The front door opened with a blast of ice-cold, just as Patty went to rummage in the cupboard for another precious tallow candle that they used only for special occasions. A man’s tall broad-shouldered figure came inside, followed by a smaller figure. Both were carrying loads of kindling and both were dressed in tattered straw-stuffed coats, and had their heads wrapped in homespun scarves underneath his hat and her shawl.
Gusts of frozen wind and swirling flakes came after them, and the fireplace crackled loudly in protest as the wind from the chimney found a sudden new outlet.
“Argh! Brr!” Alann exclaimed, slapping his mittened hands together and stamping his burlap and cotton-wrapped feet to shake the snow off him. Then, turning to the figure behind him, he said: “Quickly, shut the door now, Percy!”
Niobea frowned. “Stop making a mess, Alann. Wipe your feet before you take another step. And you too, girl.”
Percy, swaddled in the only woolen shawl that the sisters shared between them when taking turns going outside, clumsily shifted the bundle of kindling from both hands to one. She then used her shoulder to slam the old wooden door behind them, lifted the bolt and drew it in place.
“Ah, that’s better!” Alann said as he put down his bundle on the beaten earth floor near the door and started to scrape the snow off his wrapped feet. “There’s an early blizzard gathering, you know, wife. Good thing I stocked up on the hay and the flour. Put the extra blanket on the horse too, just in case, in that drafty barn.”
“Good,” Niobea said. “We can’t afford to lose that horse.”
Percy meanwhile dumped her bundle of kindling on top of the rest. She untied the woolen shawl, and underneath it was another cotton one that she kept on, since the inside of the house was chilly despite the lit fireplace. She hung up her coat and shawl and the mittens on the rack in the corner, received her father’s hat and coat and hung them up, then crouched down on the floor and started to wipe her own feet and the snow-sodden bottom of her burlap skirt.
“Why is it so dark?”
From her narrow bed in the corner, Bethesia spoke. Her voice was louder this time, tremulous and somehow frightening.
“What is it, mother?” Alann said. “What’s wrong?”
“So dark!” repeated the old woman, and then moaned.
“Oh, blessed saints . . . Patty, the candle, now!” Niobea said anxiously.
“Oh,” said Patty, who’d gotten distracted by the new arrivals and now hurriedly resumed rummaging through the cupboard.
Percy stood staring at her youngest sister’s quick panicked movements. And then she wiped her forehead tiredly and said, “I thought we used the last candle for All Hallow’s Eve.”
Patty stopped, turned around, her mouth falling open.
Niobea frowned. “You’re sure, child?”
In that moment the wind outside rose with a banshee scream, rattling the shutters, and then all of a sudden there was absolute silence.
Not a gust. As though someone had torn all the noise from the universe. It was so silent that everyone paused involuntarily, listening.
And in the silence, old Bethesia’s breath came rasping.
“Mother!” Alann said, feeling a sudden ill premonition. Forgetting his sludge-covered feet he took the steps to cross the small room to his old mother’s bedside.
“Oh, Gran!” Belle said, the same premonition bringing terror to her eyes.
Niobea stood up, dropping her needlework, and she crossed herself.
“Granny!” Patty exclaimed.
Percy remained standing near the door. She had grown absolutely still. And while the others had all their attention focused on the grandmother, Percy was looking to the shadow in the corner, the thickening of darkness at the head of the old woman’s bed.
Percy blinked, while cold filled her, a cold beyond all colds, beyond Winter itself.
The cold of recognition.
Because she
knew
that shadow. She had seen it before, in the indigo twilight, lurking beneath the trunks of the thickest oldest trees in the forest, at the edges of the lake where the shore sloped into nothing just before it touched the water.
The edges of things contained traces of it. The endings.
Most recently it had slithered in her grandmother’s dark irises and then sank away into the pupils, appearing then dissolving, as though not wanting to be caught just yet.
And now here it was, fully formed in the thickness of shadows.
Percy was not surprised at all. She looked at it blankly, and wondered why no one else in the room had bothered to glance in that shadowed corner at the head of Bethesia’s bed, why no one else seemed to notice this thing for which she had no name.
“So
. . . dark and . . . quiet,” Bethesia whispered, her breathing coming laboriously.
“Oh, God!” Niobea said, trembling, coming to stand before the bed, while Alann put his hand on his mother’s cold and clammy forehead.
“Ah . . . Alann . . .” Bethesia breathed, each intake of air a great harsh shudder. Her shallow chest rose and fell.
It was interminable.
