The Hidden Icon (Book of Icons)

by Jillian Kuhlmann

  “I may not have yours or my brother’s presence of mind,” she claimed delicately ten days after he had departed, “but you should pursue what brings you peace.”

  “No matter what it may bring to others?” I argued, thinking of what Theba was capable of when she couldn’t have what she wanted, or when the consequences were unexpected. She wasn’t alone in never having an intimate among the gods, for they rarely, at least in the stories that I knew, desired each other, preferring the temperate hearts of mortals. Perhaps it was merely in observance of this habit that the icons treated each other only as siblings. But everyone else?

  Morainn didn’t answer, but poured instead tea for the both of us into clever little vessels of Ambarian make whose hollow walls kept the drink warm but didn’t burn our hands. When we were together, she often dismissed her servants and preferred to do those things that they considered inappropriate for her to do. Preparing tea might have been an insignificant gesture, but I knew what a gift it was for the both of us.

  “I saw more of Gannet within the past few months than I have in as many years,” she admitted, lips pursed above a steaming cup. “You’re lucky that he’ll return before the opera. I know he’s often elsewhere, though I suppose it’s possible he’s below ground, and it isn’t safe to see me.”

  The stigma she mentioned so idly I was beginning in part to understand. The icons were, as Paivi had said, both revered and reviled. Though the icons kept mostly to themselves when their services or blessings weren’t required, this meant only that their hands were invisible, but no less responsible for steering the course of this land.

  “What was it like for you as a girl, knowing that he was out there, but you weren’t allowed to see him?” My question was one that could only have blossomed between friends, and Morainn answered in kind.

  “When I was young, it didn’t seem fair that I must learn and do so much, and Gannet didn’t have to. When I got older, of course, I realized there were demands made of him, as well, though I don’t even now know what they are.” Morainn held her cup in two hands, her face thoughtful. “I wonder if he was ever like you, unguarded. If he could be that way with you now.”

  This surprised me, and the color that rose to my cheeks betrayed my surprise.

  “I can sense sometimes, what he’s feeling, what he’s hiding,” I admitted, guessing rightly that this would be a comfort to her. “But I think he wants to keep more from me than anyone.”

  “I’m sure it is because of who you are, Eiren.” Morainn drained her cup, her knowing smile rather like one I might’ve seen on my eldest sister’s face. “And I don’t mean Theba.”

  Though I knew her words were meant to comfort me, I couldn’t help but think of all of the ways that I was more Theba, and less everything I had been. I was shamed by how little thought I had given my misdeeds since arriving in Jhosch, that I was only reminded of Kurdan when Najat had taken me to a place where some of the icons had been buried. I had been unnerved by the markers on the tomb, by so many bodies identified by the same name and the knowledge that another who walked below ground now would someday join them in anonymity. No one would know Kurdan, either, if they found his grave in a hundred years.

  “Sometimes she is more me than me,” I muttered, but didn’t say more.

  The next morning it was Avery who came for me instead of one the icons, though she offered little in the way of an explanation. I could only suppose that Morainn awaited me, and so I followed her without question or complaint. Before we left my chamber she crossed to one of the chests where robes and blankets were stored, taking out a great, heavy robe to rival even the substantial one I wore within the palace and below ground.

  “Are we going outside?” I asked, and Avery nodded. I slipped obediently into the extra layer, lifting the many hoods that settled now around my shoulders over my head. I hadn’t been outside since we had arrived in Jhosch, not properly, the streets of the capitol mostly sheltered from the elements and great braziers providing heat for the laborers and merchants that worked out of doors. When we exited the palace, however, even the custodians of the city, hard at work sweeping the streets, couldn’t clear them entirely of the white powder that settled where it passed through the lattice-like openings carved out of the mountain. I didn’t know what I was looking at, and Avery didn’t stop me when I pulled my hand free of the great robe sleeves to collect a handful in my palm. It was cold and wet and slippery, and began to melt from my body’s heat almost immediately.

