Mistress of Winter Read online

  The Emperor continued forward across the deck toward the gangplank. Arefaine followed, pinching his sleeve, and was in turn followed by the Opal Advisor, and so on until fourteen of the Emperor’s entourage stood on the dock, just behind the semicircle created by the Carriers of the Opal Fire.

  As patient as the Great Ocean, the Emperor waited as his entourage formed up behind him, then he transformed from a rigid Ohohhim god to perfect diplomat, greeting each of the Sisters of the Council, beginning with Vallia, the Council Elder and Sister of Winter, and ending with Baleise, the youngest member and Sister of Spring.

  Not one of the Emperor’s advisors so much as twitched, but Shara could feel their discomfort. The Emperor did not speak to mortals. His divine voice was reserved for the twelve chosen who surrounded him. It was the Opal Advisor’s place to pass the word of Oh’s Chosen down the divine queue.

  Once the greetings had finished, the Sisters stepped back, and the Emperor moved to stand before Shara.

  He took her hands in his. “Though Ohndarien grows more radiant every time I visit, I confess that she still pales in comparison to you, Shara-lani.”

  “You are kind to say so, Your Holiness,” she replied.

  “I would be delighted if you would take dinner with me sometime during my visit.”

  “I would be honored, Your Holiness.”

  The Emperor turned to Baelandra and her family. Faedellin wore his finest uniform, and Astor bore his recent wound like a badge of honor. Except for his darker hair and eyes, the boy could have been Brophy. They even moved the same. Shara looked away.

  “Sweet Baelandra,” the Emperor said. “Motherhood becomes you, and your children grow with the strength of their father and the allure of their mother.”

  Little Baedellin was hiding behind her mother’s skirts, but beamed at the Emperor’s words.

  “Ohndarien welcomes her liberator, Your Eternal Wisdom,” Baelandra said. “You do great honor to us. Our city rejoices with your presence.”

  He nodded, and no one spoke for a long moment.

  “Come,” Vallia broke the silence, standing aside and bowing at the waist, “I know there is one place that you would visit before the festival begins, Your Holiness.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I could not enjoy the comforts of your great city without giving my respects to the Sleeping Warden.”

  Vallia led her Ohndariens in a line parallel to the Ohohhim through the Long Market. The stalls were packed with spectators, who cheered at the procession and threw flowers. As always, the drinking for that night’s festival would begin before noon.

  The dual procession continued along the base of the Wheel to the great stairs and started up side by side. They wound around the ceremonial steps, leading a sea of people behind them. Shara found herself staring at the back of Arefaine’s head a little way ahead of her. She was intensely curious about the young woman born on Efften and raised in the Opal Palace. Shara had been the child’s guardian for a short time, turning the music box that kept her asleep. Did she remember anything from all those years locked in nightmare? Could anyone truly leave such a tortured past behind her?

  The Opal Advisor let go of Arefaine’s sleeve when the procession reached the base of the Hall of Windows, disconnecting the entourage from the Emperor. His Eternal Wisdom usually went up alone to pay his respects to the man who once freed him from the grip of the black emmeria, but this year he paused at the bottom of the steps and turned to Shara and the others.

  “I would be honored if the Sisters, Baelandra, and Shara would join me as I pay my respects. My ward, Arefaine, has a gift she wishes to bestow upon the Sleeping Warden and the people of Ohndarien.”

  A Carrier of the Opal Fire stepped forward, holding a lacquered wooden box in his arms.

  The Emperor started up the steps, followed by Arefaine, the Sisters of the Seasons, Shara, and Baelandra. The Carrier of the Opal Fire brought up the rear, with the mystery box in his hands.

  As they neared the top, the sweet, lilting duet of the Zelani’s song surrounded them. The singing seemed to descend from the sky until they reached the top and could see Fyrallin and Kirette singing. Shara had handpicked them for the Emperor’s visit—they had the most beautiful voices of all her Zelani.

