I.
Kiran Sept was born with a broken back. Or, at least, that was what the Gales at the sparehouse said. She couldn’t argue with them, either. She had been broken as far back as she could remember.
The Sparehouse of Ciltigan was a strange, five-story structure that stuck out of the surrounding valley like a jagged, rotting tooth. It had been built an age before the Gales took it over at the behest of some long-past Emperor or other. Kiran only knew enough to imagine him in his golden robes, dictating that the village of Ciltigan be blessed with a place for all its parentless children. A place for the poor and hungry to dispense with their spare offspring, funded by a family that would never comprehend what being poor and hungry really was—let alone experience it.
If her life growing up under the vestals had made her bitter, so be it. Kiran dared anyone to be surprised.
“Kiran!” Nessa’s rushing footsteps echoed behind her. Splat, splat.
Autumn in the hills was always muddy.
“You’ll never hear the end of it,” Kiran hummed, gaze dropping to Nessa’s splattered hem as the girl fell into stride beside her.
“I’ll care when I’m not the one doing the laundry,” Nessa shot back, her sallow face brightening with a defiant sort of glee. Barely a beat passed before she was forced to stop mid-stride, kicking up a knee to help her support the bushel of apples in her arms.
Kiran bit back the urge to ask if she needed help. She already had her own load: an amphora almost as big as her own torso, nestled securely against her hip. Every day like clockwork, no matter the weather, no matter how aching her bones, it was Kiran’s responsibility to wake early and gather water from the creek for Vesta Enna. Then again at midday, and late afternoon, and before the Gale took her supper…
Solisdae was undisputedly the worst: while everyone else took their restday, Kiran had triple the work to provide enough water for Vesta Enna’s weekly bathing.
Kiran hated Solisdae almost as much as she hated Vesta Enna.
”What are those for?” She nodded toward the basket of apples. Their waxy red skins were livid in the overcast light.
“Haven’t you heard?” Nessa’s eyes went wide, excitement flushing her cheeks with such suddenness it startled her companion.
“Heard how? I’ve been carting water all morn—”
Nessa’s excitement got the better of her. Before Kiran knew it, she was drawing as close as their individual burdens allowed, pinching her words into the least effective whisper Kiran had ever witnessed.
“There’s an envoy coming from the capital!”
Disbelief flooded her. Ciltigan was about as far from Baxes as anything could get.
”Why?” She scoffed, ignoring the way the amphora on her hip grew heavier the longer they remained stationary.
Ciltigan could boast—at best—twelve-hundred people during the harvesting season, when workers came trickling in from the surrounding counties to relieve the orchards of their fruit. Apples were the only reason anyone would ever come to the village, save perhaps to deliver a spare mouth or two to the sparehouse. Even then, someone from the capital would surely be more interested in the pomegranate orchards of Tourkik or the olive fields of Elada.
A brief flash of uncertainty passed over Nessa’s features, betraying the fact that she hadn’t asked herself the same question. She didn’t consider it for long, though, quick to return to her previous enthusiasm.
“I don’t know,” she answered gleefully, offering the best approximation of a shrug the weight between her arms could allow.
Kiran watched as her gaze dropped downward, then rushed back to meet her. She was thankful that Nessa was not explicit in her consideration of her friend’s condition. Nessa started back down the narrow path toward the sparehouse, slowly enough that her limping companion could keep up.
Her right leg was slower than the left and intermittently prone to numbness. The crooked bones in her lower back gifted her a permanent leftward tilt from the hip upward. It was convenient enough for carrying a heavy amphora on her hip like a babe, but over the years the rigidity in her spine had seeped down into her leg. Vesta Enna would never waste sparehouse resources on a healer for someone like Kiran. Luckily, she didn’t need a professional opinion to know that it was only a matter of time before her right leg refused to listen to her commands altogether.
Like the inevitability of anything else grievously unpleasant—violence, war, mortality—it wasn’t something she thought about often.
As she and Nessa made their way back to the sparehouse, Kiran considered their impending visitors while Nessa chirped on about the mystery. She would make a good addition to the Nightingales some day, birdlike as she was.
The last few steps up the hill consisted of a short limestone staircase made of the same irregular gray stones as the sparehouse itself. Only the black shale roof was visible until they crested the top stair—a task made incredibly difficult when Nessa stopped dead in front of her.
Kiran opened her mouth to complain as she elbowed her way onto the thin stair with her, but her protests died on her lips the instant she looked up.
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The entirety of the sparehouse’s inhabitants—and the village of Ciltigan, it appeared—were assembled on the front lawn. Split onto either side of the entrance path, they were in the closest approximation of order Kiran had ever seen them achieve.
At the center, looming high above the heads of Ciltigan’s assembled citizens, was a domed litter. The eight figures supporting its weight were not robed as she remembered the governor’s attendants to be, but instead clad in full blackplate armor and horned helms. The peak of the litter’s roof blossomed out into a cascade of golden and black flowers she didn’t recognize, held aloft at each corner by intricately carved rearing rams. Thick, black curtains dripping with golden tassels lined the four sides, hiding the litter’s inhabitant from the outside world.
Vesta Enna stood at the top of the stairs at the entrance of the sparehouse, exchanging words Kiran couldn’t hear with someone Kiran couldn’t see. Nessa shot off ahead of her to join the crowd, leaving Kiran to ease her aching body across the lawn in her wake. Prone to curiosity as she was, she didn’t share her companion’s enthusiasm for the show unfolding before them.
