My father’s eyes grow stern. Their gray is a typical Herrani color, but sometimes they look uncommon, even unnerving. He says, “I want an answer.”
“Maybe—” My voice cracks and sounds too high, truly like a girl’s. I clear my throat. “Maybe I wanted to make a name for myself. Arin and Kestrel, Kestrel and Arin. Everyone knows your story. What about mine?”
“Our story,” he says slowly, “is about how we suffered.”
“And found each other.”
“It is about how we never want what happened to us to happen to anyone else.”
“Yes, your love for the Herrani is well-known.”
“It is you of whom we think first.”
“Sometimes it is cold in your shadow.” I see him accept this, and his easy acceptance wrenches at my gut. My midnight lie has been too quickly swallowed. What I have said is true, and embarrassing, but I have offered up this woebegone tale of seeking fame and glory because it is believable. It keeps the rest of my reasons private. I continue, doggedly, “Do you remember how Amma suspected the southern isles of planning an attack on Valoria?” The southern isles—or the Cayn Saratu, as they are called in the tongue of their people—were once part of the vast Valorian empire, but were liberated when Verex, my mother’s old friend, was elected Magister in the days following the last war. As head of the Valorian senate, Verex ended rule over its stolen territories. This did not, however, make everyone happy. The southern isles are a well-known hotbed of Valorian malcontents who seek to restore the Empire’s former glory. They have plotted blackpowder attacks on the Valorian capital and its Magister, many of which my mother uncovered and foiled. “She asked me to examine all the known maps of the islands. She sent me hither and thither even to dilapidated country manors, to search their libraries. Every crumbling scrap of a map wasn’t enough. Valorians possess better maps, she said, then packed me off to Valoria.”
“This was last spring,” he said, recalling. “You went as our emissary for the introduction of Verex and Risha’s new baby to society. Six children, all healthy, thank the god of life.”
“The god of lust had more to do with it.” This makes him uncomfortable. I cannot resist needling him. “Nothing wrong with that. I am the god of games’s own child, but I light a candle in lust’s temple, too. It is because I am so pious.” I get cozier in the chair, wagging my polished boots.
He coughs. “So you went to Valoria.”
I roll my eyes at his discomfort. “I went to Valoria. Amma was right. They have better map collections.”
“Yes. It helped them win the first war.”
“And on one map—ancient, so delicate I had to glue a layer of transparent tishin paper to its back in order to handle it—I found a speck that shouldn’t have been there, that was on no map I had seen, a lost dot near the southern Herrani coast, amid the empty islands. Amma thought maybe the imperialist plotters were hiding blackpowder on this secret island, but when I sailed to the Cayn Saratu, practically no one had heard of the island. They said that region of the sea was known for shipwrecks. They warned me away. I believed they were lying, of course, and that Amma was right. Rumors of dangerous seas would be a good way to keep nosy spies like me away from secret stashes of blackpowder.” The Caynish had no guns or cannons or easy access to blackpowder, but Valorian imperialists imported it from the northern tundra and hid it in caves on uninhabited islands, or buried it in strongboxes in sandy beaches. “But the Caynish warned me of more than shipwrecks: local legend had it that travelers had come from that region of the sea, bearing magic trinkets.”
“Magic?” he says slowly.
“They showed me a couple of artifacts—a bracelet, a tooth-shaped box—but they were inert. Nothing special, beyond their ancient appearance. But, people insisted, the items used to be able to work magic. The bracelet used to be able to charm the wearer into shrinking to the size of a cat. The box used to be able to bite an enemy.”
“Sounds like a Caynish story.”
“So I thought. But I returned to Herran to consult our naval history collection, and speak with our older sailors, who knew the sea before the first war. It was true enough that that region of the sea was known for shipwrecks. Ships went missing in those straits. I decided to sail there, and see what was what.”
“You endangered yourself.”
“Just a little.”
“You could have died.”
“Yet here I am, safe and sound, your favorite child.”
“My only child.”
“Mad at me, Etta?”
“The least you could have done was to tell us this, and warned us where you were going, if you needed a vainglorious adventure,” he says, frustrated. “You are irresponsible, reckless—”
“Don’t you want to hear the best part?”
“I worry we sheltered you too much. You are afraid of nothing.”
“The magic is real.”
“Everything is a joke to you.”
“I mean it. I swear by the gods. What I saw on the island of Herrath has no logical explanation. I saw magic. I tasted it.” I remember the drop of blood, dark as a pomegranate seed, falling from the tip of Nirrim’s finger into my mouth. Later, Nirrim described what she had seen happen to me. Her magic immobilized me. My body lay rigid, my mind driven deep into a memory I hadn’t even known I’d forgotten.
My father’s silence grows heavy, wary, and while I know from my aunt Sarsine that the king has a temper, he has never shown it to me, not directly. Instead, he gets like this: warlike, his gaze acute, his expression showing that he does not know his enemy’s moves but he does not like what he suspects. Instead of looking angry he simply looks ready. “Etta, I am not lying. I am playing no game. Not this time, at any rate. I doubted the rumors, too, when I anchored in the harbor of the island’s city. The Caynish were not wrong: it was a tricky bit of sailing. The currents are nasty, the rocks sharp. Pretty place, though. Along the coast, I saw pink-sand beaches and fields of sugarcane, much like what the Caynish grow. The climate is hot enough to make clothes stick to your skin, the coastal waters a sheer teal. Lush vegetation, vines with purple flowers climbing over everything. And while I might have dashed the ship against the rocks several times, and split the belly of my hull along this kind of extremely hard, lavender coral that gave shallower waters a purplish tinge, I don’t think it was shipwrecks, really, that made sailors disappear in that region. Once I anchored in the island’s only city, and mingled with the people there, I realized an odd forgetfulness clung to everybody. The people seemed normal, and although the island’s climate and terrain share more in common with the Cayn Saratu, its people look like us.” I correct myself. “Like you. Like regular Herrani. Same skin, similar features. Your gray eyes. They are all light-eyed, with a little more range than we commonly see in Herran. More green.” I swallow, thinking of Nirrim’s earnest, jade-eyed gaze, then hurriedly add, “Even blue. They call themselves Herrath, and their language resembles ours so much that I picked it up even more quickly than I usually do a new tongue. I suppose because it felt familiar, not like a new language but like a faded memory of my own.” Most people would stare at me right about now, confused, but my father nods. My parents have a gift for languages—my mother especially, her speech flawlessly free of any accent. People do not often consider that my father’s thick accent in Valorian comes from how much he hates using that tongue. “The Herrath language’s habits, the grammatical turns … it all felt like that godsawful ancient Herrani poetry you have made me read. The city welcomed me. They were fascinated. I’m quite easy to adore, especially when I make clear that my family is wealthy nobility—don’t worry, Etta, I didn’t make it that clear. I told no one—ah, almost no one—that I was your child. But the people liked me; they liked my gold. They invited me to endless parties with beautiful people in sparkling attire, who ate dust that made the world seem joyful.”