"Her uncle had died, and she had ascended the dais in his stead, a crown placed upon her head. Once, the nobility had tried to revolt. Once, Lord Galldrian of House Riatin had mustered enough support to march on the capital. Once, she had put whole towns to the sword. Once, she had lined the streets of the capital with the heads of traitors — one for every corner, for every street lamp. Once, she had stalked through Cairhien with saidar on her lips and blood soaked up the hems of her dress. Once, she had confiscated estates all across the countryside, throttling the flow of coin into those Houses who had forgotten the meaning of loyalty, who had forgotten their place, letting them die the slow death of obscurity and ruin.
Now, they are afraid to speak her name. Now, the Sun Throne is secure beyond all measure. Now, her rule is absolute."
-Sun Queen Moiraine Damodred from 'kept impulse dormant"
Rating: E (please note the rating change for sexy times)
Wordcount: 22,489
Summary: The White Tower is not at all what Siuan expects, and neither are the people she meets within it. A prequel to "New Spring" covering the three years of Moiraine and Siuan as Novices. (some minor book spoilers)
Read it here on AO3
(and have some memes for this chapter below the cut because I love my chaotic girl squad)
Rating: Mature (there are explicit previous chapters tho)
Wordcount: 9,805 (keeping this under 10k was the real test)
Summary: The White Tower is not at all what Siuan expects, and neither are the people she meets within it. A prequel to "New Spring" covering the three years of Moiraine and Siuan as Novices. (some minor book spoilers)
Author notes: this story was supposed to be finished, but my wife asked about what happened during the Accepted Tests and a few people have been asking about a Moiraine POV, so here we are. The Accepted Test from Moiraine’s POV.
Read it below or read it here on AO3
BEGINNING NOTES
-some book spoilers, but mainly for those book readers who know what we’re looking for. The Test canonically involves creating alternate realities that someone must face. You can just treat the imagery seen in the Test as messy symbolic foreshadowing. Please note that not everything that appears in the Tests is at all how events play out in the books. There is some truth to the Tests, but never the kind you might expect.
—
—
Moiraine has to run her hand along the central column of the narrow winding staircase to steady herself as she follows Merean down. They have been descending the White Tower for what feels like floors innumerable. One staircase leads to another, each more tightly spiralled than the last, until Moiraine feels like she’s back in the bowels of a centuries-old castle she had explored as a child, play-fighting her eldest sister with sticks they had found, until it wasn’t playing anymore, until both their tempers had — as they always invariably did — gotten the better of them.
She wonders now if this, too, will end in tears and bloodshed.
Finally they step into a large room, domed, cavernous, carved into the very bedrock beneath Tar Valon. Cold lights flicker along the walls, and in the centre of the circular room there stands three silver archways. Where one ends another begins, the three contained by a silver circle engraved in the floor, a single seamless gleaming piece. Beneath each arch there shimmers light like a veil, too bright and too opaque to see through to the other side.
Several Aes Sedai sit, cross-legged, upon the ground where the arches touch the silver ring. Demira Sedai in her brown-fringed shawl stands beside a plain table that bears three chalices. Moiraine scans the Aes Sedai present with a quick glance, identifying a few she knows, only for her eyes to widen and then drop to her feet.
Tamra Ospenya is right there. Light, the Amyrlin Seat herself.
Merean stops before they can fully cross the threshold. She turns to Moiraine and points back towards the archways. “Through each doorway, you will face your greatest fears. No one will ask you what you have faced; you need tell no more than you wish. Every woman’s fears are her own property.”
She waits for Moiriane to nod before she continues, “Once you begin, you must continue to the end. Refuse to go on, and no matter your potential, you will kindly be put out of the Tower with enough silver to support you for a year, and you will never be allowed back. You may turn back now, and you will not be made to leave The Tower. You may turn back twice, but on the third time, you will be made to leave us. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” says Moiraine.
“Good.” Merean shifts the blue shawl over her shoulders. “To seek, to strive, is to know danger. You will know danger here. If you will survive, you must be steadfast. Falter at your peril.”
Then she turns and continues further into the room. Moiraine trails in her wake. She slowly curls her hands into fists at her side, feeling her nails bite deep into her palms. The pain grounds her, makes her feel more present; it drives away the anxiety burnishing in her gut, if only a little.
They come to a halt before the silver ring in the ground, and wait.
“Whom do you bring with you?” Tamra asks, her voice echoing along the stone walls.
“One who comes as a candidate for Acceptance,” Merean answers.
“Is she ready?”
“She is ready to leave behind what she was and, passing through her fears, gain Acceptance.”
“Does she know her fears?”
“She has never faced them, but now is willing.”
“Then let her face what she fears.”
This part at least Moiraine knows. Methodically and as calmly as she knows how, she gets undressed. She cannot take anything through the archways and she can bring nothing back. Three years of being a Novice has not yet managed to stamp out her sense of Cairhienin propriety, not fully. When she’s finished undressing and wearing not a stitch, she doesn’t give into the urge to cross her arms and instead settles for crossing her hands loosely before her and gripping her opposite wrists.
Merean’s next words hold the same ritualism as those shared with the Amyrlin Seat. “The first time is for what was,” she says to Moiraine. “The way back will come but once. Be steadfast.”
The veil of light beneath the first arch shines like the surface of water, like one of the lures Siuan had taught her to use once down by the banks of the river, barbed with hooks for an unwary fish to clamp its mouth around and so be caught.
She can still go back. She can refuse. She doesn’t.
Moiraine walks forward. The light is everywhere. The light is everything. The light is the world and the world is —
The world is larger. Everything has been scaled up. The ceilings higher and elaborately coffered. The walls bowed and towering. The furniture lush and several sizes too big for her to sit upon unless she clambers up with little grace. She is already seated on a couch, feet dangling over the floor.
She sits in one of the drawing rooms in the wing of the Sun Palace dedicated to her father and his children. Ancestral portraits and large gold-framed mirrors cluster the richly panelled walls. All of them have been covered with white cloth like mourning shrouds. Snow drifts down outside, visible through the tall narrow windows. She is wearing white, without even the colours of her House to denote the station that is her due. Her shoes are pristinely ivory, but her stockings are damp; she can vaguely recall being scolded for running out in the snow earlier that morning. That seems like a lifetime ago.
Her father stands before the enormous fireplace. Dalresin’s usual straight-backed posture has drained away, and he grips the mantlepiece as if it’s the only thing keeping him from collapsing onto the floor. A full silver tea set rests upon the table in the centre of the room between the couches and chairs. Nobody touches it except Taringail. Moiraine’s eldest sister, Anvaere, watches their brother stir honey into a teacup and tap the spoon against the blue-patterned porcelain. The sound rings out like a knell, the only sound in the room apart from the crackle of the fireplace and Innloine’s steady weeping.
“Would you stop with the crying already?” Taringail mutters, exasperated. “You’ve been at it since yesterday.”
Innloine sobs into her silk handkerchief. Moiraine shuffles a little closer on the couch they share, and awkwardly pats her older sister’s knee. Innloine grasps her hand in a painful grip and doesn’t let go. Moiraine immediately regrets her decision.
“Leave her alone,” Anvaere says coldly, her dark eyes boring into Taringail without blinking.
Taringail takes a sip of his tea. “It’s unseemly, all this weeping. She’s a Damodred, for Light’s sake. She might as well act like one.”
“At least she has tears,” says Anvaere accusingly.
Taringail lifts his cup towards Moiraine as though in a toast. “I haven’t seen Moiraine cry, and she’s supposedly the baby.”
Shrinking against the couch cushions, Moiraine wishes the room were larger, large enough to swallow her whole.
“This whole thing is a farce anyway.” Taringail snorts and shakes his head. Of the five of them, he is the only one not wearing white. His Courtly garb is as sleek and dark as his hair. “A state funeral? What a charade. I agree with Uncle Laman — she doesn’t warrant it.”
Anvaere’s face is a mask of icy rage. “She was our mother.”
“She was your mother,” Taringail corrects. “My mother was a woman of proper breeding and station, not some filth off the streets who happened to spread her legs wide enough for someone to take notice.”
Anvaere grabs a teacup from the table and hurls it at Taringail’s head. He ducks, dropping his own tea to the ground in the process, and the cup shatters against the far wall. Shards of porcelain scatter across the polished wooden floorboards. Moiraine winces. Innloine cries harder. Anvaere’s on her feet, bristling with anger.
“You almost hit me,” Taringail says, sounding incredulous.
“Now, that’s enough.” Dalresin turns from the fireplace. The light of the flames flicker in the sharp hollows of his cheekbones. He appears gaunt, as though he could not stomach the very thought of food. “Taringail, I’ll not hear ill words about my wife on the day of her funeral, of all days.”
“Oh, now you defend her!” Anvaere barks out a bitter laugh. “Tell me: where was your spine for all these years? When your brothers and cousins sneered at her? When they called her a whore grasping above her means?”
“I did everything I could -” their father starts to say, but Anvaere throws her hands up in anger before he can finish.
“That funeral was a complete disgrace! You couldn’t defend her in life, and you cannot even defend her in death!” she shouts. Her words ring through the air. “Well? Tell me I’m wrong! Tell me!”
Dalresin doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything.
“You are weak and a coward,” she hisses. “You are fucking pathetic.”
“At last, something we agree upon,” Taringail says dryly.
Anvaere jabs a finger in his direction and growls, “Shut up. Don’t you dare speak to me, you worthless piece of -"
“Stop fighting,” Dalresin says wearily. “I can’t do this. Not today. Please just -”
Taringail steps to the side of their father so that he and Anvaere can glower at one another across the low-slung table. “You can’t talk to me like that. You’re nothing compared to me. I am going to be the Prince-Consort of Andor. I am going to save this House from ruin. I am going to — Would you be quiet already?”
The last he snaps at Innloine. His hands are curled into fists. There’s more brewing in the room than just tea. Moiraine steels herself for the worst, ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice.
“I said: leave her alone!” Anvaere stands between Taringaill and the couch upon which Innloine and Moiraine sit. Moiraine can just see her father’s and brother’s faces around the straightness of Anvaere’s shoulders and the bulk of her skirts. Dalresin looks helpless and tired beyond recognition.
Anvaere’s voice drops to a low swooping note when she speaks. “You think you are going to be something great, and you don’t even recognise that you’re being pushed to the side already! Laman is marrying you off to Tigraine Mantear because he sees you for the snake you are! You will be noosed behind the Lion Throne like some prized stallion — stud fee paid for and bought! You will be barred by law from ever taking the Sun Throne! You will never have what you so desperately covet!”
With every word from her mouth, Taringail’s face grows more and more red. The muscles of his jaw bunch up and a vein throbs at his forehead. She has scarcely finished speaking — her words still echoing along the ceiling — when he suddenly snaps and lunges for her.
Anvaere snatches up a knife from the table before it’s knocked aside, silver and tea flying across the floor. They are upon each other like wolves, teeth bared, snarling wordless invectives. With a shout of surprise, Dalresin tries to push himself between them. Taringail has Anvaere’s knife hand by the wrist from when she had a moment before tried to stab him in the neck.
Innloine gives a little shriek of terror and Moiraine jumps up to grab hold of the back of Anvaere’s dress. Hauling back on the fabric with all her weight accomplishes very little. She is too small, too skinny, too young. Anvaere is older than her by only four years, but the difference between twelve and sixteen might as well be night and day.
Anvaere’s head snaps back when Taringail finds it with his fist, but it only seems to spur her on. Anvaere manages to wrench her knife hand free and slashes wildly. Taringail howls. The knife handle sticks out of his upper arm.
“You bitch! You fucking bitch!”
