The Hollow Heart Read online

  “After you finish that task, remove the bodies from the agora. Scrub it clean of blood.” Delight bubbled within me. How delicious it was to make him do what I wanted, to subject him to demeaning obedience. It was fair recompense for all the times he ignored my reluctance and persuaded me into his bed.

  His blue eyes burned with resentment, but he made no reply, only spun on his heel and left. I almost wished he had objected. His sly silence was suspicious, and I would gladly punish him for any sign of disobedience. How could I ever have agreed to marry him? Why did I heed his promise that I would enjoy being with him, and then when I didn’t, why did I return to his side, simply because I felt guilty for not sharing what he felt?

  Let Aden do what I want now. Let him obey me. Let him dread my displeasure.

  Mere chose to alter an already-made dress. She works in wary silence, save when she asks if I would like a pink petticoat that will reveal itself when I walk, with a slashed red silk overlay that will drift behind me. I give permission for her to touch my divine person, and she weaves green ribbon into my shoulder-length black hair and binds it into a braided crown. She gasps when she sees the beauty of my starry earrings, but asks no questions. She tuts over the broken chain of the crescent moon necklace, but makes no comment other than that an added link can easily mend it. She does not say she is designing me to look like the Elysium bird, nor observe how the red silk falls around me like liquid. She need not say what we both know: that in the suggestion of the bird and of blood, she has chosen to figure me as a thing of immortal beauty and mortal danger both.

  I grow bored with her silence and say, “Well? Do you not find me greatly changed?”

  “You look regal beyond measure,” she says after a slight pause. “But you were always beautiful.”

  “I do not mean how I look. Was I not a weak simpleton when you knew me before? Now the city is mine, its people mine. I saved them. They will adore me for it, for that and my manifest power.”

  “As you say.”

  “As you say, my queen.”

  She repeats the honorific, but my annoyance grows. I do not like her meek obedience. I do not like her closed box of a brain, with secret thoughts of me that she will not share. She obeys me not because she loves me, or even believes in my right to rule, but because I will kill her if she does not. Dissatisfied, I close my hand around her wrist. “Remember,” I command, and feel my magic pulse into her skin. As she stares into my face, she looks suddenly dizzy, perhaps because she sees me now, in my glory, and also as I was when we first met. “Tell me how I am different.”

  She starts to speak, then chokes on her words, gray eyes wide with fear. “I can’t,” she says finally.

  I shake her wrist. The prickly pincushion she holds falls to the floor. “Why not? Go on, tell me. You protected me once. You liked me. Was it because you pitied me?”

  “Yes, a little.”

  “You dared to pity me?”

  “Nirrim, you are trapping me. There is nothing I can say to please you. Not the truth, and not a lie.”

  I release her. Loneliness slides into my chest: hard and thin and fragile, like a glass blade. “I have decided to honor you. In addition to being my handmaiden, you may be my friend.”

  “What,” she says carefully, “would it mean to be your friend?”

  “Do as I command, and I will protect you.”

  “What an interesting definition of friendship.”

  “And you must tell me the truth. Friends do not lie to each other. How was I then, and how am I now?”

  With sudden, exhausted surrender, Mere says, “You are more powerful. But you are not stronger, or braver, or better.”

  Her loyalty to Other Nirrim maddens me. It is not even so much that I resent when people prefer Other Nirrim to me—although I do. What troubles me most is that I do not understand the preference. They say Nirrim was so brave, kind, sweet. What good did it do her? No one put her first. No one chose her above their own interests. Even Sid did not. She left. She always planned to leave. In the mirror before me, I see a young woman who radiates beauty, from the dark glow of her hair to the firm set of her full mouth, her figure framed in shining red. Even the scar on my cheek, from when Raven smashed a lantern against my face, entrances. A streaky burn left by the lantern’s oil, the shiny pink scar looks almost deliberate, glamorous. This woman could never be abandoned. She need not even insist that someone stay. Sid would never leave me, not as I am now.

