Part 7: Only in Darkness
By Nina Windia
"What do you mean you're not competing?"
The morning light was warm and honeycomb, with the promise of heat already. Ryu and Sevvy were having breakfast in the Water Gardens. In the gazebo, they sat on low couches, and a girl served them warm rolls and honey with wine.
"I'm a mediocre archer at best, you know that," said Ryu.
"But you were all fired up about it just yesterday," said Sevvy. He tore a chunk out of his roll, looking puzzled.
"Well, I don't feel like it anymore."
Sevvy simply shook his head. "I can't keep up with your moods," he said.
"I've already won my garland. Whatever happens, I'm in the finals anyway."
"But if you win more than one event, you can eliminate someone else. One more shot at the Princess, right?"
Ryu went silent. Sevvy looked at his brother's face as he ate his breakfast stonily, and sighed.
"These rolls are great," he said.
Another shot at the princess. The words caught and rebounded in Ryu's head. What? Like she was a prize to be won? Again the image stirred inside his mind and took shape: the princess toppling before some kind of despair.
And then there was he— winning to take her back as his bride, not because he loved her, or even desired her. To get back at his brother.
I'm a man, he'd declared. But what kind of man was he, really?
Out loud, he asked, "How did Christina die?"
Sevvy stopped, roll jammed half way in his mouth. "Wherth dith thath come fthrom?" he said.
"Nobody here talks about her anymore, but it wasn't that long ago. What happened to her? Was it the flux?"
Sevvy swallowed down the last of his roll and beat his breast. He shook his head. "To be honest, I don't know either. I never asked."
It could only have been six months ago, Ryu thought. How must her sister be feeling now?
Sevvy cleared his throat. Ryu started up. For once, Sevvy looked uneasy. He folded the napkin on his plate absently, as though he wasn't aware he was doing it. "Ryu…" he said, "do you remember Astrid?"
Astrid, their sister. Locke's elder by a year.
Ryu's voice was quieter, too. "Only a little. I was six when it happened, so I should remember more. But to tell the truth, I can't even remember what she looked like. I… liked the fabric of her dresses. Her hair smelled nice."
Sevvy said, "Goddamn Ludians. Those monsters."
Even the golden light seemed to dim. They sat silently.
Ryu said, quietly, as though confessing a secret: "Locke still has her portrait in his room."
Sevvy nodded. "I saw it. When I snuck in to borrow his sword last year."
It was as though they'd summoned him. Locke strode up the steps of the gazebo. "I've found you a spare bow, Sevvy. It's not great, though. I told you not to stake yours up against that grassrunner. Arryn says he's a known conman."
He found his brothers, gone quickly silent.
Both of them knew better than to speak of Astrid to Locke.
The archery contest ended as everyone expected, with Arryn taking the third laurel crown. Though he'd heard of Arryn's renown, it was amazing too see him in action. The man's eyesight was incredible. He could spot details in the distance that were only a blur to Ryu, and he smashed the competition. His arrow hit the bullseye, every time.
The crowd dispersed, and Ryu began to wander. Thumbs hooked round his belt, he passed by the betting caravan, where several men called out to him. They seemed surprised to see him, and called out jovially, "Hey Ryu, we're rooting for you!", "Go get 'em!", "You better not lose, Prince. I've got all my savings riding on you."
Ryu nodded at them, and passed them by.
Applause rolled like waves from the open air amphitheatre, and curiously Ryu lingered.
On the stage, an actress laid in the pretence of death, a shroud covering over her. A man, knelt by her side cried aloud: "Fie, fate! How can I forgive you? You have stolen from me my only treasure. My sister, my sweet dove. Only your under your wings could I find shelter. You were my light.
"How can I live on now that light is gone?"
Ryu pressed on. He entered the city, and when the guardsman on the gate offered him an escort back to the Palace, he declined.
"Be careful then, please, my Lord. There a pickpockets aplenty come for the games, and more shady types as well. If you insist on going, stay away from the northern sprawl."
