Chapter Two - The Marsh Rose

Grass.

Sara knew grass. The soft creep of the damp stems over her fingers. The easy bed of it beneath her back. The scratch of it against her bare feet in summer. The Westmere was full of grass. Tall grass. Short grass. Dry grass and marsh grass. Yellow grass the colour of flax and grass deeper than wading water, the colour of dusk sky. There were few things she knew better.

But even she had never seen so much of it. The plains of Valia stretched out ahead of them, rolling and crashing through the little window of their carriage like an emerald sea, cut through with outcrops of knife-sharp rock and swift-running streams that laced silver thread across the land, fresh and clear and true. A map-face of endless green, from the Sea of Storms in the north all the way to the Dread Stones and the High Places beyond in the south, an unbroken line in broken lands. A day, a week, longer, they rumbled out across it. Following the King’s Highway, such as it was; a broad avenue of dirt and footprints that crawled its way through the slow hills and stones, crept about its edges with the forgotten rocks of an older, grander way, now half-swallowed in the grass. At first, there had been villages, closer to the sea, and they had slept in soft beds beside the warmest of fires, with fresh bread and sausages to eat, paid for with jingling purses of easy coin. The common folk had given what they could, times being what they were, hungry for her father’s silver. But then the road had narrowed, and the villages had given way to half-empty farmyards, barren with the weathered faces of distant folk with distant eyes. Her father’s men seemed not to mind, but soon even the farms had dwindled into the sunset at their backs, and still the grass went on, endless and rippling.

They slept by the roadside, then. By night, she found some refuge in the stars, picking out the constellations of the nine Makers, one by one. Temur’s jagged line, Falk’s scales, Kar’s shield, Horis’ hammer, the longship of Lorar, Arana’s rose, which she liked best of all. The shape of the familiar lights seemed strange to her, in this barren, empty place, but the distorted familiarity comforted her, if but a little. She and her father had tents to ward off the cold, too, but winter was almost on them, and the low hills gave little shelter from the wind. Even the men began to grumble, then, and the walls of the carriage became a prison of sorts, Sara fancied, an ornate box of stale air she and her father shared, grinding on forever across an endless road to the horizon.

So it was that the fifteenth day of their journey found Sara slumped wearily against the cushions of her cage, hair veiling her pale face like black willow fronds. She barely heard the shout that went up from the front of the column, but she felt the sudden urgency in the bouncing of the carriage wheels, and stuck her head groggily out of the narrow window, squinting, half-blind from dark, into the blurry light. There was a hilltop rushing closer out of the haze, and some of the men were gathered there, green cloaks streaming in the wind, sword hilts flashing at their hips. Horses snorted, and the carriage crunched to a halt. The door was already open, and Sara leapt out onto the roadside, cloak swirling. Racing towards the summit, numb legs wobbling gracelessly, and her father’s men drew back from her, letting her through.

She reached the hilltop in a rush, and the world peeled back before her in a shimmer of luminous fire. The grass ahead swept away in a long, steep curve, a valley wrought like the trough of two immense waves. On the western ridge, where they stood, the slope fell away in silken ripples towards the silver face of the river Arq below, snaking it’s broad, tireless way across the valley floor, heading north. There were buildings there in their hundreds, crouched against the curves of the water, little more than smudged pockmarks, at this distance, smoke rising from their roofs like fraying grey thread. Beyond them, though, at the centre of the valley, something brighter, something pale and shimmering in the hot light of the day, white fire on a bed of green. Sara realised she was holding her breath.

‘Uldoroth.’ her father said from her shoulder. ‘The City of the Moon.’

She stared, words catching in her throat. An outcrop of dark, jagged rock, impossibly sheer, stabbing up hundreds of feet out of the grass, pressed against the sky like an enormous altar of stone. The Heartspire. Forged by Ulwe himself, the priests back in the Westmere told her. And who but the First Maker could will such a thing? This was not of men. Her eyes raced up the height of it, swept towards the clouds above. There, at the peak, rising out of the seat of the altar; high towers topped with silver, a swarm of starlit stone, thrusting proud and pale into the winter sky like a crown. Sara exhaled, giddy at the sight of it.

‘Who made it?’ Sara asked quietly, unable to look away.

Her father snorted. ‘The Chosen. The First Maker himself. No one knows. Not those damned priests, anyway.’ he told her. ‘The old folk are long gone, and they took their secrets with them.’

Sara swallowed hard, and a thrill ran through the hair on the back of her neck. ‘It’s… beautiful.’

‘And now it is your home.’

