Chapter Nineteen - The Skyperch

(Part II)

‘Sara?’

Sara blinked, looking up. The sun was cooling towards evening, and the light filtering through the room of doors had a strange mute colour to it, somewhere between pink and amber. Filmy curtains had been unfurled around the edges of the Queen’s balcony to ward away the worst of the cold, but there was still a faint chill on the air, tugging at her skin. Beyond, the great stone canvas of the city reached out around the Heartspire like a rippled wave, blurred into lines of colour through the translucency of the curtains.

‘What’s on your mind?’

Sara turned back to the room. She was sitting at the table between the many marked doors, shoulders still covered with fur, a small glass goblet of honeyed wine in one hand. Dana was sitting beside her, her own glass set aside. They had snuck away at the ending of their chores, leaving the Matron to grumble and moan at shadows, stealing a moment to themselves in the lull of a long day’s ending. Such time was rare, and they had needed no encouragement.

‘Nothing.’ she replied quietly.

‘Suit yourself.’

They sat back again, and Dana took up her glass, sipping with her. The air shifted over the curtains, making them flutter and hiss. Sara was struck again by the difference in her sister; she was almost accustomed to it, by now, but sometimes it would catch her unawares. A trick of the light. A slight change to the curve of her jaw. The womanly width of her waist. A green eye, just that little bit duller than she remembered. She frowned.

‘Where do you think the Queen is, right now?’

Dana gave her an odd look, blinking.

‘I don’t know. Not here.’

Sara hesitated.

‘It’s just… She’s almost never here.’ she went on, looking at her sister. ‘Where is she, whilst we play maid all day?’

‘We are maids, sister. The Queen’s handmaidens, no less. And a great honour it is, too.’ Dana replied dryly, taking another sip. ‘She has duties at court. Should she always take her servants with her? Maybe she is with the King.’

‘I doubt that!’ Sara replied, then looked away quickly as Dana frowned. ‘I have not seen them together outside of the King’s Hall.’

‘Sounds like you have been keeping an eye on them rather closely.’

‘No, but… I only meant she is rarely here!’ Sara protested. ‘You’d think she’d be more grateful.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, who was she, before the King married her?’ Sara asked. ‘The third daughter of a third-rate Lord. What did he see in her? And now, still without child, at her age?’

‘The Matron would pinch your ears half off to hear you ask such questions.’ Dana replied, frowning.

‘Let’s ask her, then.’ Sara snorted. She looked at the doors around them, lined with their shapes of silver. The sun, and the moon, those were clear enough. The Queen’s solar, and her bedroom. The other though, marked by the cradle and the strange, toothed pendant, remained a mystery. ‘The old bat seems to be the only one who ever knows where her Majesty is. How many of these doors have you seen open?’

Dana frowned. ‘Just the sun, and the moon.’

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‘Me too. What do you think is behind the others?’

‘I have no idea, Sara.’

‘But aren’t you curious?’ Sara asked her, staring at them.

‘No. I’m not. I know which questions to ask, and which to keep to myself.’ she replied, still frowning. ‘Besides, where’s this sudden interest in the Queen’s movements coming from?’

Sara opened her mouth, then closed it again, looking away through the curtains.

‘Sara. Sister.’ Dana gave her a pointed look, arching her brow. ‘You need to be more careful.’

‘Careful?’ Sara replied, cheeks suddenly hot. ‘Not all of us find it so easy to refuse a man’s attentions.’

Dana hesitated, taken aback. She frowned. ‘It’s not like that. You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’ Sara said coldly, still glaring at her.

Dana stared back at her for a moment, then sighed, looking away.

‘I’m only trying to help you, Sara. This city is dangerous enough for people like us without you courting trouble.’

‘There you go again, being all cryptic.’ Sara rolled her eyes, snorting. ‘Dangerous? Dangerous how?’

‘If you just keep to yourself, and stop asking all these questions, then you needn’t worry about it.’

‘But-’

‘That’s enough, Sara!’

