by Grace Martin
That shocked me. I knew that Caradoc was unhappy with the betrothal, but I never guessed he would throw Aoife into the teeth of the dragon. Aoife was backed into a corner.
I wondered, briefly, how the Empress knew that I wasn’t a virgin. It wasn’t like I had a sign painted on my forehead. I’d only told Caradoc yesterday, and even then, it was only because I was frightened beyond bearing.
‘I demand proof!’ Aoife cried. ‘I’m not going to allow this to happen without a fight. I demand that someone summon a midwife here at once. I will prove that I am not a virgin and then you will have to sacrifice someone else instead.’ She glared at me. ‘I don’t care who.’ Behind her, many paces away and up the stairs on the stage, Aine was sitting on her small throne, her eyes cast down so low that surely all she could see was her own hands twisting in her lap.
Aoife turned and stalked from the room. The Empress hurried after her. They started shouting at one another the second they passed through a small set of doors that weren’t too far away. I hurried after them to close the doors, because I couldn’t bear to see the courtiers listening in on what had to be private, painful words for both of them. As I closed the doors, I heard a little of what they said.
Aoife turned to face the Empress face to face. ‘Mother, how could you?’ she cried. ‘For a girl you only met a few days ago? I was your favourite. Would you stand by and see this terrible thing happen to me for the sake of someone who was a stranger to you three days ago?’
The Empress didn’t flinch, but she seemed to sag a little bit. ‘You always were my favourite, Aoife. You were, and are, my beloved daughter. You will always remain my beloved daughter.’ She reached out a hand to touch Aoife’s face, but Aoife pulled away before her fingers could connect. ‘I hope that you have had a happy life, that I have been able to give you what you needed, that you have enjoyed your life, even if it needs must be cut unnaturally short. You should be grateful for that happy childhood. We have not all been so lucky. Emer has only known grief. I cannot let her depart this life without knowing happiness.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I owe it to her, Aoife. Emer would do anything for me—’
‘She doesn’t give a damn about you.’
‘I know Emer, Aoife, as well as I know you, perhaps even better. I can’t explain it to you, but Emer knows and that’s what matters. I have to keep her safe. I have to see that she’s happy. If that meant that I had to stand at the gates of the city and offer my throat to Darragh then I would do it gladly!’
I didn’t hear any more, but at least the courtiers hadn’t heard as much as I did. I wondered why the Empress thought I knew why she was so affectionate towards me. When she’d spoken just then, she’d sounded a little bit like Elisabeth. I wondered if, somewhere down the line, we were related. She was more than three hundred years old, if Aoife’s gossip was true. That was a lot of years to allow for us to be related somehow. Maybe that was why she had struck up such an instant friendship with Aine and Aoife’s mother ‒ perhaps she was the Empress’s daughter, or her granddaughter.
I evaded the courtiers, all of whom wanted a piece of me, and slunk back to my bedchamber. Gwen was waiting there. She’d changed out of her mourning clothes and washed the soot off her cheeks. She looked like nothing unusual had happened. When I looked past her and out the window it looked like it was nearly sunrise. Large swathes of the city were still alight and cast a ruddy glow onto the sky.
I slipped between the fine, cool sheets, but sleep was a long time in coming. It had been the kind of night that you have to wind down from. All that business in the throne room kept going around and around in my head. Every now and then I remembered what it had been like to gallop towards that dragon, watching his head coming down and knowing for sure that this was my last moment on earth.
A few hours later, in the moments before I fell asleep, I remembered the strange Librarian, Master Kiaran, and all his cryptic predictions. I dismissed him. I was still busy dealing with the dragon and everything that followed. I didn’t have the mental space to think about too-clever Librarians.
Chapter Fourteen
I must have fallen into a deep sleep. Someone touched me on the shoulder and I startled awake, crying out and flailing my arms around, knocking the hand away and making Gwen cry out in shock, too.
