The Hollow Heart Page 5

  And yet there is. When I enter the home, I smell her perfume. It lingers, smoky and sweet, in her favorite chair. Sid’s ghost walks beside me, her hand staying my course, light on my hip, sliding up my ribs. She presses me down into the chair, the brocade unusually dark, as black as her eyes, the wood slippery and scented with orange oil. She presses her mouth against my neck, and my head tips back.

  Do you miss me? she asks.

  You know I do.

  Show me how you miss me.

  I sit up straight in the chair, shaking away my vision of her. The chaos in the streets echoes through the windows. I light a lantern, and the oily flame gives a wavering dimension to the room. On the table beside the chair rests a glass with a remainder of green liquor at its bottom—what she was drinking when the monstrous-looking man, the one with no nose and no ears, came, and she chose her old life over the one she was making with me.

  I no longer pretend she is there, but I cannot will away the perfect memory of her, and although I feel a blankness when I think of love, a feeling as thin and empty as a glass bubble in my chest, I resent her for leaving.

  And I still want her. I want the feel of her mouth on me.

  What is this? How can she affect me still?

  It is your memory, Other Nirrim whispers. Your memory of her haunts you. Your memory of me haunts you.

  I bat away her voice as though it is a fly. I am tired. That is all. I ignore the twinge of worry that maybe my mind is shivering into pieces.

  Nirrim, Other Nirrim says.

  Go away.

  I cannot go away. I am you.

  You are who I used to be.

  Tell me, Other Nirrim says, what will you do with the Middlings? Outside, the sound of shattering glass cracks the night. What will you do with the High-Kith children?

  THE GOD

  ONCE THERE WAS A GOD who wearied of the pantheon. One hundred gods. That was all, for eternity? Little wonder we connived against one another, fell in and out of love, and nursed resentments that could last a human century or more. Yes, there were gods who somehow did not fall prey to inevitable boredom, who cherished certain fellow gods. The Seamstress and Death remained true to each other, and rose above the pettiness of others. This only intensified the restlessness of the rest of the pantheon. We are gods, they said. We are eternal. It is tiresome. We crave newness. An escape from ourselves.

  When we walked in Herrath, our island of jungle and pink sand, with its stone city of Ethin reared by mortals in our honor, what we sought was easy to find. Mortals touched us with their dragonfly lives, with their courage in the face of inevitable death. By living alongside us they changed us. They gave us children. They surprised us with their own gifts. Their rage, their hope.

  But you know as well as I that it did not last. Our demigod children, with the aid of the god of thieves, murdered Thievery’s brother Discovery. The pantheon erupted in fear and fury. One of the hundred was dead. An immortal could die. The rest of us—save the spurned god of thieves—fled to our realm. We pulled our opaque cloak of divinity around us. Mortals forgot us, almost, and we were left with one another.

  What was there to do but quarrel? I taunted another god. Had it been any other god, I might have emerged unscathed, but this was the red-haired god of games, as bright as the edge of a knife. You seem very sure of yourself, she said. Would you care to make a wager?

  Though reckless, I am no fool. I knew that she had tempted me to taunt her, so that she could offer her challenge and make it seem as though I alone had provoked it. It is her nature not only to game, but also to make a game of games. Mortal, never play against a god, let alone this god. Yet she had pricked my honor, and I was bored. What are the stakes? I demanded.

  She ignored my question. She said, You have been talking with the god of foresight.

  No, I lied.

  Yes. You have been meddling in human affairs. You have been watching the lands beyond Herrath, and the great war that consumes them. You have a mortal favorite: Arin of the Herrani.

  I denied it. Death loves him, I said. One did not stray into Death’s territory—at least, no one wise.

  Wisdom, however, has never been my strength.

  Lucky mortal—the red-haired god smiled—to have been blessed with the love of not one, but two gods. Arin seeks his revenge, and he will face General Trajan in the field.

  So the god of foresight had told me, but I kept silent about that.

  The god of games continued, One of them will fall. Trajan, however, will escape Arin’s sword. Trajan will live.

