Eight paces.
Five.
One.
The gates. I’ve made it to the gates and no bells have sounded.
The steady clip of hooves on cobblestones echoes close by. I focus on the rhythmic sound, try to match my ragged breaths to it. I look over my shoulder, back at the palace. Tiers of iridescent starcrystal crowned by turrets, stacked like the frosted layers of my bridal cake. A beautiful cage, but a cage, nonetheless.
No sign of the King’s Guard – my father’s Watchers.
The clacking hooves falter. I whip my head back. A cart now blocks the entrance, loaded with trussed carcasses of bucks. Their charnel-sweet scent taints the air. They’ll be carved up, turned into pies for the banquet celebrating my binding to Lord Astrophel next moonsquarter. A rare treat in these lean times. If I can only make it past the gates and over the bridge, if I can only thread my way through the city and breach the wall, that star-damned ceremony might never take place.
Two men dismount, heave a buck onto their shoulders with a shared groan. Its head lolls back, glassy eyes staring upwards. I twist away from them, tug my hood lower. Biting the inside of my cheek, I focus on keeping my breaths even, on ignoring the wild thuds of my heart. I adjust the weight of what I hope will pass as a laundry bundle, while the men stagger past me. While precious seconds are squandered.
I don’t dare check behind me again.
The horse leading the cart paws the frosty ground, then edges forwards. A small gap opens up, large enough to slip through.
The palace is behind me. Now, to reach the city wall.
The setting sun gilds the rainbow waters of the Opaline River, but I don’t pause to admire the view as I cross the Bridge of Stars. Not tonight. My gaze darts through the starcrystal spires spearing the sky, over the great domes of the Bindery and Observatory, winding between the loose knots of citizens scurrying home from work. No one idles in Meissa. People keep moving. Less chance of exposure that way.
I head for the market square. Once I’ve cut across that, Mother says it should only take ten minutes to reach the wall. I’ve never been allowed in the Northern Quarter, my movements restricted to a half-mile radius of the palace, and always accompanied by the Watchers. But I’ve studied enough maps. I’ll find my way.
A prickling rises at the nape of my neck. The world dims.
No. Not now. Not again.
Light speckles the darkness, pinpricks stretching to a web of silver threads. I clutch the parapet in case my legs give way.
The tinkling whisper settles in my ears.Arcelia stands on a knife-edge. Look to the mountain.
That’s the third such warning since dawnrise.
But these visions aren’t to be trusted; they’re possibilities only – a constellation of ifs – and sometimes dark mirrors signifying the opposite of what they first suggest. I focus on what’s real. The cool, slick parapet beneath my hands, the crunch of permafrost beneath my boots. I stop my ears to the whisperings as best I can; shut my inner eye to the blurred images barrelling towards me; refuse to reach for the threads and allow those images to weave into something intelligible.
Still, I can’t help but follow the instruction, even though it means confronting the source of the realm’s magic – of my own star-cursed magic. Drawing my cloak closer, I search the northern horizon for the peak of the Astral Mountain. Thanks to the Sickening, I’ve never known its full radiance, just as I’ve never known anything but the faintest glimmer of my own silver skin, but I’ve never seen the halo this dim before either. Levels of Star-Aether must be running dangerously low.
The mountain is the heart of Estelia’s magic, but it’s scarcely beating anymore.
My vision is still mottled, but I can’t afford to linger. The blindness will pass. It always does. I push against the parapet, yank my hood down, continue over the bridge.
My pulse stutters as I weave through Meissa’s winding streets. The urge to run towards the wall is overwhelming. I could reach it in half the time if I sprinted. But I mustn’t give in to temptation.
Rule number one: blend in, don’t attract attention.
A rule I’ve spent my whole life trying, and failing, to obey.
Besides, if I get to the wall ahead of schedule, I’ll miss my narrow window of escape. My only hope of getting past the patrols for illegal air-refugees is to arrive as the guard changes. I clench my fists and shorten my strides, falling into step with the people milling around me, careful to keep my eyes trained on the cobbles.
Arcelia stands on a knife-edge.
The warning echoes with every step I take. Despite my father’s attempts at denial, perhaps the protective wards have finally worn thin, the full weight of the Sickening at long last bearing down upon us. I shudder. Stars forbid. But it would explain the mutterings of blight and rising cases of Flamefever beyond the city wall, of mounting tension among the Outrealmers, discontent that threatens the centuries-old Partition Treaties. It would explain too, the sharpened edge of accusation in the courtiers’ stares on the rare occasions I’m allowed to walk among them.
They blame me for all of this, or my kind anyway.
I blink the last of the light-spots away, swerving to avoid an elderly man stooped under a bundle of kindling. It was bad enough being able to read people’s auras, but these nightmarish visions are so much worse. Burdens of knowledge I never asked for. Orthriel, my Guardian cielsylph, says my magic is evolving because I’m coming of age, and while there are limits to Orthriel’s knowledge of the ways of the Branded, I trust them on this. Just another reason I have to leave Meissa now, before my wretched powers grow any stronger.
