Chapter 1 #2
The narrow streets widen. I must be approaching the market square.
I’ve never seen it, but Elvi, my liegemaid, has described it dozens of times.
Before fresh rumours of Flamefever beyond the wall put an end to non-essential trade, she loved any excuse to walk here.
She has a sweet tooth, and the market’s mooncakes were legendary.
She always brought some back for me, along with tales of all she’d seen.
I draw my hood lower, but only a few citizens dot my path, and they keep their distance. Still, I catch up my pomander, lift it to my face. The vinegar makes my nose burn and eyes water, but one can’t be too careful.
As I hoped, the good citizens of Meissa don’t look twice at the girl made invisible by a drab, grey cloak.
The square is quiet, the crunch of feet on frost the only sound.
No market traders cry out, no musicians play.
Even its central fountain is frozen into silence – a monument my father only permits to stand as a deterrent.
My gaze roams over the water-worn carvings.
A heaving mass of prostrate bodies, both male and female, an undulating pattern of serpentine curves, faces contorted in expressions of despair. It depicts the Scouring.
Izarius, my tutor and the realm’s foremost starscribe, showed me illustrations of this fountain almost nine sunrings ago, soon after I started my lessons with him.
Told me about the many who’d sought Noelani Stellarion’s lost talismans, in the hope my ancestor’s necklet and sceptre, the property of a once-revered Elemagus – one of four formidable members of the Branded who changed Arcelia’s fate forever – might reverse the Sickening.
A fool’s errand. My father outlawed the practice when he took the Throne.
He decreed that the relics would never be found, dismissed any hopes of using them to mitigate the effects of the Sickening as the stuff of legend.
But oh, how the tale sparked my imagination.
How I dreamt of succeeding where all others had failed.
Night after lonely night, I clung to Izarius’ story, whispering my foolish hopes to the darkness.
I would find them, save my people, win back my father’s love, make amends.
Prove myself a worthy heir to the Crystal Throne.
I turn from the fountain. Those dreams were the dreams of an ignorant child, before I accepted that, for all his flaws, on this one issue, my father is right.
Arcelia has been cursed to a slow, protracted death, inexorable as the three-mooned tide, and there’s not a thing anyone can do to change it.
I may be Sistertouched, but I’m nothing like the Dawn Sister.
She created Arcelia; splintered her magic; siphoned the might of the Aethers to fashion the four cores that power its realms.
I have no such control over my magic. I create nothing; I only destroy.
We can only pray the Elemagi’s wards hold, seek to protect Meissa from the onslaught as long as we can, and defend our city against the stubborn folly of the Highlanders, the greed and jealousy of the Outrealmers.
In place of the yeast and syrup of freshly fried mooncakes Elvi described, the only scent swirling the air as I scurry past the silenced fountain is the lingering char of ash.
My stomach clenches. I fight the tide of painful memories that smell awakens.
A persistent, unwelcome reminder that, try as my father might to pretend all is well in Meissa, the Sickening rages beyond the city wall.
Flamefever is spreading. Bodies are mounting up.
I glance back at the palace turrets, my mother’s withered face rising before me again.
She’s getting worse, whatever the healers say.
The idea of leaving her pains my chest and slows my feet.
It’s the reason I’ve never tried to escape in search of the Book of Mysteries before.
My resolve wavers even now. But then I picture Astrophel’s gloating expression, the gleam in his cold, grey eyes when the date for our binding ceremony was finally set.
I’ve done my best to avoid him, but what little I’ve seen of my betrothed since his return from the Asteum two moonscycles past has only confirmed my worst suspicions.
The time away at school did nothing to improve him.
He’s as duplicitous as ever, still intent on licking my father’s boots.
I imagine him touching me in our nuptial bed and my stomach hollows.
As I cross into the wider streets of the Northern Quarter, my feet itch to run again, despite the pinching snow-silk slippers I’m forced to wear.
A towering bank of starcrystal glimmers at the far end of the road. The city wall.
A few more minutes and I’ll be free.
My shoulders sag in relief. I’m so tired. Tired of being shadowed every hour in case I make a mistake again, tired of being hidden away like some shameful secret, tired of being punished for past crimes I can’t take back.
I’m tired of being a monster.
Great change is coming.
I flinch from the small, knowing voice inside me. Light stipples my vision again, the silver tapestry thicker this time.
I don’t see the woman crossing my path until it’s too late.
A shrill cry slips her throat as our bodies collide.
She skates on the ice-slicked cobblestones, tumbling back with a heavy thud.
On instinct, I lift my gaze, blinking the threads of light away.
Still no sign of the Watchers, thank the Stars, but the other Meissans dotting my path to the wall crane their necks, start swarming towards us.
Exactly the kind of attention I hoped to avoid.
Remembering whose cloak I’m wearing, I mumble an apology, humbly drop my gaze as I reach out to the fallen woman to help her to her feet.
‘Keep your filthy mitts to yourself,’ she snaps, batting my fingers away as if they’re soiled.
One hand reaches for her pomander, the other drops to her belly.
I stiffen. It’s peaked, almost spherical, straining hard against her sapphire-coloured gown, like she’s swallowed one of the moons.
My own stomach tightens as I step back. What if I’ve hurt her? Hurt the precious babe she’s carrying?
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to face a pregnant woman.
They’re kept from the palace, an unspoken rule to spare my parents.
Stars know, they’ve suffered enough. And this close to term, expectant mothers are usually confined to their beds – a precaution to guard against the rising tide of neverborns.
I make the sign of the Star and pray the Dawn Sister protects her child, whisper a second prayer that I’ll be spared from sharing this woman’s fate – at least, until I’m purged.
There’s a reason my kind have been subject to a law of celibacy since the Sickening; it protects the Estelian people.
My father may have rescinded it to allow this binding to take place, to secure his precious lineage, but I can’t – I won’t – birth a monster.
I won’t condemn another living soul to my half-life.
I have to find the Book of Mysteries. Perhaps with my curse, the First Runes will speak to me as they once did to Noelani.
It might contain an incantation to purge the brandmagic away.
To purify me. Perhaps then, my father will deem me worthy to bind to an equal rather than some bastard-born pretender.
I could conceive untainted heirs, ensure the Stellarion succession continues unblemished.
‘You ought to be more careful, peakscrub.’ A balding man with a long silver beard jabs me in the ribs, elbows me out of the way to help the pregnant woman. I fight to keep my balance on the glassy cobbles, but as I stagger from the blow, my hood slips to my shoulders.
There’s a collective gasp. The growing throng of Meissans checking the woman and her precious cargo are unharmed shuffle back. My name carries in whispers on the breeze.
I hunch over, tugging the hood back in place. But it’s too late. They’ve seen me.
I look to the wall. I’ll have to make a run for it.
‘Princess?’
My breath catches low in my throat and I snap round. I recognise that voice, my liegemaid’s accent still sharp and craggy, despite Elvi having lived in Meissa for most of her twenty sunrings.
Elvi’s colouring singles her out too. Among a sea of silver-haired courtiers, hers is pearl-white – marking her as a peasant interloper from the abandoned peak territories.
The ghost cities. Neither of us fits in; perhaps that’s why we’ve always understood each other.
But she’s not the last of her kind. And while she might be scorned for her low-blood, she’s not feared.
Elvi’s silver cheeks are flushed pink with cold, her charcoal eyes unusually bright as she calls over her shoulder to someone and points at me.
No!
She’s led the Watchers right to me.