He explored the bazaar, mesmerised by the bright colours of the carpets, silks and weaves, though indignant when the sellers thrust them into his face. He bought a ruby red apple from a vendor, and bouncing it up and down in his hand tore a bite from it.
From there he moved into the crowded city plaza, and sat by a fountain of flying fish and ate the apple down to the core. In front of him, children were running around playing tag and shrieking with laughter. Few people looked to him, but when they did they admired his fine clothes with a kind of distance in their eyes, and ignored him.
It still puzzled Ryu, how segregated the common men were from their higher ups here in Wyndia, all though sometimes all that separated them was a name. In Dracon, any man could approach him. Then again, in Dracon, there weren't more than three hundred Brood. After the wilderness, the sheer number of lives here in Wyndia staggered him. The dirty children, running about the streets like rats. Women. Women everywhere, selling, buying, babies under their arms. More life. Incredible, how all these existences could jostle so close together, brushing, pushing and shoving past and without ever making contact.
It was strange, but sat there on the fountain, Ryu almost felt lonely.
Ryu watched as the quality of the city around him crumbled. The further he walked into the city, the shabbier the quality of the masonry, the dirtier the streets. The people, too, looked shabbier, with well-worn clothes of cheap, weather-beaten leather and fraying linen. Presumably, this was the northern sprawl. Here, the city was almost constantly thrown into the shade of the Palace, and rarely saw sunlight.
As he passed, young women sat in door frames and on steps called out to him, just as the women in the market had done, with the exception being that their wares were rather more intimate.
One woman caught him by the arm. She had small wings flecked with grey and an inviting smile. "What do you say, young man? Want to come play?"
"Not interested," Ryu said.
"Come now. A boy as finely-dressed as you, what else would be be up to in this part of town?"
"Sight-seeing."
She raised her eyebrows. "So that's it. If I were you though, darling, I'd sight-see somewhere else. Round here, stick around too long, you're just as likely to be sight-seeing your own liver." She pointed back up the street. "I'd head up that way, doll. Hate to see a boy as handsome as you in bits."
Ryu couldn't help but smile. "Thanks, but I think I'll be fine."
The woman shrugged. "It's your liver. Name's Lucille, if you ever change your mind. Find me next to Old Euron's place. First visit is half price."
"I'll keep that in mind, Lucille."
She wasn't wrong, either. He'd barely made it more than a yard down the narrow street before he was set upon. Quick as lightning, someone grabbed him by the waist, a cold knife set at his neck. The men smelled of wine and piss.
"Alright, fancy man, give us the sword," the voice grumbled in his ear. "You can drop your clothes too, and maybe we'll leave your pretty little throat intact."
Quicker even than they, so fast they didn't know what had happened, Ryu had twisted out of the grasp, and even got the knife out of the thief's hand. For a second, the man stood nonplussed. Then his red-headed partner went at Ryu, twin daggers shining. Ryu pulled his sword from its sheaf, and with the dagger and his sword, caught both his attacks, twisted the blades, sent both the man's daggers flying.
Enraged, the first man charged at him with his bare fists. Ryu ducked down and caught the man by the legs, sending him over his back and sprawling into the mud and shit.
Ryu smiled and pointed his blade at the red-head, who looked like he'd just soiled himself. "Leave. Maybe I won't cut your throats, though they're not so pretty."
The thieves took the chance Ryu was offering them. The red-head scarpered, leaving his partner to climb out of the mud and barrel after him.
Behind him, someone began to applaud. Ryu turned. It was Lucille, lifting her skirts to step over the filthy clogged drain to approach him.
"Impressive, young man. Those were the Lee brothers. They've slit more throats than they've teeth between them." Here, she paused. "Well, that's not saying much, I guess. Come walk with me."
She turned away, expecting Ryu to follow her. He said, "I'm not looking for someone to sleep with."
She looked back over her shoulder, mock cross. "How presumptive of you! I only asked you to walk with me. These streets are dangerous, after all. Do you only have sex on the brain, young man?"
