by Leigh Kelsey
“One dance,” Maia agreed, and grabbed Naemi’s hand, hauling her to the bit of cleared floor where people danced. The song’s pace increased, getting faster with every verse, and Maia kicked up her feet to the rhythm, several people around her doing the ridiculous dance, too. This dance was a joke that had begun somewhere in Upper Aether, picked up by a merchant and brought to Sainsa Empire, where a bard had brought it across the sea here. It was the silliest, fastest, most manic dance ever invented, and Maia lost her breath with every kick of her feet and every wave of her arms. The combination of ale in her blood and exertion dulled everything to a pleasant blur.
It wasn’t healthy, getting drunk after a bad day to blot out the feeling of controlling Sir Valleir, but it was a few hours reprieve, and Maia took that wherever, whenever, and however she could get it these days. Gone were the days when she could run through orchards and stables—but here, where nobody knew who she was—or cared if they did recognise her—she could be free, even if only for a dance or two.
Naemi snorted as Maia tripped over her own feet, stumbling into the wall where a framed coin—the first ever earned by Silvan’s music hall—dug into her shoulder. A bruise was surely forming. Maia only grinned, breathless and unleashed. She could have sworn the glade of trees in her soul reached its branches higher, leaves unfurling in bright mossy green along their limbs.
A man impressively twice as drunk as Maia stumbled on one of the musician’s chairs and came crashing towards her. She snapped her hands up on reflex, momentarily glad for all the extra training queen Ismene had made her take—self-defense, physical combat, sword fighting, and magical warfare for if she ever happened to develop a way to use her snaresong in a physical form.
“Sorry,” the man slurred. “Someone put a fucking chair in the way.” He braced himself on Maia’s shoulders, swaying on his feet. “You’re really pretty.”
Maia grinned, flicking long silver hair over her shoulder. “I know. Bar’s that way, buddy.”
He nodded slowly, the motion seeming to make him even more dizzy, and stumbled off towards the bar. Naemi hurried over, practically sober after one drink, and level-headed as always.
“Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
Maia snorted. “I’m fine. He’s harmless.” To her, anyway. If he even tried to hurt her, she could have him curled around himself on the floor, clutching his head as agony ripped apart his skull within seconds.
“Do you want to talk about today?” Naemi asked, peering into Maia’s face, nothing but solemn understanding in her eyes. She was so put together and … grown up. Her hair was immaculate where Maia’s ran wild, her curves generous where Maia’s were sleek, her bearing confident and calm while Maia’s cockiness was drink-imbued. They’d always been opposites; Maia supposed that was why their friendship worked.
She shook her head—and urgently grabbed the wall as the dingy hall tipped and twisted around her, its dark green walls and bronze lamps blurring into smears. “Whoa, shit.”
Naemi laughed softly, grabbing Maia’s shoulder to steady her. “I’ve got you, princess.”
“Maia,” she corrected, squinting as the lanterns that hung from the ceiling swirled into a tornado of light. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it. I want to forget it ever happened.” And pretend it would never happen again. Pretend she could say no when Ismene told her to addle the next person’s mind. Pretend she had some semblance of control over her own life.
“Princess,” Naemi sighed, sympathy and disappointment twined in her eyes. But those warm amber eyes blurred in Maia’s vision, so she pretended to have never seen the look at all. She was doing it again—pretending, lying to herself.
“I need another drink,” she mumbled, and took a step towards the bar when a bell rung. “Leovan’s hairy cock,” she hissed, her upper lip curled back.
“Last orders!” the barkeep shouted, and the band struck up one final song, a loud, jaunty ballad about a sailor from Crystellion Port and his many adventures on the high seas.
“Let’s just go,” Naemi said, squeezing Maia’s arm and attempting to steer her toward the steps up to street level.
But Maia wasn’t ready to be done yet. Wasn’t ready to go back to normality. “One last drink,” she said, batting her lashes at her best friend, and extremely pleased with herself when Naemi rolled her eyes and laughed indulgently, her round cheeks dimpled in a smile.
“Fine, but get me a pack of salted almonds.”
