Achernar woke late. The other side of the bed was cold, and she knew it was empty without looking. She rolled over anyway, cradling her cheek in the crook of her arm. He’d left a sprig of jasmine on the pillow. She held it to her nose and inhaled its perfume.
There was a knock at her door, and Alcor’s familiar drawl oozed in from the other side.
“Sixthborn. Are you awake? A Magician will have my head if you are tardy.”
Achernar frowned faintly. The sun was high through the window. “I have plenty of time.”
“Whatever you say, esteemed Achernar. I’ll wait right here.”
She felt her eyelid twitch at his thorny tone. He was lucky he was so useful. She sighed and wormed out of bed, setting the flower at her dresser table. Alcor began trilling an aimless, artful tune, the lyrics sweet and ridiculous and the sound forged from too much tuition. She wished the court could settle for entertainment from him and his ilk instead. They would, on other occasions. But not today.
She ignored him as she bathed and dressed. Skirts, shawl, bracelets, hairpins—all of it. Her qanun was already in its case and she picked that up too.
Today was a day of significance. A playing day, and for a collection of scheming Sungrazers no less. Ordinarily, it would be her younger sister basking in the lanternlight, pulling liquid melody from her famed harp. But her younger sister was gone, and her surviving siblings had far more important duties to attend to. Achernar would have to sweat before a crowd in Alhena’s stead. This had meant additional hours practicing over many days, less time for more fulfilling activities. But such was the way of things.
Alcor came to the end of his song when she opened the door. He lifted a long-fingered hand to the nape of her neck, where her hair was still damp.
“Hurry up with it,” she snapped.
He cast a spell she knew to be too involved and overly specific for most attendants to learn, let alone courtesans. In moments, she was dry. A faint scent of rosewater dusted the air. So useful, she reminded herself, that he made up for being tiring to be around two-thirds of the time. She shrugged away his proffered hand as she made her way out of the royal wing. The guards nodded to her as she passed, but all they would see was a princess in a hurry.
It was a different matter when they reached the royal hall. She slowed her pace and allowed him to link his arm around her own before entering.
Sunlight lanced across the stage, its flaxen boards already abuzz with activity. Singers murmured amongst themselves. A pair of Magicians fussed with the lights. Achernar made for the seat waiting for her front and center, and Alcor called out melodious commands on her behalf: water, refreshments, requests for the ancillary performers to ready themselves and get out of the way.
“Have a restful evening,” she murmured into his ear. “But bring back some interesting stories for me.”
“Of course.” He winked his acknowledgment and began to ingratiate himself amongst various arrivals with great and enviable enthusiasm.
Achernar laid her qanun on her lap and slid on her finger-picks. A harassed-looking Healer breezed by and touched a hand to her brow, and a wave of refreshment and wellbeing swept over her. She felt the last of her fledgling nerves fleeing. Whorls of shadow drifted through the air as she plucked at the strings, practicing her opening notes. She ignored the eyes turning to watch her every movement as she plucked her way through the entire first piece. It was a tricksome composition, the most intricate of the five—a lofty opener, to impart a certain image. Mother had selected them from the archives of the Higher Library, before the faery incursion. Before she’d gone into mourning.
Achernar had seen her precisely once since, sitting stiff-backed and silent in her favourite armchair. Siphoners had swirled about under the direction of her Healer, administering potions said to soothe the mind in addition to their usual magics. Mother had blinked through damp eyes and paid them no mind.
“I have burned three offerings at the star-shrine,” Achernar had said, head bowed and eyes dutifully downcast. “If…if I may speak out of turn, mother, I would say that father would wish you every kindness, if he were here.”
Her mother had not replied. Achernar shivered, leaving the room. She couldn’t fathom it—such violent loss of one’s beloved after the better part of a century together. Her shadows trembled mournfully as she moved into the second piece, and she paused to heave them into obedience before continuing. So deep into her preparations she was, that it took an unhushed commotion to rouse her from her work.
The whole of the west wall was a bank of windows, the hall raised high enough over adjacent pieces of palace that they could see all the way to the horizon. Through them, she could glimpse the Sungrazer fleet in the distance, huge even from afar. The skyships gleamed even through the clouds, like stars over the Killing Field. There were so many. She’d known that Cathay was a large place, with a great many people and cities of industry, but this one fleet looked as if it numbered almost half of the whole kingdom’s.
