The dungeon?
“But why—”
“Best be quiet,” the guardsman next to me says quietly. “Flack’s a jumped-up bunghole, but he has connections. Let’s get you to the palace in one piece, hey?”
I nod and touch the tiny scraps of parchment twined into the thin braid hanging down the left side of my face. It occurs to me that my words today may have been prescient in some small way. Because tucked between strands of my braid areCourageandEndurance.
I’d picked them half in jest for the onerous task of cleaning the stacks. Now, though, realization sinks into the pit of my stomach that I may need large quantities of both to survive the day.
Or the dungeon.
We march up the seventy-seven stairs from the under-library to the main rotunda. I keep my head down, avoiding the avidly curious stares of the Sisters and servants we pass along the way. I can’t answer the questions in their eyes when I have no idea what is happening—or why. My mind races, trying to find a single reason I’d be called before anyone in the palace, let alone the king of all Pyrrh.
In the early days of my indenture, back when I was only four years old and crying for my mother—partly because I missed her, and partly because of the pain from the fall that ripped open my right hand to mywrist and the edge of my right cheek—I fashioned fairy-tale dreams of one day discovering that I was a princess. That the king and queen were searching for me, and soon they’d find me and take me to live in the castle with my mother.
My young brain didn’t think to wonder how the daughter of a whore could be a princess, until one day I innocently made the mistake of telling the tale at breakfast. The other servants’ cruel laughter shredded through me, sharp-edged like the cook’s knives. After that, I locked my dreams into a small, deep corner of my mind, to be taken out only rarely and always in the dark.
Life had already taught me a hard truth: Dreams are as fragile as moon glow on cobwebs, easily destroyed in the unforgiving light of day.
As the years went by, and I realized that a term of indentured servitude actually had no end for someone like me, I let reality erode my foolish childhood notions.
Palaces and princesses.
Not for a nobody.
Not for me.
Now, if I can believe these guards, I’m on my way to the palace. Not in a beautiful dress or riding in a carriage, but stumbling across the cobblestone streets, wearing rags and covered in mold and dirt. My filthy clothes and skin are as gray as the label the Inquisitors slapped on my mind.
The label they slapped onme.
Graymind.
In other circumstances, I’d be thrilled to be outside on a day like this. The crisp autumn air is filled with the cinnamon-spiced scent of cider, and red-cheeked children run around waving banners on sticks and stealing iced buns purposely left out for them by indulgent shopkeepers. In the distance, people gather to watch the sunset at the low wall that surrounds Pallanhold Keep.
I’ve stood at that wall before, looking out over the deep blue swells of the Thalassian Sea, where the waves crash into the Indigo Cliffs of Pyrrh. Wondering what lies on the other side of that impassable ocean.
Wondering if I’d ever see anyplace else but this city.
After that first time looking out at the water, I found a tome on geography and learned about the unique blue clay and stone that give the cliffs their name. I read about unsuccessful attempts to cross the Thalassian Sea as recounted by the few explorers who’d made it home after one or more catastrophes on those unforgiving waves.
“Here be Monsters,” the old maps say in curled and faded script on their edges. But no histories I’ve ever read describe them.
Maybe we’ve always been too busy with the monsters right here in Altarra to find out about those waiting beyond its borders.
When we reach the palace—the tallest structure at the highest point in the city, which rings out in concentric semicircles around it—the officer wheels sharply to the right and steps off the main road that enters the palace grounds. We follow her onto a neatly tended gravel path that wraps around the sweep of the shining white stone wall encircling the king’s domain. After thirty paces, she stops at a small gate. The rest of us halt behind her.
I clench my teeth together to keep from asking questions. I don’t want to draw any more attention to myself, especially from Flack and his “connections,” but a constant refrain ofwhy why why why whyreverberates inside me.
Two guards on the other side of the gate wear the unrelieved black of rank-and-file soldiers, rather than the royal blue of the king’s guards. They snap to attention and salute the officer. When they open the metal gate, it creaks with disuse.
Maybe it’s the special gate for the truly desperate criminals, my brain offers. I have to bite my lip to keep from letting any hint of hysterical laughter escape.
Me. Desperate.
Right.
I’m tall compared to other female Pyrrhans, but I’m so thin that even the oldest, weakest soldier in the army could take me down with one hand tied behind their back.