  That is not true.

  Who are you to tell me about truth? Wager me, and we shall see. I wager you: Arin of the Herrani shall not have his revenge.

  She set the stakes: the winner would seize the power of the loser, who would be cast down from heaven and into whichever form the winner chose. You will not be free, the god of games warned me, until a human pities you.

  She won our wager, of course. She always wins. When Arin met Trajan in battle, one of them did fall: Trajan, his army vanquished, his hopes and honor ruined. Yet he did not die. Arin stopped his sword from delivering a death blow, and the god of games laughed.

  You might think I was lucky she did not turn me into a dirty goat, or a toad, but the god of games is clever. Instead, after she stole my power (I am borrowing it, she said. Do not sulk! You may have it back when you have earned it), she changed me into something beautiful: a rose.

  What human would pity a rose? Better that I had become a goat.

  I grew in mortal soil. My thorny stem thrust up from the earth. My flower was a tight, hard bud. Even before I bloomed, I despaired. I knew humans. Flowers, to them, were a simple pleasure. A flower could not feel or think. Cut the stem and take it home. Place it in water. Enjoy its scent and color. What was there to pity?

  It always amazed the pantheon, to see what might inspire a human’s compassion. Who would have thought that Arin, having lost everything at the hands of General Trajan, would find compassion enough to spare the man’s life? Kestrel of Valoria, the general’s daughter, had made Arin swear not to spare her father in battle, yet when the moment came, Arin could not murder the man. Compassion demanded he stop his sword. How could he kill the father of the woman he loved? She would never cease to grieve, no matter what she had made him promise. Her grief would grieve him.

  Nirrim, Queen of Herrath, wondered what the god of thieves had truly taken from her. Regret, maybe, she thought. Or love.

  But it was not regret. It was not love. It was what makes love and regret possible.

  Then what?

  Nirrim could have wondered about the truth of what she had lost for every moment of her little life, but she could not have named it, for it was compassion, and it remains the fate of all humans who lack compassion never to understand that they lack it.

  SID

  I LOAD THE GUN, STUFFING the wad of blackpowder and the bullet down the short barrel; curl my blackened fingers around the grip; and take aim. The grip fits snugly in my hand. My father made it for me, just as he made my dagger. The barrel doesn’t waver. I pride myself on a steady aim, and when I miss it’s usually because I’m bored of impressing people on the sidelines. No one’s watching now, but I feel jumpy anyway, remembering my mother’s words. The painted tin target, set on the lawn near the tall white bones of birches, is fifty paces off—challenge enough, since that distance is where the gun begins to lose accuracy. I cock the firing mechanism.

  “You’ll be late for dinner,” someone drawls in my ear.

  The gun cracks, a plume of smoke rises in the air, and my shot goes wide. “Gods, Roshar! I could have killed you! I am going to kill you.”

  “You love me.” Roshar takes the hot gun from my hand, turning it over in his, making an impressed grimace as he inspects the ivory handle. “Is this one of your father’s newer versions? You know, I gave him the idea for the gun, years ago, when he was but a poor, lost Herrani in my nation’s capital.”

&n
bsp; “You did not.”

  “Well, not directly.” As if confessing a secret, Roshar adds, in a lowered voice, “It was the mere presence of my genius that gave him the idea. I’m like one of your Herrani gods. I blessed him with divine inspiration.” He peers inside the flashpan. “I really like this new, small, handheld model. I think I’ll keep it.”

  I take the gun from him and slide it into the holster at my right hip. It is my nicest holster, made from embossed black leather, and it shows boldly against my tan breeches and white tunic with its high, masculine collar and intricate black embroidery. Given that the state dinner is in my honor and I will be greatly stared at, I feel obliged to give the attendees a good show. I always draw the eye, not just for my good looks but also for what I do with them: my men’s clothes and boy-short hair and dramatic flair. I have decided to play to expectations tonight. No one, save my father, knows that I worked as my mother’s spy, or that I am useful for anything beyond spending my country’s gold and bedding its women. Let everyone believe I am the good-for-nothing princess. It is close enough to the truth, and if that makes the court let down their guard around me, it will be all the easier to investigate my mother’s claims. “Get your own gun,” I tell Roshar.