Taringail tries to scramble for her, knife still stuck in him like a side of steak. His expression has transformed into something Moiraine has never seen before, something ugly and utterly livid, but somehow Dalresin manages to haul him bodily back. They lurch away a few paces until Taringail begins to wrestle himself free.
When Anvaere tries to move forward, Moiraine grabs her arm. “No, don’t -!”
Anvaere rounds upon her with a blind shove, and snaps, “Don’t touch me!”
Moiraine stumbles. She slips on a fallen saucer and cracks her forehead against a corner of the overturned tea table. The world spins. She attempts to stand but slumps into a seated position on the ground. She can’t see out of one eye; it stings and blood drips down in a steady sheet from her brow onto the clean white fabric of her dress.
Groggily, she blinks up to find Anvaere looking at her with an ashen expression, her eyes wide, a bruise already beginning to form on her cheek. Dalresin is still trying to drag Taringail out of the room while Taringail spits and snarls like an animal. He says something that makes Anvaere turn again with fury painted in every line of her body, tense and ready to —
“Stop it!” Innloine cries. “Oh, stop it, both of you!”
Anvaere stops. Jaw set, she spares Moiraine one last stricken glance then goes storming off in the opposite direction from their brother and father. The door to the western parlour slams shut behind her, and Taringail’s foul curses fade down the hall outside along with Dalresin’s placating murmurs.
When Moiraine feels something touch her shoulder, she flinches back. It’s only Innloine, kneeling down beside her.
“Let me see,” Innloine says softly.
Her hands are gentle, yet Moiraine braces herself as though for an incoming blow. A small gasp escapes her as Innloine touches the gash across her eyebrow with her handkerchief. Innloine makes a soft cooing noise as though to a beloved hunting hound that has gotten its paw trapped in a snare.
“You should find Aine Sedai and have her Heal you.” Innloine’s hand drifts down to cup Moiraine’s cheek, her thumb stroking against her bloodied jawline. She sighs. “I hope it doesn’t scar. You can’t afford to have your pretty face marred. Oh, my dress!”
With a glance down at herself, Innloine begins to fret over the red spots that have gotten onto her hems. She rises to her feet and departs, muttering to herself about how difficult it is to wash blood from silk. When she’s gone Moiraine is alone amidst the silent wreckage.
The crackle of the fireplace pops suddenly. Logs slip against one another. For a long while Moiraine sits there, unmoving. When she sniffles, she gets blood up her nose and has to sneeze. She wipes her face with her forearm, leaving a long red streak along her sleeve. She will be scolded for that later. Then she clambers to a kneeling position and begins to pick up the broken pieces all around her.
The silver archway appears. She does a double take. It shimmers in place like a beacon in the darkly-panelled room. Moiraine hesitates.
She can’t leave now. She needs to pick up all these pieces. She needs to pick up all these pieces, or her mother will be cross. Her mother will be —
Her mother will be —
Letting the shards of sharp porcelain clatter to the ground, she stumbles upright. She is still crying when she reappears on the other side of the doorway. Gritting her teeth, she wipes at her face and gets control of her breathing.
She looks down at her hands, fully expecting them to be bright and boldly red. The blood has vanished, but the memory of the gash on her forehead still aches. Some days even now, years later, she looks at herself in the mirror and can imagine the scar that would've sliced through her eyebrow had Aine Sedai been less proficient at Healing.
Demira takes one of the chalices from the table and approaches. She pours cool clean water over Moiraine’s head. The shock of it is bracing, it brings her back to herself and washes away the clarity of the scene within the ter’angreal like old blood washes down the drain.
“You are washed clean of what sin you may have done,” Demira intones, “and of those done against you. You are washed clean of what crime you may have committed, and of those committed against you. You come to us washed clean and pure, in heart and soul.”
Moiraine shivers as the water drips to the stone floor. She moves woodenly when Merean herds her towards the second archway and says, “The second time is for what is. The way back will come but once. Be steadfast.”
For a moment Moiraine doesn’t move. She watches the ripple of light beneath the archway, straining to see what lies beyond it. Her eyebrow gives a twinge of phantom pain, and she touches it. Then, straightening, Moiraine steps forward, and light consumes her.
She is standing in a long hallway that curves in either direction, as though it would eventually meet in a complete circle further along. The marble stone is bright yet weathered, ornate yet weighty. Iron-banded doors stand at attention between arched columns that march along the walls on either side, and on the floor a runner extends in a long unbroken line.
She should know this place. It should be a corridor like any corridor in the White Tower, but she has lived here for years and never has she come across such a place during her time in Tar Valon.
Her hands bunch into fists around her skirts. Gone the Novice whites. Instead, she’s wearing Accepted robes, banded in all the colours of the Ajahs.
Every door, every column, every mason-worked stone appears too uniform. As though someone has simply repeated one instance many times over. The patterns are too smooth and repetitious. Here, a smudge on a column capital exactly the same as the smudge on the next. There, a crack in the floor exactly the same as a crack three paces further along.
Moiraine follows the consistencies with steps faltering then purposeful. She strides down the hall for so long, she’s sure the end must come soon, but it never does. It loops round itself until she’s dizzy, until her footsteps have quickened to a trot, then to a flat out run.
A figure appears around the bend, walking calmly towards her, and the tension in Moiraine’s shoulders goes puddling onto the floor the moment she catches sight of Siuan.
“Oh, thank the Light,” Moiraine says, and she races forward to catch Siuan in a bone-breaking hug.
Siuan grunts, returning the hug with a warm laugh. “Are you trying to make me heave up my breakfast?”
“Sorry.” Moiraine steps back but she keeps her hands around Siuan’s arms as though she might slip away into the thinning air without a trace.
Siuan is also wearing Accepted robes and Moiraine exhales a great sigh of relief. They’ve passed. Both of them. They’re alive, and they’ve passed, and they’re here together.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Siuan remarks with a small laugh. When Moiraine doesn’t return it, Siuan frowns and asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I –” Moiraine shakes her head and tries to smile. “It’s nothing.”
“That’s rubbish, and you know it.” Siuan cups her cheek with her hand and Moiraine can’t help but lean her head into it. “You can tell me anything. You know that, right?”
Breathing in shakily, Moiraine nods.
“Then tell me.”
“I just –” Moiraine says. She makes a helpless gesture to the corridor around them. “I have such an odd feeling. About everything. All of this. Something’s not right, and I can’t — can’t quite place my finger on it.”
Even as she speaks, her voice trails off and her eyes focus on the runner that spans the length of the hallway. It should bear all the colours of the Ajahs in a repeating order, but something is off. She moves away from Siuan and takes a step further along the runner, counting the colours until she gets to six and stops.
The colours are repeating again after six, but that can’t be right. There should be seven. She checks the bands on their robes. Sure enough. Six.
“Moiraine?”
She turns and Siuan is watching her with a puzzled furrow in her brow. Moiraine points towards the runner. “The blue is missing.”
Siuan lets out a relieved huff of laughter. “Is that all?”
“I think this is serious.”
“What? The colours of a rug?” Siuan snorts, then walks forward to gently clasp Moiraine’s hands between her own. Whereas Moiraine’s hands are soft, Siuan’s are warm and work-rough; Moiraine had always liked how they felt against her skin. “I thought you were going to tell me something important. Like finally spilling the news about your family.”
Moiraine frowns. “My family?”
Siuan rubs her calloused thumb across Moiraine’s knuckles. “I know you’ve been trying to keep it quiet for a few days now, but you shouldn’t keep secrets. Not from me.” When Moiraine doesn’t reply, Siuan says, “I know your uncles died. I know Aine Sedai has been asking you questions again. Questions about your family, about lines of succession.”
Moiraine’s head jerks. She blinks in confusion and the cold trickle of dread that drips from the crown of her head and down her spine. “I don’t know what you’re –” Moiraine starts to say.
The memory is fuzzy, but there, creeping into the back of her mind and tapping insistently at the space behind her eyes.
Moiraine shakes her head past the odd feeling. “Yes, I – I remember, now. I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Why would that be a worry to me? It’s important to you, isn’t it?”
“Well –”
“Which means it’s important to me.” Siuan smiles gently at her and something in Moiraine’s chest unspools at the very sight. “Just because I don’t talk politics, doesn’t mean I don’t know how they affect us. How they affect you.”
Moiraine nods. “Yes. Yes, I know.”
“Then what will you do?”
“About what?”
Siuan lets loose a huff of laughter. She lowers their hands so that they hang comfortably between them. “About the Sun Throne. Obviously.”
Moiraine’s mouth opens. She tries to speak, but the words elude her. It’s how it’s always been. Thoughts of succession are as paralysing as a needle dipped in poison and hidden within a cushioned chair. Her hands clench around Siuan’s before she can stop them, and she grits her teeth as though she could bite through the marrow of fear trapped at the base of her tongue.
“I can’t leave the White Tower until I’m an Aes Sedai,” says Moiraine. “They won’t allow it.”
“That only buys you a few years, at best.”
“Yes, but that should be enough time for us.”
“Us?” Siuan gives her a puzzled smile. “That’s the reason why you should take it, not flee from it.”
Moiraine can’t muster up a single response to that.
Siuan glances around as though for eavesdroppers, then leans forward in a conspiratorial whisper. “I could be yours. In Cairhien. As Sun Queen, you can appoint an Aes Sedai advisor, and I could be by your side. We could work towards something great! Together! Think of what you could accomplish! The first Aes Sedai Queen in a thousand years! You’ll be something for the history books,” Siuan says, and her eyes are alight. “You’ll be something marvellous.”
Moiraine stares. “You don’t mean that,” she breathes. “You can’t mean that.”
“And why not? If it were me, I wouldn’t let an opportunity like this slip between my fingers.” Siuan tightens her grip on Moiraine’s fingers. “And neither should you.”
Siuan hasn’t blinked, not since the conversation started. Her fingernails dig into Moiraine’s palms, biting deep until Moiraine winces. “You’re hurting me.”
Siuan’s expression hasn’t lost its keen and avid edge. Her nails are sharp as talons. “Why don’t you see? You were always meant for this. All those years, watching your family shred itself into bite-sized pieces, knowing that the only one who could pick them all up and put them together again was the person you’ve been fighting not to become. The irony. It’s enough to drive anyone mad.” The blackness of Siuan’s eyes bleeds out along the edges like drops of ink in water. “But if you won’t do it for you, at least do it for us.”
Slowly, Moiraine shakes her head. She yanks her hands from Siuan’s and backs away. “No. No, this isn’t right. You’re not her. You’re not the woman I –”
Her teeth snap shut on the words before they can leave her. Siuan’s mouth curls in a smirk honed to a cruel edge. Where once her eyes were warm, now they gleam, knife-dark, knife-bright.
“The woman you — what?” Siuan asks. When she takes an unblinking step towards her, Moiraine takes an uncertain step back. “What were you going to say? The woman you know? The woman you love?”
Moiraine’s mouth works but no sound comes out. Something curls around her throat like a strangling vine.
“You think you love me? Is that what you think this is?” Siuan laughs, and it’s almost pitying. “I thought you were more practical than that. I thought you saw this for what it was. A good time. A mutually beneficial arrangement. Nothing more.”
“That’s not true,” says Moiraine with far more strength than she feels. Her hand trembles when she points at Siuan. “You’re not real. None of this is real. I need to – to –”
Her eyes cast around for anything that can help her, but the curving hallway is empty but for them, and the runner, and the arched colonnade, and the doors. Darting towards the nearest door, Moiraine flings it open and rushes through, slamming it shut behind her. She leans against the iron-banded wood, breathes heavily, and shuts her eyes. When she opens them again, a small cry leaps up into her throat.
Siuan is standing before her. A sword is planted through her chest and blood pours down the white of her robes, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She tilts her head to one side and smiles.
