A Trickster in the Ashes Read online

  “I did hear someone crying across the courtyard, I think it was as the sun was going down,” Breeze probed.

  “That was Fanny. She went downstairs after Timotheo came up—just as usual.” Once they reached the age of five, the children visited their fathers once a week. Fantinora had got her period the day after her last trip downstairs, and she had stopped bleeding (according to Mist, who was on linen duty) night before last. “But it didn’t go as usual. She came upstairs late for supper, and when she opened the door of the dining room, she was so, so pale. I wasn’t there, but Fairday said when she passed her going down the table, she saw her dress wasn’t buttoned right, and two buttons in the middle of her back were off. I expect everyone was staring.” Rain knew they had been. She’d been there. She’d stared, too. But for some reason it hadn’t occurred to her until now to feel ashamed. “She sat down in her place and then she began crying. We—they—all tried to pretend nothing was happening, but her hair was hanging in her plate, and after a little she started screaming. Hysterics. Fairday said she’d never heard anyone shriek herself hoarse before. She thought the neighbors would come.”

  “I thought I must have been dozing. Sometimes I dream of my old family.”

  “No, it was Fanny. Fairday took her upstairs. She said she wouldn’t say a word, she just kept screaming and—and—plucking at herself, at her clothes—until she wore herself out. And then the next morning she was back to normal.” Rain took a deep breath. Why did she feel guilty now? Because instead of being the one woman who rescued Fanny from the torture of self-humiliation, she’d been one of the seventeen who stayed where they were? Nothing to be ashamed of there. Fanny’s own mother hadn’t moved a muscle. “Dear, compassionate Fairday! She’s a real patriot, a patriot of the Enclave.”

  “But—” Breeze made a face, clearly feeling the story lacked a climax. “Didn’t Fanny tell Fairday what really happened?”

  “Not according to her.”

  “I don’t suppose they…hurt her?”

  They hurt me the first few times, Rain thought. And I wasn’t even a virgin. No lasting damage unless you count Jonny and ‘Stell—but it hurt as much as anything Colonel Sostairs did. The only difference was that they made me want it, and afterward they made me want it again. Did they make Fanny want it? It didn’t look like that. Is she immune to their persuasion? Or isn’t it just me—has their persuasion turned hard?

  “Did Cloud—or Sunlight, or Aurora—say anything about it?” Breeze asked.

  “Cloud went to see her late last night. Queen knows what they said to each other. Fairday—she said that Fanny insisted she would never take communion again, no, not ever, not even if she had to stand up to her mother. But I don’t suppose she did stand up to her. We’ll see next week.”

  “I can’t stand up to Cloud,” Breeze said, tugging her blanket up under her chin.

  And that’s why I wish Cloud would stand up to you, Rain thought with an angry prickle of tears. That’s why I wish I had her authority. I wouldn’t let ideology get in my way!

  “—and anyhow I don’t see why Fanny should be excused from communion. Half-Royal or not, she’s one of us, isn’t she? And Queen knows they need every drop of blood we can give them.”

  “Breeze, it’s not just about blood! For crying out loud, you’ve got a daughter! Annabedette!”

  Breeze closed her eyes and wriggled vigorously on her pillows. “Rain,” she protested in a tiny voice.

  “All I’m saying is that if I were Cloud, I’d have taken that possibility into consideration!” Rain heard her voice shaking with distress. Her head filled with images of monsters, offspring only a quarter human by blood and not at all human in appearance: multijointed fingers, huge useless wings, permanently oozing skin, lurid eyes. Would they be monkey geniuses, or congenital failures?