“She is going . . .” whispered Niobea. “No time to get the priest. He wouldn’t come in this storm anyway, not for us.”
“Silent, woman,” Alann said in carefully controlled anger, not wanting to raise his voice so near the old woman, and yet wanting to yell, to scream. “Don’t speak this way, Niobea, don’t speak a word, if you must. Belle, Percy, someone get water!”
“Yes, I . . . I’ll heat some water in the kettle,” Belle said. And she turned hurriedly to refill the kettle from the clay water jar.
“Look in the back there on the second shelf,” Niobea whispered. “I’ve saved a small box with dry tea. Make it, now.”
“Yes, Ma.”
“Aaaah.
. . .” Bethesia moaned.
“Oh, God in Heaven, have mercy!” Alann held the skeletal hands of his mother, stroked her forehead. His strong rough-hewn face was contorted, and he was biting his lips.
They stood thus, long moments filled only with the regular sound of harsh breath issuing out of the old woman, while Patty and Belle searched for the box of tea, and the kettle water boiled.
Niobea pulled up a bench to the bedside, and made Alann sit down, while she sat next to him.
The fire crackled, and Percy took several steps forward, ignored by all, until she stood near the head of the bed and faced the shadow.
Up close, it had no face. There was neither shape nor texture to it, only a sense of
non-being
so pronounced that it stood out.
“Who are you?” whispered Percy—so softly that her mother barely raised her head, then looked away again. Niobea had taken a tiny holy icon of the Mother of God from its nook altar in the corner, and now she held it gingerly in her hands, reciting a voiceless prayer with her lips only.
The shadow remained silent.
The kettle had boiled and Belle poured the water over a small sprinkle of precious dry tea leaves in a large wooden bowl. She stirred it with a wooden spoon until the water turned the color of amber, then even darker, and a faint barely pungent vapor curled from the surface.
Long moments passed while the tea cooled somewhat. Belle poured it into a mug over straining cloth and passed it to Alann who attempted to lift Bethesia’s head up just enough so that he could tip the mug at her lips.
The old woman lay passive, a doll. She did not make any attempt to part her lips or swallow, so that the warm tea dribbled down the withered skin of her cheeks, ran down her chin and throat and soaked her thin cotton nightshirt.
“No . . .” she gurgled eventually, her voice faint as a feather. “Let me be, son. . . . See, it stands here waiting for me . . . My time . . . at hand. How quiet. . . .”
Patty frowned, looking around then, glancing at the silent shutters on the windows, and the barely crackling fireplace.
“It really is odd,” she whispered. “Why has it gotten so quiet?”
“What, mother?” Niobea said gently, “What do you see?”
At which point Alann began to weep. He hid his face against the old woman’s chest and his form shook silently.
“I see it,” Percy said, responding in her grandmother’s stead. “There’s a thing of shadow that is standing right here in the corner, near Gran’s head. I’m not sure what it is, and it does not seem to be frightening or even moving. It’s like a strange sentinel.”
“Hush!” Niobea exclaimed, turning to her middle daughter with anguish and outrage. “How dare you say such things, horrible child, and at a time like this! Have respect for your poor grandmother!”
Percy looked directly in her mother’s eyes. “But,” she said. “But I can see it!”
“Get out!” Niobea screamed. She was trembling, clutching the icon of the Lord’s Mother wrapped in their best cotton towel, so that it nearly dropped to the floor.
Percy’s eyes were great and dark and liquid.
While Belle and Patty stared at their sister in silence, she turned away slowly. And then Percy walked to the corner rack where their coats and shawls hung. Moving as though in a dream, she took the only woolen shawl down from the peg, wrapped it around herself, then took her ragged coat and put it on.
What are you doing, child?
But no, she had only imagined it. The words seemed to ring in her mind, soft, kind, even though no one had spoken. They were the words she wanted with all her heart to hear, from someone, anyone. Words that would have given her a reason to pause.
Had it been another time, maybe her father would have spoken them. He was always the kindest, and he seemed to notice things a bit more than the others.
But now Alann was made insensitive by grief, his face hidden in his dying mother’s chest, oblivious to all around them.
And thus the words were not spoken at all.
And Percy did not pause but pulled up the bolt and then parted the door a bit, feeling the evening twilight and the icy cold rush in all at once.
She stepped outside in the quiet, closed the door securely behind her, and made sure it was sealed tight. Knowing that no one would bother to look back to watch her passing, she did not want them to grow chill—not from her own carelessness.