“You’re so desperate for this not to be real, but you already know the truth. Why else would you be running?” Blood bubbles at the corner of her mouth, runs down the side of her chin. “Always running. It’s the only thing you know. It’s what you do best, Lady Damodred.”
Moiraine doesn’t answer. She runs.
Behind her she can hear Siuan call her name. Mockingly at first. Then confused, pleading. Then she screams and it’s a sound of agony. Moiraine doesn’t turn around.
She’s sprinting down a new hallway that is identical to the last. It even curves in the same direction. In her haste, she nearly trips on her long hems. Reaching blindly out, she seizes another door handle and wrenches it open.
Another hallway. Just the same. Doors upon doors, and the sound of approaching footsteps echoing behind her. The pressure around her throat and chest tightens, squeezes like a clenched fist around broken glass.
She doesn’t know what this place is. She doesn’t know why she is here. She only knows that there is supposed to be a door. She needs to find a door.
“I want –” Moiraine gasps. Her lungs burn for air. She pulls open another door and lurches through it into the same hallway, the same interminable labyrinth. “I want out. Let me out. Please. Please, let me –”
Something tangles in her chest, branches out in her lungs. She gags for breath. Stumbling to a halt, she grabs at the nearest column for purchase but staggers to her knees, retching. Her stomach lurches and trefoil leaves spill from her mouth. They splatter to the ground in a mass of green and gold, like glittering winged insects.
The footsteps behind her quicken, they grow louder, they echo. Moiraine crawls forward but has to stop when her stomach twists itself into knots again. The leaves force their way up her throat again and she chokes on them, strangled and struggling for breath. The last time she has seen leaves like this was in the central square of Cairhien, amassed upon the branches of a centuries-old tree, the symbol of House Damodred – the Tree and the Crown.
She wrenches her head up to find a silvered arch glimmering like the surface of water beneath the summer sun. The footsteps are fast upon her. Moiraine scrambles on all fours through the doorway, and a shimmering light blooms until it devours the world entire, replacing it with a familiar dark room, filled with familiar dark faces.
On the other side Moiraine is still crouched upon the ground. The stone floor bites into her knees. She heaves for breath, her chest and shoulders rising and falling in great shuddering gasps. She coughs. Tendrils of hair are slicked to the sides of her sweaty face and neck. She coughs again.
Reaching up, she sticks her fingers into her mouth and slowly pulls out a single green and golden trefoil leaf. It unfurls like a butterfly, dripping with spit. With a shudder of revulsion Moiraine flings it to the ground and curls herself away from it.
Mutters fly around the room.
“You shouldn’t be able to bring anything back with you,” one of the Aes Sedai says. It’s Demira, holding the second chalice. Her expression is concerned but there’s no mistaking the curious glint in her gaze. “What did you do, child?”
Shaking her head, Moiraine swallows thickly past the dryness of her throat. When she speaks her voice is raspy and she has to clear her throat before continuing, “May I have some water?”
A few of the Aes Sedai exchange glances, then Tamra says coolly, “No. You must finish the Test.”
They allow her to push herself shakily to her feet before a chalice full of water is poured over Moiraine’s head.
“You are washed clean of false pride. You are washed clean of false ambition. You come to us washed clean, in heart and soul.”
Demira tips the last of the water out, and a drop lands on the bridge of Moiraine’s nose. She flinches, but doesn’t wipe it away.
Merean watches Moiraine with a guarded expression, but when she speaks her words are as steady and ritualistic as before. “The third time is for what will be. The way back will come but once. Be steadfast.”
Turning towards the final archway, Moiraine hesitates. There is no turning back. Not at this stage. That option is far behind her now. All she can do is continue on. One foot in front of the other. And light swallows the world whole once more.
"Your Majesty."
Her head jerks around. Moiraine frowns and a young man before her quails. He and another beside him – matching like a pair of handsome footmen – both bow deeply until they are bent double at the waist. They are wearing identical tabards that fall to their knees, fields of blue with a gold sunburst across the chest and white ruffs at their necks. Household servants, perhaps. Squires, most likely.
“What did you call me?” Moiraine asks and her voice is sharper than she was used to, deepened with use or perhaps age.
The two exchange a glance. The one who had addressed her waivers before looking up, only to drop his eyes and mumble towards her feet. “Your Majesty?” he repeats uncertainly.
Moiraine stares at his downturned head for a long moment then looks around the room. No, not a room – a tent. A grand and lavish tent, to be sure, but a tent, nonetheless. She is seated at a writing desk, her hand poised over a letter she had been penning moments before. Ink blots the page. Stacks of finished letters sealed with black wax wait to be taken away. A full-sized bed has been painstakingly made up in the centre of the room instead of a cot, complete with travelling trunks and a full-length mirror with clawed feet beside a bathtub large enough for her to sprawl in should she desire. All the comforts of a palace on the road.
Sitting up straighter, she balances the quill in its holder and uncrosses her legs. The long blue velvet riding habit brushes around her ankles. The Great Serpent ring gleams upon one finger, and on her other hand the royal seal of Cairhien, heavy and gold. A bit of black wax clings to part of the oval face. She scratches it off with the nail of her manicured thumb.
“How long have I –?” Moiraine has to clear a bur from her throat, and starts again. “How long have I been Queen?”
Both squires remain tense, and one hesitates before answering, as though fully expecting this to be a trick question. “Twenty three years, Your Majesty.”
Moiraine breathes in sharply, and they flinch, heads bowed. If she casts her mind back, she can almost see them, the years, the memories. They shamble in the distance like faceless figures through the mist.
Her uncle had died, and she had ascended the dais in his stead, a crown placed upon her head. Once, the nobility had tried to revolt. Once, Lord Galldrian of House Riatin had mustered enough support to march on the capital. Once, she had put whole towns to the sword. Once, she had lined the streets of the capital with the heads of traitors — one for every corner, for every street lamp. Once, she had stalked through Cairhien with saidar on her lips and blood soaked up the hems of her dress. Once, she had confiscated estates all across the countryside, throttling the flow of coin into those Houses who had forgotten the meaning of loyalty, who had forgotten their place, letting them die the slow death of obscurity and ruin.
Now, they are afraid to speak her name. Now, the Sun Throne is secure beyond all measure. Now, her rule is absolute.
Moiraine gestures to the squires. “Stand up. What did you say to me earlier?”
They both straighten slowly, neither of them meeting her gaze even now. “About the length of your reign?”
“No, before that,” she snaps, and has to bite her tongue. The anger that has always festered beneath the surface has been given an outlet, and years wearing a crown has allowed her to give in to all her worst impulses. “Before that,” she repeats, softer this time. “You said something to me.”
“You asked us to bring your armour. We have it here for you.” He points towards one of the travelling trunks.
Nodding, Moiraine stands. She motions imperiously towards them and moves to stand in the middle of the tent before the long mirror. While the squires open the chest and begin to set out its contents, she undoes the stays of her riding habit. The rich blue velvet falls in a puddle around her feet, and she steps out of it to kick it aside towards the bed. Beneath, she’s already wearing a loose shirt tucked into high-waisted trousers.
It’s an orchestrated dance, and one to which she’s grown well accustomed. Far more well accustomed than she would like. She lifts her arms for a worn gambeson to be tugged over her head. Then the squires bring each piece of mail and plate and begin the laborious process of affixing them.
The armour is as practical as it is ornate, the breastplate emblazoned with the sunburst crest of Cairhien. She stares at her reflection in the mirror, at how much older she looks, how much thinner. She is all wiry muscle and hard lines. There’s a coldness to her dark eyes, a hardness that she does not recognise. She has a scar over her left eyebrow, slicing it in two, and another at her upper lip. One a childhood stumble, the other a battlefield wound.
The articulated plates of the gauntlets click when she curls her fingers into a fist. She bears no weapon other than a long wickedly sharp knife strapped to the side of her hip. The gilded handle matches the styling of her armour, the blued steel plates and the sleekness of the cloak hooked beneath her spaulders, so dark as to appear like the sky at midnight, embroidered with the sun’s rays like lances across the ink-dyed cloth.
One of the squires kneels down and offers up a small wooden box as though it were a royal sceptre. She turns the latch and opens the lid to reveal a bracelet nestled in black velvet. With great care she takes it. The bracelet looks like ivory but isn’t. Upon closer inspection it depicts a naked acrobat bent completely backwards so that its wrists are tied to its ankles. Turning the bracelet over, she slips it over her armoured knuckles and settles it at the wrist of her left hand.
It shouldn’t fit, but it goes easily, then shrinks down to the perfect size again. Touching it seems to bring her comfort, so she slowly twists it in place around her wrist.
The squires flit about her like nervous birds. They tug at her couters and the straps of her gorget to ensure nothing will fall off in the heat of a fight. She rolls her ankle to test the sabatons and shrugs against the new weight across her shoulders.
A man ducks beneath the tent. He wears a helmet in the Malkieri fashion, obscuring much of his features in the dim light of the tent. His armour is lacquered and bears the scars of battle already, yet there is no cry of horns outside, nor the rush of feet and call to arms. Glancing at the squires, he tilts his head meaningfully towards the exit. Both bow and depart without a word.
Alone in the tent with Moiraine now, the man tucks his hands smartly behind his back and stands at ease in her presence. Regardless, he gives the impression that he could at any moment leap into a dervish of action with the sword sheathed across his back. She can’t see much of his face beneath the helm, but she doesn’t need to. In some ways, Moiraine knows him better than he knows himself.
How strange. She can read every microscopic twitch in his posture like an open book, but she can't even remember his name.
Moiraine studies him in the mirror without turning around to face him. “What news?” she asks.
“We’ve received word from the scouts of the enemy’s position. We need to give the command for the armies to alter our position on the Field of Merrilor accordingly,” he says. “The Amyrlin Seat waits to meet with you. It’s time.”
With a brisk nod, Moiraine says, “Very well.” He straightens his shoulders, and she notices the small movement. Turning, she asks, “You have something else to tell me?”
For a moment he does not speak. Then his words come like a blow. “Siuan Sanche is dead.”
Moiraine blinks back the shock that pours over her, cold as a plunge into a midwinter lake. “How?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “It was not a few hours ago. I felt it. I felt –”
His voice breaks. Crossing the tent, Moiraine reaches up and places a hand on his shoulder. He exhales a shuddering breath at even so simple a touch, even when he could not possibly feel it through so many layers of amour.
“Do you wish for me to take the Bond?” she asks softly. “You should not have to bear this alone.”
He hesitates. Between the carved slots in his helm, his eyes glimmer with unshed tears. He shakes his head, and his words are rough when he replies, “No. You need to be focused for the battle ahead.”
“What I need,” she says, resolute, “is for you to be by my side. Do not throw your life away. Not yet.”
A wordless sound echoes faintly from within his helmet, small as a choked whimper. He nods but catches her hands when she lifts them both to begin the weave. “But after?” he asks.
His fingers tighten around her wrists in a grip bordering on painful. He doesn’t mean to; his hands are shaking. “If we both survive this,” she says, “we can discuss your fate then.”
Appeased, he lets her go. She places her hands on either side of his helm as if to lift it away but stops when something drips. Not unshed tears, then. No matter. She doesn’t need to touch his skin for this.
The intricate weave of spirit drapes over him like a shroud. Beneath her hands he shudders. When it is over, Moiraine winces at the sudden knot of anguish that is him in the back of her mind. Her first instinct is to mask the Bond, to shrink back from that grief, but she tamps it down with an iron will. The grief does not belong to him alone, and they will not be alone. At least for a little longer.
“You should have told me of her passing sooner,” she murmurs, releasing him.
He doesn’t answer. He can’t. That bundle of additional emotions in the back of her mind contracts like a heartbeat, like a pulled muscle. For all that turmoil, he simply stands there, awaiting instruction.