  “But Rain,” Breeze whined. “She wouldn’t have to—you knownot with…”

  “How is she supposed to know which one is her father? I bet not even Cloud knows! I don’t know which ones are Jonajon’s and ‘Stell’s fathers!” They weren’t supposed to be talking about any of this. But in her misery, Rain couldn’t hold back. “You don’t know which one’s Annabee’s father—and it makes no difference, because a Royal is a Royal is a Royal is a…”

  Breeze shut her eyes tight and stuck her fingers in her ears. “‘We have to trust in the Sisters’ decision!” she sang. “‘We have to trust in the Sisters’ decision.” Rain smoothed handfuls of her black woolen skirt. “We have to trust. We have to trust…” Breeze’s voice died away. She lay still, the blanket hem over her mouth not moving. She must be getting tired, Rain thought guiltily. Enormous blood loss affected the body in odd ways: you wanted nothing more than to lie down and rest, but often you couldn’t fall asleep, or if you did, it was a lurid doze, and people you didn’t normally allow into your thoughts strolled and strutted and speechified in front of your lidless mind’s eye. Lessons branded with hot irons on the consciousness could be erased with one caress from the sandman.

  She shouldn’t have burdened Breeze with such a knotty ideological dilemma. But who else can I talk to? Crispin? He doesn’t understand the Enclave, and he has troubles enough of his own. Mist, Fairday—there’s no one. “Rest, my darling.” Leaning across the bed, she brushed kisses on Breeze’s forehead and nose and lips. Breeze’s skin was cool and sweaty at once.

  “Mmmph,” Breeze said crossly, and turned her head to the side.

  “I’ll come and see you again soon. If I can get away, I’ll bring your lunch tray.”

  “I’ll be down for lunch.”

  “Oh, my love. Don’t strain yourself.”

  “I ought to get up for prayers. I don’t know if I’m up to that, but I definitely have to get up for communion.”

  Breeze believed the Royals needed a taste of her uniquely nutritious blood every day to survive. It wasn’t as if she knew no better: the incident last autumn Rain had come to think of as the Great Escape had slapped the whole Enclave with the truth. But Breeze had an extraordinary talent for self-occlusion, and she had simply refused to acknowledge that her lords’ sole motivation was carnality, and that they didn’t care if they communed with her or, as had happened on that terrible occasion, which would have been the end of the Enclave if anyone had made the connection, a shop boy and an ancient beggar and a laborer stumbling home late from a tavern and (had his bodyguards not been armed with projectile guns) a prominent member of Kherouge old-money society. The Royals’ omnivorousness was now conceded though never discussed by most of the Sisters. Rain supposed that was why no one had questioned Fantinora’s taking communion as an adult. The Royals wouldn’t care!

  The Royals cared for nothing and no one.

  Breeze spoke without opening her eyes, her lips hardly moving. “It used to be you who was weak, Rainie. Now it’s me. I don’t know what happened.”

  Rain struggled for a moment and answered, managing her voice carefully. “I realized nothing was going to change. So I had to keep on, because there was no end in sight. I had to stop fooling myself.”

  Breeze smelled like metal. Her delicate blanket-shrouded figure seemed a shell of flesh around molten, seething iron. “You mean, when we heard about the eradication of the Kingsburg Royals and you—you always thought, didn’t you, that when the Queen died, the world would end. You and your cultie notions.”

  “You and yours!” Rain burst out, but Breeze didn’t answer for so long that Rain thought she had fallen asleep. She extricated her hand.

  Breeze stirred and murmured: “The world didn’t end, Rain, because there still are Royals. Right here in this Enclave. And doesn’t that lead you to the conclusion that our consecration is more necessary now than…? Never mind. It does me.”

  Rain looked out the window. The morning was dark in contrast to the glow behind her, the brightness of her love burning away, as if she were sitting next to a living pyre.

  “Consecrated, my body. Consecrated, my blood. Consecrated, my s
un-time,” Breeze chanted.

  “I’ll send someone to wake you for morning communion,” Rain said. As she reached the door, Breeze stopped chanting and opened her eyes.

