The Hidden Icon (33 page)

When Avery relented, I was sore for having been seated so still for so long. At least the dress wasn’t uncomfortable.

I followed Avery to a part of the palace that I had not yet entered, though I hadn’t strayed far from my room and the great hall, and couldn’t call myself familiar with the place. The royal chambers, though somehow finer even than what I had already seen, seemed also the most lived in. It wasn’t that anything appeared worn or weathered, but the touch of lives fully lived was on everything, appearing to me in a sight that was not unlike what I employed in the dark.

Colaugh and Agathe shamed even the elegance of my garment, and I pitied the artisan who had fashioned mine when I looked upon the king and queen in their finest. They could have been in rags and still outshone me, possessed of the same lofty carriage as my own mother and to a lesser extent, my father. Anise had grown into it, too, and I suspected Lista would if she could leave off flirtation with every glance and gesture.

Yet my family was far removed from me now and their warmth, too. I was welcomed with civility by Colaugh and Agathe, and Morainn when she lifted herself from a chair. Gannet wasn’t there, of course. When would he return? He’d promised he’d be here for the opera, hadn’t he?

I inclined my head to each of them in turn, but did not drop into the deeper bow of Avery behind me. I saw Imke at a far door with two other servants. When Avery had presented herself to her own satisfaction or theirs, she withdrew and joined the others in shadow.

“Eat, if you like.”

Agathe gestured to the table where Morainn had been seated, cold meats and fruit laid out on platters and looking as though they hadn’t been touched. Having had nothing in hours, my appetite was far from delicate. I did my best to disguise it as I sat and gathered a plate. Morainn returned to her chair, and Colaugh and Agathe joined us.

I was allowed to eat quietly for a moment, but their eyes upon me were full of questions, and I didn’t want to test their patience or their generosity. Their minds had hunger of a different kind. Unsure of my place with them, I allowed my mind, already open, to settle like a mist delicately upon the room, sensing their superficial concerns only. They were thinking of Gannet, and I was immediately alarmed, wondering if perhaps they knew already of what had passed between him and me. I darted a glance at Morainn, but her face gave nothing away, and I resisted the urge to delve deeper into the mind of a woman I called friend.

“I wish that we could meet as families, without so much blood between us,” I said carefully, thinking what a poor diplomat I made. I wanted to stress to them, though, how great in my heart their son and daughter had become.

Agathe’s brows lifted and settled again in a moment. Whether she was aware of how easily I read her or not, this was the only sign she gave of anything less than studied regality.

“We meet as we must,” she said vaguely, more a diplomat than I.

“Our people have for many generations worked together with yours. Blood calls to blood,” Colaugh said. He spoke of the Ambarians and the icons among them, not at all in ignorance of his purposeful exclusion of Aleyn. It was purposeful. For Morainn I might’ve been more than Theba, and perhaps even for her mother, but not for him. I looked at Morainn, my discomfort growing. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Perhaps Morainn could join me in my quarters after the opera, and we could talk as we had, freely, breaking bread and passing a cup. I almost thought then to suggest as much, but a herald was admitted by one of the servants. I could see his intentions as if they waved on a flag before him, the whole of his speech to the royal family, to me, and later, to the opera’s audience, embroidered in the air.

It spared me having to listen, at least.

I rose at the appropriate time to follow behind the royal family, thinking of such processions at home before we had been driven into the desert. As the youngest, I had always come last, and now I was more distant from them than I’d ever dreamed I could be. I imagined my mother and father, my siblings, turning their faces toward the north in wonder over me, and my heart ached with regret and with guilt, too. I’d felt something like family with the icons during the past few weeks, but nothing, nothing could compare to what was written in my blood and on my body, the press of a lifetime’s worth of embraces, pinches, and other affections. What had been there first, I wondered? The body born of my mother and my mother’s love, or Theba?