Sara looked back at the city, still trying, and failing, to make sense of the sheer cliffs of the Heartspire. The sunlight played over the silver-topped towers, shards of white flame against the green sea. Around the base of the rock, a pale city curled out of the grass, walls within walls rising towards the monolith at its centre. Toward the houses high above. She took a deep breath. Her home. At last.

‘The Makers have given us good weather for our arrival!’ her father announced happily. ‘But Rivertown is half a day’s ride, still.’ He turned to his men, waving them forward. ‘No more delays. Halin, get them moving.’

They moved out again over the grass, then, dipping down over the crest into the emerald wave of the valley. Sara sat in stunned silence for a time, head sticking ungraciously out of the carriage window, watching the pale walls of the city coalescing with the fiery line of the river as they rumbled down the slope, gleaming sun-drenched gleams of silver back at them over the grass. Winter may still have been drawing in, but the cold of the road was far behind them, now that the end was in sight. The men were laughing and smiling as they rode, and even the weary carriage-horses had found some new energy. Her father sat beside her, a small smile on his narrow lips, apparently uninterested in the sights beyond the window. He seemed older, this past year, dark hair cut with silver, and the long idleness of the journey had not been good for his aching knees. But he was solid, still, in spite of his weariness; solid in that once-strong kind of way that gave way so easily to softness. She could feel his eyes on her as she watched the city on the horizon, prickling at her skin.

‘What is it, father?’ she asked after a time, pulling her head back into the carriage.

‘We will stay in Rivertown tonight, Sara.’ he told her as if she had not spoken, thin voice half snatched by the rumble of the cart wheels. ‘You must bathe. The King will receive us soon. It would not be fitting for you to arrive in the keep stinking of the road.’

‘Yes, father.’

‘And you should wear that dress, when we are presented.’ he went on, gesturing at one of the other carts that trundled along behind their carriage. ‘The green one, the one your mother liked.’

‘Yes, father.’

‘You must look your best.’ he smiled to himself, looking towards the city. ‘Another daughter, they will say, this one with a good name and beauty. Another for the service of the Queen. It’s a great honour, you know. Handmaiden to Her Majesty.’

‘At last.’ Sara murmured.

‘It is soon enough.’ her father told her shortly, staring out of the window. Sara hesitated, lowering her eyes.

‘It will be nice to see her.’

‘Who?’

‘Dana.’ Sara said quietly.

Her father frowned, but only for a moment.

‘Of course.’

They crossed the Arq at midday, wallowing across the broad strain of water in a barge wider than her father’s hall, drawn from the far bank by a team of patchwork horses. This far from the sea, the river was already a hundred yards across, and the passage took some time. The bargemen watched her through the window of their carriage as they floated across the river, spying glances from under their heavy brows, and she found herself blushing. Her father told her not to mind them. There would be more eyes, in the capital, he told her, the right kind, and Sara blushed all the more, feeling another little thrill flush against her neck.

Soon they reached the shallow slope of the Arq’s eastern bank, and the horses carried them onwards excitedly, lacing their way through the low stone huts of the water’s edge. Rivertown, her father called it, but it was almost as big as the Westmere, all on its own. Some of the fishermen came out to watch them as they passed, eyeing them curiously, cheeks daubed with sweat and dirt. Sara lowered her eyes again, letting the smells and sounds and curiosities of the town wash over her. The dampness of the river on the air. The shouts of the fishermen and women, reeling and knotting on their little wooden platforms, casting nets of slender mesh into the silver waters below. Some of them worked their way through the shifting crowd at the bank, crying their wares to anyone that might listen; the new arrivals were little more than a passing distraction, to these. Above it all, fish, silver-backed and reeking, seeping through the air like a cloud. But soon they were rising away from the bank, and the breeze washed away a little of the stench.

‘Where will we stay, father?’

‘It is not far.’

The roads in Rivertown were a little smoother than the ones that had carried them from the Westmere; broad grey strips of dirt flattened by the passage of countless feet. They trundled slowly eastward, flanked by their escort of riders, and the townsfolk watched them from the roadside, blank and grubby. The buildings by the water were rarely more than wooden shacks, rising out of the damp earth of the river bank on buckling stilts, but, as they continued towards the eastern edge of the town, more and more stone had been laid into the grass, and soon the buildings were modestly sizeable affairs, with broad verandas and almost-clean facades. They came to a stop in front of one of the largest such frontages; a grand, three storey slab of pale stone, its peak furnished with a short, round tower. Her father stepped out of the carriage, with more effort than you might expect, and Sara followed, blinking up at the sign that hung swinging above the doorway. Two words were emblazoned in gold across the black wood, gleaming dully in the noon sun.

