In between verses, Astraia darted shy smiles at me, as if to check whether she was still forgiven. No, she wants to make sure you’re all right, I told myself, so I clenched my chattering teeth and smiled back. Whatever her concern, by the end of the ceremony she seemed entirely comforted; she sang out the last verse as if she wanted the whole world to hear, then threw a towel around my body and gave me a quick hug. As she rubbed me briskly with the towel, she stopped looking at my face. I thought, Finally, and let my aching smile slip.
Once I was dry and wrapped in a robe, we went to the family shrine. This part of the morning was comforting, for I had gone into this little room and knelt on the red-and-gold mosaics a thousand times before. The musty, spicy smell of candle smoke and old incense sparked memories of childhood prayers: Father’s solemn face flickering in the candlelight, Astraia with her nose wrinkled and eyes squeezed shut as she prayed. Today the cold morning light already glimmered through the narrow windows; it glinted off the polished floor and made my eyes water.
First we prayed to Hermes, patron of our family and the Resurgandi. Then I cut off a lock of hair and laid it before the statue of Artemis, patron of maidens.
This time tomorrow I will not be a maiden. My mouth was dry and I stumbled over the prayer of farewell.
Next were the prayers to the Lares, the hearth gods who protect a home from sickness and bad luck, prevent grain from spoiling, and aid women in childbed. Our family had three of them, represented by three little bronze statues, their faces worn and green with age. Aunt Telomache laid a dish of olives and dried wheat before them, and I added another lock of hair, since I was leaving them behind: tonight I would belong to the Gentle Lord’s house and whatever Lares he might possess.
What gods would a demon serve, and what would I be required to offer them?
Finally we lit incense and laid a bowl of figs before the gilt-framed portrait of my mother. I bowed my face to the floor. I had prayed to her spirit a thousand times before, and the words rolled automatically through my head.
O my mother, forgive me that I do not remember you. Guide me on all the ways that I must walk. Grant me strength, that I may avenge you. You bore me nine months, you gave me breath, and I hate you.
The last thought slipped out as easily as breathing. I flinched, feeling as if I had shouted the words aloud, but when I glanced sideways at Astraia and Aunt Telomache, their eyes were still closed in prayer.
My stomach felt hollow. I knew that I should take the wicked words back. I should weep at the impiety I had shown to my mother. I should leap up and sacrifice a goat to atone for my sin.
My eyes burned, my knees ached, and every heartbeat carried me closer to a monster. My face stayed humbly pressed to the floor.
I hate you, I prayed silently. Father only bargained for your sake. If you had not been so weak, so desperate, I would not be doomed. I hate you, Mother, forever and ever.
Just thinking the words left me shaking. I knew it was wrong and my throat tightened with guilt, but before I could say anything else, Aunt Telomache dragged me to my feet and out of the room.
I’m sorry, I mouthed over my shoulder as I crossed the threshold. The morning light had left the statues and picture shadowed; from the doorway, I could no longer see the gods’ or my mother’s faces.
We went back up to my room, where the maids waited. Walking in, I caught a glimpse of Ivy’s face looking pale and pinched with worry—but the moment she saw me, she smiled hugely. Elspeth only gave me a bored look and opened the wardrobe. She drew out my wedding dress and whirled to face me, the dress’s red skirt swirling in a frothy wave.
“Your wedding dress, miss,” she said. “Isn’t it lovely?” Her smile was all bright teeth and wormwood.
Elspeth was peerless when it came to hair and wardrobes, but she performed every one of her duties with that harsh ironic smile. She hated the Resurgandi for being masters of the Hermetic arts yet never raising a hand against the Gentle Lord. She hated my father most of all, because it was his duty to offer the village’s tithe, the tribute of wine and grain that would persuade the Gentle Lord to leash his demons. Yet six years ago, though Father swore he made the offering correctly, her brother Edwin was found whimpering and trying to claw his skin off, his eyes the inky black of someone who had looked on demons and gone mad. She was glad to see me wed, because it meant that Leonidas Triskelion would lose someone just as dear.
