Ally of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  She opened the door again. To her relief, she saw Holt and Sebastian’s bags set neatly at the feet of a couple of pallets not as thick as her own. Her bag lay against the wall to one side. She went through it one-handed and saw no one had touched it except to put the pile of clothes she’d removed the night before into it. So at least no one had been prying into their things. She shut the door behind her and returned the torch.

  Now to find Sebastian. It seemed unlikely she’d be able to locate him in this place, but if she didn’t look, she’d never know. She put the torch back, went up the stairs to the landing, and listened at the door. She heard nothing. Hoping that meant the room beyond was empty and not that the door was just too thick, she pushed it open.

  Beyond the door lay an enormous round room with a sunken floor reached by short flights of steps at intervals around it. A walkway about six feet wide circled it, giving access to a couple of doors on the far side. Great trestle tables like slabs of stone filled the sunken floor, and a handful of women moved among them, setting out utensils. Before Fiona could retreat, one of the women called out, “What are you doing here?”

  “I…” Quickly Fiona went through possible responses. “I felt strange and came looking for help.”

  The woman came forward, and Fiona saw it was Sela. “You should not leave your cell,” she said. “It is dangerous while the visions are on you.”

  “The visions,” Fiona began.

  Sela looked at her narrowly. “The tea does not affect you,” she said. “Why is that?”

  “It did,” Fiona said. “I had a vision. Now it’s gone.”

  “That is not possible. You must not have drunk all the tea.” Sela frowned. “Do you not know anything about the festival?”

  “I drank all the tea. It must not have worked.”

  “The tea always works.” Sela took Fiona by the arm. “Come with me.”

  Fiona almost jerked away, but realized in time that she didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself than she already had. She let Sela lead her out the door and back down the stairs, through the narrow, uncomfortable passages and into a room with several ordinary-looking kitchen chairs and a Veriboldan desk. A woman dressed like Sela, but in pastel blue instead of pale green, sat in one of the strange tall Veriboldan basin-chairs, writing something at the desk. She glanced up when they entered, but said nothing.

  “Hien, this…woman has failed to obey the festival guides,” Sela said.

  Now Fiona jerked away. “I did not,” she said. “It’s not my fault the tea didn’t work the way you want it to. I did have a vision.” Maybe flying birds weren’t the kind of vision they had in mind, maybe she should have said she hadn’t seen anything, but it was too late to go changing her story now.

  Hien laid down her pen. “And yet you are alert and conscious now,” she said. Her voice was low and sweet, the sound of a river running through darkness. “How is that? Did you not drink all of it?”

  “I did.” She couldn’t tell them she’d been resistant to the effects of drugs since she was thirteen, something she believed was a side effect of her inherent magic.

  “Hmmm.” Hien leaned forward on her desk, her chin in her hand. “What vision?”

  “Birds flying. And a tree.” She borrowed the tree from the other drugged woman, thinking to bolster her story of the effects the tea had had on her, and immediately wondered if it was a good idea. She just didn’t know anything, and she cursed Sebastian for putting her in this position even as she knew that was irrational.

  Hien looked at Sela, who shrugged. “You saw those things, but you don’t know what they mean,” Hien said.

  “I don’t.”

  “She should be removed from the festival,” Sela said. “Tirin says she knows nothing of what is expected of her. She dishonors Haran’s memory.”

  “Haran didn’t know anything when she went to the Eidestal, either,” Fiona shot back. “It took her ten days of fasting and prayer before she saw her vision. Now, I don’t claim to be as worthy as Haran, but I think I should at least get some credit for trying.” Thank you, Roderick, for telling me the stories.

  “I agree,” Hien said. “But you will not be able to fully participate unless you have a vision you understand. That is reality.”

  “Then help me understand. I don’t want to go home.” Where was Sebastian right now? Investigating some place he wasn’t allowed to be? She needed to keep their attention on her.

  “Tell me what the tree means.”

  Fiona blinked. “I told you, I don’t know what the vision means.”

  “But you know of the tree.”