Dana fixed her with a hard look, and Sara swallowed, looking away. She went over to the edge of the balcony, looking out over the clustered rooftops at the edge of the Heartspire, thinking of the little garden at its edge, with its dead tree and pool of dark water. The scorched-black door of Temur’s Tower. She frowned, picking out the narrow beams of jet-coloured stone that rose out of the whiteness of the city, drinking in the night-dark with their black gleam. Stormtowers. One. Two. Three. That’s how many she could see from the Queen’s chambers, but how many more were there, atop the Rock? How many more empty monuments to a dead creed?

‘Do you ever wonder why they’re empty?’

‘What?’

‘The stormtowers.’

‘Ah.’ Dana murmured, following her eyes. ‘They’re all empty. Every one I’ve ever seen, anyway. Here most of all.’

‘But why is that?’ Sara asked, frowning.

‘Why wouldn’t it be? Think we still need Greycloaks? Why, to protect us from bonemen and death clouds like in old nana’s stories?’ Dana scoffed. ‘Anyway, from what I’ve heard, the Cursed Ones that are left would barely fill a banquet table, let alone every old stormtower in Valia.’

‘Even if we wanted them to.’

‘What are you getting at?’

Sara hesitated, looking back out of over the rooftops. ‘Are you telling me you didn’t see?’

‘See what?’

‘Now who’s being obtuse?’ Sara shot back. ‘The Queen, at the feast. You saw who she was talking to. No one hates the Greycloaks more than Brothers.’

‘I remember seeing the King there, too.’

Sara scowled, but didn’t reply. Dana sighed again.

‘For someone so young, you are still so blind, sister.’ Dana sighed, shaking her head.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Thrones are not given, Sara. They are taken. The Night Throne most of all.’ Dana told her. ‘Such a thing takes many friends, not all of them savoury.’

‘How can you say that?’ Sara demanded, scowling. ‘You know what those madmen do. Or have you already forgotten why father came here asking for the King’s aid? There won’t be a boy left in the Westmere when they’re done. The King would never…’

‘Do you know his Majesty so well, already?’

Sara’s tongue tied itself in knots. ‘I… It wasn’t like that. He summoned me! I could not refuse him.’

‘First the feast, with the whole court watching. Now a private audience.’ Sara could feel her sister’s eyes on her, boring into her cheeks. ‘What did he want?’

‘We just… talked.’ Sara replied hesitantly. She thought of the garden at the Skyperch, the touch of the King’s hand as she leant out over the edge. She frowned. ‘Nothing more.’

‘I wonder.’ Dana went on, still staring at her. ‘The Fox does love his whispers. What else has he told you, when no one else is listening? Concerning you, for example?’

Sara blushed. ‘I cannot help what I look like, Dana. Or who I look like.’

‘All the same.’ Dana went on, looking out towards the balcony. ‘Do you think the Queen does not know of your visits to the King? There’s always someone watching.’

‘What would you have me do, Dana?’ Sara demanded, suddenly angry. ‘I cannot meet with him. I cannot refuse him. Who should I be more afraid of; him or the Queen? Tell me, Dana!’

‘I don’t know!’ Dana told her, eyes softening. ‘But we are in a dangerous place, sister, and you are playing a dangerous game.’

They stared at each other for a long moment, each waiting for the other to speak. But there are fewer angers more stubborn than the anger between siblings, and both of them knew it, in their own way. So Sara sat, and she scowled, and her anger hardened in her breast, kept closer than it ought to have been. Everything in this city still felt strange to her. The people, the prying eyes, the games, even the walls themselves. Like lines from an old story, given flesh in the turgid stone of lightless halls, and, just like one of the old stories, she had little control over how it would proceed. Only what she took for herself.

Dana was wrong. Wrong about the Queen. Wrong about the King. Wrong about all of it. Sara knew she was, and that was enough.

So they sat there, sipping at their wine in stubborn silence, and watched as the last of the day’s sun bled away into the gathering dark, indifferent, as always, to the whims of its watchers.