by Zoe Marriott
That boy could have been almost any one of the half dozen young men standing here now, alongside the pale, purple-robed man.
Volin appeared in my peripheral vision, hurrying toward the group. He bowed deeply at them, made welcoming noises – but his eyes were fixed on me. He jerked his head sideways, arching a brow meaningfully. This one!
Prince Uldarana was taller than I had expected. Taller than I. Slim, but with shoulders that might yet fill out into broadness as he aged. His face was browner than the face in the portrait, and a little more freckled. A young man who enjoyed spending time outdoors, perhaps. He was dressed like the others in clothes that looked rich – a deep red overcoat edged in black fur and embroidered at the cuffs and hems with the six pointed gold star of Silinga’s flag – but still practical for a sea journey. His hair was longer than the painted version too, and paler, a softly waving halo of ruddy gold. The chin was rather more decided. Even stubborn.
He was staring back at my little knot of Yamarri women with almost the exact same look of half-smiling panic that my own face must have displayed a few seconds before. With a dart of self-directed irritation I realised: this was the point of those distinctive white furs. Elo had been right. He had expected me to wear them.
Clammy with self-consciousness, I made myself step into the empty space on the deck between the two groups, signalling at my ladies to hold their position behind me. The Prince’s attention narrowed to me instantly, and he made a similar gesture to his own attendants as he, too, stepped forward.
There was no protocol for such a meeting as this. No mandatory script to follow. Without second guessing myself I dipped into a deep, straight-backed curtsey. It was the most formal obeisance a Royal Princess of my line ever performed. Until now it had been reserved for my Mother, my Queen.
I felt the Prince’s stare on the top of my head like the prickle of gooseflesh as my skirts billowed up around me in scarlet waves. He watched me rise again, wordless, and then pressed his left fist to his breast and dropped to one knee before me, bowing his head. I gazed down at the star-burst shaped parting in his waving hair, seeing the dark red colour close to his scalp – and was caught in his clear, blue-grey gaze as he looked up at me, directly into my eyes, for the first time.
He is more handsome than the portrait, I realised, with some surprise.
Something he saw seemed to give him courage. He smiled. It was a wary, cautious smile, but better than nothing. “Well met, your Royal Highness.” The words were halting and strangely accented. He spoke in Yamarri! I felt an answering smile creep over my own face as he sprang back to his feet and finished – slightly more loudly, and in Silingan, for the benefit, I assumed, of his attendants – “I welcome you to the waters of Silinga.”
“Well met, Crown Prince,” I replied in Silingan, hoping my voice sounded less dry and dusty than it felt. “I – am glad to be welcomed to your home.”
We looked at each other. Everyone else looked at us. The water gurgled against the sides of the ship, and behind me someone cleared their throat. The Prince’s eyes flicked away from mine as he swallowed, and then snapped back guiltily. I kept my gaze fixed upon his face with an effort of will.
Keep smiling. Keep. Smiling.
3
One of the Prince’s young attendants let out a sudden, war-like shout, raising both fists skyward. The Prince and I both jumped violently. He relaxed at once into flustered laughter. I held my face immobile to prevent an annoyed scowl. But the excruciating moment was at least broken.
The rowers from The Ice Blade began swarming up the gangplank, pushing everyone forward to the centre of the deck as they dumped boxes and rolled wooden barrels up over the bulwarks. The crates and boxes were pulled open to reveal hams, fruit, cheeses and bread – fresh food, the first we had seen in weeks. The Black Tern’s crew fell on the barrels with joy, uncorking them and passing around metal cups of a foaming, amber brew.
“To the Crown Prince’s good health! To the Princess’s beauty! To a happily married life – and healthy children!” one of the attendants cried, and everyone gulped down the contents of their cups as if they had been filled with water. I felt a mortifying heat suffuse my cheeks, and raised my chin, smiling still more brightly.
