The Diminished

“Magritte keep who?” I blurted, knowing as soon as the question left my lips that I should’ve kept quiet.

There was no point in asking questions that wouldn’t be answered. It seemed like they were intentionally speaking in riddles, throwing out one incomprehensible statement after another in order to infuriate me. It wasn’t as though they didn’t know better. It wasn’t as though they weren’t the ones who’d taught me my manners, and here they were. Acting like I wasn’t even here.

The Queen waved her hand dismissively and shot Mother a look cold enough to freeze mulled wine. “No one you need ever worry about. Now, before you leave, I’ll have a chat with the tutors about the topics they’ll need to cover in Ambrose’s and Penelope’s curriculum. We’ll correspond soon about announcing the engagement and planning the wedding. Meanwhile, he should spend more time at court, and Penelope will be able to assist you in running the estate.”

The music died away in the great room. My mind raced, trying to process the last few minutes of conversation.

Queen Runa lumbered to her feet and replaced the crown on her head. “Time for toasts. Come along.” When she got to the door, she turned sharply. “You do have someone tasting for him, don’t you, Myrella?”

I looked at my mother, one eyebrow raised. My valet, Gunnar, was ostensibly my taster, but I rarely bothered with the pretense at home. It didn’t seem necessary.

“Of course,” Mother said.

At the same time, I replied, “Sort of.”

The Queen closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose. “Not a drop, not a crumb passes his lips before a taster has sampled it. Not. A. Crumb. I will not lose my heir to something so easily preventable. Not after everything I’ve done to secure his place. Do you hear me?”

Mother bowed, her knees nearly dropping to the polished marble floor. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

They swept out of the chamber together, leaving me to wonder what, exactly, the Queen had contrived to make me the heir to the Alskad throne.

PART TWO

“The knotted, tangled cord that stretches between twins serves as both lifeline and tether. Your twin exists to be your counterweight, to balance you as you balance her.”

—from the Book of Rayleane, the Builder

“When my earth was rent apart by the mothers and fathers who came before, Dzallie spilled her fiery fury upon my land, already so broken by the shards of the moon. Steward this second chance well. Use and care well for my gifts, for you will find no mercy in my arms again.”

—from the Book of Tueber, the Earthbound

CHAPTER SEVEN

VI

A single day was not enough time for me to find my balance after my whole world had turned upside down. The anchorites tasked Curlin—her shaved head, seemingly ever-multiplying tattoos and newfound piety still startling, even after all this time—to be my shadow in the hours before I was to board the ship at dawn. I didn’t like to think about how they’d managed to get a captain to agree to give me passage, or what that would mean for me on the journey ahead, so instead, I focused my ire on Curlin.

I suppose the anchorites thought I might’ve tried to run, despite the fortune they’d taken from me and I from the sea. I might’ve, too—the weight of the secret pearls in the pouch around my neck whispered to me of escape, but I knew all too well how far the temple’s reach extended. How far the Suzerain could see. There was nowhere I could hide if they wanted to find me. My stash would have to go with me to Ilor.

Curlin shifted from one foot to the other in the doorway of my bedroom, her arms crossed over her chest. The new tattoo on her knuckles was red and tender-looking. Yet despite the vast chasm that’d opened between us since she’d joined the Shriven, I could still read Curlin’s face as easy as any book.

“Dzallie’s eyebrows, Curlin. Come in or don’t, but stop looming there like an ass. We’re alone now.”

Curlin made a sour face, but came in and sat on my bed. Her eyes avoided the side of the room that’d once been hers. I shoved my spare set of clothes and the few small bits and trinkets I’d collected during my childhood into an ancient bag and sat back on my heels, glaring.

“Now what?” I asked. A long day and a longer night stretched ahead of us, and I’d nothing else to occupy my time until I left to board the ship that would take me to Ilor. There was no one who’d care to hear my goodbyes, no one who’d care that I was gone. The only person in the world who’d ever given me a second thought was on the other side of the ocean.

My heart beat a little faster at the possibility of seeing Sawny again. I wouldn’t hate seeing Lily, either, though I could only imagine the look on her face. She’d thought herself rid of me, after all.

