Ashes Slowly Fall

by Katya Lebeque

  She lay there awhile, in the pre-dawn dark, thinking about her sister. It would be good to see Vanita in nice clothes and laughing again someday. Right now, the fact that she was alive was enough, but someday laughing would be nice. Then she pushed the idea out of her mind. She needed her mind clear and her thoughts close today.

  Ash got up and pictured her day. She pictured the former ladies in waiting’s room, with its brown striped walls and silken pillows soon to be sacrificed. She allowed a wave of boredom to come over her as she walked toward her clothes chest. One would have to wear something fine to face the ladies again after all this time. She pictured in great detail the blue frothy dress in there, demure enough for daytime but certainly not modest, as she put on her kitchen smock silently in the dark. She even imagined a moment of irritation fiddling with the little satin buttons in the small of her back. It left her tired, she had already been in her smock for two minutes by then time the dress was on. It was only dawn and she was now already tired, but she visualised it in her mind’s eye all the same. She had to keep her thoughts close today.

  A moment’s peace as the imagined and actual day met, with Ash getting up and walking out the door. Then they diverged again as Ash went one way, and her imagined blue frothy dress went another.

  Imagined Ash was going to the courtyard, with its tiny pool of water lilies, to wait for Rize. She was going to be there, but he would not come, it was easier that way. The area was simple enough and undetailed to visualise convincingly, and even that was difficult as she came around the corner to see the heart-warming sight of gleaming white marble counters all laid out with gruel in bowls and stew.

  “Tell me again the passages,” she murmured to Tarah, pulling parchment from inside her smock and a nib of charcoal from the fire. She tried to picture in some variation the simple shallows of the water lily pond and irritation at Rize as she drew left ten paces, then right, then right again. When she was done, she nodded brusquely to Tarah before anyone else could see her and headed briskly out the door.

  “I don’t like this,” Tarah murmured low in her ear once she’d caught up, having spent far longer on the fiddly satin buttons.

  “I know,” Ash said, handing her a pious head covering she’d found, and putting on one of her own. “But there’s no one else I trust who matches my height and size. If I wasn’t absolutely certain there was no danger in you being discovered, I never would have asked.” She looked Tarah up and down. “Besides, that dress looks amazing on you, you should keep it. Now, come on!”

  They were just in time; the first bell was ringing as they made it through slightly separate ways into the already crowded stone vestibule. Ash allowed herself one last thought of looking down at her blue dress, wondering if she should have not changed it before coming down here so it would be less wrinkled for the ladies” room later, before she let go of the exhausting exercise of imagining all the time. This was why she had asked Tarah here – she needed all her concentration to take in the Pathfinders” ways and needed one set of eyes for that. Besides, a benign day with absolutely no suspicion of any Pathfinders would never have fooled that old woman.

  The second bell tolled, and slowly everyone started shuffling through one archway out the vestibule like cattle. Ash shuffled along with the rest, into the Pathfinder’s impromptu temple where they “blessed the Path” each new day. It was dusty, but less dusty than other rooms in the castle she supposed. High sandstone vaulted ceilings and ornately pillared walls meant that this may have been a temple for some other purpose, before, but it was hard to see whose. The room had no windows, for all its size, except one newly-cut rectangle set high in the north wall. This made a straight “pathway” of sunlight cut straight down the wall and floor in a golden line, right up to where they were walking in. Orange paint of some kind, similar to that of the Head Pathfinder’s tower walls, echoed the same gold line in the same places as the sun, but branched off into multiple smaller “paths” twisting and winding along the floor in serpentine patterns that both pleased and disturbed the eye. All of them leading back, after their twists and turns, into that single merciless straight line of sun. She supposed it was to help the lesser-born folk visualise “the Path” and give them something to pray to. For Ash, it just made her uneasy.

  “The Path welcomes you hear today,” intoned a voice from across the room. Beneath the rectangle cut into the wall was a Pathfinder, a younger one, all in silhouette. “You have come to seek the Path today, and those who seek of its rightness will be blessed and will show you the way. So, come!” The silhouette raised its arms.

  On cue the people around Ash began shuffling forwards along one of the painted paths on the floor, meticulously stepping wherever their one twisted and turned, mumbling words of prayers Ash could not hear. Unexpectedly, the sincerity of it cut to the heart of her. When was the last time she had prayed? While the others visualised their path or whatever they did, she visualised the bare old hazelnut tree at Rhodopalais. She said words to her Christian God, or at least her mother’s, and followed the orange paint road marked out for her on the floor.

  “Remember what you have been taught,” said the voice of the silhouette again. “Picture the Path as you imagine it, then let your mind go blank. Let imagination give way to something else.” There was some form of altar at the end of the room next to that Pathfinder, up ten or so steps and cut out of the stone of the wall. A small candelabra and a torch were burning there, and Ash shuffled a bit closer on her orange paint line, hoping that at closer quarters the flames would illuminate the Pathfinder there.