“Your Highness, if I might have a word...” Volin’s voice trailed off delicately as he placed a heavy hand on the Prince’s shoulder and towed him inexorably away. I wasn’t sure if the lurch in my stomach was relief or disappointment. The Prince glanced back once, but his expression was hard to read. I couldn’t tell for sure if he was even looking at me.
Several of the rowers now pulled out instruments – spike fiddles, drums, bone flutes. Plopping down unceremoniously to sit cross-legged on the deck, one or two leaning on the rail, they began to play. It was light, lively music. Dancing music.
Two of the Prince’s attendants bowed to each other and began weaving around each other in a complex pattern, slapping each other’s shoulders, stamping and kicking up their heels. The movements of their arms made me wonder if it was a war dance, and normally performed holding spears or swords. Beside me, Elo was rocking and bouncing in place, responding to the rhythm.
Ane presented me with a plate of sliced fruit and cheese, and a pleading expression that forced me to take it, although my stomach was still far from settled. Another one of the attendants approached Elo tentatively, holding out his hands in a universal appeal. Elo turned a glowing face to me, clasping her own hands under her chin.
I nodded before she had time to say anything. “Go on then. See if you can teach him the dance of seven hawks.”
She let out a trill of laughter and darted forward to take the blushing young man’s hands. Ane and Sereh were soon swept after her, surrounded by a crowd of eager would-be partners. The vivid colours of their Yamarri dresses swished and swirled among the subdued colours and sleek silhouettes of the men, making both groups seem exotic and beautiful. The difference in language seemed to cause surprisingly little difficulty. The sailors were almost drowning out everyone’s voices with their clapping and whistles anyway.
No one approached me, of course. And that was good. It was. The only person whom I could have agreed to partner without breaking etiquette was the Prince. The Prince who was still with the Captain, on the bridge by the ship’s wheel. The two were engaged in what seemed to be a lively argument.
I tried to suppress my annoyance and curiosity. But surely... Was now really the time for Volin to be occupying the Prince’s attention in this way?
As I lifted a fragrant slice of green-skinned, yellow-fleshed fruit to my mouth I drifted, casually, in that direction, keeping to the edge of the ship. The man that Sereh and I had guessed was the – what had Volin said? The Ice Breaker? – stood beside Prince Uldarana and Volin, not participating in their discussion, eyes fixed on the clouds above. One of his hands was wrapped around the brass rail, his bare fingers flexing.
Licking the tart juice from my lips I nibbled on a piece of cheese as I moved closer. My sight was not good, but my hearing was excellent.
“...to linger here any longer,” Volin seemed to be saying. His gritted teeth flashed between tight lips. “We must weigh anchor immediately!”
The Prince patted Volin’s arm absently, his eyes fixed on the party. Was he looking for me among the dancers? “You worry too much. I’ve already told you, Nikaj can easily protect us.”
The Ice Breaker nodded silently.
The Captain’s face suffused with the same ugly purple flush I had seen earlier as he turned away from the Prince, rounding on the Ice Breaker. “You! I hope he’s paying you well for this piece of idiocy – because you’ll get no more work from the Palace once the Queen hears you’ve endangered the prince!”
The Ice Breaker didn’t react, but the Prince made a sudden, jerky movement, as if the Captain’s words had pressed on a bruise. His handsome face turned sullen, like a child’s, and he snapped, “That’s enough, Volin!”
I turned away, placin
g my still-full plate down on a nearby barrel. Disgust had turned the fresh flavours sour between my teeth.
I tried to remind myself that I did not agree with every aspect of my people’s traditions, either. How many times had I argued with my Mother, questioning the ancient law that stated Blessed children must be forced to renounce their families as soon as their powers were discovered? Sometimes Blessings manifested in children as young as three or four, and the children had to be forcibly removed. This was why we still occasionally had tragic ‘purgings’: families who were so loath to lose their little ones that they were willing to feed them poisonous remedies to destroy their Blessings.
But ultimately our methods, though imperfect, were rational. Respectful of the Gods. No Blessed child, regardless of their background, was left to struggle through the emergence of their abilities alone. Nor were they forced to sell their abilities to the highest bidder, to work for money and pervert their sacred connection with the divine for money.