The Sungrazers were a very wealthy and unusual faction, she reminded herself, but she scowled inwardly nonetheless. Thurayya had spoken cryptically of encroachers upon the kingdom and of their eldest brother’s dark moods, but it had been one thing to hear it and another to see it coming.
Authority stated they were allowed to be here, poking their noses into castle magics and the Higher Library. Achernar was welcoming them, instructed to do so by mother herself—the command had not since been rescinded by the Magicians, either. She’d strained her skills and her magic over the last moon for…this. She couldn’t fathom why. It wasn’t her place to wonder why. It hadn’t been Alhena’s.
She plucked a melancholy note, similar to the one they’d asked of her at the execution. A whisper of darkness seeped out, pointed like a little knife. She watched as it twisted aimlessly with no intent to guide it, before dissipating. Then she returned to her practice. Shadows poured from her fingertips and swirled around her skirts like smoke.
+++
Achernar stood stiffly in the wings, hidden behind drapes of patterned canvas. She took a deep breath as the last of her assistants scurried off the stage. Minutes passed in half-darkness. She could hear footsteps in the waiting corridor, shuffling shoes and swishing fabrics. Tonight, every seat would be occupied.
“Sixthborn,” a Magician cautioned her, pulling her a step backward, further out of sight and unable to peer outwards. She frowned faintly, wishing she could see through the curtains. She knew what a full hall looked like, but it would be…different, with Sungrazers.
“You’ll do excellently,” Alcor said in his glittering purr. His hand brushed over her shoulder and then he, too, was gone.
She waited, gripping her qanun as the hall filled. Voices rippled through the air, and amongst them were many Cathayan accents. It all rustled together. She couldn’t pick out individual words. By the time they settled, it had dipped fully dark outside.
The Magician gave her a nod before he strode on stage, arms flung wide. His cloak billowed like a slice of spilled sky.
“Welcome,” he called, voice crackling faintly with amplification spells. A hush fell. “Welcome, our esteemed Sungrazer guests. We the Magicians find it an honour to host those with such a loving and respectful interest in our humble realm. Thus, we the kingdom are pleased to present our finest royal musician tonight: the Sixthborn Achernar.”
She strode on-stage as the Magician retreated, turning her gaze over the crowd. A few Sungrazer faces were recognisable from their presence about the palace, but most were new. In pride of place were a family adorned in red and gold: a husband and wife with two sons, their gazes curious and cutting.
She fixed her gaze on the far wall to keep from losing herself in the hundreds of eyes below. It boasted a mosaic of tessellated triskelions, radiating out from a jeweled eye. She liked to fix her gaze on it when she played here, imagining herself in the shade of camphor trees instead. How she longed to hide in a tranquil corner of her private gardens, hand-in-hand with far sweeter company. But that was not in accordance with tonight’s duties.
The singers arranged themselves behind her, all courtlings and courtesans with gifted voices. None of them were Alcor—he’d somehow extracted himself from performing. How…fortunate for him. She arranged her qanun to expectant silence and took a calming breath. Then she launched into the opening piece.
The song poured shadows. Behind her, voices harmonised. Darkness cloaked the stage and spilled over like a low mist. She pursed her lips in concentration as the notes swelled and shapes blossomed from the dark smoke: a spiral of scaled skyfish and undulating sand-rays to match the liquid sound. She whisked the shoal over their heads before diving it down towards the audience. The crowd gasped as one, but she barely heard it, so busy she was with ensuring the shadows maintained their shapes. The fish faded as soon as she relinquished control over them. She glimpsed wondrous eyes and a hand reaching out to touch a dissipating fin before she resumed staring into the mosaic eye.
Utmost concentration, she told herself. This portion was always the most difficult.
Now she conjured human figures: mages with cloaks and swords leaping around the stage, hunting barbed monsters. A battle raged in shimmering silhouettes, forms wisping fluidly from one shape to the next. The air grew thick and cold. The world narrowed to her view of the mosaic eye as she lost herself into the flow of the song. The singers were nothing more than a wall of rising sound. The crowd may as well not be there.
Something glinted on the far wall, in the darkness of the mosaic eye.
Achernar registered motion, a sharp crack through the air, an object incoming in the center of her vision. Her fingers scraped over her qanun in alarm. Harsh notes split the air, sharp and sudden. Her shadows coalesced at her command, encasing her in a dark shell. The world became blackness, soft and tarry, and for a moment her only thought was: I ruined the song?