  “Come,” I tell Mere, and step off the dressmaker’s block, ignoring the pins pricking my skin. Alterations can wait. I will have rivers of gorgeous dresses to display my worth. They will make people grateful to have a god for their queen. I call to my Elysium, which swoops into the house through an open window and bites its talons into my shoulder. “There is something we need to see.”

  * * *

  The Keepers Hall’s stained-glass windows are smashed, the shards a broken rainbow at my feet. My handmaiden hangs back warily, unwillingly, staring at the hall’s open double doors, which hang, splintered, on their hinges. This hall once housed the councilmen, the people closest to the ruling Lord Protector. They decided our laws and instructed the militia to enforce them. They possessed the city’s largest library when Half Kith like me were forbidden from reading. Not so long ago, when I entered this hall for the first time, councilmen in the library sat calmly drinking my watered-down blood, served to them in glass teapots, as they read their books and enjoyed their improved memory. I know how they had obtained my blood—it was drained from me every day during my imprisonment. But where did they get the blood that watered the fortune-telling tree? Who in this city had the ability to read the future? What other powers lay hidden in my people?

  “You drank an elixir,” I say to Mere, who shrinks from me, clearly worried she has provoked my wrath. “You served it to me, and it made us more beautiful.”

  She is frightened again, and scrambles for refuge in an empty compliment. “You do not need an elixir to look more beautiful. You are beauty incarnate.”

  “I know that. Do you believe I would knowingly drink the blood of my people, the children of gods? I want to know where you obtained it. The Council provided many different elixirs to High Kith for a price. Where did they keep their supplies? Where did they keep the blood?”

  “I don’t know.” She backs away, stained glass cracking beneath her feet. “I didn’t know the elixir contained blood. I didn’t think—”

  “Indeed, you did not think. You simply drank it, and enjoyed it, and never questioned its origin.”

  “Nirrim, what can I say? I would never drink it now that I know.”

  “Oh, would you not? You enjoyed how the elixir smoothed your skin. Do not tell me you would have sacrificed beauty for the sake of your scruples. You would have drunk the elixir … so long as no one would punish you for it. You would drink, provided you could keep your sin secret.”

  Mere’s expression slackens in fear, yet her chin lifts. “Think what you like. I know that I would not. I am sorry I ever did.”

  “If you are sorry, then be of use!” I storm ahead into the Keepers Hall, and hear her follow alongside me, her sandals scraping against more broken glass. “Who sold you the elixir?”

  “A councilman.”

  “Who?”

  “His name was Jasen. He was born into a well-respected family with many sugar fields two hours by foot outside the city.”

  “There must be stores of blood. He would know where they are to be found.”

  “Possibly, but he was executed in the agora along with all the other councilmembers.”

  In the tales of the gods, Vengeance eats live coals as a treat. My fury feels like that meal, like I have swallowed a burning lump that scalds all the way down my throat and into my belly. “Say nothing,” I snap. “I won’t hear your reproach!” Mere bites her mouth shut, not realizing that my words were not for her, but Other Nirrim, who is always ready to tell me what I’m doing wrong, in all her si
mpering goodness.

  I don’t need a councilman to get what I want, I tell Other Nirrim, and I don’t need you.

  Sunlight filters whitely through the broken windows. The hall is dark, the tiny mosaic patterns of its tiled floors a shadowed blur. Lanterns have been knocked from their sconces. The air smells of oil and urine. The Elysium squawks and tucks its beak into my braided hair. Annoyed, I shrug the shoulder on which it stands. Even a bird should know that revolution is not pretty.

  I quicken my pace as we pass from the corridor of the entrance into an open rotunda. The quiet of the empty hall floats around us. I could call for interrogations of the remaining High Kith in the prisons, and send for my people to ransack the hall and tear it apart to its bones in search of the elixirs, but I have already wasted so much time. Practically my whole life. I cannot wait another moment. I stoop to collect a shard of stained glass, prick the tip of one finger, and lift it to the Elysium’s face. It trills, excited by my god-blood. “Find more,” I order, and it launches from my shoulder and wings away.