That man was hurting himself to keep the storm at bay, and for what?
For gold, and the whim of a silly, spoiled, Prince.
My spoiled Prince.
What have I done, coming here?
What I must, I told myself, fiercely. The only thing I could do. And it’s too late to go back now.
The sailors were lighting spirit lamps, placing the flickering glass globes haphazardly on the wine and beer casks and on the empty food crates. Their warm light created tall, narrow shadows that danced their own strange dances between the relaxed, laughing shapes of rowers, musicians, royal attendants, sailors and ladies-in-waiting.
I turned away to stare out at the sea. The ships drifted in an early twilight, tinted purple-blue by the clouds. The sky was almost as dark as night, and the water was flat, without glimmer or glint, as if it had all been transformed into solid marble by the Ice Breaker’s will. My hair, restrained by oil and tight braids under my smoothing palm, felt full of sparks.
The Silingans spoke a different language, and looked very different. But for all that, it was easy to forget sometimes that they were truly different to my people, beneath the skin. That they held values and beliefs which every part of me rejected as wicked. Heretical.
A soft, diffident cough brought me around in an awkward movement. Prince Uldarana stood at my side.
“Crown Prince. My apologies – ” I began stiffly, too aware of my unfavourable thoughts.
“Please,” he interrupted, also in Silingan, lips pulling into a grimace. He seemed chastened. Perhaps the Captain’s annoyance had upset him. “I came here to meet you, and yet I abandoned you before I had even greeted you properly. Barely scraped up the courage to look you in the eye, if I’m honest.” He made a coughing noise that I thought was meant for a laugh.
The frank admission was unexpected – and disarming. I felt myself unbending as if a taut steel thread had been gently pulled free of my spine. “It’s all right,” I said gently, and when he still didn’t look at me, impulsively: “What do your friends call you, here?”
That brought his miserable gaze up from the planks of the deck. “My friends?”
“Surely they don’t always address you as Your Royal Highness the Crown Prince Uldarana? What about your parents? Surely you have a nickname? My friends call me Theo.”
That was a lie. I had never had a friend. Only allies and enemies, tutors and advisors, ladies-in-waiting, servants, and family. Of those, only my family – the three of them, Mother, Father and sister – had ever called me Theo.
But it worked. The Crown Prince smiled like a clenched fist suddenly opening. It was a much better effort than the last one I had seen: warm and bright. “My friends and my Mother call me Uldar.”
“May I call you that?”
He nodded fervently. “Of course. And I shall call you Theo. That’s pretty. I – ”
The music jangled to a discordant halt in the same instant that a scream rang out, shrill and echoing in the cold twilight.
“Sereh?” I whirled in the heavy circle of my skirts and hurried around the mast, Prince Uldar just behind me.
The deck before the bridge was a mass of people milling around confusedly – some of them kneeling by or bending over a single, fallen man. It was the Ice Breaker. His face was streaked with blood and he was struggling feebly. Some kind of fight? No, no, the blood was streaming, gushing from his nose. His eyes... They were white crescents beneath his half-closed eyelids. And it was Sereh kneeling on the deck beside him, silhouetted against the light of one of the lamps. She was holding his hands down.
He... He was having – some kind of. Of fit. He was having a fit.
I froze mid-stride, assaulted by a cascade of sense memories. My eyelids fluttered helplessly. The taste of apples, sweetly acidic, on the back of my tongue. The silvery crash of the sacred chalice hitting the marble flagstones, droplets of wine pattering across my bare feet. Aramin’s eyes, alight with triumph even as her cheeks paled in horror.
Light flashing from the rubies in Mother’s crown: “You are broken.”
Sereh looked up and met my gaze, her own face full of panic. “Princess! Help me! What should I do?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was frozen, unable to move or breathe, let alone speak.
Volin was pushing frantically through the crowd, shouting, staring at Prince Uldar: “He’s over-extended himself! The storm – ”
On the deck, the magician’s back stiffened into a tortured arch, then slumped. Limp, his hands slipped out from beneath Sereh’s, and his pale-lipped mouth went slack.
