Page 60 of Her Dark Reflection

His body was drawn in an open cart, purpose-built for the funeral. It was a dark mahogany, with wheel spokes of bright yellow gold, and garlands of monkshood, azaleas and lilacs filled the space around his cold corpse, obscuring the smell of death and rot. I walked behind the cart, as it was the custom for all mourners to walk with the deceased. The trampling of so many feet were thought to warn Madeia that another of her children was returning to her, with the greater number of mourners meaning a greater welcome by the goddess. Two glossy black horses with purple ribbons braided into their manes and tails pulled the carriage along and they shook their heads and snorted as they towed their burden.

The crowd lining the road within the palace grounds was so quiet as we passed them. They were palace servants and members of the court mostly, and I scanned them briefly, fixing on a pair of little girls holding hands, purple ribbons in their hair, tear tracks cutting down their faces, then a white-haired old man clutching his cap to his chest. A woman holding the hand of a little boy caught me looking in her direction and she scowled at me before bending to whisper into the ear of her friend. I was glad for the veil.

Princess Gwinellyn walked alongside me, her head bowed, grief rippling the skin of her pale face. I didn’t know why she had foregone the veil, but I supposed she didn’t really need to hide away for lack of emotion. She also didn’t need to obscure the mess sorrow usually made of a face; she was pretty even with her red-rimmed eyes and pinched brow. There had been much muttering about her health in the immediate aftermath of the king’s death. I’d heard she had been holed up in the infirmary and fed a steady diet of sedatives to keep her calm. The general consensus seemed to have been that she wouldn’t attend the funeral.

But here she was, looking a little shrivelled, but otherwise surprisingly well. The spectators often pointed to her and whispered, and I realised belatedly that she’d never been officially presented to the public before this moment. Her birthday ball was supposed to mark her transition into public life, and it had ended in… well, it had ended here.

Guilt clogged my throat, and I had a harder time swallowing it down than I did when I was standing over Linus’s corpse, which was ridiculous, given thathewas the one I had murdered. I slowed my pace slightly, allowing the cart to draw ahead until I could no longer glimpse the still form of the dead king. It was making my skin crawl.

The palace gates loomed before the procession, and I wanted to sigh at the thought of how far we would need to walk. All the way to the Great Cathedral in the heart of the city. The Grand Paptich would plead with Taveum to relinquish his grip on humanity and return us to the days before time ravished the world and stole our everlasting youth, Aether would be thanked for the sun, sky, and water that fed our king’s life, and then his body would be imparted to Madeia’s care in the ground. The same rites no matter the man or woman, an homage to the fact that all were equal in death.

This particular man was dressed in cloth woven with real gold thread, and would be buried with enough wealth to build himself a palace in the shadow realm, but, nevertheless. I eyed the soldiers carrying the chests of said wealth as we approached the gates, wondering at exactly how much gold and jewels would be buried with my dead husband.

We passed through the gates, out of the quiet respect of the palace grounds, and into the square beyond, and the sight of the crowd made me nervous. The memory of the last time I’d been in this square was as sticky as the blood had been on my shoes that day, though I tried to scrub it from my mind. This would be different. This was a funeral.

Or at least itshouldbe different.

The air beyond the palace walls was thick and heavy, laden with the heat that the greenery of the gardens had lifted from the day. The back of my neck was damp with perspiration within minutes, and I longed for a breeze or the shadow of a cloud to pass over the sun. The crowd lining the square looked wilted and aggravated, all limp hair and shiny skin as they shifted and muttered to each other, gazes flicking to the full retinue of soldiers who had fallen into formation around the procession as the cart lumbered into the square.

The sight of the crowd somewhat loosened the guilt that was hanging from me, refusing to be discarded. There was little grief to be seen here. I thought back to that flippant comment Linus had made, about the city wearing the consequences for the riot. If the mood here now was anything to go by, they’d worn those consequences with little grace. I hoped it wasn’t retribution I saw in the faces of some of those I passed.

The city streets narrowed as the procession moved out of the square, pressing the crowd closer. I was forced nearer to the cart, and I kept my eyes resolutely fixed off to the side, trying my best to keep the corpse out of my eyeline, but I caught the stink of rot beneath the perfume of the flowers, which was unsurprising, given the heat.

An image flashed through my mind, of Linus sitting up in the cart and reaching for me, his eyes still vacant and the red-tinged froth still clinging to the corners of his mouth. I pushed the image away, but my stomach roiled. How undignified it would be to be sick with all these people watching. And their muttering seemed to be so much louder with the buildings funnelling us down the street. People peered down at us from the floors above, sometimes entire families complete with small children craned their necks over balconies and window ledges to get an eyeful of the decaying king.

