The Hollow Heart Page 18

  I shake my head, mouth full.

  “Why did you go?” she says. “Was it about that dress?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “I might be able to help you find who embroidered it.”

  “Emmah, would you know if someone in the house has been watching me? A servant? Or even a lady, like Ceciliah, or Lyannis, the Valorian ambassador.”

  “A jilted lover, you mean.”

  “Must everyone always cast aspersions on my reputation?”

  “You earned it, you must admit. Why are you asking about someone watching you?”

  When investigating, my mother always said, let the people you question know only what they need to know. I decide against explaining my suspicion—that either Roshar retrieved the ring and used it to poison my mother’s dress, which I cannot imagine him doing, or someone surveilled us and dug up the ring after we left. I must hesitate too long to reply, because Emmah waves away her own question and says, “Forget the reason. I know of no one who would follow you, save the lovelorn, but I will play your spy.” She helps herself to another wedge of cheese. The quail sizzles in its pot. “I will pester the other servants for some answers.”

  “You are wonderful, Emmah.”

  “I know. Mind that quail. Small as it is, it will be done for dinner sooner than you think. Wipe that worry from your face. If you are being watched, I will soon find out by whom.”

  * * *

  When I enter my mother’s suite, it is empty. In her quiet bedchamber, the bed is perfectly made. The dining room is silent in its simple intimacy, the curtains plush yet not overly elegant, the wood of the furniture a light, sanded ash. I set down her dinner. I listen to the suite’s silence, and worry returns as my boots tread the sapphire patterned carpet. By the time I enter the sunroom, my worry has turned into fear and self-blame. I should have told my father about the assassin. There should have been guards placed around my mother at all times. Why did I not do this, how could I be so arrogant as to think I could solve the problem all by myself?

  Could my mother have been abducted?

  Will I find her lifeless body?

  Then I hear, though the windows, footsteps across gravel. It’s the sound of someone small, and I recognize the short, quick paces of my mother in a rush.

  Of course. The garden.

  My mother’s rooftop garden has a door that allows her to pass into my father’s rooftop garden, which lies just on the other side of the garden wall. The garden is a way for my parents to enter each other’s suites without the entire household talking about it.

  I step out onto the garden. The sky has darkened to iron, the air bites, and the potted trees have lost their leaves, but the walls of the garden are afire with an ivy that changes to red in the cold, and the low, bushy damselthorn will keep its color throughout the winter, its broad leaves a glossy green traced by a red-pink pattern. My mother halts at the sight of me, her heels grinding into the gravel. She blushes. She is dressed impeccably, and I have an image of my father tenderly buttoning each button up the back of her dress, buckling her dagger belt into place, and sliding a wisp of dark gold hair back into its braid. “I’m late for our dinner,” she says ruefully.

  Now I flush, because I feel stupid for believing that she needs me to serve her. How many times has she slipped away to my father’s room and snuck back just in time for me to bring her a meal? When did she get well enough to walk?

  Then I feel terrible for being jealous of my father and wishing that my mother had stayed ill a little longer—not very ill, but just enough for me to remain important to her. “We have no appointment to keep,” I say. “You can go back to Etta.”

  “And miss the meal you made? And your company?” She crosses the crunching gravel to me and reaches up to tuck a short lock of hair behind my ear. “You are so tall.”

  “Too tall for a girl, you mean.”

  “I mean that I can’t believe how you’ve grown, when you were once so small, and all mine.” Her fingers are icy. “I have been lucky, to have you three times a day. Even before you left Herran, you would avoid me.” My mother’s hands are cold when she is afraid. I realize that she is afraid of me.

  It makes me sad. I don’t want her to be afraid that she has offended me just by visiting my father. I don’t want to feel possessive of her, or greedy for her attention. I want to feel normal. I want to be Kestrel’s normal daughter, the kind she raised me to be. “Come inside, Amma. I want to talk with you.”