‘I told you it was a bad idea to wake her up like that,’ someone said in a sardonic tone. Even Aoife didn’t sound as bitter as that. I opened my eyes. Gwen was standing beside my bed, both her hands clasped to her chest, as though she was afraid I’d hit her if she reached out to me again. There was another woman in the room standing near the door. I couldn’t make out her face, it looked like it was patterned with shadows, from the guttering light of the candle beside my bed.
‘This is how I’ve always woken my princesses,’ Gwen snapped back. I’d never heard her sound so tart before. ‘Your Highness, there is someone to see you. A midwife.’ Gwen looked back at the other woman nervously. ‘She, um, she’s here to examine you.’
I sat bolt upright. ‘Examine me?’ I cried. I think I may have even clutched the bedcovers to my chest in shock. ‘No!’
‘You can thank your so-called sister for that,’ the midwife said. Her voice was deep but sharp.
‘My sister? Do you mean Aoife?’
The midwife snorted. ‘Hardly. Dismiss your servant and we can get this over with.’
I sent Gwen out of the room, but I was ready to scream the whole palace awake if need be. I glanced out the window to try and guess the time, but the sky was still ruddy with the glow of the fires, so it was impossible to guess how far we were from sunrise.
‘Do you have a name?’ I asked, trying to break the ice. I felt like we should at least get to know one another’s names if we were going to be as close as all this.
‘Rhiannon,’ she said. She turned away from me a moment to grab a chair. When she turned back to me, carrying the chair to set it down beside the bed, it was all I could do not to gasp. Other people had drawn spirals on their faces with soot to show their grief tonight, this woman had the shapes branded onto her skin. In between the branded spirals were small patterns tattooed onto every square inch of her face. When she blinked, I could see that even her eyelids were patterned.
She smiled. It looked bizarre as parts of the pattern flexed and compressed with the movement. ‘And you are Emer.’ She looked me up and down where I sat on the bed, my legs drawn up and the blankets tight around my chest. I don’t know what I thought she was going to do to my chest. but I was keeping the blankets tight anyway. ‘I don’t bite.’
‘I’d rather not find out the hard way. Look, I never agreed to be examined by anyone. It was the other princess who said she wanted to prove that she wasn’t a virgin. Why don’t you go and talk to her?’
‘Because I have to examine all three of you by morning.
‘I’m not going to let you examine me and that’s final.’
She smiled again, completely without humour. ‘That’s fine by me. Get eaten. What have you got to lose?’
‘Nothing, since I’m not a virgin,’ I snapped. ‘I lost that a long time ago.’
I was surprised to see the way her face softened and for a moment she looked almost compassionate. She spoke softly, ‘I know, Emer. And believe me, I do understand why this is especially difficult for you. Would it help you to know that I’m not going to hurt you? That I’m not going to force you?’
‘How did you get here, anyway? Did the Empress send out for a virginity tester?’ Rhiannon looked uncomfortable. She blinked a bit faster than she ought to and wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘Or did you volunteer for this job?’
‘I volunteered.’ She practically whispered it.
‘That makes you kind of weird. Who would volunteer for a job like this?’
‘I knew of the dragon’s demand. I heard a few days ago that you had been appointed the Bach Chwaer. I know the White Queen, know her very well, and I knew that she would challenge every aspect of the demand. I knew t
hat sooner or later, the Empress would call for a midwife. It had to be me, for reasons that are none of your business. Princess Aine needed me. You were going to need someone who could treat you with respect and make you feel safe. Princess Aoife ‒ well, I needed to be the one who examined her, too, and I can’t tell you why.’
‘Do you always speak in creepy riddles?’
And she laughed. She straight up laughed, the tattoos ‒ and, now that I could see her face more clearly, the burns ‒ rippled and played a pattern of sun and shadow. ‘You would probably say that I do. I’ve perhaps spent too much time with the Librarians.’
‘Were you once a Librarian? I suppose they would need a midwife from time to time.’