Then pain blossomed across her chest, and people started screaming.
She brought her hand to the wound: enough blood to coat her fingers. There had been a tunneling, a resistance, but whatever hit her had shorn right through her shadow-shield.
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A Healer. She needed a Healer.
She slid bonelessly from her seat, qanun toppling against the boards. More cracks erupted; there was a disturbance in the air above her. The air pulsed thick with magic as she forced herself up onto hands and knees, crawling toward the wings. Her chest burned. It was becoming difficult to keep the shadows manifested without her qanun.
“Sixthborn,” someone shouted. She recognised it to be the Magician’s voice. Hands bumped against the outside of her shadow-shield, still bunched protectively around her body.
“Wound…” she wheezed. Her sternum was a cage of pain. People were still screaming. He likely couldn’t hear her.
She dropped the shadow-shield, close to fainting, and many pairs of hands pulled her deeper into the wings. Shouts and orders echoed around her; someone was casting a shield, the spell-light yellow-gold like dead aphids.
Someone propped her up against the wall, pressing a wad of cloth to the wound. With the pressure came more pain, but she lifted her arm weakly, trying to help. Iskandar had told her about the importance of staunching blood, once—of pressing on the bandage and not lifting it to peek.
There’d been a time, as children, when she’d fallen off a garden wall and split the skin on her head. Head wounds bled out of proportion to the injury. Were chest wounds the same? She didn’t think so. Her skull felt stuffed with pale clouds. Her chest was too tight. She tried and failed to conceptualise a way of breathing without hurting. Slow and shallow movements, like this? Or this? No…
Her helper—Alcor, she registered dimly—murmured anxious words to her, something about a Healer being on the way. A trio of singers hovered anxiously in her peripheral vision. She sat slumped in the wings for some time, listening to the commotion beyond the stage.
The Magician returned with a pale Healer in tow, panting with exertion. What was this half-familiar Healer’s name? Achernar wondered dazedly. One of the legacy-born—Cradine? Cardainne? Her vision seemed to be going dark at the edges, but that couldn’t be right. She’d already dismissed all of her shadows.
“Out of the way,” the Magician said, shoving Alcor aside.
The Healer, whatever her name was, dropped to her knees and pressed her hands to the wound. Sharp, burning pain faded to a dull ache as the bloodflow stemmed. Her breathing eased.
“Hold still,” the Healer said, and set her face grimly.
She reached into the wound, fingers catching on—what was it? Achernar wondered. It felt very strange, to feel the thing being pulled out with none of the expected agony. The Healer dropped the item to the ground with a clatter, and the Magician bent down to wrap it in cloth.
Now the Healer had her hands on her shoulders, murmuring under her breath. The wound stitched shut; Achernar could feel crumpled bone crackling back into place, skin warping and stitching shut of its own accord. The dazedness withdrew bit by bit, and she could think more complex thoughts again, such as: who had planned to harm her, and how had the causative agent appeared from nothing? But there was no time to linger, because the Magician was pulling her to her feet and ushering her out of the wings, back past the dressing rooms and down the tiny back staircase leading out of the royal hall.
“What was that?” she asked, hand at her chest. Her fingers snagged where the cloth of her dress had torn; she could scarcely believe she could breathe freely again. “An arrow?”
He frowned, steady hand at her back urging her along. “Some sort of iron dart, Sixthborn. That is as far as I can gather. I will pass the item along to Sa—” He caught himself. “To Magician Firstborn. I am sure he will be amenable to explain to you later. For now, we must get you to safety.”
“But how was it ever there?” she murmured uneasily.
He shook his head. “An illusion unpeeled. Hurry, now.”
+++
The Magician had been wrong about Saleh. There were no hourglasses in the safe-room, but the guarding Magicians had informed her that at least two had passed, and still he had not come to inform her. She supposed he might yet be busy herding Sungrazers. She rubbed her sternum with the heel of her hand, marveling at a lack of the slightest twinge.
Whatever had been shot at her, it had been set in advance and hidden with illusion. The kingdom was weak to illusion, she realised. Anyone with the knowledge—entertainers, harmless artists who traveled in ones and twos and were usually overseen by Magicians anyhow—likely came from Glister. Even there, it was a dying skill.
