LIN
Gwydolin can’t name a safer city than Nuaranth. Nevermind that she has yet to travel outside the Upper City, let alone Nuaranth as a whole, the fact remains that she can leave her window open and her door unlocked overnight. And when the white sun casts its dawning rays on her face in the morning, Lin gets out of bed and waltzes over to that open window.
It’s a sight she’s seen her entire life: Nuaranth-by-the-Sea laid bare before her as it tumbles toward the wine-dark coast. From her childhood bedroom in the Upper City, Lin can see the whole of the Lower City, enclosed by Nuaranth’s mighty and majestic walls and vast swathes of Midtown made of red brick and concrete. A pleasant breeze washes over her face, too high for the sea's salt to tease her short, shaven hair. She closes her eyes and takes a deep, contented breath. A knock comes on her bedroom door, right on schedule, and the Bright Caster steps up to it, through the double door open with practiced ease.
“Lady Talivar,” Tessn greets Lin, holding a wig in each hand. Tessn is one of House Talivar's servants, and the one assigned as Lin’s personal aid. Statuesque, tall, and handsome, Tessn wears a man’s servant uniform despite being a woman, with wide sleeves bunching at her elbows and crosshatched pants held up at the waist by a thick, brazen belt. A black armband hugs her upper arm, the standard denotation of the Shadowarch class. “Here is today’s selection for wigs.”
Nuaranthian high fashion dictates the wearing of wigs, the men and women cutting their hair short or shaving their heads to accommodate the daily changing of hairstyles and colors. Lin’s selections for the day are blonde ringlets that would go down past her shoulders or a smart cut bob of chocolaty rich hair. Lin’s ultimate desire is a wig of deep amber, red, or auburn locks cascading down to her waist. Red like the distant walls of cliffs and wasteland prairies. Such hair grows on the heads of westward Stygrians, a rare breed of people secluded in the rural neighborhoods of the Holy City Durduna. A Stygrian in Nuaranth is rare, and rarer still if they give up their hair.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Lin sighs and leads her servant inside her spacious room. She could spin round and round for several paces before risking bumping into furniture, filigree metal- and woodwork imported from Atwurk. Lin’s favorite oil lamp stands in the corner, a souvenir that her brother Dorian bought for her during his stay in Lemlat a few years ago. It’s a squat, ugly thing made of animal bones reshaped by Elemnists. She finds it quaint and would sooner have her room demolished than part with the lamp.
Lin takes her seat in front of her mirrored bureau, the silver mirror held up by filigree brass-work. “What do you think, Tessn? I can’t decide today.”
Tessn starts by carefully placing the blonde wig on Lin’s head. “Well, you always made for a wonderful blonde.” Tessn removes the wig and replaces it with the brunette one. She rakes her fingers through the locks and arranges the hair into a tasteful arrangement. “But this one fits your pretty face perfectly.”
Lin fluffs up the bottom of her bob, turning her head to get a different viewing angle. Tessn remains behind her, a hand on Lin’s shoulder while the other traces the outline of the Bright Caster’s jaw.
“Nuaranthian legend says that the most beautiful woman in the world wore her hair in military fashion,” Tessn says, voice soft in Lin’s ear. Her fingers ran up the side of Lin’s face and brushed the hair behind her ear. “Short and unobtrusive. She was a successful leader who gathered the Shadowarchs and Bright Casters ousted from Durduna and built Nuaranth. Elemnists from the Elemental Order raised the cliff out of the sea to keep her and her people secluded from those that hunted them.” Tessn’s fingers trail down Lin’s neck, leaving goosebumps in their wake, her hand resting on her other shoulder. Lin thinks Tessn is right. This wig makes for a splendorous frame around her face.
“Was she a Bright Caster or Shadowarch?” Lin asks, turning her head in the other direction.
“Some say both.” Tessn reaches across Lin’s back and plucks a silver necklace from the bureau. “Some say neither. I’m sure your father would say she was a Bright Caster.”
“I’m sure he would.” Lin nods. She lets Tessn tip and angle her head to better fit and clasp the necklace around her neck, delighting in her gentle touch. “But what do you think, Tessn?”
“I think she was a Shadowarch,” Tessn says, reaching over Lin again to select a gemstone pendant. She holds two up at either side of Lin’s face at eye level, determining which one works best with her lilac eyes. “Clan Nuaranthia sounds like one that could have existed, no?”
