Sisters of Shadow and Light

by Sara B. Larson

  “Reading?” Her voice dropped to a frosty whisper.

  I still stared at the stone floor that leeched the heat from my body, trying to restrain the trembling in my knees. I’d gone too long without sleep, without food; I was woozy with exhaustion and the ashes of my dying hopes.

  Mother spun to face me. “You took him to the library, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question. “Didn’t you!”

  Finally I looked up, meeting her hazel eyes that I knew were mirror images of my own. The angrier she got the greener they were—and right now they flashed jade with only a thin rim of amber still visible around her irises.

  “He could help, Mother,” I began, knowing my argument was lost before I even started. But I had to at least try. “He knows so much about them—he can read their language. If he had some time, he might even find some answers for—”

  “It is forbidden!” She flung the words at me like they were knives, intended to cut me down, to slice through my defense. “Zuhra, you know that and yet you continually defy me!”

  “I know, Mother. And … I’m sorry.” My throat was thick, words and air getting jumbled and caught and tangled. My head pounded with the force of a lifetime trapped in this place. “It’s just that Inara—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” Mother cut one hand through the air and turned her back on me. “If you won’t wed her, then you must leave.”

  I didn’t dare look at him, didn’t want my last memory of Halvor Roskery to be a look of panic—or worse—on his face at the prospect of marrying me; a face that had somehow come to mean so much to me in the space of a single night. A night that would burn like a dream in my memory: the hours of watching him read by the light of the lantern, learning the angle of his jaw and the brush of his dusky lashes on his sunburnt cheeks when he blinked at my questions, always so careful to think before answering.

  His silence spoke more loudly than anything he could have said.

  “Then go. Now,” Mother barked.

  No. Let him stay.

  The words burned in my mouth, aching to be loosed, but I swallowed them, scorching my throat.

  Mother stormed past me, a force of nature trapped in a cage of flesh, and snatched Halvor by the arm. She was already outfitted for the day, in her most severe dress of charcoal and black lace trim, her hair scraped into a hasty bun. I shrank back instinctively, though I hated myself for it. This night’s work was going to result in worse than bloodied knuckles and a hungry belly. Anger emanated from her like the spark in the air an instant before lightning struck.

  “Madam, I am capable of walking on my own. I insist you unhand me.” Halvor’s voice was laced with steel as he yanked his arm free.

  “You will leave my home at once!” Mother’s shrill command reverberated around us.

  There was a pause, when Halvor’s eyes finally met mine for the space of a mere intake of breath. I stared back, fighting a sudden sensation of falling, as if the glass in the Hall of Miracles truly had disappeared beneath my hands, sending me plummeting to a sudden end that I wasn’t ready to accept.

  “If that is your wish” was his stiff response.

  I shook my head mutely. He couldn’t go, not yet. Not when I’d hardly even nicked the surface of what he knew, had dredged up the tiniest particle of hope that he might be the key to helping Inara. The book he’d managed to take was a telltale bulge in his coat pocket, a concealed reminder that he possibly held the answer right there, mere inches from his hands. But Mother had already turned on her heel and stormed to the door, dragging it open and gesturing for him to precede her outside into the gray dawn.

  Halvor didn’t look back when he exited the citadel.

  I stood rooted to the spot, my limbs leaden and unwieldy, but nothing heavier than the painful thump of my heart beneath my ribs.

  “Don’t let him walk away,” Sami murmured, startling me. I’d forgotten she was there. “This is your window opening. Don’t let her shut it, too.”

  I turned to her, my throat tight with the wishes and dreams I still hadn’t let fully form.

  Sami raised a hand to my cheek and then nodded. “Go.”

  I lifted my skirts and ran.

  NINE

  Ashen mist skulked across the courtyard, coiling around Inara’s carefully tended bushes and trees. Mother stood like a specter outside the door, caught between the fog at her feet and charcoal sky above, arms crossed over her chest as she watched Halvor march resolutely toward the hedge and the gate it concealed.

