The Book of Snow & Silence

by Zoe Marriott

  The dress was too costly for a housekeeper or a steward, even a senior one. A lady in waiting of some standing then, a member of the court...

  More details swam into view. Heavy waves of honey coloured hair, streaked thickly with silver, intricately braided and twisted back from the temples of a pale, oval-shaped face. Golden eyebrows, pale eyes, high cheekbones, a thin nose. Early forties perhaps. A decided chin, a distantly amused quirk to the narrow, delicately shaped lips. I blinked a little more, taking in the blue gems glinting on the ears, a long string of pearls at the throat – and then, with a shock that propelled me from my seat, the fire of diamonds set in that golden hair.

  A crown.

  A crown of diamonds worked into delicate, spiralling shapes – like stars or snowflakes. Like the dazzling towers of the Silingana itself, wrought in miniature.

  The crown of the Queen of Silinga.

  I dropped into my deepest curtsy, knee thudding down on the carpet with all the grace of a mud brick. Cheeks on fire with mortification, I bowed my head, fixing my eyes on the silvery silk of the slippers poking out from the fur trim of her skirts. I had been sniping at the Queen. The Queen. Her Highness Queen Consort Miramand.

  I had told her, to her face, that her household management was lacking. I had shrugged her off and jibed at her. I had utterly disgraced myself and my Mother. Why couldn’t that lightning bolt have struck me?

  “Your Highness,” I began in a whisper. “Please – accept my apologies – ”

  “There is no need for embarrassment. It was a simple mistake, and we are not in public here. Do sit down again. You must be exhausted from your ordeal.”

  For the first time, her voice held a hint of warmth, and the graciousness was like salt water in the wound of my humiliation. My cheeks only burned more hotly as I clambered, joints crackling audibly, to my feet, and then plopped back into the chair where the Queen had put me.

  “The doctor told me that you had sustained no major injuries, but I want to hear how you are feeling. Are your rooms to your taste?”

  “I am – quite well, your Highness,” I croaked, barely aware of what I said. Had there been a doctor last night? “A little fatigued, perhaps. The rooms are lovely. How – how is Prince Uldarana?”

  My first meeting with my own future Queen. With the woman I hope one day to succeed. What must she be thinking of me?

  “He is well, although like you, a little tired. Ideally there would be more time to allow both of you to recover from all you’ve suffered, but to delay your introduction to the court would be to incite gossip. You understand, of course?”

  “Of course.” I nodded jerkily, trying to force myself to emulate her calm. “Is – is there much to be done today?”

  “I’m afraid there is. Girda was to have explained your schedule to you.” She let the abrupt end to the sentence stand as its own rebuke. I had lost my temper and sent Girda from the room without letting her tell me anything, though she had tried to warn me that the Queen had sent her. My actions had seemed entirely justified at the time, but now it was obvious that my bad temper had been unworthy of one in my position.

  I swallowed, accepting the unspoken chastisement with a small nod.

  She went on, “You must be presented to the King today. Once he has formally recognised you and given you and Uldarana the traditional blessing, preparations for the betrothal ceremony and ball can begin. Tonight there is a banquet, to celebrate your deliverance from the shipwreck and introduce you to the court.”

  I nodded again, and, with some effort, met her gaze. She was examining me frankly, making no effort to conceal her doubts, her internal calculation. It was a familiar look. One I had witnessed so often on my own Mother’s face. The face of a woman asking herself: is this girl good enough?

  The ghost of a cringe travelled down my spine. My chin lifted unconsciously, and my shoulders straightened as every muscle clenched in anticipation of battle. I forced my hands to unknot and lie flat on my lap.

  I am calm.

  I am calm.

  I am calm.

  The Queen’s brows came together in a frown. Then, with sudden, surpassing sweetness, she smiled at me.

  Approval. Unexpected. Unreserved.

  It was as if my bones had turned to warm water inside me. I nearly slid right out of my seat. My eyes prickled again and my breath, as I drew it in slowly through my lips, trembled audibly.