I couldn’t blame her. She couldn’t know that for two hundred years, the Resurgandi had been secretly trying to destroy the Gentle Lord, any more than she could know how little Father would miss me. Like all the folk in the village, she knew only that Leonidas, the mighty Hermeticist, had bargained with the Gentle Lord like any common fool, and now, like any common fool, he must pay. It was justice; why shouldn’t she rejoice?
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured.
Ivy blushed as they dressed me, and the dress was worth blushing over: deep crimson like any other wedding dress, but far too gaudy and enticing. The skirt was a mass of ruffles and rosettes; the puffy sleeves left my shoulders bare, while the tight black bodice propped up my breasts and exposed them. There was no corset or shift underneath; they were dressing me so I could be stripped as quickly as possible.
Elspeth snickered as she buttoned up the front. “No use making a new husband wait, eh?”
I looked blankly at Aunt Telomache and she raised her eyebrows, as if to say, What did you expect?
“I’m sure he’ll fall in love with you at first sight,” said Ivy bravely. Her hands were shaking as she adjusted my skirt, so I managed to scrape up a smile for her. It seemed to calm her a little.
For the next few minutes, we all pretended that I was happy to marry. Elspeth and Ivy giggled and whispered; Astraia clapped her hands and hummed snatches of love songs; Aunt Telomache nodded, lips pursed in satisfaction. I stood quiet and compliant as a doll. If I stared very hard at the wall and reviewed the Hermetic sigils in my head, the bustle around me faded. I still noticed everything they did, but I didn’t have to feel much about it.
They combed my hair and pinned it up, hung rubies in my ears and around my neck, painted rouge on my lips and cheeks, and anointed my wrists and throat with musk. Finally they hustled me in front of the mirror.
A gleaming, crimson-clad lady stared back at me. Until this day, I had worn only the plain black of mourning, even though Father had told us when we were twelve that we could dress as we pleased. Everybody thought that I did it because I was such a pious daughter, but I simply hated pretending that everything was all right.
“You look like a dream.” Astraia slid her arm around my waist, smiling tremulously at our reflections.
Everybody said that Astraia was the very image of our mother, and certainly she could not have gotten her looks anywhere else: the plump, dimpled cheeks, the pouting lips, the snub nose and dark curls. But I might have been born straight out of my father’s head like Athena: I had his high cheekbones, his aristocratic nose, his straight black hair. In a rare burst of kindness, Aunt Telomache had once told me that while Astraia was “pretty,” I was “regal”; but everyone who saw Astraia smiled at her, while people only nodded at me and said my father must be proud.
Proud, yes. But not loving. Even when we were very young, it was clear that Astraia took after Mother, and I after Father. So there was never any question which one of us would pay for his sin.
Aunt Telomache clapped her hands. “That’s enough, girls,” she said. “Say good-bye and run along.”
Elspeth’s eyes raked me up and down. “You look pretty enough to eat, miss. May the gods smile on your marriage.” She shrugged, as if to say it was no concern of hers, and left.
Ivy hugged me and slipped a little straw man into my hand. “It’s Brigit’s son, young Tom-a-Lone,” she whispered. “For luck.” She whirled away after Elspeth.
I crushed the charm in my hand. Tom-a-Lone was a hedge-god, the peasants’ lord of death and love. The village folk might
sacrifice to Zeus or Hera sometimes, when custom demanded it, but for sick children, uncertain crops, and unrequited love, they prayed to the hedge-gods, the deities they had worshipped long before Romana-Graecian ships ever landed on their shores. Scholars agreed that the hedge-gods were merely superstition, or else garbled versions of the celestial gods—that Tom-a-Lone was but another form of Adonis, Brigit another name for Aphrodite—and that either way, the only rational course was to worship the gods under their true names.
Certainly the hedge-gods hadn’t saved Elspeth’s brother from the demons. But the gods of Olympus hardly seemed inclined to rescue me, either.
With a sigh, Aunt Telomache unfolded my fist and plucked out the crumpled Tom-a-Lone.