Kings’ View.

‘Halin, see to the horses.’

‘Yes, M’lord.’

Halin was young, for her father’s guard, little more than thirty, and his dark hair fell down about his shoulders, past cheeks stubbled with coal and steel. He winked at Sara as he turned his horse about, leading the rest of the men away towards the stables through an open archway beside the inn, leaving a few others on foot beside her and her father. Their hands were on the hilt of their swords as the Lord Westmere stepped up to the broad, oaken door of the inn, painted black and gold in the colours of the King.

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‘We will take the top rooms.’

The attendant that opened the door blinked back at the finely dressed man and his armed retinue in the doorway, practiced poise shot for a moment. Then he recovered, and an expression of condescending surety descended on his narrow face, frowning over his greying brows. He was wearing a simple black doublet, and the silver cup brooch of a Keeper was clasped against his breast.

‘I regret to inform you, sir, that the top rooms are currently occupied.’ he said calmly, with the faintest hint of clipped impatience; the kind of man who deludes himself with the idea of having no time to spare. ‘We can spare two rooms on the first floor, for you and your… lady companion. Your men may make use of the stables, if they chose.’

‘We will take the top rooms.’ her father went on, as if he had not heard him, not looking up. ‘And we will take the two more besides, for the dozen more men seeing to the horses and wagon. You will need to bring more beds up.’

‘Nine gods, man, this is quite irregular!’ the Keeper hissed, eyeing the armed men flanking them at the roadside. ‘Might I ask who…’

‘And we will require food brought to our chambers.’ her father went on. ‘Broth and bread for my men will suffice, something more fitting for my daughter and me. Fish would seem appropriate. What is today’s catch?’

‘Trout... I really must ask, sir, who…’

Her father held up a hand, and with the other shoved a jingling coin purse into the attendant’s bemused fingers. The man weighed it against his palm, then drew it open slightly. Sara caught a flash of gold, and the man’s eyes widened.

‘Lord Nordin of the Westmere.’ her father told him, thin lips humourless and pressed, rounded gut puffed out against his doublet. ‘We will take wine and water by the fire, whilst you ready our rooms.’

*

Not long after, Sara stepped breathlessly into the top room of the King’s View, face flushed and skirts trailing. The stairs that climbed out of the bowels of the inn were high and steep, all smooth stone and lurid mosaic walls; the proprietor’s imagining of what the Lords and Ladies of Uldoroth would favour in their own homes. He was wrong, Sara suspected, but that did little to distract her from the number of stairs; after three weeks sitting like a potato in the back of a wagon, her legs had quickly turned to jelly during the climb.

The room into which she entered was a long strip of thick, patterned rugs and ornately styled alcoves. Pale stone flickered in the light of several dozen candles, blinking like fireflies. The shutters that lined the east-facing wall were all closed, and there was a midnight warmth to the room, without the pale light of the day beyond. At the far end, a small section had been partitioned off by a pair of sliding screen doors, They were currently open, and Sara saw that the area beyond contained a generously-sized bath and a large, gaudily framed triptych mirror, significantly taller than she was.

‘M’lady?’

Sara blinked. A servant girl was looking at her curiously from beside the doorway, hands clenched apologetically over her belly. She was a skinny thing, with soft brown hair and deep shadows around her large, dark eyes, and her pale skin had a sickly sheen in the amber light of the candles.

‘Yes?’

‘Is the room to your liking, M’lady?’ the girl asked her meekly, and Sara realised she must have asked the question once already. She smiled back at her, nodding happily.

‘It’s perfect. You may draw the bath up now, and bring some fresh towels.’

‘Of course, M’lady.’ the girl replied politely, stepping back through the open door and closing it behind her. Sara went unhurriedly through the sliding doors at the far end of the room, taking it all in. The distorted brass surface of the three-faced mirror was across from the doors, the large bath against the left wall, shuttered windows on the right. She eyed the three rippled reflections of herself in the mirror for a long moment, then, on impulse, stepped over to the shutters, throwing them open. Daylight flooded into the room, gleaming against a wave of green as it swept away up the valley slopes to the east. A broad, crowded stretch of road speared through it, and, beyond, the white walls of Uldoroth blinked back at her in the afternoon sun, topped with distant guards, swarming like black ants over the parapet. The Heartspire climbed out of the smoke and haze of the city below, tall as a mountain, shading a hundred acres of grass and more, towers pricking at the sky. It seemed to rise out of the earth of its own accord. Why here, she wondered? So far from the sea, in land where little grew but grass? If it weren’t for the river, there would be no reason for it to be here, at all.

