lot like they did in the Night Court, offering distant greetings and plenty of privacy.
I doubted that Lia—or her father, who’d started the collection—had meant for the gallery to become a kind of shrine, but for those of us refugees from the forgotten empires and scattered kingdoms, it was the one place we could go to see something of our homelands. I’d made a number of visits to the gallery before Cradysica, but hadn’t been back since. When I’d haunted the place before, though, I’d come to recognize a few of the other frequent visitors, all of us going to our own personal collection of portraits.
The gallery probably wasn’t meant to feel like a tomb, but the dim light—to protect the art—and profound silence gave it that feel. They’d packed the walls with portraits, landscapes, and other paintings, drawings, etchings, and renderings. Not arranged to please the eye, but grouped by cities within kingdoms. One wall held art that couldn’t be traced to any particular place, orphaned works like Lia’s new crown.
I always went straight to one portrait, dominating the center of the wall that held Oriel’s art. The royal family. My family. Lia’s words on regrets had been on my mind, and one of my many regrets at Cradysica had been that, as often as I’d visited this portrait, I’d never been able to bring myself to look at Rhéiane’s face. I’d assumed her dead, and in the most horrific way, but now that I knew she might be alive … Well, I wasn’t sure I remembered what she looked like, and if I was going to rescue her, I’d dammed well better be able to recognize her.
Not giving myself the opportunity to lose my nerve, I strode up to the painting, pointed at Vesno to sit, and looked right at Rhéiane.
It felt like a punch to the gut.
I had forgotten, far too much. I should’ve looked at Rhéiane’s portrait long before this, because I realized in that moment that I’d been carrying around the last image I’d had of her. The blood, and tears, and screaming … I shook that away and determinedly stared at this version of my sister. Painted not long before Anure began his campaign of terror and destruction, Rhéiane had been about sixteen, and beautiful with the first blossoming of womanhood.
With hair dark as a raven’s wing, like mine, but glossy and waving to the backs of her knees, she smiled impishly, full of merriment and vitality, her tawny eyes seeming to sparkle. She and Sondra had been fast friends, and I’d remembered Sondra as the beauty, but that had clearly been a little brother’s blindness. For Rhéiane had a radiance to her of intelligence and personality. And the sight of her face brought back a rush of memories, of her teasing me, reading to me—even yelling at me not to mess with her stuff. Which I always had anyway.
Some deep place in me stirred, like a seed putting up a shoot in soil long since dried and cracked. I remembered Rhéiane, and it was good.
Stepping back, I surveyed the wall full of images I’d previously ignored. Paintings of the crown city of Oriel, with the palace high on a craggy hill, tumbling in tiers to the buildings of the town. The seven walls circling in rings marking the various sections of the city, then opening to the rich pastureland below. Low stone walls wended through field and orchard, making designs.
There were more—paintings of famous people of Oriel I barely recalled learning about—and other scenes I didn’t recognize. A mirror-bright lake with snowcapped mountains beyond. Another city, bounded by three rivers, arched bridges spanning them. I had no idea where that might’ve been.
What did Oriel look like now? I guessed I’d pictured it like a scoured wasteland of ash and bare rock, much like Vurgmun. Probably the beat-up, grief-ridden boy I’d been had seen the mines at Vurgmun and painted all the world in those colors. Past time, probably, to rethink all kinds of things.
As I left, Vesno happy to escape the boring place I wouldn’t even let him investigate, I passed someone in a violet cloak, kneeling before another grouping of portraits. They made the sign of Yilkay’s blessing and stood as I came abreast, tipped back the cowled hood to reveal short silver hair.
“Good morning, Conrí,” Brenda said.
“Brenda.” I nodded at her, then looked curiously at the wall.
“Derten,” she offered, turning to look, too.
“Your homeland?” I asked. I was uncertain of polite