The opera house was deeper within the mountain than the palace, and I had the sense that it served as a center for the city in a way the palace could not. The face of the house was carved much as the palace was, seeming to spring from the stone itself, but where the palace had all of the impressions and comforts of a structure that is human made and one whose sole purpose is for human shelter, the opera house boasted no such familiarity. The latticed stone at the front and sides glowed with an unnatural light, and I saw within that mineral doused fires burned green and blue. There was no gate but the lane deadened, grown broad with the stones laid in beautiful, intentional patterns. If there were characters or images I couldn’t pick them out, but the delicate tracery of mortar suggested more than simple labor.

I recognized none of the guard who stood at attention outside, and wondered if perhaps the soldiers that had accompanied Antares had been given well deserved leaves from their posts. They hadn’t been friends, not remotely, but I was grateful that the eerie shadows drawn down the liveried, armored men were not across faces that I would have recognized by fireside. I didn’t see Antares, either, and hadn’t seen him since the morning he’d slain the man in the snow. I’d learned from Morainn that while attacks of that kind were far from common, Ambarian law did not leave much room for such offenders to explain themselves. I didn’t see how a people who revered Theba would behave much differently towards murderers, or attempted murderers.

I felt my heart hammering as the guards that had accompanied us parted to join their company in lines outside the opera house, spear points muted in the strange light but made somehow more deadly. I wanted to walk beside Morainn, but she followed immediately behind her parents, and I several steps behind, as though I were both a guest they wished to distinguish and a leashed animal, padding in deference behind her masters.

My heart found no rest, of course, when the wonders immediately within the opera house were muted all by Gannet standing to one side. He didn’t look at me, he didn’t even look up. I read nothing in the bowed, golden brow, and I noticed all the icons that waited with him. Unlike the guard that stood outside the opera house, they were in two lines to one side, their eyes fixed on the ground, their garb as rich and bright as mine. Braziers were burning with the strange glow all around. At first glance it seemed like the night sky, populated by scattered and senseless constellations. The ceilings glowed with runes, a masterwork of some precious metal inlaid in the stone, tier upon tier of private boxes pocketed in the mountain’s walls and looking down upon a many-seated ground floor. An oval-shaped stage was lit by fires of green and gold and blue at the center of the opera chamber. I marveled only briefly for the opera and Gannet both, for Colaugh and Agathe were proceeding up a flight of spidery stairs to our left, Morainn flowing up an identical set on our right. Witless, I looked from mother and father to daughter and back again, but it was Morainn who gestured to me, and she I followed.

Two guards trailed behind me but remained at some distance. Despite this opportunity to speak with Morainn, my attention was all in keeping my footing. There were many torches to light our way, but I was disconcerted by the occasional and considerable break in the stone, through which I could see the perilous distance growing between our feet and the ground floor. The opera house was ancient, and it felt like the Rogue’s Ear had. I remembered Gannet’s warning that the tunnels we had passed through hadn’t been made by mortal hands, nor intended for mortal passage. I wondered if the opera house had at some time served another, other worldly purpose.

Gannet. I felt his nearness like I did my own breath. Why hadn’t I joined the icons in whatever it was they were doing below? I didn’t think now that I could bear his going away again without speaking with him, daring to touch him again.

When I guessed that we had climbed halfway up what felt like the whole mountain’s side, Morainn turned down one of the narrow passages that boasted curtained entrances to the boxes and an ample view of the stage. She parted the curtain on the last and I hoped for a place to sit within, as I was exhausted from nerves and the climb both. The guards did not follow after us, the curtain falling again over the entrance with a rustle of finality. Morainn’s breath of relief was nearly as loud, though she did not take one of the chairs gathered around a brazier, burning a smokeless fire for warmth. I didn’t sit, either, but looked eagerly toward her. We were framed by an opening at the front of the box, providing a perfect view of the stage and the boxes opposite ours, which were already beginning to fill with dark shapes.