Sara sighed, feeling that familiar thrill of excitement rush over her skin, but now there was something new to it, a closeness that snatched away the impatient anxiety of the past weeks. She looked up to the gleaming paleness of the keep atop the Heartspire, and thought of her sister. Three years. Three years since their father brought Dana on the same long journey from the Westmere, an offering of blood to his King. Sara remembered the day they’d left, and saw again the stony eyes of an exile closed away into the carriage. Dana didn’t know how lucky she was, Sara had scowled. Whisked away to the capital, to the Queen’s service, no less, whilst she was stuck alone in the dank mire of the Westmere, locked away from the world in father’s keep. She was too young, he’d told her. It was not yet her time. She was two years older now, than Dana had been, when she had left, and the wait had been agony.

But now Sara smiled. None of that mattered, anymore. It didn’t even matter why her father had brought her, at last; that purpose he hid even from his own men, but she heard them whispering. The Black Hand were abroad in the Westmere, they murmured, beside their fires on the road, when they thought their masters asleep. Didn’t have the men. Needed the King’s aid. Before the winter set in and the roads through the marshes closed up. They were afraid.

But to Sara, phantom Brothers were just another thing to leave behind. Her eighteenth nameday had come and gone that summer, and she was here, finally, released, ready to take her place in the court of the King. Just like she’d always dreamed of. Three years. Would Dana recognise her, she wondered? Would she recognise Dana?

The servant girl arrived back, then, bearing the first of the water, but Sara had already turned back to the open window. The cold breath of the coming winter whispered over the shutters, soft as a prayer, but Sara barely felt it. She let her furs slip from her shoulders, still staring out at the pale keep atop its rock, and the white walls glimmered in her emerald eyes, ember hot and flashing.

The next hour or so passed in a heady daze of steam and perfumed water. The sun was gleaming its last, and the soft, pink light of evening filled the room. Beyond the windows, the sounds of the dying day were rising softly from the streets of Rivertown; wagons rolling across the roadways, fishermen calling out to each other as they ambled towards the cooking fires and ale mugs of their chosen watering holes. Sara had insisted that all of the shutters be opened, and the city walls in the distance blinked back at her in the dimming light. The bath was that perfect warmth, just a fraction from discomfort, and she lay back in it, letting her raven hair float freely in the milky bathwater, cold air brushing against her exposed face. She sighed, content.

‘How’s the water, M’lady?’

Sara opened her eyes, glancing up at the maid beside her. It was the same girl who had showed her to her room when they arrived, skinny as a birch branch and eyes like a frightened doe. Sara decided against covering her modesty.

‘It’s lovely, thank you Ewa.’

‘Would you like me to help you?’ the girl asked, and Sara frowned, looking away with a blush.

‘That… will not be necessary.’

‘As M’lady wishes.’ The girl stepped back through the sliding screen doors, closing them behind her. The ladies in the capital clearly had different sensibilities to the ones back in the Westmere. Sara took a deep breath, closing her eyes again, and sank deeper in the balmy smoothness of the water. After so many weeks of travel, such a long bath seemed a well-earned indulgence. The dirt of the road had long since washed away, at this point, and her skin felt soft and supple as gossamer. She sighed, daydreaming of palace gates opening, peeling back layers of gold, the nobles and musicians and guardsmen in their black armour rising to greet her. Welcome, Lady Westmere, they whispered, and gold gleamed back from walls of marble water. Soon, she would be free. At last.

Her fingers were well-pruned, when she rose at last from the water. The servant girl had left some towels for her, and she snatched one up, ringing her raven-black hair and pressing the dripping, perfumed water from her skin. She’d had two dresses laid out for her, and she stared at each, for a long moment. The green, with intricate golden lace at the bust, her mother had liked. Before. The blue, a more modest affair, had been Dana’s once. She sighed, putting that decision off, a while longer, and stood for a time, looking at her own reflections in the triptych mirror. The rippled brass filled with the pink light of the evening, turning her pale skin bright, picking out the gleaming drops of water on the smoothness of it. Three pairs of eyes, blinking. Three of her. She wondered what worlds they lived in, beyond the distorted face of their mirrors. She wondered if they would trade places, with hers.

‘Enjoying the view?’

Sara blinked, and found the sliding doors behind her open. Her father was standing between them, watching her in the mirror, unblinking.

‘It… it is beautiful.’ She replied, wrapping the towel around her chest.

