Ari pictured how the wisteria archway would look when the flowers were in full bloom, dangling purple flowers over the clusters of bronze bell-shaped windchimes that hung from their branches. It wasn’t as if she could start a three-way conversation with Natty and an invisible-to-most spirit right now about Children without looking insane enough to burn.
Claribel must have suspected something and hidden it from her, even before the whispered comment that Ari had mistaken for a throwaway at their youth, because hadn’t the very first question from their seven-question truce been about whether she’d been found near a river? The waters that had haunted her since childhood lapped at her anew.
She counted her footsteps, forcing her breaths to slow. Perhaps Claribel’s question had nothing to do with Lady Una’s Children. After all, small talk wasn’t everybody’s weak point.
~It was no small talk.~ Claribel’s voice rang through, quiet yet clear. Ari kept her eyes on the bells and her footsteps even. If Natty heard, she’d made no response. ~To tell you the truth, at the time, I was trying to see if we could make the best of this unusual situation. As Ogun said, Acren, the Child of Wine and Dreams was known for the ability to possess others. If I could make you sound like a newly arrived Child of Una, then what’d await me would not be the stake, but glory for Aquilon. I’ll tell you something that Ogun didn’t. Mona, the first Child, the Child of Love, is the only one who was made in her own image. The other Children were all copies of those from the main noble Houses, just like you are a copy of me.~
She could see their destination now: a wooden cabin painted with wisteria blossoms and green birds.
~That is why I didn’t think you really were Children. Not everybody is like His Majesty, hidden away in an apothecary until the throne finds itself missing an heir. Hesperus is not a hidden noble. I have had the displeasure of meeting his father, and they do bear a striking visual resemblance. I merely thought it’d be of benefit to House Aquilon to have a Child appear in my form. I had yet to think of a good way for the reveal, but just think of what we could achieve! Susu, the last Child to grace us, came to House Aquilon too. Having a second Child after what everyone assumed was the end of the Age of Heros would have sent a message all around the world. We could have sold pilgrim’s badges crafted from Aquilon glass as replica Eyes from all those who’d travel to see you.~
The Aquilon glass promoter, as ever. Ari couldn’t think of anything worse.
~Yes, yes, I know that now. And yes, I know more than that now, since you’re thinking I’ve just read your mind. Ever since that strange fire got me, I’ve been able to see more pieces of your past – not everything, and nothing before the riverside memory that your friend spoke of – and I know you feel more than a little disturbed by it. I would too.~
The bluff would have been more effective if she could remember the guard’s name. Still, it was enough for Claribel to suck in a breath as wispy as her form. ~Can you read my mind too? Oh. You can’t.~
No, but Ari could read between the lines. Other questions they’d traded from that silent meal formed pieces of the puzzle that clicked neatly against the guard’s words, said with a wink: no one in your household is going hungry. He must have been sneaking food to the Khurammians, gaining the reputation that he was eating for two in the process.
She could also regret brandishing those words like a weapon. Was it any better than what Master Keating had done, waving Ogun through the walls for shock factor alone?
~All right, all right. It’s not that I’m hiding things from you on purpose. Maybe I was, but right now, it’s difficult to know where to start. I can tell you about what I deem most important, which would be changes in the soil from poldering – whether the last acres we reclaimed from the sea has had enough salt removed by the reeds we’d burnt to grow rapeseed now – because it is difficult to train master glassmakers, and we’ll need land to farm. However, I guess right now, you’d probably like to know that guard’s name, because it is bothering you. Rin. Here.~ Claribel pressed against her temples, and an image of Rin popped into her mind. He was, of course, the one who’d waved a sword at the dark flames just this morning. ~Good to know that works. Try this one.~
What should have been a fragment of her own memory burst through her mind.
*
‘It’s not fair! You’ve taken the crunchiest slice!’ Miri puffed her cheeks from across the table, jabbing at the slice of pizza in Ari’s plate.