Ryu stood for a moment, then his mouth turned up into a smile. He fell in with her, and she took him out of the dingy alleyways, leading him back out into the light of the plaza.
In front of him was a statue he hadn't seen before.
She was cast in pure white marble, stretching out her hands as though to embrace the whole city. Larger than life. Christina.
Strange, how she wasn't here anymore, and still cast such a long shadow.
"Here's a proper piece of sight-seeing for you, Mr Tourist," Lucille said, seeing him looking. "This here's our late princess. You know about our princess?"
Her face had been cast exactly in her image. Perhaps they'd used Nina as the model.
"I've heard of her," he said.
"Tragic," Lucille said. "You know what happened to her?" Ryu shook his head. "Plonk your butt down here then," she said, sitting on the plinth of the statue. "I'll tell you a story to tell yer relatives when you get back. Truth is, I know what happened better than most. I was doing some cleaning work in the Palace at the time, before this bitch maid accused me of pinching this silver I didn't even see."
Ryu sat with her. She said, "You know the gods we keep here in Wyndia, don't you?"
"Some. The same as in the Cedarwoods, right? Eld, Auga, Kaze? Gaia too, I think. And Yanoo." At the same time, Ryu couldn't help but wonder why they were discussing religion.
"You got most of them. But not Eld. Not anymore." She said, "You heard of Myria?"
The name rung a bell. "I think I might have, somewhere."
"Goddess of the dark, knowledge, prophesy- not much different from Yanoo really. She has a shrine up in the mountains but nobody had much heard of her until Princess Christina adopted her."
It clicked. This was Christina's god she spoke of.
"Myria ended up getting really popular, loads of folk introduced her to their pantheons and placed her talisman on their shrines. But the princess went too far. She'd become a kind of prophet to the god, started relaying messages directly from Her. And 'bout a year ago, she announced to all her followers that if they were the goddess's true believers, they'd believe only in Her, and cast out their other gods."
"Oh."
"Right. If only people hadn't listened to her, this wouldn't have happened. But… well, if you'd ever met her, you would understand. The princess had a kind of power. People listened to her. They believed in her. So her followers threw out their other gods, stopped visiting Auga's temples and Kaze's shrines, stopped praying to Eld. The monks and the priests started to get angry…"
"And then…?"
"And then, you can imagine. When she wouldn't back down, the priests of Eld murderered her."
Ryu's breath caught in his throat. "Murdered!"
"I really don't know how they thought they were going to get away with it. The heads of the temples have always had a lot of power in Wyndia: maybe they really believed their faith would award them with a pardon."
Ryu was still reeling with this information that it took a moment for him to soak all this in. "I take it they didn't, then?"
Lucille shook her head. "You won't find a single talisman to Eld left in this city. Not in public, anyway. Anyone found worshipping him has their idols taken and destroyed, and they're whipped out in the gallery. There's a couple of them strung up there now, if you want to see them. And after he'd found the truth, the King rounded up every single priest of Eld, built a huge pyre, and he burnt them all to death."
"All of them?" said Ryu.
"The King knew Eld's cult was behind it. But no one would come forward, and no one would bring anyone forward. After a fortnight, he decided to burn all of them."
This was shocking enough itself, but Ryu still couldn't wrap his head around the fact Christina had been murdered. It seemed only yesterday she'd been sat by his side under the aurora and she'd told him how she could never talk openly during the day. Only in darkness, she'd said. He could still feel her cold hand, pressed against his cheek. He shook the feeling off, like a shiver.
"How?" he asked. "How was she…?"
"Poison, I was told. I never saw the body myself. The Princess always had a drink of milk before bed. Her sister didn't recognise the serving girl."
Christina, he thought, with grief. And Nina. She must have seen it all happen.
"And now," he realised, "they're trying to get rid of Princess Nina. Why?"
"I have the juciest gossip for you. Nobody in the city has the foggiest, but in the Palace rumour is that she's doo-lali."