  We trace its flight as it dives down a flight of stairs and plows through a series of hallways with barrel-shaped ceilings and locked doors on either side. Fleetingly, I wonder if these were private rooms for the councilmen, but I do not deliberate long, as each hallway is dark and the bird its only brightness. The Elysium seems to have its own glow, like a darting flame. Its song trails behind it, tinkling against the cool floors, which are tiled yet plain terracotta, a strange contrast to the rest of the building’s marble and stained-glass splendor. The walls of the hallway are wood, not marble, the doorknobs plain black iron, not gilded as the metalwork on the doors to the library had been when I entered—a lifetime ago, it seems—and was confronted by the god of thieves.

  The Elysium slows at the hallway’s end, batting its wings to hover as best it can, like a hawk pausing midflight to sight its prey far below. In a luminous blur, it drops to settle on a doorknob, and sings.

  “Open it,” I tell Mere, who tries. The door is locked.

  My patience for humans wears thin. Divine memory can do nothing to manipulate a locking mechanism, and Mere is useless.

  “Find Aden,” I instruct the bird. Aden will use his gift to heat the metal lock until it oozes out of the door. “Go with the Elysium,” I tell Mere, “so that you may explain the situation to Aden. Do not try to run away, or when you are caught there will be no mercy.”

  “Why would I run,” she says, a slight dryness in her voice, “when I have the rare protection of your friendship?”

  * * *

  When Aden returns with Mere, it does not take long for him to do as I require. The lock and knob flow down the door in black, molten ribbons, and he shoves the door open.

  “Light the room,” I order. As before, he gives me a quick look of dislike before obeying, but I have taught him well the pointlessness of defying me, and the pain I can cause him. He mounts no arguments nor tries to assert his own views and ways, as he did when I was his lover, before Sid set foot on this island. Aden’s skin radiates, and as light cloaks his body, I understand why girls in the Ward found him so handsome, with his long, firm limbs and bright blue eyes. I admire him for a moment, as I would a favored possession, until the light grows enough for me to see the contents of the room. Mere, who has lingered by the door, gasps.

  We stand in a storage room with shelves upon shelves of large glass vials stoppered and labeled, filled to the brim with dark liquid. As the light brightens further, I can read a label: Flight, it says. Another reads, Nightmares. As I walk among the shelves, the Elysium chirping excitedly as it bobs in the air above me, I understand that this room must hold the blood of generations. There are too many vials to have been accumulated in my lifetime. Aden makes a choking sound.

  A rustle comes from a far corner of the room. As soon as I turn in its direction, Aden stops me with a firm hand I shake off, at once pleased and annoyed at his instinct to protect me. I do not need his help, and am about to tell him so when I see that Mere has located the source of the sound—a councilman in his robes, an opened vial beside him, cowering behind a shelf. Mere has what looks like a dagger at his throat. I squint further, disbelieving—how did she come upon a weapon?—and see that she must have secretly collected a shard from the broken windows in the entry of the Keepers Hall.

  “Did you plan to kill me, Mere?” I ask, amused.

  She ignores me, but I do not care, so pleased am I to see her angry at her own kith. “Where does this blood come from?” she hisses at the councilman. “How did you get it?”

  He creeps back, knocking over the vial, which spills blood onto the floor and rolls, the label clear: Nourishment. His story is evident. He hid himself away from the wrath of my people and drank someone’s magic to keep himself alive long enough to wait for an escape. Pleadingly, he says to Mere, “The Half Kith are dangerous.” He gestures at Aden and me. “Look at those freakish people. They will destroy us all.” Dirty though Mere’s dress may be, he is able to tell she is High Kith from the fabric’s deep purple color, the depth of an indi flower newly opened, and the frothy trimmings of elaborate lace. “You should not threaten me, lady.”

