Page 22 of In the Ravenous Dark
“Depth. Like a sculpture,” my father says knowingly. “You’re anartist, Rovan, except your tool isn’t a chisel or a brush or even a loom. It’s sigils.”
“Justonesigil, mostly.”
“You’ll learn more. And with them, you can make almost anything, you realize, not just a weaving.”
I remember the ball of water I summoned for Bethea and feel a flush of pride, but then focus on the ground as sinking shame takes its place. “I still got caught. And I couldn’t do anything to save myself, or my mother, or you. And now I don’t know how I’m supposed to follow in your footsteps.”
“I’ll help you. I promise. I’ll teach you. For the moment”—he sags back against the desk—“I think I need to rest before tonight’s banquet. And you have an appointment with the tailor.”
“I don’t want to see a tailor or go to any pompous banquet,” I hiss. “These people are vultures!”
“Do it, Rovan, for your mother’s sake. For me. Please.” He holds my eyes again, but this time I can tell he’s so, so tired.
“Ugh,” I say, and he smiles slightly, knowing I’ve relented.
But then his smile drops. “Rovan, I’m begging you… keep your head down. Try not to ask too many questions, at least for tonight. Be on your guard. Don’t think to find sympathy or succor.” His mouth thins to a grim line. “Not from any of thesevultures.”
7
Ihate my gown, I hate the grand banquet hall, and I hate the people around me. Most especially I hate my guardian, standing all too visibly behind my father and me as the guests mill and mingle before serving starts.
Evenhe, the dead man, has dressed for the occasion. A bright silver circlet binds his dark hair, and he wears a long black robe, embroidered in ghostly silver thread around the collar and sleeves, though his black sword belt still cinches his trim waist. This time, two half-moon blades, gleaming wicked and sharp, hang on either hip. He looks like a king who has stepped out of legend. Or rather, the underworld.
Despite hating the sight of him, I’m jealous of his strange blades. I would feel more confident with a weapon facing all these people. My gown isn’t nearly protection enough. While the sapphire-blue creation hasplentyof material, contrary to what Crisea implied, it’s terribly thin, draping in gossamer folds from gold feather pins at the tops of my bare arms to the floor, and belted tightly across my breasts and down around my waist and hips with a twining strophion in cloth of gold. My dark, blue-tinted waves of hair have been piled atop my head with a heap of red poppies and coiled with thin gold chain, which matches the spiraling gold cuffs around my upper arms and wrists. Other than the chains and cuffs, I feel naked… which is perhaps fitting.
I’m unarmed, unarmored, and in the den of my enemy. A feeling of helplessness threatens to consume me, but I need to stay alert, look for any way to help my mother and escape. Still, my predicamentmakes me want to do something, anything, even throw a table across the room, merely for something to do.
The dead man is a shadowy warning at my shoulder.
My father and I trail behind Penelope and Crisea, who seem far more at home than we do in this strange place. The palace’s grand banquet hall is as opulent as one would expect. There are golden chandeliers shaped like antlers so entwined with blooming flowers that they look like hanging baskets bigger than carriages, dangling from a sky-high ceiling painted in blue and gilt-lined clouds.
“My wedding feast was held here,” my father murmurs. “I haven’t been back since, and I can’t say as I’ve missed it.”
Penelope either doesn’t hear him or pretends not to have as she threads her way through the crowded tables. The bejeweled guests part around her and Crisea, leaving plenty of room for us in her wake.
I feel as if I’m stepping into a gilded trap that will close around me at any moment. I should be screaming, at the very least. Instead, I’m supposed to smile and greet people.
Penelope steadily makes her way toward a table near the central dais where a tall, dark-skinned man stands. He’s older than my father, perhaps in his later forties, though he looks younger. His black braids are streaked with silver, but his arms are powerful, his back straight. He’s handsome in a hard-cut way. I don’t need the sword at his hip or the ceremonial bronze breastplate and gold-tipped pteryges over his red chiton to tell me he’s a warrior, and a high-ranking one at that.
“Princess,” he says to Penelope with a bow of his head. His eyes are warmer than the formality sounds on his lips. He gives Crisea a crease-eyed smile.
“You know I prefer my military title,” Penelope says. She’s come in armor herself, though Crisea wears a lavender peplos, which I have to admit looks great on her. “Rovan, this is my late sister Princess Maia’s husband and the leader of Thanopolis’s armies,General Tumarq. Tumarq, allow me to introduce my stepdaughter, Rovan Ballacra, only recently reunited with her father. It was a joyous occasion.” Her tone communicates anything but joy.
Nonetheless, the general gives me a respectful nod. “Greetings, Rovan.”
I don’t know what else to do, so I nod ever so slightly back, swallowing my emotions with questionable success. The man is being polite enough, and at least he isn’t a ward. Still, he’s another obstacle in the path of my escape. Although… I wonder if he knows where my mother is being held, and if I can somehow ferret the information out of him.
If the general has noticed my tepid response, he’s unperturbed. “You have a name that sounds unfamiliar in these halls, like my own. My ancestors originally heralded from a kingdom north of Thanopolis, but my parents, their last rulers, were driven here by the blight. Even if the wards and their guardians try to make us soldiers obsolete, it is now my greatest honor in life to protect this city’s walls.” He lifts a strong, calloused hand. “But I remember what it was like to feel the stranger, as I’m sure your father once did and you do now.”
“My mother, too, no doubt,” I say before I can think better of it. “She’s supposedly a guest behind these walls, as well.”
My father clears his throat. He sounds slightly strangled.
Tumarq remains impassive. “Indeed, the palace is unparalleled, and it can be disorienting. But you might find something in common with my offspring, Japha, as a ward.”
Word of me has already spread, then, if he knows I’m a newly warded bloodmage. I reluctantly turn my attention to the person lounging in a chair next to the general—the only one yet seated, as far as I can tell.
“I do not call them either my son or my daughter, since they insist they are neither.” The general smiles.