Ari shrugged, tossing her slice into Miri’s plate, which was a matching, floral porcelain with hers.
‘I don’t want it now,’ said Miri, throwing it back. ‘You’ve touched it.’
‘Sorry we aren’t telepathic.’ Natty rolled her eyes and helped herself to a slice of the meat feast. ‘We kind of have to touch it to move it.’
‘Telekinetic, you mean. Seriously, you look like teenagers, but you can’t even use words properly. Go read a book or something.’
A blink later, and the pizza cutter was spinning towards Miri’s neck, gripped tight in Ari’s fist, only to strike against a butter knife.
Despite the tremor in her liver spot-covered hands, Great Gran Mildred’s cornflower-blue eyes stared her down.
‘Miri, no more complaining. They’re all crunchy enough. Ari, use your words next time. We don’t tolerate bloodshed over dinner. That would have been a waste of a good pizza,’ said Great Gran Mildred, straightening the doilies that Ari had knocked crooked. ‘And Natty, no eye-rolling when you’re a guest in my house please. It’s rude. Next time I’m going to pop it out and roll it for you if you–’
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*
‘What…’ Ari swallowed her words and redirected them within.
~That is what I’d like to know. I have started sorting through some of your memories, and there are already pieces that are at odds with each other. There must be false ones mixed in with the real.~
But… Where did those come from? Did she really want to play happy family so much that they’d formed into lifelike hallucinations? Not so lifelike, if it’d featured a Natty who’d need to be told to read a book.
Before Claribel could embarrass her with another one of her untrue, unspoken desires, she tore across the final few steps towards the cabin. She knocked on the door, half-unwilling to dissipate the tinkling laughter that drifted from within.
The laughing figure who yanked the door open couldn’t have been Nicholas. The woman’s freckled cheeks dimpled from her smile, framed by her loose auburn braids. Looking at her green silk brocade gown and ermine-lined cloak, she was most likely Master Keating’s wife. The elephant in the room.
~What are elephants?~
~…Are their ears really that large? I’ve seen paintings of olifants, but their noses were shaped like herald’s trumpets.~
‘Who is it, Lady Keating?’ A young man with serious, grey eyes, a cream apron and rolled-up sleeves dusted his hands and leaned against the door frame. There was no one else in the hut, only a wall full of tools: hammers, saws, chisels, squares.
If this was the carpenter rumoured to be more than friends with the lady in front of them, then Ari could see the appeal.
Natty cleared her throat and made an exaggerated bow. ‘Greetings, my lady! His lordship sent us to listen to a tale of the Battle of Eirene, to be told by Nicholas of the Wooden Workshop. I come bearing a present pieced together from words, which is all a fool can offer you.
‘I hail from the House of Aquilon
Where our dark ravens are ravenous
To admire the chairs you’re sitting on
And to tip my cap at your cabinets.’
‘Lady Claribel,’ said Lady Keating, clicking her tongue in a most unladylike way – or in a way that only ladies brought up with high enough stations could get away with – and waved the man that must have been Nicholas back into the workshop. ‘He must have sent you here to hear the truth about Hesperus the fire mage. At this rate, I may as well start selling tickets for the show. Perhaps you could be my understudy, Mistress Fabia – it is Mistress Fabia, is it not? Come in, come in. Watch the sawdust underfoot. It does tend to cling to our gowns. Here. Have my seat. No, no, I insist. I can offer you some half-drunk mint tea, but I’m going to assume it’s a no. Nicholas, prop!’
Silently, Nicholas handed Ari a beautiful wooden carving of a raven. It had eyes of polished amber, and the skill of the chisel had picked out individual feathers upon its back. It cocked its head at her, as if about to caw. She turned it over, only to be greeted by the same mishappen ‘TC’ signature.
‘This is beautiful. I’ve seen your work in the hall of the manor too. The statue of the bathing woman is…’ She looked up into the same quiet smile on Lady Keating’s face. ‘…a statue of you?’
