Pretty didn’t talk much to the servants who flitted around Athalia’s townhouse like periwinkle butterflies around a mudpuddle, but she listened plenty. The servants—excepting the Silent Sisterhood, who never said anything—gabbed about how the Daylily was going soft in her old age, how she should’ve gotten a little dog like the rest of the courtesans did when they wanted a pet, how she could have bought a real daughter from any number of uphill girls who had miscalculated their beaus’ reaction to becoming fathers.
A real daughter, then, must be better than a close-rat. And how could it not be, if it came from uphill?
Might be a real daughter was smarter and braver, but Pretty was determined that no real daughter would do better at manners and deportment than she did. She practiced her posture until her spine ached. She smiled until her face hurt. She laughed as sweetly as Athalia did, placed her hands as gracefully, cast her eyes as meaningfully.
Could a real daughter sit as still through the needlework as Pretty did? She didn’t figure so. Could a real daughter stop crying when Athalia told her it would eventually stop hurting? No, a real daughter would’ve been a lot of bother instead of a good girl like Pretty was.
Every day, when the soothing oils had been rubbed into her skin and the salve spread on her eyes, Pretty curled up in Athalia’s big, curtained bed while the Daylily sang her to sleep, and she prayed that the Cormorant would make her the best girl Athalia ever knowed, because Athalia was the best grown-up—maybe the best person—Pretty ever knowed. When the Daylily of Siu Carinal said something, it happened. She never told tales, and what she promised always came true.
It felt disloyal to think so when her onliest twin was the one Pretty was comparing the Daylily to, but it was the truth. And yet Pretty still loved and missed Brat.
Athalia understood that, too.
“It’s not like a sunblister, that pain,” Athalia said, wiping the tears from Pretty’s face. “The hurt don’t go away, you just get harder around it.”
Pretty sniffled. “When?”
Athalia smiled her sad smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes so soft, the one she showed to nobody but Pretty.
“Sometime, child. Sometime.”
There were days when Pretty couldn’t be around Athalia, when she had to hide belowstairs with the servants because a caller was expected to come visiting. Sometimes, Athalia left for nights at a time to attend balls and masques and theatres far away.
Spring came around, and everything outside the townhouse started winding up. The music got wilder, the smells of food and flowers and spices filled the air, and the hoopin’ and hollerin’ picked up. The Carnival of the Dead was just around the corner.
“Can we go to the Carnival, us?” Pretty asked.
Athalia kissed her on top of the head. “Not together we can’t. I got to sit on the High Stand, me. The future Lord of Siu Carinal wants his Daylily on display.” Her eyes narrowed, staring into the mirror at herself. “One more year, at least.”
“Then we’ll go to the Carnival together?”
“Until it’s your turn, Seleketra,” Athalia said, chucking Pretty under the chin the way she always did when she called her by her someday-name. “Then I’ll go all on my own and watch you up there on the High Stand, shining to beat the ghost city.”
***
Swathed in brilliant colors and crushing flowers underfoot, the parade wound its way through Siu Carinal toward the carnival grounds. The past year’s newly departed and several old favorites howled and danced in the streets, their tempered flesh stretching and groaning under the strain. But the dead temperers had done their job well—hardly a corpse popped or tore. Mixed in with the dead were musicians of every instrument, banging, blowing, and plucking.
Pretty saw the dead great lady she and Brat had been waiting for, all gussied up in finery and flowers, her snooty face stretched into a wide, unfamiliar grin as she railed out a ululating song. There was old Tonia, too, dancing around on her twisted leg like she never had when she was alive.
There was the boy who’d coughed himself to death in the next tunnel! Oh, she wished Brat could’ve seen that. Some dead temperer had really done himself out on that one, peeling and pinning and coloring, making the close-rat look like a dyre in mid-change, half a beast, half a human. The boy roared and leapt, scaring the fancy folk and sending kids shrieking back into the crowds.
Dead close-rats never got tempered in time to make them look festive, but their decayed little bodies were good for all manner of imps and fright’ems and beasts.