Maia saluted and stumbled past her friend, pretending she didn’t see the flash of disapproval and exasperation in Naemi’s eyes when she thought Maia wasn’t looking. She knew Naemi would never understand what it was like to cut through someone’s mind like a dagger through butter, what it felt like to twist, corrupt, and completely rearrange a person into someone else. But she was grateful to have her here, even if Naemi would never quite know why she drank herself into a stupor so she’d fall straight into a dreamless sleep.
The days when she went to sleep sober … bad. Unbearable.
So Maia ordered another ale and a box of salted nuts for her best friend, and clung to the promise of oblivion for a little while longer.
Maia’s loud voice rang off the sky-tall stone buildings of Vassalaer’s arts quarter, right by the river that separated northside from southside. Her bawdy song was a masterpiece she’d picked up a few weeks back from a very dignified woman visiting from Saintsgarde, who’d turned out to be just as filthy-minded as Maia. “And fair Vella’s shock, at the sight of his—”
“Alright,” Naemi cut her off, unable to hold back her laugh even as her golden face went beetroot red at the scandalous song. “That’s enough of that.”
“That’s not even the best bit,” Maia replied, relishing the sharp wind off the Luvasa as it combed cold fingers through her hair, chilling her hot face as she and Naemi wound their way past marble gallery buildings, columned museums, grand theatres closed up for the night, and the huge, towering opera house with its malachite spires. This had always been Maia’s favourite quarter, so full of art and passion and the hush and call of the river.
“Saints, no,” Naemi breathed, shooting her a pleading look.
“He laid Vella bare, surprised at how bushy,” Maia sang, grinning and beyond pleased with herself, “what laid between thighs, her honey-sweet—”
“Princess!” Naemi laughed, shoving Maia a step as her ears flushed bright red.
Maia laughed so hard she hiccupped and snorted, tears squeezing out of her closed eyelids at the sight of Naemi’s horrified expression. The expression dissolved into red-faced laughter as Naemi leant against the side of a gallery and wheezed with laughter.
“So glad you feel free and safe enough to laugh, your highness,” a hard female voice snapped, and Maia spun to face the speaker, the world blurring into streaks of light and shadow as alcohol raged through her. It suddenly seemed like a stupid idea to have gotten herself into this state. “It’s good to know you’re still able to laugh, unburdened by all the beastkind your family have slaughtered and enslaved.”
“It’s not slavery,” Naemi replied, haughty and defensive as she stepped in front of Maia.
Maia blinked, urging her vision to focus as she readied a song to addle their attacker’s mind. But the woman wasn’t attacking them; from what Maia could see through the blurs, she just stood there, her arms crossed over her chest, her clothes a mix of bland grey and mud-brown the same colour as her hair. Not a member of court, not a southsider—not someone with money. A woman with every right to be pissed off at a princess.
“Not slavery?” she seethed, her hands curling into fists at her sides. “My sister is fifteen, and in training for the pillow rooms. Fifteen. You would force a child to learn the art of the bedroom,” she sneered the words, “just because she has an animal form? Because you’re scared of what she can do as a ram? I’ll tell you what she’s not capable of, your highness: being crushed underneath some old man’s sweaty body while he ruts her and steals w
hat she should never have to give.”
Maia’s stomach twisted, a sick slosh of alcohol and bile. “She shouldn’t—not at fifteen.”
She couldn’t see the woman’s vicious smile, but she heard it in her voice. “Oh, she won’t be forced into a pillow room for another year, but imagine being that age and having a spiteful instructor rip apart your confidence and teach you to be silent and unmoving no matter how much they hurt you—”
“Enough,” Maia breathed, her skin tight, itchy all over. “And I don’t have to imagine, thank you. We princesses get the same training.” Only hers had started at thirteen, in preparation for an engagement that had never come, thank the saints. Or rather, thank the assassin who’d killed her intended while the hateful man travelled to the training camps at Thelleus.
