Desires and Dreams and Powers Page 3

  * * *

  San leaned her forehead against the train window. A mottled tapestry of greens flashed by: lacy-leafed trees, hair-fine grass, the tanglement of bushes and vines.

  “Every single world.” Logan slouched in his seat, one knee drawn up almost to his chin. “You always think it’s the best one yet. Don’t you ever get tired of them?”

  She grinned at him. “You like them too, don’t you?”

  “A bit.”

  “What’s your favorite?”

  “Anywhere that’s not Cavernaugh.” He paused. “Do you miss your home world?”

  Fire and smoke. Brother Maron’s wrinkled hands. Sunlight on the floor of her mother’s house, before the monks had found her. “A bit.”

  For a few moments there was no sound but the rhythmic rattle of the train. Then he asked quietly, “So what’s your favorite thing?”

  Canals in Cresca. Golden skies and airships in Vaen. Dragon-masked crowds at the Musakki street festivals. The endless ocean of Skyre. Gleaming white cliff cities in Usasu. The grimy streets of Faralos, with garlic, flayed rabbits, and fresh fruit hanging side by side in the market. The Scarandene spring she was watching now.

  “Everything.”

  * * *

  4. They say that when Dusé died, Kima sought the consent of every living creature to die as well; for if she could obtain it, they would all be reborn with him into a deathless world. Tsuitya disagreed. They do not say why.

  * * *

  Most of the Warders had been distracted by the explosions, but there were still plenty of them as Logan and Skadi pounded through the corridors. As he fought, Logan caught glimpses of Skadi beside him, her sword moving as smoothly and swiftly as Aru’s. He couldn’t hear her, but he knew she was mouthing Shehai war-chants, prayers for the souls she killed.

  Aru thought she was she was the most honorable creature to walk the earth; Logan thought she was plain crazy. But Aru wasn’t there now, and Logan was thankful for her sword.

  “This way,” said Skadi, making a sharp turn. Logan was also thankful for her sense of direction; he would have lost his way in the labyrinthine base a long time ago.

  The door, when they found it, was of scuffed and dented metal. Skadi took out a lock-pick. “I can have it open in a moment.”

  Logan took a step back. “We don’t have a moment,” he said, and kicked the door in.

  The Oracle sprawled dead and bloody across the floor, with San crouched beside her.

  Logan crossed the room in two strides and grabbed San’s wrist. “Come on. Aru’s wounded, and there are more coming.”

  She let him pull her arm up without rising. “Crystal’s gone.”

  “Where?”

  “Doesn’t matter. It was bait.”

  “We’ve been chasing the wrong shards?” demanded Skadi.

  San looked up with unevenly dilated eyes. “My destiny’s not to save anything. Destiny broke, before the worlds, before the gods. The Crystal was only to make us walk through worlds, to see them all from the inside, because I have to see them from the outside. And when I see them, destiny will be whole. Because all but one will die.”

  Logan caught her as she crumpled.

  * * *

  5. Kor, Kima, Dusé, Tsuitya. In every world the gods have the same names, and in every world they follow different paths. But there are four other things that never change: destiny, choice, death, price. So they enact every possible story, but the outcome—in essence—never changes.

  * * *

  As soon as San was conscious, she demanded to see Aru. She didn’t cry when she saw him lying still and pale; she brushed a few strands of hair off his forehead, then sat down beside his bed to wait. Logan paused in the doorway, then went downstairs.

  Skadi was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, her pale braids as neat as if she had never been in a battle. For a few moments they looked at each other in silence.

  “Did you really mean what you said back there?” Logan asked abruptly.

  “We have to consider it. You think she will?” Skadi jerked her head towards the stairs. “If she lives, a million worlds will die.”

  “So we should what?” Logan stepped off the final stair. “Slit her throat for the good of mankind? Is that your kind of honor?”

  “I don’t want to hurt her. But you know what the Oracle said. If we don’t kill her, sooner or later she will see. And if she will not choose, all worlds will die instead of all but one.” Skadi’s voice was clipped. With Aru unconscious, she seemed to feel she had to be the ruthless one. “If San is to live, she must choose.”