  “I…know it was Haran’s first vision, the one that led her to the Eidestal. It was a fir tree that grew all alone on the plains. She camped there and continued to fast and pray until ungoverned heaven opened up before her.”

  “And the birds?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Birds are symbolic of souls,” Sela said. It was a reprimand, delivered in a prim voice. Fiona ignored her.

  “So…the fir tree, and souls? What does that mean?” she asked.

  “You will have to meditate and discover the truth,” Hien said. “Symbols speak to our inner minds the way words speak to our conscious thoughts. Sela, bring a stronger tea. We will find a private room where you can be observed. Perhaps you just need a different perspective.”

  Fiona lowered her head so they couldn’t see her irritation. A stronger tea and observation? All that meant was she would be watched while she had her “vision” and she’d have to be drugged for all that time. Well, if it kept their eyes off Sebastian…even so, four thousand guilders and the chance to help a friend was looking like poor payment.

  10

  Sela and Hien escorted her to a small, windowless room whose sole furnishings were fat cushions strewn upon the floor. Then Sela left, and Hien sat smiling at Fiona, not speaking, until Sela returned with a teapot and a sizeable mug. She poured for Fiona, also not speaking, and watched with Hien until Fiona drained her cup. Then she poured another. Fiona said, “I need to use the facilities.”

  “Better not to until the vision is over,” Hien said.

  Fiona examined her face closely. Was this all a ruse to toy with the ignorant foreigner? But Hien’s eyes were wide and guileless, so Fiona drank down the second cup. Her head began to swim, and Hien became blurry, her outline edged with rainbows in shades of black. Fiona set down the cup and closed her eyes against the dizziness. “I feel strange.”

  “Do not be afraid,” Hien said, and Fiona felt her take her hand briefly. “You follow in Haran’s footsteps.”

  She smelled lilacs, and swallowed; her throat was dry despite the two cups of tea. Distantly, she heard Sela say, “This is a waste of time. She’s not here for the right reasons. We should send her and her companions away.”

  “She deserves a chance, Sela, just as the others do,” Hien replied. “It’s not our place to judge.”

  “Of course it’s our place to judge. We do it all the time.”

  “You know what I mean. And I think there’s no reason to be suspicious of her. What could she hope to gain by pretending to be interested in the festival?”

  “I don’t know. Does anyone know where her companions are?”

  Fiona quickly let out a moan, which shut the two women up. There was silence for a moment. “I think—” Sela began, and Fiona moaned again.

  “The tree is the temple, but the temple is not the tree,” she said in a low voice. “It all makes sense—”

  Silence, and then the sound of wind rushing across miles of tall grass. Fiona opened her eyes and saw, not the tiny room, but the endless grassy plains of the Eidestal. Hien and Sela were gone. Fiona tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t obey her. She smelled the distant dry tickling odor of a grass fire, but when she turned her head, she saw nothing but blue summer sky. Moving her head made the scene sway, so she held still and said, “Am I here, or there?” Which made no more sense than any of thi
s did.

  In the distance, something tall and thin appeared, and as Fiona fought to bring her eyes to focus on it, it sped toward her so rapidly she cried out and threw her arms up to protect her face. Nothing struck her, and after a moment she lowered her hands and saw, two feet away, a skinny fir tree. Its needles were scant, but so dark a green as to be almost black against the sky, and there were stumps where branches had broken off halfway up the trunk. It seemed to be looking at her, and Fiona threw back her head and glared at it. “This is a vision, it’s not real, and you can’t frighten me.”

  The tree continued to look at her with an impassivity that made her struggle to rise again, to attack the tree and tear off a few more of its branches. She still couldn’t stand. She shouted in fury and pushed off the ground—

  “You were better at patience than this,” said a familiar voice, and Fiona gasped. The tree’s trunk wasn’t wide enough to conceal a person, but the woman stepped out from behind it anyway. Her red ringlets shone in the sunlight, her eyes were warm and loving, and she came forward until she was only a few paces from Fiona.

