I thought it would be worse.
She wandered back out into the bedroom dripping water as she went and looked at the dresses again. There was only one in black.
Well, that makes this simple.
The long skirt was pleated and fringed in black lace, which she found amusing and she wondered how long that fringe would survive. The blouse was so thin and cold and smooth that she couldn’t imagine what sort of fabric it was made of, and resolved to ask Omar about it later. When she had the top on, she found that it too had black lace around the cuffs and the neck, and there were voluminous folds hanging from her upper and lower arms, overlapping to transform her arms into drooping black flowers. The black jacket at first seemed too small, but that was only because the sleeves only came down to her elbows, the better to display her layered blouse sleeves, she guessed.
When she was finished dressing, she stood in front of the window and squinted at her dim reflection superimposed on the view of the palace grounds outside. A tiny draft whistled around the edge of the window and the movement of the air made her lace and ruffles and ribbons flutter gently around her.
I look like a raven.
She smiled.
A pretty raven.
She found a black ribbon in one of her jacket pockets and used it to tie her thick red hair back from her face, and then she covered her hair and ears with a thin black scarf that she found in the dress cabinet. She stepped back out into the hall and said, “I’m ready.”
The short officer turned and looked at her, and froze. He blinked. “Uhm. Yes.” He smiled, and a nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth made it look as though he wanted to speak but didn’t know what to say.
Wren waited.
“Right.” Tycho tugged his jacket down smooth over his chest and straightened his back. “Let’s be off.” He started walking and she followed, but he kept slowing down a bit to walk beside her instead of in front of her, and since she didn’t know where they were going, she kept slowing down to follow his lead, and so they proceeded rather slowly, glancing at each other every few moments.
Either he thinks I’m pretty, or I put the dress on backwards and he’s trying to think of a polite way to tell me. I don’t think I’d know what to say to either one.
She followed him out into the courtyard and down a broad brick road through a park of yellowed grass and naked trees. Gradually, the major stopped looking up at her and they quickened their pace, and her thoughts returned to the task at hand.
Damn it, Omar. You old coward. Why am I going to talk to this woman? She doesn’t know me. I don’t know her.
“Can I ask you something?” Tycho said, glancing up at her.
Wren looked at him, and for a moment she forgot about the corpses and the immortals, and she saw a handsome young man struggling to keep pace beside her, and she slowed down a bit and managed a smile. “Sure. As long as it’s not about my ears.”
“Oh.” He looked away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Oh gods, he looks mortified!
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” she said. “I’m just a little sensitive about them, and it’s a rather long story.”
“I understand,” he said. “I’d tell you about my condition, but it’s a rather short story.”
She smiled, and he smiled back.
“All right, well, I’ll tell you the short version then,” she said.
“Just my type!”
She said, “Well, there was a plague, and everyone in my country was becoming infected, including me. It wasn’t a normal plague, with spots and smelly bile and death. It was a… soul plague, I guess. Then Omar found a cure, except it wasn’t quite perfect, and everyone was left with a little bit of a fox’s soul inside them, which gave us these ears and eyes.”
“You have a fox’s soul inside you?” He glanced at her with a look of mingled amusement and disbelief.
“Yes. But just a little piece of one.”
“And now everyone in your whole country has ears like that?”
“Yes.”
“Even the men?”
She laughed. “Yes, even the men, although they weren’t very happy about it.”
Tycho blew out a long breath. “Well, if that’s the cure, then I’d hate to see the disease.”
Wren winced and looked away. Visions of deformed monsters ran through a blood-soaked tapestry in her mind. “Yes, you would.”
They walked on in silence for a minute, nodding at passing servants and soldiers. Wren tried to study the strange buildings around them, the huge towers and domes and arches and columns. Omar had told her about the buildings in the south, that they would be larger and grander than anything she had known in Ysland. And he was right, as ever. But there was no magic or mystery about the palace. It was all just cold, gray stone. Shaped and polished and cunningly arranged, yes, but just stone all the same.
Tycho led her up the steps to a many-arched entrance, and Wren saw high above the building a square tower rising behind it.
“She’s up there?” she asked.
“In the Tower of Justice? No, not usually. She’s made herself quite comfortable in the lower chamber. It’s an older hall, abandoned long ago, but still intact,” Tycho said. “It’s not very nice down there.”
“Then why does she stay there?”
“She says she likes it.” Tycho opened the door and ushered her inside a nondescript room of polished marble filled with doorways to other chambers. “When Prince Vlad agreed to defend Constantia, we had no idea he would bring someone like Koschei with him. And I think even Vlad had no idea that Koschei would bring his mother.”
“Life is full of small surprises,” Wren said.
Tycho paused at the top of a stair that led down into a well of flickering torchlight. “Listen, to be honest, I’m still not sure what sort of person she is. She spent most of her time alone even before Koschei was captured. And now, since he’s been gone, she’s been more than a little unhappy, as you can imagine. She comes out at night to harass the soldiers from time to time, but other than that, we don’t see her.”
“No one sees her, not even to bring her food?”
“The servants leave it at the bottom of the stairs for her. But she’s made it fairly clear that she’s not in the mood to take visitors unless there’s word that her son has been freed.” Tycho said, “Are you really a witch, like her?”
“I’m not a witch. I’m a vala.”
“What does that mean?”
“I make medicines from herbs, and I read the stars, and I read dreams, and I talk to ghosts,” said Wren. “Anyone can do what I do, if you learn how.” She fingered the ring inside her glove again, feeling a vague sense of guilt at her one omission.
But he doesn’t need to know about the aether-craft. Not yet, at least.
“I didn’t think you were really a witch, exactly, but the black dress, and the ears, well…” Tycho shrugged. “Are you ready?”
Wren nodded, and they descended the stairs.
The steps spiraled down and the air grew cooler, until they stepped out of an alcove into a large chamber in which their footsteps echoed far into the distant shadows. But only a few paces from the alcove, the floor was covered in Persian carpets, which were covered in dirty animal pelts, many of which had their heads and paws still attached. Three iron braziers stood in a crooked triangle around the rugs, all burning brightly and throwing off waves of heat.