“There she is.”
A smiling face hovers over her. Not Sena’s.
“We lost you there for a minute. Let’s move her to that cot.” She can feel strong hands lift and position her on the uncomfortable canvas. She lets the nightmare go, gladly trading it for reality—even though it doesn’t feel real yet. Things are only marginally better.
Caliph is leaning over her with eyes the color of wet snakeskin. He is looking at her pupils. She can tell he is attempting a prognosis. But his anxiety over her is the anxiety of a stranger for another stranger.
For a moment she lets herself look into his eyes.
What’s happening? She feels frantic and confused.
From behind the High King, she hears someone break the silence with a joke. “It’s okay folks … she’s just never seen that much money before.” A chorus of good-natured laughter.
But a flashbulb pops and Caliph’s irritation shows. “Please! No more lithos!” Caliph’s voice is smooth but forceful. She sees a knight grab the offender and move him instantly toward the door.
A woman in a red trench has appeared.
“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” says Caliph. “Is she all right?”
It is the physician’s turn to look at Taelin’s eyes. She makes Taelin squeeze her fingers. Her face is kind but not as kind as Caliph Howl’s. “I think she’ll be just fine,” the doctor says.
Taelin sits up and summons a smile for the crowd. “I’m sorry.” Dazed amity leaks out of fractures in the resolve she has put on specifically for the event. “I don’t usually faint.” There are more jokes … this time about the High King’s good looks.
Taelin sees the chapel as though its gravity has shifted and the witch is at its core. The huge shadow has disappeared. Sena is looking at her with a curious smirk. Not cruel. Rather ingratiating … as though she has done Taelin a favor.
Taelin scowls and stands up. She remembers she is being scrutinized. She smiles again and touches her forehead where there is a faint scar.
The physician produces a glass syringe.
“Oh Gods, no. No. I’m fine.” She holds her hands up and maintains the artificial grin despite the fact that the room is spinning. “I’m so sorry. I haven’t eaten much today.” She sits down again, this time in a padded chair that has been scrambled from a nearby room.
Caliph pats her gently on the back and puts a glass of water into her hand. “We don’t have to do this tonight,” he whispers. His voice is only for her. Too kind. She suspects him of ulterior motives but smothers her skepticism with graciousness she coughs up for the press.
“No, really. I’ll be all right.” She stands up. Everybody claps.
She can see the Iscan trade bar in the coffer. Gold. Its value must be extraordinary. She doesn’t know what to say. She says thank you. She lets the High King’s aides move her into position by the table. They shine lights on the two of them. The ambrotypist begins with a litho for the papers and then takes two images on treated plates of glass.
She doesn’t want this. She works her demonifuge nervously between her fingers. She remembers that it is too much money. She must stop this. She must decline. She must turn this event to its one true purpose and the only reason she agreed to the High King’s donation in the first place: so that she could refuse it in front of the press, then tell all the journalists what she intends to do … how Nenuln will change the north forever. But it is too late. Is it too late?
The litho-slides have already been taken. If she declines now, they will print the slide of her accepting and then write that she changed her mind. She will look foolish and capricious. If she accepts, her entire goal will be compromised. But it is too late. She has been thinking while the flashbulbs pop and the journalists scribble. She has been smiling and nodding while her eyes circuited the room.
The ceremony has been abridged for her sake. The High King is already leaving. Taelin sees Sena standing by one of the crimson window panes. Wait! Weren’t all the panes replaced? The witch breathes on the window and then draws something on the frost-covered glass. The knight has reopened the front doors and the air is freezing. Sena gives Taelin a private smile and floats out into the snow.
CHAPTER
9
Royal Charity Backs Pandragonian Religion
by Willis Bothshine, Journalist
In a move some have called political desperatism, High King Caliph Howl gifted three hundred forty thousand beks to the reformed Church of Nenuln in the form of a solid gold trade bar. The king’s public donation took place at thirteen o’clock on Tes eleventh, Day of Whispers. The gift was accepted by Lady Taelin Rae, currently the church’s only acting clergy, before royal knights escorted it to Crullington Bank for deposit …
Taelin’s eyes skipped down, passing over details of her arrival and purchase of St. Remora.
But according to Dr. Yewl, professor of Stonehavian Politics, “Even if the [High] King’s donation doesn’t ease the tension between [Pandragor and Stonehold], it’s a smart thing for him to do, locally. He should do more of it. Shelters bring order [instead of] rogue panhandling to pay off squat lords. We need more infrastructure for rebuilding [people’s] lives.”
Before it came to its smug conclusion, the article turned out another line or two about the High King’s failure to build relationships with the south.
Taelin set it aside with a feeling of despair. Papers were for entertainment, skepticism and veiled malice, not messages of hope.
What had happened? But she knew. Last night she had had a dream. A beautiful white figure had appeared to her, standing in St. Remora. Haloed in gold, and orbited by fantastic lights, the being had told her, in a pure high language, about the blackness that had come crashing through her chancel.
So much like a train …
All darkness and smoke and dials spinning. Like a locomotive bursting into a station.
It was the witch’s train.
And Sena had her bags packed. She had used Stonehold up. She was done here, on the edge of escaping … far away.
The language was so simple, so beautiful and perfect, that Taelin hoped Nenuln would never stop talking.
Don’t let her get away, Taelin.
But I don’t understand the other things I saw. There was a man’s body, I—
You saw the future, Taelin. It is a gift.
* * *
TAELIN touched the demonifuge against her chest. So it was meant to be. She was meant to accept the High King’s money. She was meant to meet Caliph Howl.
Yet her dream had given her no clue how to chase Sena down. Taelin didn’t know any holomorphy. She had never been good at math. Nenuln will provide a way.
She set her cup of coffee down and got up to shovel snow.
As she approached the front doors, she stopped.
A single pane of red glass confronted her. How had she missed it? Its ill-fitting edges leaked cold air. Taelin looked at it closely. There was a finger-drawing melted into the ice, flower-like.
She wiped her hand across the mark. Strangely, she couldn’t make it go away.