  “Mother,” Fiona said. “Sweet heaven, is it really you?”

  Mother shook her head. She looked so much younger than she had when Fiona had seen her last, wasted and ill. “It’s a vision,” she said, “and it’s all in your mind. But sometimes your mind can tell you truths the waking world can’t manage.”

  “You can’t see heaven from earth,” said another voice, and Fiona sucked in a breath, because her father had just emerged from the non-space behind the tree, looking just as young as her mother. “And we can’t see you. Heaven only knows how Haran managed it.”

  “But you…” Fiona tasted tears and wiped them harshly away. She never cried. “Why am I seeing you? After what I didn’t do?”

  “Longing,” said Mother. “Sorrow. Regret. It’s not your time yet. Fiona, don’t let yourself be alone.”

  “I don’t have much choice, do I?” Her bitterness surprised her. “Do I?”

  “You always have a choice,” Father said. “You stayed too long with Roderick, but it hasn’t destroyed your life, has it? And now you have an opportunity to start over. It’s time for a change.”

  “What change?”

  “You don’t know, so we don’t know either,” Mother said. “But change is coming, and you can either make it your own or go on hiding from it. And we’ll love you no matter what you decide.”

  “We’re waiting for you, Fiona,” Father said. He took Mother’s hand. “For as long as it takes.”

  “Promise,” Mother said.

  The smell of grass fire was stronger suddenly, and dizziness struck Fiona hard, making the world swing like a pendulum. She closed her eyes and the dizziness lessened. Dimly, she realized her hands were clenched tightly in her lap, and she made herself relax, smoothing the robe over her knees. “It will be too long,” she said, opening her eyes. The Eidestal, the tree, and Mother and Father were gone. Hien sat cross-legged a few paces from her, watching her intently.

  It was like losing them all over again.

  Grief, and fury, struck her hard in the chest, and she lurched at Hien, catching herself mid-lunge on her hands. She panted, feeling as if she’d run a mile without stopping. “What did you do to me?”

  “You had another vision,” Hien said, sounding pleased. “What did it mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Fiona ground out. “I saw the Eidestal. I saw my dead. You tell me what it means.”

  Hien looked past her, toward Sela. “Do not,” Sela said.

  “I will not,” Hien said. “But I can say that when you see the dead in vision, you should follow their instructions. That is the meaning.”

  Fiona thought back over what Mother and Father had said. “Change,” she said. “Change, and a decision.”

  “Then seek change,” Hien said. “Why are you not now in vision?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s not being honest with us,” Sela said. “We should confine her. She won’t know it’s not part of the festival.”

  “Be more compassionate,” Hien said. “Rest here until suppertime,” she said, “and meditate on your vision, so it becomes more clear to you.” She stood and walked past Fiona. The door opened, then closed. Fiona settled herself on the cushion again. Sela’s presence was a dark, ominous cloud filling the room. She silently cursed. No more exploring for her. Now she really did need to find Sebastian and warn him that at least a few people were suspicious of her and, by extension, him.

  She closed her eyes and relived her vision. Was she really so lonely that her unconscious mind had conjured up the two people dearest to her? She didn’t have time to be lonely. She was too busy worrying about Sebastian and the success of this mad adventure she’d fallen into. True, her longing for family was always at the back of her mind, but she never dwelt on it; that was a fool’s errand, and Fiona Cooper was no fool. It was just all this talk of Haran and ungoverned heaven that had made her remember her lost loved ones and wonder what heaven was like for them.

  She sat, letting her mind roam free, until Sela said, “Supper.” Then she followed the woman back through the corridors and up the stairs to the landing, where they met dozens of women coming down, all clad in rose or teal or gold robes like Fiona’s own. Sela gestured at the round room with an expression that said she didn’t care if Fiona starved to death. Fiona gave her a cold, cutting stare and was pleased to see the woman recoil. She turned her back on Sela and followed the women into the room.