Athalia had given Pretty a handful of coins to buy flowers to throw and any food she could want, but Pretty hadn’t spent any of it. She wasn’t sure how to trade money for things, and she was afraid she wouldn’t have enough and would get tossed in the River Street gaol.
Anyway, what if some of her wrappings fell away when she threw a flower? Somebody might see the unfinished needlework, and then she’d be in trouble. Only one of her eyes was done so far, and she had promised Athalia she would keep everything hidden “’til the time comes.” A demon didn’t get halfway made, and she didn’t grow up, neither, she sprung into being, full-grown and finished. If somebody saw Pretty before she was finished, all Athalia’s hard work and money would be wasted.
Behind the dancing dead came the floats, decorated in flowers and crepe and flaming candles.
A fist squeezing Pretty’s chest let loose, and tears of happiness swelled in her half-finished eyes. Brat hadn’t been in amongst the dead. Somewhere, her twin might still be alive.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Behind the floats came the lords and ladies in their open carriages, showing off clothes and jewels that made the rich uphill folks look like dirty dockworkers.
There was Athalia! Pretty shrieked and jumped up and down, clapping. The Daylily of Siu Carinal rode in the handsomest carriage of them all, a sparkling thing lined with mother-of-pearl and trimmed with ebony. Next to her a jolly, drunken lordling tossed handfuls of coins to both sides of the streets, thoroughly amused by the scramble they caused.
Then the man reached back under his seat and came up with bottles of rum. The crowd roared. He held the bottles out one at a time for Athalia to kiss, then lobbed them into the sea of people. Fights broke out, young men pummeling each other for a chance to drink from the bottles that the lips of the Daylily had touched.
The lordling collapsed back into his seat with his arm around the most beautiful woman in the world.
Pretty realized with a start that the scarf wrapping her face had begun to slip. She snatched it back up.
When the carriages were past, the people lining the streets crowded in behind the carriages, singing and drinking and raising an uproar as they followed the parade.
Pretty squeezed in with them, jostling and dancing upriver toward the festival grounds, humming or howling along when she knew the tune. Brat was probably alive, and Athalia was the most sought-after woman in Siu Carinal, and Pretty loved them both.
***
“It’s Carnival of the Dead time, I figure,” Nine said, getting up and dusting off the sand. “You ever been?”
Saint Daven wasn’t interested in holidays. “Focus on what you’re doing here. I shouldn’t have been able to see you, let alone knock you down like that.”
The boy rested one of his twin swords on his shoulder. “My twin Pretty’s probably dancing the dead up the river now. We always went, us. The music and the flowers, those were Pretty’s favorites. And you get to see who all’s died that you knowed.”
There was a thought to make a wild boar vomit. Saint Daven could hardly count the dead he never wanted to see again. Worse yet, the dead he did want to see again.
Saint Daven raised his swords—a pair to match the swords his distractible student trained with—and jerked his chin at Nine.
“Start over. Don’t let me catch you this time.”
Nine sighed. “Ain’t you sick of this yet?”
“I’m sick of your whining. How long do you want to live? Because unless you perfect this, your stint as a Thorn’s going to be bloody and short.”
“I’d like to see another Carnival, me.” Nine scratched his nose. “It’s three more years plus a half ’til I get grafted, ain’t it? Then I’ll get the gold, then me and Pretty are gonna get an uphill placement.”
“You’ll be with your master. You won’t see your sister again unless he allows it.”
“Course he’ll ’llow it! Anyways, I can send Pretty the gold so’s she can buy our placement ’til I get there. In Siu Rial, a body can buy any placement but lord if’n they got enough money and clout.”
“What part of ‘grafted until death’ don’t you understand?”
“Ain’t none a’ you masters still grafted,” Nine said. “How much gold did you get when you was a Thorn?”
“Enough.”
Lord Paius had paid his Thorns a working wage, which was more than most lords did, because the old man had believed that Thorns were more than just property. There may also have been an element of guilt at how he had attained the three of them and what they would ultimately be used for.
