Ally of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  “Today you will be instructed on the nature of heaven and your visions,” Sela said. Fiona grimaced. The idea of being lectured all day when she didn’t know what Sebastian had learned wearied her. She took another bite of porridge. It was going to sit like lead in her stomach, she was sure of it. Her next bite was too large, and she gagged on it before forcing it down. That made her pause, laying her spoon down in her half-finished porridge. It was a stupid idea, but it would get her some privacy, if only for a short while.

  She picked up her spoon and fiddled with it. “Oh, I don’t feel very well,” she murmured. One of her neighbors, a Veriboldan woman, looked at her curiously, but by her expression she didn’t speak Tremontanese. Fiona laid her spoon down again and rubbed her stomach. “I really don’t feel well,” she repeated, then picked up the spoon and took another incautiously large bite. She closed her lips, took a quick breath, and jabbed the back of her throat with the spoon.

  She must have hated the porridge more than she knew, because her stomach immediately convulsed, and she yanked the spoon out of the way as she vomited the porridge back onto the table. Both her neighbors cried out and shied away from her as she gagged, vomited again, and clutched the table to keep herself steady. More noise arose as nearby women exclaimed and stood to see what was happening. Panting, Fiona pushed her hair back from her face and tried not to react to the stench of bile and oats puddling on the table in front of her.

  “What is happening?” Hien was beside her, crouching to look into her face.

  “I just…didn’t feel well…I’m so sorry,” Fiona said.

  “Excuse me,” Sebastian said, “let me just take—”

  “Back to your duties,” Sela said.

  “I’m a doctor,” Sebastian said, and Fiona had to hide a laugh at how scornful he sounded. “And she’s my responsibility.”

  He took Fiona’s hand in his warm, dry one and placed his other hand on her forehead. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe normally, ignoring the stench. “She has no fever,” Sebastian finally said, and Fiona opened her eyes to discover him addressing Hien. “She ate too quickly. She needs only to rest somewhere for a few minutes, to make sure she won’t vomit again.”

  “No one else will be ill?” Hien said. She looked alarmed.

  “Unlikely. This is not uncommon for her. I’ll sit with her and monitor her condition.”

  “We do not have time,” Sela said. “The day’s activities will begin soon.”

  “Better this not happen again,” Hien said. “But you are not allowed into the temple. Sela, take Fiona to one of the small rooms where she can change her clothes and be treated. Then, doctor, you will return to your duties. This should not interfere with Fiona’s instruction.”

  “I’m sorry,” Fiona said.

  “It is illness, and no one’s fault,” Hien said. “The rest of us will wait here.”

  Fiona felt Sebastian’s hand on her elbow, supporting her, and she leaned heavily on him as they followed Sela’s rigid back out of the eating hall. They went down the stairs and through the passages to a windowless room with a couple of Veriboldan basin-chairs and a vase filled with long, wide blades of striped grass that smelled spicy. All the walls were lined with cupboards that went to the ceiling. Sela went to one of them and pulled out a stack of white linen, then a teal robe. She handed the pile to Fiona. “Your man will wait outside,” she said, holding the door open and glaring at Sebastian. He smiled his crooked smile, shook his head, and left, followed by Sela.

  Fiona immediately stripped out of her spattered clothes and dressed. She wondered, as she put it on, why she hadn’t been given another gold robe, then decided she didn’t care. Probably the colors didn’t mean anything. She bundled the stained, smelly clothes into a ball and set it in the corner, then cracked open the door. A few seconds later, Sebastian entered. “We don’t need an audience,” he told Sela, who reddened. She snatched up the ball of stinking clothes and slammed the door behind her.

  “Sweet heaven,” Sebastian said. “I can’t believe you did that. No, actually I can believe you did that, but—”

  “We don’t have much time,” Fiona said. “Hien suspects me of…I’m not sure what. Of having some sinister purpose in being here, I think, and of course she’s totally right. She watched my door all night and I couldn’t get away. What did you learn?”