“Very soon they’ll take you down there, and keep you,” Morainn said suddenly, her hands clutched in the rich fabric of her gown. She caught my eyes, and hers were vulnerable and flashing. I didn’t know if she meant where the icons clustered in the opera now, or below ground, where we had been. I didn’t think it mattered. “Mother told me that was what they did with Gannet. He was four when he was taken, and she didn’t see him again until he was twelve, and then only secretly.”

My breath was sharp. Already I could see that I didn’t belong in the palace. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might not have the freedom to retreat when I wished.

“It’s different for me,” I explained, though for all I knew it wasn’t. “Gannet was a child.”

Morainn did sit down then, whipping her skirt with a force I thought might stir the fire from the brazier. I sat down quickly and close beside her.

“You’ll see soon how different you are,” she said, the sadness in her voice made sadder still by how final, how thorough, was her belief in the words. I couldn’t respond in any kind before she continued. “I won’t watch with you. I am supposed to, of course, but I told him that I couldn’t.”

She looked over my shoulder at the entrance, but when I turned, there was no one there. Morainn’s next was quieter still.

“Shortly after it starts, he’ll come. He can’t be seen here. The icons never watch. But because you are who you are, you’ll watch from here. Just this once.”

Though I had a moment’s fear that she spoke of Paivi, she would have referred with such familiarity to no one but her brother. If my heart had hammered before, it beat flush against the fabric of my robe now.

“I don’t know what I am, Morainn, but I do know that I am your friend,” I offered as finally and as firmly as she had expressed what I could only read as regret. “No matter what I see tonight, I’ll still be after.”

When she looked up, I thought perhaps her eyes had bleared from looking in the fire. “I didn’t expect that we would be friends, Eiren, but we are. Theba can’t change that.”

She said it as though we spoke of a different person, as though when realized, Theba would eclipse me entirely, preserving our friendship like an insect in amber. How true or right her feelings, I was filled with too much terror to pry. Morainn rose then and I did, too, our tight embrace not unlike the ones I shared with my sisters when I bid them goodbye. I would see Morainn again, but this was goodbye to something between us.

The opera house was well-filled now and humming with hushed conversation. Morainn passed back through the curtain. I looked down on the ground floor and I couldn’t distinguish between one person and another. I felt exposed all the same, not wanting to draw too near the edge of the box lest my solitude be noticed by some keen, distant observer. I could see the shadows at the stage’s back, and I wondered if even now they disguised the players. What sort of people could they be, playing at icons playing at gods? My gaze traveled from the stage to the curtain entrance to my box and back again, waiting for some appearance in either place, something to attract my attention away from dark thoughts. It was the stage, first, and though I’d hoped to speak with Gannet privately before the opera began, my curiosity got the better of me.

On stage two figures, a man and a woman, moved towards each other from opposite ends of the oval. Their skin and clothing glowed in the firelight, making them far easier to see than the patrons who were level with them. I wondered what alchemical work was this, some powder or paste that gathered and reflected the light from the strange fires. As they neared the center, all conversation ceased abruptly, and seats were taken in startling silence. The pair on stage moved in study around each other, circling as prey and predator might, as uncertain lovers, establishing trust or dominance or both. Unwittingly, I moved nearer the box edge, taking a seat for fear I might now miss something.

“In the beginning of the world there were many gods capable of creation, but only one who could destroy.” The voice emerged from the shadows, bodiless but clear. “It was Theba who claimed the broken blade in the forge, the fallow crop, the stillborn babe. If we didn’t have her to reap, how could we ever know the value of our sowing? She taught us. In our earliest history Theba laid with the mortal Shran and conceived with him a child.”

There were other figures in the shadows but only just visible, their limbs thrashing out onto the stage in a wild, soundless dance. The man and woman collapsed onstage and I bit my lip, my chest tightening in the moment before the woman rose slowly again, climbing over the man and coming finally to stand with one foot on his chest. One of the figures at the edge of the stage crawled forward on her belly before rolling over onto her back, offering herself to the woman standing. I knew this story already, but not like this.