I heaved myself out of the small cubbyhole where I made my bed. Shivers racked my body – Triple Gods, it was so cold here, why did it have to be so cold? – as I wrapped the golden pelt of a desert lion tightly around myself, sending more books thumping to the floor. If my fingers fumbled as they prised open the small, secret compartment in the lid of my personal trunk and removed a vial of greenish-grey dust, then that was a result of the temperature, not a failure in my control.
It took me less than a minute to mix a precisely measured amount of the powder in a small cup and swallow it down. I grimaced at the bitter, metallic flavour of the precious ration of fresh water, and the chalky texture the medicine left on my tongue. I had tasted little else for days. It seemed the only mouthful of liquid or other sustenance I could keep down aboard this accursed vessel was the one I dosed with my medicine each day. I had enough willpower for that.
There would not be an episode here.
I stopped up and tided away the vial, then tipped a sheaf of scribbled notes from the folding chair by my make-shift desk and sat before I called out. “You may enter.”
The door thudded open and I was engulfed. Books and papers were swept aside and replaced by colourful drifts of fabric, winking embroidery, and jewels. I was pulled briskly to my feet, my fur stripped away, and patted and frisked all over by eager little hands.
“Oh Princess, you have lost weight!” The plump one tutted sorrowfully. “And you missed breakfast and the midday meal today as well, are you sure you won’t take something to eat?”
“Don’t go on about it, Ane! There’s nothing worse than people reminding you all the time of how sick you’ve been. We have that garnet belt – we’ll cinch it in and it will look fine. No man ever complained that his wife’s waist was too tiny,” said the oldest one, Sereh.
“The garnets? But surely she must wear the ermine to meet the Prince?” the third – Elo, the youngest – protested. “Red and white together? Oh no!”
I swayed in place, unsure if my body was rocking with the movement of the ship or my sudden desperate longing for Enesis, my old maid, stern and solemn and, most important, usually silent. She had broken her customary quiet when I began preparing to leave. She had begged, tears in her eyes, to come with me. I had refused.
Yamarr was her home and I knew she loved it as fiercely as I did. I would not exile her, even if I must exile myself.
These girls were volunteers, and of a different type: not true servants but ladies-in-waiting, younger sisters and poor cousins from good families happy to exchange their low-ranking lives at court for the promotion to royal handmaiden. I only hoped they wouldn’t come to regret their choice as much as I...
Too late to go back. Too late to change your mind now.
“I will wear the dark brown furs today,” I interrupted with forced calm. “And the ruby and gold circlet and bangles, and the matching ear-bobs. You may braid my hair, but leave it down.”
“Surely you don’t mean that!” the youngest girl protested, clutching the snowy white ermine to her breast as if it were a treasured pet. “You must wear the ermine! It’s the finest, and the Prince will expect it – ” my stomach did a slow, greasy roll beneath my ribs and I breathed out slowly, suppressing the urge to retch, “ – and what will he think if you refuse his gift? Princess, really, I beg you to reconsider. You simply can’t – ”
Her voice reminded me of a flock of buzzards fighting over a carcass. Abruptly I could stand it no longer. “Be silent, Elo!”
She stepped back, as shocked as if I had slapped her. Wary, the other two hesitated. They were unused to my temper. I had never exchanged more than a pleasantry or two with any of them in my life before we boarded the ship, and during the worst of my sea-sickness – the vast majority of this endless eight week journey – I had locked the door of my cabin and refused to allow anyone entry, so that no one would witness my despair, my misery.
My weakness.
It wasn’t their fault that they didn’t know me. And near-strangers though they might be, they were all I had left of Yamarr.
I am calm.
I am calm.
I am.
Another deep, slow breath, as my Whisperer tutors had taught me, and I offered the girls a small smile, allowing my expression to warm with a facsimile of affection.
“Come – let’s not squabble. Haven’t we work to do? Elo, you must fetch my gown. Ane can make a start on my hair, and Sereh, the rubies and garnets are on the second layer of my jewel case. Quickly now!”
Reassured, they rushed into action.
I kept the smile on my face as they tugged and rearranged and brushed and twisted. Kept it there, kept it there, until it felt like a piece of wood stretching my dry, cracked lips out of shape.
Elo was right. The ermine was the finest fur. The most expensive and exotic. And I hated it. Hated the pure, cold, snowy whiteness of it, and the fact that it came, not from one of the familiar creatures of my homeland, but from the cold, snowy realm of Silinga itself. A gift, sent all the way across the freezing sea, from my future husband. A man I had never met.
There would be enough of bleak whiteness and of cold in my future. For now, I would wear the soft fur of the brown mountain bear, and pretend it kept me warm.
Ten minutes later I emerged on deck, not allowing myself to pause as the frigid air tightened the skin on my face, forcing all the warmth from my body in a single white plume of breath. My hands scrabbled inside their thick muff of dark fur, chafing, chafing at the dry skin to try and keep the cold away. I kept my face still.
I had hardly ever ventured up here. Much easier to conceal my weakness in the confined space of my own cabin, from which I could exclude servants and crew at will. It wasn’t as if the sight of the lashing, iron-dark sea, or its overpowering rusty stink, or the constant squeak, snap and crack of the ropes and sails brought me any pleasure. Even the crew were a drab sight. They all possessed the pale skin of their people, and their neat uniforms were one shade or another of faded, nondescript dark blue.
At least the sea appeared calm for once today. It was an opaque, milky grey, disturbed by small, white-topped ripples. The sky was grey too. The low clouds that seemed to sit directly above the sails were a darker grey. And the air was faintly grey with mist. I shivered as I adjusted my balance on the shifting deck, sure I could feel the damp greyness seeping into the tiny porous holes in my bones.
“If you keep moving, you get used to the cold,” Elo told me, appearing at my elbow with an eager little hop. The ladies-in-waiting surrounded me, propelling me forward and encircling me at the same time, serving as a barrier between me and the seamen that worked all around us.
Not that the crew ever actually dared approach me. The Black Tern was a diplomatic ship – sleek and fast, relatively luxurious, even equipped with two pairs of the new repeating iron cannon, and sent for the sole purpose of transporting me. The men who ran it, I assumed, were well used to high status cargo. They averted their eyes respectfully and stayed out of my path, as if anxious to avoid giving offence. I wasn’t easily offended, but I did wonder how many foreign princesses they had hauled across the sea this way, and if they had possessed fiery and uncertain tempers.
While I had feigned an affection for my ladies in the cabin, now I really felt it. Dressed warmly but in vivid shades – midnight blue, pistachio green and ochre yellow – and with their glowing brown skin and brown, brown-black and blue-black hair, they looked like the lovely tame birds that fluttered through the tree garden at the palace. Everything was colourless here. The ladies alone looked like home.