  “No one takes me seriously,” he complains. “I miss Arin the tiger. I shouldn’t have left him in Dacra. Everyone takes me more seriously when he’s around.”

  I examine my black-dusted hands, wondering whether to clean them before dinner. I like the disreputable look they no doubt give me, which would play well to the image I want to cultivate tonight, but my father won’t like it. He used to dream of being clean. A bar of soap was a miracle. He is too proud to remind me of this, but he would mention that my showing up dirty makes our guests think I don’t respect them.

  Well, I don’t.

  Pretend you do, my mother would reply.

  “Your father wants a report on your time in Ethin,” Roshar says. “Before dinner. If you are quite finished with target practice. Not a single hole in the target, I see. That shot of yours was quite bad, little god-child.”

  I ignore him, snapping the strap of the holster in place. It feels good to have my gun back. I like having my gun on one hip and my dagger on the other, my Herrani and Valorian birthrights in plain sight. I didn’t wear the gun in Ethin. Once I realized the island had no knowledge of this kind of weapon—indeed, no knowledge of blackpowder at all, and no cannons—I kept the gun hidden. No need to let a foreign nation know about a military advantage. Keep your strengths and weaknesses hidden, and reveal them only to your gain. “Etta sent you to find me?”

  “I came purely for the delight of your presence.”

  I remember staring down at my mother’s pale face. Poisoned? I said. Who would poison you?

  That—she smiled—is a foolish question.

  Oh, right. I forgot how many people hate you.

  She looked up at me as though she were my child. In a small voice, she said, Is it so many?

  I felt cruel. Well, I said evenly, as though the problem at hand were some boring mathematical equation we would solve together, it only takes one disgruntled person.

  Yes, she said, her voice stronger. Exactly.

  I know when your mother tells you she has been poisoned, it isn’t very daughterly to feel good—but I did, because I always liked working on a problem together, instead of being her problem, and when my mother respects you and takes you into her confidence, it is no small thing.

  How do you know you’ve been poisoned? I asked.

  I don’t, my mother said. I suspect it. Her lids half lowered. In that light, her brown eyes looked golden. Tired. She was at the end of her strength. Quietly, she said, Do you believe me?

  When are you ever wrong?

  All the time.

  You?

  I need to correct my mistake, she murmured, and this was like her: to be cupped in Death’s palm yet still hunt for something she had missed, to examine a puzzle for a better way to solve it. The gods alone knew what mistake she meant. It could be anything. There was always something she needed to perfect. Amma, I said suddenly, desperately, as though ready to beg, I will help you.

  I know, she said, and was asleep.

  Hope stirred within me. I brushed a lock of loose hair from her face, careful not to touch her skin. Maybe, if I could find who did this, I could also find a way to save her.

  “To tell the truth,” Roshar says, still staring at the blank target, “I thought there might be something you’d want to tell me that, for personal reasons, you do not wish to tell your father.”

  He has my full attention now. “Like what?”

  “Oh, something to do with that girl, maybe.”

  “I have nothing to say about Nirrim.” She did not love me. I was good enough for a time. It didn’t matter, in the end, how I kissed her. It didn’t matter how her body arched at my touch. It didn’t matter that she was tender. What mattered was her honesty when she admitted that she didn’t feel what I felt.

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

  No.

  “Are you home for good?” Roshar asks carefully.

  “Yes.”

  “Then shall we?” He nods in the direction of the house. As I walk beside my godfather, I sneak a glance at him. He is not very tall for a man, and I am tall for a woman, so we are of a height. I see clearly the tension along his jaw—the way he avoids my gaze, yet feels it. My father’s truest friend. My mother loves him, too. Yet Roshar is no Herrani, and we have always known that his political loyalties are due first to his queen, not my country.

