Her skull shifted, as though under invisible fingers. Chips and fragments of bone reassembled themselves like a jigsaw puzzle, knitting back together into a seamless whole. The rents in her skin drew closed, like someone stitching up a seam. Her shoulder was next, torn muscles reknitting, arm straightening as the bones snapped into place. She felt an unpleasant stirring along her back, and as soon as she was able she heaved herself up onto her knees and listened to the quiet click-click as bits of rock that had been forced deep beneath her skin dug themselves out again and clattered to the ground.
Within a few minutes, she could stand. The binding had restored her to the state she had been in before she stepped off the roof, plus or minus a layer of grime and a few pints of blood smeared on her skin or soaking into the turf. As best she could see it was the state she would be in until the long-postponed Day of Judgment finally came to pass. The same state, in other words, that she’d been in four years ago, before she had died the first time.
–
Sothe appeared out of the darkness. She had a way of moving that was so quiet she seemed to materialize from nothing, like a ghost, with equally terrifying effect. In this case, her aura of menance was diminished by the fact that she wore the long blue dress and gray apron of a palace lady’s maid, and was carrying a fluffy towel. Even in this attire, though, she had a formidable air, tall and slim as a blade, dark hair cut short as a boy’s, and sharp, aquiline features.
As far as the world was concerned, Sothe was Raesinia’s maid and personal attendant. That was true, but her duties went considerably further than that. Raesinia knew that before entering her service Sothe had been highly placed in Duke Orlanko’s Concordat, though she was closemouthed about what exactly had prompted her depature.
“There has to be a better way,” Raesinia said. “I mean, this is ridiculous.”
It was easy enough to get into or out of the palace during the day, when a steady stream of delivery carts arrived to feed its vast appetite. Unfortunately, during the day the princess royal needed to be seen. By night, the grounds were closed off and patrolled, which had forced Raesinia to devise this somewhat unorthodox method of escaping unseen.
“It has the virtue of being unexpected,” Sothe said.
“We should knock out those ridiculous leaded glass windows and put in something I can open. Or at the very least get the gardeners to put a planter here. Fill it with dirt and grow something soft. Lavender, maybe. Then I wouldn’t come out of it smelling like blood and brains.”
“The gardeners might wonder,” Sothe said, “why it looked like something had fallen on their plants from a great height.”
As she spoke, she dragged one foot back and forth across the gravel where Raesinia had landed, erasing the small crater and burying the bloodstains. Raesinia sighed and rolled her shoulders, feeling a few errant splinters of bone click back into place. She wiped the worst of the blood off her skin and handed the towel back to Sothe, who accepted it without comment and offered Raesinia a folded silk robe. Thus at least minimally attired, the princess led the way away from the house and out into the woods, Sothe ghosting along behind her.
“Any trouble tonight?” Raesinia said, pushing aside an overhanging branch.
“None at all.” Sothe frowned. “The man Orlanko has assigned to you is. . inattentive. I ought to write him a reprimand.”
“I hope you’ll refrain, for both our sakes.”
“I don’t know,” Sothe said. “I might enjoy a bit more of a challenge.”
Raesinia looked over her shoulder at her maid, but her expression was unreadable. That was the trouble with Sothe-she never smiled, and it was almost impossible to tell when she was joking. Raesinia was fairly sure this was one of those times, but not completely certain. Sothe did occasionally complain that soft living was taking the edge off her skills, and she’d been known to take extreme measures to stay in practice.
The forest they were traversing was as much a work of artifice as the manicured gardens of the palace. It had been carefully tended and sculpted by generations of gardeners into the very epitome of what a forest ought to be, with tall, healthy trees spreading leafy branches, and no irritating undergrowth or unexpected deadfalls that might tangle the footing of an unsuspecting courtier. It was therefore easy going, even with bare feet and by moonlight, and before long they’d reached one of the many little lanes of packed earth that wound through the woods. Here a carriage was waiting, a battered one-horse cab. An elderly gray mare waited in the traces, munching contentedly from a feed bag.
Sothe attended to the horse while Raesinia climbed inside. Gathered on the battered wooden seat, with Sothe’s usual attention to detail, were her necessaries: more towels and a jug of water for a more thorough cleaning, pins for her hair, and clothes and shoes for the evening. As the carriage lurched into motion, Raesinia set about effecting her transformation.
By the time the regular clicking of the wheels over cobblestones indicated that they’d reached the city proper, she was ready. No one from the palace would have recognized her, which was of course the idea. Her normally shoulder-length hair was pinned up and tucked under a short-brimmed slouch cap, and she’d traded the silk robe for cotton trousers and a gray blouse. It was a boyish outfit, although she doubted anyone would mistake her for a boy. That wasn’t the point. Rather, it was the kind of thing a girl student of the University might wear-comfortable and casually defiant of custom. In the taverns and eateries of the Dregs, it was as good as a uniform.
She’d originally wanted to change her name, but Sothe had advised against it. Responding properly to a false name took a good deal of training, and there was always the chance of slipups. Besides, there were thousands of girls named Raesinia in the city, all roughly her age, products of a brief fashion for naming children in honor of the newborn princess. So she became Raesinia Smith, a good solid Vordanai name. Raesinia had spent a few interminable court sessions daydreaming an elaborate backstory for her alter ego, complete with parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, family tragedies, and bittersweet young loves, but somewhat to her disappointment no one had ever asked.
The clicking slowed and stopped. Raesinia checked herself over in the hand mirror Sothe had thoughtfully provided, found nothing out of the place, and opened the carriage door to step out into the Dregs.
She was immediately assaulted by a blast of heat and a blaze of light. It was well past sunset, but the streets were as crowded as if it were noon, and nearly as bright. The torches and braziers burning in front of every open establishment were traditional, as were the lanterns carried by some passersby, but Professor Roetig’s new-pattern gas lamps outshone them all with a steady, unceasing radiance, standing tall atop their high steel sconces. They gave an oddly manic cast to the whole scene, as though the scurrying nighttime revelers were flouting some celestial law.
Carriages were rare in that part of town, and those that were visible were all hired cabs. The three or four miles of Old Street that ran across the front of the University were mostly fronted by shops and drinking establishments catering to the student body, but above and behind these places of business were innumerable second- and third-floor rooms and tumbledown tenements. Here lived those scholars not wealthy enough to secure living space on University grounds, alongside the hawkers, publicans, and prostitutes who worked on and around the nearby streets.