  “That’s not an acceptable solution!”

  “Then nothing’s acceptable. Those are the only choices.”

  He remembered the rattle of a train, the outside world reduced to green flashes.

  “Nothing,” said Logan, “is the least acceptable thing.”

  * * *

  6. There is a place where they do not say anything at all; a place between places, between worlds, between possibilities. Where no one speaks and (more importantly) no one sees. If even one person could see into the place of myriad places, the three thousand thirty-three infinities, there would be only one.

  One thing is certain in every possibility. Eyes will come.

  * * *

  “You know what she’s going to destroy!” Skadi yelled as she attacked Logan. “You’ve seen the worlds—how can you not care?”

  Logan blocked her sword without answering. “Go!” he yelled at San, throwing a kick that Skadi barely dodged. Warders ran in through the doorway. “Just go!”

  Where? thought San, closing her eyes. And opened them on a hallway from the monastery, shadowy and panelled in dark wood.

  “Don’t look back.” A girl stood before her in gray rags, her hair the color of clotted blood. “Dusé looked, and you know what happened.”

  “Tsuitya,” San breathed.

  “In a metaphorical fashion.” Tsuitya began to walk down the hallway. “The story’s complete. All you must do . . . is choose which story.”

  San followed, passing doors on either side. She felt a terrible certainty that the hallway was crumbling away behind her, revealing something she did not dare comprehend.

  “I won’t choose any story that makes people die,” she said.

  “Then everyone will die.”

  “You never chose your parents’ choices.” Creator, Protector, Destroyer—Tsuitya’s story was different in every world, but she was always the rebel god.

  “Of course, everything I tell you is a lie. Unless you make it true.”

  “I can’t make anything true.”

  “Think of all the tales you’ve heard. They can’t all be true. All the worlds you’ve seen. They can’t all be real.”

  “What if there is something that’s true in all worlds?”

  The hallway ended in a wooden, brass-knobbed door exactly like all the others. Tsuitya turned. Her pupils had swallowed up her eyes. “Refusal is a choice. Open and choose.”

  San laid a hand on the knob, shutting her eyes. In every story in every world, the gods had disputed death and lost.

  But they had always tried to bargain with it.

  “What do you choose?”

  The voice came from all around her. San’s pulse was in her throat.

  “What is not in any of your stories,” she said.

  “Then what do you choose?”

  “Everything.” And she flung the door wide—

  As she spun around to look back.

  * * *

  7. Once before time, there was decreed a prophecy and a destiny and a choice. One would come who must choose which world would live while the others died. And a stupid little girl wanted to save

  every

  single

  one.

  * * *

  Of course she did have to lose her eyes.

  What kind of story do you think this is?

  * * *

  3,033. San heard Logan sh
ift and exhale uneasily. “Skadi turned on the Warders as soon as you vanished. She saved my life. Now she’s taking care of Aru. I think she’s sorry. Sort of.”

  She shrugged. “I would have killed me, if I were her.” Skadi couldn’t let the worlds die and Logan couldn’t let her kill an innocent. They were both right and both wrong.

  He laid an arm over her shoulders. “What happened?”

  “I found something else to look at.”

  Logan tensed, and she knew he was looking at the bandage over her eyes. “Why—”

  “I’m only allowed to see one thing. Ever.”

  His voice was low, turned away. “I’m sorry. I wanted . . .”

  Someday she might rage against her blindness. But not today.

  “All I want,” she said, “is to go to every single place I cannot see.”

  Silence. “You’ll need someone to keep you from tripping.”

  “I know,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  And Her Eyes Sewn Shut With Unicorn Hair

  “Look, Zéphine!” Marie called. “A unicorn!”

  Even though Zéphine knew what would happen, her heart still thumped with hope. She set down her spoon, then jerked her head up to see the breakfast room window where her little sister stood. But when she looked where Marie pointed, Zéphine saw only a gazebo whose white latticework was clogged with crimson roses.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Marie whispered.