  It did. Once she was close enough, she stepped as unobtrusively as possible off the crowded orange path and onto the bare sandstone floor, looking around. More than three quarters of the people, largely servants but not all, were milling towards the altar slowly, with the first ones almost there. As they climbed the ten steps, the Pathfinder would beckon them welcomingly. Ash saw that, shrouded in shadow behind her were five other Pathfinders, standing straight-backed against the wall. As the person would reach the Pathfinder at the altar they would bless them, touch a fingertip to the centre of the forehead and to their eyes while the other hand held their wrist. A dreamy expression came over the Pathfinder’s face as that bony hand clasped onto the wrist and Ash knew instantly that as this servant, who couldn’t read any books to gain knowledge nor call on their own education for understanding, was seeking for “the Path” for answers while this Path’s lackeys were reading them like a book instead.

  Sickened, Ash looked away. There were smaller archways dotted along the sides the long room, mostly hidden in shadows, where the winding orange lines did not go. It seemed that someone who seemed to have a real “experience” was ushered into one of these dark alcoves to kneel and thank the Path in private, having their little moment there. A sixth Pathfinder monitored over these, walking amongst the people there who were muttering and crying alternately, and placing a hand on each one’s head going by. The right hand, not left, same hand as the Pathfinder at the altar used to clasp the wrists. Perhaps this was how the steward Walters knew all about how many servants were feeling rebellious. Perhaps not, either way, it was all Ash had needed to know. She looked around for Walters and, not seeing him there, made her way quietly out.

  Onto the next thing. Ash briefly pictured herself walking up the stairs and wider corridor back to her room even as she went a narrower, hidden way. Tarah’s directions were good, and she easily found the right servants” passage as she went up and up the winding way towards the towers, stepping quickly, trying to picture her rooms as vividly as she could. Faster, she thought to herself when she dared. The morning prayers would not last forever, and what other chance would she get for all the Pathfinders to be so preoccupied in the day?

  She did not veer towards the left and its staircase that she had used before. Instead, fiercely imagining walking back towards her rooms from the courtyard’s pond, she took the other way scrawled from Tarah’s directions. Here wa
s a smaller staircase even than the first, just as winding, but with none of the garish children’s paintings on the walls. Instead, this staircase was so bare that not even a torch or candle glowed on its windowless walls. Assumedly the Pathfinders knew these steps so well that no sight was needed – as for Ash, she was glad she was in her smock and not that hateful gown, or she would have tripped several times already. As is, in her old leather boots and ankles exposed, she made her way up quietly in the dark.

  At the top of the stairs Ash paused briefly, listening with all her might. If she were wrong and had timed this incorrectly – if she were even minutes off from what was a rough guess to begin with – all hell would break loose. There’d be no excuse as to why she was trespassing in a part of the castle that wasn’t supposed to exist, especially when she was ostensibly fifty rooms away mooning in her rooms. But she could hear nothing, could see nothing, and she still wasn’t sure how much advantage her enemy had either. There was nothing for it. She stepped out onto the landing.

  All her breath came out in a rush when she saw it was empty. Then Ash spotted the children and she hushed. Just because they couldn’t see her did not mean they couldn’t hear. She came over to the wall in front of her, where the rudimentary square cut into the wall gave her a perfect view of the Pathfinders” classroom, with a painfully thin old woman she did not recognise facing her back to the “looking glass” and, beyond her, three or four little faces. These ones were various ages, and all dressed in orange, all girls, and Ash knew that she had been right. She hadn’t thought too much of the ornate looking glass the first time she had visited the Head Pathfinder, but now she could see that what she had suspected in that hateful room of Rize’s with the carrior in it had been right. These were glasses that were spelled or built to somehow be reflective on one side and simple transparent glass through another. Here, the Pathfinders could watch the children – or each other – unobserved. Well, today, she would be the one watching them.

  “Alright girls, that’s histories done. You may have any lesson you want next before we do lunchtime embroidery.”

  “Can we do hands stuff, Ma’am Pathfinder?”

  “‘Hands stuff’, Catelyn? We use proper names in this class. The Path has multiple expressions in different Pathfinders, and all will have a particular affinity for one of the Path’s gifts.”

  “See! I told you! I can only do the sight things and not the hands, Ma’am –”

  “The word is Path-aligned visualisation, Kaylene, and the “hands” you all refer to is kinetic identification. And you know it. So, each girl will give me a page on the five most common manifestations of Path-aligned giftings tomorrow morning at first bell. And not but’s! Now, everyone pair up for kinetic identification.”

  Ash watched for what felt like hours. She watched the teacher Pathfinder instruct, watched the pudgy, childish hands practise throwing each other across the room. She watched them all stand up again and face into opposite corners of the room and pull colours and sentences from one another’s minds. It left her shaken, but she watched all the same, until a bell clanged sharply, and she jumped with fright. The lunch bell – from when there used to be lunch at any rate. The girls broke formation into a more social circle, then all filed out the room with their teacher. Ash waiting until they were gone before stealing away herself.

  “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you for an age!”

  “Well I told you after the lunch bell… Why, did you have any trouble?”

  Tarah shook her head, looking tired but lovely. “Do you know how long it took to get out of that awful thing?”

  “I can guess, I assure you. And now you can help me with it.”