“Still they cling to their superstitions,” she muttered, and flung it into the fireplace. “You would think Romana-Graecia conquered them last week and not twelve hundred years ago.”
And from the way Aunt Telomache talked, you would think she was descended in a straight line from Prince Claudius, when in fact she and Mother came from a family that was only three generations removed from being peasants. But there was no use pointing that out to her.
“You don’t know,” Astraia protested. “It might bring good luck, after all.”
“And then the Kindly Ones will grant her three wishes, I suppose?” said Aunt Telomache, sounding more indulgent than annoyed. Then she turned a stony gaze on me. “I trust I don’t need to remind you how important this day is. But it is easy for the young to forget such things.”
No, it’s easy for you, I thought. Tonight you will fondle my father while I am the plaything of a demon.
“Yes, Aunt.” I looked down at my hands.
She sighed, eyelids drooping in preparation for another tender moment. “If only dear Thisbe—”
“Aunt,” said Astraia, who was now standing beside the chest of drawers. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Her hands were behind her back, her smile as big and bright as the time she had eaten all the blackberry tarts.
“No, child—”
“So isn’t it lucky I remembered?” With a flourish, she pulled out from behind her back a slim steel knife hanging in a black leather harness.
For an instant, Aunt Telomache stared at the knife as if it were a big, fat spider. I felt as if I had swallowed that spider, as if it were crawling down my gullet with poisonous legs. That was how lying felt: all the lies I had swallowed and spat out again, vile and empty as the husks of dead insects, all for the sake of making sure that precious Astraia could stay happy. And this knife was the most important lie in our family.
“I had it specially made,” Astraia went on earnestly. “It’s never cut a living thing. Just to be safe, it’s never been used at all, not even tested. Olmer swore it hasn’t, and you know he never lies.”
Unlike the rest of us, who had been telling her for the last four years that there was a chance I could kill the Gentle Lord and walk away.
“You do realize,” Aunt Telomache said gently, “that it’s possible Nyx won’t get a chance to use the knife? And”—she paused delicately—“we can’t be sure it will work.”
Astraia raised her chin. “The Rhyme is true, I know it. And even if it isn’t, why shouldn’t Nyx try? I don’t see how stabbing the Gentle Lord could possibly hurt.”
It would show him that I was not broken and cowed, that I had come as a saboteur to destroy him. It would likely make him kill or imprison me, and then I would never have a chance to carry out Father’s actual plan. Even if the Rhyme were true—even if—trying to fulfill it was still a bad bet, when the Resurgandi might never have another chance like me again.
“I don’t know why you’re so reluctant to trust Nyx,” Astraia added in an undertone. “Isn’t she your dearest sister’s daughter?”
Of course she didn’t understand. She’d never had to think through this plan, weighing every risk because she had only one life to lose. She’d never woken up in the night, choking on a dream of a shadow-husband who tore her to pieces, and thought, It doesn’t matter how he hurts me. I’m the only chance to save us from the demons.
Aunt Telomache met my eyes, and the flat set of her mouth spoke as clearly as words: Indulge her for now, but you know what to do.
Then she pulled Astraia close and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Oh, child, you’re an example to us all.”
Astraia wriggled happily—she was almost a cat, she liked so much to be petted—then pulled free and gave me the knife, smiling as if the Gentle Lord were already defeated. As if nothing were wrong. And for her nothing ever would be wrong. Just for me.
“Thank you,” I murmured. I could feel the rage pushing at me like a swell of cold water, and I didn’t dare meet her eyes as I took the knife and harness. I tried to remember the panic that burned through me last night, when I thought her heart was broken.
She was comforted in minutes. Do you think she’ll mourn you any longer after your wedding?
“Here, I’ll help!” She dropped to her knees and strapped the knife to my thigh. “I’m sure you can do it. I know you can. Maybe you’ll be back by teatime!” She beamed up at me.
I had to smile back. It felt like I was baring my teeth, but she didn’t seem to notice. Of course not. For eight years I’d borne this fate, and in all that time she’d never noticed how terrified I was.
For eight years you lied to her with every breath, and now you hate her because she’s deceived?