  As they reached the gazebo, the Emperor dropped to one knee. Arefaine seemed mesmerized by the sight. Her perfectly expressionless Ohohhim mask dropped for the first time as her powdered features winced. Breaking protocol, she let go of the Emperor’s sleeve and walked forward, reverently sinking to her knees next to Brophy’s cage. He was dressed in a rich velvet doublet of crimson and orange, with his hands on the pommel of the great Sword of Autumn, its huge red gem and stylized branches glimmering in the sun. His eyes darted frantically under his closed lids.

  Arefaine touched the intricate brass bars and blinked. Shara stepped forward, stood behind her, and put a gentle hand her shoulder. Arefaine looked up. Two thin tear streaks marred the powder on her cheeks.

  Shara couldn’t imagine what it must be like to meet the man who had given his life for yours.

  Keeping her breath slow and steady, Shara found it difficult to speak, but she forged on. “I put him in his favorite dream so that he might have some comfort until we find a way to release him.” She paused as Arefaine looked up at her, only the tear streaks betraying her impassive Ohohhim expression. Shara swallowed. “It is a small thing, I know, but at least his dreams are pleasant,” she said.

  Arefaine looked back at Brophy’s pulsing eyelids, his eyes darting frantically underneath. Her tears had stopped, and she spoke just loud enough for Shara to hear. “He has kept us safe with his strength all of these years,” she said. “And you have helped him, for which you are to be revered.” She paused. “But do not deceive yourself, Shara-lani. He lives in a nightmare.”

  Shara’s eyes widened, and her breath left her. Arefaine rose, so close that Shara could have kissed her.

  “I am sorry,” Arefaine said. “I have dreamed those dreams, and they are unbearable.” She rose to her feet and nodded to the Emperor. Shara’s hand fell nerveless to her side.

  “The Lady Arefaine has brought a gift for the Sleeping Warden,” the Emperor said. “If you will allow us to present it.”

  The Carrier of the Opal Fire brought forward the ornate chest encrusted with three huge opals. They set the heavy box down and stepped away. Arefaine crossed to it, knelt, and opened the lid.

  Shara gasped.

  Within lay three crystals, each the size of a fist. Muted colors swirled within. They were perfect, miniature replicas of the Heartstone.

  CHAPTER 13

  All of Ohndarien celebrated, but none so much as Astor, Heir of Autumn. The Grand Feast of the Opal Festival was about to begin. The Emperor was in the city and Arefaine the amazing, the wonderful, was with him. Astor’s thoughts had been thrown into a delicious confusion from the first moment he saw her stepping off the ship. He had never seen anyone so radiant, so mysterious in her distant beauty. She almost seemed sad or lonely at the front of the long line of powdered faces. He’d spent the whole walk up the Wheel trying to think of some way to talk to her, to make her laugh so he could see the smile in those pale blue eyes.

  Astor hurried down the hallway to his mother’s room. Like always, his mother and Baedellin were slow getting ready, but even that could not dampen his mood. He would get them there on time. He paused at the doorway, collecting his thoughts and slowing his breathing before poking his head inside.

  Mother sat in her dressing robe on the short bench in front of her vanity. Baedellin sat next to her as both gazed into the huge oval mirror. Mother dabbed a tiny bit of red paste on Baedellin’s lips, and the girl tried to spread it evenly with her finger.

  “Slowly, dear,” Mother said. “The art of a lady’s preparation is in the subtlety. We want to elevate our appearance, but we don’t want anyone to think we spend time doing so.”

  Baedellin giggled.

  “Father says we’ll be
late,” Astor said from the doorway. Baedellin craned around, then swiveled back as if she hadn’t heard him. Mother never moved, but she said, “I’m no longer the Sister of Autumn. I’m allowed to be late.”

  “That’s right.” Baedellin giggled. “You men will just have to wait for us. It takes time to be beautiful.”

  “No, being beautiful is easy. It takes time to stop being ugly.”

  Baedellin spun around, gave Astor a withering stare, but she noticed that Mother had said nothing, calmly continuing to apply her makeup. Baedellin paused, then turned back into the mirror and spoke in her best adult voice. “Astor is just grumpy because he wants to see his girlfriend.”

  Looking at Astor in the mirror, Mother raised an eyebrow. He felt his face grow hot but didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, it’s true,” Baedellin continued. “He wants to kissy kissy kissy and do the naked dance and have her babies.”