  Robed women settled themselves at the trestle tables like butterflies coming to rest. Fiona found a seat off to one side, grateful not to be sitting on a cushion on the floor anymore. Her neighbors, a couple of Tremontanan women wearing teal, nodded and smiled at Fiona but didn’t speak. Shy, or was this another expectation of the festival Fiona was once again not privy to?

  Men and women clad in dull brown shirts and trousers moved through the room, carrying steaming bowls. The sound of their feet striking the floorboards, and the rustling of their clothes, were the only sounds in the room. Fiona leaned back as an elderly woman set a bowl in front of her. It was black kiln-fired ceramic, hot to the touch and filled with a thick soup that smelled of garlic and tomatoes. The smell woke Fiona’s drug-dulled appetite, and she picked up her spoon and ate as rapidly as good manners would allow. Another server set down a chunk of heavy black bread Fiona used to mop up every drop of broth, washing it down with water that was warm and tasted strongly of minerals. It wasn’t enough to satisfy the demands of her stomach, but there didn’t seem to be any more forthcoming.

  She looked around at the other women. Most of them were probably Veriboldan, though there were a handful of Eskandelics and several who were too pale not to be from northern Tremontane. They ate with little attention to their surroundings, and Fiona wondered what visions they’d had. No one sat very close together, but between the women and the servers, the room was full of bodies, and it was growing warm enough that Fiona felt herself relaxing. She hadn’t realized she was tense. Sleep would be nice.

  A hand took her bowl, and Fiona looked up to find Sebastian standing there, clad in brown like the other servitors. He was looking at her intently, as if he wished he could send a silent message into her brain. His other hand rested palm-down on the table, his fingers tapping urgently, and on a whim Fiona laid her hand atop his. Instantly his hand slid away, and Fiona felt the corners of a folded piece of paper. She swept it across the tabletop and into her lap. Sebastian nodded, the barest motion of his head, and walked away with her bowl and cup.

  Fiona glanced at her neighbors. Neither of them were watching her; they were still intent on their food. Without looking down, she tucked the folded note tightly into the sleeve of her linen shirt. Her sleepiness was gone. She wanted to get to the privacy of her cell to find out what Sebastian had to communicate. Nothing good, she feared.

  When all the tables were cleared, Hien stood on the walkway where everyone could ea
sily see her. “Haran fasted and prayed, and a vision was given to her,” she said in Veriboldan. “The vision of the tree became the reality of the tree. Tomorrow you will meditate on the reality of your vision. The doors of the Jaixante are open to you, but take care—not all visions are true. Use cunning and wisdom to know the difference.”

  Two more women repeated her words, one in Tremontanese, one in Eskandelic, then Hien clapped her hands three times and everyone around Fiona rose. Fiona hurried to her cell and, with the door shut safely behind her, unfolded Sebastian’s note.

  meet in this room when everyone’s asleep. must talk. unexpected development.

  She folded the note, then after a moment’s thought set it on fire and let it burn to nothing. She rubbed the residue off on her inner sleeve. Unexpected development? That could be anything. At least Sebastian hadn’t been caught doing anything he shouldn’t, though she did wonder why he’d been pressed into serving duty. She sat on her pallet and waited.

  The room was so still she could hear nothing but her own breathing and the distant thrumming of her pulse. How long should she wait before meeting Sebastian? Tired aches spread throughout her body, the remnants of the drug, probably. The other festival attendees would likely feel as tired as she did, so they’d be asleep quickly, but there was no way to know how long it would take the priestesses to settle in for the night.

  She stood and went to the window. It was full dark, and the lights of Haizea made its walls and roofs glow. The one bridge visible from her window stretched in a silver line across the dark waters of the Kepa River. Fiona leaned her forehead against the cool glass, wishing she were in a position to better see the Jaixante, with its masses of colored jewel-like lights. Change is coming, Mother had said—no, that hadn’t been Mother, it had been her mind trying to communicate with her. What change did she anticipate without knowing it consciously? This adventure had already turned out to be more than she expected. If something else was coming, Fiona wasn’t sure she welcomed it.