The Magicians had swiftly coordinated with Higher Librarians to fetch tools from the archives: spell-stones and spell-slips, strange cuts of glass. She gripped one such shard in her hand now, a triangle with symbols etched onto its edge. The Magician had said that peering through it would reveal illusions; she hadn’t managed to spot any. By the sound of things, neither had they. There was only an alleged handful of iron darts and their clockwork cradle: a box nailed to the mosaic eye, melted once it had expended its ammunition.
She touched her qanun with a sigh. The Magicians had fetched it for her as soon as the royal hall had been cleared. It was undamaged, but it would need tuning. A lot of tuning.
There was a sound at the door. She sat up straighter, tensing. Out of tune the qanun may be, but it would work so long as it could make a sound; she struck a long note. Shadow-armour swirled around her shoulders, belting over her chest and ribs.
“A visitor, Sixthborn,” a Magician called. The door opened. He was holding his own illusion-glass up to his eye, looking her brother up and down.
“Achernar!” said Iskandar. He wore his Healer’s uniform with an apothecary’s bag clutched in hand. His cloak swirled about his ankles as he jogged in, boots clacking across the tiles. “Sit, sit. I would’ve come earlier, but they wanted to put me in a room too. They said a second-rank attended to you?”
She sank back into her chair and allowed the shadows dissolve, still gripping her qanun. “Yes. I’m in no pain.”
“Would you humour me? If she missed any internal bleeding…well, with a projectile…” He gave an uneasy grimace. “It sounded bad.”
“If you insist.”
She held out her wrist. He took it, furrowing his brow. A line of coolness rippled over her from head to toe before Iskandar let go, shoulders sagging in relief.
“You’re clear. She did a good job.”
“Well, yes. Thank you for checking.”
He reached for his bag. “Are you feeling shaken? I have a potion, if—”
“No need. They already provided me with one. Was anybody else injured?”
He cleared his throat, before drawing up another chair. “A few of the singers, a couple of Sungrazers. They were all seen to. No fatalities.”
“Ah. That’s fortunate.” She frowned. “You don’t think it’s an awful coincidence, that it happened tonight?”
“You suspect the Sungrazers?” He gave a wry smile. “I’m sure Saleh and Thurayya have thought of that. The Magicians are sweeping the castle as we speak. Think they’re going to try and search their ships, too. I think that talk about a scouting party to the mountains might be given precedence as well.”
“I see. But why me?” she asked, troubled. “After Alhena and the faery incursion—we’ve been cut down to four. If this is due to wretched creature schemes, then why me? Shahzad and Thamir were Magicians. I am barely a musician.”
“It was only luck that we weren’t in the East Hall with them,” he pointed out, steepling his fingers under his chin. “Our minders are anxious about us being in the same room right now. I doubt they’d allow it if I weren’t a Healer. This was deliberate, so it must be a matter of opportunity. Whatever’s behind this—and there is something, no matter what vague words Thurayya tells me—they want all of us dead. They want to cripple the kingdom.”
“They’re going to increase our guard after this, aren’t they?” she murmured.
“Saleh and Thurayya were already on double-guard…their coworkers, too. But yes, I expect so.”
An increased guard would mean precious little time alone, or alone with Karim. Everything would be so much harder to choreograph, if not impossible. She bit her lip.
“We’re quite safe,” Iskandar said, misinterpreting her consternation. “Though it can’t hurt to have your qanun with you.” He made a good point; though the iron had pierced deep into her flesh, it would no doubt have punched out the other side without her shielding. She didn’t bother to suggest he keep his flute at hand.
“I wasn’t worried.” How could she be now, when she would be shadowed by guards and Healers and Magicians at every turn?
He cleared his throat, giving her a smile. It was the indulgent smile of a brother who thought his little sister was putting on a brave face. “I thought we might be stuck here awhile, so I brought along a board for goats and jackals. Want to play? I might have missed a couple of pieces rushing to pack, but I’m sure we can substitute with…” He rummaged around in his bag. “…Bandage rolls? Or, no—these spare corks would be more suitable.”
She sighed inwardly. “Of course. It will pass the time.”
“Don’t think I’ll go easy on you just because you nearly died,” he said. He sounded cheerful enough, but Achernar had been raised on court foundations; there was a sliver of fear under there, too.
“You will be the one to be near death once we are through with this game,” she retorted. She knew this other game, too: humour and bravado to stave off the worry. Thamir had oft joined in, when he’d been alive.
+++
Minutes after they were finished playing, the Magicians announced the castle safe. Iskandar swept up the pieces with a sigh. The game had come to a draw.
“Stay safe, sister.”