Curlin’s dark blue eyes searched my face. “There’s still time, you know.”

“Time for what?” I asked.

“Time to change your mind, idiot,” Curlin snapped. “They’d still take you. It’s not so bad. Better, at least, than what you’re walking into. Do you really want to spend the rest of your short life hauling stones until your fingers bleed or your back breaks? You’ll never make it twenty-five years. I bet you’ll hardly last one.”

I ran my hands through my still-damp hair, working out the snarls and doing my damnedest to stay calm. “Do you have no recollection at all of the promise we made?”

“Of course I do, but—”

“I’d rather die than break it,” I said, cutting her off. “I would rather die than turn into a monster like them. Like you.”

Curlin’s brows furrowed, and she set her jaw. I’d gotten under her skin. I couldn’t help but dig a little deeper.

“At least in Ilor, I’ll be near Sawny. Near someone whose word actually means something.”

“Actually,” Curlin said slyly, her voice taking on a cruel, musical edge, “you won’t. They’re sending you to the far side of the islands. They know the kind of trouble you two get into together. They’d never chance letting you see Sawny again. You don’t deserve a reward like that after what you did.”

Bile rose in my throat. There was no one in the temple who could possibly care that much about my only friendship. “Horseshit,” I said. “They’re sending me away to die quietly. Where I won’t embarrass the Suzerain when the grief breaks me.”

Curlin scoffed. “If the Suzerain knew what you’d done, that you’d stolen pearls from them, you’d be waiting for an execution block, not a ship. Count yourself lucky that the anchorites care enough to protect you. Though I’ll see Hamil dry the seas before I understand why.”

“Are you going to tell them?” My nails dug into my palms, suddenly wondering if Curlin had truly changed that much.

It would be the right thing for her to do. Her loyalty had been to the Suzerain since she’d taken her vows. There was a part of me that hoped some flicker of our friendship still warmed her, though. Just a little.

“I could. One more dimmy given over to the gods and goddesses to excise in their mercy,” she pondered, her voice icy and distant.

“Don’t talk like that,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. “We were friends once, Curlin, and you’re a gods’-cursed dimmy, too. Remember?”

“No,” Curlin said. “I’m Shriven now. Shriven of all sin. Past and present. No more rules. No more holding back. My only task is to protect the faithful. I am not cursed, but forgiven. Each time I do violence, I bask in the glory of the gods and goddesses, for I act as the arms of the Suzerain, and they are the embodiment of the gods and goddesses.”

Curlin crouched in front of me, looked me in the eyes and raked her sharpened nails across my face. Pain shot through me, and even as I forced myself not to flinch away from her, the tears that’d welled in my eyes snaked down my cheeks, mixing with my blood.

“You could have been saved, Vi. But you’re too stupid to save yourself.”

“Get. Out,” I snarled.

She smiled at me coolly. Unable to contain my fury for another moment, I spat in her face. Shock played over her features like wind over the ocean, and before I could even process what I’d done, she’d stood, lifted one booted foot and kicked me in the gut, sending me sprawling backward. Air gusted out of me. It had been a long time since someone’d caught me and given me a proper beating, but the red-hot blaze of pain was uncomfortably familiar.

She was gone, with the door slammed closed behind her, before I’d gotten my breath back.

* * *

In the gray light of the predawn, I walked the foggy streets of Penby for the last time, surrounded by the women who’d colored and shaped my childhood. Sula and Lugine flanked me on either side. Bethea walked in front, her two canes clattering on the cobblestones, and Curlin trailed behind. No one had remarked on the three slowly scabbing wounds on my cheek where Curlin’d scratched me, but I was well aware of them, especially as the icy air stung the tender skin.

I would’ve left Penby on my sixteenth birthday anyway, but instead of heading toward a freedom I’d chosen, clouded though it was with the threat of my own unstoppable violence, I trudged toward twenty-five years of hard, never-ending physical labor—and the inevitable loss of myself in a land impossibly different from the one where I’d grown up.

I knew a little about Ilor, but only what we’d been taught in our history lessons. After the moon split and the goddesses and gods rained their vengeance down on the world, little land was left habitable. The virtuous chosen who survived fled to the places not pocked by falling moon shards or covered in fiery rock spewing from the fragmented earth, splitting into three settlements.