  “That’s enough,” Mother said, trying to suppress a smile. “Go get dressed, or your father will eat all the tarts before we get there.”

  With a last look at her makeup, Baedellin pressed her lips together critically, nodded, and stood up. As she walked toward Astor, she stuck her tongue at him.

  “Kissy. Kissy. Kissy,” she said.

  Astor pretended to lunge at her. With a squeal, she dodged and smacked into the doorjamb. It spun her halfway around, but she giggled. “Kissy, kissy,” she said, and darted out the door.

  Despite his embarrassment, Astor smiled at her retreating back, then turned to look at his mother.

  “She reminds me more of you every day,” Mother said.

  “I was never that bad,” Astor said.

  “No. You were twice as bad and half as sweet.”

  Astor sketched a quick bow. “That must be why you always loved me best.”

  Mother gave him a disapproving frown before rising and crossing the room to the wardrobe near the bed. She untied her robe and tossed it onto the bed.

  “Are you as anxious to get to the feast as Baedellin says?” Mother asked as she pulled two dresses out of the wardrobe. She appraised them for a moment, then laid them both on the bed.

  Astor poked at the jewelry box on her dresser, picked up a hairclip shaped like a golden butterfly. Many things came and went from Mother’s dresser, but the golden hairclip had been there as long as he could remember.

  He nodded. “I am.”

  “Do I know the girl?”

  “Mother, Baedellin is a girl. Girls my age are called women.”

  Mother laughed softly. She picked the dark crimson dress. “And at my age, all women seem like girls. I apologize. Do I know this woman?”

  “No more than I do.”

  “Are you being mysterious?”

  “Mother, I’m embarrassed. Let’s not talk about it. She doesn’t know who I am.” Then he added, “Not yet.”

  “That is hard to believe,” she said, stepping into the dress. She slipped it up over her waist. “You are a Child of the Seasons. Chances are she knows you better than you know her.”

  “Let’s stop.”

  “As you say.”

  Astor looked at the space between his mother’s breasts for a brief moment before she pulled the dress the rest of the way up. There was a tiny white scar where her shard of the Heartstone was once embedded, testament to her time as Sister of Autumn. He didn’t know where she kept the red diamond that used to go there. Once again, Astor felt the call of the Heartstone, always soft in the back of his mind. He would have a gem in his chest someday. And with the arrival of Arefaine and the containment stones, someday soon.

  Anxious to change the subject, Astor said, “When do you think Arefaine and Shara will use the containment stones to awaken Brophy?”

  Mother tied the long strings of her dress around her neck. “Soon.”

  Astor thought of Brophy sleeping on the top of the Hall of Windows. When Astor was fourteen, he would sometimes sit and watch Brophy’s face for hours. It was like staring into a mirror. That was three years ago. Now Brophy seemed like a mirror to Astor’s childhood.

  “What was Brophy like as a child?”

  “A lot like you.”

  Astor smiled.

  “Except he was polite, well-mannered, thoughtful, conscientious, humble…”

  Astor shook his head.

  She crossed to the dresser, twisted her hair up onto her head. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Her hands cast about among her jewelry. Astor handed her the golden butterfly hairclip.

  “No, not that,” she murmured. “Give me that one.”

  He handed her a golden comb encrusted with rubies, and she tucked it in her hair with a sigh. “Brophy was very similar to you,” she murmured. “But he had a seriousness, a focus that frightened me sometimes. I couldn’t stand the thought of him in harm’s way and protected him as long as I could, but events took him away from me. I wasn’t there when he really grew up. I was there for his childhood, but the Physendrian Nine Squares made him a man.”

  Astor thought about Brophy playing that brutal game. Neither the game nor the country existed anymore, but the legends of both remained. Brophy had been three years younger than Astor when he climbed that burning tower, wounded, exhausted, making himself a god to a nation of his enemies.

  “I barely spent ten minutes with him after he returned, before he did what he did, and…” She drew a long breath. “He was so young.” She shook her head a little.