  Sebastian tried to sit in one of the basin chairs, then gave up. “I was able to enter the foreign trade office. It’s not too far from here and isn’t a very big building. So that’s two things in our favor. But those are the only two. There are a dozen smaller offices, all of them crammed with paperwork, and they’re all labeled in Veriboldan so I couldn’t even identify which office belongs to Gizane. It’s also a very busy office, and I was watched carefully the whole time I was there. If I hadn’t been wearing the brown of a temple servant, there’s no way I’d have gotten inside.”

  “So you’ll have to go at night, when everyone’s gone home.”

  “No, we’ll have to go at night. I need someone who can read Veriboldan to narrow down the search. You’ll have to sneak out of the temple with us tonight. Holt to break us in, you to find the right office, me to identify the papers.”

  “I told you, Hien’s suspicious. I don’t think I can get away.”

  “You’ll have to, or that’s the end of it.”

  Fiona deftly hopped into a chair and pulled her legs up. “Where do I meet you?”

  “There’s a small door around the corner from the main doors. The main doors only open for ceremonies, so they use the small door for normal traffic. It’s locked at night, but that’s not a problem for Holt.”

  “Holt’s proving remarkably versatile for a manservant.”

  Sebastian grinned. “He wasn’t always a manservant. Anyway, we’ll meet there at full dark, raid the office, and be back in our beds before anyone notices we’re gone.”

  “You are far too optimistic. I can think of half a dozen ways this can go wrong.”

  “Really? I came up with seventeen. The trouble is, there’s not much we can do to minimize the risk short of giving up, so we’ll just have to see what happens and adapt accordingly. I realize I’m asking a lot—”

  “I’m already involved, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, but until now you haven’t done anything except fake a vision. What I’m asking you to do now could get you thrown in prison.”

  The chair felt like a throne, tall and commanding the room. “I’m confident it won’t come to that.”

  Sebastian shrugged. “You can’t say I didn’t offer you an out. Thank you, Fiona. I’d say my family thanks you, but they’d probably hate that you know their weakness.”

  “I’m not doing this for them. I’m doing it to help a friend,” Fiona said.

  “You—” Sebastian stepped closer to the chair and took her hand. “I am very glad,” he said, “you’re not Lucille.”

  His grip was firm, and Fiona squeezed his hand lightly before removing hers. She hopped off the chair. “I’ll meet you tonight.”

  Hien was waiting outside the room when they emerged. “You are well?” she said. Her hands were clasped tightly in front of her, twisting slowly.

  “I’m so sorry to be a burden,” Fiona said.

  “You will come with me,” Hien said. She took Fiona’s elbow and marched her rapidly away, her grip tight and insistent. Fiona flung a quick look backward over her shoulder at Sebastian, but he could only shrug and shake his head.

  They ended up in the pyramidal room, which was now empty of furniture. Its white walls gleamed yellow in the torchlight, disorienting Fiona. She knew it was still morning, but it might have been any time of the day or night in that angular, uncomfortable room. “You are not here to worship,” Hien said. “Tell me the truth.”

  “Why would you say that? Of course I’m here to worship,” Fiona said.

  Hien made a snorting noise of dismissal. “You know nothing of the festival. You know nothing of the rites. Y
ou try to sneak about in the night and you ask for exceptions that set you apart from the others. You want something from this festival that is not what we offer, and I demand you tell me what that is. I should make you leave.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “I have instincts that tell me you need to be here. Tell me those instincts are not wrong.”

  Guilt struck Fiona hard enough that she forgot to breathe for a moment. She’d gone this whole time thinking of the Irantzen Festival as a means to an end and only now did it occur to her that for everyone else, this was a religious experience. She was lucky heaven didn’t strike her down where she stood. This was a good woman who didn’t deserve to be used, who didn’t deserve to have her faith mocked, even indirectly. And the lie Fiona was about to tell on behalf of people who didn’t deserve it would probably damn her further. Sebastian’s family, she thought, you had better be worth this.

  She cast her eyes down. “I’m…very ill,” she said. “Not with a simple sickness, but something much worse. My doctor controls my symptoms, but he can’t cure what’s wrong with me. When I heard about the Irantzen Festival, I wanted to come, but that was only a few weeks ago and…no one’s sure if I’ll be around for next year’s festival, so it was this year or…” She shrugged, hoping to convey calm resignation. “That’s why I travel with my own doctor. I was feeling ill last night when you found me on the stairs.”

