Red Icing
Three days to the first trial.
Esme grumbled as shadow hands pulled her stays tight behind her back.
“A bit more, you think?” she asked, pouting as she stared at her frilly underthings in the mirror.
The shadow hands smoothed down her waist appreciatively.
“You’re right. I am intensely perfect.” She nodded and the hands tripled themselves, each pair grabbing a different massive yellow frock overdress from her closet. She picked at her lip. Bows or stripes? Stripes or pearls?
Pearls, definitely.
“This and the stomacher with the birds,” she said, pointing to the canary overdress with a split front, lines of pearls delicately stitched along the bottom edge. She almost got lost in her clothes as a pair of hands wrangled them over her head.
When she was no longer drowning in fabric, she admired herself. Micrean fashion might be the single thing she wouldn’t change about this wretched place.
Of course, she wasn’t dressing up just to smooch herself in the mirror. She had to go into North Amaris to hunt down that address, and she’d rather be caught dead than underdressed in the Hand.
She took a seat at her vanity, dress swallowing the stool.
Ladies loved to pat rose dust on their cheeks, ever since Isobel caught a cold a month ago and pretended her ruddy face was intentional.
The common color was much too pale to show up on Esme’s skin, so instead she found the makeup Princess Jitaya of Uhmer had sent her a month ago.
In return, Esme sent her back a whole trunk of Micrean erotic magazines.
They were good friends.
With her eyes lined in kohl and her cheeks about as red as a bout with the plagues could make them, Esme grabbed a matching parasol and left her room.
When she got to the steps, she took one look at her daisy-patterned shoes and opened her parasol.
It threw a shadow over her, and she stepped onto it as if it was a ledge, then carefully maneuvered herself down the steps atop it.
The maids froze to stare at the hovering Wraith.
If they saw her shoes, they’d understand.
After a float down the mountainside, during which she terrified a horse, Esme landed herself on the pale-bricked streets of the Hand. A plume of smoke curled up from somewhere south. Magic swept in on the breeze.
That was something else Esme would have to fix.
Magic was here, whether she understood it or not.
It would have to be managed. Before she could catastrophize about it, a man brushed by her on the street, and she stepped aside and lowered her head as he passed.
The noble, red kerchief peeking out from his pocket, spat at the ground right by her feet.
Well, this was the Hand.
The city had dubbed silver and crimson the heir’s colors, and red doublets and kerchiefs decorated the nobles to show support for Janos. But of course. When faced with two foreign interlopers, the more Asterou one was always the preference.
Esme ignored the unignorable staring. She used to glamour herself here just to get through the streets without cracking under the weight of a million gazes.
Now, she simply didn’t waste the effort.
If Amaris’s nobility wanted to arrive late to their affairs because they had to gawk at a woman in a dress, that was their business.
Soon, Esme found the address, a restaurant called Virya’s Belt.
She’d had hangover breakfasts here a handful of times at the behest of Tagas, a great fanatic of their pancakes.
She stepped into the restaurant, and her eyes were immediately drawn to the domed glass ceiling that allowed patrons to stargaze at night.
The floors shone with polish but sighed under her weight.
The cozy dining room was nearly cramped, comfortable redwood chairs crowding around small tables.
The entire place creaked with aged charm, a warmth that spread even to the host, a pretty woman with thick black hair tucked under a scarf.
“A table for two, please,” Esme said.
The host’s eyes widened, but she nailed on a smile and led Esme to a booth a bit off from the rest of the dining room. Instead of brown, this table was black, the chairs a bit taller and finer than the ones around it. A Wraith’s table. They had one in every decent establishment in the city.
The host dipped her head, but before she could leave, Esme crooked her finger to draw her closer. “I’m looking for someone who might know a thing about cake,” she told her.
The host’s eyes cut to slits. “What kind? We have experts in all kinds of confection,” she said, trying to keep her voice cool.
It didn’t work. Esme noticed the practiced lack of an accent first, and the familiar scent of a friend next.
