I used my fingers to scrape away what appeared to be meat pie filling and pastry crust. Gasps sliced through the sudden silence. Two of my escorts hedged in around me, tense and tall and suffocating, so I could not see where the next pie came from, only where it exploded: on the face of my portrait hanging in the shop doorway.
The other two escorts shoved through the crowd and grabbed the perpetrator—a middle-aged woman with a tired face and the sinewy arms of a hard worker. She held her chin high as they dragged her toward me.
“That’s for the children who starved because of you and your family,” she spat.
Indignation, embarrassment, animus boiled in my blood. Slap her face, a vicious voice inside me said. Toss her in prison or lock her in the pillory.
But with a pang of shame, I thought of the young boy who had thrown the rock at the window, the way my guards had rushed to defend me, no questions asked. They would slay this woman on the spot if I commanded it.
It was a power I was duty-bound to wield with compassion.
But that didn’t mean I had to roll over like a submissive dog.
I slid my thumb down my cheek, gathering warm filling that smelled of black pepper and cloves, which I made a show of sucking off while staring at the woman. My guards each sported one rapier and one dagger, and I reached for the nearest one’s dagger, sliding it from the scabbard engraved with our kingdom’s lily crest.
The people in the crowd gasped again. Perennia uttered my name in a cautious tone. Since I’d pulled the blade out facing down, I twirled the weapon’s handle over my fingers to deftly reverse the grip, something I’d casually practiced but wasn’t sure I could do without flubbing it until that very moment. I took one step, then another, until I towered over the insolent woman, who appeared more ill at ease with every beat that passed.
But I didn’t press the blade’s edge to her throat as my pride desired, nor did I take it to one of her knobby fingers, greasy from the pies, as Uncle Mathis might have done. Instead, I turned and strode back toward the portrait of me, smeared with oozing filling, and dragged the blade over the wood and cheap paint until a gash marred one eye.
When that was done, I lightly tossed it back to my guard. He caught it by the handle, sheathing it along with the brief flicker of surprise that crossed his face. The crowd gave me a wide berth as I walked away.
On the ferry, Perennia sat silent and tense at my side. After we reached the merchant ship and strode up the gangplank, crewmembers waved us past the captain’s cabin to the private guest cabin. It was installed with a desk, a dining table, and a curtained bed tucked into an alcove. Six windows curved with the shape of the ship’s stern, looking out on the gyrating sea.
I sighed and dropped my belongings beside the bed, eager to access the cruet of brandy on the dining table. Perennia sank onto the mattress and hugged Larabelle’s book to her chest, staring at me.
“What?” I asked as I splashed brandy into a pear-shaped crystal goblet. “Did you think I was going to execute her?”
“No,” Perennia muttered. But I wasn’t convinced. She pried open the dense book and began to read. I took a few swigs and looked outside again, thinking how long a fortnight would feel undulating over an endless sea.
“That’s interesting,” Perennia mused after what seemed a long while.
When she didn’t elaborate, I indulged her. “What?”
“In Perispos, they build edifices to honor both the good and evil deities, whom they call the Holies and the Fallen. The Holy edifices are on top of hills and the Fallen edifices are underground.”
“Yes, I’ve heard. Quite fascinating.”
“The Holy edifices are for praise and prayer, but the Fallen edifices are for self-reflection,” she explained, disregarding my sarcasm. “The former feature murals depicting joy and redemption, and the latter, suffering and carnage.”
“And elicromancers spawning from demons, I suppose?”
Perennia frowned. “Why are you acting this way?”
“Why aren’t you? This nonsense inspired those zealots to kill our parents.” My tone had gone so cold so as to become brittle, and it broke over the last two words.
My younger sister furrowed her fair brow. “Just because some believers interpret the holy text that way doesn’t mean the whole religion is worthy of ridicule.”
I plunked down my goblet, already feeling the warmth of the spirit settle in my chest. “You are more forgiving than I am. I’ve no curiosity about their edifices or their deities. I only want to make sure Ambrosine hasn’t set her new kingdom on a course for disaster. And then I want to go home.”
“Home, where everything is going so well?” Perennia asked.
I wanted to bristle at the irony in her tone, yet I knew she wasn’t using it to wound, as my other siblings and I often did. She watched sadness clear the bitterness from my expression. She stood.
“Don’t,” I said from across the cabin, splaying a hand to stop her from using her Solacer power to relieve me of my taxing emotions. “I don’t need you to take this away.”
She set her brow in determination, but merely strode to the dining table and sloshed brandy into another crystal goblet. “When Father was troubled, I used to hear Mother tell him this: ‘It’s easy to find fault with whoever wears the crown, but harder to wear it.’ You’ve taken on a role that has never been easy for anyone, Glisette. And it will be even more difficult if you let your prejudices stand in the way of ruling justly. Mother and Father wouldn’t have wanted us to judge an entire religion based on the actions of a few.” She raised her goblet of amber liquid. “To finding your stride as a benevolent queen.”
I clinked my crystal against hers and swallowed the rest of my serving. Perennia took a sip and grimaced in disgust. “How do you drink that, and so early in the morning?”
I smiled a little as she forced herself to drain her serving, finishing it off with a gag. She crossed back to the bed and settled in to read while I stared at the rising sun sparkling over the waters.
At last I heard the distant hollers of crewmembers and felt the boat gently shift. “I think we’re leaving,” I said, but turned to find Perennia asleep sitting up, the book sprawled on the coverlet beside her. The brandy must have gone to her head.
I tented my fingers against my smile for a moment, hoping to hide it should she notice me staring tenderly at her. But she didn’t awaken. I padded toward her, shedding my lightweight spring mantle to spread over her shoulders.
As I pulled away, an illustration within the book caught my eye. It was a crude relief printing depicting miserable humans writhing in darkness, their mouths open wide with tormented screams I could almost hear. In the background stood four shadowy figures.
It took a few beats for what I’d learned in lessons to return, sloshing a little with the brandy. I didn’t even need to squint and read the script at the foot of the illustration that provided the names for each Fallen deity. I remembered.
The first was Themera, meaning Cruelty. She wore a crown of knives. The second was Silimos, or Apathy. A thin veil covered her emaciated form. The third went by the name Robivoros, or Depravity. Teeth grew from unnatural places all over his sinewy body. And the fourth was called Nexantius, or Vainglory. His flesh sparkled like diamonds, but his face was featureless, a reflective mask.