Every hair on my body suddenly crackled, lifting upright. At the edges of my awareness there was a soundless vibration that seemed to set the very air buzzing in my ears, and, not knowing why, I jerked my head up. Above the ship the swollen clouds were ripping asunder. Light pulsed and burned through them. In the distance the wind was rising, an immense, tearing howl, as vast as the far reaches of the sky itself, a sound like that of a sandstorm in full fury. Lightning slashed through the clouds toward the ship –
I was face down on the deck. I blinked frantically, eyes watering, vision striped with black and gold. Ears ringing with a roar of thunder that went on and on and on. Screaming. No, that wasn’t me. Someone else was screaming. More than one someone?
Hands were scrabbling at me, pulling at me. More shouting, close by. My head snapped to one side and my cheek went abruptly numb, then flooded with heat. A slap. I blinked again, hard, and a face swam into my sight.
“Come on! You have to get up – get up, we have to get to The Ice Blade!” It was Uldar. He was frantic, eyes wide and staring, hair straggling damply at his temples. The sky behind him was black as midnight...
He shook me, hard, until my gaze focused on him. “Theo! Wake up! The ship is on fire!”
4
Uldar dragged me to my feet in a graceless, gasping scramble. The world dipped and weaved around me, and I couldn’t get my breath. Sensations battered at me – thick, acrid smoke burning my throat and eyes, sounds like hundreds of mirrors shattering, a strange orange light that sent warped black shadows and sparks flying across my swimming vision...
Fire?
The ship was on fire?
I twisted in Uldar’s grasp and let out a cry of disbelief. The main mast had been cleaved asunder, fully half of it blasted away. The sails and ropes and rigging that were left hung in wild tangles of flame. The barrels of spirits and food crates strewn around had only added fuel to the conflagration. Squinting against the eye-searing brilliance of the fire I could see dark, motionless shapes scattered across the deck – but whether they were people or mere debris, I could not make out.
It must have been divine intervention that Uldar and I had emerged from that unscathed.
“My ladies – S-Sereh – ”
I tried to lurch away and Uldar’s grasp on my upper arms tightened to the point of pain, holding me back as I staggered in place. It took me a moment to realise that my knees hadn’t given
way under the horror of what I saw. The ship was bucking in the water like a wild horse. Waves gushed up on both sides of the deck – met overhead – enveloped us. And broke.
Knocked flat by the impact and blinded by the foam, we washed across the deck in a tangle of trailing clothing and flailing limbs. Every layer – cloak, furs, gown and under gown – was instantly three times as heavy, sodden and cold as ice. Shudders racked my body. I wheezed. My nails tore, scrabbling for purchase on the planks of the deck.
My elbow and hip smacked into something, hard; the impact stopped me in place. I jerked out both hands frantically to catch hold of whatever had hit me. Steps. The steps to the raised deck. The ship’s wheel, spinning wildly, loomed above us. Beyond that, I saw the bow of the ship, rising against the black sky.
Uldar clambered off me, stumbled, skidded on his knees and made it to the bulwark, peering over. His face fell, then creased with fury. He smashed his fist into the brass rail. “No!”
“What?” I shrieked at him over the wailing wind.
“The Ice Blade is gone! I can’t see it – it must have torn free – ”
The Black Tern lurched violently. The deck tipped sideways. I began to slide again, this time in the opposite direction.
“Theo!” Uldar flung himself toward me, latching onto the sleeve of my outer robe. His other hand was wrapped around the brass rail. Face straining with effort, he leaned back, trying to drag me to him. I felt a seam at my shoulder tearing. The fabric began to give way. My toes and fingers scrabbled desperately, helplessly at the deck. Unsecured objects from the upper deck – a wooden barrel, a bucket, a book – tumbled past, narrowly missing us. They disappeared into the hungrily roaring fire.
If Uldar’s grip failed we would plunge straight down into those flames.
With an echoing groan, The Black Tern dropped.