“I suppose so,” Lin demurs. If her father knew the types of conversations they have, he’d eject Tessn from the household faster than Lin can protest. Gwydolin sett Talivar is the delicate flower of House Talivar, the crown jewel of Nuaranth’s upper-crust society. Only women attend her, for men would not keep their lecherous hands off her. Her thoughts are the High Councilor’s own and she is the perfect reflection of Patrician Ideals.
It’s all so ridiculous. It’s all so absurd.
Lin wants to see outside the Upper City. She wants to walk the streets of Midtown and the wharves of the Lower City. She wants to gaze upon the red rock wasteland as it rushes past, trains bound to Atwurk and Lemlat and Korazenur. At least she had the worldly Tessn to tell her tales and myths and legends. Lin closes her eyes and leans into her servant’s arm as the woman affixes a citrine pendant to her silver necklace.
Tessn pulls back, to Lin’s mild disappointment, her work done and crossed arms concealed inside her baggy sleeves. Lin reexamines her reflection. She’s hated her dark hair ever since black went out of vogue and this chocolaty brown wig isn’t an improvement in her eyes, but Tessn’s honeyed words have turned her around on it. The citrine is a pleasant choice, though Lin would have gone with plain silver were she dressing herself. It would even pair her sleeveless nightgown, made of undyed silk.
“I’ll prepare your morning bath and day clothes, Lady Talivar,” Tessn says with a deep bow. “In the meantime, I believe your brother is still eating breakfast in the third dining room.” The third dining room is the smallest of House Talivar’s seven dining rooms, meant for rare family meals and breakfasts. Don’t mistake this for the fourth dining room; it’s reserved for business breakfasts and ally meetings. Which is not the sixth dining room used for exclusive luncheons with allied houses.
Gwydolin walks barefoot through House Talivar, passing by painted marble sculptures of her ancestors, their tasteful nudeness undercut with modesty wreaths around the hips. She trails her fingers along the floor-to-ceiling windows on the outer wall, fingertips drawing out little squeaks and leaving streaks behind. Crystal lights hang from the ceiling, the twinkling creation of Bright Casters from the art district, fulgent and gentle and twinkling. Lin stops to look at the one she broke about a decade ago when she was eight, experimenting with her Inner Light as children are wont to do. In a panic, she attempted to replace the crystals she broke by creating her own hardlight. The resulting crystals remain imperfect, yet no one has ever mentioned it. She knows now that someone discovered the obvious recreation, but an eight-year-old Bright Caster being able to create hardlight is something to be celebrated. Lin smiles and continues walking down the helical hallway toward her dining room destination.
A voice comments as Lin enters the dining area, “—not like those stuffy librarians.” She recognizes the voice, and then the figure, of Garrison Commander Syn sett Harros. He’s tall, though not as tall as Tessn, and boxy, his tan-skinned face smooth and clean-shaven. Commander Harros stands across from Gwydorian, Lin’s older brother of twice her age.
Gwydorian defies the rule of high fashion by keeping his natural dark hair, though he keeps it cropped close to his head. He glances at his sister with hard eyes, glittering with Inner Light, and raises a finger to his lips as a gesture to mute the Garrison Commander.
“So they know how to fight,” Dorian says, his low voice rumbling. “This changes nothing. Since they fell for the trap at the sanctuary, this tells us they are still delightfully ignorant of the situation. Maintain patrols there and increase patrols in Midtown and the Lower City. Flush them out and keep them silent.”
“And the other thing?” Commander Harros asks. “At the Garrison?”
Dorian gives him a sharp look, one that says “Not here. Not in front of Gwydolin.”
“It can wait,” he says aloud, jaw clenching.
“It really can’t,” Harros says, voice insistent.
“Then handle it and get back to me later.” Dorian turns to his breakfast, curried eggs and shaved Jalla Root. “If there’s anything else, bring it forward now.”
“Kuna has too much influence in the ghetto,” Harros says, folding his arms behind his back. “She makes demands of my lieutenants, and those demands are being met.”
“That sounds like a discipline issue,” Dorian sighs. “Pull out the ones caving and send them to reeducation. Fill the gaps with twice the number of Praetors. Is that all?”