  Just as I was about to ask Avery what, exactly, I was holding, Morainn approached with Imke and several other servants, none of whom I recognized. I was pleased enough to see her, and my pleasure increased at the sight of Antares towering over the women with a number of the palace guard with him. If we must have an armed guard to travel outside of the city proper, I would have chosen him. Though we couldn’t greet each other with as much familiarity was we might have if Morainn had visited my chamber in the palace, her smile was warm and she noted immediately the clutch of white powder in my hand, now rendered almost entirely to water. Even after all I’d seen, it was like magic to me.

  “As soon as I knew it was snowing today I decided we should go out,” she explained.

  So this was snow. I knew of it in stories, of course, but it was a phenomenon singular to Ambar. Even the mountain ranges in Aleyn were absent of it, and though I had seen it at a distance as we approached Ambar, this was the first snow of their winter.

  Morainn paid no attention whatsoever to Antares or the others who were armed as we made our way out of the city, but I could sense her irritation at their presence, and knew that they were more for my benefit than for hers. The question of whether or not they were protecting me or protecting everyone else from me wasn’t one I had to ask: I knew the answer was both.

  We did not ride but walked out of the city. We were in Jhosch still but this was the part of the capitol that had more to do with providing for the body of the Ambarian citizen than the mind. There were farms and groves, dusted all with white, and labor animals lowing as they took shelter from the snow. Men, women, and children didn’t retire from work because of the weather, but their hands and feet slowed as we approached, bowing their heads to Morainn but raising them again just as quickly to have a look at me. I thought again of the conversation with Paivi, of all they didn’t know. Was it my responsibility to lead them in ignorance? When I was in Theba’s thrall fully, would I care?

  And yet I couldn’t believe that it would be so. I saw the other icons and they were individuals, not simply incarnations. Though I had been seized in the past by the alien force I had taken to be the dread goddess, I hadn’t felt it for some time. Even when Kurdan had fallen in the Rogue’s Ear, I knew that it had been me who had slain him, now. In my own defense, but still by my own hand.

  What leaves hadn’t fallen from the trees were born down by the weight of the snow, both crunching delightfully under foot. I felt the cold only after my wonder was exhausted, and my dark thoughts were banished entirely by the serenity of the scene, of our quiet but merry company. It could have been sweeter only for me to have Gannet at my side. I wanted for him more than I did my mother or father, my brother, my sisters. Had I become a woman, or a monster?

  Monster.

  Monster.

  “Monster!”

  It wasn’t my thought that amplified but a scream, a screeching that was followed by a whistling arrow and the thunk of the point against one of Antares’ armored guards. The one nearest to me. There was a flurry of swirling cloaks and drawn swords, and someone pressed me hard into the snow and earth. I heard shouts that could only have been orders given. Even if I’d wanted to lift my head and see, the pounding of my heart seemed to pin me to the earth. More screams, and a dark fall of hair near my face confirmed that Morainn was beside me, her eyes wide and white and flashing when they caught mine. She was alive, and for that I rejoiced. There was room in my fear to hope that no one had been hurt because of me, though n
ot much.

  “Eiren, get up.”

  It was Antares’ voice, and a moment later there was a hand gripping my forearm. I rose with his assistance and met his eyes only briefly before my gaze traveled beyond him, behind him to the hooded figure that struggled against three of the guard. I saw the bow, the glove the assassin wore to provide a steady hand when firing, and a great surge of anger flooded through me. I could have struck him down with a blow, by my hand or my mind I didn’t know. My violence was barely checked by Morainn’s charging forward and raking the hood away. The face of a man of middle years was revealed, one I didn’t recognize and it seemed neither did she. His face was stubbled out of neglect rather than fashion, his eyes severe.

  “Who dares to attack me?”

  She didn’t need to say anymore, for though I hadn’t seen Morainn or her family mingle much with the common folk of Jhosch, it was clear to one and all who she was. His expression did not falter.