Samiria, a distant, mountainous land, had closed themselves off from the world. Even now, everything we knew about them came through their ambassadors. Trade ships were forced to dock in their harbors and wait for the Samirians to come to them. There were rumors of magic, but, much like the stories of the amalgam, hardly anyone believed them. Denor’s people were said to have little fear of the goddesses and gods, instead living their lives guided by the murky principles of science. And in the Alskad Empire, all gray and frozen drizzle, lived the only people brave enough or stupid enough to venture out to explore and colonize the unsettled lands decimated by the rage of our goddesses and gods.

When Alskad’s explorers had harnessed the power of the sun and built the first sunships, they set off to explore the land left empty since the cataclysm. It was in these explorations that Ilor had been discovered. Its wild jungles, high mountains and deep harbors had lured some sailors to stay, and thus, the first settlement on Ilor had been born.

The crowd on the docks hushed and parted in the presence of the anchorites. The great hulking masses of the sunships, nestled into their places along the docks, took on new meaning this morning, though I’d seen them almost every day for the past ten years. We approached the ship that would take me to Ilor, its portholes like black sores lined along its lower levels. The decks that ringed its upper third were already half-full of folks flapping their handkerchiefs at the lives they’d chosen to leave behind.

Irony of all ironies, it was the Lucrecia. Tears pricked my eyes at the thought of Sawny and Lily, but I fought them back. I wouldn’t let Curlin see me cry.

“I don’t suppose I’ll see any of you again,” I said. “Let my ma and pa know what you’ve done with me, yes? And Curlin...” I smiled sweetly at her. “I hope you rot and die.”

Curlin glowered, and I could see the effort it took to keep her trap shut. She deserved it—her vindictive prying had gotten me into this mess in the first place. I’d never forgive her for that, never forgive her for becoming one of them. I was glad to be rid of her, even with the short, hellish life that was laid out before me.

Anchorite Lugine tsked at me and handed a slip of paper to the familiar uniformed woman at the end of the gangplank. I recognized her fox-collared coat and the humor crinkling the corners of her dark brown eyes. She was the same woman who’d arranged for Sawny’s and Lily’s passage to Ilor. She examined the paper and rifled through a box before handing me a ticket. She didn’t seem to recognize me, but why would she? I’d just been one in a sea of unremarkable faces she saw every day.

Lugine pulled a parcel from the pocket of her wide skirts and pressed it into my hand. “Rayleane bless you, child.”

Sula exchanged a meaningful glance with Bethea before saying, “Remember what we’ve taught you. Only devotion can save you from the burden of your diminishment.”

I did my best to keep from rolling my eyes. These women had raised me from a babe, but they’d forget me before I’d been gone a month. My ma certainly had. Da’d come to see me from time to time, plying me with sweeties when I was little. Later, after some brat had broken my nose the first time, he’d taught me how to climb walls and find hidey-holes. He’d even taught me how to throw a punch, the idiot. Not many in Alskad were stupid enough to encourage a dimmy to violence.

I shook away the thought. I didn’t want to think about Da. The man, as much as he’d tried to be kind to me, had still abandoned me to the temple. All those memories brought with them were darkness and pain. No matter how many times he’d come to see me, no matter how many times he’d told me he cared, at the end of every visit he still left me there, alone in the temple, and went back to my brothers and sisters in their warm house on the good side of the End. And not once did he hug me. Not once in all those visits had he held me close, like he did his other brats.

I was far better off without him. Without any of them.

I didn’t look back as I climbed the gangplank. Not once. Not even a glance. I’d forget them as quick as they’d push me out of their heads.

See if I don’t, I thought petulantly to Pru.

By the time I made my way to the railing on the third-class deck, the tugboats had begun to chug us out toward the open ocean, where the sunship’s sails would unfurl. The folks around me wept and laughed and talked in nervous whispers about the lives they had to look forward to in Ilor. They talked like they’d never heard about the way folks treated their contract workers. No one mentioned the temple’s demands on the folks they hired to manage contract workers like these folks, and the length those managers would go to to see those obligations fulfilled.