“Yes, sir.” Commander Harros bows to Dorian. He stops to bow to Lin, standing in the doorway the entire time with an uncomfortable expression on her face. “Lady Talivar.”
Lin takes a seat across from her older brother, shying beneath his strenuous gaze. “What was that about?”
He dismisses her curiosity with a wave of his hand. “Work matters. At least House Harros is no longer in charge of the Garrison. Old Man Quinlan would put the city under lockdown at the slightest inconvenience.” Such events are before Lin’s time, although she remembers how red-faced Dorian would get before the High Council’s reorganization, which named him Militia Councilor and placed the Garrison under his department. Having the whole of Nuaranth’s law and military under one person simplifies matters, and Lin can’t think of a person better suited to that position than her even-keeled brother.
“Onto other matters, though.” Dorian straightens in his favorite high-backed chair, which seems to follow him wherever he goes.. The worn leather is cracking and coated in stubborn stains of a strange hue. Lin has never seen him sit in another chair and she’s examined it several times. With creases, fades, and cracks intact, she can confidently declare it’s the same chair, not duplicates. “How is work on your Demesne coming?”
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“Well,” Lin starts, shifting her weight from side to side. “I mean, what is a Demesne anyway? Can we consider hardlight as a universal Demesne and everything else just applications of it, or is there some genetic defect—which I lack—that expresses itself through Bright Casting?” A house servant offers a brief reprieve by setting a plate of food down in front of her. Lin’s typical meal consists of a pair of eggs cooked at such a low and slow so it never crisps or browns, leaving only smooth whiteness, and a thick slice of fluffy white bread to soak up all the butter used to cook the eggs in such a manner.
“You’ve made no progress,” Dorian states, hands folded together. His cold eyes look straight through her.
“None whatsoever.” Lin looks down, avoiding his eyes. “It’s difficult, okay? You can’t expect me to pull a Demesne out of thin air.”
“The Elemental Order expects its Elemnists to have formed a Demesne before they reach sixteen years,” Dorian says, voice firm. “I’ve been pushing such standards for Bright Casters to the High Council. You need to build one before you turn twenty.”
Lin bristles at his demand. He is asking her to become the youngest Bright Caster across their entire history to form a Demesne and he’s making such a demand with such flippancy. How dare she not break the mold? How dare she shame her House with such mediocrity? She doesn’t deserve to be their delicate flower.
“Yes, sir,” Lin demurs. Dorian nods his head, satisfied for now, and rises from his seat. Once he leaves, Lin unclenches her fists. She looks down at her palms, sharp indentations from her fingernails aching with her beating heart.
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Gwydolin attends private lessons with her Bright Casting tutor outside House Talivar’s spire in a neighboring tower called the Water Downs, where a soda water spring bubbles up around the perimeter before cascading off the cliff and into Midtown as humble mineral water. Since her tutor is male, she’s accompanied by four Praetors and their handler, a female lieutenant from the Garrison. Tessn also accompanies Lin, keeping a pace behind her and to the right. The servant cast tepid glares at the Praetors, her shoulders stiff and her eyes narrow.
“Lady Talivar, are these things too close to you?” Tessn asks, unprompted. “Are you uncomfortable? Do you need more room to breathe?” They are walking along an open-air walkway that bridges the House Talivar spire to the rest of the neighborhood. If she desired, Lin could’ve taken a litter. The walkway is wide enough to accommodate two lanes of litter traffic and pedestrian traffic, but she likes to feel the air on her face.
“I’m fine, Tessn,” Lin says, terse and sharp. She’s still riled up from her earlier interaction with Dorian. During her morning bath, she vented about it to Tessn as the servant washed her scalp, but she’s put the morning’s events behind her.
“If you need space, you only have to say the word.” Lin grimaces and gives her a curt wave. The constant coddling is stifling. She has no issue with the Praetors. That’s a “Tessn Issue,” which is something Lin doesn't understand but will accommodate when her humors are agreeable. But now, Lin wants to exercise what little authority she has in her household.