Then Percy stood on the porch of their house, bathed by an impossible silence. There was no wind, only peculiar gentle snowfall. In the twilight the snowflakes came in delicate clumps or individually, crystals from the sky. They dusted the white ground with a fresh crisp layer, and they sparkled on the branches of the old elm tree in the backyard and the thatched roof of the barn beyond which lay their tiny field, and across the street, the neighbors’ houses. They landed on her eyelashes and swept her cheeks.
The world was suspended.
Percy stood there like a dolt, having nowhere really to go, and indeed no will to do anything. She then slowly lowered herself on the ground and sat down in a lump right in front of her father’s house, feet tucked underneath her, wrapping the burlap skirt tightly to keep out the ice and tucking her hands in her sleeves since she had forgotten her mittens.
She froze gently and watched the snow.
Something strange was happening, and it had to do with the shadow in the corner, the one that had stood sentinel over Gran’s head.
Persephone, strange girl, knew somehow that, although tonight had been her grandmother’s time, yet at the same time it
had not—
would not be. For she knew with a certainty that death was not going to claim her, or anyone else for that matter.
Neither this night, nor the next.
D
eath’s fourth stop was magnificent and most distant of all, to the south, in the heart of the Realm. And, as with all the others, not a heartbeat elapsed.
The Silver Court was the Imperial Seat of power of the Realm—the capital and the center of all things. Neither a full-fledged city nor a proper citadel, it retained elements of both, incorporating splendid structures of the grand Imperial Palace, three immense cathedrals, including the Basilica Dei Coello, numerous galleries, lyceums, ornamental gardens, and outlying estates.
Situated at the exact meeting point of the three kingdoms—Lethe, Styx, and Morphaea—the Silver Court was officially its own entity, and the three kingdoms surrounding it sprawled outward like subservient petals from its neutral core. In theory this ensured that the Emperor could never play favorites among the vassal kingdoms. In practice, the kingdoms of the Realm eternally vied for imperial privilege and attention, and could only be united against a common threat to the south, beyond the foreign borders—a chronic threat issuing from the Realm’s grand neighbor, the Domain.
The Silver Court of the Realm took its name from the grandiose silver-trimmed Hall of the Imperial Palace where the Emperor Josephuste Liguon II and the Emperors before him held the most splendid balls in the world. The Hall’s lofty ceiling was painted by the great Fiorello into a scene of Heaven where each cloud had not merely a silver lining but was coated completely with a paper-thin sheet of pressed silver, and where the Figure of God shone with the purity of this metal while the beatific Angels wore silver halos.
Gold had been deemed too much of a worldly metal by the ancient Emperor whose conceit this Hall had been. And unfortunately, since silver tarnished so easily, the whole of the grand Hall had to be polished and restored every season by a cadre of Imperial Silversmiths.
From the ceiling were suspended a hundred chandeliers of transparent crystal, while more crystal hung in garlands on the walls that were the color of deep burgundy.
The Emperor Josephuste and the Empress Justinia held court while seated upon silver thrones trimmed with burgundy velvet, and the light of a thousand candles shone upon the mirror-polished wooden mosaic of the lacquered parquet floor.
It was the depth of winter now and the roof and overhangs of the Palace were covered with the ermine coat of snow. Within the walls the myriad corridors were a hive of mayhem as servants of every rank sped about on their tasks. For, tonight was the great Birthday Feast of the Infanta, only beloved daughter of the Emperor, and all of the nobility were invited, including select foreign royalty.
Outside the Palace the wind howled, swirling snowflakes into a haze of whiteness, and the darkening sky was the color of faint mauve twilight and milk. Aristocratic carriages arrived one after another at the gates, met by liveried servants who seemed permanently fixed in bowed stances from their non-stop genuflecting and from the relentless cold.
Today the Infanta turned sixteen, and would make her social debut as a grown Princess of the Realm and no longer a child.
The Infanta, Claere Liguon, was a slight and sickly creature, and her ailments were so plentiful and frequent that she was almost never seen in public at all. Tonight she was to put in a brief appearance as the clock struck eight, and then, after a dutiful hour of hearing out the Court’s congratulations and receiving gifts, she would once again retire to her living quarters and immediately to bed where she spent most of her time.
The Silver Hall was filling with noble guests as Peers of the Realm arrived in elegant haste yet with a proper semblance of nonchalance—dukes and baronets and marquises and counts and minor lordlings accompanied by their bedecked spouses, all having surrendered their winter furs and capes at the Palace foyer into the accommodating hands of imperial liveried lackeys.