‘Nothing but the best, for my daughter.’ Her father said proudly, stepping through the door.

‘Do they not knock, in Uldoroth?’

She bit her lip, raising her eyes slowly, and found him staring back at her, a flash of irritation on his narrow face. His green doublet was styled with dark thread, bowed a little around the soft roundness of his belly, and his fingers were silver with rings.

‘Do not talk back to me, Sara.’ he told her, unsmiling. ‘Dinner will be ready soon. We will take it in my chambers.’

‘Apologies, father.’ Sara said quietly, averting her eyes. ‘Is it that time already?’

‘It is late.’ he told her, looking out of the open windows with a sudden smile, anger forgotten. Sara shifted before the mirror, uncomfortable with the closeness of him, but he went over to the windows, indifferent.

‘You should bathe again, before we leave. Three days, I should think. Tomorrow we shall send a bird to the King. He will not keep us waiting long.’ he said idly, still staring up at the looming walls of the city. ‘The green dress, I should think. The one your mother liked. To match your eyes. We must make the right impression, Sara. We cannot be refused.’

‘Yes, father.’

‘The journey to the city will take some hours, more to the keep. I’ll have the stable master polish the carriage and brush the horses, before we go.’

Sara glanced up at him, catching the distant look in his eyes, and realised he wasn’t talking to her at all.

‘They call the keep the City of the Moon. The City within a City.’ he said suddenly, pointing up at the cluster of pale walls atop the escarpment. ‘Do you know why?’

‘No, father.’ she lied, but he didn’t seem to hear her anyway.

‘Because of the Moonsilver. Temur’s Steel. That rock is full of it. The walls, the towers, striped like a desert wolf with the stuff. By moonlight, the streets of the Heartspire glow like silver.’ He paused, looking at Sara knowingly, and she shifted slightly before the mirrors, favouring him with a smile. ‘The First Maker loves nothing better than the moon. Raised the rock himself, if you listen to the priests, of course. Pious nonsense, but it’s pretty, all the same.’

Sara looked up through the window again, then, eyes climbing the sheer-sided rock to the monolithic keep high above. Doors made for giants, opening for her, full of light and music. The evening was dimming, and the pink light of the sun had given way to amber, rippling over the tops of the distant towers like liquid candlelight. It might have been a trick of the dusk, but she thought she spied a glimmer of silver.

‘No army has ever taken the keep.’ her father was saying. ‘Not the traitor Ragnolf and his kin.’

‘Or the Darkness.’ Sara murmured.

‘Stories for children.’ he replied dismissively, falling quiet for a moment. Sara could almost feel the city reaching out to her across the grass, tall and proud and ancient beyond knowing. She could hear the voice of it, the distant wind rushing over the high towers and jewelled parapets, whispering against her ears. Full of promises. But she wasn’t there. Not yet. She adjusted the towel, shifting uncomfortably.

‘How long will you stay, after?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Two weeks, maybe. It will take some time, to prepare the King’s M…’ He paused, then straightened, looking over at her.

‘Come, let me look at you.’

She froze, staring wordlessly at the three versions of herself in the brassy surface of the triptych, and, for a moment, they stared back. Safe. Alone. Then he arrived at her back, emerging into each of the imperfect reflections, blocking the amber light with his shadow. She shivered at the cold air from the window, hands limp at her sides. She could feel him behind her, just inches away, and she looked down at her feet, watching little droplets of water pooling about her toes. His eyes were moving, crawling over her skin, tracing the dripping lines of the water as it rolled down the paleness of her face. Her shoulders. The quiet drew in around them, and the sounds of the street outside became faint with the pressure of it. Sara kept her eyes down, trying to ignore the three other hers, blinking at their feet. The three other shadows, behind them. Instead, she thought of the white walls of the palace beyond the window, listening to ghostly music and laughter on the wind.

‘You are a woman now.’ her father mused, stepping around her, and the three reflections vanished into his shadow. He reached out his hand, taking hold of her chin between his fingers and tilting it up until she was forced to meet his eye. ‘We will find you a fine husband, here, from one of the great houses. Then who will sneer at the Weasel of Westmere?’

Sara said nothing. Her father’s eyes lingered a moment longer, chin wobbling smugly. Then he pulled back his hand and turned on his heel, heading for the door.

‘Have her ready by the hour, girl.’ he barked as he left her chamber, and the servant girl started from her place outside the screen doors, hurrying forward with a handful of towels. Sara caught her eye once as she took one from her, but the girl quickly looked away, and the silence of the room faded, slower than it ought to, into the evening-ease sounds of Rivertown beyond the window.