  “Can’t believe you lot wear this sort every day… I’d rather scrub floors.”

  Scrubbing floors did indeed sound good when Ash knocked, yawning already, on the oaken door. “Enter,” called out Bella Nargosi loftily.

  Ash had tried and tried to get around this part of her day in her mind, but the truth was that she was exhausted from imagining where she was not all the time and trying not to think about what she actually was thinking about. Sitting and hacking up pillows with the ladies would be a break for her poor mind and at least wouldn’t be too challenging. She went inside.

  “Ah, Ashlynne! We wondering if you were going to abandon us, after that unpleasantness the other day, didn’t we girls? But here you are – and what good fortune too! We are just so busy and need all the help we can get. There’s the food, which I think it best if I organise as it’s a difficult job, then there’s musical accompaniment and an important job is the baskets.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ash chose a seat, smoothed out her skirt, and only then realised that there was no embroidery to be seen.

  “The customary birthday commemorating baskets, surely you must know? It’s tradition to have baskets with a token representing the royal, a basket for each year, and that they been thrown over the person on their birthday. Really Ash, it’s a very old –”

  “Of course I know about basketing. I’m asking why on earth we’re discussing it.”

  Naomi Verraine was next to her again, and the lady handed her a piece of parchment and quill. “It is the Crown Prince’s nineteenth birthday in just a few days,” she said quickly before Bella could respond. “We are planning things rather hastily unfortunately - the celebrations are set for this Saturday.”

  “But I thought the prince didn’t want a birthday celebration?”

  Bella Nargosi just snorted. “Whatever the prince has discussed with you in your, ah, private time, is not our concern. We were given notice that the king wants a celebration, and princes” occasions are traditionally organised by the eligible ladies of the castle.” Her eyes flicked over Ash’s rumpled skirts, which did look as though someone had been lying down in them, her unkempt hair and her narrowed eyes. “We need all the hands we can get, so let’s stretch the term “eligible lady’, shall we?”

  ***

  Utterly useless hours passed before the ladies adjourned in the dining hall for supper at last.

  “It’s a crisp night again, isn’t it girls?” Bella was chirping all the way down the stairs. “I might need something to warm my bed later – or are you calling dibs on him again, Naomi?”

  “Afraid so,” said Naomi, smiling as though they were talking about a puppy dog.

  Ash thought idly about slapping them both with the wooden end of her crossbow, but her mind was elsewhere. Derrick had made his own choice, and she needed to be sharp for what was to come. She stayed just long enough to eat the bare minimum of food and to memorise in the detail what the table, meal and ladies looked like before saying her goodnights, ignoring pointed questions about whose bed she was warming tonight, and left.

  But she did not go up to her rooms, or even up to the towers. Instead she went down, following her hastily drawn lines, to Tarah’s third and final described spot.

  He had his back to her, when she stole into the room, and she made use of all her years of hunting to ensure that she made not one sound as she stepped in through the doorway. He turned around anyway.

  Walters had been shaving. The air was thick with the rare smell of soap and steam as he dragged his hip dagger up his neck. So, when the steward turned around, he found not one blade against his throat, but two.

  “You” he spluttered, red-faced indignation as he looked between Ash and her knife, and she took care to angle them away from the looking glass beyond. “I didn’t see – I mean, how did you get in here?”

  She smiled mirthlessly, not answering. “I knew it – knew you’d been trained like them. And I know how to evade you, and her – all of you. So, believe me when I tell you that no one will see it first when I drag this thing around your beard and turn it red.”

  “Path’s God! What do you want?”

  “Answers. For a start, I would like to know where the Head Pathfinder will be tomorrow night at moonrise exactly.”

  “In
the ballroom celebrating Prince Rize’s birthday. We all will.”

  Her knife wavered a little. “Tomorrow’s Saturday?”

  “It is. And I was told you would be the one to honour him in the basketing. What has any of that got to do with my – with the Head Pathfinder?”

  “I am going to need a written list detailing her movements, as well as confirmation on a little theory of mine. You see, I know she has visual and not kinetic Path gifts, so who would she trust to see to the carriages each month? Who would know enough about the whole household? So, you’re going to write her routine down and then you are going to confirm for me that you are the one spelling the carriages to leave once a month. You’re going to tell me how and you’re going to tell me where. And don’t think for a moment you can lie to me. I’ve been watching you all behind your looking glasses – oh yes, I know about those – and so anything that doesn’t correspond with that, or any sign that you’ve told her we’ve had this conversation and I go straight to the Crown Prince and tell him you’ve accosted me.”

  “You dare! Never!” he gasped, and for a second his pulse jumped so juicily in his neck that Ash leaned forward hungrily.

  “You listen to me, you arse-wiping puppet – do you think you’ll be the first man I’ve killed, if I slit your throat right here and now?” She let him see them then, let the supper scene slip from her imagination as the corpses of mobsters and criminals danced through her eyes. “Don’t you try me, Steward. Write. Now.”

  It was with a neat parchment of cursive that Ash left Walters” room later, and with six words, given bitterly from the back of the sweating man’s throat as she finally lifted her blade: