The Shapes in the Floorboards
When at last she slept once more, Llaneth did not dream. There was no bright flowing river, no horse. She did not feel the urgency of the boy’s hand at her waist. There was no subtle movement in the grass beneath her feet.
The guards had performed a thorough search of the corridors and found nothing. She had not expected them to. The darkling was hers; she sensed it somehow. Bound to her. Part of the same pattern.
In the morning, the sun shone once more through her window, and when she stood gazing out over the walls and the plain, she saw no dark speck on the face of the mountain.
But the break in the pattern remained. A shadow had come into her home, and though she could not see it, yet she sensed it in the way the curtains moved in the slight breeze, in the way the light played through the crystal bottles that stood on her dressing table. The pattern was broken, and no one, not armies or kingdoms, could piece it back together again.
She opened her bedroom door and found a white-cloaked figure outside, standing up smartly to attention as though he had known she would open the door right then.
“My lady, he said, executing a graceful bow.
“Lucre!” she exclaimed, smiling. “Have you been here all night?”
Lucre inclined his head. He was an elegant man, and he held himself as light as a dancer. He was from Telemour, and his skin was a deep, rich brown. Burnt by the sun, she had always supposed, though she had never asked him about it.
“A man does not sleep when there is a shadow in his house,” he said. “Though I trust you slept, my lady?”
“I slept well enough, master sword.”
“Then you are no man.”
She punched him gently on the arm. He did not flinch.
“How did you know that I would come out of the door at that moment?” She asked.
“How do you know that I knew?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been standing to attention all night.”
“I saw the maids going in; I saw them coming out. It was easy to discern the pattern.”
“The maids never told me that you were out here.”
“Perhaps I did not wish to keep the company of maids this morning.”
“You mean you made yourself invisible?”
“There are many ways to avoid the attention of men and maids, my lady. Would you call a sword a sunflower if I placed it in a bowl and set it on your nightstand? A sword remains itself regardless of the scabbard.”
“And yet, I have never seen you draw yours, master sword. Why is that?”
“If you have your servant uncork a bottle, do you not drink the wine?”
He bowed once more, and she curtsied in return. The day was always brighter when Lucre was around. The events of the night were already fading in her memory like a dream. Like the fluttering of a moth at the glass, gone by morning.
But the sense of wrongness returned as she descended the stairs. It came up through the grain of the wood pressing through her silk slippers. It was in the touch of her fingers on the handrail. In the way the light fell through the arches. A softness, a sickness. The pattern was sagging, like a fruit left in the sun.
She found her sisters in the parlour taking breakfast. Fentallion sprawled across an armchair, one arm hooked over the back of it, raven dark hair spread across the green velvet. Lenadriel sat at the small table, back straight, sipping from a glass of creamy fresh milk.
She almost ran to them, but she restrained herself, keeping her back very straight, her steps very even. She was a princess, after all.
“Ah, sister,” cried Lenadriel. “I hear you called the guard last night.
Llaneth frowned. She did not wish to talk about it, or the creeping feeling that was climbing up her legs. She wanted to eat fruit and talk about horses and who would dance with who at the high summer dance.
“Please, just can we be normal for an hour. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s unsettling.”
“Did you see the Darkling?” said Fentallion, leaning forward, a glint in her eye.
“I saw, well, I thought I saw a shadow and heard a noise like a dog scratching at my door.”
Lenadriel smiled and shivered. “It is delicious,” she said between sips of milk. “A shadow in the castle, and no one knows whence it came.”
“It’s easy for you to say,” said Llaneth, abandoning her attempt at normality. “You have a stilled heart of armour. What do I have?”
“You can burn a man if you will it,” replied Fentallion. “But we will keep guards outside your door tonight and every night nonetheless. I’ll have Lucre see to it.”
Llaneth smiled, remembering the comfort she had felt that morning upon waking and finding Lucre at her door. Perhaps the shadow could be held at bay by a man with a white cloak and a sharp sword.
“Here, sit and have some apples,” said Llenadriel, patting the bench next to her. “They are last season, but they have been well stored. There are some cinnamon raisins, too. It is a fine day for riding. Will you come with us once you have eaten?”
Llaneth sat and allowed her sister to fuss and fill her plate with fruit and slices of meat, but the shapes of the food on the plate were wrong. The colours swam before her eyes. She clutched her sister's arm and squeezed her eyes shut, suddenly nauseous.
“Do you ever feel like someone is talking about you?” She said. “Like they are making decisions about you, and you don’t know it?”
The words tumbled out in a rush, and inexplicably, she felt hot tears starting.
Lenadriel laughed. “Why, sister, whatever do you mean? Of course people are making decisions about us all the time. We are high princesses. What else would they be doing?”
“I just feel like something is coming for us. Maybe something bad. Something really, really bad. I don’t know why, I just feel it in the wood and the walls. Like it’s written in the shapes of the grain in the floorboards.”
“Oh, sister, Come riding with us,” said Lenadriel, placing a soft hand on her shoulder. “It is a fancy, Tis all. We are surrounded by guards in the heart of the White City. Nothing can come on us, nothing at all.”
But Fentallion said nothing, and her eyes were dark.
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An hour later, once breakfast was eaten, the three sisters slipped out of a side door and into the busy city. The streets were crowded with vendors and barrow men, carts piled high with silk and fruit, sweets and trinkets. Llenadriel dashed from one stall to the next, inspecting the wares, touching and lifting fabrics and gold with long, slender fingers. She held up a piece to her neck, a delicate gold tracework studded with opals. The merchant, an owl-faced man festooned in flouncing silk swags, hung close by wringing his hands.
“It's very you, sister.” Said Fentallion, who had no time for ornaments. But it is not gold, see? She waved a hand, brushing away the illusion. The tracework became grey lace. The opals faded to pebbles.
“Oh, you are a spoilsport, “ said Lenadriel, waving her hand in the opposite direction and restoring the illusion. The piece sparkled once more, but the opals remained stones.
Llenadriel placed the necklace back in its box, and the vendor melted into the shadows behind the barrow, owl face inscrutable.
“The horses are to be brought to the clock gate,” said Fentallion. “Which way will we go?”
The clock gate was a short walk down the straightways past the jeweller's district. The people were gentle, and the crowds thin, but Fentallion had a glint in her eye.
“Let’s take the Warren,” she said.
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Llenadriel’s eyes lit up. “Do you remember the spice market? And the rat men got in among the traders and there was a fight and one of them died.”
“Oh please, let’s not,” said Llaneth. “We can follow the straightway and be at the gate in no time.”
“But then we will be there before the horses,” said Lenadriel.
“But we could pass Bertina’s on the straightway.”
“There are bookshops in the Warren,” said Fentallion, already making her way to the nearest archway that nestled dark between two shops. “Come, sister. It will take your mind off things.”
Llaneth followed her sisters reluctantly into the dark tunnel that yawned between two shops. A drip of water landed on her nose. The walls were the backs of the shops. Passing between them, it was as though they were shunning her. Then, the tunnel opened out onto the market.
On the straightaway, the barrow men were polite, reticent even. They waited to be spoken to. Here, behind the shops, the people crowded in close, holding out handfuls of ruby chips, bags of saffron, bone dice, dancing moles in tiny pink dresses.
A man with the face of a moth and great grey wings turned the handle of a mechanism, and music tumbled out like sparks. Lleandriel smiled and tossed him a silver coin. He flourished his coat and caught it in his pocket without taking his hands from the crank.
“See, sister?” She said. This is the real city, not the straightway. Why would you want to miss this?
Fentallion hurried back from where she had been scouting out ahead.
“The bone market is on today,” she said. “Come quickly before the ways change.“
Lenadriel and Fentallion hurried down an alleyway, and Llaneth was carried along with them. The alley became dark, then light again, and Llaneth felt a twinge of vertigo as it opened out onto a wide open space with walls of stone and silk.
The square was carpeted with blankets, each one a stall, and each blanket was covered with skulls. There were ordinary animal skulls, goat, sheep, rabbit. Tiny little mouse and mole skulls. A basket full of seed heads turned out to be the dried heads of bees, a thousand segmented eyes, glistening.
In the middle of one blanket was the great skull of a mammoth, blackened with age. The tusks were carved with hunting scenes, men with spears and nets crowding towards a precipice, Ill-fated animals stumbling before them.
The traders were small and hooded. They kept their heads down so she could only make out the tips of their bony noses, the barest suggestion of eyes and teeth.