  People don’t like to imagine the worst possibility, my mother often warns. And so they are caught unprepared when the worst comes.

  Roshar quickens his pace. The smell of grass is raw and strong.

  Could it be you? I wonder as he strides just ahead of me, as though to escape my glance, which I know has turned into an examination.

  Did you pour poison into my mother’s cup?

  * * *

  My father smiles when I enter the library and touches my cheek—a light, fond double tap, as though he is settling something into place, and that thing is his idea of me. I bristle, though I know he means to be kind, and say, “What is so amusing?”

  “Not amusing. I’m happy you’re home.”

  I cannot say, I heard your silence in my mother’s suite. I have Sid, you said. No, she answered, You don’t. I cannot say, Why didn’t you defend me? I cannot say, I spied on you in your moment of fear, when you exposed what every single person in Herran, down to the smallest child, already knows, knows as intimately as they know the signs of a coming green storm: how utterly lost you would be if anything happened to your wife.

  I say, “You find something funny.”

  “People say you look like Kestrel, but no one looks like you. You would stand out anywhere.”

  I look down at my freshly cleaned hands. “This is about how I am dressed.”

  “It is more than that. But yes, a little.”

  “Why must what I wear be such a favored topic of conversation?”

  He considers this, rubbing the scar on his face. The open window lets in a warm breeze that lifts the edge of the curtain and lets it fall. Gently, he asks, “Do you not mean it to be?”

  I fling myself down into an elegant reading chair, slinging my trousered legs over one arm and lounging against the other. “Yes, sometimes I want to be noticed. It also annoys me, how everyone finds my appearance so interesting. I can’t explain it. You want to have a state dinner to show everyone that your heir has returned and Herran is safe, the hereditary line unbroken. So here I am, your prize pony.” I hear my voice shrink. “I want to look good. But not your way. Mine.”

  “Sid, you do.”

  I look up at him. He does not tell me to sit up straight or remember my manners. He does not remind me of my duty as a princess. I say, the resentment clear in my voice, “You found me funny.”

&nbs
p; He takes the chair across from me. He is too large for it, like a wolf in a birdbath. “If I found anything funny it was how we are different.”

  A cold stone sits in my throat. I wish I had his height, his strength, the way he commands respect without uttering a word.

  “What I mean is,” he says, “in a crowd, I would rather be invisible.”

  “You are saying I’m a show-off.”

  “Can we not have every word between us go wrong? I am saying that I like how you’re dressed, and if you enjoy holding the center of attention, that is no bad thing.”

  “Right. Important for a princess and future queen.”

  “Sid, why did you leave Herran?”

  “I was bored.”

  “That is not the real reason.”

  “The parties here are always attended by the same people and I’ve slept with all the interesting ones. I require more variety in my entertainment.”

  Nirrim calls this sort of thing a midnight lie: where I tell a truth that functions like a lie because I’ve said it in order to disguise a greater truth I don’t want known. The thought of Nirrim makes me wince. My father notices. He says, “If you sought pleasure, that doesn’t seem to be what you found.”

  “You underestimate my ability to take pleasure in almost any circumstance, save this conversation.”

  “Please,” he says, “answer a direct question. Don’t make a game of it.”

  I shrug. “The god of games loves me.”

  “You stole one of my ships.”

  “Borrowed.”

  “Sailed in the middle of the night.”

  “The tide was right.”

  “Left no note or word.”

  “My actions spoke for themselves.”

  “Why can’t you trust me? Why can’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

  I shouldn’t have to. It should be obvious. No one has forgotten I am engaged to Prince Ishar, son of Queen Inishanaway, ruler of Dacra from its northern grasslands to its watery capital to its islands sprinkled in the sea. If my father cannot guess that I don’t want to marry any man, it is because he does not want to. My mother, who knows full well my refusal, since I screamed it at her the night I left, probably has said nothing of it to him. He would have mentioned it by now if she had. But he should know, and the fact that he does not proves that he does not know me.