If anything, there was a sinking feeling in her stomach. The brief, suspended clarity of dread that came right before a fall. She chewed at the inside of her cheek, coming to a stop beside Nessa at the edge of the assembly.
Eogan, a local orchardsmith’s son who happened to be of an age with them, leaned sidelong to nudge an elbow against Nessa’s arm. His brows rose in a teasing flicker as they shared a glance of excitement that Kiran could not bring herself to feel.
Snatches of Vesta Enna’s clear voice carried over the heads of the crowd. She was imploring their visitors to take full advantage of the sparehouse’s meager accommodations, begging forgiveness for their humble offerings…
Kiran had never witnessed a single speck of humility in Vesta Enna. When the Gale drew into the low bow of a servant, risking muddying her robes on the cobblestone stair, Kiran was afflicted with a foreboding sense of the uncanny. Had she fallen into another world while gathering water at the creek?
Eogan elbowed deeper into the crowd, making way for Nessa—and Kiran—to wedge themselves closer to the fore behind him. Between the shoulders of the other Ciltigans, she could make out the man standing at the foot of the sparehouse steps: he wore a scholar’s braid looped tightly at the top of his head, black robes printed with golden flowers and cinched with a belt of intertwined ram’s horns. He offered a much more abridged bow to Vesta Enna, which seemed to act more as permission for her to return to her feet than proper graciousness.
Kiran watched as the Gale straightened, her gaze downcast in a show of submission as uncharacteristic of Vesta Enna as snow was to a summer’s day.
The robed attendant gestured back toward the litter and continued to speak.
“His grace thanks you for your hospitality, and extends his deepest apologies for the sudden nature of his arrival—”
A murmur like the sound of distant birdsong came as the litter’s curtains shifted, and only then did Kiran realize there were bells attached to the tassels. She pulled her gaze from the attendant toward the litter, following the sound. The noise of them choked the attendant into silence.
A brown hand held back the front curtain, thick palm speckled with pale patches that reminded Kiran of moss creeping across dark stone. One of the ram-headed soldiers slid out from beneath the burden of the litter, moving around the exterior of the litter with surprising deftness to draw the curtains open. The level of the litter never wavered, even when he rejoined his brethren. She had never seen such precision.
Ice filled her belly for a second time. She became suddenly aware of the thick silence that surrounded her. Whatever murmuring sounds a crowd ought to have made had suddenly disappeared. She cast her attention toward those closest to her and found only uncertainty and anxiety in their faces. All of them were focused on the same point.
Kiran swallowed against the tension in her throat and followed their collective gaze.
At the center of the litter, unshaded by the overcast light, sat a man such as she’d never seen. Even seated, she could tell he was thicker and taller than any man she had ever met. He was exposed to the waist even in the chill of late-autumn, black silk robes pooling in his lap. His muscled chest was mottled with white just as his hand had been, collecting along the angles of his shoulders and trickling down his breast like a mantle. His black hair was shaved from the cheek downward in a swordsman’s cut, intricately braided to expose the streaks of stark white at his temples. He had the unpierced ears of nobility but, strangely, wore no other jewelry.
“Our men are accustomed to discomfort, Vesta Enna.”
His voice was deep and surprisingly clear, each letter sharp with the precise pronunciation of an educated man. She didn’t know what she had expected, but it wasn’t that.
”We would not deign to burden your house with more mouths. With your permission, we shall make camp here.” He gestured toward the lawn that stretched out in front of the sparehouse, ignoring the way Vesta Enna stumbled over her own words in an attempt to devise an acceptable form of protest. The crowd began to whisper, exchanging uncertain glances.
“But, your grace, we—”
He raised a single hand. Silence cut through the world like the swing of a headsman’s blade.
Not just precision. Power.
“We shall camp here.”
It had never been a matter of Vesta Enna’s permission, Kiran realized. She watched as the Gale sank into another bow.
The giant man in the golden litter gave a single, succinct gesture and the armored men carrying him set to work splitting the crowd. Kiran felt the sudden press of people working against her, attempting to accommodate their movements without upending the amphora of water on her hip. She had forgotten how heavy it was, how numb her leg had grown.
Eogan stood steadfast at her back. She didn’t know if his support was coincidental or intentional, but it kept her upright all the same as the crowd condensed to let the envoy through.
The sound of bells passed close over their heads, and when Kiran looked up, she was met with a set of pale violet eyes.
The symmetrical patches dancing down his face formed a mask across his eyes. His brows and lashes were white. Purple eyes struck her as something unnatural. Was he touched by magic, like the Emperor’s wives? Like the witch-forgers of the damask blades?
She only realized she was staring after him when Nessa pulled her back to reality, tugging on her free arm. Kiran’s back screamed in protest but she bit down on the familiar taste of pain, ignoring the way her vision weakened with it.
“Who was that?” Nessa squeaked, apparently still possessed by an unwavering enthusiasm.
Eogan shifted away from Kiran, the crowd beginning to disperse around them. Some returned to work, others gathering into pockets of whispering gossips.
“Didn’t you see all the goat horns?” He asked, disbelief painting his tone. “That’s Baran Capra, the only son of Emperor Grana’s widow.”
Kiran felt her head swim.
What the hell was a prince doing in Ciltigan?
“They call him the Piebald Prince.”