  The damp soil soaked my stockings as I darted out the door. If he reached the gate before me, the hedge might let him through—he might disappear into that mist and never return.

  I tried to bolt past my mother, but she reached out and snatched my arm, yanking me to a stop.

  “Halvor!” His name ripped out of my throat and he paused, but didn’t turn.

  “Don’t you dare go after him,” Mother hissed, her grip so tight her nails bit into my skin even through my sleeves.

  “I thought you wished for me to marry someday—to at least have the chance!”

  Her eyes were fevered when they met mine. “Not someone obsessed with them.”

  Was it a trick of the uncertain light or had some of the vines fluttered—a sign of the hedge beginning to part? I squinted, but couldn’t be certain.

  “Please, Mother.”

  “No.” She stepped back, toward the citadel, tugging me with her.

  Urgency beat in time with my blood. “He can help,” I insisted and then I jerked my arm free with the sound of my sleeve ripping, leaving Mother with a handful of fabric and nothing more.

  A sudden gust of wind tore through the courtyard, clawing at my hair and dress, stinging my eyes as I sprinted for Halvor and the gate. The hedge rippled, the leaves undulating. Don’t open, don’t open, I prayed silently, the dewy ground slippery and uncertain beneath my feet. Did he wish to leave? Why hadn’t he stopped when I called out for him?

  “Halvor!” Only a few strides separated us, and the hedge hadn’t parted yet. Relief poured through me, hot and heady, when he spun at the sound of my voice coming from so much closer to him. It wouldn’t open now—not with me by his side. Not with the chance that I could escape with him.

  “You don’t have to go. She can’t force you to.”

  “Zuhra…” My name sounded like regret, like an apology.

  “If we stood up to her—together—”

  He shifted, glancing over my shoulder to where my mother stood on the stairs, shouting my name, demanding I come back so the hedge would open for him. “I apologize if I, in any way, led you to believe that my intentions were”—he cleared his throat—“dishonorable … or of a matrimonial nature—”

  “No.” My answer was too fast, too abrupt. “No,” I tried again, forcing calm into my voice though my blood was a frantic hum beneath my skin. “My mother—she—you must excuse her. She won’t force you to marry me. She can’t.” To the east, the first true sunrays had just broken free of their nightly cage, streaking the clouds above us currant, setting fire to the sky. “I’m asking—pleading—with you to stay. To help me help Inara.” In the fiery light of dawn, his eyes glowed cinnamon.

  I felt his indecision in the way he still remained half-turned toward the hedge, saw it in the uncertain flicker of his gaze back to the citadel before settling somewhere just above my nose, refusing to meet my eyes.

  Everything in me sank.

  “If the hedge will let me, I must go. Master Barloc needs me…”

  “Inara needs you,” I asserted. He was intrigued by her, I knew. I’d seen it yesterday, had heard it in his voice when he’d asked about her. I wasn’t enough to induce him to stay, I knew that now in his uncertainty … but perhaps she was.

  Before he could answer, Mother was there. “You will regret this, Zuhra.” The threat was so quiet, I was certain only I heard her. She latched onto my arm again, and I knew this time, I would not be escaping. “Let me give you a word of advice, you
ng man.” She turned to Halvor. “Abandon this fascination with the Paladin. Help your master return to his library and then leave him. Study something else—anything else. Trust me, only misery and suffering will come of an interest in those … those monsters.”

  I stared at her, too shocked by her words, by the sudden sheen of tears in her eyes to try to pull free. When she turned on her heel to lead me back to the citadel, I didn’t fight her. Monsters.

  She’d called them monsters.

  “We will go in and shut the door,” she called back to Halvor. “The hedge should open if we aren’t out here.”

  I looked back at him one last time. His mouth moved and I thought he might have said “I’m sorry,” but the wind tore his words away from me.

  Mahsami still stood in the same place, her expression expectant when I walked back in. But when Mother followed immediately behind and shut the door firmly after us, Sami’s expression fell.