The walking path feeds into an air-born plaza, a wide oval with a glass viewing platform in the floor at the center. Residents and tourists can see Midtown below, staring at the building tops. Gwydolin, during a rare and brief visit to the High Council, presented an art feature that could bridge the gap between the plaza and the structure beneath it: a pillar of hardlight, with the top half built by Upper City Bright Casters and the lower half built by Midtown Bright Casters. They shot down the idea as being a needless and expensive security risk. The memory only sours Lin’s already terrible mood, and she walks a direct line through the plaza toward the Water Downs, cutting through other pedestrians as her Praetor escorts push them aside.
The Water Downs was the first building built on top of the cliff and looks it. Its stone and glass construction doesn’t mesh with Nuaranth’s newer buildings, built by hand many years ago as a symbol of Nuaranthian ingenuity outside of the Elemental Order and its sects. Elemnist buildings all look the same, their construction materials shaped through Elemnistry as uniform pieces with no seams or mortar. But Nuaranth built the Water Downs through planning and pride, not instinct and magic. They built it over the soda spring from which it derives its name, meant to be a facility to pump and collect the soda water and house the pump workers. In today’s day and age, however, the spring flows out of the structure and down into a Midtown reservoir, though it loses its effervescence during the trip. The main lobby has a fountain that still burbles with spring water and the once-clean statuaries now stand encrusted and misshapen with collected mineral deposits.
Gwydolin approaches the fountain and holds her hand out. “Tessn, my cup,” she says and Tessn pulls a long-handled cup out of her sleeve. Made of polished silver, Lin’s spring water cup reflects the outside world in distorted imagery while ruddy, reddish mineral deposits cake the inside. Tessn cleans it out regularly, even resorting to chiseling the crystals off, but constant use dirties the inside. Lin fills her cup and takes a long drink. The water is fresh and effervescent; the bubbles tickling the inside of her mouth. She takes a second, and third, drink before handing the cup back to Tessn. The servant wipes the rim with a cloth before stashing it back in her large sleeves.
“Stairs,” the lieutenant orders her Praetors once they reach the lift. “Fourth floor.” The Praetors comply with stony silence, ascending the adjacent staircase. Both Lin and the officer enter the lift, but when Tessn tries to join them, she’s barred from entry.
“I cannot leave my lady’s side,” Tessn says, chest puffing up at the indignity.
“She needs her space,” the lieutenant sneers. Tessn tenses, her typical smooth and good-natured expression hardening into something Lin doesn’t recognize.
Tessn takes a step forward. “I cannot.” She stands much taller than the officer, who is taller than Gwydolin.
The Garrison lieutenant extends a forearm blade made from hardlight and points it at Tessn, the tip pressed against her chest, halting her in her tracks. “Watch your tongue.”
Lin grabs her forearm and lowers the blade. Her earlier worries evaporate from the current worry strangling her heart.
“Tes, I’ll be fine,” Lin says, “just take the stairs.” When Tessn doesn’t step back, her brow furrowed as if contemplating fighting a lieutenant, Lin includes a muted and timid “please.” Tessn gives in and steps back enough for the lift doors to close. As the lift begins its ascent, the lieutenant retracts her hardlight blade and scoffs.
“Shadowarchs,” she says, placing a hand on the small of Lin’s back. Lin jolts at the touch but says nothing. Once the lift stops at the fourth floor, she exits first. In full view of Tessn, her Bright Casting instructor, and the previous students still packing their things after their lesson, Gwydolin spins around on her heels and slaps her escort with an open palm across the face. Her palm stings and throbs with the impact, growing numb in places.
“You do not speak to my servants,” Lin says, voice rising and cracking, pushing her finger into the other woman’s sternum. “You do not threaten them, you do not decide for me, and you DO NOT touch me!” Lin punctuates her statement with another full-on slap across the face with her other hand in the opposite direction. Fuming, she walks away without caring about spectators, finding solace in a seat.
“A cold cloth for your hands, Lady Talivar?” Tessn says, standing a respectful distance apart from her, proffering the cloth in question with a shallow bow. Lin takes it, mumbling her thanks, coming down from her adrenal high.
She shouldn’t have done that. She shouldn’t have directed her aggression towards the lieutenant. That woman is crying, rubbing her cheek, with the Praetors offering neither comfort nor compassion. Talking to the lieutenant would have made her remember her station. It felt good, though.
“Ah, Lin, it is good to see you,” her instructor says, ushering out his previous students. He sounds as if nothing controversial happened, but his expression says otherwise. “I’ll give you a moment before we start.”
