The smith, they noted, wore vambraces instead, covering his forearms and etched in intricate designs. It seemed a profligate quantity of godsmetal, and showed his importance. Smiths accrued godsmetal by imperial reward—for service, and victory in battle. With each success, their ships grew larger. The bigger the ship, the more glorious the captain. The wasp ship was small, which would suggest the smith was either not glorious, or simply young and at the beginning of his career.
“And what was your mother’s gift?” asked the tall, shaved-pate telepath, whose name was Ren.
“Shock waves,” answered Nova.
“Magnitude sixteen,” added Kora, proud, and the girls were gratified to see the Servants’ eyes widen. They were impressed. How could they not be? How many of them were sixteens? The scale of magnitude went to twenty, but gifts of a strength eighteen and above had been recorded only a handful of times in history. In practical reality, sixteen was about as good as it got. Moreover, magnitude was heritable, which meant…
“This should be interesting,” said the white-haired Mesarthim, Antal, still trying to wipe the stench of their clothing off his hands. The girls were curious about his hair—so much of it, and so white. He didn’t seem old, but then, Mesarthim didn’t age. Longevity, perhaps even immortality, was a side effect of the godsmetal, so it was impossible to tell.
“Let’s see what you can do,” Solvay said to the girls, and then she turned to the smith.
He had not yet spoken, but only leaned against the wall, watching. His posture was lazy but his eyes were sharp. He alone of the four showed an interest in what was no longer hidden by the sisters’ stinking clothes. As Kora and Nova stood there, abashed, his gaze took a leisurely journey over their bare white legs and shoulders, their thinly veiled young breasts and bellies, as if their smallclothes and crossed arms hid nothing from him.
“Skathis?” prompted Solvay when he didn’t respond but only continued his brazen perusal. He turned to her, eyebrows cinching together, as though unaware that they were all waiting for him. “Shall we begin?” she prompted, and there was something brittle about her tone, something cautious.
“By all means.” He turned back to the sisters. “Let’s see how you look blue.”
And those words, which heralded the girls’ lifelong dream, were dirtied by Skathis’s mouth, which seemed to leave a film on them, making Kora and Nova all the more anxious to hide themselves from his gaze.
He tossed something to Kora. It was an easy underhand lob, and gave her time to start in surprise and reach for it. It was as small as a packed snowball—the icy kind that hurt—and she registered that it was godsmetal just before she caught it. She thought it would be hard, but it hit her hand like jelly and burst, splashing up her arm and clinging, so that it seemed to have caught her, and not she it.
There was nothing haphazard in the way it pooled and flowed over her skin. It didn’t drip, but spread out smoothly, thinning itself like leaf and gilding her—not gold, but blue—from the tips of her fingers, up her wrist, and over her forearm, so that she seemed to be wearing a glove made of mirror. She stared at it in wonder, turning her hand over, flexing her fingers, her wrist. The metal moved with her like a second skin.
And then she felt it: a low hum, a vibration.
At first, it was only her hand and forearm where the metal touched her, but it spread. All thoughts of modesty were forgotten as the thrum moved up her arm, even beyond the shining glove. As she watched, her skin began to change color. It grayed, like storm clouds or uul meat, flushing upward from the edge of the glove, rising toward her shoulder, carrying the thrum and the gray with it. She felt the buzz in her lips, in her teeth.
Nova saw the change come over her sister, her skin darkening to gray, then finally to Mesarthim blue. It was perfect. She’d imagined it so many times: the pair of them blue and free and empowered, and far away from here. And now it was happening. Tears pricked her eyes. It was finally happening.
They had always believed, deep in their hearts, that their gifts would be strong like their mother’s. As to what they would be, it was hard to decide what to hope for: elemental, empath, telepath, shape-shifter, seer, healer, weather-witch, warrior? They changed their minds all the time. Nova, especially, had always been gift-greedy, never able to settle on one. Smith, of course, was the emperor of gifts (and the emperor himself was, of course, a smith), but Kora and Nova knew how rare it was, and had never gotten their hopes up. Lately, with the village men eyeing them like livestock, invisibility had begun to seem appealing to Kora.
“I’d rather inflict blindness,” Nova had asserted. “Why should we have to disappear just because men are animals?”
And now the moment of discovery was upon them. The suspense was almost unbearable. What would they be, once their gifts awoke? In what capacity would they serve the empire?
The hum surged through Kora. Once it had covered the whole surface of her body, it seemed to sink deeper, through her skin to the core of her, to penetrate her heart, the backs of her eyes, the insides of her knees, the pit of her belly.
Then in her mind: a presence. It gave her a start, but it was not unfamiliar. A short while ago, outside, she and Nova had spoken a plea in their thoughts—see us—and the telepath, Ren, had come into their minds, and he came again now into Kora’s.
Don’t think, he counseled from inside her mind. Don’t wonder. Just feel.
I feel…a humming in my skin, she thought experimentally, wondering if he would hear her.
He did. That’s the physical threshold. Go deeper. Our gifts are buried within us.
She tried to do as he said. She closed her eyes and imagined she was opening other eyes that would look inward instead of out.
Nova watched, marveling at the silky azure of her sister’s eyelids, a shade darker than the rest of her skin. She was beautiful like this, majestic even in her dingy smallclothes. The godsmetal glove lent her an elegance that even homespun couldn’t ruin, and her hair, which against her white skin was mild and pretty, became, set against blue, a drama of contrast. Even her pale brows and lashes stood out in a new and striking way. Nova wondered what was happening inside her sister. She wanted to be in Kora’s mind with her, sharing this experience as they had shared all their dreams for all their lives. What was she feeling?
At first, nothing. Kora was trying to look within herself, but she didn’t know what she was supposed to see, so there was nothing but the imperfect darkness of her eyelids, washed with wavering red where light glowed through.
Don’t see, said Ren. Feel. What feels different?
Maybe he guided her. Maybe she did it on her own, but Kora began to become aware of the discrete entity that was herself, apart from environment, expectations, and the watchful eyes of these important strangers. Apart even from her sister. It was like being suspended inside herself, hearing the blood moving in her veins, feeling the throb of the heart that pushed it, and her limbs, and her breath, and her mind. She envisioned herself turning blue to her bones, the mesarthium seeping into her, and not infusing her with magic, but waking the magic that was already there.
She felt a pressure in her chest. As soon as she did, the telepath did, too.
There, he said. There it is.
What is it? she asked.
Bring it forth, he said. Let it come.
The pressure intensified, and she felt something in her chest begin to give way. It unnerved her. It felt as though some essential part of her was about to spill out of her body—as though her rib cage were going to swing open and…let something out. There was no pain. It was like discovering that, all along, her body had been made to do this, that her chest was hinged like a gate and she had simply never noticed.