Padrian. The woman reeked of him, which would be normal if he ever rolled with anyone, but he was as staunchly against bedfellows as Daphna, if not more so. He wasn’t even a fan of romance.
And yet a pretty woman smelled like him. Strange.
“Vanilla cake, red icing,” Esme said.
The host stiffened. “Ah, yes. I know one such expert.” She straightened. “I’ll have your order for you soon, miss.” With that, she disappeared into the kitchen.
Esme swept a look over the scantly inhabited restaurant.
Before she could think up a way to get the other diners to piss off, the host and another woman emerged from the kitchens holding brightly decorated bags.
They presented them to each of the two inhabited tables as gifts, grinning from ear to ear.
In seconds, the diners’ tabs were settled and they were gone.
Then the host closed the front curtains and flipped the open sign round.
The other woman lit candles. Then they too were gone.
Another opening of the doors, and a smaller woman slunk out from the kitchen. Her dress was simple and plain, with a kerchief stuffed in her neckline to hide her throat, her blonde hair hidden beneath a veil. She stopped in front of Esme’s table, gaze low and hands wringing themselves limp.
“Please, take a seat,” Esme offered, gesturing to the booth across from her. The woman sat like bending might snap her in two. “Are you hungry?”
“Why are you here?” the woman asked, trying to keep her hands still as she stared at the will on Esme’s throat.
“Not even thirsty?”
“No,” the woman said, but her voice revealed more than she knew. The word practically echoed out of her empty stomach. It also had the clipped, blunt “o” sound that only Lake mouths made.
“It’s on me. Order whatever you’d like,” Esme offered as the host returned with a wax pad and a pen.
The woman refused again, pushing herself back into her chair.
“Then two orders of those egg-dunked pieces of bread you make. Lots of fruit. Whipped cream. Two nectars of Virya, too,” Esme ordered mindlessly. “Oh, and some sausage.”
The host nodded, not giving a look to the woman across from Esme before she took the order to the kitchen.
After three seconds of silence, the woman shook her head again. She flattened her hands to the table to push away. “I should not have agreed to this.” She looked like she might bolt.
“Yes, you should have,” Esme said, placing her hand on the table. It was a soft promise that even in this big yellow balloon of a dress, Esme would catch her before she even got to the door. “You know something I need to know. But first, I’d like to know your name.”
The woman remained in her chair, picking at her nails. “My name is Paula.”
“No, it’s not,” Esme said, leaning back in her booth.
The woman pursed her lips, looking from side to side. She sighed at the empty restaurant before closing her eyes. “My name is Yanor.” Her name swept out of her on a sigh.
Esme nodded. An old Lake name. Waldov, really. “And my name is Esme. Now, if you don’t mind, about that cake.” Janos, she meant.
Yanor ground her teeth, staring down at the table. “It’s evil. It patrols the border with an army to make sure no Kak-sov can escape.”
“Why?”
“Lukas can only live in a giant glass castle for as long as he wrings us dry, and he can only tax us when we live in his region. So he sends that cake out to make sure we never leave. Evil usurping bastard.” Yanor spat.
Lukas was not born the rightful heir to the Lake.
His brother, Krv, ascended the throne with the sole purpose of wrenching his “Kak-sov” from its unfair trade agreements with Micrea and returning it to Waldov control, like it had been before Omniel conquered it.
Turiel didn’t want a war, so he funded Lukas’s coup.
After a five-year fight, several secret military maneuvers from Micrea, and millions of talons funneled into the region, Lukas killed his brother and took control of the Lake, denouncing statehood and submitting to Micrean rule.
The Wail were stationed in the region to maintain peace during the handover, but remained long after.
“How do they do that?” Esme asked.
“They target the towns around the Lake that used to help us sneak out of the territory. The… cake…” Yanor struggled with the metaphor, but Esme waved it away.
They were alone. “Janos and the soldiers ride in and they kill all the men first. They do it in their beds. Then the women. You can guess. Some get taken back to camp, but some are just killed right there. They save the children for last. The boys they take. The little girls…” Yanor choked on the words, on the memories they must have brought with them.