  It wasn’t my window. That’s what I would tell her tonight, when we were in the kitchen doing dishes together, as we always did.

  All traces of emotion were erased from Mother’s face, but the unmasked suffering that she’d exposed—however briefly—moments before had struck me more deeply than any of her barbed threats or bursts of temper.

  “It’s better this way,” she said matter-of-factly. “He was not the one we’d hoped for.”

  I nodded, morose—resigned.

  “I will deal with you in a moment, but first…” Mother moved to the window.

  I couldn’t bear to watch, to see the hedge part and then swallow him whole. Instead, I looked up. Buttery-yellow daylight touched the dome above us, turning the carvings of the Paladin and rakasas into gold. I stared up at them, at the excruciatingly beautiful faces of the army of Paladin men and women, seated upon their gryphons in the air, weapons raised, some with hands wielding balls of fire, all bearing eyes that glowed blue with lapis lazuli. In contrast, the rakasas were terrifying, all teeth and claws, some monstrous in size and others in the viciousness depicted in the scene.

  The light spread slowly but surely, the dawning of a new day. Inara would be waking soon. For a brief moment, I thought of alerting Mother to the fact that Halvor still had one of the Paladin books, but then decided against it. I’d never be able to read it, so he might as well keep it, to take back to their library with his master.

  “Sami, take Zuhra to her room and lock her there.” Mother’s sudden order pulled my attention away from the ceiling to where she stood by the window, still staring out at the courtyard.

  “Mother!”

  “You’ve proven yourself unworthy of my trust.” She spoke to the window, her knuckles white where she gripped her skirt. “You will remain in your room until I deem you capable of resisting the temptations of this place properly.”

  “But Inara—”

  “Perhaps you will think of her next time before making the decision to disobey me.”

  Ice-sharp desolation scraped beneath my skin. “Please, don’t do this—I was only trying to help her!”

  “Sami! Take her up to her room immediately.”

  Mahsami murmured an apology before gently tugging me toward the staircase that would lead us up past Terence, the Paladin statue, then on to our rooms.

  I allowed her to guide me away, knowing if I didn’t obey, she, too, would suffer the brunt of my mother’s wrath, though my legs grew heavier and heavier with each step.

  When we reached the landing and turned down the hallway toward our rooms, Sami slowed her pace. “I’m sorry.” Her apology was so quiet, I barely heard it. “I was certain I had made the draught strong enough for her to sleep well past dawn.”

  “You don’t need to apologize. You were only trying to help.”

  We both fell silent, resigned to our own fates.

  When we reached my door, I paused before opening it. Inara’s room was next to mine, but there were no sounds from within yet. I didn’t know when I would be allowed to see her again. Though I longed to, I couldn’t bring myself to wake her up and force her to leave the release of sleep.

  Rather than helping her, my actions had caused me to unintentionally abandon her instead.

  “I’m sorry, Zuhra, but she’ll be waiting for me, to make sure I did as she asked.”

  “I know.”

  The door creaked when I turned the knob, but then I paused again, this time to look into Sami’s familiar gray eyes.

  “Mahsami … I have to know. Why did you stay?”

  A flash of sorrow skimmed across Sami’s face. In all the years together, I’d never dared ask her that question. But suddenly, I had to know.

  “Oh, Zuhra … You know why.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  I’d never been whole, I knew that. I’d aged all wrong; my body had lengthened and grown tall while I’d steadily broken apart inside. Day after day after week after month of my mother’s rebuttals and rules, of Inara’s distance and suffering, of the shadows of a father I barely remembered but couldn’t forget around every corner, of living in a mausoleum of the heritage I was forbidden to discover but hungered to know … Pieces of me lay scattered across the stone hallways of this citadel, shards of a child’s heart that yearned only for love and slivers of a soul that ached for understanding—belonging, even.

  But I’d been careful to keep tiny bits of myself safe, protected behind a carefully hardened wall of disillusionment.