It was like the news hawkers on the streets of Penby never once hollered a story about rebel groups destroying crops or workers so mistreated they ran away, only to be hauled back, the terms of their contracts doubled. The world we were chugging toward wasn’t any better than the one we were leaving behind, but I understood the impulse to escape. Sawny and Lily weren’t the only folks who’d had trouble finding work in Penby. Outside fishing and shipbuilding, jobs were hard to come by. At least in Ilor there was a chance, albeit a vanishingly small one, for a person to make something of themselves. To change their station.

That chance existed for some people, anyway. But not for dimmys. Not for me.

I raised a hand to my brow to protect my eyes from the icy drizzle and watched the capital of the Alskad Empire disappear into the fog of the early summer morning.

Good riddance, I thought.

I took one last look across the frigid gray waves and spat into the water. Hoisting my bag over my shoulder, I elbowed my way through the folks peering over the railing as if they could still see their kin on the docks. I wanted to claim a bunk in the cabin where I’d sleep for the next two weeks. I didn’t plan to do much more than sleep there, though. The ship was filled with so many things I wanted to see, so many rooms and luxuries I’d only ever imagined, and I planned to savor every moment of freedom I had left. I never thought I’d get the chance to explore a sunship, much less live on one for any length of time.

Free of the crowd, I rested my bag on an empty bench, blew on my numb fingertips and tried to get my bearings. It’d gotten colder on the deck as the ship picked up speed, even in my sweaters and scarves, and I wished that I had thicker leggings and another pair of woolen socks on under my worn knee-high boots.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, miss.” The deep voice still held the nasal vowels of the End, though softened and disguised. Anyone who got out of that poor, shabby neighborhood always tried to leave it as far behind them as they could.

I assumed my most polite expression before turning around. “Yes, sir?” I asked, gray eyes wide and innocent. That look worked on all the anchorites, even Bethea, unless she was in a particularly foul mood.

“See your ticket?”

My face masked in a feigned, sweet smile, I fished the slip of paper out of my pocket and handed it over to the bald, pinch-faced man, his chapped skin red and peeling. His eyes lingered on the scratches Curlin had left on my cheek.

He scanned my ticket and his mouth twisted in a cruel smirk. “Temple worker, are you? Miss Obedience Violette Abernathy. Cabin 687. You’ll need to find E deck with the rest of the trash. Walk down there a ways, and take the staircase on the left down six flights. Follow the signs in the corridor from there.” His rough words grated on my nerves.

“Thank you, sir,” I said as politely as I could manage, heaving my bag over my shoulder.

“Where’s your twin, girl? Ought not get separated, even on the ship. It’s an easy place to get lost.” There was a dangerous glint in his pale eyes.

“I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”

I started walking toward the staircase he’d pointed out. I knew where this conversation led.

“Where’s your twin, Obedience? Mayhap you need some help finding her?” His thin screech carried over the din of the ship and the ocean beneath us.

I continued striding across the deck and fled down the stairs as soon as I reached them. I’d have to be more careful. Some people could smell dimmys from a mile away and took special pleasure in torturing us. The scratches on my face didn’t make me any less conspicuous, either.

I shuddered, remembering Gil, a little towheaded boy who’d been left on the temple doorstep when he was maybe five years old. There was a note pinned to his sweater, explaining that his twin sister had died, and his parents couldn’t be burdened with a dimmy. It wasn’t unusual; dimmys were left on the temple steps all the time. Curlin and I used to take them under our wings a bit. Us being the dimmys who’d lived in the temple longest, we knew how to skirt the rules. Make things more comfortable.

Gil’d been practically silent during the day, but every night he’d shown up in our room, asking for a story before bed. One day, early in the spring, Gil hadn’t come back from an errand. The anchorites fussed for a night or two, but after that it was like they’d forgotten him. Sawny, Curlin and I had combed the streets for days, driven by some invisible force. None of us wanted to give up on him. He was too little to fend for himself, and too sweet. I’d finally found him, shivering in an alley, covered in burns and blisters, his arms and scalp cut to ribbons.