Something dawned on Esme when she said, “They save the children for last,” but she tucked it away.
“But that’s how Lukas can keep us inside. If there’s nothing outside but death, then why leave?” Yanor said bitterly.
“Then how did you get out?” Esme asked.
Yanor’s eyes were wide and wet. She hid her hands under the table.
“We failed the first time. It was me and my father and my sister and her family. They found us less than a mile from the border. If we’d had just one more hour, just a bit longer, we’d have all made it.
” Yanor braced herself on the table, holding her head to keep it together.
“They caught us. They killed my brother-in-law and my father and let my sister and I go. But the second time, we planned to leave on a day we knew another group was escaping and…” Whatever Yanor was about to say, she was not proud of it.
“We whispered about them around a soldier so that when my sister and I and her children left, no one would be looking for us. They’d be looking for that other family instead. We got out that night.”
Esme let Yanor cry as she worked through it all. So that was what Lukas was doing: killing people off to keep his residents inside and demand their taxes. That’s why he had so much money to throw at Turiel.
“How long has Janos ridden with the Wail?” she asked.
“Since he was a teenager. Bastard’s been rotten since he was a child, though,” Yanor whispered, wiping the tears away as their food came.
She leaned back and let the host set a big plate of breakfast down in front of her.
Esme watched the host’s arm as she did so and found scars tearing the inside, covered by skin-colored powder.
Suddenly, it made sense—the many bakers, the way they’d closed this place up when Esme came.
This restaurant had to be involved in the escape of Lake citizens.
And perhaps Padrian, of all people, was too. How had she missed all of this?
She covered her mouth as Yanor grabbed her fork and ripped into her food. She’d been right: the girl was hungry. She watched her eat.
How’d she missed it? she asked herself again. Then again, there were no witnesses except a bunch of missing children. Turiel had known—Esme knew he had known—but he got his cut at the end of the year, so he did nothing.
“I’m sorry about everything that’s happened to you,” she said quietly, pushing a dish of sausage to Yanor once she’d finished the first plate. A nod, a sigh, and Yanor devoured those, too. “You’re extremely strong to have gotten here.”
Yanor’s cheeks flushed. “Thank you,” she said stiffly, wiping her mouth. “I assume you’re here because of that, though.” She nodded at the will on Esme’s neck. “He can’t be king. A dead dog would be better.”
Esme snorted. “Unfortunately, a dead dog wasn’t listed in the will. I would have supported it.”
Yanor gave a watery smile. When she mopped up syrup with her last bite, her kerchief fell from her neck and Esme’s blood froze. Scars crisscrossed her chest in gashes so deep Esme didn’t know how they’d healed.
“So, what’s your proper name, then?” Yanor asked suddenly. Esme flinched and looked away from her wounds before Yanor caught her staring. “What? I’m not from here. You obviously aren’t either.” She waggled her fork at Esme.
Esme considered lying, then whispered, “Bast.”
Yanor nodded as she chewed, finally wiping her face. “Our real names are better.”
Esme could only agree.
Yanor’s eyes got cloudy, and a tear spilled over. “We’re both stuck here, aren’t we?”
“Unfortunately,” Esme said, sitting back in her chair and taking a drink.
Yanor smiled suddenly, sniffling and taking a long pull of her own drink. “I’m having breakfast with a Wraith,” she said.
“We Wraiths are fans of breakfast,” Esme said, not having touched her food.
She still wasn’t hungry. She had that anger burning in her stomach again.
At herself, at Turiel, at Lukas, at Janos, and everyone else who’d failed Yanor.
“Now, I must go pretend to be scary someplace else. Thank you for your bravery, Yanor.”
Before Esme could stand, Yanor leapt up from the table and grabbed her wrist. “I was told that Wraiths couldn’t break a promise. Promise me that Janos will not see the throne.”
Esme froze, aware that she could break any oath she wanted. Still, she said, “I promise you, Yanor, that Janos Rivel will never see the throne.”
She slid Yanor a bag of silver and slipped away.