"Doo-lali?"
"You know… a bit touched in the head. Even before Princess Christina died. Not that I ever got close to her myself, but you hear things, working in the Palace. Stuff like, flying off in the middle of the night, and saying strange things. People heard her talking to herself. And I never told you this, but the whispers say that she's not even a virgin. Shock! Gasp! Right? Not that I care. She could fuck the entire royal guard and their squires as well if she wanted and it wouldn't bother little old me. But then, I'm in little position to judge, am I?" Lucille grinned crookedly at him, and Ryu considered that she didn't sound- barring talking to herself- that doo-lali to him.
"Well? Is that enough tourist information for you?" she said.
In reply, Ryu opened up his purse and put several coins into Lucille's hand. "Not that the jangle of zenny isn't music to my ears," she said, pocketing them, "but why exactly are you paying me?"
"For your time. You could be with a customer right now."
Lucille's eyes shined. "I like you," she said. "Tell you what. Let's make a bet. If ever we bump into one another by chance again, I'll fuck you for free." And when Ryu opened his say something, she halted him, finger pressed to his lips. "Don't refuse. Didn't your mother ever warn you about breaking girls hearts?"
Carrying a crisp bouquet of lilies he'd bought at the market, Ryu descended down into the crypt. He footfalls fell loud upon the stairs. It took him a moment to realise that was because it was so quiet. The silence was impenetrable, even stifling. He passed by the statues of a dozen, almost identical kings, all rotting into time.
At the very end of the crypt, there was a sight that astounded him.
Christina didn't look like she was dead, only sleeping. Like at any moment, she might wake up, and wonder at the debris of candles, incense and flowers piled around her.
Ryu was alone. Though not consciously he'd wondered if he might meet Nina here… or maybe hoped was the right word.
But it was just him, and a dead girl.
Ryu laid the flowers down with the rest, and knelt before the bier.
"Christina, it's me, Ryu. Do you remember me?" The long silence stretched on: had he really expected her to reply? "I remember you. I wish we'd gotten to know one another better. You understood me more in a day than my brothers have my whole life. I really hope you remember, wherever you've gone to now. I don't know your god, but I hope She's taking care of you.
"I followed your advice, you know. Though it didn't turn out the way I hoped. Maybe you were right. What was it you said? Intimacy doesn't last?" He stared down at his hands, pale in the light. "I was wrong all along. Sarah never loved me: she was only toying with me. Or maybe she never thought what she was doing would hurt me… I don't know which one is worse.
"Afterwards, I felt like a fool. I gave her everything… I made our connection into something magical. Until I realised there was no connection at all. All those same thoughts I thought we were thinking, the hopes we shared… I'd imagined them all in my head.
"And even now when I think about her, although sometimes I get angry, just as often, I miss her. I miss her irrationally. She betrayed me, and yet I still… I just don't understand. Why can't I let these feelings go free? Why can't I…?" His words trailed off in a tumble of emotion. Ryu leant down, his head bowed at the alter.
After a few minutes, he stood. "I'm sorry. My problems are nothing to yours: you're dead. Looking back on how I've behaved the last few years, I've only ever thought about myself. And it's terrible… but even now, with everything that's happened, I can still only think about myself."
He stepped over the heat of the candles to the alter, and gently, cupped his hand around Christina's face, just as she had done with him, those years ago. "All the same," he said, "I'm glad I met you."
A woman's voice cut through him like the pointed end of a javelin: "Get your filthy hands off her!"
Princess Nina stood in the tomb, hands round a precious pot of incense, leather sack under her arm, her eyes ablaze.
Immediately, he let go and stepped back from Christina's body. Nina glared at him fiercely, giving no indication of whether she recognised him or not. As she approached, Ryu stepped back against the wall to give her space, and her attention on him dissolved.