  “Yes,” lied Zéphine. “Beautiful.”

  Why should she hope to see a unicorn now, when she never had in all her life?

  Marie untangled herself from the lace curtains. She was only twelve; baby fat still clung to the corners of her beaming face. “And on your nineteenth birthday, too! It’s a lucky sign—the unicorns will love your maiden dance tonight, I know they will.”

  Zéphine sat back in her chair and looked at her little silver bowl. She didn’t want any more custard; the few mouthfuls she had already eaten hung heavy in her stomach.

  Marie kept on chattering. “…and the suitors can start watching you dance for the unicorns next month. Philippe is first in line to try, right? He would make a good king.”

  “Mother danced for nine men before Father.” Zéphine mashed the custard with her spoon.

  “I wouldn’t like that.” Marie’s dark eyebrows drew together. “Nine men, all dead…”

  I would only like to summon a unicorn, thought Zéphine. The men can look after themselves.

  But she knew that no unicorn would ever come for her.

  She stood abruptly. “I’m going out.”

  “I’ll come—”

  “Leave me alone.”

  As she pushed open the glass doors, she saw that Marie had tears wobbling in her eyes. Tonight, Zéphine would get to watch those pretty dark eyes overflow with tears until Marie’s trembling little hands finished sewing Zéphine’s eyes shut.

  She strode past the gazebos and topiaries to the northern quarter of the garden. First came the fountains. Marie loved to play among the glistening water-spray, but Zéphine hated them: their many-tiered elegance proclaimed the wealth and peace that the unicorns had given Retrouvailles for a thousand years.

  Beyond the fountains, though, lay the pools. They were crafted with as much art, but made to look natural: some overgrown with water-lilies, some surrounded by cattails, some clean and open, ruffled only when a crane alighted. Here Zéphine had always been happiest, because she could pretend she was outside and free.

  Today the pools looked nothing like freedom; they reflected the high outer wall of the garden, the mocking rim where stone met sky. If only walls stood between her and freedom, she would have been gone years ago. But the ancient enchantments of Retrouvailles did not permit princesses to leave the palace grounds until they had performed the maiden dance and been accepted.

  Fear burned through her stomach. She halted, looking down at the still, dark water in the nearest pool. She had swum in this pool and she knew how deep it went. Deep enough for drowning.

  Swallowing, she knelt by the water. Plump white stones by ringed the pool; for weeks she had planned to use them to weigh herself down, but now she couldn’t make herself pick them up.

  If she failed her maiden dance, she might not have another chance to die with her soul still free. Still human. But even so, she couldn’t move.

  She only needed to be brave for one moment, long enough to jump. Drowning couldn’t hurt too badly. If she could inhale enough water right away—if she could be absolutely sure that she would indeed fail tonight—if she were not too afraid to do anything but kneel here, shivering.

  She was infinitely afraid.

  “Contemplating the water, demoiselle?”

  Zéphine flinched, then recognized the voice. The cold ache in her stomach eased. “Hello, Justin. Guarding the virtues again?”

  Justin stood to attention in the narrow point where two walls met, his dark blue coat crisp and buttoned, one hand on the filigreed hilt of his sword as if he might need to defend the kingdom at any moment. He would not: the garden was a nine-pointed star to symbolize the nine virtues of a true princess, and the palace guard maintained a ceaseless watch on each of the nine points to symbolize their devotion.

  He saluted. “Someday I’ll be lucky at cards.” Guarding the virtues was one of the least favorite duties among the guards, and they regularly wagered it away.

  Zéphine fought a smile. She was sure he gambled poorly on purpose, likely because he knew how much seeing him meant to her. Ever since Justin arrived at the palace six months ago, she’d sought him in the gardens again and again. Out of all the guards—out of anyone, Marie excepted—he was the only one who saw her as a girl, not a maiden fated to dance with the unicorns.