There was asplata few paces ahead of the first soldiers, and I caught sight of a little boy above being tugged back out of sight by woman with an expression of horror. He’d only thrown a cabbage, but it was enough to rile the soldiers. Already tense with the expectation of trouble, several of them began bellowing at the crowd to get back and the flash of steel caught the sun as swords were scraped from scabbards.

But the threat of the swords did nothing to quell the crowd. They began to push closer, shoving and shouting, faces twisting with anger. I flinched as something sailed over my head and met the wheel of the cart with a squelch, and the noise around me surged. My heart was a hummingbird in my chest as my gaze darted all around me, seeking some kind of escape. But I was in the centre of the road, surrounded on all sides by what was beginning to look like a mob.

A jolt of movement caught my attention and I snapped around in time to watch Gwinellyn clamber aboard the cart. What was she doing? Was she going to hide behind her father’s corpse? She rose to her feet and made herself an even more obvious target, before throwing her hands out, as though she was pleading with the crowd, and crying out ‘stop!’

I don’t know what she thought would happen, but the jeering and shoving carried on unabated.

‘Are you mad? Get down!’ I called, but she ignored me as she fumbled with something in her hands. ‘Gwinellyn!’ I tried again as I dropped into a crouch by the wheel of the cart, my fear of projectiles overcoming my aversion to its cargo.

‘Enough!’ It was Gwinellyn’s voice again, but this time it was much louder, projecting above the cacophony of angry commoners and threatening soldiers. ‘This is a funeral!’ Her voice cracked, and I looked up at her to see she was clasping a dark, knotted cord to her throat. The foolish girl had an ampliweave. Well, much good it would do her, given that she couldn’t speak before a polite and listening ball room, let alone an angry mob.

But to my astonishment, the buzz of voices settled a little. People were ceasing their jeering and shoving to look at this little wisp of a girl balancing on the edge of a death cart like a crow with her black gown and black hair, her face lily pale. Perhaps they were turning to look because she was so ridiculous a sight.

‘You… you might not know me,’ she stammered. Which just went to show how little she knew of this kingdom she would inherit. Of course, they knew her.

‘I’m prin… your princess.’ She licked her lips as more of the crowd’s attention zeroed in on her. A few people booed. Wonderful. Now she’d marked herself out as someone worthy of lynching and Brimordia’s monarchy would end just as Yaakandale’s had.

‘And maybe I’m the reason you’re so unhappy. Or if not me, then people like me,’ she continued. The noise died right down now. They were listening.

‘I know that there are problems in this… my… country that have been ignored. I have heard that you are suffering.’ Her voice was growing steadier, and there was something about the way she spoke—with such sincerity—that I had to admit was captivating. ‘But the man in this cart is… was my father. Not just your king. No matter his faults and mistakes, all deserve a dignified burial, at the very least for the sake of those of us who loved them. This is not the day for retribution. This is a day for grief.’

She took a deep breath, her eyes combing the faces turned towards her, and I could hardly believe the sight, but the soldiers were lowering their weapons. ‘Taveum marks us all with time,’ she continued, ‘and this unites us, because no matter our differences, death is universal. So please, I beg you, hold your disquiet for this one day. Let me grieve for my father.’

By the time she was finished, there was complete stillness around us. Gwinellyn almost seemed to come out of a trance after the final syllable left her mouth, blinking her eyes rapidly as she shrank down and slipped quietly from the cart. She returned to her place in the procession, nodded curtly at the driver, and the next thing I knew the cart was rolling away and leaving me exposed.

I rose to my feet and eyed the crowd warily as I slunk back to my place beside Gwinellyn, and the rest of the procession began taking a few hesitant steps. The crowd drew back to allow the cart through, and before long we were marching on as though nothing had happened. Except now, heads were bowed as we passed. It was so peculiar, the way the people of the city just piped down like that, the way they whispered to one another, the strange, fevered expressions some of them wore as they stared at the princess.

I watched Gwinellyn carefully as we continued, my eyes narrowed. ‘Where did that come from?’ I asked when I drew close enough to speak to her, my voice carefully inflectionless.

She jolted as though I’d startled her, then flashed me a hesitant smile. ‘They gave it to me, so I could speak at the funeral. I don’t think anyone actually thought—’

‘For fall’s sake, not the ampliweave. You had afitat the ball when you tried to give a speech.’

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