In fact, Ryu thought, it was as though she'd put him out of her mind completely. Approaching the alter, she set down on the ground the items from the sack; rice cakes, honey, a plate of sugared roses. He watched, as she cleared away the wilting flowers and old food and put them into the bag. Carefully, she placed the gifts on the plinth below where Christina laid, as conscientiously as offerings. When she had them precisely where she wanted them, she picked up a long taper. Lighting it from one of the braziers, she lit the pot of incense, and placed it on the alter below the bier. Smoke arose from the pot like cursive script.
From her hair she slipped a shell comb. With the simplicity of someone who's done this countless times, she slid onto the bier and lifted Christina by the shoulders, carefully, carefully, so that her head laid in her lap. Then, she began to comb her hair.
Ryu felt the overwhelming sense that he was intruding on something incredibly intimate. He knew he should leave, and yet at the same time, the same feeling held him fast. He watched as Nina brushed her sister's hair, forty strokes a-side, and brought the shine back to it. Ryu saw, how under her sister's hand her golden hair gleamed once again.
How often did Nina do this? Every week? Every day?
"Why are you still here?"
Nina didn't even look at him as she spoke. Her back to him, she continued to brush her sister's hair, in precise even strokes.
"I… I came to pay my respects to Princess Christina."
"You've paid them. Now go."
Ryu wondered later why it was he didn't go.
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
He took a step forward, enough to see the note of impatience playing out over her face as she said, "No. This is my job. It's no one else's concern."
"I knew your sister," he said.
"The same could be said of half the people in this city," Nina said.
But you don't understand, Ryu wanted to say. It was different. He'd known her, really known her.
Nina swung round suddenly, and gazed at him, her eyes spitting sparks.
"I know who you are," she said, piercing him to the spot like a tacked butterfly. "You're one of the men my father's invited to compete in his little carnival. It isn't enough you're here to take me from my home, but you have to lay your dirty hands on Christina as well?"
"I didn't—" Ryu started.
"You make me sick. All of you, you all swan around acting like you own the place. Just yesterday I found a man here who had the audacity to cut a lock of her hair, for a keepsake."
"Couldn't you station a guard outside?" Ryu asked.
Her eyes flashed. "Do you think I'm stupid?"
Ryu felt dismayed, and taken aback by the whole exchange. He said, If I've wounded you in some way—"
"You!" She laughed, cruelly. "I don't even know who you are. You probably think I do. You're all the same, noblemen." she slipped from the alter and approached him, stepping up tight. Was she trying to intimidate him? Goad him into anger? He was startled when she reached for him. "You think the whole the whole world revolves around you, and your pretty little cock." Like that she reached between his legs and squeezed. As though he'd been shocked with electricity, Ryu threw himself back, one of Nina's moulding ancestors at his ear.
"What do you think you're doing?" he said. His voice echoed.
She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She encroached on him again, her hand on his chest. She answered his question with a kiss.
Her lips were hot and syrupy and she reeked of sickly sweet incense. Ryu pushed her away.
"Princess," he said, "stop. You're doing something you'll regret. You're sick with grief; you're not in your right mind now."
"Why?" she said. "Just because I initiate something, instead of a man, I must be 'sick with grief?'"
"That's not what I mean. It's like I said, you don't even know me. And look around yourself, Princess. Where we are."
Nina looked back, at the burning braziers, her sister sleeping her eternal sleep. Nina reached up, slinging her arms around Ryu's neck, holding him in her embrace. She closed her eyes; she looked almost peaceful. "I want her to see," she said. "I want her to know who I am."
Lucille had to be right. There was something wrong with the girl.
Taking hold of her hands, Ryu untangled her from him, holding her back. "I told you, no."
For just a second, hot anger flashed through Nina's features. Then it faded, and left something colder behind in its wake.
"Tell me," she said, creeping closer, her wrists still restrained in Ryu's hands. "The palace guards. If something were to happen, who do you think they would believe? Me? Or you?"
Ryu said nothing. He didn't like where this was going.