‘No, I have never been a Librarian.’ She sat on the chair, close to the edge of the bed, but her manner was friendly, not just professional. ‘I know one Librarian quite well. One whom I suspect has already spoken to you. Yes, I heard that you were riding from Cairnagorn when you spotted the poor Camiri children who needed your aid. I guessed that Kiaran wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut for more than a minute or so. He always loved grandstanding, nearly as much as he loved his own reflection.’
‘You know Kiaran?’ I asked. I barely refrained from calling him Hot Stuff, which I suspected she would never let me live down.
‘Yes. Thanks to the vagaries of time, we met twenty years ago, when both he and I were the same age.’ She laughed, softly, and more to herself than to me. ‘I never fail to be amused by the difference in all our ages.’
‘Are you being mysterious on purpose?’
‘Maybe.’ This time, the smile was a grin. ‘Unfortunately, it doesn’t really matter who I am. You and I are only a few years separated in age, but we only knew one another for a very short time. We were never really close. Well, in the future, you and I will never really be close, anyway. We found ourselves temporarily on the same path, that’s all. I know, perhaps, more about you than you would be comfortable knowing. I know enough to know why you were going to need a midwife tonight who was going to treat you gently.’
Now I whispered too, ‘You mean Maldwyn?’ I asked.
She nodded.
‘Do I get back to save my sister?’
‘Do you mean Umbra?’
‘What?’
She had been leaning forward in the chair a little, now she sat back suddenly. ‘I thought you knew that you were a twin?’
‘Of course I know I’m a twin. It’s hard not to notice when you grow up with someone who looks like you.’
‘Emer, Elisabeth isn’t your sister.’
This time it was my head that went back. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘Of course she’s my sister.’ I didn’t say anything about the fact that she knew my Sparrow’s latest name. Come to think of it, she’d called Aoife the White Queen earlier, and Aoife wasn’t the White Queen yet.
‘You can believe it all you want, that doesn’t make it true. That was actually part of why I wanted to come here tonight. The Thousand Counties tremble on the edge of disaster. I know what happens to this country when the dragons return as well as you know it, maybe I know even better than you, because I didn’t spend my childhood hiding from the world. The only chance for the Thousand Counties is Umbra. She promised she would return and I believe she would keep her promise. You and she are twins. You have that in common. You won’t break a promise.’
‘How could I be Umbra’s twin? She lived five hundred years ago. Maybe it’s been a rough day and a rough night for me, but apparently I’m not as old as I look.’
Rhiannon chuckled obediently. ‘I know you’re not five hundred years old, Emer. But then, you and I were born two years apart and today you’re eighteen and I’m forty-three. Don’t act ignorant and pretend you don’t know about the Portal or how it can be used.’
‘You know how the Portal can be used? Can you get me back to my own time?’
She shook her head. ‘I only know that it can be used to move forward and backwards in time. We were separated and we all exited the Portal at different times. Kiaran arrived a hundred years ago. Cuchulainn hasn’t even appeared yet. The rest of us were scattered in between.’
‘Am I here?’
‘Not yet. I know that because you’re eighteen. You’re going to have a birthday before you come back here again.’
‘So I get back to Elisabeth?’
‘You get back to your own time.’ She stood up and walked to the window. The sky was starting to get lighter now. ‘Whether or not you managed to save Elisabeth? I don’t know. I know you were trying.’ She turned back to me. ‘This is irrelevant. What you need to know is that Umbra is your sister. You and she have a bond that is greater than any other in this world. If you can find her then, she will share her power more freely with you than with anyone else in the Thousand Counties. You can save us, Emer. You can save the Thousand Counties. Did you enjoy being a hero tonight? You could do more than that.’ She hurried back to me and, ignoring the chair, fell to her knees beside the bed.
‘You could save us, so that the terrible world that you and I grew up in never comes into existence. You can change the world, so that Cairnagorn doesn’t fall. You can change the world, so that the desolation that follows the war doesn’t damn a generation to starvation and disease. You can change the world, so that the creepyguardians never exist. You can change the world, so that Maldwyn is never in charge of looking after a young girl. You can save yourself. You can save Elisabeth from the horrors that stalked you when you were hardly more than children. Find Umbra. Use her power. Save us all.’
