Caitlin Brennan - Song Of Unmaking

The sound was so tender and yet so imperious that Valeria found her eyes stinging with tears. It was meant for her, too, in its way—and for all of them, whether or not they could understand.

The uproar this year was less pronounced than it had been when Valeria, having become champion of the testing, was unmasked as a woman.

Briana had never pretended to be anything but what she was. What exactly that was at the moment, no one knew, but Master Nikos decreed that the matter would be decided tomorrow. Today the Called would celebrate their elevation to rider-candidates. There would be no further distractions.

Master Nikos had learned a great deal in the past year. They all had.

Valeria had spent her own feast of celebration in Kerrec’s study, cleaning and tidying. She had every intention of doing the same again, but Briana insisted that they both go. “I would really rather be in the stable,” she said as they shared a bath and put on festival clothes, “but this is duty. The stable—and the Lady—will be there in the morning.”

“You believe that?” Valeria asked.

Briana nodded. “She promised.”

“Then it is true,” Valeria said.

“All of it,” said Briana. She was standing perfectly straight, not moving except to speak. Her maids had come down from the tower to dress her properly, which looked like a great ordeal.

No doubt she was used to it. Valeria, quickly and comfortably dressed in the grey coat and doeskin breeches of a rider-candidate, perched on a stool and watched. It was fascinating, the transformation of a stablehand into an imperial princess.

Briana’s gown was very simple compared to some Valeria had seen in the emperor’s court, but it was made of silk that shimmered now gold, now scarlet. She wore a collar of gold set with bloodred stones, and a net of gold and rubies confined the coiled mass of her hair.

Valeria sighed faintly. She never had cared for clothes and pretty things the way her sisters did, but there was something about silk.

Her fingers smoothed the wool of her coat. She had earned it with blood and tears. She would never trade it for anything. But she could be tempted—almost—by that beautiful gown.

Briana was still Briana, even in imperial splendor. She refused to mince down the corridors and across the courtyards like a court lady. She strode out with a swish and swirl of skirts, which would probably have given her maids the vapors.

It made for a grand entrance. The dining hall was full, but the diners’ cheer seemed rather subdued. Briana’s arrival changed that. They all stood up without prompting and applauded as she made her way to the front of the room.

The high platform had a long table set up on it, with all the new riders sitting there. The nobles were seated just below and to the right of the head table—across from the riders, whose table ran along the wall to the left. Briana would have gone to the nobles’ table, but the rider-candidates came down in a mob and carried her up to join them.

They carried Valeria, too, over her vigorous protests. She could not stop them. There were too many and too determined.

When they set her on the platform, she finally got the words out. “I don’t belong here! This isn’t my year.”

“You were cheated of it last year,” Lucius said. He was the ringleader and proud of it. “We’re giving it to you now.”

One of the others pressed a cup into her hands. It looked and felt very old, a broad shallow chalice of silver engraved with intertwining figures of men on horses. The same image was carved on the arch of the great gate of the citadel. She wondered, rather distantly, which of them had come first.

There was wine in the cup. “Drink!” the rider-candidates said in chorus. “Drink! Drink! Drink!”

She looked down from the high table at the riders below. None of them had moved to stop this. Kerrec was not even looking at her. His head was bent and his hands wrapped around a cup, as if something fascinating swam inside it.

Her jaw hurt. She was clenching it. She relaxed as much as she could, and made herself stop caring what Kerrec did or thought.

She focused on Master Nikos instead. He had an expression almost of curiosity, as if he was waiting patiently to see how this game played out.

He was not angry. She saluted him with the champion’s cup and drank as deep as she could stand.

The wine went straight to her head. Instead of making her dizzy, it made her wonderfully, marvelously happy. Nothing mattered then—not Kerrec, not the riders, not anything.

She passed the cup to Briana. That met with a roar of approval.

These rider-candidates had none of the rigidity of their elders. They loved a spectacle. If that spectacle shattered the traditions of a thousand years, then so it did. This was a new world. They would make new traditions for it.

Valeria woke with the mother of headaches. She vaguely remembered leaving the hall, late and so full she could barely move, but between the hall and her bed, she had no memory at all.

Slowly she realized that not all the pounding she heard was inside her skull. Someone was beating the door down.

Briana in the servant’s room was much closer to the door—and should have been rocked out of bed by the noise. But the hammering went on and Briana made no move to stop it. Valeria staggered out of bed, cursing the arrogance of imperial princesses, and stumped scowling toward the door.

Paulus stepped back quickly at sight of her face. He had a healthy respect for her powers. She lightened her scowl somewhat, but there was no getting rid of all of it. That part was pain.

Paulus scowled back. “Master Nikos is asking for you,” he said.

She had been expecting that. Yesterday’s adventures had had nothing to do with her, but the riders would be needing someone to blame. She left Paulus standing in the doorway while she went to wash and dress.

On the way, she peered into the servant’s room. The bed had been slept in, but there was no one in it. Briana was gone.

That took a little of the edge off her temper, but not much. She had to reach inside herself for calm, and then for focus.

She needed both. Paulus did not move out of her way when she reached the door. He had a look that made her eyes narrow. “What is it?” she asked.

His face was stiff. Not that that was anything unusual—but this was a different kind of stiffness. Valeria pulled him back into the room and thrust him into the nearest chair. “Talk,” she said.

He scowled even more blackly than before. “It may be nothing,” he said. “I could be imagining it. I’m not an Augur. I was supposed to be one, but I was Called instead.”

Valeria clenched her fists to keep from shaking him. “You saw something,” she said. “When the Lady Danced.”

He nodded tightly. “Did it occur to you to wonder why, of all the hundreds of people at the testing, there was not one Augur? You’d think one would come just to watch. It’s not as if there were a tradition against it.”

“Are you saying there’s some sort of conspiracy?” Valeria demanded.

“I don’t know,” said Paulus. He said it without exasperation or excessive temper, which for him was unusual. “I saw things in the patterns of the Dance. It was like writing on a page.”

“What did it say?” Valeria was working hard to cultivate patience. Paulus was not going to come to the point until he was ready. Considering how reluctant he obviously was, she wondered if she wanted to hear it.

“I’m not sure what it said,” Paulus said. “I can tell you what I think it said. It was like a poem in a language I never properly learned. There was a stanza about the school and about change, and about how the old had to die to make room for the new. Then there was a sequence about the war. How the only way to win it was by doing nothing. Or by embracing nothingness.”