  “This is wrong,” Mere says, flinging her free hand at the rows upon rows of bottled blood. “You are a murderer.”

  “No,” the man says desperately, and I notice he is not much older than I am. The fullness of his black beard tells me he has hidden here for what must have been days, since the start of the revolution. “I have killed no one. They are all perfectly safe, I promise.”

  “Who are?” I demand. “Where are they?” But as soon as the question leaves my lips, I know its answer. I draw Aden from the blood-filled chamber, leaving Mere, my new acolyte, to guard the councilman, and we return to the hall of doors. I turn a knob. It rattles in my hand. When I knock at the door, a small cry comes from within the room. “Aden,” I say, my pulse mounting in fury, so sure am I of the sin this door hides: the very worst crime the High Kith could commit against us. Aden needs no urging. His hot hands seize the doorknob. He runs his palms flatly along the face of the lock until the metal scallops like whipped cream. The hot iron smells like a coming thunderstorm. Although I see the beginnings of fatigue line his face—his power, though spectacular, is always quick to fade—when the reddened metal slides down wood, he shoulders the door open. Light flows from his skin into the room. We see clearly who made that cry, who must have supplied blood for the Council’s collection.

  She cowers under a narrow bed, her hair long and unkempt, her hands small yet plump in the way of children who have just begun to walk.

  Aden’s gaze catches mine. I see my rage mirrored in his eyes as we both realize that the hall with its many doors must hide countless children like her, milked for their magic.

  SID

  I THUMB POMEGRANATE SEEDS INTO a bowl I know my mother likes, a matte white ceramic one that looks like water-polished stone. When I asked her why, she replied that the Valorian dishware she used when she was young was too elaborate, painted with heroes from long-ago wars. Unusually for her, given that she taught me every code she knew and challenged me to invent more, she said that sometimes it was nice for something not to mean anything, for a bowl to be no more than a bowl. A spoon, a spoon. It is as it is, she said, smiling, holding the bowl out for me to admire its simplicity.

  I shiver to remember those words. I remember Nirrim reciting them, her tone dull with the habit of acquiescence. It frustrated me at first, because I did not reckon with how necessary it was for Nirrim and everyone of her kith to repeat them, as though they were internal law that the Half Kith imposed on themselves. If she did not pretend the rules of her society were simple, immutable, like this bowl, she would be punished.

  My hands falter as they cut bread. Nirrim stopped pretending. I did not fully realize, then, how courageous it is to no longer go along with a lie. I remember her angry tears as she made me swear to help her make the High Kith pay for what they did to her pe
ople. I promised, and broke that promise, and left her to the danger of Ethin and her determination to plot against it.

  At first, when I explained to Nirrim that my mother was sick, I thought I would return to Herrath as soon as she was well. But that island holds nothing for me now. Nirrim does not love me. I understand. How many times have I tried to explain to a girl that love cannot be forced, that I could not make myself feel what they wanted me to feel? Nirrim had started to say the same words, and I couldn’t bear it.

  Do you not love me like I love you? I asked. Won’t you come with me?

  No, she said. I can’t come with you.

  I stopped her next words. An apology will make it worse, I told her.

  I don’t want to apologize.

  Good. There is no need. I lifted my hand to block the sight of her beauty, her pity, and left immediately, grief and shame rising in my throat like bile.

  And yet I cannot leave Nirrim, not entirely, not when I wake up thinking she sleeps beside me, that after I have my fill of looking at her full, gentle mouth and the thick lashes of her closed eyes, I will stir her out of dreams with a light touch. Wake up, I will murmur against her throat.

  Mmmph.

  Lazybones, I will tease, and touch her in a way that will make her eyes fly open.

  Sid!

  Yes?

  I was sleeping.

  You were?

  You owe me an apology.

  You’re right, Nirrim, I do. How shall I make you forgive me?

  You know, she will murmur.

  I always stretch out on the bed, imagining what I will do, my limbs alight with desire. But then I come fully awake, and of course the bed is empty.