  “It was not you whose heart my arrow sought, dresha, but hers.” He looked past Morainn, right at me, eyes burning with a hatred I was sure even knowledge of my sorriest deeds could not have stirred. It was like hatred from another world, born of more than what man could feel. He stopped struggling against the guards who were trying to hold him, looking at me as though I were the only person who existed for him in that moment.

  “You will never do what you have come to do, Theba. I will go to my grave if I cannot bring you to yours.”

  I felt again the surge of anger, but before I could act Antares stepped away from me and toward the captive man.

  “Easily done.”

  And Antares drew his sword, which I had never seen him do for all he had worn it since the moment I had met him, and plunged it deep into the belly of the man. I gasped as he withdrew it and drove it again into the man’s chest. He didn’t scream but remained still and silent. Though the man’s eyes fell from me, I felt that they had burned through me in his last moments.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked, shocked as the man crumpled to the ground, the serene beauty of the snow splattered with his blood. In Aleyn even such a blatant attempt to take another’s life would have resulted in an inquiry, his motives examined, questions asked.

  Antares cleaned his sword in the snow. I knew I’d never be able to see white again without also seeing red.

  “Such men aren’t given the right to defend themselves, or foul the world with their lies,” he returned quietly, looking up from his work to Morainn. I could see in his face that this was not the first judgment he had delivered so swiftly. “We should return to the palace, dresha.”

  Morainn nodded dumbly. In her countenance I could see that while she wasn’t surprised at Antares’ work, she was surprised at the act that had required it. I didn’t need either of them to explain to me that attacks of this kind against icons were always met with immediate and deadliest force. I didn’t know what Antares would have done if Morainn had been the man’s target, but it didn’t matter. It had been me.

  I thought of Kurdan, ranked now in my mind with this nameless attacker, each of them consumed with a blind desire to hurt, to kill, to put an end to my life and in so doing thwart Theba’s work. Neither of them would have me, neither Theba nor those who would destroy her. My will and my life would be my own.

  Chapter 23

  There wasn’t time enough to reason away what had happened out in the snow before the day of the opera arrived. Najat banished me early from her company, and soon I was accosted by Avery and several others, all arrived to dress and paint and plait me. Though I was no stranger to such attentions, I had often encouraged our servants to shift their passions to my sisters, who were far readier to be coaxed and teased than I was. These women, however, had no one to tend but me. My mood wasn’t improved in thinking of my sisters, nor by the guilt I felt for not having thought of them but a few hours earlier, ensconced among the icons as I might be in a family.

  Avery was the bearer of some new torture, however, for the great rug in my chamber was rolled up off of the floor and a tub three times my size was carried in and placed before the fire. One servant stood by without any other purpose but to heat bucket after bucket of water. With the fire roaring hot and high I almost imagined I was warmed through, and when Avery instructed that I strip all of my clothes and climb into the tub, I thought at first she might be crazy. Still, there was no arguing with her, nor with the servants that crowded once I was in to scrub and pick at my nails, my feet, their hands kneading scented soaps into my scalp and shoulders. With the steam in my face they plucked the stray hairs on my brow, giving not one moment’s pity to my yelps of pain. There were some cosmetic habits my adolescence in the desert had never required, and when I was finally freed from the tub and wrapped shivering in a thick robe, I felt like a cooked bird.

  Though I had worn the robe and gown I had been given on my first day each day thereafter, Avery unfolded now a flame-gold bundle of a similar style, if richer in every other way. The fabric itself reminded me of the light, airy stuffs we used for clothing at home, but this was only the topmost layer, shimmering and settling over a soft, downy underdress the color of honey. Embroidered along the hood and sleeves were not the characters of the other, but elaborate renderings, scenes and figures playing out the details of their lives.