‘She has captured my likeness well,’ said Lady Keating, tossing a honeyed walnut into her mouth and offering the same to Ari and Natty.
‘She?’
‘You are holding my sister’s work,’ explained Nicholas. ‘You are sitting on mine. I am not the genius who’d captured the previous king’s attention.’
‘Just mine.’ Lady Keating grinned, seemingly unbothered by the scandal she was stoking.
Nicholas smiled back but shook his head. ‘Sometimes in a family, there will be one child who’d shine so brightly that the others become mere rushlights to their sun. My sister was that child. Have you ever heard of her, my lady? Her name is – for I hope she still lives – is Tamaren.’
‘We have all heard of her in song, but I never had the good fortune to meet her. I would love to hear her story from her brother instead of a deceased lover,’ Ari added, hoping that the story would lead her farther from a bad end, somehow.
Nicholas cleared his throat and brought the past to life.
It didn’t take long for everyone to notice that Tamaren was not like other babes.
She never cried in church. Never. She’d hang on to every word from the scripture. Dommy’s puppet shows, on the other hand, were not to her liking at all. She screamed so loudly through his ‘Ninus and Moracea’ that we had to leave.
At six months, she spoke her first word, and it wasn’t papa or mama. She’d pointed at the sign of the Holy Fang and said, ‘Pope.’
By the age of three, she’d taught herself to read, and she’d write out all the names of the cardinals, archbishops and bishops, and draw them on a map next to the year of their births. She’d make her older brothers sit and learn letters too. She’d pluck words like ‘monotonous’ from stray conversations and insert them into her brothers’ vocabulary. She’d write out ‘Lycurin’ in a slanting hand and laugh, for she’d written him ‘in curly’, which were made from the same letters.
When she turned seven, she started making wooden statues for her parents to sell. She’d sit for hours at a time, chiselling away at fallen branches and cast-off pieces until they became trinkets shaped like one of the Children, or an animal from some noble’s heraldry. It took some years, but she turned the family from just another carpenter to the carpenter for decorative work. More than anything, she liked to carve figures of griffins, which was, of course, part of the royal coat of arms.
The previous king, Lycurin, happened to be gifted one of her figures by the then-unmarried Lady Keating. Some part of her artistry must have captured his heart, for he sought her out.
The girl he found was no ordinary carpenter’s daughter, but someone with a mind so extraordinary that she’d managed to become more knowledgeable than any nobleman’s daughter even without access to their libraries and tutors.
She kept their time together a secret, as she must, but as time went on, not even Tamaren’s devotion to the Church could sway Lycurin’s descent into a desire to reform it. Tamaren was hardly allowed home by the time that House Lyoness’s forces started marching on Eirene, spurred by the Church.
She must have been so afraid when it seemed that House Lyoness was set for victory. That was when a kindly Royal Guard allowed her to slip out of the palace. Lycurin got wind of it, and instead of letting her go, he sent his fire mages after her. She didn’t come home. It might have been because she knew he wouldn’t react kindly to her leaving and didn’t want her family to suffer for it.
Instead, she tried to head to the fringes of the city. Where could she go though, when the city was under siege? She’d made it to the tanner’s quarters before the fire mages caught up with her. They were willing to burn down everything to kill her. For what?
And that was when Hesperus of the blue flames decided to go against his orders.
That day, Lady Oriana and Her Majesty the Queen, who was then Lady Rosalind, found the long-lost heir to the throne as an apothecarist’s apprentice, Lycurin took poison to join Tamaren in death, and Hesperus left the tanner’s quarters untouched by the other fire mages’ flames. That day, Tamaren wrote a letter addressed to her brothers, and disappeared from their lives.
Nicholas let the silence ring on, until Claribel thanked him for the tale.
‘Not at all, my lady. As for the raven? Keep it please. It bears a certain likeness to you. I’ve always believed that she’d meant to gift it to you one day. May the Fated One savour you, Lady Claribel,’ he said.