Which is when I realize: she’s not Mim. That’s Irina, one of the scullery maids who mops the corridors and minds the fireplaces. I turn away quickly as she strides down the main road to the east, probably going home to her family for a few days off.
My hand covers my stomach as that hollow feeling inside me grows. It’s midmorning now. She said she’d come for me at sunrise. Where is she?
I return to my little spot next to the blacksmith’s shop. To keep myself from squinting endlessly down the road to the temple, I watch the people in the square. They’re wearing their light fall cloaks, which is the heaviest garb they ever have to don within the city walls, because the Valtia keeps us warm even in the depths of winter. Their cheeks are full and their limbs are strong, because the Valtia ensures the gardens and farmland are protected from too much heat in the summer. They wear adornments, bangles and tunics of all colors, because the Kupari are wealthy and can trade our bountiful food for goods from the southern city-states of Korkea, Ylpeys, and, until a few months ago, Vasterut. All these people going about their lives, trusting that the Valtia and her magic wielders within the Temple on the Rock are protecting them. It is an intimate and precious trust, as some of the citizens have brothers and nieces and sons and cousins who were discovered to be wielders as children and welcomed within the temple’s white walls. It is a great honor for any family to have produced a magical child.
What will happen to these well-dressed, straight-backed citizens if they don’t have a Valtia to keep them warm and protect them from raiders and bandits? Do they know the girl who failed them is in their midst? Some of them look my way, and each time, I tense up, expecting their eyes to widen with recognition.
But their gazes slide away. I don’t hold their attention. They don’t know me, not without my bloodred gown and my makeup—the white face, the crimson lips, the copper swirls.
As the sun reaches its peak, sweat slides in drops down the back of my dress, stinging my wounds like a hundred angry hornets. But if I pull my hood away and reveal my hair, will the people know me then?
Again, no. When I really pay attention, I realize that one in every five or so has hair that glints with reddish gold, that shines beneath the sun. Many of our citizens also have pale-blue eyes.
I’m not such a rarity after all.
I ponder that as I wait. As I wait and wait and wait. Finally, I’m drenched from the combined heat of the forge and the sun and my frustration, and I move across the square to sit closer to the northern road.
I’m still there as the fishing boats return in the afternoon, as the sky clouds over and the day turns gray.
And as the twilight comes, chasing away the heat of the surprisingly warm autumn afternoon, I am still there. Hollow with hunger and shock and worry. Mim hasn’t come.
“—already searched the Lantinen,” comes an unmistakable, reedy voice—it’s Leevi. “So we’ll search along Etela Road next. I sent my apprentice ahead to give them notice.”
My whole body jolts. As a distant rumble of thunder rolls across the Motherlake, I yank my hood up and scramble away from the northern road, ending up by the bakery again, just in time to watch Elder Aleksi and Elder Leevi stride into the square. People back away from them as they pass, bowing with reverence when they notice the elders’ belts, shot through with the copper that marks their status. A few women coming out of the bakery whisper to one another, and I hear the one word that tells me exactly what Leevi and Aleksi are doing.
Saadella.
They’re searching for the little girl with the copper hair, the ice-blue eyes, and the blood-flame mark. My replacement. The one who would be Valtia, if only I were dead. Or, at least, that’s what they think. I cross the square to walk slowly behind the two elders. I want to know if they’re looking for me, too. As we leave the square and start down Etela Road, which leads directly south until it meets the timber wall that rings the city, people gather in the street even though it’s starting to rain. Mothers and fathers wipe drops from their faces and push their daughters to the center of the road. All the girls have copper hair. Pale-blue eyes.
There must be at least ten of them on this street alone.
I step into an alley between a cooperage and a brewery as Aleksi and Leevi reach the first girl. She’s perhaps three or four, and her damp red hair falls in tangled waves to her shoulders. Her mother grasps her by the rib cage and lifts her into the air. “She’s got an eerie, calm temperament, Elders. She has since she was a babe. Wise beyond her years. I’ve always wondered.”
My breath comes faster. Was that what it was like when I was found?