  “You could have said this.”

  “I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me! And it wasn’t much. It’s just that the doctor worries if I’m not honest with him. And it was true what I said about the watch. I just didn’t mention that the doctor wanted to find an apothecary to see if they had any remedies he hasn’t tried.”

  Hien put her hand on Fiona’s shoulder. “There is no shame in this,” she said. “No shame, and no fear. I think you were moved to come here for a reason, Fiona Cooper. You have seen a vision of change. Today we will talk further, and discover what change is in your future. Maybe it is death. Maybe it is life where you now expect only death. But you deserve answers.”

  Fiona couldn’t bear to look anywhere but at Hien’s bare feet. They were plump, and a little dirty, and the nails were cut very short. “Thank you,” she said. “I want to understand my vision.” And maybe then I won’t feel like an utter heel.

  Fiona lay on her pallet, wishing she had the watch. Everything in this place felt so timeless, if she hadn’t had a window she’d never have known if it were day or night. She waited, as she had before, for moonrise. One more moonrise, and they’d do what they came here for, and then Fiona might be able to salvage some of the tattered shreds of her honor.

  She’d spent most of the day talking to the priestesses—not Sela, thank heaven—and some of the other women, discussing visions and symbols and what it all meant, and it had been interesting. Not least the moment when a woman had said, “Fiona, you don’t understand it because you don’t want to,” and that had left Fiona speechless, because of course she wanted to. Didn’t she?

  At the end, it had just been her and Hien, and Hien had pointed out that change is always frightening even when it gives you something you want. “You might simply be anticipating reuniting with your loved ones in heaven,” she said, so casually certain Fiona had forgotten for a moment that she wasn’t a dying woman. “But tell me—if you were cured today, how would you feel?”

  “Afraid,” Fiona had said, “because it would mean having to live again.” It wasn’t until later that she realized how easily that answer had come to her, and now, lying on her pallet, she turned the matter over again in her mind. It had come easily because in a sense, she was ill—her fire was a condition no one could cure, that had come to define her, and if it were gone…the thought terrified her. Yes, she could have a normal life, but it would be that of a stranger, someone who didn’t have to fear sleeping too deeply or losing her temper or even picking up a hot pan the wrong way in public. All things that didn’t touch Fiona Cooper.

  She closed her eyes and remembered her vision. Mother, looking at her with those so-familiar brown eyes, saying Change is coming, and you can either make it your own or go on hiding from it. Go on hiding from it? She wasn’t hiding—well, yes, she was, but it was for her own protection and that of her family, because where one Cooper had inherent magic, others might too, and people like those hunters might not stop at killing just her. But what if things were different? Suppose she could live openly with her inherent magic? Even if no one feared her as a potential Ascendant, her magic was something terrifying, destructive and deadly. It wasn’t as if she could control the fires she started. Put in those terms, she almost feared herself.

  She opened her eyes and saw pale blue moonlight filling the room. Time to go. Introspection could wait.

  No one lurked in the hallway outside her door, and Fiona felt again the pangs of guilt that filled her whenever she remembered lying to Hien. She’d have to find a way to make it up to her. Somehow. Without telling the truth.

  The temple’s silence hung over her like a shroud, making her quiet footsteps seem to echo in the stairwell. She passed the eating hall, whose door hung slightly ajar, and heard the distant sounds of washing up. She hoped to heaven Holt and Sebastian hadn’t been pulled into that chore.

  There were no torches lit in the entry chamber, but Fiona fumbled along the wall and around the corner until she found the outline of a small door, and then hinges and a knob. She leaned against it and waited, reminding herself that the entry was large, and tall, and if she walked away from the door she would not immediately run face-first into another wall. The darkness smelled of old torches, and damp stone, and when she breathed out, she smelled supper, spicy chicken and peppers. It had been unexpectedly delicious, and when Fiona caught Hien watching her, she felt guilty again.