He’d never spoken another word, and soon after, he’d tried to set the temple ablaze. The Suzerain had forced all of us temple brats to watch his execution. Curlin, Sawny, Lily and I had stood there, shivering in the first snow of the fall, our tears cutting icy paths down our cheeks, as the Shriven hauled Gil onto the platform. One of the anchorites stood behind me, hands on either side of my head, so that I wouldn’t be able to look away when the Shriven hangman tightened the noose around his slim neck. That was the day we’d sworn, on our lives, that none of us would ever become one of them. We promised not to join the Shriven, and three of us kept that promise.

The people who’d targeted Gil hadn’t been dimmys, just cruel folks who knew a lot more about hate than love.

I followed the signs through a maze of corridors, looking for my cabin. Turning on to the final hall, 680–690, I saw a young man with dark brown skin that glowed under the hall’s sunlamps leaning against the doorjamb outside what looked to be my cabin. His shoulders were broad beneath his deep purple livery. Another of the ship’s crewmen, and likely as not, this one’d hold the same prejudices as the other. I stepped quickly back around the corner, hoping he’d not spotted me.

I didn’t know if I could manage to hide myself from the ship’s entire crew for the whole of the journey. It didn’t seem possible. I gritted my teeth and tried to push down the fear, anger and exhaustion that brought tears to my eyes. I’d hardly slept the night before, and the idea of dealing with another ignorant, aggressive idiot was almost too much.

Steady me, I thought, reaching out for Pru, and strode down the hall with every bit of confidence I could muster. The young sailor straightened when he saw me, drew his hands out of his pockets for a brief bow and watched me with clear, golden brown eyes.

“May I see your ticket, please?” he asked pleasantly. His voice was warm and carried a faint lilt I didn’t recognize.

“It’s already been checked,” I said. “And you’re blocking my way. Excuse me.” I tried to shoulder past him, but the young man was all lean, hard muscle, and my head barely came to his chest.

He very gently placed his hand on my shoulder and nudged me out of the door frame, which he now fully occupied. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m required to check the tickets of everyone who’s been assigned to this room.”

A cluster of middle-aged Denorian men dressed in beautifully dyed and intricately knitted wool whispered at the end of the hall. Their broods of children swirled like storm clouds at their feet. I eyed the young man standing between me and the cramped room lined with bunks. It was empty, thank all the gods. I didn’t think I could bear to have one more person witness this exchange.

The young man’s amber eyes refused to leave mine, not even to linger on the scratches on my cheek, and I was grateful to him for that small kindness. Heat crept into my cheeks, and I could’ve kicked myself for blushing. His wide mouth seemed unable to contain its smile, and with his high cheekbones and those eyes, he was easily one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. It was a pity he was a sailor—a good-looking fellow like him could make a fair match in the city. He looked to be about the right age for marriage, perhaps five years older than me.

I glanced at the Denorians and weighed my options. The part of me that knew better than to cause a fuss outweighed the urge to run—though only because the young sailor had some of the longest legs I’d ever seen and would surely catch me before I made it back to the stairs.

I fished in my pocket and handed my ticket over. “See? 687. Now may I please pass?”

He studied the paper for a moment and handed it back to me. “Miss Abernathy, would you come with me, please?”

“Why? This is my room. Haven’t you got to check the other tickets?”

His jaw tensed and his voice softened, like he was talking to a frightened animal. “Your cabin assignment has been changed. If you’ll come with me, I’ll escort you to your new room.”

Alarms sounded in my head like the horns that blew each time some hovel in the End caught fire. I took a step back and my eyes flashed to either end of the hallway. This felt like a trap.

“I’m fine here. Promise,” I said.

“I must insist you come with me, Miss Abernathy.” He put a big hand on my shoulder, but I ducked out of his grip, thinking fast. He didn’t seem threatening, but I’d learned the hard way that looks were often deceiving. I didn’t trust anyone.

“I’d rather wait for my twin,” I lied. “Don’t want to get separated. It’s a big ship, you know.”

The young man leaned down close to me, careful not to touch me again, and whispered in my ear. “I know you’re traveling alone, and I think it’s for the best if we keep that knowledge as quiet as possible. Don’t you agree?”