“The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills.” Moiraine sighs, then shakes her head sadly. “Come, then. Let us not tarry any further.”
They cannot afford to wallow in grief. There is no time for mourning. Not now. Not later.
From the trunk, she grabs the last remaining piece of her armour: a helmet that has been forged to serve as a crown. Spikes of gold erupt from all around the brow like a wreath of gilded horns. The man holds open the tent flap for her with a shallow bow. Outside, the world is burning. Flames lick the sky. A storm-dappled war steed is being held by one of the squires. It paws at the ground.
This is it. The end. Everything she has prepared for, everything she has worked for so tirelessly and for so long. The weight of armour is nothing compared to the mantle of years across her shoulders, the sheer weariness like a physical ache in her bones. She does not need to steel herself and go with the knowledge that she may never return. Dying for this cause is the easiest part.
She places the helmet upon her head. War drums strike in the distance, followed by the low mournful peal of a horn shivering the air. Moiraine does one last check over her armour, twisting at her vambraces, passing her hand over the bracelet, feeling the sweetness of the One Power well up like an echo at the touch. With this she could blaze like the sun itself on the battlefield. She could fell a legion with a sweep of her hand.
She has unsheathed her dagger with a flourish and is about to sheathe it again, when she sees something flicker at the corner of her eye. It isn’t, as she first suspected, the flutter of her cloak in the mirror. It is a silver arched door, shimmering with light.
The way back will come but once. Be steadfast.
“No,” she whispers. “Not now. Not -”
"Moiraine?" She turns at the sound of her name, spoken imploringly. The man holds up the tent flap higher for her. "They’re waiting.”
Her gauntlet creaks around the hilt of the knife. She grits her teeth past the impotent rage filling her mouth with the taste of iron, fury ferrous as blood spilt. Facing the door, she says, “I have to go.”
“What are you talking about?”
She doesn’t answer. She can’t bear to look at him for a second longer. The first step away from him, from the battle and the destiny that awaits, makes the earth tremble beneath her feet. Moiraine forces herself to take another.
“Please. We can’t win without you. We need you.” His voice cracks. “I need you. I can’t -"
She doesn’t look back. She can’t. If she does, she’ll break. The last thing she feels as she walks through the door is a tug at her cloak, as if he has grabbed onto the trailing end of it and is trying to yank her back. Eyes burning with unshed tears, teeth bared in a rictus snarl, Moiraine whirls around and slashes.
The knife freezes a hair’s breadth away from Merean’s neck.
A startled gasp flits around the room, quickly smothered. Everyone is staring at her, at the way the tendons stand out on Moiraine’s forearm and the back of her hand. The tip of the knife trembles in her shaky grasp.
Moiraine is breathing heavily, eyes wide. The surprise and fear glints in Merean’s gaze, but fades almost immediately when Moiraine lowers her arm and drops the knife to the ground with a clatter of steel against stone. The sound rings in the silence. Nobody comments this time about how she shouldn’t have been able to bring anything through the archway. A trefoil leaf seems trivial in comparison.
Merean holds out her arm and stands aside in a gesture for Moiraine to walk forward. At the other side of the room, the Amyrlin Seat waits. Drawing in a deep breath, Moiraine moves. She kneels before Tamra, feeling the eyes of everyone in the room following her. It is Tamra herself who holds the final chalice, who pours it out slowly over Moiraine’s head, the water lapping across her shoulders and down her back.
“You are washed clean of Moiraine Damodred from Cairhien,” Tamra says. “You are washed clean of all ties that bind you to the world. You come to us washed clean, in heart and soul. You are Moiraine Damodred, Accepted of the White Tower. You are sealed to us now.”
Moiraine does not feel clean. All she feels is cold and tired. The water they have poured over her does nothing to combat the sweat and terror that still clings to her skin.
She pushes herself to her feet and someone — she doesn’t care to identify who — passes her a towel and the clothes she had stripped out of before. They are neatly folded. Even the bit of braided cord she uses to tie back her hair is coiled atop the fabric.
Mechanically, Moiraine dries herself off and then pulls on the Novice robes. She sits on the floor to tug on her socks and shoes, and has to swallow down the sudden swell of tears when her socks get wet, thinking of being twelve, of being scolded for playing in the snow on the day of her mother’s funeral, of getting her stockings and mourning dress wet because she would rather be outside in the cold than inside with her family.
Moiraine sits there, staring blankly at the space between her feet. People move about her but she pays them no heed. She has to gather the pieces of herself together before she can stand again, feeling muddied, feeling like she has been crouched at the bottom of a long dark empty well for days, unable to clamber free.
While all of the other Aes Sedai have made their way towards the exit or are in clandestine conversation with one another, Merean remains behind, waiting. She is holding the knife between her hands. Moiraine momentarily forgets how to breathe when she sees it again.
Without a word, Merean hands out the dagger towards her. Slowly Moiraine takes it. The gilded handle has been crafted for her hand and fits into the snugness of her palm as though it belongs nowhere else. Turning the knife over, she uses the flat polished edge to look at her reflection.
A slice of herself stares back. There are no scars. There is no leanness to her face, making her look more like her father. No cruel slant to her mouth, making her look more like her brother and uncle. No hardness to her eyes, making her look more like her sister.
There is only herself. Tired. Dishevelled. Young. Too young by half.
“Moiraine.”
Moiraine’s head jerks up, her hand tightening instinctually around the hilt of the knife. Merean is watching her closely. She tilts her head towards the exit. “Come, child. I will escort you back to your rooms.”
Moiraine nods mutely. For a moment she flounders for what to do with the knife — there is no sheath for it; she will need to have one made; perhaps it could make a suitable belt knife, even if it is a bit long for the task — before she simply lowers her arms and holds it at her side, knuckles white. With a shuddering breath, she follows Merean out of the chamber, and she does not look back.
Night has poured out over the land. Moiraine catches glimpses of it through the arched and camed windows as she is led through the Tower by the Mistress of Novices. The city below twinkles like a blanket of stars. It may have been hours that she was in the domed basement chamber. It may have been days. She cannot tell.
Moiraine can barely keep her eyes open. Her feet drag across the floor. At one point along the way she nearly runs into a column. Merean has to steer her with a gentle yet firm hand at her shoulder.
“We’re nearly there,” Merean murmurs, and she drops her hand to Moiraine’s elbow to guide her. “Not long now.”
Moiraine has to resist the urge to tug her arm free. Even the simple feeling of Merean touching her is too much; it makes the space seem too enclosed, her dress too tight, her mind too loud, the memory of anger and bitterness and grief blood-bright on the back of her tongue.
They finally reach the Novice Quarters, and Merean lets her go when they stop outside of Moiraine’s door.
“Sleep now, child,” Merean says. “One of us will come around tomorrow to show you to your new quarters.” She offers the briefest of smiles. Somehow on her it still seems cold, the action never quite reaching her eyes. “Well done.”
Moiraine watches her go. It’s only when Merean has rounded the corner and out of sight that she turns back towards her door, opens it, and steps inside. In the entryway, Moiraine goes stock still.
Siuan is there. Siuan is pacing her room, already ready for bed. Her chin jerks up when the door opens and she gives Moiraine a relieved smile. “Thank the Light,” she sighs, then grins at Moiraine’s stricken expression. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Moiraine blanches at the sound of those familiar words. A chill settles over her, sticks to her skin like wet cloth. The door shuts behind her, clicks in place, loud as her heart, loud as a war drum ringing out across the Field of Merrilor.
Siuan’s grin is quickly replaced by concern. She strides forward and cups Moiraine’s face with both hands. “What’s wrong?”
Moiraine opens her mouth to speak but cannot find the words.
Siuan glances down. “Why do you have a knife?”
Moiraine’s hand trembles around the hilt. “I brought it back,” she says hoarsely.
“They let you bring back a knife? I wasn’t able to bring back anything except for horrible memories,” Siuan jokes weakly.
“They didn’t — I didn’t mean to. I just — My Test was –” Moiraine starts to say, but stops.
Eyes widening, Siuan says with a panicked note, “But you passed, right?”
Moiraine nods. The movement is jerky.
“Oh, thank the Light,” Siuan sighs. “For a moment I thought – But it’s all right. You’re all right.” A pause and then Siuan asks, “Are you all right?”
Moiraine’s mouth drops open. She cannot force the lie upon her tongue. It dies in the back of her throat. She steps away from Siuan and drifts towards the bedside table. Carefully she sets the knife down. It gleams in the lamplight, a fragment of her reflection still dancing on its mirrored surface. If she looks too closely, the flame of the lamp looks like the gleam of a golden crown upon her head.
"I saw -" Moiraine begins.
"You don't need to tell me."
Moiraine’s head jerks up when she hears the words. Siuan is watching her with a fierce and fervent gaze.
“Whatever it is,” Siuan continues, stepping closer, “you don’t need to tell me.”
Biting her trembling lower lip, Moiraine tries to quell the relief that pricks at the corners of her eyes upon hearing those words.
"What can I do?" Siuan asks, and her jaw is squared in that determined way of hers. In the low lamplight, she is beautiful and steadfast and wholly herself. "Whatever it is, I'll do it. Just say the word."
Tell me this is real, Moiraine thinks so hard her chest aches with it. Tell me this is impractical. Tell me you want me. Tell me you love me. Tell me –
Moiraine swallows the impulse back and touches her throat with a wince. “Can I have some water?” she asks.
Siuan’s face relaxes into a small, relieved smile. “Of course.”
When she turns away to stride over towards where the pitcher of water rests atop a small ablutions table, Moiraine sinks down onto the bed. She looks down at her feet; it is disorienting that they reach the ground. Somehow she expects her legs to be sheathed in metal. Somehow she expects a carpet on the floor with the wrong number of colours. Somehow, she expects her legs to be shorter, for her to be younger again, for the world to be so large she slides straight down its gullet and into the burning red stomach of mountains.
She takes off her shoes and sets them neatly aside just beneath the bed. She’s too tired to ready herself for sleep otherwise. Instead Moiraine buries her face in her hands, elbows digging into her thighs as she rubs at the soreness behind her eyes.
She glances up as Siuan returns with a cup of water. “Thank you,” she murmurs, then drains the whole thing in one go. Afterwards her throat is still scratchy and sore, like she’s only just shaking off the last day of a winter chest cold. If she breathes too deeply, she can almost feel her lungs clogging up with leaves like a river mouth.
She clears her throat and sets the cup beside the knife. The bed dips beside her and Siuan sits down, close enough that their shoulders press up against one another. Moiraine has to bite back the urge to shy away when Siuan rubs her back, and she hates herself for even the shadow of this doubt.
“Mine wasn’t so great either,” Siuan says softly. “You were –” She makes an abortive sound, then seems to rethink her decision and shakes her head. “It’s done, and it’s not worth repeating fears designed to bait us.”
Grasping Moiraine’s opposite shoulder, Siuan pulls her closer so she can press a kiss to the side of her head. She lingers there. She holds Moiraine slightly too tight, slightly too long. Moiraine turns to look at her.
“Do you want to sleep here tonight?” Moiraine asks.
Siuan exhales a slow unsteady breath. She nods and their foreheads press together. Moiraine closes her eyes. She leans into Siuan and feels her do the same in return until their noses brush their cheeks.
After a long moment, Moiraine pulls away. Still in her stale Novice robes, Moiraine lies down in bed. Siuan clambers in beside her, and the two of them are quick to wrap themselves up in one another beneath the blankets. Siuan shivers and tucks one of her feet between Moiraine’s calves.
“How are your feet always so cold all the time,” Moiraine grumbles without any barb to the words. She rearranges her legs slightly so that both of Siuan’s feet are nestled somewhere warmer still.
