No one enters my cell again until several hours after Kobok has left. The quiet snick of the lock on my door nudges me from my doze. I open my eyes, expecting the minister again, or maybe the guard coming to take me to an early execution. But it’s neither. It’s a small woman, oldish but not too old, in a neat black servant’s uniform. She holds nothing in her hands besides the key, which she tucks on a chain into her pocket.
I lift my head, surprised. “Who are you?”
She doesn’t answer. She just stands, looking me over, her face unreadable. Then, like Kobok, she steps forward and draws my chain to the side, baring my forearm. She studies my brand. Unlike Kobok, though, she doesn’t say anything, or react at all.
“What do you want?” I ask.
She sets my arm down, stands back, and goes back to the door.
“Are you a slave, too?” I ask.
She smiles sadly as she steps out, shuts the door, and turns the lock.
I keep my head lifted a moment longer, and then set it back on my arm, wondering who she was and what my brand meant to her. I close my eyes, searching for that fitful sleep from a moment ago, but only a few more minutes pass before I hear footsteps again, heavier than the servant’s. The lock turns, and I open my eyes to see the cell guard from Kobok’s interrogation, still bearing that mirrored lantern. In her other hand is a tray. She sets it down on the floor and steps to the ring fixing my chain to the floor. Pulling out her keys, she unlocks the manacles on my wrists and instead fits an ankle cuff to the chain. She locks it around my boot and steps back.
“Dinner,” she says.
I look down at the tray, expecting swill, but I’m surprised to see a silver plate with meat and rice, and a cup of dark wine.
“Last meal?” I ask dryly.
She fixes the manacles on her belt. “The council of ministers has always sponsored the final meal for prisoners heading to the gallows. An act of goodwill.”
I snort in contempt.
“Enjoy it,” she says acidly. “You’re lucky they held to tradition instead of letting you go hungry.”
I turn my head away as she heads back out of the cell, her key ring jingling importantly. My stomach turns at the thought of food, but I think of all the times in Three Lines I checked a snare to find it empty, or scraped the bottom of a pot for the final burned flakes. I think of how often the only thing to offer my campmates was cattail powder and withered roots.
I massage my wrists, stiff from the manacles, and drag the tray toward me.
I eat without tasting, my thoughts drifting back toward Three Lines. Slowly, methodically, I start to neatly sever myself from the people who could be used against me, or could be drawn into my dangerous orbit and destroyed. I force myself to believe my campmates are safe in Callais, that Veran’s friends have brought them into their circle of protection and are giving them the lives I never could. I say good-bye to Sedge and Lila, and Bitty and Arana, thanking them for helping me get through the toughest times. I say good-bye to Saiph, wishing him good fortune. I say good-bye to Andras and Hettie, praying they’ll find their ways back home and into the arms of their families. I say good-bye to little Whit, wishing her a soft bed and good food and the voice of somebody gentle, somebody who can smooth away the demons she should never have had to live with. I say good-bye to Pickle, wishing him a death easy and free. I say good-bye to Rose, kissing her forehead and laying her back down to rest in Three Lines, the guardian of the South Burr. I apologize in specifics to each person, but I don’t wait to hear their responses, relying on the whole span of the Ferinno to cut them off from me.
I say good-bye to the Ferinno, the flushes and washes and massive sky, the larks in the scrub and the dust and the snakes. I say good-bye to Three Lines, the water pocket and sun-hot walls. I say good-bye to my horse Jema and wish her a sweeter life with a kinder rider than me. I say good-bye to Rat. The food sticks in my throat at this point, and I fight away the headache that springs up at the thought of him. I wish him good hunting and dust baths and stretches of sun to lie in, and then I move on fast, before this headache breaks apart into something I can’t stop.
I say good-bye to Soe and Iano. I don’t know whether they would count themselves as friends to me, but they didn’t turn me in or turn me out, and for that I’m grateful, I guess. I say good-bye to Tamsin. I liked Tamsin a lot, and I hate how good the world is at targeting our specific joys and turning them into pain. I don’t offer her many words, though. Whatever I have to say to her, I expect she already knows. Instead a memory rises, unbidden, of the giant redwood tree she took me to on my first day at Soe’s, a place of peace and purpose for her, and I wish her that, I suppose.