  I... I am calm.

  I will be calm.

  She nodded, eyes still on mine, as if some important message had passed between us. Then the smile faded to leave her face as blandly composed as before. “Now let’s discuss your wardrobe.”

  Still shaken and off-balance, I blurted, “But – it’s all at the bottom of the sea.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” she said, eyes narrowing in thought as she ran her gaze over me. “I mean your new wardrobe. I believe I know just what you need.”

  10

  “This is supposed to be a ball gown?”

  “The very latest fashion in ball gowns.” Mistress Kirgin said earnestly. “Lady Savigny and Lady Ardansk both wore similar ones to the Prince’s last birthday ball. These translucent sections, the arms and back, will display your – ah – unusual skin to great advantage. You will look stunning in it, I promise!”

  “My skin is perfectly ‘usual’,” I said coldly, crossing my arms. The fabric of my under-dress, borrowed like everything else, suddenly felt far too thin and revealing. How did these people see me? “And I have no intention of displaying this much of it for the entertainment of the general public, regardless of fashion.”

  The dressmaker turned away. “My Queen?”

  “Princess Theoai has made her wishes clear,” Queen Miramand said calmly. There was satisfaction in her sidelong glance at me. “Modesty and restraint are certainly very fitting traits for a future Queen.”

  The seamstress sighed in defeat, allowing the see-through fabric to droop from her hands.

  The Queen effortlessly took over. “You have designs in the Yamarri style, I know. Why don’t we think along those lines...”

  Seeing that neither of them were paying any attention to me anymore, I allowed my gaze to wander, surveying the wreckage. Bolts of silk, velvet, brocade, lace, piles of fur, heaps of lining material, beads, buttons and trims in every shade and of every pattern lay strewn over the furniture and floor of my dressing room, knee deep in places. Everything I wore from today on would be brand new. I had nothing left from my old life.

  I imagined the excitement that would have lit up Elo or Ane’s face at this sight – and saw again the face blurring in the dark water, the slender arm reaching. I clenched my teeth down on my lip.

  Stop this. It is nothing but self-indulgence. You have cried your hour, and more than that. Now it is time to put sadness behind you and fix your mind on what must yet be done.

  On what is yet to be won.

  “Very well, Mistress Kirgin – pin that one on for now and the Princess can wear it this morning,” the Queen was saying. “Have your staff begin work on the rest immediately.”

  “It is a very bold choice. Are you sure – ?” the seamstress asked.

  “Time is of the essence. We mustn’t keep the King waiting.”

  The seamstress shook her head emphatically, making sharp, commanding gestures at her two assistants. “No, your Highness. No, we must not.”

  The women bustled into place around me, holding panels of silk, snowy white and unadorned. I clenched my teeth. At home we usually reserved white for weddings, funerals and high festivals, and even then it was never an entire gown or suit of clothes. I should have paid more attention to the Queen’s conversation with the dressmaker – but this was an emergency. I had to accept what was ready now, or I would go to meet the king in my borrowed nightgown.

  One of the seamstresses seized my arms, tutting as she pulled them out straight from my sides. The other dropped to her knees at my feet, a fan of silver pins poking out alarmingly bet
ween her lips. The dress quickly took shape around me as they pulled, prodded and poked at my flesh as if I were a freshly killed antelope.

  “The hair up, I think – something simple, but with fullness at the crown. The pearl pins and the ivory combs?” Queen Miramand mused, and Mistress Kirgin herself rushed to comply, wielding a brush over my curling hair – still damp from a recent bath – with an efficiency that made my eyes water.

  “Good,” Queen Miramand pronounced, as the last piece of the dress was tugged and secured into place. “Now for the finishing touch.”

  She reached to her throat for the long string of white pearls that hung nearly to her waist, and lifted them carefully over her head. “My own Mother gave me these, a very long time ago. I never had a daughter to pass them onto.” I held very still, hardly daring to breathe as she placed them around my neck. Her next words were soft. “Until now.”