“A better question is why is it always so bloody cold in this bloody Tower when we have some of the world’s greatest channelers around?” Siuan huffs and pulls the blankets up so that both of their heads are covered, so that they’re enveloped in the growing warmth of their bodies together. “You’d think one of the Brown Sisters would’ve invented a more efficient way of heating the place by now, but no.”
It should be impossible, smiling after a day like today, but somehow Siuan can always manage to make her smile no matter the circumstance. Chuckling softly, Moiraine shuffles a bit until her head is more comfortably situated on the pillow shared between them. One of Siuan’s hands scratches idly along Moiraine’s back through her dress in a way that would normally have Moiraine arch against her like a cat. Now, Moiraine merely sighs in relief.
They’ve passed. Both of them. They’re alive, and they’ve passed, and they’re here together.
Burying her nose into the crook of Siuan’s neck, Moiraine breathes in the warmth of her skin, feeling Siuan’s arms tighten around her in turn.
For now, nothing else matters.
--
--
END NOTES
-and in place of a dark lord you would have a QUEEN! NOT DARK BUT BEAUTIFUL AND TERRIBLE AS THE DAWN! TREACHEROUS AS THE -! ahem. sorry.
-I just think Moiraine with scars would be neat (and hot)
-yes, i gave her knife from the show a backstory. Because i can. And also because BOOK SPOILERS - lmao I just think it would be hilarious that the knife Moiraine brings back with her from her Sun Queen alternate reality is not only the same knife she uses on Rand in the season 1 finale but ALSO the same knife she uses to kill Merean at the end of New Spring. And Merean being the one to hand it back to her after the Test? Delicious. Too good an opportunity to pass up. You know i had to do it to ‘em.
Summary: The first time Moiraine channels, she is ten years old and it is a complete accident. The first time Siuan channels, she is ten years old and it is entirely on purpose. (set before 'kept impulse dormant')
Read it below or read it here on AO3
The sun has long since set by the time Siuan and her father arrive back home. And even then, it's a slow climb up the rickety staircase to the fifth floor of the apartment building, tapered and slouching with shingles so that it seems like an old man trying to lean against the identical building beside it. She walks in her father's muddy footsteps. There's no point taking off their clogs on the bottom floor. Not when so many other patrons of this shithouse don't bother to do the same. And so the pair of them track mud all the way up the worn and creaking stairs, moving aside when a neighbour needs to squeeze by the pair of them in a rush down the stairs.
It shouldn't be possible for the top floor to be any noisier than the one beneath it — especially with nobody to cause a ruckus on the floor above — but somehow it is. Must be the echo, the thrum of noise clattering its way up between the closely huddled walls of apartment buildings. Islands, they call them. Like fuck, they're islands. The Fingers of the Dragon had more space between them.
By the time they arrive at the top floor, Siuan's thighs burn. Her father doesn't complain in the slightest, so she keeps quiet. He shrugs a coil of rope from his shoulder and it falls heavily to the ground outside their front door. They go about the ritual of removing their clogs and carefully arranging themselves so as not to step in any traces of mud.
"Get the door, won't you?" Berden says, while he busies himself with untying his clogs. He's always slower at it than she is. Having only one hand will do that, and he never accepts her offer of help so she doesn't give it no matter how much she might want to.
She fumbles for the door handle in the growing darkness. In the windowless hallways and stairwells, the complex feels more like a warren, breathless and subterranean. With a rattle of the handle — the bloody thing never opens unless she rattles it — Siuan opens the door. Her father knuckles his back as he straightens. She lets him enter first and he murmurs a note of thanks in passing.
Inside isn’t much larger than the hallway outside, truth be told. Still, it is a palace compared to what Siuan is accustomed to. Her parents have managed to salvage bits and pieces from the wharves until the place actually feels like home. Screens partition up the single room into three sections, and the walls are a comforting clutter of items, strung and hung to keep the minimal floor space clear.
“Dad’s home! Dad’s home!”
In a blur of motion Lia, her younger sister, barrels into their father and nearly bowls him over. He grunts at the force of the impact but manages to stay upright and, laughing, he presses a kiss to the top of her head.
“What am I? Chum?” Siuan grumbles, shutting the door behind her as she steps in beside them.
Lia peeks from under their father’s arm and sticks her tongue out in Siuan’s direction.
Siuan sticks out her tongue back then says, "Mom told you to keep the door locked when you and Ynes are home alone."
"It was locked!"
"Then how did I just open it?"
"Where is your mother?" Berden asks before Lia can retort.
As if on cue, the door behind them creaks open again, and a tired voice says, “Here.”
Their mother steps into the room and shuts the door behind her. Rosaria is carrying a small parcel that faintly steams in the low light. The smell of food alone is enough to make Siuan’s mouth water. The last time she had eaten had been at breakfast in the pregrey dawn while the moon still set. She had scarfed down a simple meal on the docks while her father had readied the dinghy for the day’s work ahead, and Siuan had admired the way the moon seemed — as it did every morning — to kiss the horizon, and the waves dappled its light until the silvered crescent appeared to multiply into three reflections of itself.
Berden lets go of Lia to kiss his wife’s cheek. She accepts his affection with grace and a smile, albeit a tired one. “Shall we eat?”
The effect is instantaneous. Both Siuan and Lia start setting up the main area for a meal. Lia gathers pillows to sit upon while Siuan drags a low-slung table from the corner. Rosaria places the parcel of food upon the table and Berden fetches bowls and cutlery.
Glancing around with a curious frown, Rosaria asks, “Where’s your sister?”
“Coming!” a voice calls.
Ynes steps out from behind one of the screensa and in her hands she carries a lit candle, which sheds a puddle of light all around. All of their eyes widen. Berden darts forward to put the candle out, steading his youngest daughter’s wrists with extra care so that she doesn’t drop it.
Rosaria rounds on Siuan, “Why weren’t you watching her?” she asks, her voice sharpened more by fear than anger.
“Me? I only just got home with dad!” Siuan points an accusing finger at Lia, who is doing her best to look extra dutiful by keeping quiet and setting the table. “Lia is the one who’s supposed to be looking after her!”
“You know how dangerous it is!” Rosaria says, heedless of Siuan’s indignant outrage.
“How was I supposed to -?” This isn’t my fault!”
“You’re the oldest. It’s your responsibility, Siuan. We’ve been over this.”
“Hush, now,” Berden says to Ynes, who has begun to cry during the commotion. “It’s all right. The fire is out. See?”
“Can we just -?” Rosaria pinches the bridge of her nose and the wind goes right out of her sails. “Can we just have dinner? Please?”
Grumbling under her breath at the injustice of it all, Siuan drops onto her usual pillow set on the ground. Berden has set the extinguished candle aside, and is now coaxing Siuan’s youngest sister over to the table. Her dark eyes are red-rimmed and she sniffles as she sits down beside Siuan.
“It’s dark,” she mumbles.
“I know, love,” Berden murmurs.
“We all know,” says Siuan acidly under her breath. She hunches her shoulders when her mother shoots her a warning look.
Rosaria begins to serve warm rice and broth and pickled greens into each bowl. She hands one first to her husband then to Siuan. “Living in the Outer City isn’t like living on the river. There can be no flame in the island.”
Biting back the urge to insist she knows — for the hundredth time, she bloody knows! — Siuan takes her food in silence.
“Because of the fires,” Lia chirps up, as though this whole debacle isn’t her fault for leaving Ynes alone in the first place.
“That’s right, dear,” Rosaria says absently, handing her a bowl.
Berden bumps Ynes’ shoulder gently with his elbow, and asks as though they are confidants, “Where did you even find it?”
Ynes shrugs morosely and is the last to accept her dinner. “In her things.” She nods towards Siuan.
“That’s -! That’s not true!” Siuan splutters.
“Siuan,” her mother says in that brook-no-nonsense tone.
“It’s not!” she whines, but nobody is listening to her. She glowers at Lia, who grimaces, knowing she’s in trouble for that particular lie.
“Do you want to play statues with me later?” Lia offers weakly.
Siuan scowls. “No,” she says, continuing to eat. “In fact, I’m going to go see a princess tonight.”
Lia's face screws up in confusion. "A princess?"
"Yes."
"You?"
Siuan frowns at her sister's tone. "Yes."
"Where? At the docks?"
"Don't be dumb."
"You're being dumb, going off at night to see a fake princess."
"She's not a -!" Siuan lowers her voice when her mother gives her a look, and hisses, "She's not a fake princess. Mara's brother told me that there's a ball happening in the Inner City and all these nobles and royals are coming from all over."
"How does Mara's brother know?"
"Because he works as a stablehand at House Saniago. He overheard some of the seashells talking about it."
"Seashells?"
"The -" Siuan pauses and casts her mind back. "He called them something like that. Seashells. Seneshells." She jabs at her bowl of rice. "Who the fuck cares. There's a ball."
"And you're just going to -" Lia uses her fingers to mime walking "- go right in? Dressed like that?"
"No."
"Oh. Okay. Because I thought you were really stupid for a second."
"Shut up."
“Don’t tell your sister to shut up,” interrupts their mother.
Lia points at Siuan. “She can swear but she can’t tell me to shut up?”
“You swore?” Berden asks.
“Nobody ever listens to me,” Siuan grumbles around a mouthful of food.
“Shut up!” says Ynes gleefully from the sidelines. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
Rosaria sighs and shushes her youngest. Berden meanwhile nudges Siuan’s knee under the table. “I was listening. Mostly,” he adds. “And you can’t be going off into the Inner City by yourself. Besides, I need you on the boat tomorrow. You need an early sleep. We’re rising with the dawn.”
“But -!” Siuan starts to protest.
“You’re rising with the dawn,” Rosaria repeats firmly, having gotten Ynes to quiet down and continue eating. “It’s a miracle I got that stall at the market, and we need fish to stock it, or -”
She doesn’t finish her sentence, and instead shares a nervous glance with her husband. He gives her his best and most encouraging smile.
Finishing her meal, Siuan slumps her elbows atop the table and stares glumly into her empty bowl. She stabs her cutlery against the bottom of the bowl and thinks that if she never is awake to see the sun rise again, it would be too soon. Princesses don’t need to wake up with the sunrise. Princesses don’t need to mend nets and gut fish. Princesses get to sleep in. Princesses get to have ladies-in-waiting clean their fingernails while they take long luxurious baths.
When her mother scolds her for the noise, Siuan sets down her cutlery and instead picks at a hangnail while she waits for the others. An insistent rapping at the door gets their attention. Rosaria frowns at the door and starts to rise, but her husband shakes his head and stands before she can. "I've got it," he says.
Stepping around the table, he goes to the door and opens it. Siuan's eyes have adjusted to the darkness, to the faint sliver of moonlight that peels through the single tiny window of the apartment like a silver rind, just enough to see who has come calling.
There's a smile in a dark face that looks nearly identical to her father's, but for the fact that her uncle Huan is taller. He carries his wiry form in a hunch, but even that cannot hide the extra height over his brother, as though he is constantly in the process of unfolding himself. His close cropped dark hair lacks the streak of grey that Berden has already earned over the years, and his clothes are sweat-stained.
"Evening, Berden," he says. "Sorry to interrupt -"
"What are you doing here?"
It's a rare day when Siuan hears her father use that tone of voice. Huan's smile slips slightly, but recovers not a moment later. His eyes have dark circles beneath them, and his cheeks cast sharp shadows across his jawline. Even in the low light he looks sickly. "Can't I just want to visit my older brother and his family?"
Berden's only good hand tightens around the door handle, as though he's but an instant from slamming it shut in his brother's face. "I told you not to come around here."
“I just -” Glancing back down the stairs over his shoulder, Huan sniffs and wipes at his nose with his ragged sleeve. He lowers his voice when he speaks, "I need help."
