Xara Zynthar's Arc

Chapter 3 of 16

Xara Zynthar reached the servants' gate at first bell with her scarf pulled low and her gloves already on. The steward met her without a word and walked her through a side corridor to the library. He set a stack of unshelved books on the table, told her the prince was hunting today and would question her tomorrow, and left her to work. The library was warmer than she expected. She catalogued for three hours before anyone spoke to her. A junior clerk asked her to check a Hallen text he could not read. She read it. He blinked, thanked her, and brought her two more. By midday, a older scribe walked over with a broken spine to mend and stayed to watch her hands. By late afternoon, three of them sat near her bench, asking about scripts they had shelved wrong for years. No one asked about her scalp. One woman offered her tea. Xara took it and drank slowly, so her hands would not shake. She left at last bell with her name still in the ledger and the steward's squint slightly softer than yesterday. She walked back to the small stone shelter as the sky went pink. From outside it looked like any peasant's hut, low and grey. Inside, her rest pod glowed against the far wall, its heating unit humming, its sitting curve lit soft blue. On the smooth resting bed sat a package she had not left there. It was wrapped in a cloth she recognized. The weave came from her homeworld. Her hands went cold and then hot. She untied it. Inside lay a gown of deep green silk cut in the local style, but stitched with thread that caught light the way her own skin did. A note in her own script read only: For the night he sees you. Beneath the gown, wrapped in oiled paper, sat a pale eel egg the size of her fist, glowing faintly, something curled and moving inside it. A gift, or a message, or both. She did not know who had sent it. She knew only that someone from home had reached this planet and was watching. She set the egg beside the vial of moonlight water on her shelf. Then she stripped off the silver dress and pulled the gown over her head. It fit as if measured on her while she slept. In the pod's dim mirror, she did not look like a servant, and she did not look like a thing to be gawked at. She looked like a woman a prince might listen to. She practiced her answer aloud. "I am Xara Zynthar, of the northern reaches beyond the sea. My people are scholars. I came for the library." The words fit her mouth now. Tomorrow the prince would ask, and she would not stumble. The gown had given her that. Someone from home had given her that. And she still did not know the price.