"I can imagine it now. Their sweet, demure little princess comes running to them, crying because some nasty foreign stranger has forced himself on her. Her clothes are all torn, and she's sobbing." As she spoke, she moved in closer, their faces almost touching, pulling hard against Ryu's grip on her wrists. "I have to say, I don't like your chances, stranger. I don't like them at all."
In Ryu's head, he could Sarah's laughter, as she hurt him.
Was it the personal mission of every other woman in this world to destroy him?
He felt fury rise in his stomach, like bile. It took all the effort he had inside him to choke it down, to stop himself from grinding Nina's wrist bones into dust.
And then, she laughed. She threw her head back as though he was hilarious, had to stifle her giggles against the fabric of her shawl. "Your expression!" she gasped. "You can wipe that mad look off your face. I'm not really going to report you to anybody. I was just toying with you." She withdrew out of his space, and Ryu let go of her wrists, though he still regarded her warily, like he would a dangerous animal. She grinned at him, tears of laughter in her eyes. "Really?" she said. "Do you think they'd really listen to me?"
Nina approached the bier and knelt down, packing the rest of her things away into the sack. She became very small.
Just what was going on here?
"What do you mean?" Ryu said. He kept his distance, but he didn't need to. In the space of a few seconds, Nina had shrunk down. She'd become that fragile, helpless creature he'd encountered above the city, battling against her own unhappiness.
She gazed up at him, eyes pools of still water, reflecting a faraway light. "If I haven't even the power to get a single guard stationed for my sister's tomb, do you think anyone would listen to me if I made a complaint against you?"
"But you're a princess of Wyndia," Ryu said.
"Was. Soon, I'll be someone else's bride. I might as well have packed my bags."
"That's insane," Ryu said, shaking his head.
"I'm not lying. Ask anyone you want. You'll discover the truth. Ask why another woman occupies my mother's- the Queen's- chambers. Or who the boy is who sits by my father's side. Even that bitch Kleopatra, my bastard sister, sleeps in my bed. My bed, and my sister's bed." Her hands tightened over the sack, till her knuckles turned white. "You think I'm a liar? Everyone in this palace is a liar. It's rotten to the core."
Thinking back, Ryu realised that she might be telling the truth. There had a been a young boy by King Philip's side each time he saw him, though Philip had no sons. And Queen Rosetta? He might have seen her, once.
Ryu knelt down beside Nina. He wondered whether to offer her a comforting hand, but wonderd too if it would be presumptive. Also, he was still wary. He said, "I'm sorry."
"Why? You've done nothing." Her face was turned away, towards the floor. "I'm used to it. I've been vanishing from this city from the day I was born. First Eurydyke moved in, then her spawn. Then my sister spoke to that goddamned oracle… that was the start of it. She was mine, and I was hers, but I could never match her. Then she started preaching. Nothing could come between her and the god. She went too far. I told her… I tried to warn her…" her voice trailed off in a choked noise. Ryu thought she was crying, but when she gazed up at her sister's body, Ryu saw her face: cold as stone, lifeless.
They've wrung her dry, Ryu thought. Squeezed next to every last drop of life out of her. That's why she like this.
He wondered why she was telling him, a stranger, all of this. But perhaps that was why. He was a stranger; he meant nothing to her.
The nearby brazier guttered. Almost of out of oil, it spluttered and hissed, and went out.
In the dark, Ryu put his hand on Nina's.
"She loved you," he said. Nina didn't react. "She came to Dracon once, my hometown. She told me… how happy she was, just talking to you. She said it made her feel—" What was the word she'd used? "—she said it made her feel eternal."
Nina moved. She looked up at him, into his eyes, searching. "She said that to you?"
"Yes."
Nina asked, "Who are you?"
"My name's Ryu. I'm from Dracon. My mother is—"
"No." Her other hand moved, tightened over his. Her eyes locked him in place. Lit by torchlight,- something seemed to stir within them. "I mean, who are you?"
To be continued.
A/N- Thanks for the reviews guys! Makes me happy to know you're enjoying the story so far.
Next chapter will be from Nina's perspective. Yay!