The woman laughed, a mirthless sound as sharp and brittle as glass. “It’s not the same. You won’t be forced to serve for the rest of your life because of something you can’t change. Because a group of people you’ll never meet have decided your life is worth less than everyone else’s.”
“The council are wise,” Naemi said, her voice nothing like it had been just moments ago. Now it was steely and unforgiving. This woman was right though—their treatment of the beastkind was wrong. “They know what’s best for us, they understand far bigger things than we do.”
“Spoken like a true disciple of evil,” the woman spat, advancing a step.
“That’s close enough,” Maia slurred, the back of her tongue tingling as a song rose. “Let us be on our way and we won’t report this.”
“Report it?” The woman cackled. There was pain in that laugh. Maia and Naemi were a convenient outlet, but they hadn’t caused this woman’s suffering. Staying would only make it worse; they needed to leave. “You’re nowhere near your palace now, princess.” The word was a barb, nothing at all like when Naemi spoke it. “You’re close to the northside, and you’ll find that some of the north’s cruelty creeps over the bridges.”
“Enough,” Maia snapped, and raised her voice in a sharp, lilting song. She could have killed the woman, could have scrambled her brain inside her skull, but … no word she said was wrong. And what she’d told them made Maia sick with disgust. It was injustice—and Maia had loathed injustice for as long as she’d been alive.
But she couldn’t openly sympathise with a beastkind woman, no matter how wrong what she and her sister endured was. No matter how savage the indentures were that forced even children into the army or menial jobs or the pillow rooms like this woman’s sister. Sympathising wasn’t a Delakore thing to do, wasn’t acceptable. So Maia swallowed the words she wanted to say like a drop of poison that burned on the way down and sang her to sleep, giving Naemi a reassuring smile.
“Come on, let’s go.”
She caught her friend’s hand and squeezed, Naemi’s face a mixture of pale fear and outrage. She didn’t resist as Maia tugged her into a run.
She tried to put the woman’s words out of her mind as they raced down lamplit streets and around dark corners, the river’s shhh always in the background. Checking that they hadn’t been spotted, Maia crept inside the back door of the Library of Vennh, and despite her best efforts the woman’s words haunted her like determined ghosts.
Chapter Six
An obnoxious sunbeam forced through Maia’s closed eyelids, stabbing into her eyeballs long before she’d even opened her eyes, and she groaned, rolling away from the light—and smacking into something unexpected with an, “Omph.”
“Tell me you’re a handsome, charming rake I brought home from Silvan’s,” she groaned, rubbing the crust from her eyes.
A soft snort answered her. “One of four.”
Maia cracked an eye open, wincing as the skylight in the vaulted ceiling continued to assault her. “Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself, Naemi. You’re wonderfully handsome.”
A smile curved Naemi’s plump face. “Morning, princess.”
“Morning, rake.”
Naemi barked a laugh. “I assume we’re going to have to sneak out of the attic and down through the library.”
“Yep,” Maia agreed, pushing onto her elbows and inhaling a long drag of dust- and book-scented air. It smelled like fun nights and even better days.
Dita Fhane, the head librarian who let Maia borrow this room in the attic, hadn’t technically specified that she was only supposed to use it during opening hours, but Maia didn’t want to get on the stern woman’s bad side. She’d been lucky that Dita had found her, surrounded by a pile of books and archived newspapers, obsessively researching just for something—anything—to blot out the memories of her first snaresong.
She’d been on the verge of a breakdown, and Dita had seen something of herself in Maia’s mania, without explanation or expectation, she’d given Maia the highest room—an honour, since the room was closer to the clouds the Eversky, saint of the skies, called home. She’d given Maia this attic to do whatever she wished in—read, research, study, or just sit in solitude, in safety. And to say thanks, Maia worked a few shifts in the book-filled rooms downstairs, organising the stacks. But she loved shelving them so much it was like another gift Dita had given her.
Half of the time, Maia used the attic room to stumble up to as night turned to morning, more alcohol than blood in her system, and the world blurring around her. The rest of the time, it housed her obsession, the one thing she completely and utterly devoted herself to, her single passion—if you didn’t count drinking—and the only mystery that had held her focus for three years now: who the chasm was the Sapphire Knight?
