Page 13 of The Gilded Ones

Decided? Is it even a question? All these days, I have been praying, submitting, in the hopes of belonging somewhere, and here I have it – the answer, the one I have been seeking. I look at her, my eyes certain now.

I accept the seal.

“Yes,” I say, “I have. I agree – on one condition.”

An amused smile curls across her lips. “Oh?”

“You will make them tell my father that I am dead.”

In the end, Elder Durkas doesn’t even argue with White Hands about my fate. All it takes is a pointed arch of her eyebrow, and I’m unchained and dressed with such extraordinary speed, it’s as if the hounds of the Afterlands themselves have risen to nip at the elders’ heels. The elders may hate to lose the wealth I’ve brought them, but they dare not go against an emissary of the emperor.

It’s night outside when they lead me to the steps of the temple, and so dark the moon only barely sparkles on the snow-covered ground. A blast of icy-cold wind hits my face, sending tears to my eyes. It wouldn’t sting so much if I had a mask to cover my face, but I’m an impure woman. I’ll never be able to wear a mask now.

I’ve been freed from the cellar. I never thought I would be. I never thought I’d feel the wind again, never thought I’d glimpse the sky again. This almost feels like a dream – the blissful ones I have whenever I die and my skin takes on the same golden sheen as my—

“Take these,” Elder Durkas snarls, shoving something coarse and heavy into my hands. “They’re an offering for the emissary’s mounts.”

I look down, surprised to find a burlap sack filled with plump red winter apples. A sob chokes me. Winter apples are harvested only at the height of the cold season. If these are as fresh as they seem, I’ve been locked in that cellar for two full months, perhaps more.

More sobs come, each one more wracking than the last.

Elder Durkas’s lips curl into a sneer at the sound. “Wait here,” he growls, walking towards White Hands’s wagon: a small, rickety wooden affair with tiny windows on each side and a single door at the back. Two large creatures are attached to it. They look almost like horses, but there’s something funny about them.

As I blink, trying to make them out through my tears, Elder Durkas calls out to White Hands: “I’ve brought the demon, as you commanded.”

Demon. I should already be used to the word, but shame curves my shoulders, and I huddle into my coat. That is, until White Hands guides the wagon nearer, and I see the creatures clearly for the first time.

The breath rushes out of me. Those creatures aren’t horses at all; they’re equus: horse lords. They have human chests sprouting from their horselike lower bodies and talons where hooves should be. Mother used to tell me about them – how they ran through the desert on their talons, herding horses and camels. Similar creatures roam the more remote mountains of the North, but they’re larger and much more heavily furred. Strangely, these equus are wearing heavy coats over their glossy white bodies, and they even have furred boots over their talons. It must be too cold in the Northern provinces for their kind.

The larger one sees me staring and nudges the other as they near the steps where I remain, huddled into myself. “Look, look, Masaima, a little human to eat,” he says. He has a stripe of black hair in his otherwise pristine white mane, and his nose is so flat, it’s almost a muzzle.

The smaller one is pure white from head to tail, and his eyes are a large, gentle brown. “Looks tasty, Braima. Shall we share her between us?” he says with a smile.

I shrink back, alarmed, but White Hands turns to me with an amused smile. “Do not worry, alaki, Braima and Masaima are vegetarians. They only eat grass…and apples,” she adds pointedly.

I blink, then hurriedly remove two apples from the sack. “Oh, here, these are for you,” I say, walking over. I slowly offer them up, mindful of how much the equus loom over me.

Greedy, long-fingered hands snatch the apples out of mine.

“Mmm, winter apples!” Braima, the black-striped equus exclaims, crunching into his. Suddenly, he doesn’t seem dangerous at all – more like an overgrown puppy playing at being fierce.

He’s obviously the elder of the twins. I realize that’s what they are now, because other than his larger size and the black stripe in his hair, he and his brother are identical, both beautiful in that ethereal, otherworldly way despite their powerful physiques.

White Hands shakes her head fondly. “You should be nicer, Braima,” she chides. “Deka is our travelling companion.” As I frown at this strange description of our circumstances, she turns to the elders. “What are you waiting for, then? Hurry it up.”

The elders quickly do as they’re told. Warm clothes and a few packs of food are bundled into White Hands’s covered wagon, as are several flasks of water.

The entire process takes only a few minutes, and then White Hands helps me up into the back of the wagon and shuts the door.

To my surprise, someone else is sitting among the furs packed there – a girl my age with a plump figure and the blue eyes and blonde hair so typical of the Northern provinces. She smiles at me cheerfully, her face half covered by an ocean of furs, and a tingle rushes under my skin, one distinctly different from what I felt when I first sensed the deathshrieks. This tingle feels almost like…recognition… Could she be one of my kind? An alaki too?

“Hullo,” the girl says and gives a pleasant little wave.

She reminds me of Elfriede, the way she seems so shy and eager at the same time. Only the accent is different, hers flowing in the rhythmic up-and-down of the remotest Northern villages, the ones so high in the mountains it takes weeks to reach them.

I’m so taken aback to find someone else sitting here, I barely notice the clinking until I glance up to see Elder Durkas approaching the front of the wagon, a pair of manacles in hand. White Hands is already seated at the reins, and she watches impassively as he nods at me, disgusted.

“That one is unnatural, even for an alaki,” he sneers. “Refuses to die no matter how many times you kill her. Best to keep her chained away from the other one, before her bad blood spreads its influence.”

---