  “Darling—Annabedette—say hello to her for me—give her a kiss—”

  “If she’ll let me.” Rain went out. The corridor ran the length of the building. Locked doors led to other solitary-confinement sick bays and to storerooms. Gray light from the skylights showed dust in the corners where some rebellious child had skimped on his chores. A few moments ago Rain had been cold and tired, but now anger heated her blood, and she couldn’t believe she’d ever loved Breeze, except that the rational part of her knew that she was only angry because she still loved Breeze. She said to the closed door, “You’re killing yourself in the service of appetites that know no satiation and no gratitude. The Royals aren’t human. If I had to guess, I’d say the real Royals weren’t human either. But what I do know is that ours were nothing but beasts to begin with, poor imitations, and we’ve indulged their bestiality to the point of turning monarchs into monsters. I wish I had the strength to tell you what they really are! But you’re past believing me—and I’m not even sure I have the strength to believe it myself.” She rested her forehead against the door. From inside came the faint sound of Breeze chanting prayers. “I don’t want to believe it, that’s for sure. But you see, unlike you, I’m in constant contact with the children, and they’re the proof. I don’t understand how any of our Sisters can still convince themselves their babies are the offspring of the Ferupian Dynasty—unless they’ve known all along that the dynasty and the monsters were one and the same—and in that case, how can they keep insisting the children are privileged, brilliant, destined for greatness, and all the rest of it? Dynastic heritage is no longer a guarantee of success, for one thing. And for another, Fantinora! And Omar’s no better, he’s just better at blending in. As for my own—Jonajon! ‘Stell!”

  A throbbing, endless sigh of horror deafened her, as always when she really thought about her son and daughter. Faintly, she heard the chords of the organ from the chapel. Morning prayers. Breeze had been on time, but she was late.

  22 Jevanary 1900 A.D. 5:47 P.M.

  When, Rain wondered, had she become a playgroup leader? She’d never thought of herself as good with children. But judging from the way the older offspring had turned out, Rain was no worse than Founding Sister Cloud, or Sunlight, Aurora, or any of the other older Sisters. It was even possible that her own childhood, spent in an environment whose similarities to the Enclave she no longer bothered to deny, gave her a better understanding than they of the way the children’s minds worked.

  Not that understanding them was the issue. The issue was controlling them.

  Someone was pregnant all the time, and although a good third of the children born in the Enclave died—that was the same here as anywhere—still, increase was inevitable. Right now the Enclave had twenty-two offspring between the ages of fifteen and seven months.

  Running the household entailed so many other tasks that it was simply impossible to watch all of the children all the time. When it came to damage control, most of the Sisters relied on scoldings and smackings. Others put their faith in reason, never mind that reason confused the offspring worse than illogic did. Others, Rain thought, would secretly have liked to lock the children up alongside their fathers—at least that way the Sisters would have been spared the daily embarrassment of the Little Escapes, when one child or another went missing, only to be caught in vain attempts to infiltrate the nation of normal children. Their looks alone disqualified them for friendships with the neighborhood youngsters. They knew how to hide their precocity but not their oddly tinted skin, extra fingers and toes, and disproportionately long limbs. Worst off were those cursed with rudimentary wings, which, concealed under their clothes, looked like humpbacks. Rain’s heart ached for them. But the pain turned to horror when she remembered the rare occasions when she’d witnessed Royal children and local urchins playing together. Inevitably, the offspring tried to organize the comfortable chaos of bucketball or lurk-and-seek into what looked like war games. And Rain had once spied on the absurd, pitiable spectacle of Jonajonny holding a tutorial in a shopkeeper’s stockyard, drawing diagrams in the dirt for a circle of uncomprehending three- and four-year-olds, finally throwing down his stick and screaming at them like a short-tempered professor. He wasn’t a normal child, and Estellesme was far from a normal toddler. And her two weren’t even eccentric by offspring standards.

  The only way, she’d decided, to minimize such doomed contacts and simultaneously try to normalize the children was to keep them busy. They had astounding memories, and they liked to use their imaginations; what could suit better than putting on plays? They’d extruded their first effort, Dolorous and His Brothers, before an audience of Sisters a year ago. Each successive production was ten times better than the previous. And she found the role of manager gratifying enough to continue for her own sake as well as theirs: combing Kherouge’s libraries, salvation stores, and rag-and-boneries for scripts and costumes gave her an excuse to go out whenever she needed. This had come in especially handy since Crispin arrived. Besides, she loved theater itself, every aspect of it from casting to rehearsing to set-painting to the interpretive finishing touches that made each play hers. Watching the curtain rise gave her a thrill she hadn’t realized was missing from her life. Ever since she ran away from the Seventeenth Mansion of the Glorious Dynasty, she’d been told over and over that she was good for nothing but theatrics. She’d once held a grudge against the world for forcing her on stage over and over; but now—ironically, now that she herself was no longer acting—she knew fate had understood her better than she understood herself. She would leave arithmetic and geometry, geography and literature, foreign language and history to the Enclave’s fanatics.