  It didn’t hurt that he was handsome. He was no taller than Zéphine, but his arms were round with muscle; his skin, though pale and colorless when he first arrived from the northern provinces, was now quite respectably tanned; and his eyes were an exotic pale blue, and his mouth seemed always on the verge of a smile. For several months, she had kept thinking she would like to kiss that mouth.

  Princesses were not supposed to long for guardsmen.

  I will never see him smile again, she thought as she stood and walked towards him.

  “You look tense. Out for a last walk?”

  Zéphine’s heart skipped before she realized what he meant. “I suppose I won’t see you as much when I’m queen.” She did her best to smile.

  “Don’t say me you’ll miss me.” Up close, his smile didn’t look convincing either; his jaw was tight, his forehead lined. Zéphine had to crush a sudden conviction that he knew what was wrong with her. She’d been so careful. Nobody knew: not her father, not even Marie.

  “What if I will?” She leaned against the wall beside him.

  He stayed at attention, facing forward, but his eyes flicked sideways at her. “I think a queen will have better ways to amuse herself. Starting with her husband.”

  She sat down with a huff and curled up against the wall. Her red skirts pooled around her; she thought of her blood seeping across the floor of the Great Dome, and swallowed dryly.

  “That’s bad posture, demoiselle.”

  “Soldier, I command you to sit.”

  “I’m not technically a soldier.” But he sat beside her anyway, stretching out his legs as if his white trousers couldn’t possibly stain.

  Zéphine tore at a clump of grass. She wanted to forget about tonight for just a few minutes, but how could she, when her stomach was still cramping in fear and every heartbeat took her closer to the unicorns?

  “So you dance tonight?”

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  “I thought a princess’s maiden dance was supposed to be joyous.”

  “What do you know?” Zéphine turned on him, not caring that tears prickled at her eyes. “What does the Reine-Licorne mean to someone like you? Crowns and silks and formal court sessions? Or legends and glor
y and—”

  “You.” He wiped a tear off her cheek with his thumb. “Just you, demoiselle.”

  “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I know about being demoiselle.”

  “Then tell me what you know.” He looked straight into her eyes. “Tell me what you want.”

  “I know my first kiss will be with the man whom the unicorns permit to watch me dance and live. I know my first child and every one after will be a daughter. I know that I will dance with the unicorns every full moon until I die, when my body will be left on the Plaine d’Ossements; and when the unicorns have gnawed away my flesh they will crack open my bones for the marrow. And I wish I could change any part of it.”

  “Well.” Justin leaned closer. “One of those things I can change.” And he kissed her.

  It was barely more than a brush of his lips, but it sent a shock through her body, sharper than fear. For one moment she was stunned into stillness. Then she leaned forward to kiss him back.

  A moment later he had gathered her into his arms and was kissing her open-mouthed. She felt it through her whole body, a fire she had never quite believed existed, least of all for her. It felt like her bones were melting, but that was all right, because he lowered her onto the grass. When he lifted his lips from hers, it was to kiss her neck and then her collarbone.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  His lips stilled against her skin; then he sat up, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry. I can’t— I’m sorry.”

  She sat up too. “Sorry you kissed me or sorry I said—” Her throat closed.

  “You’re the princess. You have to dance for the unicorns. I can’t—” He choked on a bitter laugh. “I can’t take that away from you. I can’t hurt you.”

  Zéphine hugged herself. “It doesn’t matter,” she said dully. “I’ve never seen a unicorn.” She ignored his sharp intake of breath. “My dance will fail tonight, so Marie will be queen and I will be the unicorn bride. Do they tell you guards what that means? They will dress me in white like a bride and give me the draught of waking sleep so I can neither feel nor move. Then Marie will lay me on the floor of the Great Dome; she’ll sew my eyes shut with unicorn hair, slit my arms from wrist to elbow, and perform her maiden dance around me. When the unicorns come for her they will drink my blood until I die and eat my soul when it escapes between my lips. It’s the only way she can take my birthright once the unicorns have rejected me. That’s why I’ve never loved my sister. I’ve always known the last thing I’ll ever see is her sewing my eyes shut. The last thing I’ll ever hear is her song to the unicorns.”