Only women can attend to Lin, “lest men try to despoil my precious daughter” as her father would say, ignorant of the proclivities of certain women and Lin’s own preferences for the fairer sex. But both he and Dorian made an exception for Jontonvair sett Kinkara, her Bright Casting instructor. He’s the oldest son of Councilor Fenoiryne, a close political ally of House Talivar, and a superb Bright Caster besides, having formed his Demesne five years prior at twenty. Despite his popularity with Gwydolin's generation of young women, his natural ability to not only Bright Cast but also teach others to form a Demesne was more than enough to overlook the tragedy of his gender. “Awakening” he calls it, and it is the pursuit of “Awakening” he loves more than anything else, as shown by his bachelor status.
Once Lin steadies her breathing, and the pain in her palms has subsided, she stands up, ready to take her lesson head on.
“Before we begin,” Jonton says, “let’s go over a brief thought experiment.” The twinkling in his eyes flares bright as he levels an open palm to the floor. Crystal hardlight erupts from his hand, glowing bright white, the square pillar extending from his palm until it comes to a rest on the floor. His splayed fingers relax, and he moves his hand, the hardlight column remaining upright where he left it.
“Behold, light!” He holds out both hands on either side of the column in a similar fashion, fingers splayed and palms facing the floor. Brilliant hardlight grows from his palms again, and he leaves them on the floor. “More light!” The crystals illuminate his face from the bottom up, casting a sinister shadow over his otherwise compassionate demeanor. “Tell me what you notice, Lady Talivar.”
Gwydolin observes the pillars. Their white light does little to illuminate each other’s surfaces and, being light sources themselves, cast no shadows when they block each other’s glow. She walks a circle around the display, squinting her eyes, trying to force herself to see something other than a modern art display. Her mind wanders. It would look rather nice in her room.
“Perhaps you’ll see what I’m trying to show you when I do this.” Jontonvair points at the central column, a thin strand of light shooting from the fingertip and pouring into the hardlight. Its luminosity climbs until it’s three times as bright as the other two, its crystal hard edges indistinct. Lin, still walking around the structure, squints her eyes harder. When light from the central column meets the outer columns, it splits into a “v” shape, that inner space still lit up by the dimmer crystal. She stands in that space, cocking her head to the side. Lin knows that this is what her instructor is trying to show her, but she doesn’t have the faintest idea why.
She glances at her shiny shoes and the shadow on the floor and wall. Multiple light sources fracture her shadow, from Jonton’s display to the crystal lights in the ceiling. It’s darkest where they coalesce, the focal point of light and shadow. Lin’s eyes scan across the shadow that spreads across the floor where the light is brightest, pallid and thin. It’s the same shadow as the uncovered light inside the “v” she’s standing within.
“What is a shadow?” Jonton asks, stroking his clean-shaven chin in thought. He doesn’t wait for Gwydolin to answer. “The absence of light? When you stand in-front of a bright light, your shadow stretches across the floor. But what about light blocking light? Is that a shadow?” He stands by the Bright Caster and points at the floor. “It still illuminates the ground. That’s not a shadow, is it?” He points at her shadow, the one on the floor where the light is brightest. “That’s a shadow. But they are the same shade!” He pinches the air with his entire hand, both of them, and makes an aggressive shaking gesture. With a snap of his fingers, Jontonvair dissolves his hardlight columns. He walks to stand across from and holds his palms up toward the ceiling.
“When two light sources illuminate opposite sections of the same hallway corner, the wall still casts a shadow,” he says, gesturing with his hands. “Light overlaps light in the bright spots and shadow intersects shadow in the dark spots. We have shadows and a focal point of light. But what do we call that space in-between, where light and shadow mix?” He stares at Lin, her lips parted as she thinks about his words. “And do you think a Shadowarch could control it?” He drops his hands.
“A ‘light shadow?’” Gwydolin purses her lips. She doesn’t know what to make of Jonton’s lecture. What is light and dark? Two points of the same spectrum?
“While you think on that, we’ll begin your Bright Casting exercises,” Jonton says, flourishing a hand and emitting a thin switch made from brittle hardlight, dull. “One Awakens their Demesne through instinct. Now—” he swats Lin’s calf, his hardlight switch shattering. She flinches away from the impact, her calf skin stinging “—fight!”