But Lord Paius had done the best he could with the tools he had, and when it was over, Paius’s old friend Grandmaster Heartless had advocated for the release of the last remaining tool from the royal dungeons and eventually dragged what was left of him back to Thornfield.
“I got more than most do,” Saint Daven snapped, wanting the conversation to end. “Get your swords up and disappear.”
“You figure it was enough gold to buy a placement?” Nine faded out while he was still talking. First, Saint Daven could see the thorny locust tree through the boy, then almost no boy and all tree, then just a shadow on the ground. “With three brothers being Thorns, it’s purt near gotta be, ain’t it?”
“I can still see your shadow.”
The shadow faded, but didn’t disappear completely. It slipped across the sand and circled right.
Saint Daven turned to follow his attacker. “That must be how you lost the tournament. What I don’t understand is how you suddenly backslid this far after almost a month of perfect invisibility.”
“Backslid this.” Nine’s voice came from Saint Daven’s left ear, on his opposite side from the shadow on the ground.
Saint Daven spun, whirling his steel. Invisible twin blades clanged off his. One of them had gotten close enough to open a slice in his shirt.
Nine cackled and attacked again. They fought their way around the bailey. Glimpses of the boy’s shadow followed them, mirroring Nine’s movements, but opposite where he was actually standing. When he was in front of Saint Daven, the shadow attacked from the back, when he moved to one side, the shadow moved to the other. When he swung with his left sword, the shadow swung with the right.
The discrepancy was disorienting at first, but the gold-eyed former Thorn picked it up in a handful of traded blows.
“Neat trick.” Saint Daven turned to slip a thrust, watching the shadow behind him and defending in front. Nine’s sword hissed past his ribs. “But if you want me to let you off for the day, you’ve got to get rid of that shadow.”
“But this is better than invisible!” Nine swung for thigh and throat.
Saint Daven slashed the throat strike aside and pulled his leg just enough to avoid the thigh attack.
“No, it’s not. If someone sees a shadow that shouldn’t be there, they go on alert.”
“The wrong way, they do,” Nine grumbled, coming at him from another angle.
Another parry. “They may even sound the retreat.”
“So! That means I protected the king, don’t it?”
“It means you let your master’s would-be assassin escape.” Saint Daven went on the offensive now, away from the shadow and toward the nothingness. “They’ll come back the next night and the next, until the shadow-man isn’t on duty.”
Nine yelped as he hit the wellhouse. Behind Saint Daven, the shadow tumbled, then scrambled to its feet.
Saint Daven pressed the boy harder.
“Then you’ve got a dead master—” He cornered the invisible Nine between the wellhouse and the bailey, where swinging the twin swords would be nigh impossible. “—your sword taken away and melted for scrap—” He slapped the boy’s invisible ankle with the flat of his blade, eliciting a howl. “—and a soul shattered into a hundred pieces—” Another thump, this time against the side of the boy’s invisible head. “—desperately trying to get back to the man you were supposed to protect, who doesn’t exist anymore.” Saint Daven punctuated his next words with just-pulled killing blows: “Get rid! Of that! Shadow!”
Nine screamed in frustration. “I cain’t figure how, me!”
“Then we’ll be here all day.”
And they were. Nine grew steadily more furious, his sword work becoming wilder, eventually giving up defense entirely. He managed to score a couple wild cuts on Saint Daven, but was limping and bleeding all over before they finished for the day.
Finally, an hour before dusk, the master sent the sweaty, dirty, bloody boy to bed.
“Pretty hard on him,” Saint Galen said as Nine stalked off.
“Think the Royal Thorns will go easy on him when they come for his master?” Saint Daven wasn’t betting on the boy being grafted to the king. Even if Nine became the best in his year, Grandmaster would be honor-bound to tell His Majesty that the boy was half-blind. A private posting was the best scenario the kid would get.
“If they come for his master, Dav. Like Grandmaster said, it doesn’t happen to every Thorn.”
“Nine can’t afford optimism.” Saint Daven grabbed a whetstone and oil rag and got to work cleaning up the practice blades. “He could disappear completely before the tournament. What happened?”