“Yes. You be careful, too.”
She picked up her qanan. The trio of Magicians who arrived to escort her were only distantly recognisable: fully-fledged, and none of them Karim. They passed a west-facing hall on their way to her chambers and she frowned at the wall of rolling mist in the distance. The sky was thick and starless.
“Will there be a storm?”
The Magicians exchanged glances behind their masks. “It seems so, Sixthborn.”
“It looks to be a severe one.”
“A precise assessment, Sixthborn.”
She suppressed a sigh. Karim never spoke like that. But then, the Magicians were tense tonight. They were likely leaning on rehearsed politeness. There’d been very few times when the mists had blown over the kingdom itself, but tonight’s storm might bring them close. The evening’s events had delayed the Magicians; she saw no skyships at the ready, no nets that should have been spun hours ago.
“May the kindest stars shine upon your colleagues,” she offered.
“And upon you, Sixthborn.”
The sky was spitting down by the time she made it to chambers, droplets flecking softly against the window. She pressed a finger to the glass and traced a star in the condensate as she watched the droplets trickle down. Clean water, for now. It might soon be blackened with dust. Far to the west, figures speckled the sands: Magicians and Weathermancer fodder zephyring out towards the salt. Maybe fewer than a handful of Healers. She chewed at her lip as she wondered if Karim was among them tonight.
Light flooded the sky—a lick of silver fire across the soft skins of the stormclouds—and then came the sound.
Achernar stilled at the crackling boom, sooner than she’d thought, so close it seemed to rattle the very foundations of the castle. The glass shook in her windowpanes. She glanced to her door, where she knew the three Magicians stood guard, and told herself it would be foolish to ask for their company. Perhaps she could send for Alcor…? But useful he may be as a misdirection technique, he always made for tiresome conversation. And none of her court friends would know of what had happened yet, much less come up at this hour.
Instead, she set about setting her belongings to rights. Every drawer had been yanked open, and most of the cushions had been knocked to the ground by the Magician’s rough searching. Once she was done, she turned her shard of illusion-glass to what few nooks she thought they might have missed. Nothing of note. She stiffened again at the next unexpected rumble of sound, low and furious like the howl of a dying star.
“It isn’t the thunder that’ll hurt you,” Saleh had told her once. She’d been young then, barely seven summers past, with only the vaguest knowledge of what his Magician’s cloak signified, of his importance and what it all meant. The circumstances, too, were hazy in her memory; mother had ordered him to mind them for some reason or another. And yet she could recall his expression as clearly as the notes of her first qanun: his brow crinkled in dry amusement at her cowering and trying to hide it.
She’d gulped. “I’m not afraid.”
He chuckled at that. “And neither is brave brother Fifthborn, cowering beneath his blanket?”
She glanced over at Iskandar, whose unfocused eyes narrowed. He relaxed his grip on the quilt in a very deliberate manner.
“I’m only cold,” he said, scowling. “Why don’t you have warming runes in your workshop?”
Saleh shrugged carelessly. “It interferes. Can’t you endure a little chill? You’ll never be a Magician that way.”
“I don’t want to be a Magician.”
“Really?” Saleh chuckled again. Outside, gales gusted. Skyfire-light touched his profile, sharpening the lines of his face. “What a waste. Are you worth the siphoners they send you?”
Achernar had clenched her fists. If she’d known what she knew now, she would have never found the nerve. “That’s not very nice. Didn’t mother tell you to be the responsible one?”
You’re being unfair, she wanted to add, but she suspected he’d find that turn of phrase childish.
Thunder boomed, closer than it had last come. Iskandar flinched again. Firstborn brother Saleh sat as still as a statue.
“I’m only speaking the truth, Little Achernar, which is as responsible as Sanaz says. Spending half your days blind is no excuse for cowardice. Your jumping at whispers might be amusing if it weren’t so pathetic. Listen to my words: it isn’t the thunder that will hurt you.”
Alhena hadn’t been there. Perhaps that’s why she’d never learned.
Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. Achernar blinked and pared herself from memory, realising at once how cold she was. She prepared for bed in rote motion, unpinning her hair from its coiffed cage and shaking the curls loose. Her chest did not hurt, and each breath came easily. When she crawled beneath the quilts, she found herself wishing Karim were here—safe and warm in her arms, with nothing to fear.
The rain slashed down. She watched the lightning through a gap in the curtains and let the thunder sink into her bones.