"No."
"Berd, please -"
"Go away, Huan."
Berden closes the door but Huan sticks his arm through the gap to block it. "No, wait. Please just - I need a place to stay. That's all."
"What happened to your bed at Delmar’s dockside?" Berden asks.
"You know Delmar and I. We can't agree on the shape of the moon."
"You're lying. Again."
"No. I'm not. I swear I'm not."
"So, if I talk to Delmar down at the market tomorrow, he'll tell me that everything is straight with you? That you haven't been back on the dice and hounds again? Is that right?"
Silence.
Lia and Ynes have stopped eating and lowered their bowls to listen. Their mother hasn't turned around to watch the goings on behind her, but her expression is alert, like a cat feigning sleep while its tail twitches and its ears cant towards noise around it. She tries to move nonchalantly, but Siuan glances down and sees her mother's hand loosen around the hilt of the small knife she always wears at her belt when she realises who it is at the door. Rosaria notices her noticing, and gives her eldest daughter the smallest shake of her head.
"Can't I at least see the girls?" Huan pleads. As he does so he peers over his brother's shoulder and smiles at them.
Siuan feels herself smiling back in spite of herself. Beside her, Ynes lifts her hand in an excited wave, which Huan returns with a bright-eyed infectious grin. It transforms his face from something haggard to something carefree and animated, like getting a glimpse at his true self beneath the disservice life had done him year after year.
That's how it always is with Huan. Impossible not to like him when he smiles. Even just a little.
Berden sighs. "I'm sorry," he says with a shake of his head. "But you need to go."
Huan's face falls. He seems to crumple up into himself. "I don't -" he starts to say, but stops at the look on his brother's face. Swallowing thickly, he casts his gaze down and nods. "Sorry," he mumbles. "I'm sorry."
As he turns away, Berden opens his mouth like he wants to speak, lifts the stump of his arm as though to reach out with fruitless fingers — a hand long gone — but Huan leaves without another word. Berden lingers at the door, watching his brother go, and the sound of Huan's shambling footsteps echoes unevenly, until even that fades.
Berden shuts the door and returns to his seat. Ynes and Lia have resumed eating, though Lia's clever eyes dart between her father and her mother as she feigns disinterest in the situation. Siuan doesn't bother with the disinterest. Her mother would see through such a ruse anyway.
"I'll have a talk with Delmar tomorrow," Berden says.
Rosaria has picked up her bowl again. She nods. "I think that's for the best."
"I don't know anyone else who can take him in."
"My brother -"
"Your brother has already done too much for us."
"What else is family for," Rosaria jokes meagerly, though she backs it up with a smile, which her husband returns. When the silence stretches on for too long — long as a strait of water pinched between two bodies of land — she glances over at Siuan and Lia, who have been watching their interaction closely. "Finish up your food."
Lia redoubles her efforts, eating swiftly and efficiently. Siuan meanwhile tips her bowl forward to show that it's already empty.
Rosaria nods her head towards the door. "Then you can start cleaning up, then please."
Groaning, Siuan nevertheless does as instructed. She gathers her bowl and cutlery and her mother's, then the others' when they've finished. She stacks them neatly atop one another — Ynes' is the one with a chip on the side from how often she drops it — and starts down the stairs to the second floor.
It's the nearest thing the island has to a kitchen, and it's perfectly wretched. A few other island inhabitants are there. One leans in the hallway outside the kitchen and smokes on a pipe. The embers of the pipe are the only source of light in the whole place. He blows long thin tendrils of smoke from his nostrils, and his dark eyes are veiled as he watches her pass. Someone yells at him to put out the light, and he growls a reply even as he wanders over to an open window and taps his pipe free of ash and spark.
Siuan washes the dishes as quickly as she can and scampers back up the shadow-crowded steps. Back in the river house, nobody had watched her from the shadows. Nobody yelled about candles and pipes. There wasn't the incessant smell of rancid mud and moulding cloth baked into the walls. And still, it’s the nicest place she’s ever lived.
Upstairs, everyone is preparing for an early night’s sleep. Siuan and her mother set up the hammocks on hooks between the walls, while Lia pesters Rosaria with questions about her day at the market. Berden catches Ynes cutting drawings into the floorboards with a small knife and has to rush over to take it from her. Then Siuan and her sisters take turns sitting before their mother while she braids their hair and sends them off with a kiss to the forehead.
Siuan clambers expertly into her hammock and punches her pillow until it sits just right. She listens to her mother and father’s hammock creak on the other side of the partition as they climb in. Lia complains that she still has to share with Ynes and Berden calls tiredly out that it’s only for a few more weeks until they can weave another hammock for her. And even as talk dies down in their apartment, the sounds of the rest of the island travel through the walls and floor as though there are no barriers at all.
Somehow through it all her father manages to fall asleep almost instantly. Siuan can hear his snores start up, and her mother doesn’t poke him in the side to get him to stop which means she’s asleep too. Siuan waits a few more minutes, listening for any change in breathing, any creaks or indications that someone else might still be awake, before she carefully extricates herself from her hammock and stands upright.
Siuan quickly and silently changes into clothes. Grabbing her best blue apron, she ties it around her waist over her outfit. Though they’ve only been living here a short while, she has memorised every squeaky floorboard. She avoids them all on her way towards the door, which she eases open just wide enough to slip through. On the other side, she grabs her clogs but doesn’t put them on quite yet. When she’s taken the first step down the stairs, the door creaks open behind her and she whirls around.
Lia peers owlishly at her and whispers, “What are you doing?”
Siuan waves at her. “Go back to sleep!”
Lia of course doesn’t listen. She squints through the darkness at what Siuan is wearing, then her eyes widen in realisation. “Ohh, you’re sneaking out!”
“Shh!”
“Wait while I get changed and I’ll go too.”
“What? No!”
“But I want to come see the princess.”
“Will you be quiet?”
Lia crosses her arms. “No. In fact, I’ll tell,” she threatens in a low tone. “If you don’t take me, then I’ll go wake up mom and dad right now and I’ll tell.”
Siuan growls, “If you do that, then I’ll tell them where Ynes really got the candle from.”
Lia does not reply. Lia who is scared of the dark. Lia, whose hand Siuan has to hold at night when the island walls creak and moan.
Immediately Siuan regrets her words. She is about to take them back, when Lia says softly, "You shouldn't go alone.”
Sighing, Siuan walks over and places her hands on Lia’s shoulders. "I'll be back,” she murmurs, then nudges Lia back towards the room. “Go to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Grudgingly Lia nods and does as she’s told. Siuan waits by the shut door, listening to the creak of Lia’s footsteps and their mother asking what was happening. She holds her breath until she hears Lia say, “Just had to go to the bathroom.”
She breathes out in relief. Turning, she starts back down the long staircase. Once outside, she slips on her clogs. She doesn't need to gather a cloak about her or cross her arms to preserve her body heat; the heat of the day lingers in the warm night air. The sky is clear and dazzling with the wink of stars, and the moon casts its watery light, limning the world in delicate silver.
She squeezes through the alley between two islands and darts up the street. The Stone towers to the north, an enormous seamless dome that gleams in the nascent moonlight like a mountain. The walls of the Inner City cordones off the Maule from the rest of the population. Tear's lifeblood and livelihood the sea, yet the people who tend it are barred from their worldly betters. Whatever the fuck that means.
Guardsmen are supposed to be watching the little gatehouses that dot the Inner City walls, but by this hour they are often too deep in their cups to care. Siuan slips past them like a minnow through the nets. They don't pay her any heed.
On the other side of the walls, she pauses in the shadow of a building and stares. The streets here are lined with stone. The buildings are made of stone. Even the roofs are shingled with some sort of stone material — that certainly isn't thatch she sees, or even tile. Street lamps illuminate every corner with pools of flickering golden light, and she spies a man with a long pole going 'round and lighting each lamp. There isn't a trace of mud to be seen, apart from what has been dragged partway up the road by the track of carriages and carts.
Hurriedly, Siuan scrapes as much mud from her clogs as she can before continuing on her way. The first few steps are unwieldy — cobblestones aren't designed to account for these kinds of shoes. After a lifetime navigating riverbanks and sandbars, fields and muddy streets, paving stones it seems will be her downfall.
Beside each lamp on the street corners are signposts. Some are even riveted to shop walls, or swing from iron-wrought poles in a faint ocean breeze. Siuan doesn't spare them a glance. She can't read them. And anyway, she had watched Mara's brother draw the route to the great house in the mud of the road outside their island. How he had dragged a stick at sharp angles that twisted in a single branch until terminating at a jab into the muck.
She has only seen it explained once. Once is enough.
She takes a right. Then straight on for two more blocks and left and straight again. She stops when she sees a sign hanging over the back entrance of an enormous manor house. The sign has something burned into the wood that she can’t read, but it is also painted yellow with black stars and a red moon — the sigil of House Saniago.
Dozens of guardsmen stand at their posts at the main entrance, and dozens more loiter around the stables on the other side of the manor. They wear great feathery plumes on their armour and handsome half cloaks that hang rakishly from one shoulder. The air is filled with their talk over card games, the swish of horse tails, and the fresh green smell of manure. The stone face of the house has a cacophony of windows that glitter with amber light — actual windows, not just holes in the walls but made of coloured bits of glass assembled between lead chambers like so many fish scales. Music drifts faintly from the house, music and laughter.
"Excuse me."
Siuan jumps. A servant girl, not much older than herself, goes bustling past, through a gate leading somewhere around the manor house. Glancing around to see if anyone noticed — they hadn't; nobody seems to care a whit — Siuan follows. She trails after the servant girl through a garden area fragrant with herbs and fruit trees, some of which tempt Siuan themselves — she has not tasted an orange since her mother brought one home three years ago and offered her a slice with a proud, beaming smile — then pauses when the girl vanishes through a large door.
Cautiously Siuan approaches the door and peers around a hinge. An enormous kitchen is crowded with people. They chop vegetables and stoke the fire and assemble fanciful delights upon large silver platters, which are in turn whisked away by young men dressed in matching livery, yellow and black, a hive of activity.
Siuan watches until her view is blocked by somebody stepping in front of her.
Eyes wide, she looks up. A broad woman in a pristine white apron scowls down at her. She bears a set of shoulders that could have hauled nets fast as any at the docks, faster even.
"You here for someone, girl?" she asks.
Siuan straightens her spine and announces, "No. I'm here to work."
The woman's dark eyebrows hoist up like a sail. She takes in Siuan's attire, her shabby blue apron and shoes. Then she grunts and nods sharply towards the enormous fireplace, or rather to the bundle of brooms leaning their handles against the stone-slabbed siding of the fireplace. "Go sweep out back, and I'll make sure you're fed before you head off to the Maule again."
Siuan tries to protest, but that earns her only a roll of eyes.
"Don't argue, or I'll call the guards to take you away. Do you think you're the only dockrat here?" she says, and tugs up the cuff of her sleeve to reveal familiar inked markings on her brown skin. "Now, do as you're told, and I won't tell your mother you were here."
Siuan's blood goes cold. "You know my mother?"
"Light, child. No. But I can damn well find out fast enough to make your head spin." Doing up her cuff buttons again, she says dismissively, "Now, go on, with you."
"Thank you," Siuan mumbles, trailing off uncertainly.
"Mistress Lucia,” says the woman. "And if you — no, don't put the roe on that, you idiot!"
Siuan starts until she realises that Mistress Lucia isn't talking to her. In fact, Mistress Lucia has stormed off and is now berating one of her staff, who grimaces and apologises.
Everybody is too busy to notice Siuan stepping warily into the kitchen. She approaches the fireplace, the flames licking its surroundings with scorching heat. Then, grabbing one of the brooms, she makes her escape. Outside, she turns right towards where Mistress Lucia had indicated with a generous wave of her hand.
