Zara Veylinn's Arc

Chapter 6 of 12

The shuttered house smelled of dust and old smoke. Zex leaned on Zara's shoulder until she lowered him onto a bench near the cold hearth. She cut his shirt away and packed the wound with clean linen. Through the slatted window, the palace rose above the roofs, its pale towers lit by torch-glow, its crown of spires bright against the dark. She had one night. She wore a servant's tunic stiff with ash and blood. No one would let a girl in a servant's tunic speak a claim to a throne. "I need a gown," she said. "By dawn." Zex opened his eyes. "My sister kept a wardrobe in the upper room. She died two winters ago. Nothing has been moved." He pointed at a narrow stair. "Second door. The tall chest." Zara climbed. The upper room was cold and untouched. She lit a stub of candle and opened the tall chest. Inside hung a court gown made for a princess of his house. The bodice was stitched with star-maps in silver thread. The skirt fell in layers of deep blue and rose, its hem set with small green stones. It had been cut for a taller girl with wider shoulders. She held it against her body in the mirror and saw the sleeves swallow her hands. It did not fit. It did not have to fit tonight. It had to fit by morning. She carried the gown down and laid it across the table. From her pack she took her mother's seal ring, the folded documents, and the small sewing kit she had carried since the road. "You can sew?" Zex asked. "My mother taught me," she said. "Before the fire." She pinned the shoulders in, cut the hem, and began to stitch. Zex watched from the bench and named the houses she would face at court, one by one, until his voice thinned and he slept. Near the third hour she heard a soft step on the boards behind her. She turned with the needle raised. The spectral hound stood in the doorway, its coat pale as breath, its eyes calm. It had followed her scent through the wall somehow, past the gate, through the streets. A thin curl of sickly green fog clung to its legs and thinned to nothing on the floor. It lay down beside the table and watched her work. Outside, in the distance, she heard a horn from the outer wall. Search parties, moving through the fog she had left behind. At first light she stood and put the gown on. The sleeves lay flat. The bodice held. In the mirror she saw a girl with ash-dulled hair, a bloodstained servant's tunic folded at her feet, and a court gown that named her house in every stitch. She slid the seal ring onto her finger. Zex opened his eyes and tried to bow from the bench. "Walk with me to the gates," she said. "I am done being a servant."