  She looked at herself in the mirror over the dresser for a moment, adjusted the front of her dress.

  “I wanted to take his place, you know…” Astor said. “When I was younger.”

  Mother turned to look at him.

  “I even asked Shara to switch us.” He looked down, then returned her intense gaze. “I must have been nine or ten.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she said softly.

  Astor remembered Shara’s sad, sad smile as she gently refused him. Looking down at his mother, he coughed. “Well,” he said, shrugging and holding his hands out. “There were always these beautiful women singing to him, and nobody ever told him what to do.” He smiled. “It seemed like a good trade.”

  Mother simply watched him for a long time. He thought she was going to say something, but instead she took his head in her hands and bowed it, kissed him on the brow.

  “Find my orange scarf with the red embroidered leaves, will you?” she murmured. “It should be in the tall wardrobe.”

  “When will Shara try to wake him?” he asked as he fetched the scarf from the wardrobe, brought it back to her.

  She took it and laid it lightly on her shoulders. “I don’t know. The council must discuss it first.”

  Astor’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

  She paused as she always did when they talked about council business. “It’s your question. Why don’t you see if you can answer it?”

  Astor rolled his eyes. These questions always became lessons, her way of preparing him for the Test.

  “Because they think it is dangerous.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  She arched an eyebrow, slipped a bracelet on her wrist.

  “All right,” he said. “If the corruption gets loose inside the city, we may not be able to defeat it again.”

  “Exactly. If Arefaine’s stones fail to contain the black emmeria, all of Ohndarien could be lost. Or worse.”

  “Isn’t Brophy worth that risk?” Astor said.

  “That is what the council will debate. Is one person’s life worth taking that chance?”

  He wanted to give the quick answer, the answer his heart yelled, but he hesitated. Mother had taught him that his heart was only one of several inner voices. Sometimes the mind spoke the truth, sometimes the body. The key to wisdom was deciding which voice to listen to.

  “I would take him to the Heart to minimize the danger. Or move him somewhere where there is nobody around. The Vastness, or the Cinder.”

  She no
dded. “And yet, it is still a huge risk, if what we believe about the black emmeria is true.”

  “But we have to try,” he insisted. “You think we should try, don’t you?”

  “I am not on the council. It is not a decision I have to make anymore, but I understand their hesitation. I love you and your sister just as much as I love Brophy. And there are thousands of mothers in Ohndarien who love their children as much as I love you. I made these kinds of decisions for long enough. I’m very happy for someone else to make them now.” She paused, looked up at him. “But it doesn’t matter what I would do. The important question is what would you do if you were on the council?”

  Could he risk Baedellin’s life, or Mother’s, to awaken Brophy? Brophy had gambled with the entire world to save Ohndarien, but could Astor do it? And if he didn’t, who would? Who saved the heroes when they needed saving?

  Baedellin burst into the room, twirling in her red dress.

  Thankfully distracted, Astor smiled. “You look beautiful, like a little spinning bit of fire.”

  Baedellin screwed up her lips, trying to find the insult. When she couldn’t she beamed at him and nodded emphatically. “Thank you, good sir,” she said in her adult voice, and curtsied.

  “You look lovely, my dear, absolutely lovely,” Mother said. Baedellin twirled again.

  “Come, it’s time to go,” Mother said. “We’ll have plenty of time to discuss this later.”

  “Discuss what?” Baedellin asked as they left the room.

  The feast was amazing. It always was. The Opal Festival was Ohndarien’s greatest holiday, and the feast was its zenith. Tonight, Ohndarien’s wealth ran through the city like water through the locks. The party covered the whole top of the Wheel. Entire pigs and oxen were roasted on huge spits, and garlands of flowers hung from every tree in the gardens. Torches taller than a man bordered the festival area, and it seemed as though everyone in Ohndarien had come to celebrate their victory at the Nightmare Battle, and to honor the Ohohhim who made it possible. People talked and ate. Ate and talked. Children scampered through the gardens, as their parents gathered together to discuss art, politics, or the past. Astor saw his father among an aging group of the Lightning Swords, reminiscing about the old days. This was the only night of the year that no one brought up the subject of the next attack.