When the food is gone and I’m back to lying on my side again, when I’ve gone through everyone else I can think of, every incidental face, from Patzo in Snaketown to Cook and the rustlers to Dirtwater Dob decaying somewhere under the desert sun, I reluctantly turn to Veran.
I spend a long time staring vacantly, my mind slow and empty. I don’t know what to wish him. I don’t have anything to offer. Apologies seem pointless. Forgiveness seems trite. Well wishes of happiness and health seem almost offensive. The longer I think, the emptier I feel, like I’ve given away the last bits of myself that were still clinging under my exterior.
I find my thoughts instead simply settling on his face, the familiar copper of his skin, the black of his hair reflecting the sky in glints. I think of his sagebrush eyes watching me, drinking in the world in great gulps, determined to absorb as much as possible with each available heartbeat. Where the limits of my life have made me closed up and callused, his have made him wide open, hoarding all the highs and lows the world has to offer. I think of his excitement over gear, his enthusiasm for action, his regard for his family and his ma’s forest scouts. I think of his soft, practiced footsteps and buoyant energy. I think of his funny habits toward the natural world—thanking trees, welcoming thunder, ranting about songbirds hitting glass.
I frown.
I try to find that funny.
It’s not funny, though.
I think of the little birds in the sage throughout the Ferinno, wheeling through the open air. I know what it feels like now to slam into something you never see coming, to break your body on solid glass, and then to fall from the wide-open place you’ve always called home.
And then for that to happen dozens—hundreds—of times a day, every day, and for people to call it normal.
My mouth twists.
Veran’s right to be angry.
In fact, it makes me angry, too.
This palace is a quarry of arrogance and death, breeding it both inside and outside its brilliant glass domes.
Impulsively I slap the tray that was paid for so generously by wealthy folk upstairs, offering me one last condolence for the life they created for me. The silver plate jumps from the tray, resting at an angle against the lip, and the empty cup tips. Flecks of wine trickle down the surface of the plate, trailing past the sudden reflection of my face staring back at me.
The image wobbles on the silver as I blink back at it. I scan my reflection for familiar details, but they’re muddled by the dings in the metal and the guttering lantern light. Even my face has shifted, dissolved with all the other stuff that used to be inside me.
And then, in the next breath, I blink and find myself staring not at myself, but at that other girl.
Eloise.
I stare at the reflection. The metal distorts the razor edges I’m so used to seeing in my face and replaces them with softer lines. The darkness unlocks my hair and piles it over my shoulder. The lantern flashes on the tin studs in my ear, turning them to pearls.
Princess Eloise Alastaire.
She was sick, when I saw her just a few weeks ago. Weakened by that fever that’s crept into Tolukum. Infected by mosquitoes purposefully drawn into her room, the insects turned unknowingly into weapons because there aren’t enough birds to eat them.
Because the birds hit the glass.
Because the glass is impressive to powerful people.
Because the powerful people can force less powerful people to make the glass for them.
My fists close and squeeze, and in the metal plate, Eloise’s reflection spasms with anger. I catch a glimpse of that other man, the ambassador, as he ran at me, wild-eyed. The princess’s father, Rou. I only saw the two of them for a few minutes at most, but I can see his face in hers.
I wonder what else of him lives in her—what about his laugh? His smile? The way he bounces his leg while thinking?
My stomach goes cold.
Is that a memory?
I recall that patchy vision that came with the pain as Kobok loomed over me—the shifting cloth, the play of sunlight, the sound of clinking. My breath comes shallowly in my throat as these things grow sharper. The cloth is a tablecloth fluttering on an open terrace, lit with morning sun. The clink of the chain is the sound of cutlery on breakfast dishes. There’s a giggle. Curly hair brushes wood as we crawl under the table. Voices murmur gently above. Two pairs of legs flank us in our cave, our fortress—on the one side, trousers and boots, with one knee bouncing. Movement and deep laughter, the smell of cinnamon.
On the other side, stillness.
Her leg didn’t bounce. She always sat perfectly still, a rock, an anchor. Cool and quiet and safe.