The Chamberlains had grown hoarse from announcing His Lordship so-and-so and Her Ladyship this-and-that with every breath. The great long gift table on the side of the hall was overflowing with garishly sparkling wrapped boxes, containers of all shapes and sizes, chests, baskets, trinkets, trifles, and curiosities. There were numerous clockwork toys, for none could rival the clockmakers of the Realm for their skill with the delicate timepiece mechanisms—armies of windup miniature horses of lacquered wood and ivory bore upon their backs tiny metallic knights, and reposed on platforms in military lineups; delicate copper and gold birds with jewel eyes perched within filigree cages; porcelain courtier dolls wearing full crinolines or jackets of lace and crimson silk stood in various poses of suspended half-life.
Meanwhile, gossip bounced like champagne bubbles around the hall.
“Can you imagine the poor sickly dear finally venturing forth into
le haut monde
on her sixteenth birthday?” the distinguished and well-preserved Duchess Christiana Rovait of Morphaea uttered in a stage whisper, fanning herself and inclining her grand-wigged and powdered head closer to the equally grandiose head of the Countess Jain Lirabeau whose northern estate lay within the same kingdom.
“Oh, tonight is going to be very interesting,” the sultry Countess Lirabeau replied in a softer voice. She was young and beautiful and yet powdered so that her skin was fashionably wan and matte as porcelain, while her lips were a shock of delicately outlined crimson. Her wig stood up a foot and a half over her head, its ringlets meticulously arranged and strings of pearls winding through the silver locks. “I dare say the Infanta will be coddled as always by her Imperial Papa, and then rushed off out of sight. That’s when the real excitement will begin. His Imperial Majesty has more pressing matters in the form of Balmue-flavored politics. The envoys of the King of Balmue are here. Look, there, toward the back near the Duke of Plaimes and his gawky son—see those four men clad in silver and sienna brown? Those colors they wear are shades of Balmue. And if I am not mistaken, there are enough secret sympathizers in the Silver Court to make things very interesting indeed.”
“Interesting and quite tense—goodness, is that the wind I hear outside? Interminable blizzard. Now, what of the outcome of the confrontation between the Red and Blue Dukes tonight? Any news on that? Oh, how I do adore Lethe’s chronic military antics—or what passes for such, directly under the nose of their poor Prince Osenni. He is not here, is he? No, I dare say not—not with the old dear Queen Andrelise so very indisposed.”
“I am certain all of Lethe stayed home. We are stuck with our own, and most of Styx. They even brought His youthful Majesty King Augustus Ixion. There he stands, the poor boy, surrounded by grave old men. Most depressing, I dare say, if he is hoping to get more than a moment with the Infanta. But then, one is never too young to start planning royal connections.”
But the Duchess Rovait barely deigned to glance in the direction of the very young and newly orphaned King of Styx, a thin, anxious-faced youth of no more than fourteen, overdressed in pearl-embroidered crimson and black velvet, bewigged like a gilded doll, and surrounded indeed by distinguished “advisors.” Royal children did not interest her, and neither did political puppets, and she was apparently more interested in discussing Lethe.
“Goraque’s retinue is noticeably absent,” the Duchess Rovait continued. “And as for Chidair, Lord knows he is a strange fellow, and is not to be expected to be present, not even with all of Balmue knocking at our gates.”
“Yes, Duke Hoarfrost would much rather pummel his neighbor than an actual adversary,” remarked Jain Lirabeau mockingly. Her eyes glittered remarkably tonight, with belladonna-enhanced dark pupils, under the thousand candles of the Hall. And, oh, how well her cornflower blue crinoline dress offset her porcelain pallor. . . .
“Now, Vitalio Goraque, on the other hand, he would have been here no doubt—”
“Fie! That is absurd! How could he manage to be here on the same night as the battle? Were he to ride breakneck and put three horses to lather, he’d still make it to Court only by morning, at the earliest.”
“Oh, no you misunderstand, my dear,” said the Duchess Rovait, laughing. “The very notion would be ludicrous, just taking into account the distance between here and there. And indeed, no man is expected to forgo the military pleasures for any other enterprise. What I meant was, Goraque is a true man of Court—even if the rest of Lethe leaves much to be desired in that respect—and he would have been here, if such a thing were achievable.”
“In that case, I do see what you mean, Your Grace. Though, indeed, a man of one court does not equal a man of another. They cannot hope to rival the refinement of Morphaea with its urban splendors of Duorma—Letheburg’s Palace is nothing to Duorma’s Palazzio. We breed nobility, lofty and true, I always recall, when I am back at home up north, or when I visit your own idyllic estate, or when I attend the gracious court of His Majesty Orphe Geroard. Nothing but the Silver Court itself will ever exceed the courtly pleasure of sweet Morphaea.”