“I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with him,” Naemi remarked, her warm amber eyes following Maia’s stare to the whitewashed wall she’d covered in sketches, newspaper clippings, book articles, and her own interviews with witnesses. There was a path only she could follow, mapped out from question to answer to yet more questions via lines of chaotic blue cord.
“He’s a traitor,” Maia replied, narrowing her eyes at the three sketches from first-hand accounts, each one vastly different—one was a white man in his forties with chestnut brown hair and wide, pale eyes; one man was in his early thirties with troubled blue eyes, to-die-for cheekbones, and a smirking face that could melt her knickers; and the third man was older, with wavy black hair and a strong nose, his eyes squinting with a dangerous gleam. Maia had her money on the third man. The only common element in the eyewitness accounts was a crescent-shaped scar on his inner wrist. Perhaps the only accurate part of the descriptions those witnesses had given. Maia had searched every pub, every mess hall, every community building, theatre, and dock for men who looked like those drawings. And found nothing. “He’s dangerous,” she went on, weaving a story even she believed some days. “Who knows what he’s going to do next, who he’s going to kill next?”
She meant every question, no matter how fascinated she was by him. The Sapphire Knight might have fought against the injustice handed down to the poor, the undesirables, and the minorities, but he was responsible for seventy-two deaths. He was the mastermind behind the explosion of the festival square on Old Year’s Night three years ago. The Hunchback Saint’s temple of knowledge had exploded, shards of its white dome killing so many on that day, when everyone had gathered to celebrate the new year. Maia’s own cousin, Ismene’s youngest child, had died that day, and though she’d never been close to the vain girl, she still mourned her. Still raged at the Sapphire Knight for killing her with his reckless justice.
“Come on, then,” Naemi sighed, pushing to her feet and stretching her arms over her head, the bright sunbeam making her golden skin glow, like she was a living sun herself. Naemi had always been beautiful, all golden and curvy and full of poise and light. If Naemi was a sun, Maia was the moon, each one every bit as important to the sky. “We’d better sneak out before the library gets too busy.”
She was right. Maia hauled herself off the roll of blankets she kept here for such trespassing occasions, and her heart sank at the sight
of her beautiful dress now crinkled into a thousand folds of charcoal and orange fabric. Not ruined completely, but definitely battered and mangled. She’d have to bribe Aethan, the head of laundry, to give it special care to restore it to its former glory.
“You know what I fancy?” Maia asked, stretching out her arm to ease some of the soreness in her shoulder. Blanket or no, she’d still slept on the floorboards, and it didn’t make for a painless body.
“Every man and woman in Vassalaer?” Naemi replied with a wry smile.
Maia crossed the floor and whacked her friend on the shoulder, her mouth hanging open in outrage. “No, you cheeky bitch. A pork bun.”
Naemi moaned in agreement, brushing out the wrinkles in her own dress. It had fared better than the fine fabric of Maia’s, and still held some of its original shape in the red cotton. “What time do you think it is? Will there be any left?” The vendor notoriously sold out his entire cart of pork buns by noon on any given day, and by nine on a weekend.
“There better be,” Maia grumbled, her stomach gurgling. She stuffed her feet into her shoes, Naemi wrapping her golden hair up in a stately up-do, pinning it with the owl comb she always wore. “Ready, princess?” she asked as Maia grabbed her bag from where she’d left it on the sill of the little window.
“As I’ll ever be,” Maia agreed. “If anyone asks, we came into the library at opening time to look for a book on the Eversky.”
Naemi snorted. “In these dresses? I’m sure they’ll believe that story.”
Maia’s lips quirked, but she just aimed for the door, cracked it open, and when she heard nothing, swept her friend out and down the staircase.
They made it all the way to the second floor before they came across anyone, the Library of Vennh quiet this early in the morning. It had to be eight, no later. A good omen for pork buns.
“He’s here,” Naemi hissed, grabbing Maia’s arm as they crossed the walnut floorboards, that divine scent of old books wrapping around them like a hug.