  “Yes?” she says eagerly. When I say, “About the assassin,” her face falls, and I wonder what she hoped for.

  Inside, I undo the holster and place the gun with a clunk on a petite, decorative table near the door of the dining room and then join my mother at the dining table. I keep, of course, my dagger at my waist, as does my mother. A Valorian always wears her dagger. I light lamps. The room glows as if it has been made suddenly happy. As I carve the quail, which vents its steam, I tell my mother about fighting in the salle with Roshar, about his broken ring and how he buried it, and about discovering the ring was gone.

  “Roshar would never hurt me,” she says.

  “I agree.”

  “If he were the assassin, why would he mention to you that he wore a poison ring? It makes no sense for him to make such a song and dance about a broken ring and then later return to dig it up.”

  “Well, this is Roshar. He makes a song and dance about everything.” When she begins to protest, I interrupt. “I don’t suspect him. But it is interesting that the barbs on your dress had the same numbing effect as the poison from the eastern worm. I think before, when I was gone, someone was contaminating your food regularly, possibly with the same Valorian drug poured into the aqueducts decades ago. Your symptoms match those of that drug: you grew fatigued, and it seemed like you had a wasting illness.” I set the carving knife aside, and we sit. The tablecloth reaches all the way to the floor. It is made of a heavy gray fabric with embroidered blue kestrels, its hem fringed with thread-of-gold. A gift, probably, from a visiting dignitary. Some of them aren’t very imaginative, and often give her something with her namesake on it instead of something she would actually enjoy.

  “The assassin grows bolder,” she says, “to take advantage of the opportunity to use a new poison—which, with the right dose, would kill instantly.”

  “Yes, but that’s not what troubles me.” Neither of us can eat what is on our plates. “It’s that the person must have been spying on Roshar and me. It’s someone who must have easy access to you, the house, and the grounds. A servant? A guest?” Many Valorians resent my mother for bringing an end to the Empire. Is Ambassador Lyannis one of them?

  “The assassin must have been very close,” my mother says, “in order to overhear Roshar describe the properties of his ring to you.” Her expression tightens with anxiety. “I don’t like the thought of this man following you.”

  “I’m not so sure the assassin is a man,” I say, though I am not surprised my mother thinks so, when so much danger in her past came from men—like the emperor, or even her father. I think of Ceciliah, haunting the hallway, looking for me.

  “True: the dress,” my mother says. “It was made by an expert hand. Likely a woman’s, though not necessarily.” She toys with her fork, amber eyes narrowed, and I wonder if part of her has liked, even if only a little, being threatened, for the challenge of trying to name the culprit. I confess that although I wanted to bring the name of the guilty person to her, to do the job she had assigned to me, with none of her help, I like better working on a puzzle with her, even if it is a grim one. It reminds me of when things were good between us. When I was small, and we would play round after round of Bite and Sting, sometimes I would beat her, and she would be thrilled. Do it again, she would say, and then we would play, and I would lose, and so we would have to play yet again, and so on until I fell asleep at the gaming table. Time for bed, she would murmur, and I would pretend to keep sleeping so she would carry me to her bed. In the morning, s
he would wake up next to me, soft and warm, and say, I kept you up too late.

  No, you didn’t. I want to be good like you.

  You are good like me.

  Amma, I said, filled with sudden, childish guilt. I confessed, I was faking to be still asleep. So you would carry me.

  She smiled. Do you not think I knew that? Do you not think I love to carry my one, my only tadpole?

  A stone rests in my throat. I think of Sarsine, and how she said she wanted me to be happy. I think of my father, who said he wanted me to choose whether to be safe or happy. Most of all, I remember Nirrim. She was abandoned as a baby, left in a metal box outside the Ethin orphanage, and raised by a woman who used her and made her blind to her own worth. Nirrim was imprisoned. She could not even wear certain colors, or taste certain fruits. And yet, in spite of all this, she was brave. She was ready to risk her life to change her country. The way she kissed me was brave, the way she brought me to bed. She would have been punished for it, if caught. For her kith, it was forbidden for a woman to be with a woman. How could she be so brave, when every pleasure and freedom was denied her?