  She’d commandeered the biggest ground-floor room at the back of the courtyard for a rehearsal space. She stood with folded arms, watching the principal members of her cast milling in the rainlight from the windows, fighting over the interpretation of a climactic confrontation. It was the end of a long afternoon. Her limbs felt like rags, and her forehead throbbed: she always ran out of energy before they did.

  “Cut by gee two. Disaster crypt to two.”

  “Green raspberries. Nocount, slash wy oh oar, catak-la.”

  They spat the monosyllables under their breaths like generals arguing behind enemy lines. She wasn’t meant to hear. The four or five oldest offspring spoke only Ferupian, but these younger ones had their own language, a kind of military jargon, or perhaps it was more like the private terminology of art critics. She meant to keep Jonajonny from being initiated into it by any means necessary.

  “Nemmine. By ex to nineteen, pattern no catak-la.”

  Three of the children closed in, watching intently as the other two embraced. The girl ducked the boy’s kiss, pulled away, and delivered her line. Her voice throbbed with adult emotion negated by the voice itself, which was tiny, fragile, and high-pitched. “It’s not intended / That I be your intended! / By the hand of my maid / Oh, heart, I’m afraid / Our betrothal is ended!”

  “Duella?” Alessandro, nine, exclaimed on just the right note of shock. “That soft-eyed / Creature who cried / For joy as I’d confide / My love for you, my desire to wed you—”

  “Aless, snog ex one zero zero alt coilaway.”

  Alessandro looked annoyed. “Ink, Petey. Eleo blay, truss no, zhee—” He dropped into Ferupian. “She’s as stiff as a nightgown hung out to dry!” Rain supposed there were nuances of disapproval you couldn’t express in their language, which seemed primarily designed for the purpose of codifying disagreements like algebra. Aless turned to his romantic interest, Eleondora. “You’re playing it for laughs, Eleo! You’re supposed to be telling me you love me, but you can never see me again! If you can’t fake it, then you should’ve let Julijo have the part!”

  “She doesn’t want to kiss you because you’re p
hysically repulsive,” Mogglebone, Petryan’s sidekick, suggested. He was too good an actor for Rain to jettison him, but he held a grudge against the whole production because she hadn’t made him hero, and had started a rumor that she’d discriminated against him because he was only eight. He was an expert at sowing schism. In her nightmares, Rain imagined him as governor of Kherouge—although it would be the first time the Assembly had elected a governor with permanent jaundice and a scowl as wide as his brow and webbed fingers that were the real reason she hadn’t given him the part (there was no way he could hold the hero’s prop, a big tin broadsword). But that was the kind of thing you couldn’t make offspring understand. “I wouldn’t kiss you if you paid me in cash.” The flaps of daffodil skin between Mogglebone’s fingers rustled as he mimed palming coins. “Flex point nine, siz aitcha therwise,” he added softly.

  “I’d kiss a fish if my art demanded it of me. And even if you wouldn’t, no one’s asking you to, Moggie!” Eleondora peeped piercingly. Because a genetic accident had given her a sparrow’s voice, none of the other children took her seriously. Rain had cast her as the Squire’s Daughter in an attempt to build her self-confidence, which had backfired because all the children except Eleondora herself saw through it. She had simply caught prima donna fever and become unendurable.

  “No one’s asking you to butt your silly yellow mug in, either!” she piped. “Aless obviously hasn’t got it with regard to my character. The whole idea is that I’m trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t see him again, and so I’m scared to let him touch me in case I change my mind. But if he has a complaint, he ought to direct it to Rain, and so you’re both wrong, what do you think, Auntie, I’m right, aren’t I?”