Fentallion and Lenadriel glowed brightly, creating shadows in hundreds of empty eye sockets. They stepped, stepped, light feet among the blankets and skulls, graceful as dancers.
Llaneth followed along behind, careful not to crush any of the small bones. She envied her sister’s grace sometimes. She had no doubt that they could leap across the whole square in a single bound if they wished it, but instead, they danced and pirouetted, animated by the flame that spun in each of their hearts.
Instinctively, she put her hand to her bracelet, the thin grey band that represented her own connection. She drew the power into her, but it was only a whisp of an ember, while their power was a playful bonfire that could be coaxed into an inferno if either of them willed it.
Fentallion drew near her. “Come, sister,” she whispered. “Feel the power and dance with it.”
Fentallion took her round the waist and drew her in, turning her round and out across the square. She stepped softly between the bones. Llaneth’s power guttered like smoke, and she almost fell, but Fentallion lifted her up and over the bones as easily as a mother might lift a baby. Llaneth forgot sometimes how strong her sisters were. Strong and fast enough to protect a kingdom. She danced faster and faster, coming together with Lenadriel who shimmered across the floor towards them like a figure seen through smoke. The veil lifted, and for a heartbeat, she saw her sister's true forms, armoured and terrible, trailing smoke from their eyes.
There was the tiniest of crunching sounds. Llaneth lifted her foot and was mortified to find fragments of rabbit skull broken beneath her slipper. The hooded trader hissed in annoyance. Llaneth felt her cheeks reddening, then Fentallion was there.
“Here is gold,” she said, tossing a small bag at the foot of the trader, who snatched it up eagerly. “Now say the words.”
“Your debt is paid,” echoed the trader, repeating the formula, undoing the bone debt.
Giggling, Lenadriel and Fentallion half dragged, half carried Llaneth out, across the square and into the alley beyond.
Llaneth found she was trembling. “I didn’t want to come down here,” she mumbled, staring at a place where the corner of a stone block lined up with the edge of a building. Pattern was comforting. People were unpredictable, but pattern could be relied on.
“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” said Lenadriel. ”It was only a skull.”
“You don’t know what it was to him,” she said. “Maybe it was the spirit of his grandmother or something.”
“It was a skull,” said Fentallion. “See? I brought a piece to check.” She opened her hand, revealing a curved white disk the size of a coin.
Llaneth looked closely. It was indeed just a skull. There was no illusion she could perceive.
“They sell them for food,” said Fentallion. “The copperberries eat them in the autumn before the change comes on them. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Llaneth felt her embarrassment beginning to ease. Her cheeks began to cool.
“Can we just get to the clock gate, please?” She asked.
Fentallion nodded and led the way.
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Half an hour later, the sisters emerged back into the straightway close to the clock gate square. The horses were already saddled and ready, attended by a small group of grooms and whitecloaks, Llaneth swung up into her saddle and waited by the gates for her sisters to be ready. Her horse was a small bay animal, lively and quick with bright intelligent eyes. It trotted easily around the cobblestones, eager to be off. Her sisters had massive chargers prepared for them.
Fentallion swung herself up easily, and her animal shifted beneath the sudden weight, eyes wide and rolling. Years ago when they were younger, Llaneth had tried to lift her sister, arms wrapped around her waist, straining. It had been like trying to lift a building, yet Fentallion appeared slender, and when she moved she was lithe as a candle flame.
Behind them, Llenadriel swung up too. She had unclamped her hair, and it flowed out behind her as she moved, animated by the power that ran through her.
The Clock Gate was named after the old sundial that stood in the center of the square, though who would place a sundial in the shadow of the walls, Llaneth couldn’t fathom. The great wooden doors were already open and traders were passing through freely, carrying bales of cloth slung over their shoulders. Corded muscles and swarthy skin. Cages full of chickens and ducks. An old man leading a caravan of donkeys with a piece of frayed rope. Another leading a camel by a long silken sash that looped around the animal’s shoulders.
Fentallion spurred her horse, and leaped past them, through the gate and out onto the plain.
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They broke away from the road almost immediately. Llaneth let the wild joy of freedom push all the thoughts out of her head. Her horse was smaller than her sisters’, yet she was faster, and she took joy in spurring the bay mare up to a gallop, leaping over fences and carving great smooth curves in the swaying grass.