“I’ll give you a moment to yourselves,” said Aunt Telomache. “The procession is ready. Don’t dawdle.”
The door clicked shut behind her, and in the silence that followed, from outside I heard the faint patter of drums and wail of flutes: the wedding procession.
Astraia’s mouth trembled, but she pushed it up into a smile. “It seems so recently we were children dreaming of our weddings.”
“Yes,” I said. I had never dreamt of weddings. Father told me my destiny when I was nine.
“And we read that book, the one with all the fairy tales, and argued about which prince was best.”
“Yes,” I whispered. That much was true, anyway. I wondered if my face still looked kind.
“And then not too long after Father told us about you”—well, he told her, when she turned thirteen and wouldn’t stop trying to matchmake me—“and I cried for days but then Aunt Telomache told us about the Sibyl’s Rhyme.”
Every half-educated child knew about the Sibyl’s Rhyme. In the ancient days, Apollo would sometimes touch a woman with his power, granting her wisdom and driving her mad at once, and she would live in his sacred grotto and prophesy on his behalf. They said that on the day of the Sundering, the sibyl stood up and proclaimed a single verse, then threw herself into the holy fire and died; she was the last sibyl, and that day was the last time the gods ever spoke to us.
Every well-educated child knew that it was just a legend. There was no good evidence that there had been a sibyl in Arcadia at the time of the Sundering, let alone that she had said such a thing, and no ancient lore about demons, nor any newly discovered Hermetic principle, so much as hinted that what the Rhyme prescribed could work.
The day that Aunt Telomache told Astraia the Rhyme, she forbade me ever to tell her that it wasn’t true. “The poor child’s had enough of tears,” she’d said. “As you love her, let her believe it.”
I had promised and I had kept my promise, and so now I got to watch Astraia clasp her hands and recite it in a low, reverent voice:
“A virgin knife in a virgin’s hand
Can kill the beast that rules the land.”
A hopeful half smile twisted at her lips, and she darted hopeful half glances at my face. It was my cue to smile and pretend to be comforted, as if the Rhyme were true. As if Astraia weren’t asking for comfort as much as trying to give it. As if I had ever lived in her world, where daughters were loved and protected, and the gods offered an escape from every terrible fate.
You wanted her to think that, I told
myself, but all I wanted right now was to seize a book off the table and throw it at her face. Instead I clenched my hands and said sourly, “We both know the Rhyme. What’s your point?”
Astraia wilted a moment, then rallied. “I just wanted to say . . . I believe you can do it. I believe you will cut off his head and come home to us.”
Then she flung her arms around me. My shoulders tightened and I almost jerked away, but instead I made myself embrace her back. She was my only sister. I should love her and be willing to die for her, since the only other choice was that she die for me. And I did love her; I just couldn’t stop resenting her either.
“I know Mother would be proud of you,” she muttered. Her shoulders quivered under my arms and I realized she was crying.
She dared to cry? On this day of all days? I was the one who would be married by sunset, and I hadn’t let myself cry in five years.
There was ice in my lungs and in my heart. I was floating, I was swept away, and out of the cold I spoke to her in a voice as soft as snow, the gentle and obedient voice that I had used to consent to every order that Father and Aunt Telomache ever gave me, every order that they would never give Astraia because they actually loved her.
“You know, that Rhyme is a lie that Aunt Telomache only told you because you weren’t strong enough to bear the truth.”
I had thought the words so often, they felt like nothing in my mouth, like no more than a breath of air, and as easily as breathing I went on:
“The truth is, Mother died because of you, and now I have to die for your sake too. And neither one of us will ever forgive you.”
Then I shoved her aside and strode out of the room.
Astraia didn’t follow me, which was lucky. If I’d seen her face again, I would have shattered. Instead I floated numbly down the stairs. I knew that soon I would realize what I had done, that the acid of my self-loathing would eat through my walls and burn me down to the bone. But for now, I was wrapped in cotton wool, and when I reached the bottom of the stairs I stepped out onto the floor and curtsied without even trembling.
Gilded Ashes Page 10