The manor house sprawls against its landscape of lush gardens and fountains. Siuan reaches a set of stone steps leading up to a locked door and begins to halfheartedly sweep, even as she glances around for sign of any people. The sound of music is louder here than at the entrance, and the rough talk of soldiers and guardsmen has given way to half whispered conversations, impossible to overhear. Gone the smell of hay and horses and shit, and now perfumed flowers and citrus groves.
Siuan hears someone laugh over a wall, the noise closer than before. She wanders over until she finds a gate, but a thick chain clamps it shut tighter than a noblewoman's whalebone corset. She looks up. A tangled vine winds its way up a trellis towards a balcony high above, which straddles either side of the wall, where another trellis tangles along the balustrades.
A quick glance around to check that nobody is watching, and Siuan leans the broom against the wall. She approaches the trellis and tests it with a few firm yanks. The trellis is made of thick bands of wood that crisscross their way up the wall, secured into place. And so, kicking off her clogs to the side, she climbs.
It isn't very different to clambering around a mast's rigging with Mara and Lia when the larger packet ships come to dock, avoiding the yells of midshipmen for them to heave off whilst the stevedores haul the goods down to shore. In fact it's a great deal easier. The trellis doesn't have the same give as rope, and the balcony is far lower than the mizzen tops.
She scampers up the wall face. The music swells and the sound of glass clinking against glass the higher she climbs. Victoriously, Siuan hooks her hands over the balcony railing and hauls herself up that last bit, only to freeze.
She is suddenly face to face with a young lady with golden hair in ringlets, wearing a dress that shimmers like water, bedecked with jewels. Her face is powdered and pale, and her blue eyes widen in shock.
Silence. And then Siuan starts furiously descending back the way she came, as fast as she can. Her toes slip against leaves, and she swears loudly, flailing for whatever she can grab hold of. Gravity seems to yank on the small of her back, and the last thing Siuan sees as she falls is the young lady reaching out to try to catch her.
The world goes white and all the breath leaves Siuan's body in one fell swoop. She lies on her back, winded, blinking the world back into being.
"What on earth is going on?"
"There was a girl hanging from the balcony!"
"Don't be ridiculous. There's not a — Why, there's a girl on the ground down there!"
"I told you!"
“Do you think she’s a thief?”
With a groan, Siuan struggles to sit up. Her body aches but everything seems to be working properly as far as she can tell. On the balcony above, a man has joined the young lady. He points to her and shouts towards the other side of the wall, "Over here! No, you idiots! The gate! The other gate!"
Someone yanks on the nearby gate, then the sound of fiddling with the lock and the scrape of a key.
Panic leaps in Siuan's throat. Scrambling to her feet, she lurches the first few steps, but the ground steadies beneath her and she sprints away. Behind her someone shouts for her to stop, and she can hear the clanging of the iron gate being opened followed by the clunk of armoured footsteps.
She doesn't stop and she doesn't turn around. She skids around a corner, nearly toppling over, and runs headlong into Mistress Lucia's stalwart frame.
Mistress Lucia's hands steady Siuan's shoulders. "I heard yelling. What did you do?" When Siuan tries to break free and flee, her grip tightens. "Oh, no you don't. This way."
Siuan is dragged into the kitchens. "Who's that?" one of the staff asks.
"The only thing you need concern yourself with is that bloody pastry, Elodis," Mistress Lucia snaps in return.
Nobody else questions Mistress Lucia after that, and Siuan is promptly shoved into a pantry behind sacks of rice and flour. Not a moment later, she hears the rapid steps of guardsmen approaching. Siuan doesn't dare do anything more than peek around the corner, holding her breath all the while.
Mistress Lucia's body is blocking the entrance of the kitchen. She has her arms crossed, and Siuan can barely make out the figures of armoured guards with brightly coloured sleeves beneath their breastplates. "What do you want?" Mistress Lucia asks.
"Some of the guests said they saw a thief run in this direction."
"Said that, did they? A thief?"
"Well -" the lead guard flounders beneath Mistress Lucia's hard glower. "They saw someone, in any case."
"Awful lot of 'someones' around the manor right now. Or haven't you noticed there's a party going on?"
The guard's voice hardens. "Now, listen here -"
Mistress Lucia doesn't do anything more than uncross her arms, but it's enough to make all activity in the room pause, and everyone goes stock still to watch with apprehension.
"Ser," says Mistress Lucia in an iron voice, "This event has been planned for weeks. I am trying to run two dozen staff keeping all these grand nobles fed and fucking watered. And if so much as a single pie goes out that door at the wrong time, I'll be sure to let the master know who was the cause of it."
He mumbles something that Siuan can't hear, then barks at his men, "You heard the woman! Back to your posts, you lot! Or I'll have your bloody hides for saddlebags!"
Mistress Lucia remains shadowing the doorway until the stomp of marching feet diminishes, then she turns around. All she does is lift an eyebrow, and every member of the kitchen staff leap back into action with renewed fervour. They keep their faces downturned as she crosses the kitchen back to the pantry where Siuan hides.
For a long torturous moment, Siuan quails beneath her hard glower. Then Mistress Lucia shakes her head and gestures for Siuan to follow her. Hesitantly, Siuan does so. Mistress Lucia strides towards a bamboo steamer and retrieves a freshly steamed bun, which she promptly folds into cloth and tosses to Siuan, who catches it.
"What's your mother's name?" Mistress Lucia asks.
Startled, Siuan clutches the parcelled food to her chest. "Rosaria Sanche."
Mistress Lucia grunts, then points a squared finger in Siuan's direction. "Now, I'm going to tell her you were here. Not because I want you punished, mind, but because if I were in her shoes I'd be worried sick if you were out and about at this hour. And if you think she doesn't know, then let me tell you: she knows."
Siuan's shoulders cave inwards and she mumbles, "Yes, ma'am."
"Light. Stand up straight! Don't cower!"
Siuan pushes her shoulders back and squares her jaw.
"Better." Mistress Lucia doesn't smile at her, but her gaze softens. "Go home. Sleep. And for your sake, I hope you’re better at hauling a net than you are at sweeping."
Siuan nods, hand tightening around the food. "Yes, ma'am."
Siuan doesn't test her luck any further. No sooner does she step out of the kitchen and into the cooler night air — cooler than beside that blazing torrent of a fireplace — than she realises she is, of course, not wearing shoes. She cranes her neck to see around the corner back towards the balcony, and spies a guardsman talking to a nobleman. The young lady is at his side, golden curls falling about her shoulders. Siuan's clogs have been abandoned beside them. With a grimace, Siuan turns and leaves them behind.
She will need to walk back through the mud and muck with bare feet. Worse still, she'll need to ask her parents to buy her a new pair. Dread pools in the pit of her stomach. But at least, she thinks to herself as she meanders along the paved roads and back towards the Outer City, at least she had managed to see a princess. Or something that very nearly resembled one.
When she reaches the Outer City, her feet squelch unpleasantly through the mud. Siuan makes a face and soldiers on regardless. She misses living out by the river instead. She misses the trees. She misses the solitude. She misses grass beneath her feet instead of this endless mud. She misses being able to light a fire without fear of being snapped at by her parents.
Siuan stops at an island building not at all dislike the one her family lives in. Part of it is in a state of repair, and there are building supplies piled up along one side. People mill about out front. She settles herself atop a few dry planks of lumber and unwraps the food Mistress Lucia had given to her. The steamed bun is still warm. When she sinks her teeth into it, her mouth bursts with sweet spices and actual, honest to Light meat. Not fish. Beef, perhaps. It tastes smoked and she catches a dribble of dark red sauce with her tongue before it can escape.
With a contented sigh, she leans back against the thin timber wall behind her. Through it she can hear the scuffle of someone walking around in their room. She is savouring the final bite of her small meal, when she hears them.
"Ugh. My boots are getting wrecked in all this shit."
"Why the fuck aren't there at least some planks on the ground?"
"Better yet — why are we here?"
Frowning, Siuan thinks for a moment that the voices are coming from inside the island. Then she cranes her neck and glances around the corner. Out in the street just in front of the island, three men have stopped. Their puffed and brightly coloured sleeves and their fancy leather boots and their thickly embroidered half cloaks clearly mark them as nobles. Or at least very wealthy merchants, though Siuan suspects by their demeanour that this is not the case.
One of them tips his head back to take a swig from a half empty bottle that sloshes. Another shifts a lit torch between his hands, holding his other hand out for the bottle of booze. When his friend keeps drinking deeply from it, he smacks his chest. With a grunt, the other lowers the bottle and hands it over. People walk around them, giving them a wide berth.
“I can’t let you fine gentlemen visit my city without sampling all of the wares,” one of the young lordlings says. Of the three of them, only he wears a beard in the Tairen style, neatly trimmed and oiled so that it forms a sharp point.
“Oh, aye. Great selection you have here,” says another with a sarcastic sweep of his arm towards the downtrodden street.
“We just need to ask for directions. You, there!”
A woman who had emerged from the island keeps her head down and quickens her step to hurry past them, but the Tairen lordling moves to block her path.
“Now, where are you off to so fast at this hour?” His smile is sickly in the flickering torchlight.
She mumbles something and tries to step around him. The other two close ranks. One wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. The other brings the torch closer to the woman's face to better inspect her. She shies from him, but the young Tairen lordling grabs her arm before she can slip away.
"Don't suppose you can give us a tour?" he asks. "There may even be something in it for you, if you perform your duties to our satisfaction."
Siuan doesn't hear what the woman says in reply. She's too busy glancing around for something she could do or use. Anything at all. Several cheap roofing tiles have fallen from the piles of construction materials and lie broken in the mud. She grabs a few pieces, sticking them into her apron front pocket. Then she carefully peers around the corner and takes aim.
The woman is twisting and trying to break free. Siuan's first hurl of a roofing tile goes awry. The lordlings don't even notice it plopping into the mud behind them. Scowling, Siuan chucks another. It clips one of their legs, and he gives a shout of surprise more than of pain. The others whirl around to see where the cast came from. Her next throw catches one of them directly on the forehead, and he rears back, clutching his face. When he pulls his hand down it comes away red with blood.
It's enough. The woman tears her arm free and goes running off without a backward glance. Siuan smirks, a rush of triumph swelling in her chest, only for it to recede as quickly as the tide.
One of the lordlings points towards her. Eyes widening, Siuan turns tail and races down the alley between islands. Behind her, the sound of booted footsteps scrambling wetly through the mud. But this place isn't like the broad stone avenues of the Inner City, and Siuan knows them like the treacherous paths through the Fingers of the Dragon.
Weaving and ducking, she dodges around the stilts of an island balcony, then slides between a gap small enough to give a grown man pause but just enough for her to scurry through to another alley. The lordlings stop and swear, then go the long way round. Siuan laughs, knowing full well that she'll have disappeared before they can circle around to meet her.
That is, until she pops out the other side and stumbles to a halt right before Uncle Huan.
He blinks down at her, his haggard expression giving way to utter bewilderment. "Siuan?" he says. "What are you doing out? Why aren't you at home?"
She pants for breath, pointing back the way she'd come. "Men," she manages to get out, then adds, "Bastards."
Huan's face screws up in even deeper confusion, but he smiles nevertheless. "That's very unspecific," he drawls. With a shake of his head, he gestures at her. "Come on. I'll take you back home."
"Stop right there!"
Siuan whirls around. The three lordlings come puffing into view with mud splattered up their boots and breeches. They stop beneath rickety scaffolding held up by nothing but ropes that creak beneath the weight of building supplies.
The Tairen lordling steps forward, face red — with fury or exertion it's difficult to tell — and jabs a finger in Siuan's direction. "You," he growls, "have made a big mistake."