I stared at her. I’d long since let the blankets fall to my lap. I was more than adequately covered, anyway.
There was a knock at the door barely a second before the door was opened. Both of us turned our heads in shock, but Rhiannon moved like lightning. She twitched the bedcovers up towards my shoulders and rose to her feet.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded. ‘This examination was to be private!’
It was a guard and my blood ran a little cold at the thought that, had Rhiannon actually been examining me, he would have walked in and seen far more than he had a right to. Perhaps that was why he’d done it, because he was smirking and trying to hide it.
‘The Empress wants to know the results,’ he said, still smirking.
‘Get out of here! This is private!’ Rhiannon shouted, pointing at the door. He turned to go.
‘Wait!’ I called. He turned. I sat up very straight as I addressed him. ‘What’s your name?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t speak to me in that insolent tone, soldier! You will call me Bach Chwaer and you will answer my question! What is your name?’
‘Why do you want to know my name, Bach Chwaer?’
‘Tell me now!’
‘It’s Galeran, Bach Chwaer.’
‘Galeran. That’s nice,’ I said sweetly. ‘I’ll be sure to tell the Empress that Galeran burst into my room without waiting for permission, hoping to catch sight of me being examined by my midwife. She is very protective of me. I’m sure she’ll want to know your name, too.’
His mouth fell open. ‘No,’ he whispered.
‘Why not?’ I asked. He was going pale. I’d gathered long since, while I was still a featherskin, that the Empress was not constrained by very much when she was annoyed. And Galeran knew that he was going to find the Empress very… annoyed. ‘Actions have consequences, Galeran.’
‘Highness, please, I beg you-’
‘Why should I?’
‘Highness, please!’ He fell to his knees, right where he was, next to the open door. ‘Please, spare me!’
I shrugged. ‘I have no reason to. You may go, Galeran. You will know if I choose to tell the Empress. If I choose to keep this unfortunate event between us, then perhaps I may have some work for you to do for me.’
‘Highness, Bach Chwaer, anything!’
The Empress must be very unconstrained indeed. The man was as white
as a sheet. Maybe it was true that Aoife was my mother, because I was pleased by it.
‘I’ll let you know,’ I said, keeping my voice sweet. ‘You may go now.’
He was up off his knees and out the door in a moment. Rhiannon watched him go then turned to face me. She lifted her eyebrows, which did interesting things to the tattoos on her forehead. ‘Whatever our differences, I always appreciated your backbone.’ She took up her bag and moved the chair back to its original position.
‘Wait, you’re going? What are you going to tell the Empress?’
‘The truth, of course, Emer. Once you get to know me, you’ll realise that I don’t lie except under the most exceptional circumstances.’
‘But you didn’t-’ I lowered my voice. I was being an idiot speaking so loudly. ‘You didn’t examine me.’
‘I’m a mage, too, Emer.’ Again, she got that oddly compassionate look on her face that didn’t really suit her. ‘I’d forgotten how ignorant you can be. Virginity isn’t always easily detectable physically, so I use my magic to determine whether or not a woman is a virgin. In your case, given the circumstances of your loss of virginity I strongly questioned that you might reasonably be considered a virgin but… Emer, I’m so sorry. Until today I never realised that you had a child. I’m… I’m so sorry.’
I drew my knees up again, close to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. ‘I’ve never told anyone,’ I whispered.
‘I know that now, Emer. I… I want to apologise for what I say to you in the future. I really didn’t know. Some of the things I said must have been so hurtful. I had no idea.’
She hurried from the room, closing the door behind her. I stayed where I was for what seemed like ages. Eventually I rolled onto my side, still with my knees curled up to my chest. My child. My son, my baby. My David whom I barely knew. My own David, who was taken away from me by Maldwyn. I started to cry. I hardly allowed myself to think about him and the thought that he’d left some kind of mark on my body was important to me. There was no other mark in my life to show that he even existed.