  I swallowed hard, touching the glowing, perfectly matched pearls hesitantly with one hand. “Thank you.”

  The Queen nudged me toward the full-length mirror of silvered glass that hung on the dressing room wall. I certainly made a striking figure, covered from head to toe in unrelieved white, white ornaments gleaming in my hair. The gown was high at the throat, with a little boned collar that stood up from the neckline and brushed my chin, and long, straight sleeves that hugged my arms tightly, forming a stiff ruffled fan around the wrist to match the collar.

  My skin looked burnished like bronze, and my hair jet-black rather than the dark brown I knew it to be. The severe style of the gown gave me a severe look, too. Formidable, even.

  I was reminded suddenly, disconcertingly, of my Mother. I raised a hand to my hair just to check it was really me, trying not to pull a face.

  A hasty knock on the door broke the moment. Before anyone could call out permission to enter, it flew open to admit Girda. “Highness, the King is dressed and ready to receive visitors.”

  “He is up very early,” the Queen said, blankly, surprised.

  My eyes strayed to the demolished tray of food that we had consumed as our midday meal an hour or so ago. Early?

  We mustn’t keep the King waiting.

  No. No, we must not.

  My tongue found the sore place on my lip and I grimaced as I tasted blood again.

  With a firm hand on my elbow Queen Miramand led me toward the door. Her movements contained no undue haste, but still I sensed a certain – urgency. Girda and another two women – ladies-in-waiting, from their fine dresses and jewellery – fell in silently behind us.

  “Uldarana will be waiting for us in the King’s receiving rooms,” Miramand said, with the faint air of one offering a treat. “Are you excited to see him again?”

  “I can’t swim!”

  The blinding flash of the lightning, the vertiginous heave of the ship, the breath-stealing plunge into the icy water.

  Hands that pushed me away and let me go.

  “What were you thinking?”

  I held my breath, hoping she had not felt me flinch. What was the required response? “Very much. I hope to get to know him better before the marriage.”

  There was a stifled titter from one of the women behind us. Girda? My back crawled with self-consciousness. Desperate for distraction, my eyes traced the pale, blue-green walls of the corridor and the tall, vaulted ceilings. They were carved with stylised wave shapes that rose and curled and fell hypnotically around the curtained shapes of the windows. Overhead, cold light poured in through more clear cupolas set into the ceiling. Were the walls and ceiling actually ice?

  I reached out to brush one of the waves with my fingers and found them smooth as glass, but dry, and barely chilly to the touch. Surely nothing other than enchanted ice could possess such a strange texture, as if the ‘magic’ which had made these walls had sealed away the ice’s natural properties somehow. Such an astonishing work of power...

  “Every few years we have the Ice Breakers come along and remake the patterns,” Queen Miramand said, observing my interest. “When I first came here it was snowflakes. Uldarana’s favourite was a pattern of ships, but that was very complex and too expensive to maintain.”

  Built on the backs of Ice Breakers...

  The soft shushing of our feet on the carpet abruptly transformed to sharp tapping as the corridor opened into an antechamber formed of more unnatural ice. Like all the rooms I had seen so far it was circular, and its ceiling soared away to a dome of stained glass – or perhaps dyed ice – in shades of blue, green and gold.

  The left half of the room was shrouded in velvet curtains, tightly drawn against the sun. The right half turned out to be a mezzanine with a tall, clear ice railing. It protruded over a dizzying swirl of staircases, unfurling like the inner whorls of a seashell above a dark, bottomless well of shadows.

  “Down there is the ballroom,” Queen Miramand told me, swiftly slaying any fanciful thoughts. “Which you will see later, when it is prepared for the festivities. We don’t bother to light it unless it is in use.”

  Girda hurried away across the room to a great set of doors – the only set of doors in the room. Twice my height, carved from pale, silvery wood, their towering white lintel displayed scenes of sea-faring, sea-battles, and ships being engulfed by hopefully imaginary sea-creatures.

  The maid conducted a quick, whispered conversation with a footman. He bowed ceremoniously, then rang a bell that sang with a high, melancholy note. Both doors swung slowly inward.