  How could I be such a coward, that I cannot bear to tell my mother the truth?

  Finally, I feel the full force of how much I miss Nirrim. I wish she were here. I wish I were like her. “Amma,” I say, “I don’t want to marry Prince Ishar. Please don’t make me do it.”

  Her expression rumples. I must have horribly disappointed her. I grow rigid, hands stiff on the table, and await her anger. She will try to persuade me. Already, it hurts. Already, I feel outcast. She will banish me from her heart. Yet what can I do, save this? I cannot continue to lie to her. Even if Nirrim is lost to me, I can’t forget the lesson of how brave she was, and how much I wanted to live up to her example. The god of games does not love me … or loves me too much, and gave me the gift of playing a part too well. I pretended too convincingly to be the person my mother wanted me to be, until I became a coward hiding in the shadow of my phantom self.

  My mother says, “I know you don’t want to. I would never make you do that.”

  “But … you wept when you caught me with Ivaline.” I remember my mother’s stricken face. “Because you knew then, for certain, that I liked women, and could not want Ishar.”

  “I did not know then that you didn’t want him. Some people do not want only women.” She traces a blue kestrel on the tablecloth. “I cried because you didn’t trust me enough to tell me about Ivaline. What we had when you were little was gone, when you would bring every beautiful thing you found to show to me: every pretty stone, every irrielle’s egg. A leaf. A horse nail. You were grown, and would one day fall in love, if you weren’t in love already, and you didn’t want to discuss any of it with me. Instead, you said you wanted to marry Ishar, yet grew angry whenever I raised the topic.”

  “Because I knew you wanted the marriage!”

  “For the good of Herran, maybe, but not for you.” She spreads her hands helplessly. “There have been times when I planned to write to Queen Inishanaway to end the betrothal, but then I thought it would make you only angrier at me for taking the choice out of your hands, for acting so imperious, as you have called me. So all-knowing.”

  “Amma—”

  “You are right. I do act that way.” Her eyes are golden with tears. “But I don’t know you. I haven’t known you for a long time. I only know what you let me know, and I have missed you so much.”

  I drop my gaze to the golden fringe of the tablecloth, which blurs in my vision. “You called me an apple.” I can’t keep the accusation from my voice.

  “What?”

  “The night we fought. When I left. You said, You are an apple, Sidarine.”

  She places a small, cold hand on mine, where it rests on the table. “Because I thought of that day on the pier. Of the apple and the stone.”

  “I know you did. You called me that because you disapproved of how I was with women, how much I loved pleasure, how I wanted my life to be as sweet as a dessert—”

  “No. It was because I knew you would leave me.”

  As my eyes fill, I remember the apple, floating away from the pier, bobbing on the waves, floating out past the ships, until it was lost in the great bay.

  “I am sorry I left,” I whisper.

  My mother touches three fingers to the back of my hand: the Herrani gesture to seek forgiveness, or to give it. “I am glad you did, if it means you were able to return, and let me tell you how much I love you.”

  Outside the window, tiny snowflakes drift down against the purple sky. Soon it will be too dark to see them. I hold my mother’s hand and feel warm inside. Soft, the way I was when she carried me to her bed. I think of Sarsine’s advice, and of Nirrim, and say, “What if I must leave again?”

  “Tadpole, all children leave their mothers, in one way or another. But we always wait for our children, and are so happy when they come home.” She smiles, and my eyes clear. I understand that although I have tried for years to be like my mother, she is telling me she knows I need to be myself.

  The snow falls more thickly. The quail has grown cold. I shift in my seat to reach for knife and fork, eager to be busy with my hands, and when I do, the sole of my boot comes down on something small and hard, just beneath the edge of the tablecloth.

