“W
ould you like to wear this tonight, prince?”I glance up briefly from the parchment I am writing on and that is all it takes—a moment of negligence—for a bead of black ink to roll loose from my quill and stain what had once been spotless.
I think there is a metaphor in this, somewhere, but as I watch the ink splatter morph into a many-headed hydra, a forest of necks blooming like rot before my eyes, I grit my teeth and knock the soiled parchment aside.
The quill drops back into the ink pot with a bitter plink.
“...Prince Adonai?”
“Sorry,” I say, though I am not. “Can you repeat that?”
She hesitates, swallowing softly as she looks from the parchment to the quill to me. I smile. Backlit by the fading sun, I look, I think, rather holy. This seems to reassure her. “The fur cloak, prince. I believe it once belonged to your father? At least, that is what princess Miriam told me.”
She smiles and curtsies, her ankles tucked in like a lord’s daughter, before she turns to my dresser and pulls out a cloak of rippling wolf’s fur. I see her stroke it lovingly, just once, before she brings it under the lantern light. The bottom of her long, black braid sweeps the floor in a dark halo.
“Ah.” I glance wearily down at the cloak as she holds it aloft before me. “It did.”
The beast that had once worn this magnificent skin had been killed by Father, a spear in the eye, on one of his famed winter hunts. A row of mottled sandy feathers had lined its hem, each as long as a dagger, plucked from the tail of a teryr killed in his glorious youth.
The cloak had been tailored precisely to my father’s measurements so that it would sweep grandly after him like an emperor’s robe. I lean over and caress the fur. Father had donned the cloak so often in the wintertime—to galas, to meetings, even to dinner—that I had once called him, in solemn jest, Thousandfurs.
How he had laughed at that.
The hem of teryr feathers has since been stripped, burned with him as part of the elaborate rituals demanded of a Solterran funeral. We had followed it to the letter; an Ieshan had written the book of rites.
Anyway, I had not gotten Father’s height, or much of any of him, besides this cloak.
And there are days when I miss him terribly.
“Yes. This is perfect.”
My lyre is strapped to my side and I am strumming it softly, an aimless melody of minor keys, when a plume of red blows in at the far end of the statue hall. A smile breaks cleanly across my face.
“Miriam.” My voice echoes down a procession of marble busts. A drifting statue blinks languidly at me, staring for an exaggerated moment, before her powdered head swivels owlishly towards a guest who has come to seek her questionable wisdom. Yes? I hear her whisper, her tone Delphic.
I drift unhurriedly towards Miriam, my steps keeping loose time to the swells of sweet violin streaming softly from the opposing ballroom. I wonder if she had known about this party of Pilate’s—with a mere week of preparation even I am impressed by how well he has managed to pull it off—yet by the way she is bristling, I conclude that she doesn’t.
The thought comforts me greatly.
“Drinking already?” I smirk down at the two empty shot glasses trailing her like ducklings. Like our siblings had, all of her life. I touch my nose briefly to her braided updo, brushing flat a flyaway strand. Father's fur cloak presses ghostlike against her shoulder.
“You know Pilate. Things are always going well.” There is no bitterness in me tonight as I stand besides Miriam, wolf’s fur filling in for all the places I am hollow. When was the last time I had spoken—really spoken—to her? What—if anything—does she know?
What—if anything—does she want to know?
I am drained of answers. Instead, I gaze longingly down at the shot glasses. I wish to be like that. Ducklings, in Miriam’s shadow.
“As for you and me...” I begin walking again, towards the entrance, so that I can better hear the violin. I nudge her shoulder to beckon her to follow.
Dearest sister. Must I always depend on you so?
Ambition was my idol, which was broken
Before the shrines of Sorrow and of Pleasure;
And the two last have left me many a token
O'er which reflection may be made at leisure
BRIGHT SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. ASTONISHING RED.
(All that brightness inside me?)
(All that brightness inside me?)
♦︎♔♦︎
