PROLOGUE
There is light in the Above. Different from the day star that turns the Above blue, different from the White Mother. It is red and gold, bright, dancing and alive like the anemones that sway in the current – but bigger, much bigger. She has never seen anything like it before. She turns, allowing the storm’s wild wake to wash around and through her, flipping her over onto her back with a flurry of bubbles so that she can stare up at it, spellbound. It is beautiful.
And then – great ripples above her. Not as far above as the red light, but on the very surface. Black things falling through the light, great silver crashes as they hit the water. She dodges with a curl of her fin as a jagged, pitted curve of metal spins past her. Pieces of wood and iron. Pieces of a ship. She has seen shipwrecks before, and the aftermath of shipwrecks on the sand at the very bottom – but never from such a short distance. Never from directly beneath. The storm has brought her almost to the land.
She is too close. She knows what she is supposed to do.
But it is so beautiful, and so strange. She stays, just a moment longer.
And then something falls into the water that she has never seen before. Not wood or iron or even a glittering stream of falling gold and jewels – but something that moves. Something almost like a person except...
Except it has no tail.
The poor, strange feelers that the thing has on its bottom half are thrashing – almost like arms, almost like claws, but misshapen and wrong. It can’t swim. She feels her gills stiffen as she realises: it is a Creature of the Air.
A human.
The storm is driving them together, drawing her toward the surface as it drags the human down. It is forbidden to show a human this form. She and her sisters danced around the boats earlier today to warn the humans to flee and they did not heed the warning. This human’s fate is its own choice.
She knows she should shift back to her hunting form, pull in her fins, twist downward and propel herself away, but... She can see the strange, pale blur of its face, the odd, webless hands – so weak and bony – and the drifting hair, red-gold-brown like the soft fronds of ralana ferns. See the desperate clouds of bubbles frothing from its mouth. Like the light, it is different. Strange.
She’s never seen a human in the water before. So close.
And then the human is close enough to touch. With a tingling surge of shock she is looking into its eyes. It stares back.
He – he? He stares back.
It is a he.
It is human but she can see, see – his – fear. His despair. There are thoughts in those eyes. A person. He is not Selkoh, but... he is a person. He is different to her, but he is a person and he is dying.
She is too close. She knows what she is supposed to do.
But she does something else instead.
Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw
I was born Her Royal Highness Theoai Herim. Senior daughter of Queen Theoan. Crown Princess of Yamarr.
For seventeen years I was the future Queen of Yamarr. For seventeen years I was trained, taught and tested as only a prospective monarch can be, proving myself again and again against the standard of my Mother, and her Mother, and hers before her. I was the hope of my nation. The future of my line. The cool blood of the great warrior rulers of the Yellow Desert flowed in my veins, and the wisdom of the scholar consorts of Emenessa informed my every word and action.
Now?
I am Theoai of nowhere. Broken one. Worthless. Forsaken daughter, exile of Yamarr. After spending all my strength to cling to it, it took only a single moment – one moment of happiness, of trust – for the crown to be dashed from my grasp.
But that was not the end of my disgrace.
It was only the beginning.
1
I was home again. Soaring weightless on the desert wind, as if borne up by the wings of some silent nightbird, high above the black and yellow rippled dunes. On the eastern horizon, the moon – wearing the sharp horns of her warrior’s crescent – rose to greet the icy glint of the guardian stars that would ride with her through the night sky. Below me, the welcoming lights of Segemassa. The city where I was born.
The tributaries of the river Sege which ran through and beneath the city like veins glittered with the lights of slow-moving pleasure barges as they passed beneath the spreading thorn trees and between the reed beds. Buildings, roads and parks spread across the lush lands my ancestors had reclaimed from the sand, a rumpled green velvet cloak scattered with jewels. Lamplight glowed in the windows. Torches bobbed briskly along the shadowed streets.
In the Southern Quarter, the night market filled the air with raucous music and laughter, its colourful drifts of paper lanterns rocking in the same wind that carried spicy scents – roasting kid and honeyed figs, rosewater, cassia and ambergris – up to me.
And above it all the golden towers of the Palace stood sentinel, watching over the city from the apex of the river delta as they had done for five centuries.
The cool, sand-gritty wind gusted again. I circled the Palace, eyes hungrily examining the shadowed gardens and fountains, the tiled courtyards and pools. But something was wrong. Something was different.
No. I don’t want to see this place again.
The wind did not listen. It carried more laughter to my ears – a memory this time. The merry chime of Aramin’s amusement as she ran from room to room in the sun drenched afternoon, hiding from her nursemaid beneath my bed and begging for my silence even as her giggles gave her away. “Sssh, Theo! Don’t tell...”
I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to remember.
Thunder clapped. Lightning lit the sky above the Palace. Suddenly I was falling. Seeing again my Mother’s face, sorrowful, resolute – pitying. The lightning flashed from the glittering facets of the rubies in her crown.
“We can hide the truth no longer, my daughter. You are unfit. You are broken.”
Stop! Stop it!
I hurtled toward the ground, screaming – and woke with a choked off gasp, biting my lip hard enough to taste blood.
The thin planked walls of my cabin shuddered and creaked, transmitting the relentless churning of the water outside directly to my uneasy guts. It was daylight already – cold blue light spilled through the frost-rimmed porthole. I checked the corners of the small room to ensure none of my maids were present before I permitted myself a small groan, pulling the thick layers of fur Mother had sent with me up over my head. The books and papers which I had been queasily studying last night before my lamp burned through its oil fell to the floor with a variety of thumps and bangs.
Almost immediately there was a tentative knock at the door. “Your Highness? Are you awake?”
Well, I am now, I thought pettishly. Did they take turns hovering outside my door so that one of them was available to prod me at all times?
“Yes, Elo – what is it?” I called back, making the required effort to sound composed and gracious.
The answer almost trembled with eagerness. “They’ve sighted land at last, Princess! The Captain says we’ll arrive today. Do you want to get dressed?”
My teeth found the sore place on my lip again. I had known this was coming. I refused to let my hands shake or my breath speed up. Too late to go back. “Wait a moment!”