Page 81 of The Moon Blessed King
They eat bread for lunch, bread for dinner, and if they are lucky, they have bread for breakfast too. Right now, anything more filling goes to the baseline humans who are dying daily and desperate for sustenance. Fen is starting to hate bread, but it is what they need to do to help their patients. This will not last for ever. She needs to believe that. It is not going to be for ever.
Fen slowly chews her loaf. Her mouth feels dry and uncomfortable. Her stomach clenches painfully tight. ‘Jasmines are mine,’ she tells Cieli. ‘I like the purple.’
‘Purple is nice,’ Cieli agrees. She sounds a little wistful.
‘When I was younger, I wanted to wear nothing but purple. I hated wearing Giver white.’ She looks down at the uniform she was given to identify her to their endless stream of patients. ‘It’s bland and useless and it gets stained so easily. It feels like being wrapped in rules. No running, no playing, no excess movement, because anything you did got the white dirty and then everyone wouldknowyou broke the rules. Everyone could see.’
‘I like white,’ Cieli says. Fen’s nose scrunches; she rubs at the grime staining her knees from where she has knelt repeatedly at the bedsides of the ill. ‘In the cells, everything is dark. The only light comes from the torches carried by the guards and a few pillars along the way that have vents going up to keep us from suffocating. But…the light never travelled far, and you can’t see colours in the dark. Not really. Everything is muted and bland. Sometimes, in the years it took for me to be summoned again…I’d forget the colour white.’
She smiles a little, like she’s just told a joke. ‘So, every time I saw it again…I would think: it’s beautiful. There’s no darkness here. It’s only light.’ Cieli’s fingers go to her black trousers. She too rubs at the stains on her knees, hers almost seeming to meld into the fabric.
‘Do you hate black?’ Fen asks. Right now, with everything going on, she isn’t sure she can arrange for a change of uniform for the Reapers.
‘No,’ Cieli says. ‘It’s familiar. Comforting, in its own way. Sometimes, in the cells, if you hid far enough in the shadows, the guards never noticed you. So, the dark is nice, sometimes.’
‘Cat likes the dark.’ Fen knows. He lights fires for others, but if left on his own he would curl into the dark corner of his room and sleep peacefully without concern. ‘And he seems to like silver too. Or maybe he just likes his crown.’ She meant it to be a bit light-hearted, but Cieli frowns at the observation.
Cieli hunches a bit. She lowers her voice, like she is telling a secret. ‘When he was younger, they used to keep a torch over Stello Alest’s cell. Everyone could always see him. Everyone always knew where he was. Who he was.’
Fen is not sure what to say. She puts another piece of bread in her mouth, chews even though she doesn’t have the saliva to make it easy. Swallows dry. Cieli flicks some invisible dirt off her knee. She folds her hands in her lap. ‘He used to look at us every time they brought him in and out of the cells. He’d look at us like he was memorizing our faces.
‘He was nine when he entered the cells. He had been given a royal education before that, but…there were gaps from a lack of context or understanding. We…taught him as best we could. Told him stories, tried to entertain.’ Fen cannot imagine how hard it would be to do something like that, to describe what is indescribable without comparison or understanding. ‘There’d be times when the Queen would have him come out of the cells. Sometimes to murder someone at her behest…but every year no matter what: one night to seethe stars. And whenever he returned, he’d tell us stories of his own. He’d describe every colour he saw, every glorious sight. In those nights…I think all of our favourite colours were whichever one he described. For in that moment, it was perfect.’
Cieli loves him. Fen knows this. She has seen the loyalty Cieli has towards Cat and knows that love must be involved. But it feels deeper than that. It is not merely the love of a monarch or the love of a comrade. Cieli loves Cat like Fen loves Elician. Cat is as much a part of Cieli’s family as Elician is Fen’s. She has tried to imagine the Reaper cells before. It was impossible not to after Lio and Elician returned. She saw how it changed them both, how the same Brielle that taught Cat as a child left an impact so profound on Lio he nearly killed a man when he learned of her death.
The Reapers in Altas were not Reapers Cat knew personally, and yet, despite that, they went to him. They understood him, wanted to touch and be near him. ‘Why do your people careso muchabout him?’ she asks. ‘In Soleb our people respect and honour our king, but…youloveCat. You would doanythinghe asked. All of you would. And have.’
‘He is our son, brother and future, Fen,’ Cieli says. ‘He’s the best hope we have.’
‘And you’d trust him over anyone? Everyone? No matter what they said?’
‘Yes,’ Cieli says, with no hesitation or doubt. ‘He is our king, now and always. Is it not the same for you?’
‘No,’ Fen murmurs. ‘It is exactly the same.’
She takes a deep breath then, finishing the last of her bread and slowly standing. ‘I’ll be back in a few hours,’ she tells Cieli. ‘I need to clear my head.’ Cieli nods and offers an awkward salute, hand over her chest. It is a kind attempt, for all it is lacking in the gesture’s usual decorum.
Fen leaves the butcher shop and makes her way down to Elena’s home. Her former mentor has been hard at work testing potentialinoculation methods. Elena isolates herself in her lab most nights, peering at skin samples beneath her microscope and taking note after note. Only a few days ago, Fen was horrified when she spied a mark on Elena’s arm, with a dark painted circle to indicate the original dimensions of that wound. Elena had mixed together some kind of substance using cells from a patient before and after they were healed. They all watched the wound’s progress with bated breath but, three days later, the cut showed no signs of infection, and Elena was more than a little persuasive when she said she wanted to try testing it on other people in the city, just to make sure. She has been preparing the concoction ever since.
Fen knocks on her door as she enters the home. She peers in. ‘Still alive?’ she asks, only half joking. And her mentor nods without looking up from her research.
‘Still alive. There’s food in the cupboard. I missed lunch earlier, you can have it.’
‘No,’ Fen says. ‘It’s fine. I just need a few moments’ rest.’ But Elena isn’t listening. She is still working. So, Fen closes the door and turns, not towards her former bedroom in this home but to the basement and the secret passageway outside the city.
Lord Hamad has written to her. A simple, quick message, asking her only one thing: could she meet him, tonight. She’s surprised he dared to risk leaving his home in the middle of such an outbreak, but so long as he has the resources to keep himself away from anyone infected…he should be fine. And she, certainly, cannot infect him. She is immune.
He has asked her to meet him at an old guard outpost meant to serve as a signal tower for Crowen should enemy forces manage to push past Altas into the interior. It takes her half an hour to reach it on foot. Three men are standing by the door and they watch her approach without saying a word. They let her inside without much comment, and she finds the lord sitting at a long table stacked with more food than Fen has seen in weeks. Her stomach gurgles, but sheignores it. Hamad smiles when he sees her. He stands and bows perfectly. ‘My dear princess, you look exhausted. Please, will you sit with me?’
‘Thank you, Lord Hamad,’ she says, approaching the table. She sits in the proffered chair to his right.
‘How are things in Crowen, Your Highness?’ he asks her. He offers her some wine, and she thanks him again.
‘The plague is spreading,’ she says. ‘We are doing what we can to halt its progress.’
‘But it’s not enough, is it?’ Hamad asks.
‘The gods have granted us a formidable challenge,’ Fen replies. ‘We do what we can.’
