold, unfeeling stone, and the Skaandan boy and I are dragged into the great hall, where the king keeps his Collection.

The boy is shut, weeping, into a cage made of reeds, while I am shoved into one made of iron.

It seems enormous to me, until the door is locked and the king nods at his steward, who hauls on the chain looped through the top of it, and I find myself hoisted, spinning, up into the air.

I wrap my hands around the cold metal bars, peering dizzily below me and trying not to be sick.

The cage stops when it reaches the ceiling, some thirty feet in the air.

The steward must do something to secure it, because he lets go of the chain and the cage does not fall, though it keeps spinning slowly.

My heart leaps and dives within my chest. I barely hold back a whimper.

I huddle in a corner of the cage, dimly aware of a metal sleeping ledge, a short set of climbing silks, and a rope that’s stretched from one end to the other.

The king means me to practice my routines, I suppose, as well as I can in here.

The cage must be ten feet square, far larger than the boy’s away below me.

But ten feet square is my whole world now.

And that is not very large for a world. The others at least are together, in their cages down on the cold floor.

Mine is the only one suspended from the ceiling.

I listen to my breathing. I count the beats of my heart.

My body grows stiffer and stiffer until my limbs start to hurt and I’m forced to uncurl myself, to move, carefully, toward the sleeping ledge.

My legs are asleep and I fall, making the cage lurch and sway.

I nearly lose my lunch. But I haul myself up to the ledge.

I massage my legs until the feeling comes back into them, needles of pain so sharp they take my breath a bit.

I gaze down into the hall, vast and echoing, the entire back wall made of glass.

It looks into the glacier valley, a frozen wasteland the king’s guards referred to as the Sea of Bones.

Stars burn cold above the Sea. The winter will be long and lonely.

My stomach pinches in hunger, and I wonder how often the king feeds the children he keeps in his Collection.

I remember that I am part of that Collection now.

I remember that this is not a joke or a game.

I’m trapped here, and I am wholly, irrevocably, alone.

I curl up on the sleeping ledge, my cheek pressed against the metal.

Just this once, I allow myself to cry.

I watch them work from between the bars of my cage: a dozen men on scaffolding, strapped in with harnesses and ropes so even if they fall, they will not die on the marble floor far below.

They drive iron rings into the ceiling and hang equipment from them: chains attached to wooden platforms, thick knotted ropes, red and gold and blue aerial silks, swinging bars.

They stretch wires from one end of the hall to the other, at varying heights. They do it all for me.

I study the apparatuses, ice in my belly, trying to map out a routine in my mind before I force my body to do it. I am not sure I can—maybe the king wants me to fall. But I picture the arena at home, where I spent hour upon hour practicing. I remember that I am remarkable and that I must not fail.

I expect to be let out of my cage; I expect a chance to practice properly before I am called upon to perform. But I am not.

The first time the king’s steward hauls on the chain and brings my iron cage down to the floor, it is the fifteenth hour—evening, if it were not winter.

He fits his key into the lock and turns it with a click, then heaves on the chain to bring me skyward again.

The door creaks open, and I stare out at the wires, the platforms, the silks. Fear slides through my bones.

The king is here, of course, with a handful of Daerosian nobles, pale men and women overburdened with furs and glittering with diamonds.

They sit in a semicircle of chairs in the midst of the room, ready to marvel at the king’s prodigious Collection.

Lamps skew orange shadows across the floor, and the time-glass in the back wall—a marvel of Iljaria magic—pulses with its own red light.

When the Iljaria abandoned Tenebris, they left quite a number of magical items behind, and the magic that they set in motion all those centuries ago still endures.

That is the power of the Iljaria—eternal, until the world’s ending.

The king tilts his face up, up. He frowns at me.

I try not to shake, but I do. I know what happens to the children in his Collection who fail to please him: He slits their throats and throws their bodies down into the Sea of Bones, where it’s said the Ghost God and the Gray Goddess walk together, keeping watch over the dead.

That is the terror woven into every part of me.

That is the only reason I step from my cage and leap onto the first wooden platform.

My routine is shaky, at best. I don’t even use all the apparatuses.

But I don’t fall. And when it’s over, the king nods for me to be locked back into my cage.

I collapse onto the sleeping ledge, slick with sweat.

I have passed this first test. But I know I must do better next time.

I know I must be braver, bolder, showier.

Below me, the other children perform. I don’t watch.

I curl into the tightest ball I can, and I pray: to the Violet God, god of time; to the Bronze God, god of minds; to the Prism Goddess, goddess of all things; to the Ghost God, god of nothing.

I am clumsy at praying. I am not good at it, I am not used to it. Perhaps that’s why they don’t answer.

I rub my aching arms. I plot out my next routine, over and over in my mind. I tell myself I will live through it. I tell myself that I will not fall, that the king will be pleased with me, that the Sea of Bones will not be my ending.

I tell myself all these things, but I don’t think I believe any of them.