I see Eloise’s face next to her father’s again, and even though there’s sameness, there’s difference, too, and I wonder—if some things came from him . . .
Which things came from her?
The reflection in the silver plate flickers again, and my own face returns to me—not Eloise’s, not her father’s, not her mother’s. And then finally, finally, I recognize what exactly I’m looking at. Veran would have already spotted it, if he were here. His giddy voice filters back from the top of the mesa.
Start with what you have.
I push myself up from the floor, my ribs blazing with pain. Stiffly, I draw my ankle toward me and examine the lock on the cuff. It doesn’t look complicated—all the manacles in the prison probably take the same standard key. I look at the cell door. It probably takes a different key.
I pick up the plate and wipe the last trickles of wine from it. Slowly, I get to my feet. Wincing, I shrug off the fine blue vest Veran bought me and lay it over my shoulder. The chain of my ankle cuff clinks as I step to the cell door. I crane my head against the bars and look down the corridor. About twenty paces away are the crossed legs of the cell guard, bathed in a circle of light from the bright mirrored lantern.
“Hey,” I call. My voice echoes off the stone. The boots down the corridor twitch.
“What?” The guard’s voice is annoyed.
“Did you send this message?” I ask.
“What?” she asks again.
“This message, in my food. Is it from you?”
A stool scrapes the floor. The circle of light swings as the guard snatches up the lantern. Her boots slap on the floor as she hurries toward me. I shift the plate in my fingers.
“What message?” she asks with alarm. “Where? Let me see.”
She holds the blinding lantern aloft. I tilt my head against the bars so their shadows fall over my eyes. Her fingers stretch toward me.
I slip the shiny silver plate through the bars, tilt it, and beam the reflection right back into her face.
She scrunches her eyes shut, and I lunge, grabbing her outstretched hand and yanking it through the bars. She shouts in surprise as she stumbles forward, but the noise cuts off as I bend her arm awkwardly against the bars. She tries to swing the lantern toward me, but I meet her fingers with the edge of the plate. The lantern drops from her grip, landing mirror-side down on the floor. It shatters. The corridor goes dim. I trap her other hand and twist it through the bars as well, pulling her shoulder flush against the metal with her arms pinned through two different openings. Leaning against the bad angles of her elbows, I reach for her belt and pluck the knife from her hip. I let the edge brush her neck.
“Yell again and you’ll wish you hadn’t,” I say against her ear.
She grits her teeth and struggles, but the angle is too awkward for her to pull away. I shrug the blue vest from my shoulder, praising Veran for his exorbitant taste—my old threadbare vest would have split apart with minimal tugging, but this one is thick, lined, and heavily stitched. Setting the knife momentarily in my teeth, I work the guard’s wrists through the arm holes and then cinch it tight.
With her secure, I set the knife against her neck again and work the ring of keys off her belt—not an easy thing since I can barely get my wrist through the bars. She fights me silently, trying to keep her hips as far from me as possible, but eventually I hook her belt and manage to slide the ring off its clasp. The keys jingle as I pull them through the bars.
“You’re nothing but a common outlaw,” she snarls.
“I’m an extraordinary outlaw,” I say, picking through the keys. “I am a crowned queen of outlaws.”
I work through three of the smaller keys before I find the one that unlocks my ankle cuff. For good measure I close it around her wrist—even if she manages to get free of my vest, she’ll still have one hand trapped inside the cell. The key to the door is easy to identify, being stamped with the same number as the lock, but it’s not so easy to reach it through the bars. I wince as I press my cracked ribs against the metal, fighting to fit the key into the tumblers.
Finally, it turns, and I sigh as the door hinges open. I step into the corridor and shut it behind me.
The guard is twisting her hands viciously in my vest. I step toward her and slide her belt off—if she gets a hand free, I don’t want any of her gear close by. I remove the gag from its pouch.
“You’ll swing for this,” she hisses.
“Nah,” I say. “I’ll swing for everything else. This bit? I doubt they’ll care. Although you might get a reprimand.”
I fix the gag over her mouth, give her an encouraging pat, and then step over the lantern and head down the corridor.