  But it was not any life, it was mine. The midwife carried me as an infant from the birthing chair to my father’s arms, Jurnus and I raced through the streets and the sand. I bent my head in prayer, I burned ritual herbs, I braided Esbat’s hair and soothed Lista’s vanity. I went into exile with my parents, brother, and sisters. The figures were tiny and but a handful of knots each, but I recognized them all, and could see when Morainn and Gannet entered my life, crawling dark and glinting with gilded thread in the capitol tower. The sand barge rolled over the breast of the garment, plagued by troubles and shadow-spirits, the ruins of Re’Kether sketched in thread that seemed to shift as that place had.

  The Rogue’s Ear was at my throat, darkness giving way to light in the world and in my heart. What I had gained there not even the most skilled seamstress could have rendered. But there was still something clairvoyant in the stitches. Did I imagine that Gannet stood in stitches taller and finer than he had at first, in contrast to my first impression of him? My arrival in Jhosch stood at the back of the stiff collar, and though there was greater space for a more detailed rendering of faces, the artist went instead with more color, an abstract sense of myself and all of my traveling companions. We looked like figures of myth, all splashes of color and fine, spidery features. It was breathtaking, and I could hardly imagine wearing such a life for all I had lived it.

  Avery gave me as much time as I needed to examine the dress before she helped me into it. I submitted to the tucking and lacing, the many layers of skirts hitched in a way that allowed them all to be shown to greatest effect. The hood was left gathered at my shoulders while my hair was dressed, lightly oiled but softened around my face. I was patient as they painted my eyes, cheeks, and lips, trusting that their skills were greater than that of a ten-year-old Lista, using me as canvas and plaything. I fingered one of the thread figures that I imagined to be her, and wondered how the artist could have known so much, or perhaps only guessed. I didn’t fathom that such business would have kept Gannet away, or that he would have relinquished my secrets even if this had been his errand. I touched a hand to my neck only to have it brushed lightly away, thinking that there were some secrets in the dress he couldn’t know.

  When Avery relented, I was sore for having been seated so still for so long. At least the dress wasn’t uncomfortable.

  I followed Avery to a part of the palace that I had not yet entered, though I hadn’t strayed far from my room and the great hall, and couldn’t call myself familiar with the place. The royal chambers, though somehow finer even than what I had already seen, seemed also the most lived in. It wasn’t that anything appeared worn or weathered, but the touch of lives fully lived was o
n everything, appearing to me in a sight that was not unlike what I employed in the dark.

  Colaugh and Agathe shamed even the elegance of my garment, and I pitied the artisan who had fashioned mine when I looked upon the king and queen in their finest. They could have been in rags and still outshone me, possessed of the same lofty carriage as my own mother and to a lesser extent, my father. Anise had grown into it, too, and I suspected Lista would if she could leave off flirtation with every glance and gesture.

  Yet my family was far removed from me now and their warmth, too. I was welcomed with civility by Colaugh and Agathe, and Morainn when she lifted herself from a chair. Gannet wasn’t there, of course. When would he return? He’d promised he’d be here for the opera, hadn’t he?

  I inclined my head to each of them in turn, but did not drop into the deeper bow of Avery behind me. I saw Imke at a far door with two other servants. When Avery had presented herself to her own satisfaction or theirs, she withdrew and joined the others in shadow.

  “Eat, if you like.”

  Agathe gestured to the table where Morainn had been seated, cold meats and fruit laid out on platters and looking as though they hadn’t been touched. Having had nothing in hours, my appetite was far from delicate. I did my best to disguise it as I sat and gathered a plate. Morainn returned to her chair, and Colaugh and Agathe joined us.

  I was allowed to eat quietly for a moment, but their eyes upon me were full of questions, and I didn’t want to test their patience or their generosity. Their minds had hunger of a different kind. Unsure of my place with them, I allowed my mind, already open, to settle like a mist delicately upon the room, sensing their superficial concerns only. They were thinking of Gannet, and I was immediately alarmed, wondering if perhaps they knew already of what had passed between him and me. I darted a glance at Morainn, but her face gave nothing away, and I resisted the urge to delve deeper into the mind of a woman I called friend.