  Until Halvor had shown up yesterday, until I’d spent an entire night beside him and stupidly, foolishly let that wall crack, allowed tiny fissures of hope to weaken it. And now he’d left the citadel—had left me—as everyone did eventually. Physically or mentally, whether by choice or not, it didn’t matter. The result was the same. I was alone. Always utterly alone.

  Except for Mahsami.

  And so I had to know now, finally, after fifteen years, why she had stayed then—and why she stayed now. Why I should let myself believe that she wasn’t going to disappear one day too.

  “Please, Sami.” She wavered in front of me, like someone had spilled water on a painting, smudging the details of her face.

  Only when she reached up and tenderly wiped the moisture from my cheek did I realize I was crying. “My dear girl … I stayed because I saw a chance to right an old wrong. And because even though I was never able to have any children of my own, something inside me knew you and Inara might be in need of a mother.”

  “We already had a mother.” I didn’t say or mean it unkindly—it was a question. A terrible question, but one that I felt I deserved an answer to.

  “In body, yes. But you didn’t just lose your father the night your sister was born” was all she said back, with a look of such tenderness that I couldn’t respond except to nod. She patted my cheek and then let her hand drop.

  Every moment that she remained, talking to me, she risked my mother’s fury being turned on her. No matter how badly I wished for her to stay, I forced myself to open the door the rest of the way and walk into my room.

  “Thank you, Sami,” I whispered, even as she took out her key ring to lock me in.

  She wiped her cheek on her sleeve without looking up, thumbing through the keys until she found the right one.

  I couldn’t bear to close myself in, so instead I turned my back, letting Sami do it herself. The door clicked shut softly and I exhaled. Sami’s voice was muffled by the heavy wood separating us, but as the lock slid into place and her key scraped back out, it sounded like she’d murmured “I’m sorry” one last time.

  My room glowed honey-gold as the sun crested the peaks visible through the single window across from where I stood. I always left my curtains open; I loved waking to the sunrise warm on my face, my walls shimmering with the light of a new day. But I felt no joy from this dawn, only a bone-deep exhaustion and the knifing pain of new loss—something I’d believed myself impervious to, until today.

  Though I knew Halvor was gone by now, and I wanted nothing more than to crawl
underneath my covers and give myself over to the oblivion of sleep, part of me had to see the evidence to make it true. I crossed the room slowly, telling myself that last crumb of hope I clung to—that he would still be standing there, waiting for the gate to appear—was completely futile.

  The hedge was so tall, it rose even with the top of my window, blocking my view of Gateskeep, the trail leading down to it from the citadel, or any of the valley between the cliff we lived on and the rest of the mountain range to the east.

  I did, however, have an excellent view of the courtyard below. The empty courtyard … and the wrought-iron gate, completely clear of vines, gleaming ebony in the morning light.

  He, too, had truly left then.

  As abruptly as he’d come, Halvor Roskery was gone.

  TEN

  “Inara!”

  Inara, Inara, Inara. A shout, a buzz, a curse. Through the roar, through the dark, through the light—

  That is who I am.

  Is who I am.

  Who I am.

  Who am I?

  Who am I?

  Flesh made pain, pain made flesh. Roaring and howling. Inside me—crawling, creeping, crying.

  Skin stretched tight, too, too tight. Light too deep, too heavy, too loud. Roaring and roaring and ROARING.

  A new voice, a deep voice. Sounds that bang and bump and I try, try, try to focus, but the light is blinding and the roar is deafening and she’s gone. Why is she gone? Why doesn’t she come?

  Who am I?

  Where is she?

  Where am I?

  The roar is worse and I need her. I feel blindly, I see but don’t; I hear but can’t understand … and the roaring is worse, worse, worse …

  And then pain. Shooting, blinding, breaking. Screaming—the screaming is mine, it’s me, I am hurt. Am I hurt?

  A deep voice, an image that swims through the blinding light, through the roaring dark, eyes of umber, of richest soil between my fingers, of edges of leaves curling and burning and I must heal them, must help them …