Page 51 of Rhapsody of Ruin
I put both palms flat on the parapet long enough to teach the stone my skin. When I stepped back, the city did not do me the courtesy of pretending it would thank me tomorrow. It would be alive; that would be enough.
I gathered the notes and slipped them into my sleeve where the seam would not look as if it bore more weight than silk. I lifted my chin at the mist and did not forgive it for swallowing the river’s noise. I turned toward the arch and the stair and the corridor I would need to walk with a mouth that smiled correctly at men who wanted me to do it so they would believe their kindness was enough.
At the threshold a movement caught the corner of my eye. Not an escort. Not a spy. A boy, Namyr, carrying a broom he did not need to carry in a corridor no one had asked him to sweep. He had a face I had almost seen in another room today, the bottom lip too full to hold still when the law learned a new word and pretended it had always loved saying it.
He froze, then sketched a bow so awkward it broke my heart worse than trembling hands. “Highness.”
“What is it?” I asked, because the broom had not been his idea, and because boys drafted by fear to carry messages no man wants to admit to have the right to speak or swallow as they choose.
He lifted the broom higher to prove it existed. “Nothing,” he said, and the lie put water into my eyes because it was the same lie my people had been trained to believe would keep them safe if they only tried hard enough to make it sound clean.
I took one step toward him. The broom trembled. I stopped a step away. “Come to the lower archive at dawn,” I said. “The one with the door that wears no jewels.” I did not lower my voice. “Bring no broom.”
His mouth opened. He made the shape of ‘yes’ and could not make the sound.
I did not make him. “Tomorrow,” I said.
He nodded so fast I feared for his neck and then fled in a direction the palace would not remark upon in its morning count.
I went along the upper corridor and down the small stair and into the gallery where the musicians liked to tune when it rained against the glass. It did not rain; it was still twilight. I loved and hated that about this city; I loved and hated it for everything that made grammar difficult. Below, the kitchen sent up a fresh ribbon of smoke. Somewhere a woman laughed the way a woman laughs when she does not get to laugh tomorrow and knows it.
Nyssa met me at the turn toward my rooms, mask in one hand, the other holding a tray with two cups and a pitcher that steamed. She didn’t comment on my hair, or the color in my cheeks, or the papers in my sleeve. She had learned me before the palace had.
“Tomorrow,” she said, and neither of us pretended to misunderstand.
“Tomorrow,” I said, and did not look back at the terrace because if I had I might have given the city the luxury of seeing me want something it could not sell to me later.
I drank tea that scalded and wrote until my hand cramped. I signed the notes in a hand uglier than my mother’s and truer. I sealed them and had the seals witnessed and thought of the boy and the broom and the way the law had looked when its favorite hunger had learned it was not allowed to perform at the table today. I thought of the hymn and the gloss. I thought ofwillingas key andwillingas blade andwillingas love and rejected the last and set the others side by side.
When the lamps burned low and the glass walls remembered the veining of the city in only their own shadows, I went to the window and pressed my fingers to the pane the way I had pressed them to the parapet. The glass made my skin shine the way the moons do when they smile without warming. I traced a circle on the cold and then refused to close it at the bottom.
“Tomorrow,” I told my reflection.
She did not roll her eyes. She knew what I meant.
I blew out the last light and crossed the room by the memory of where the floor did not catch my feet. The bed was too large and too soft; the sheets smelled like lavender and my mother’s favorite lie, that comfort can be duty if you call it by the right name.
I lay down and did not sleep. The city breathed; the river pretended not to. The palace sang a verse I would correct in the morning.
I held tomorrow against the roof of my mouth like a lozenge that would not dissolve.
When the wind changed, it brought the smell of smoke that was not resin.
The ward-candles along the corridor flared, then steadied.
I closed my eyes and saw the stairs. The arch. The terrace. The moment when two hands made the same grammar without permission.
Tomorrow lifted its head and waited.
Chapter 23
Rhydor
The city was a silver bruise beneath us when I lifted off. I did it quietly, no ceremony in the yard, no crack of talons on stone to wake the hall. The palace has too many eyes for a public metamorphosis and too many mouths that enjoy repeating what they think they see. In a shadowed court off the east wing I stripped down to the leather that would not shred, folded my crest and peace-wrapped sword into a burlap satchel for Torian to bring by mule, and let the change take me.
I never loved the spectacle of it. The court would. They would call it theater and forget it is work. Heat rolled through my bones, old heat, familiar as hunger, and everything I had to hide in these halls found its place again: spine lengthened; hands unmade themselves into claws; my lungs learned a different prayer. In the next breath there was no silk on my skin and nothing between my ribs and the sky.
Elowyn waited in the ivy-thick arcade two turns from the kitchen yard, her hair pinned in a quiet knot, her gown hidden under a rider’s cloak the color of slate. Minimal escort, the way we had agreed. Sir Thalen had picked the scout who watched the door; Korrath had placed one man in the alley with a lantern and a code no one in this palace recognized. Useful. I learned to love useful young.
