“A thousand years ago the Builders put a slope under us all, Jalan.” A woman’s voice behind me, old but strong. “The world’s sliding toward a fall. Some of us have been enjoying the ride too much to worry about that drop, or they think there will be something for them at the bottom of it. Others want to undo the deed that set us sliding in the first place. That’s the war.”
For a moment I think of that hot roof slipping beneath me, the desperate scrabbling at the tiles as the edge rushed toward me, the relief when I managed to steer into the east spire. Had she seen all that? I don’t want to ask if she plans for us all to fall.
I make a slow turn. The Red Queen fills the doorway, her gown a deep crimson, bone spars rising above her shoulders to spread a fan of the material behind her. A necklace of jet sets stark black shapes across her chest, diamonds and rectangles. She looks old, but tough, like a rock that has weathered countless storms. There’s no kindness in her eyes. I can see Mother behind her, winded by the stairs, tiny in comparison, and Nanna Willow with her.
“Come, Jalan.” My grandmother beckons me, turning to leave. She doesn’t offer her hand.
“Use a lighter touch,” Garyus says. He coughs, thick with phlegm, tries to rise, then flails an arm at a shelf on the wall opposite. “The copper box.”
Grandmother steps into the room. “It’s a crude measure at best.”
I stand gaping, amazed that the Red Queen would let an old cripple in the Poor Palace address her so.
“It says enough to tell you if the boy needs closer inspection.” Garyus waves at the shelf again.
Grandmother gives a curt nod and Nanna Willow hurries to the box. It’s small, only just big enough to fit my fist in, no lock or latch, embossed with thorn patterns.
“Only what’s inside,” Garyus directs.
Nanna Willow opens it—schnick—it makes a satisfying sound as the lid comes free. She stands without motion for a moment, her back to us, and when she turns her eyes are bright, almost as if she were on the edge of tears, perhaps struck by some old memory at once both bitter and sweet. In her hands the box is open and a glow escapes, visible as her body casts it into shadow.
“The blinds, if you wouldn’t mind.” Garyus looks toward my mother who seems more surprised than the queen at being set tasks by this stranger, but after a moment’s hesitation she goes to use the long stick beside the shelf to draw the cloth across the high window. The room is plunged into a half-light. Nanna Willow tips the contents of the box into her hand, closes the lid, and replaces it on the shelf. In her palm is some piece of shaped silver, a solid cone with little runes incised around it. The whole thing glows like a coal from the fire but with a whiter light, and the runes burn.
“If you could let your son hold the orichalcum, Princess Nia,” Garyus asks. In the shifting glow of the metal cone his face becomes something monstrous, but no worse than the gargoyles that supported me in my climb.
Mother takes the orichalcum from Nanna Willow’s hand and immediately the glow becomes brighter, more white, though shifting as if waves were rippling through it. She holds it at arm’s length as if it might explode and brings it to me, passing Garyus in his bed. The glow becomes momentarily stronger still as she nears him. Grandmother steps back when Mother approaches us.
“Here, Jally. It won’t hurt you.” Mother holds the cone out to me, her thumb on the base, the point against her forefinger. I’m not convinced. The way she keeps it from her body suggests it might bite.
I take it despite my misgivings, and as I do the thing ignites, too bright to look at. I turn my head away, almost dropping the cone, and in my effort not to look I stab myself with the sharp end behind the knuckle. Keeping my gaze averted I now see the cone’s illumination as light and shadow on the walls. When Nanna Willow held it the glow was a steady thing but now it’s as if I hold a hooded lantern spinning on a cord, sweeping a beam of brilliance across the walls, throwing first the queen’s face into sharp relief, then Mother’s, leaving Grandmother in darkness.
“Set it on the table, Jalan,” Garyus says. “On this plate.” And so I do.
The light dies from it immediately, leaving only a faint glow, and the runes still burning bright as if carved through onto some hot place where the sun dazzles on desert sands.
“Unstable.” Grandmother steps closer, bending in to see. Despite their interest both she and Garyus are careful not to touch the orichalcum. “Conflicted.”
Unbidden, Nanna Willow comes to turn the plate, rotating the orichalcum so the queen can see all the runes, seven in total.
“Brave. Cowardly. Generous. Selfish. It’s almost as if he were two people . . .” Grandmother shakes her head, turning to look at me as if I were some unsatisfactory meal set before her.