  Footsteps, approaching in the darkness—boots on stone. Fiona pressed herself against the door and tried to breathe slowly. The boots came closer; there were two sets, scuffing along quietly.

  “The door’s here,” Sebastian said, and Fiona squeaked as Sebastian’s reaching fingers found her shoulder. “Fiona?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank heaven. Shall we go? We made a clean escape, but I don’t want to waste any time.”

  Fiona stepped to the side and felt a large body move past her. “Can you…are you picking the lock, Holt?”

  “I am, Miss Cooper, and if you don’t mind I would prefer not to carry on a conversation while doing so.”

  “Sorry.”

  She heard tiny scraping sounds, like mice with metal claws, thought about asking if light would help, then decided Holt knew what he was doing and she shouldn’t interfere. Sebastian came up close behind her and said in her ear, “The priestess Hien asked me what foods were healthiest for you. Do I want to know what you told her?”

  “Probably not. Do you suppose you’re damned more thoroughly for lying to a priestess than to an ordinary person?”

  Sebastian chuckled. “When we return to Tremontane, you can ask absolution at the first bethel we reach.”

  She didn’t much feel like laughing. “I may do that.”

  His laughter ceased. “That sounded serious,” he said. “Fiona, what—”

  The lock clicked. “Master N—Sebastian, Miss Cooper,” Holt said, “shall we proceed?”

  14

  Fresh, chilly air brushed Fiona’s cheeks, reminding her that she hadn’t been outside in three days. Sebastian and Holt were already heading down the shallow steps toward the colonnade, and she followed them, wishing she’d thought to have them bring her shoes. The stone was like sandpaper on her bare feet, rough and cold.

  The pillars of the colonnade towered over her as she passed through their moonlight shadows, pale in the dim light and stippled with color from the tiny lights outlining their bases. It was hard to imagine them being made by human artisans, they were so big and bulged so oddly. She glanced back at the temple, which was dark and still. The fairy spires she�
��d barely had time to notice in their mad sprint for the doors looked more like spikes in a giant crown now, as if some creature had put his head down for a nap and might wake at any moment. She trotted a few steps to catch up with Sebastian. This was not the time for fanciful thoughts.

  The steep ramp at the end of the colonnade was brightly lit by lamps on wrought iron posts twice as tall as Fiona, their blue glass turning the light ghostlike. Fiona wondered how they reached the Devices to repair or replace them. Her white linen clothes glowed in the lamplight, and Sebastian and Holt’s brown garb had a purplish tinge to it. Sebastian gestured, and they set off down the ramp.

  Now that they weren’t racing against time, Fiona could appreciate the view of Haizea visible from the ramp, which followed the curve of the island’s shore. The city glittered like broken glass, colored shards strewn across the landscape, with the Kepa a silvery ribbon barely visible below. Movement still threaded along the wide streets across the river despite the hour, men and women carrying out their nocturnal business. How many of them intended crime, like they did? Probably anyone who did was skulking in the shadowed places and not strolling along the well-lit streets.

  Where they were, streets opened off the ramp at intervals, and Sebastian took the third one, staying close to the side of the road. The buildings all looked the same, tall white structures rising to spires outlined by hundreds, thousands of light Devices. Blank façades rose a hundred feet in the air, windowless and unmarked except for the faint outlines of doors set flush into the walls. Fiona crept along after Sebastian, listening for the sound of anyone who might accost them. Their own footsteps—or, rather, Sebastian and Holt’s boots—echoed faintly off the white buildings.

  Sebastian stopped abruptly, holding up a hand, and Fiona nearly piled into Holt’s lean back. They’d stopped at the corner of one of the buildings, and Fiona rested her hand on its smooth marble surface that gleamed blue in the light from the lamps. Faint streaks ran like cracks across it, though she couldn’t imagine anything more solid. Then she heard it—the distant sound of footsteps, quiet but unmistakable. Sebastian peered around the corner. He made a gesture; two guards. Fiona realized she was holding her breath and let it out slowly. The sound died away. Sebastian gestured again, and they moved forward, more slowly this time, around the corner and onto a new street.