“Yes, and now you flatter and tease, my charming dear girl—but, do go on in this precise manner, with such delightful exaggerating!”
“Well, only a little!”
In that moment of their rapturous native reminiscence, a slim, dark nobleman approached the Duchess and Countess. He bowed deeply before them, interrupting the splendid stream of gossip with his sudden presence.
“Ah, my dear Vlau! I am perfectly flabbergasted to see you here after all!” exclaimed the Countess Lirabeau, and even the white sheen of powder could not conceal a sudden blooming of rose color in her cheeks. “For some reason I didn’t imagine for a moment that you were seriously planning to attend. But you are here, and I am . . . gratified!” With a flutter she turned to her more matronly companion, saying, “Your Grace, may I introduce the Marquis Vlau Fiomarre?”
The Marquis bowed again, his impeccable elegance of movement so pleasing that the Duchess Rovait could not help but allow her gaze to linger on the young man’s willowy frame clad in somber black. His serviceable, but badly fitting wig was almost carelessly under-powdered, revealing at the edges his real hair with much of its natural darkness showing, gathered behind him in a queue. But none of it mattered, for his shoulders were wide and his eyes black, disturbing with their intensity. His eyes affected her with a thrill, for despite her maturity, the Duchess was not immune to male charms.
“It is a pleasure, Your Grace. And well met again, My Lady Lirabeau. My deepest thanks for your most kind references in my admittance to this Imperial Assembly.”
The Duchess Rovait dropped her fan so that it dangled on a satin tassel at her wrist, and then picked up her lorgnette and trained it at the young man. “Fiomarre,” she mused. “Why do I know this name? Is that one of the south-east provinces?”
“Almost correct, Your Grace,” he replied in a somber voice, focusing a gaze of his beautiful, disturbing eyes at her. “It is a small Styx principality to the south and west of here, bordering with Balmue. We grow grapes and olives, Your Grace. That is, my father’s lands grow these crops—”
“Aha!” Christiana Rovait said, as her brows swept upward and her lorgnette dropped back on its golden chain. “Now I recall, young man, Fiomarre cognac! I knew it sounded familiar. Wonderfully virile, dare one say it—erotic stuff.”
For the first time the Marquis Fiomarre’s serious face allowed a faint trace of a smile to soften his expression—but only for a moment. And he bowed once again, acknowledging the Duchess’s blatant compliment.
There was a lull in the chatter as noteworthy new arrivals appeared at the grand entrance of the Silver Hall.
“The Right Honorable Lady Amaryllis Roulle of Morphaea, the Right Honorable Lady Ignacia Chitain of Styx, and the Right Honorable Lord Nathan Woult of Morphaea!” a Chamberlain announced.
And the Silver Court turned to ogle the newcomers, for these were three of the most dashing and popular of the younger set, and together they called themselves the League of Folly.
Lady Amaryllis was a slim tall beauty with black hair and pale delicate skin—a dark antique pagan goddess. Tonight she wore a brilliant scarlet gown trimmed with black velvet and braid of the exact deep ebony shade as her hair that, unfortunately, in all its resplendent glory, was fashionably concealed by the powdered pallor of a tall wig. Lady Amaryllis had the tongue of a wasp and the sharpness of an angry fae, but also knew how to be so charming that she was everyone’s darling, and ruled the Silver Court like the Faerie Queen herself.
At her side, Lady Ignacia Chitain wearing jade green, paled into insignificance, despite her equally marvelous wig and powder concealing what was known to be radiant auburn hair, and a fair flawless complexion.
Finally, came the young Lord Nathan Woult dressed in silver velvet. His own disdainful elegance, a pristine metallic wig over midnight hair, and pale bloodless features, made him a fitting consort to the unspoken Faerie Queen of the League of Folly and the Silver Court.
“Trouble is here,” said the Countess Lirabeau, glancing at the newcomers.
“Ah, poppycock,” the Duchess Rovait retorted, once more lifting her lorgnette to examine the elegant newcomers, and Lord Woult in particular. “These are lovely children, my dear, and you must learn to observe them as such. They are a fair source of entertainment.”
“They are wicked!” Jain Lirabeau said in a loud whisper. Somehow it coincided with a general lull in conversation and was thus heard all the way down the Hall. Realizing her own blunder, the Countess bit her lower lip and sighed.