The glittering crowd below hold my eye, the finery of a departed age, a fortune in silks and taffeta, each lord glittering with wealth displayed for every other. Hardly one among the hundreds would be alive when I woke, claimed by age, the children beside me old beyond my imagination. For the longest time I’d believed my grandmother had come into the world creased and seamed, carrying her wrinkles from the womb, the iron grey in her red tresses as ancient as the lichen on statues. To see her young unsettles me in ways I can’t explain. It tells me that one day it really will be my turn to be old.
The feast is almost over, though food still mounds the platters and servants scuttle hither and thither to refill and replenish. Here and there are empty seats, a lord stands, unsteady, bows toward the host, and walks toward the great doors with the overly careful gait of a man in his cups. Elsewhere guests are flagging, pushing back plates. Even the dogs at the margins of the hall have lost their enthusiasm for dropped bones, barely prepared to snarl their ownership.
At the head of the great table, presiding over fifty yards of polished oak near hidden beneath silver platters, goblets, candelabras, tureens, and ewers for wine and water, sits a man I know only from paintings. His portraits are rare enough to make me wonder if the Red Queen burned them. Gholloth, second of his name, a blond giant of a man, sits there-red-faced from the drink now, his tunic elaborately embroidered and blazoned with the red banner of the March, but wine-stained and straining at the seams. On canvas they paint him forever young and glorious as he looked on the beaches of Adora, or was imagined to look. They show him at the start of the invasion that was to tie the dukedom to the Red March throne. The War of Barges they called it because he took his forces on river barges across the sixteen miles of sea to reach Taelen Point. Now he looks to be fifty or more and wearing his years poorly, as old when he sired my grandmother as his own father had been when he sired him. Where the elder Gholloth might be I can’t say, dead perhaps, or a toothless ancient hunched upon his throne with a bowl of soup.
The twins aren’t watching their father though: the Silent Sister is staring at someone with unusual intensity, even for her, and Garyus follows her gaze, frowning. Alica and I join them. We’re watching a woman about halfway along the table. She doesn’t stand out to me, neither old nor young, not pretty, more motherly, modestly covered, her gown a lacklustre affair of black and cream, only her hair sparkles, raven-dark beneath a web of sapphires held on silver wire.
“Who is she?” Alica asks.
“Lady Shival, minor nobility from one of the Port Kingdoms, Lisboa I think.” Garyus frowns, raking his memory. “Has King Othello’s ear, an unofficial adviser of sorts.”
“Elias is watching her,” Alica says, and Garyus blinks, looking across the room to where a man stands by the wall in the shadows, away from the diners, ostensibly filling his pipe. There’s something familiar about the fellow. It’s in the swift and restless movement of his hands. He reaches up to light a taper from the wall lantern and his upturned face catches the glow.
“Taproot! By Christ!” They don’t hear me of course. I’m not here, just a dreamer floating in the memories my blood carries. It can’t be Taproot. This man is in his forties, and the Dr. Taproot I know can’t be past his fifties. Besides, how would my great-grandfather’s courtier be traipsing across the Broken Empire at the head of a circus? This must be an ancestor of his. But just observing him, seeing the quick and bird-like motion of his head as he scans the tables, always returning to our lady beneath her net of sapphires, I know it’s him. I know when he opens his mouth I’ll hear “watch me” and restless hands will conduct the conversation.
“Elias will-”
“This woman is beyond him. - says she’s here to kill. . someone.” Garyus cuts Alica off, waving her away with irritated jerks of his over-tight arm. Again their sister’s name escapes me, just a silence where it should sound.
“I didn’t hear her say anything,” Alica says, peering at her sister who is still fixated upon the woman below, her gaze unwavering. “Who is this woman to kill?”
“Grandfather,” says Garyus, half a whisper. “She seeks to change the destiny of our line.”
“Why?” It’s not the question I would ask, certainly not at eleven. I’d be asking where we should hide.
“- won’t say,” Garyus replies.
The Silent Sister breaks her staring at the woman below to glance my way. For an instant I’m sure she sees me-I’m transfixed by those mismatched eyes, the blue and the green. She returns to her study.
“She doesn’t know?” Alica asks.
“Be quiet, child,” Garyus says, though he’s just a boy himself. He looks serious now, old beyond his years, and sad, as if a great weight has been laid upon him. “I could have been king,” he says. “I could have been a good king.”
My grandmother frowns. She hasn’t it in her to lie to him, even this young when the whole world is half make-believe. “Why are we talking about that again?”
Garyus sighs and sits down. “- needs my strength. She needs to see, or this woman will kill us all before we can stop her.”
Alica’s frown deepens. “-’s done that before. . hasn’t she?”
Garyus’s nod is slight enough to be missed. “Even before we were birthed.”
“Don’t do it.” Alica is speaking to them both. “Tell Father. Set the guards on her. Have her thrown in-”
“- needs to see.” Garyus hung his head. “This woman is more than she seems. Much more. If we don’t know her before we act, we will fail.”
The Silent Sister leans over the balustrade now, staring at the woman with such intensity that it trembles in each line of her over-thin body, staring so hard that I almost expect to see the path between them light up with some recognition of the energies being spent. Garyus hunches in on himself, a slight gasp escaping his lips.
Unseen forces mount. My skin crawls with them, and I’m not even there. Down below the sapphires in the woman’s hair seem to return more than the light of lanterns, sparkling with some inner fire, a vivid dance of blue across the blackness of her hair. She sets down her goblet, and looks up, half a smile on wine-dark lips as she meets the Silent Sister’s gaze.
“Ah!” Garyus cries out in pain, limbs drawn tight to him. The Silent Sister opens her mouth as if to scream but, though the air seems to shake with it, there is no sound. I watch her face as she stands, her gaze still locked with the woman’s. For a second I could swear there is steam rising from the Silent Sister’s eyes. . and still she won’t break away. Her nails score the dark wood as some invisible pressure forces her back, and finally, like a branch snapping, she is flung back, reeling, arrested only by the wall behind her. She stands bent double, hands on thighs, pale hair about her face, drawing in shuddering breaths.
“What. .” Garyus’s voice is weak and croaky-more the voice I know. “What did you see?”
There is no answer. The silence stretches. I’m turning back to see what the woman is doing when suddenly the Silent Sister straightens up. Her hair parts and I see that one of her eyes is pearly blind, the other darkened beyond any memory of blue skies.
“Everything.” The Silent Sister speaks it as though it is the last word she will ever utter.
“We need to do something.” Alica, seeming a child for once, states the obvious. “Get me close enough and I’ll stick a knife in her.” The illusion evaporates.