  I lean back and look down to see what the object is. Something golden twinkles up at me from the carpet. I might have noticed it earlier, perhaps, had it not blended in with the tablecloth’s fringe.

  “What is it?” my mother says.

  I bend down to retrieve the object.

  It is a small gold earring.

  “Amma.” My voice sounds very far away. I look again at the tablecloth, whose embroidery is so intricate. “Where did you get this tablecloth?”

  “Your nurse made it for me.” Her face pales as she realizes why I am asking. In a hushed voice, she adds, “Emmah is so gifted with needle and thread.”

  I remember Emmah coming to me late at night to light candles to the gods, her thimble glinting on her thumb. Some new project, I thought. She was always working on some piece of embroidery. I remember her stricken face when she realized she had lost an earring I had made for her, an earring exactly like the one gleaming on my palm. I remember asking for her opinion on the fabric of the poisoned red dress, and how she had hesitated, and asked me if I knew who had sewn it.

  No, I said.

  But I know now.

  NIRRIM

  I LEAP AWAY FROM ADEN’S knife. I am not a fighter, but I thank the god of thieves for taking my heart. Other Nirrim would have been frightened. While she recoils within me at the thought of fighting Aden, I welcome this moment. Other Nirrim saw Aden as a wounded man abandoned by his mother, smart and talented yet too under society’s thumb to live his full potential. So what? I sneer at Other Nirrim as I dodge Aden’s next wild lunge. Everyone in the Ward was wounded. No one was allowed to be special.

  Several of my Half-Kith guards cry out. They rush to save me, but others, traitors that they are, hang back to see which of us will win. “No,” I call to the guards. “Leave him to me.”

  “Even now,” Aden says, “when you have no weapon, you think you’re better than me.”

  All true … except for the idea that I have no weapon. “You dropped your knife,” I start to say, gathering my power to push a false memory into him. He falters, almost releases the blade, and then his eyes harden. With his free hand, he hits my mouth.

  My mouth blooms with pain. I taste blood.

  “Try that again,” he says, “and I will hit you harder.”

  It hurts so much that I can’t speak, which is exactly how he hopes to prevent sly words that will twist his mind. Yet his hand was loose, not quite a fist; he could have hurt me worse. He may want to murder me, but he is not as fully ruthless as he could be. Although he slashes at me with the knife, the cold, clear vision granted to me when the god of thieves stole my heart tells me Aden is not fully committed to the acti
on. He cannot quite bear the thought of stabbing me.

  In short: he is weak.

  “Aden, I am sorry.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Be king by my side.”

  He pauses, the hand with the knife lowering a little. “You say that only because I’ll kill you. Later you’ll take it back. You’ll use your power to make me remember falsely.”

  “But I’m not using my power now.” I lower my voice so that the guards don’t hear. “You were right, Aden. Our marriage is the perfect way to give our people what they want. It doesn’t matter that I don’t love you. Go ahead, kiss me in front of everyone watching. Let’s make a good show of it, now and forever.”

  “You are horrible,” he whispers, and kisses me, knife at my throat.

  I spit blood into his mouth.

  Surprised, he pulls back, coughing, but some of it must have gone down his throat.

  As any councilman knew, and as I learned the day Sid drank a drop of my blood, the easiest way to borrow my power is to drink it. Sid went rigid with memory. The High-Kith man in the market, so long ago, when I left the Ward for the first time, made me give him my blood and the same thing happened to him: he became a sculpture of himself as his mind plunged into the past.

  Aden stiffens. “What did you do to me?” His memory, whatever it is, creeps through him and locks his limbs. He drops the knife. It clatters against the tiles, and he cannot see me as I retrieve it. He sees nothing but the past. Briefly, I wonder what he sees. What will be the last image in his mind?

  It doesn’t matter. I will never know.

  A tear runs down his cheek.