Immediately Huan grabs Siuan by the shoulders and pushes her behind him so that he stands between her and the lordling. His grip on her is iron, but his voice is all smooth charm when he speaks, “You’ll forgive my niece, my lord. I was just about to take her home.”
“I’ll do no such thing -”
“My lords, you seem very lost,” Huan interrupts. “You should be at a tavern by the fire with a girl on your knee and a cup of ale in your hand. Not here among the shit of the Maule.” Then to Siuan’s surprise he drops into a flourishing bow. “Allow me to be your guide. I know the city better than any, and can take you wheresoever you please, so long as you give a little something in return of course.”
The lordling sneers at the way Huan rubs his thumb and forefinger together. “Always in it for the money, aren’t you?”
“All men have to eat, my Lord,” Huan says.
His voice is silky, but he makes a gesture behind his back for Siuan to go. Siuan starts to slip away, but the Tairen lordling’s dark eyes dart to her and he steps forward. Huan moves in his path. When the lordling tries to go around him, Huan grabs him by the shoulders to prevent him from doing so.
“Don’t touch me!” the lordling spits, breaking Huan’s hold on him.
“Forgive me, my lord. It’s very muddy back here. I wouldn’t want you to get your finery all dirty.”
“Shut up and get out of my way.”
Again, the lordling tries to step around him, and this time Huan shoves him back.
With a shocked look on his face, the lordling staggers back a step. One of his friends steadies him, while the other tightens his grip upon the torch. The Tairen lordling’s expression turns from incredulity to anger faster than a storm. He shrugs off his friend’s hand and snarls at Huan, “You can’t touch me! My father is High Lord Sunamon of House Haellin, and I will have your hands!”
Huan laughs and holds his hands out wide. “Then you may have them, my lord!” he says, and punches the lordling square in the face.
This time the Tairen lordling falls flat on his ass in the mud. As he flails and swears, scrambling back to his feet, Huan rounds upon Siuan and hisses, “What are you waiting for? Run, burn you!”
Siuan runs. She makes it to the T junction at the end of the alley before pausing when she hears the unmistakable slide of steel being drawn from its sheath. Except, it’s Huan who has darted forward and drawn the Tairen lordling’s own thin sword and now holds its point at him. The other two draw their swords in retaliation, but all four of them stand there. Nobody wants to be the first to strike.
“Is this really how you want to die? For a filthy little dock rat?” the Tairen lordling asks. His once fine clothes are now half smeared with mud.
“I could ask the same of you.” Huan gestures with the tip of the sword towards the three men. “Let’s all cut our losses, shall we? Grab a drink. Call it a night. My offer still stands.”
“Fuck your offer.”
Without another word, the Tairen lordling seizes the torch from his companion. Huan lifts the sword to block any incoming blow, but rather than strike at him, the lordling instead flings the lit torch through one of the low island windows.
Siuan’s breath catches in her chest. A thread of smoke drifts through the open window, then quickly a torrent, and soon — too soon, too fast — flames leap along the side of the building. Huan has lowered the sword and turned to stare. From here, she can make out the expression on his face, horror that flickers orange and red and bright.
The Tairen lord snatches the sword from Huan’s loose grip before Huan can think to stop him. When he lifts the sword up in the air, the blade gleams like a horned arc of moonlight in the sky, and Siuan cries out. The sword comes down, the pommel striking at the side of Huan’s head. He crumples to the ground in a heap.
Siuan doesn’t pause to think. Her bare feet slip as she sprints towards Huan, and she crouches down beside him roll him onto his back. His eyelids flutter.
Smoke is pouring out into the air now. It mingles with startled yells and the panicked race of feet from the lower levels. But the island rises up by five stories, and the glow of the flames spreads through the flimsy wooden structure like kindling. The lordlings back away. The Tairen lord glances upwards. With a slash of his blade, he lordling cuts one of the ropes suspending the scaffolding so that a jumble of building supplies comes crashing down, blocking any easy retreat Siuan might otherwise have. Through a gap in the rubble, he smirks at her and sheathes his sword with a flourish before he and his friends turn and vanish into the night.
Huan groans and tries to sit up, wincing. He prods at the tender part of his head then croaks, “Ow.”
“Can you stand?” Siuan asks but she is already hauling him up to his feet.
Huan lurches upright and has to steady himself with a heavy hand on Siuan’s shoulder. She wraps an arm around his waist and guides him back towards the other end of the alleyway. The crackle of fire grows steadily louder, and people in neighbouring islands peer from their windows only to hasten away, evacuating anything that might be touched by a wayward spark. Huan’s feet regain confidence with every step, and by the time they’ve rounded the corner of the T junction, he’s the one hurrying her along with urgent murmurs to go faster.
Smoke thickens the air to a grey veil. Siuan’s eyes have begun to sting and water by the time they make it out onto the main street. Here, others congregate, some having escaped from the island itself at the first hint of smoke. An older woman yells for someone to fetch the fire carts, and two young men go racing off down the street, but nobody disperses. Nobody has any doubt that the fire carts — owned and operated by a Lord — will take too long to show up and demand too much compensation for services, letting the island burn until everyone gathers enough coin between them to spur them into action, until it’s too late.
Huan looks all around then points at Siuan’s apron. “Give me that.”
Puzzled, she undoes the stays and hands it to him. He ties it firmly around his neck, fastening it with a knot at the base of his skull so that he can pull it over his nose in a makeshift mask. Then he says firmly, “Stay here.”
When he turns to start back towards the island, Siuan gasps, “No wait -!” and grabs the back of his threadbare coat before he can go two paces.
Huan stops. Gently, he untangles her trembling fingers from where they’ve bunched up around the fabric of his coat. He tips her chin up so that she’s looking into his eyes — warm and dark and crinkled the way they get whenever he smiles. “I’ll be back,” he says, more softly this time. “Now, stay here, or your mother will kill me.”
This time he doesn’t give her the opportunity to protest. He turns and abruptly races towards the flame-engulfed island without so much as a drop of hesitation.
Siuan stares after him even when his tall form has vanished from sight through the main entrance. Smoke billows up the side of the walls and crawls along the roof line. Someone clambers through a window and attempts to scale what remains of the scaffolding to escape, and she is chased by flame that seems alive, groping like fingers. Others make it out the front entrance, soot-streaked and hacking up their lungs. They are taken in by onlookers, who bring them safely away from the blaze and assess any wounds.
Desperately, Siuan scans each of them for her uncle’s familiar figure. She rises up on her toes to get a better look only to drop back down on her heels, her stomach twisting itself into knots until she feels sick.
Then a dark shape shambles through the thick haze of acrid smoke, and Huan staggers through the front entrance carrying a child in one arm and guiding an ashen-faced young woman by the other. When they’ve reached a safe distance from the island, he pushes the child into her arms, only to turn and run back into the building once more.
The second time he returns with a babe cradles in his arms and an older child clinging to his back, arms wrapped around his neck tight as a noose. He has to tug himself free and press the baby into a random onlooker’s arms. His clothes have gone monochrome. He is awash all in greys and blacks, singed and ash-strewn, ash in his hair, ash caked onto his brown skin. He barely waits to shove the children with him out the door before turning back again.
Siuan darts forward and grabs one of the children by the arm, hauling them away from the building along with their older sibling who scrambles in their wake. Even from here, the heat of the flames is intense as a forge. The air shimmers with the force of it. And with a dull roar, a section of the second floor buckles and collapses.
The entire island shudders and leans, but by some miracle remains upright. The main entrance is stove-in like a smashed hull. People on the street are trying to orchestrate buckets to be brought with seawater. The kids Siuan had been helping flee. Some people rush forward with buckets in a meagre attempt to quell the flames — not to put them out completely but to stop them from spreading to other nearby buildings. Others still rally around second story windows, holding out their arms to catch a man bracing himself for a leap to the ground.
Siuan doesn’t pay attention to any of them. She is trying to remember how to breathe. There’s no way anyone can get out through the main entrance anymore. Not without battling their way through burning rubble with nothing but their hands.
Siuan pushes her way through the crowd and towards the left side of the island. She stops when the heat becomes too great to stand for any length of time, and still it draws at her skin like so many fingernails digging in deep. If she cranes her neck, she can just see the side entrance down a narrow alley.
The door is shut. Then it shakes, someone pounding on the other side and yelling hoarsely.
For a moment Siuan does nothing. The alley is cramped with soot and smoke, but most of the fire hasn’t reached this side yet. Not fully.
Taking a deep breath, Siuan plunges forward. The drumming on the other side of the door has quickened, grown more desperate, and whoever is trapped there coughs in between their shouting. Siuan reaches for the handle and yanks, but the latch is firmly stuck in place.
The noise on the other side pauses, then resumes with renewed urgency. “Help!” a woman’s voice calls. “Please -!”
“It’s locked!” Siuan calls out.
The handle tries to turn from the other side and the door is yanked against whatever latch is keeping it in place.
“It’s not working!” the woman shouts, panicked. “I need a key!”
Fingers still curled around the handle, Siuan rattles it just like at home. Through the frenzy and fear, through the crackle of fire eating up timbers, a strangely familiar warmth spreads in her chest. Not the bitter heat of flames but a sweetness like taking that first sip of honeyed tea on a cool morning and watching the moon dip towards the sea.
The world sharpens. Flames swarm the wall and bend towards her like a set of hands closing around their prize. She can feel the internal mechanisms of the lock tangle, a net that has gotten itself all gnarled up on deck. All she has to do is unweave a snarled tendril there and —
Siuan turns the handle and the sliding of the latch into place chimes, warm and silvered as a bell.
She pulls the door open and a woman tumbles out, nearly falling atop her. “Thank you,” the woman gasps. “Oh, thank you, thank -”
Siuan tugs on her arm, “Come on!”
A beam falls within the building, so loud and so near that both Siuan and the woman cry out in alarm. Immediately, the woman scoops Siuan up in her arms and runs. Siuan protests that she doesn’t need to be carried, but the woman’s legs are longer and the flames chase them down the long narrow alleyway.
The woman holds onto her for a moment longer once they’ve made it back out onto the street as though to assure herself that they’re both alive, before setting Siuan gently down with trembling hands. Behind them they hear a dangerous creak, and they both turn as the side wall of the apartment peels away from the rest of the island like a rind of fruit, revealing the skeletal timber framing being eaten up from within. Fire pours out, and all the onlookers take a step back. Slowly and with a great gnashing roar, the island caves in upon itself. Like a wave it rolls down, crashing to the ground, sending up a spray of misty sparks that splatter and illuminate the dark earth until it seems awash with so many burning stars.
Distantly Siuan hears the bell of the fire cart tolling furiously as the driver shakes the rope attached to its clapper in an attempt to part the crowd and let it through. The heavy ox-pulled cart groans its way to the fore, and men in thickly padded buff coats leap down and start to heave water atop the wreckage to put it out so it cannot spread.
Someone touches her shoulder and Siuan glances blankly up towards the woman from the alley. Tear tracks mark the ash and dust on the woman’s cheeks, but her voice is steady when she asks, “Is there anyone that can take you home?”
“My uncle Huan.”
The woman searches the crowd around them. “Where is he?”
Siuan opens her mouth to answer, but the words won’t come out, as though a hand has wrapped around her throat and squeezed. Instead she points, her fingers shaking.
Broken pillars and crooked timbers list like ship’s masts and slowly the fires burn lower. Staring at the space where the entrance used to be, Siuan watches for her uncle’s return. She searches every flicker of the flames for his body, every crack of debris for his voice, hoping to spot him, hoping to see him straighten unscathed, unscorched, among the rubble, hoping that he would brush the sparks from his hair and find her there.
