bright, and I had to duck my head to hide it. For the first time since the nightmare that had begun at Aestival, I would be guarded by people loyal to me, not Dieter. These people wore my emblem.
‘You are our daughter,’ said Ardas, noting my happiness. ‘We send you back to your throne represented as such.’
Roshi drew my attention with a hand on my elbow. ‘Come,’ she said, leading me away from the thick of the feast.
On the far side of the bonfire, glimmering and dancing in the night-cloaked plains, torches mounted on staves driven into the ground marked out a circle. Shadi stood in its centre.
Memories that weren’t mine prompted me to bow to Shadi once I stepped into the circle.
‘Mother of my mother,’ I said, my voice firm, ‘I remember the days of your life.’
Torchlight cast a yellow gleam in her eyes, a sparkle which didn’t touch the depths of her gaze. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suspected as much. Beata was a woman of many talents.’
Over my shoulder she addressed Roshi. ‘Back to the feast with you, child. There’s time enough for your new duties on the morrow.’ She turned back to me. ‘You must be gentle with her, child. It is a great pain to her to leave.’
‘Let her stay, then,’ I said, an easy enough offer given my cousin’s moodiness and scornful words over the past days. ‘I don’t mind. I have maids aplenty back home.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Shadi. ‘The choice is made.’
‘If she doesn’t want to –’
‘Who said anything about not wanting? The girl asked to accompany you,’ said Shadi, dismissing the topic with a flutter of her fingers. ‘Come closer, child, we must get you ready. Tonight you will be Nilofen – if a somewhat wire-haired specimen.’
She had clothes for me, a slit-skirted dress of wool dyed a brilliant red. The bodice sported an elaborate pattern worked in beads, bones and claws. As she dressed me she explained the meaning of each, a complex interpretation of colour, placement and original owner.
The dress felt strange against my skin and cut off my air after Shadi cinched the goat-leather belt around my waist. My head swam with the familiar disorientation of a vision. The flames of the torches turned to spears, darting up and down, in and out, until I didn’t know which way was up.
Hoofbeats drummed in my ears and a herd of horses galloped at me from all directions. Tall and spare and gleaming in the stabbing torchlight, every horse in the herd bore a whip-thin serpent with bright green scales twined around its neck. The drumming built to a dazzling crescendo, clattering and bouncing around inside my skull, as the horses trampled my old clothes into the ground, then vanished in a cloud of dust which wouldn’t settle.
I drew in a shuddering breath as the spears of flame, the horses, the dust, all melted away and it was just me and Shadi, alone in a circle of torchlight.
‘Do they always take you by surprise, child?’ said the old woman, peering at me.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘A dizzy spell is all.’
‘Oh yes, a dizzy spell. Of course. Well, if the time comes when you need to deal with those, have Roshi bring you back to me. I will teach you.’
‘Buapi,’ I said, the Skythe word for grandmother familiar in my mouth now, as if I’d always used it, ‘was it you who worked the hex on Beata? The one to pour your memories into her head?’
She nodded. ‘Beata permitted it, of course. No one can enspell you against your will if you’ve the knowledge to stop it – which Beata had.’
Pity she hadn’t passed on that knowledge, I thought, then I wouldn’t have a brand on my brow or the voices of two old women in the back of my head, planted in the folds of my consciousness without my knowledge or consent.
‘Perhaps it’s the source of your dizzy spells,’ Shadi suggested slyly. ‘Beata’s gift, I mean. If you didn’t fight it, it might not hurt so.’
‘You don’t understand –’ I began.
‘I understand this much. You mustn’t fear. You’ve our blood in you, and you mustn’t smother it in your walls of stone. You don’t have to live on the plains to commune with the sky. Seek high ground, child, where walls can’t impede you. Then you’ll find your strength.’
‘I have no strength, not the way you’re talking about,’ I said, crossing my arms.
‘When you change your mind, come back and visit old Shadi