  Uldarana stepped out.

  “Theo,” he said. In the silent room, the diminutive echoed like a shout. I couldn’t read his face. He was too far away. The woman behind me tittered again.

  Miramand’s hand on my arm tightened fiercely, and then released. “We will allow the two of you a moment’s privacy.”

  The Queen’s attendants filed quickly past me through the grand doors. The Queen stopped for a moment to tug sharply on the hem of the Prince’s doublet, and tap him underneath the chin: a silent reminder to stand up straight. He blushed furiously, looking mortified, but did not protest. Without speaking, she too departed, leaving Uldarana and me alone save for footman.

  The Prince was wearing red again. A military style doublet, with a golden half-cape at one shoulder that rippled, weighty with embroidery, as he walked to meet me. A dress sword rattled at his hip, and his tall, black boots thudded dully on the ice floor. With each step his blush faded and he seemed to pull a little more confidence around him, until he was moving in something like a swagger. He reached out and took my hands without asking for permission – but his palms were sweaty, overly warm as they held mine. He was taller than I remembered. The boots must have heels.

  Like an actor reciting his lines in a play, he greeted me gallantly: “You are as beautiful as a dream, Princess.”

  Someone save me! This was worse than the first time! What were we supposed to say to one another now? We had barely met, yet he had risked my life, then saved it – and I had returned the favour, only for us to fall into a quarrel. Followed by him ogling that other girl in front of me. Had any situation ever been less auspicious for courtship? Had any betrothed pair ever been so excruciatingly awkward?

  “Unfortunately, you can’t get away from me by waking up,” I said. Then clamped my teeth together. Triple curse it, why had I said that?

  Uldar blinked. This had clearly not been among the responses he had practised for. His hands loosened on mine as if he was about to let go. And then, miraculously, his eyes crinkled and he let out a shout of incredulous laughter.

  I unclamped my teeth, and felt the corners of my lips curl up in sheer relief.

  “You don’t like flattery, then?” he gasped, shoulders shaking.

  “I – wouldn’t say that,” I hazarded, still too shaken by the near disaster to think of anything less honest or more politic to say. “I’m just not used to it.”

  “You’re a princess. Doesn’t everyone flatter you and tell you how lovely you are?” he asked, face creased in confus
ion.

  “No.” I cast my mind back to days that began before dawn, training until my hands blistered, hunching over books of strange languages, mathematical equations and geological information until my head throbbed and the moon rose. And looming above it all, the ever-present look of unmet expectation on my Mother’s face. It made me quail, even in memory, and my voice came out harsher than I had meant it to. “No, never. Until now.”

  If anything he looked more disconcerted than before, as if the notion of going without flattery was entirely alien. But he was a prince, and one day would be ruler. Did his caretakers not humble him, test him and beat him, and withhold their affection to make him stronger? How did they know that he would be worthy? Rest is for the dead.

  The silvery bell rang out again, making us both start. Uldar let go of my hands at last, leaving them uncomfortably damp, but only to draw the right one firmly through the crook of his elbow.

  “Well, dream or not, it’s too late to escape now,” he said, offering a grin that seemed somewhat forced around the edges. “Don’t – take Father personally, will you? He’s a bit – ah – he can be gruff. It’s just his way.” He cleared his throat.

  Longing for my ladies surged up inside me, a sick, hollow ache. They should have escorted us now, been at my back, at my right and left hands. Their presence would have comforted me and borne me up. They would each have carried a small casket of scented wood packed with a tiny amount of rare spices, gold and perfume – representing my dowry.

  But the sea had swallowed them. The sea had swallowed everything.

  I faced this meeting with nothing to prove my consequence. Not a single attendant, not a trinket or even a button to my name. The only offering I brought was my self.

  My exiled, unwanted self.

  No. I would not allow myself to cringe and quiver like a kicked dog before these people. I had trained all of my life for this. I was not a supplicant; I was a Royal Princess of the line of Herim.