The steady drumming of hoof beats was a soothing balm. Her sister's horses beat to a slower cadence. The three rhythms phased in and out of step, following a pattern that bent around the great curves that they carved through the grasses as they swept across the plain.
They reached the river, and Fentallion called a halt. They dismounted and let their horses wander freely down to the water to drink.
There were washerwomen here, crouching on the rocks in the middle of the torrent. One by one, they unfurled their bundles, weighted the corners of the fabric with stones and let them stream out in the current, great coloured splashes, red and white and yellow, whipping beneath the clear rushing waters.
Lenadriel had some bread and meat in her saddle bag and she shared it between them. Llaneth ate, then lay back letting the warmth of the sun wash over her body, listening to the cropping of the horses, the steady rush of the water, the song of linnets in the rushes.
She stretched out a hand to her sisters, who lay next to her. Squeezed. Felt them squeeze back. This was good. This was family. A small flickering of power flowed into her from the chain at her wrist. It went out through her hands to her sisters and was met by their much greater power.
Her throat became dry, so she crawled to the water to drink, not bothering to stand, going on her knees like an animal.
She crouched down on the river bank next to her horse, letting her golden hair tease the surface of the water. She cupped her hands and lifted the bright, sparkling water to her lips. It was cold from the mountains. She cupped her hands again and pressed water into her face, squeezing her eyes shut against the chill.
When she opened them, she saw reflected back at her a blank no-face beneath a tasselled hood, full of stars, black-gloved hands cupping the air. She leapt away, falling backwards on the river bank, scrambling, feet mixed in down amongst the rushes, sinking in mud.
“Father,“ she gasped. “Father is in danger.”
She scrambled up onto her horse, her foot missed the stirrup, she pulled herself up on the horses’s mane. The animal started in surprise and sudden pain. She clung to its neck as it wheeled round and round.
“We have to go back.”
Fentallion was lying in the sun by the water. She opened her eyes and looked up. “What are you doing, little sister?”
“Father is in danger. We have to go back.”
To her relief, her sisters did not ask questions, and in a moment, the three of them were riding back towards the city.
The city towered over the plain, white and hard as a shard of crystal, trapped within the ring of the wall. It sat on a slight rise in the ground, the only hill on the plain between the mountains. To Llaneth’s eyes the city looked wrong, diseased, like a pustule ready to break open, like a fat and sagging boil. The mound filled with puss and yellow spores. The white towers - white stones laid across a tomb.
She spurred her horse faster and soon left her sisters behind. The city towered before her. She could see the cloaked watchers on the walls marking her approach. She made for the main gate, the Castle Gate, and it opened before her. She did not stop in the square but pushed onwards, her horses’ hooves sounding bright and shrill against the cobbles. Men and women stood aside. Mothers pressed their children up against the walls of the narrow streets. Still, she did not stop. The great portcullis of the ring-gilded keep opened before her, the white and gold tower where her father ruled. She rode right into the hallway, her horse foaming and wheeling, servants scattering around her. Then she ran, up the curving stairs, up and up. The door of the throne room stood ajar and unguarded, and she burst in without knocking.
There was her father atop the high seat. He looked up, shocked, tucking something away in his pocket, something gold that curled around his fingers. There was a smell in the room, an old smell of decay, like a pig left to rot in a barn, like dead rats under the boards, blowfly maggots writhing in their eyes.
And for a moment, he looked almost pleased to see her, as though she had come for him, to save him from some great and hidden danger, but then the shutters fell.
“Daughter?” He asked, his face blank and placid. A flash of fear in his eyes, already hurriedly hidden.
“Father. Father, I was...”
She became aware of how she must look: face red, clothes wet with sweat, hair in disarray. She felt the heat of shame, and the shame stole the heat of the true fire from her.
“I was, I just...”
The door opened wider, and Fentallion and Lenadriel entered behind her. Lenadriel took her arm.
“Come,” she whispered in her ear. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Llaneth struggled briefly, but there was no use fighting against an armoured witch. Lenadriel’s grip was implacable.
Her father watched them go, but as they passed through the throne room door, Llaneth thought she saw a pleading look pass across his handsome face, like a boy thief caught red-handed, bound to the whipping stool in the market square. Then the door slammed shut, and she saw him no more.